A Whole Different Baby February 3, 2011

Layla has reached the age where she is very active, interactive, taking everything in, and learning every minute.  It seems like she was just born, so it’s funny to me to see what she is like now and think that she’s totally different now to the little baby who pretty much just used to sleep all the time.  Let me count the ways that she is “new”:

1. Her hair is coming in thick and fast.  It was just a few weeks ago that the sides and back of her hair had fallen out and most of her hair that was left was just on top.  Every day I can see she is getting more and more hair and it seems to be getting longer quickly.  When Hayden was her age his hair had fallen out but was coming back in very light blonde.  This does not seem to be happening to her; I don’t think she will ever be blonde.  I don’t think it will be long before she starts getting some baby curls. 🙂

2.  She is an eating pro.  She gets three meals a day, and she’s an eager eater.  My stepdad said it best: “She eats with her whole body!”  Her little hands and feet move in excited circles as she eats.  Cutest. Thing. Ever.  I guess I will have to qualify this by saying that she is a very eager eater as long as I have added some yogurt to whatever I’m giving her.  She will open her mouth like a little birdie when there’s yogurt mixed in, but otherwise she’s not as keen.  The last couple of meals I have forgone the yogurt and she has still eaten it, but in the past she wouldn’t even open her mouth if it didn’t have the good stuff in there!

3.  She is finally taking naps in her crib.  This has been a looooong time coming.  I only have myself to blame for her nearly hitting the 8 month mark before she would sleep in her bed during the day.  I didn’t push it because 1) when I work it was easier to let her fall asleep on her nursing pillow while I worked than try to get her to nap upstairs and then have to manage going up and down the stairs continuously with the real possibility of her never falling asleep.  I knew if I kept her with me she would definitely fall asleep and it would be, well, easy!  And 2) the times I did try to let her “cry it out” in her bed she would start getting in a habit of crying whenever I put her in her crib, even at night.  If I didn’t bother with it during the day, then the nighttime routine wasn’t negatively impacted.  Obviously this approach wouldn’t work for most families, but it was fine for us.  But now that she is taking naps in her bed it just feels like she is so grown up!

4.  She has been sitting up very steadily for a while now.  She’s not crawling, but she does kind of wiggle herself in the right direction when she is lying on her belly and wants something.  But no scooting or crawling or anything like that.

5.  She LOVES laughing at Hayden.  She is very interested in him.  He loves making her laugh, too.  He will shake his head back and forth which usually gets her laughing.  In fact, he was doing that this morning when we were taking him to preschool, but she hasn’t been feeling well and she was watching him but not laughing.  He was telling me that she needed to be laughing because he was doing that.  lol!  When she and I have been home on a workday and Hayden’s been at preschool, she gets visibly excited when I put her in her carseat when it’s time to go get him (and she doesn’t get excited when put in her carseat any other time).

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Haircut October 27, 2010

Layla had to get a little haircut a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn’t that it was getting too long (she is a girl, after all, so I don’t expect to be hearing the frequent “she needs a haircut” from John that I get about Hayden (John is not as big of a fan of shaggy little boy hair as I am) 😉 ), but she has been losing some hair on the sides of her head while the top keeps growing longer.  It was starting to look a little bit silly so I decided to clean it up.  I did feel badly giving a haircut to a 4 month old as it just didn’t seem like it should be time yet, but there was one particular chunk on the side of her hair that needed to be tidied.  Once that was cut then the top and other side needed to also be cut to make it all look even. 

She started out happy enough, but by the end she was ready for it to be done.  When she started crying John had the cheek to ask her if she was upset because she heard what I had done to Hayden’s hair in the spring!!  lol  Anyway, I stopped cutting when she got upset and finished the rest of it when I was giving her a bath.  That girl loves baths so much that I had all the time in the world to get it right since she wasn’t in a hurry to get out!

Haircut May 5, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I finally caved and agreed it was time for Hayden to have a haircut (John and I are never in agreement about when it’s time for Hayden to have his hair cut – he usually starts to mention it about 6 weeks before I think it’s time).  We haven’t been hugely impressed with the cuts we’ve gotten from the places I’ve taken him to in the past that specialize in kids’ cuts, so we thought maybe I should have a go at it.

