I Wanna Hold Your Glasses November 4, 2010

Layla seems to have entered a new developmental phase in the last couple of weeks: grabby and squirmy!  She wants to grab onto anything within reach: hair, face, clothes, and yes, glasses.  And she’s fast!  She rips those suckers right off John and my faces before we get a chance to stop her.  We’ve been introducing more and more baby toys to her to try to satisfy her frequent need to grab.  She’s also quite squirmy.  She’s very strong in her back and neck now, to the point where she’s mostly held on our hips as opposed to cuddling against our chests like little babies do, but she’s also starting to move around a bit when being held.  Not with the force of a baby who walks and wants to get down to go off somewhere, but just trying out different movements I think.  Another thing she really enjoys is putting her feet in her mouth.  She sleeps in a sleep sack and when I am changing her in the morning the first thing she does is grab her feet and get them in her mouth.  It’s like she’s thinking, “Well, there you are, Feet!  I’ve missed you.”

But the big news of the moment is she rolled back to belly yesterday!  She didn’t move her arm out from underneath her so she didn’t stay on her belly long, but her whole body was flopped over onto her front. 😀  Such a big girl!

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Back to Work! and the Sleeping Situation October 27, 2010

Well, I’m back to work!  I had intended on having an extended maternity through Thanskgiving, but I asked my manager to keep me posted on opportunities as they came in so I could reevaluate as needed if the right thing came along.  I don’t think I’m allowed to say in a forum like this who my new client is, but it’s a large multimedia corporation, which is different from all the pharma companies I’ve worked for/with in my career.  Then again, with the nature of my work it doesn’t really make a huge difference what kind of work the company does since I work on Human Resources systems.

Anyway, the right thing came along and I went back to work 3 1/2 weeks ago.  When I went back to work after having Hayden I put him in day care because I was starting with a new department and I didn’t know what it was going to be like (likewise I’d never had a baby before so didn’t know if it would be too much to have him home while I tried to work, etc).  Having now been through it with him I decided to try keeping Layla home with me while she is a little baby.  She really is a pretty good baby, so I don’t spend a lot of time soothing her.  Also, when Hayden was a baby I would go in once a day to breastfeed him, and through that I got to see how the infant room operates at the day care center.  When they aren’t at full capacity they have time to do a lot of fun interaction with the babies, but when they are busy it is all “maintenance” – whoever’s turn it is to eat gets fed, changed gets changed, slept gets slept, and if a baby is fussing who doesn’t need any of that and there is another baby who does, they have to wait their turn.  I can understand that – they have to do what they have to do to make sure things get done for all the babies.  However, it’s not more than what I can do with Layla even when I get busy.  Also, she sleeps a good amount of time during the day, and she sleeps better at home than she would there since it’s dark and quiet in her room and they have to keep the lights on at day care and it’s not quiet.  Although, for a long time I was not able to master the sleeping situation the way I wanted to.  I couldn’t get her to sleep in her crib for naps, so I was just letting her fall asleep on the boppy pillow which was around me.  This allowed me to still be able to type.  I just didn’t have time to keep going upstairs to try to sooth her.  I hoped that once she got good at going to sleep on her own at nighttime that would transfer over to naps, too.  So, I tried it today at naptime and she did take two naps in her crib today!  The afternoon one was way too short but it’s a start.  I didn’t expect it to be perfect right away.

So, I am very happy with my work situation right now.  I know when she gets more mobile she will need to go to day care because I won’t be able to chase her around all day (and who knows how far off that is – she has really mastered her belly to back roll today!), but until then it’s working.  It’s much more demanding having her home than it would be with her at day care, but it’s so much more rewarding.

Rolling Rolling Rolling October 18, 2010

Layla rolled from belly to back on Sept 25!  I had her on her belly with her arm underneath her a little so she didn’t have to figure out how to get her shoulder out of the way.  It took a lot of encouragement, leaning over her and talking to her and jingling toys just out of her line of vision so she’d have to keep turning her head further and further back to see and then… bing! Onto her back she went.  She did it few times that night, but she hasn’t done it much since then.  She moves around so much when she’s on the floor.  She’ll go on her side and lift up her legs so they are parallel to her body, then move her torso to straighten herself out, so suddenly she’s at a 90 degree angle from where she was just a moment previously.  She’s done that for a long time.  Yesterday at Grandpaman and Grandma G’s she was on a blanket on the floor and she kept rolling onto her side so far that we thought she might end up rolling onto her belly.  But not yet, so far!

Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’ March 10, 2008

Hayden has been making great strides in his maneuvering!  He started rolling back to belly a while ago, but he would just lay on the arm he had rolled onto and not really lift his chest up.  He started doing that a couple of days ago and really seems to be exploring a lot more with this new trick.  I wouldn’t say he is rolling everywhere to get where he wants to go like some babies do, but he just worms his way around by kicking his legs about combined with some rolling.  The other day I laid him down on his activity mat while I went to get breakfast, and when I came back 3 minutes later he was still on his back but in the middle of the floor, at least a foot from the activity mat.  I got a good laugh out of that!  Little munchkin.

He is also sitting up pretty well now.  This was another one that he has been ‘doing’ for a few weeks, but he was leaning really far forward to keep his balance and could only sit for a few seconds before he slowly fell over.  He still isn’t exceptionally sturdy while seated, but he doesn’t have to lean all the way forward any more and he can stay up for quite a while before falling over.

Development January 2, 2008

This has been a big development month for Hayden.  I think we’ve seen the most development in the last three weeks versus any other time in his short life.   He has really starting to use his hands.  He can hold things now and pulls on things.  He can recognise and react to mine and Kara’s voices.  He has started to laugh and he smiles just all the time.  He is a really happy baby! (well normally – I think he is just starting to teethe so that is probably challenging for him!).  He is also starting to master the roll over – of course this type of development means we have to keep more of an eye on him as he can get up to more mischief!!!!

What’s new? October 18, 2007

Well it’s been about a week since my last post so this will just be a hodge-podge of stuff I can think of that I haven’t written about yet. 🙂  When Scotty was here the weekend before last, I went to visit my friend from high school (well, elementary school even!) Jennifer who had a baby on Sept 9.  I hadn’t seen little Connor yet and she hadn’t met Hayden, so it was a really fun visit!  When I had talked to her on the phone she was saying how big Connor was.  He was already 9 lbs!  That is big for a one month old, but once we put Hayden next to him he looked pretty tiny!  He also felt sooo light, and Hayden felt sooo heavy to them!  She took a couple of pictures which you can see on her dropshots http://www.dropshots.com/jencaldwell#date/2007-10-06/16:51:13 By the by, in one of the pictures there is a really attractive bug bite on my neck.  It looks like a really classy love bite/hicky or whatever the kids are calling it these days, but I’m afraid it was just a boring old bug.

So the big big news in our world is what happened on Monday.  Hayden was having tummy time and he rolled over from his tummy to his back!  I thought it was a fluke — maybe I hadn’t put him properly on his front or something.  I put him back on his belly and he did it again!  I got the video camera and he even did it two more times for the video camera!  I have tried twice to get him to do it again but so far nothing has materialized.  I couldn’t believe it though!  How exciting!

In other news, Lucy turned one on Monday.  She is no longer a pup!  Her daddy got her a nice new doggy bed — she had ripped her old one to bits even though she still was happy to lay in its remains.  I think John might have gotten a little carried away though, as the bed came with a pillow and a blanket.  A pillow and a blanket.  It’s supposed to be a dog bed.  This from the man who won’t let me put a sweater on the dog.

Today Hayden and I went to Nashville, Indiana with my mom.  Nashville is a little artsy area in southern Indiana that is in the area of a state park that has lots of trees and is really pretty this time of year.  Actually, the trees aren’t really changing color too much this year, but usually this time of year the trees are all sorts of beautiful colors down in that park.  Anyway, it was a lovely day of shopping and eating, and right at the end Hayden pooped up his back while I had him on my lap.  I was just in the process of trying to figure out where I was going to change his diaper, too, little devil!  My mom thought it was the funniest thing she had seen in ages.  Oh the nerve! 🙂