Quick Update (and yes, there are pictures this time, mom)

Sorry about the spotty posting lately. I've been gearing up for Keeley's first birthday party. Hopefully, I'll get more posts up later next week after I've recuperated. Anyway, here's a brief update on what's new with Keeley this week (complete with pictures).

We've finally got Keeley in her new car seat and she likes it. She's very excited to be able to see me in the car and out the windows. She laughed all the way to the gym the first time we used it. Well, pretty much all the way. She stopped for a while to stare at the shirtless construction workers on the side of the road. (Looks like trouble, Donald...)

New car seat is a hit. Bring on the shirtless men, mommy!

Also new this week is this:

Keeley learns to pick her nose.

Yes, this week Keeley has realized she can stick her finger up her nose. Joy. Must remember to check my clothes for any "juicy bits" before leaving the house. (This is in addition to checking for those lovely iridescent streaks.)

Furthermore, this week she's had a very weird (and maybe a bit disturbing) attachment to my clean underwear. (I cannot stress the clean enough.) She grabs them from off the couch where the laundry is piled - yes, I WILL GET IT FOLDED. Just today I found this:

I would like to add that I found this RIGHT AFTER IT HAPPENED. No, I wasn't letting my child play in the toilet. One second she was running around with my underwear and the next second they were in the toilet. Holy cannoli.

And keeping with the underwear theme (and let me just say I NEVER thought I would post pictures of my underwear on the Internet, but I guess that goes with the whole "never say never" saying) here is how she was playing later in the day:


Lovely. Needless to say, both pair of underwear are back in the washer and hopefully will be folded and put away prior to someone getting their sticky little hands on them. Sheesh. Isn't it enough that I have to play Beat the Clock just to get any dishes in or out of the diswasher without Keeley getting into it? And why, may I ask, does she always go straight for the KNIVES? Now the clean laundry is fair game as well? Ugh.

And lastly, Keeley got her very first knee scrape today. Aw. We were playing outside and she fell in the driveway and skinned her knee. She cried. I held her. She saw a stick and was over it. I took photos and then we cleaned the wound. With soap. Our baby girl is growing up.

A closer look at The Wound. Look at the detail - what amazing photography.

Already she's trying to run into the street. (And I'm busy taking a picture.)

And it's only Wednesday.

More of a stream of consciousness-type post than anything of importance. Or interesting for that matter.

Well, Keeley was up this morning at 4:30 am. I must have a whole set of luggage under my eyes right now. Yeesh. She woke up around 2 and started crying but went back to sleep rather quickly. Then she started crying again at 4. And at 4:30. So I went in there and rocked her a bit which usually helps and she goes right back to sleep. Well, she went right back to sleep, but as soon as I tried to put her in her crib she woke up and started crying again. I thought she could be cold, so I put some pants on her and tried the rocking thing again. No go. So I just put her back in her crib and went back to bed myself, crossing my fingers that she would go to sleep. Nope. She cried off and on for a while and Donald finally went in to go get her sometime after 5. I don't know what it was. I'll just (hopefully) assume she was cold and couldn't get comfortable (something easy to fix).

Now I will knock on wood (my head) about this, but Keeley is normally a very good sleeper. Of course, there are days that is not so, but on the usual day I can pretty much count on 2 naps and a full night's sleep from her. This is nice. Maybe once or twice a month she'll wake up during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep herself and I'll go in there and rock her in the rocking chair and she'll go right to sleep. I'm sure this isn't the right thing to do, but I figure every other night she gets to sleep fine so she'll be okay. Helping her out here and there won't hurt. It's also kinda nice to snuggle with her and hold her while she's sleeping. Even in the wee hours of the morning. I know those days are numbered.

Waking up at 4:30 though? Not so much fun. Especially since I hosted playgroup yesterday (a first for me - write it in The Mommy Book) and had family for dinner. Both went well and I'm so glad I did them, but it requires some effort to make sure the house is somewhat presentable and food is prepared somewhat on time for dinner. So, even under normal circumstances, I would be a bit more tired today. Either way, here I am, tired or not. Maybe I should call in sick.

On a more productive note, I have done more today before 10 am than I have in a while. (Let's just say I'm not a morning person.) I washed dishes, Keeley ate breakfast, we went out to get diapers, we've had a snack. The only benefit so far to getting up and going to early is the fact that they were still serving breakfast at the Chick-fil-A. Yum. Nothing like a chicken biscuit to get you going. And the most amazing thing happened on the way home... Keeley fell asleep in her car seat. Without a pacifier. Without crying. I went to get her out of the car and she was asleep. I couldn't believe it. I brought her in the house and was able to transfer her to the crib without her waking up, too. Getting up at 4:30 can do that to a girl. Now could I sleep? Nope. Go figure.

