• The day started with Jake recounting very vivid and strange dreams throughout the night which were very entertaining.
• Jake made breakfast for me… eggs (over hard), vegi-sausage patty, toast. Delicious.
• Then Quinn and I headed to Storytime @ Woodstock Library. It was the first “play group” event she’s been to since her crawling exploded a week ago. She enjoyed the hour, especially towards the end when the toys were brought out.  As soon as they were laid on floor, she departed the “safe zone” (mom) and took off towards the toys. She sat back to back with the other kids, grabbing toys out of the box and sometimes from another helpless baby, with only the occasional look back at me, to make sure I was still there. It was her independence shining through, and I was so proud of her. In these past months she’s developed a reputation of being quite the “mama’s girl” as well as a having a healthy dose of separation anxiety, so to watch her dart towards the barrel-o-toys without hesitation was brilliant. You couldn’t wipe the smile from my face if you tried.
• By early afternoon my brother John and his fiance Amanda made it to the house (from Olympia). We all ate some lunch and headed out to Saturday Market. The weather was perfect, crisp but dry. Quinn seemed to soak in the scenes, especially enjoying the live music, err, at least I did. I especially loved the moments when Jake took Quinn out of her stroller, and went off to show her what Saturday Market looks like if you’re 5′10″. He kept getting all of these endearing smiles and comments about her and it was so sweet, I think a part of my heart may have permanently melted.
• We came back to the house where Quinn proceeded to grow more and more fond of her uncle and soon-to-be auntie. At one point she noticed uncle John’s beard and would not leave it alone.  We kept trying to capture the moment in a picture but NO LUCK… Damn those delayed camera shutters!  She has just begun to really enjoy new people and we are seeing her start to “show off”. Tonight she was playing with her toys and then would quickly glance up at John with a beaming smile as if to say… “look at me and how awesome I am…” God it was so great. When John was not looking at her, she’d try her best to get his attention, so that his gaze was back on her.  To watch her develop these social skills blows my mind.
• For dinner we ordered take out from our favorite local Mexican Cart. Quinn settled for steamed apples, avocado & toast.
• After dinner I had the great idea that Quinn would enjoy some time, sans diaper and ummm I discovered, she pees A LOT. Two seconds after I pulled off her diaper, she peed on John’s shoe. Three minutes later she peed again, and a couple of minutes later, she peed while she was crawling over to the bookshelf. Jake kept hollering from the kitchen, “put a diaper on her, problem solved.” But each time she peed I thought… “OK, her bladder has GOT to be empty now. Now she’s fine to be without a diaper…” Luckily the 3rd episode was the last. And the floor got a good cleaning by me.
• Uncle John and Aunt Amanda headed home, charged with caffeine.
• And finally, bath time for Quinn & bed.

This day was wonderful from start to finish. I love that Quinn is really coming into her own and developing more and more personality as each day passes.  I loved just hanging out with my family. Laughing, telling stories and just relaxing. Perfect. Perfect. Day. Period.

Crawling

It was a few days ago when Quinn finally figured out that magical limb coordination that changed her from a reliable blob on the floor, to hell-on-wheels. Well, hell-on-wheels is an exaggeration as her crawl is still on the sloppy side. Her arms move in the traditional “crawling” position and move accordingly, however her legs do a very strange shuffle that somehow propel her forward. Her legs are a mix between a traditional crawl/bear crawl/military crawl. She’ll focus on an object she wants, which is usually around 4-5 Quinn lengths away.  She’ll then lunge forward and proceed with caution. She will crawl only as far as she thinks she needs to then sits herself up. If she comes up short, she repeats. I’m calling this crawling. She has not yet set her sights on anything too far away… for instance, me in the other room. She’ll lunge in my direction, then just stare in my direction and whine while I shout bits of encouragement to her… “come on Quinn”… “keep crawling”… “come get mommy…” The encouraging words don’t seem to be creating much action yet as they seem to just remind her that I’m in the other room and NOT picking her up.  Which reminds me that I need to use this time, before she is actually hell-on-wheels, to finish baby-proofing the house.

