Independence Days

Mikayla is blowing my mind lately, and I have to share.

• On Friday, she grabbed her spoon from me at breakfast and started eating her oatmeal by herself. This is not the first time she has reached for the spoon, but it is the first time she has not placed her oatmeal directly in her hair or sent it flying through the air.
  
  Side note: how long does it take for a baby to "declare" handedness? Mikayla has always self-fed with both hands, but more often with her left. She is using both hands equally frequently to feed herself with the spoon, and seems equally coordinated with both so far (she gets the food smoothly into her mouth with both). Do I have an ambidextrous genius child, or will she eventually decide which hand she prefers?
  
   
• Today, while eating her PB&J for lunch, she looked me in the eye and held her nose with her right thumb and forefinger. I have never seen her hold her nose, and neither Joel nor I have taught her this. She gave me this mischievous smile for a few seconds before opening her sandwich-filled mouth and gasping for air. I'm not sure whether she knew ahead of time that this trick would deprive her of oxygen. Now, I can ask her to "hold your nose!" and she will do it again. Yes, I'm amazed by this because it is possibly the first spontaneous trick that nobody has taught her, and she found it as hilarious as I did.
  
• Also today, we went erranding with our sweet neighbor, Fran. Fran is at home by herself during the day while her teen (special-needs) grandsons are in school, and lately she has dropped by a few times to visit. Today we coordinated a visit to the local thrift store together, so that she could help me carry and corral little ones and actually accomplish my few shopping goals. Typically, Mikayla rides in the shopping cart or, when she is in a really sunny (not) mood, I have to carry her AND push the cart. Today, Mikayla pulled the go-limp-in-momma's-arms-and-slide-down-her-body move that signaled her desire to walk like a big girl. This has so far happened only at home, possibly a couple of times at church. But she walked like a CHAMP at the store, browsing the display cases of jewelry (the plexiglass windows between her and the merchandise were a little baffling at first) and doing laps around the front display aisles. She even attempted to push the cart. And walked through the big doors, along the sidewalk, and out to the car. She only became a tiny bit afraid when she saw the gigantic forklift that the employees use to move big bins of donations around, but hey, that's a little intimidating even to an experienced biped like myself.
  
• Mikayla used to be afraid of both our gravel driveway and the grass. On Saturday she held a few blades of grass in her hand. Today, she walked all over the driveway, around the car, and gave handfuls stones to Fran before they came inside and showed off Mikayla's dirty palms. I saw her grimy hands and thought, she's officially a kid now!
  
• She is learning new words almost daily. The cutest is "buh-puh" (purple) and "byyyyeeeee!" every time she hears one of us say goodbye on the phone. Also "doop doop doop" with accompanying hand motion, which is apparently what the ceiling fan "says".
  
• I am happy to report that she seems to understand the question, "Do you want a spanking?" This has, for the most part, turned our diaper-change experiences around considerably, for the better. And I have only had to follow through once - the mere mention of that dreaded smack on chubby toddler-thigh inspires golden obedience. So far. But stay tuned on that one, folks, because I do believe she is her momma's daughter.
  
• She takes her big-sister role very seriously. She brings Isaac his blanket (and puts it over his face). She shows him all her toys (mostly by bopping him in the head with them, but she REALLY wants to give them to him!). She gives lots of hugs and kisses and rocks whatever he is sitting in. And she doesn't let me get lazy...today I strapped him into his carseat, but left the handle back in the reclining position. Mikayla pulled the hood/shade thing up over Isaac's head, and tugged on the handle, looking at me with eyes that obviously said, "But momma, he's not ALL ready to go yet!" I'm amazed at the things she picks up on, like burping her baby doll, putting a burp cloth over the doll as a blanket, and obviously making sure Isaac's carseat is in the locked, upright position so that we can leave the house.

 And those, dear reader, are the ways my sweet little girl has been venturing forth on her own two feet lately, and taking my personal world, at least, by storm. There's a new reason to feel at once proud and humbled every day!

SDG!

CIO: Part Deux (Isaac's Turn!)

These last seven weeks have been such a blur, I haven't had a chance to think about blogging, let alone come up with an interesting topic! Next week I will try to do a two-month update for sweet Isaac, so that you all know what he's up to. For now, though, I just want to jot a few things that might be worth remembering.

Joel and I have been discussing when to let Isaac cry it out. Sometimes during the day I simply don't have the opportunity to go help him out, so he cries to sleep out of sheer necessity. Amazing how a 15 month old can gobble up all your time! But this has definitely been more the exception than the rule, and frankly we are hoping he can become a little lower maintenance. I harbor no expectation that this will suddenly lead us to become well-rested people, since he is still waking a couple of times at night to eat (none of those amazing 5-6 hour stretches that Mikayla was doing at this age...yet...possibly because the poor kid has spent the last few weeks snotting around. The lack of oxygen probably wakes him if hunger doesn't.).

So I decided to peruse back over the blog to see when Mikayla first CIO. Turns out, she was almost exactly two months old. And Isaac will be two months old this Thursday. And this coincides with Dr. Marc Weissbluth's recommendation in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby, a book that preserved our sanity the first time around with Mikayla. We are such intuitive parents, aren't we, knowing just when to start letting our children CIO? Or...two months is when we've reached our wits end on trying to get our child to sleep. Intuitive, or exhausted, take your pick.

Just now we decided to test the theory. Isaac went down in his playard at 6:25 and started to cry. But I KNEW he was tired, dry, and not hungry. Perfect recipe for a little CIO attempt, no? We set our mental timers to five minutes, because you can let your child cry for five minutes and still definitely be a good parent. At five minutes he was pretty unhappy with us, but we looked at each other and let the clock inch by to seven minutes...the wails were coming and going at this point. At ten minutes I decided to go rub his back, offer the Nuk, etc. Still pretty ticked, so I picked him up for a minute to soothe him. His eyes immediately started to drowse closed, so I dropped that kid like a (fragile) hot potato so that he could reap the full benefit of falling asleep on his own. Generous momma that I am.

Here we are at 6:55 and that little bug has been silent for at least ten minutes, meaning it took all of twenty for him to successfully CIO with a minor assist in the middle. It kind of feels like that moment when...no wait, actually there is nothing quite like the feeling of a SLEEPING INFANT.

Plus, Mikayla just went night-night, so we are enjoying one silent house at the moment. Joel and I are whispering to each other just to make sure we don't break it. Notable quotable from Joel: "Our house hasn't been this quiet in seven weeks."

We are strongly considering letting Isaac CIO at bedtime tonight, but it would mean probably sleeping him in his playard downstairs, so he doesn't wake his sister. But perhaps, if it takes less than twenty minutes, we could tolerate having him in our room.

On that note, gotta run. Our neighbor's dog just started barking, loudly, and Mikayla's monitor just flipped on, meaning she's awake. Keep an eye on the news tonight; if you hear my name, you'll know this didn't end well. No, seriously.

SDG!