This has been the month of 8 million teeth, grunting, jumping, whining, puking, giggling and so much more.
It’s hard to believe we’ve made it been through twelve months already. Each one getting easier and yet harder than the month before it. It really did go by so fast and yet, last June feels like ages ago.
This month she has discovered she can grunt for things she wants. That’s been fun. And if you don’t listen the first couple times, it turns into major whining and fit throwing until she does get what she wants. The other night, I was on the phone with my sister while I was making dinner. I had just grabbed a spatula out of the drawer to serve it and was walking around with it for a minute. Little Miss Must Have Everything started making obnoxious noises and I, paying only half attention, thought “what a spaz, chill out.” A few seconds later, she was reaching and screaming, trying to get the spatula from me. So, thinking it was so cute that she knows how to express she wants something specific, I gave it to her. Way to not give in to the demon-child’s every whim. Whatever, I had plenty more to serve dinner with and it occupied her long enough that I actually could serve dinner. Things like that are hard to come by these days! Anything longer than a split second and god only knows what the kid will end up doing/putting in her mouth.
She is most definitely in the stage of putting things in her mouth. I hate this stage. It needs to go away just as quickly as it stormed in and ruined my life. I cannot take my eyes off her for a second or it’s a fishing expedition in a baby’s mouth. And it’s not only small things she finds on the floor. It’s ANYTHING she can get her hands on. It doesn’t even have to fit in her mouth, she’ll just put her mouth on as much of it as she can cover. And then chew. We have teeth marks on everything now. Her crib? Her brand new crib she had never even slept in? First thing she did - chew on the rail. She occasionally tests out the biting people – okay, probably only me – waters. She looks at me before she does it, like she’s gauging the likely-hood of getting away with it. And for the record, no, she doesn’t.
She now has eight teeth. Well, almost eight. She absolutely has six and the other top two have started coming out. So I’ll count them since I can feel them when she chomps down on my fingers. She loves to have her teeth brushed which is so very cute because she will usually get so excited for it. Lately she has taken to biting down really hard on the plastic-finger-thinger (which, yeah, my finger is in it and really does feel it). It’s high time to graduate her to a toothbrush I am thinking.
The child has a third hand. That would be her mouth. Remember how I said she puts EVERYTHING in her mouth? Wanna get something from here to there? Well just put it in your mouth! She can crawl with things in her hands but it’s oh so much more speedy to shove it in the mouth and have hands-free speed-crawling across the house. Not only is the mouth good for chewing and biting, it’s a great packhorse as well! She’ll put little toys in and crawl around every where with them dangling from her lips. She has a little red strap that looks like a toy tongue that she packs around. The other night, she put a puff container between her teeth and packed it around the living room. That was quite a site. It was too long for her normal approach so she had to tilt her head a little so it didn’t drag on the ground and trip her up.
And speaking of her mouth… She’s been taking lessons from the old, cool, basketball-playing Michael Jordan. If she doesn’t have something in her mouth, she’s got that tongue dangling out of it. To the front, to the side, doesn’t matter. Tongue must be out.
She also climbs everything. Especially people. Even more especially when she wants to be held. She'll climb up your leg and latch on and not let go til you pry her off to pick her up. If you don't pick her up, but just pry her off and put her back down, an instant later, she's completely attached to your knees again. And she weighs nothing so sometimes it's hard to know she's even there. Which can be bad. Really bad. Like when she's attached to the back of your legs so you don't see her and you're paying attention to other things. But of course, I would have no experience with that.
She waves to everyone now. We go for a lot of walks at night and she waves to people clear down the street, or cars driving by, or birds flying by. Waving, waving, waving. It's her new thing. She's always got that hand going when she sees other people. She waves when we leave her at day care and when we pick her up. The first time she waved to me when I dropped her off, it made me so sad. Now it's cute. Especially when she waves to every single person as we leave. Hey - at least she's starting out friendly. For now.
She has recently started the seated jumping thing. Mostly when she sees her dad. She gets very excited. Her hands go up in the air and she bounces up and down on her knees and just squeals. It’s hilarious. I say she usually does it when she sees Dan, but she also does it when no one is paying any attention to her at all or is even in the same room with her. So who knows. She’s a nut. She’s started adding some giggling to it too. Which is something else entirely. She’s never really laughed much. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that. The last week or so that has changed entirely. She will giggle like crazy. Nothing is cuter. Nothing. And hers is so funny.
Something that is not so funny is her new eating habits. She has no interest whatsoever in her food – only your food. She rarely eats baby food – even Cheerios and puffs which are baby crack to her are so not cool now. No, she has to eat whatever you’re eating. Doesn’t matter what it is. She’s like a begging dog. Literally. She’ll stand at the chair and stare and moan and grunt and whimper til you give in and give her a bit and then she’ll grin and squeal and then start all over again. Exactly like the dogs. It pretty much started a week or so ago when we ordered pizza. She whined and whined, because apparently I starve the kid - so I gave her a small piece of the crust. Not really sure what the hell I was thinking. She ate a bit of the crust, no big deal – it was new and novel. Then we ordered pizza again this weekend. I put a couple pieces on my plate and went to sit down and eat my dinner. She was in the middle of the floor when I started. I sat down, she looked, saw the pizza, shrieked at the top of her lungs, giggled and teleported herself to my knees. She did it every time Dan or I sat down to try to eat any of the pizza. She’ll climb up, grab on to your legs and giggle and grin and grab until you give in. She’s actually taken a couple pieces off the plate but never tried eating it. She grabs it and sort of flings it around showing you, “This! This is what I want you over-grown idiot!” So apparently, if we ever really need her to eat, we just need to get some pizza crust.
Conveniently, the begging all started right when we’re able to give her a lot more foods now and she’s actually willing to try about anything that you feed her (or that she finds on the floor – mmmmm yummy rocks - ARG!). She may not like it, and it may come out all over the floor in little, chewed up, mooshy pieces, but she tried it. Or, she may like it and still chew it up and spit it out just BECAUSE SHE CAN. Which I have accepted is the way of life from here on out. I get it. I am accepting it early and giving in to the drama that will forever be the baby’s way or no way. I figure life will be much easier getting that out of the way now instead of trying to fight it for years to come.
She has just learned "uh oh" in the last couple of days. It's all I've heard. She even uses it correctly most of the time which is so cute. For now - I know it will soon get old. But for now, it's adorable.
Random Things I’ve Learned During the Twelfth Month:
- Incredibly sick babies are absolutely no fun. But they are so cute in their cuddly, mellowness.
- Not being able to immediately fix your incredibly sick baby is heartbreaking.
- Giggly babies are contagious.
- Two words: baby songs. Love ‘em!
- Up! Up! Up! Does not exist for itty-bitty babies but when bigger babies figure it out… all yah see is their chins because Up! is somehow so fascinating.