My big dilemma/question is, what do I do with the evil cat litter box? Our house is simply not large enough to conveniently store it out of baby’s reach, yet within kitty-cat reach. I’m contemplating placing it on the back-porch, but that would require us to install a cat-door which I’m not crazy about. Any ideas?

I Stand Alone

Along with this skill is her new found desire to stand ALL THE TIME. This as well as pulling herself up and stand at whatever is close… the couch, a chair, coffee table, my legs. She carefully pulls herself up, then lets go so she’s standing alone. One of three things happen at this point, she either (1) falls on her butt, (2) she falls towards the object that she was holding, or (3) falls all the way to the floor and hits her head. Even though she is often brought to tears when she falls, she is so determined to stand alone, that once the water-works have stopped, she goes right back to this activity.

Climbing Stairs

Quinn loves to stand on the stairs and look up, as she tries to figure out, where daddy’s voice is coming from. His office is upstairs and he can be heard but not seen. I’m afraid I’ve created a bad habit because, she is officially bored with standing at the stairs and banging on the steps… She now climbs up the stairs. Unbeknownst to her, she needs my help to complete this activity, however I don’t do much except hold her back, so she doesn’t fall backwards. As we reach the summit, I can tell her little legs get tuckered out, so I’ll give her a little push on her butt. She is beyond proud of herself when she reaches to top. It’s hilarious seeing this little blob of a person make their way up our 13 steps. I think she’s going to be a bit disappointed when I put that baby gate up.

Vo-cab Comprend-o

Her current word comprehension list is:Mommy. Daddy. Kitty-Cat. Bird. Dog. She may be comprehending much more than this, however, when I say these words to her she clearly understands. For example when I say “where’s the bird?” She looks up in the sky, trying to spot one. When I say “Where’s the kitty?” She quickly scans the room, looking for Maya the cat. This whole word comprehension thing is so fascinating and I know that if you don’t have children this probably won’t blow you away as it has Jake and I. But seriously people, I don’t know what could be more fascinating than watching your child learn one new thing after another. It’s an amazing gift.

And with that I’m off to wipe a snotty-nosed-afro-bedhead baby.

As of two weeks ago, I am a full blown, 100%, stay-at-home-mom (sahm).  The commitment I had made to my company was to give between 8-10 hours per week, which, I know sounds like something any of us could do without even blinking… However, the deal was that I would do this work from home while my daughter napped. I suppose at some level I knew it’d be a temporary situation, as obviously babies do not keep up that heavenly schedule of sleeping MOST of the day, but when Quinn abruptly shifted her naps from 4 down to 2 a day so quickly – I was a bit shell-shocked. I tried to “squeeze” in my 8-10 hours but the attempt was quite pathetic. She’d go down, I’d pick-up a few things around the house, maybe wash a dish or two then I’d head upstairs settling in to do some work, and 15 minutes later she was awake. I’d give a *sigh* of frustration and leave the pile of work there for the next time.

After almost 3 weeks of playing this game, I finally realized… things were not going back to the way they were. (Hey, listen, I never said I was quick on the uptake…) I returned the box of work, 2/3rd’s complete, said my goodbyes and my “yes, we’ll be coming back to visit often” remarks and off we went. A very anticlimactic ending to something that has been the constant in my life for over 8 years.

It was a couple of days later that I began feeling sad about ending the nearly perfect situation with my employer. While I only went in once a week to return/collect more work, that visit, plus watching the stream of department emails come and go, was my lifeline to the “working” world. The last morsel of my “old” self. I tried to log into my work email in the hopes that someone forgot to disable my account but…  I no longer existed. I spoke to Jake about it and he said what most guys (dudes, sorry for generalizing) would say, “I thought this is what you wanted”. I replied with, “yes it is, but, I’m still sad about it.” I know you’re probably familiar with this predictable male-to-female conversation format that occurs on a semi-regular basis in our house (man hears woman declare feelings, man gives solution, woman doesn’t WANT solution, she just wants him to LISTEN. Man can’t JUST listen, must give ACTION, SOLUTION, ANSWERS to stop woman from “declaring of feelings”.) Sorry, I digress — the fundamental differences between the way men and women communicate is for another post, on another day.