Obviously we had to have a pretty good incentive to get him to hold still and not freak out while I was cutting it, so the first stop was Target where he was allowed to get a special toy.  He picked a big car carrier truck (John calls it a car transporter in case I’m using the wrong word), which came in at around $5 cheaper than the cost of a haircut so I figured I was on top financially if nothing else.

He was so excited about his car carrier that when we got home he wanted his hair cut right away.  Great start to things!  I put him in his booster seat and tried to get a kitchen towel tucked in around his shirt collar to keep the hair off him as much as I could.  That lasted about 2 minutes before it fell or he took it off (I was too busy to notice).  He kept his cool for a little while, while I tried to pretend like I knew what I was doing and do it as quickly as possible.  After a while the hair was starting to get everywhere, and it was all downhill from there.  He was upset that the hair was all over him, and then he started crying, then he put his hand in his mouth as he was crying (why do kids do that?), and of course the hand had loose hair on it because the towel wasn’t covering him anymore, and he became even more upset because he had all this hair in his mouth… I did manage to get his hair all cut before I let him down, but the last 1/2 of the haircut was very tricky contending with the screaming and freaking out that was going on.  I think an essential tool that I was missing that could have made all the difference was a barber’s cape.  It would have made the hair slide onto the floor and kept his hands clean so no hair would have gotten into his mouth.  Perhaps I need another cape for myself, to try to transform into SuperMom and do a better job next time.  I haven’t decided yet if I will actually try it again next time (with a cape) or take him to the “professional” place.

The end result?  Well, I think he has had worse haircuts before.  The last couple of cuts he’s had I have ended up tidying it up afterwards anyway.  I have found that so frustrating, that I have planned my day around the appointment, gotten him there, done all the psychological prepping with him, paid the money, and then have to do more to it when we get home anyway.  I had to do some tidying up after this haircut, too.  Several times I would sneak out the scissors and fix a couple of spots while he was playing, bathing, or eating.  Each time I’ve done this he’s gotten really mad and ends up hitting himself in the head for some reason, once with a spoonful of blueberry yogurt which actually made for decent hair gel in the end.  His cut is still pretty choppy in places and certainly nothing to brag about, but it’s fairly even all around and once it’s grown out a little more the choppy parts shouldn’t be easily noticed.

Haircut! March 15, 2008

I have a cool new haircut!  My mommy decided to cut the long strands of hair that were on the top of my head about three weeks ago.  I am a cool dude now!  It is short enough to spike up again like Daddy would do when I was first born, so my daddy is very happy.  Now my hair looks even all over again and is looking thicker as time goes on.  My hair is quite light now which is funny because it was black when I was born.  My parents think that it might be light while I am young but the chances of me not being a brunette over time are very low (if not nil!).

Where is our hair going? January 15, 2008

Hayden and I are both losing our hair at the moment.  Many people told me when he was born with all that hair that he would lose it, and he had so much I thought even if he lost some we wouldn’t really notice.  Well, he has lost a lot of hair, particularly right at the back of his head where his head touches the mattress while he sleeps.  He has this little bald patch back there, bless him!  Apart from that, his hair has really thinned out all over and gotten a lot lighter than it was when he was born.  My neighbor has a theory that even though they say babies lose their hair, she thinks it is just that their heads get bigger and roughly the same amount of hair is still there but it is covering a bigger surface.  This does make sense, since I never really find any baby hair around where he has shed.  He also has some really dry areas around his scalp, which could be a minor case of cradle cap.  I think Faith had a suggestion on that I’ll have to ask her about.

So, Hayden and I are in the same boat on the hair loss issue.  I am shedding like crazy!  Apparently during pregnancy hair typically gets a lot fuller, and I didn’t particularly notice that during my pregnancy, but I did notice that I wasn’t really losing any hair anymore.  (Before I was pregnant I would always find a few loose hairs after washing it.)  It is also pretty common knowledge that after pregnancy women lose a lot of hair.  I guess the breast feeding must have delayed this response because it has only been within the last week or two that I have started to seriously shed.  My hair is everywhere!  It’s on the floor all over the house, I’m constantly picking hairs off mine and Hayden’s clothes, it ends up in my food a lot (nice), and especially right after I have washed it and am combing it out I end up with fistfuls of loose hair.  Thank goodness for the Dyson, hey!