After my mourning/moping stage, the idea of this new found “freedom” began to take shape in my head.  See, even though I was only working while she was sleeping, I never ventured off too far, due to her frequent naps and the fact that I didn’t want to be caught out-and-about while she napped in the car, because “naptime” was always my “work-time”.

So during the first week and a half, I found myself with more freedom, yet I didn’t quite know what to do with it. As a result, I defaulted to our typical stopping grounds — Safeway, Fred Meyer’s and the ever so wonderful, money-sucking Target. However, when our fridge was stocked and there was not one more baby item I could justify purchasing at Target, I realized that Quinn and I need some new “activities”.

I made my way through the Urbanmamas calendar section… and payed a bit closer attention to the “puddle jumpers” mailing list I am a part of and selected a couple of things to attend.

The first was this, the World’s Biggest Playdate. It was very entertaining and I’m sure Quinn will take away a decent cold or two, thanks to the “community” toys she managed to shove in her mouth. There were lots of babies, live music, and Elmo!

Then on Friday we spent the day at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) with my friend Janna & Eve. Eve is 13 months old and quiet the little role-model for Quinn. We played for a couple of hours at the museum and then put the babies in their respective strollers and went on a 4 mile stroll. The girls did wonderful and only in the last 15 minutes did Quinn start to fuss, but it was short-lived because she quickly crashed in the car. Next on the agenda is Gym Class at Gymboree on Tuesday & Library time on Friday.

The challenge to these “outings” is to look for things that are free, or very inexpensive at the least.  I’m excited about the Gymboree gym class, but at 65 bucks a month, I’m gonna stick with my “free class” pass and seek out other options.

My hope is to have an “activity” at least 3 time a week for her, and while this is mainly for Quinn’s benefit, these outing do mamma some good as well.  Being cooped up in a (non-gigantic) house with a baby begins to wear on my nerves after a while. And now that I’m getting the hang of this SAHM thing, I’m sort of getting excited about the things she and I can fill our days with.

It’s not that often that Jake and I actually sit down together and agree on a television show to watch. This gathering has become even more scarce since Quinn was born. In fact there have been exactly 4 times we’ve sat down together and (tried) to watch something — the Presidental & VP debates. On the evening of the first debate we made it a point to leave my in-law’s early enough, so we’d have plenty of time to settle in.

Things did not go as planned. She lost her “cool” about 20 minutes into the debate. I took her outside to relax and I got stung by a bee. Which, what in the world was a bee doing on a cool evening towards the end of September??? Not to mention I’ve somehow avoided being stung by a bee for the past 20+ years — and I get stung now? I fell into a slight panic because the bee stung me on my arm, the arm that was holding my child. I also panicked because the last time I got stung, the affected area swelled to the size of a bowling ball. Just slightly unpleasant.

Anyway, long story short, I think it took us 4 hours to watch the 90 minute debate.  The other debates were of course the same, well, minus the bee sting. However for the remaining 3 debates, our expectations were correctly aligned with Quinn’s. And in the end, we were just glad we had a DVR that we could pause, rewind and fast forward.

So on this eve of the election which I am so excited for, I may not be able to sleep… I would love nothing more than to be glued to our tube from 4 p.m. on, watching CNN’s detailed reports on their “Magic Map”. However, I fear that I’ll have to settle for the election coverage to be the “background” noise to my standard evening with an 8 1/2 month old. Oh, and by the way, I’ve been trying to teach Quinn how important this election is, and why it is so important that Obama wins this thing…  And why we need to watch every silly news channel all night, however I’m not sure she totally got the message.

In her defense, she’s got a lot going on right now…  Learning to stand on her own, and oh yes, figuring out how to turn the lights *on* and *off*.