So here we are having a morning snack at 10am. Who knows what the rest of the day will bring. There's not too much productivity on my list. I can tell you that much.

Going off the bottle

Well, for the past two days - today makes three - we've been weaning Keeley off the bottle. Suffice to say, she does not like this. It surprised me since she never seemed to attached to the bottle anyways. She doesn't carry it around with her throughout the day and we practically have to chase her around with it to get her to finish one. She was just more interested in anything else than she was in drinking her bottle. I thought it would be easier.

I was wrong.

I guess it's not that bad. She's not screaming for her bottle or anything. She just WILL NOT drink formula out of a sippy cup. ANY sippy cup. And, believe me, I have tried many different kinds: ones with soft spouts, hard spouts, angled cups, handles, no handles, straws, no straws, with lids, no lids, regular cups, and even a bottle with a sippy top and handles. All are apparently very offensive. Well, offensive with formula in them. She's had juice in a sippy cup many times and has no problem whatsoever. She actually gets excited to have juice because she doesn't get it very often. But with formula in the cup? No way. Sometimes, she will take a tiny sip from the cup. Most of the time she just purses her lips and blows out. (It's actually kind of funny if you're not directly involved in the situation.)

Everything else seems to be fine, though. She's eating her normal food. I try to make her a little more cereal and put more formula in that. I make sure to give her extra servings of dairy foods she likes. (We're eating a heck of a lot of yogurt, people.) She does seem to be fussier than usual. Although, I'm not sure if that is because of the whole bottle situation, just a normal stage right now, teething, a bit of a cold she seems to have, or some crazy combination of everything I just listed and eleventy billion other possible things it could be. Sigh.

I guess she's okay. I called the doctor's office yesterday to make sure she would be okay with such a drastic decrease in formula consumption. The nurse said she should be okay with the added dairy foods and we could start transitioning her to whole milk (YAY! Bye, bye formula.). Not sure if whole milk is the answer to the sippy cup dilemma, but at least it's not all expensive formula going down the drain. Oh, and we've kept the bedtime bottle, so she's getting about 6 ounces there, too.

I guess I just wish I'd done this a little more gradually. Like take away the daytime bottles first and keep at least the morning and bedtime ones. But I feel like going back and adding the morning one will be a huge step backwards now that we've gone through all this. I don't know. I guess it's just one of those parenting things that I obsess about while I'm going through it and make myself crazy and then look back on it later like, "Oh yeah, I guess that worked out okay." Anyone have any advice?

You might know

I just found out that the Super Bowl is the same day as Keeley's birthday this year. Of course, that's the same day we planned her party. So much for the person who assured us that the Super Bowl was NOT that day. (Not to mention any names, Mike.) Just as much our fault for listening anyways. I guess it won't make too much of a difference since her party is at 1.

I can't believe that last year we watched the Super Bowl in the hospital with my parents. Keeley slept through most of it. But that makes sense since she was like maybe 2 days old. And now she'll be a year in just a couple weeks. It's so amazing how fast it all went. And it seemed so SLOW those first couple months. I thought we'd NEVER be here. But more of that in the Month 12 letter.

Birthday party plans are coming along nicely - for those of you who where wondering. (Anyone?) I mailed out the invites in plenty of time (for once) and I have most of the decorations. Sweetheart theme. Aaaw. Our sweetheart is turning one. (Insert tear here.) Sniff. I've mostly figured out the cake situation, but I still need to know how much to make and how I'm going to decorate it and what kind of icing I want to use. Okay, so maybe I only have cake pans. Either way, that's more than I had before this weekend. I still have to make the favors and some of the decorations and figure out the food situation. Oh, and totally clean the entire house. Apparently, I am not as far along with this as I thought. Perhaps I should stop sitting in front of the computer and start doing something...

P.S. For those of you who are coming to the party, I just wanted you to know that gifts are optional. You can bring one and we'll love you or you can not bring one and we'll still love you. (Just maybe a little less... Did I just write that? OF COURSE, I AM KIDDING!)

The hilarity of destroying block towers. Wow.

The polls have now closed

Thank you to those who took the time to vote or email me with your opinions. I decided to send in the first photo, Big Smile, because it shows off her dimple and crazy hair. Mostly, I'm glad I learned myself how to use the survey feature on blogger. Now I can survey the audience more! Are you excited, or what?

Which one should I use?

I want to send a photo of Keeley in for Live with Regis and Kelly's Beautiful Baby contest. We all know what a beautiful baby Keeley is. So beautiful, in fact, I am having trouble deciding which photo to send in. Here is where I need your help. Could you look through these 4 photos and vote which one you think has the best shot? Thanks for helping, Keeleyfans!

Big Smile

Santa Smile

Pink Hat

Jaunty Flower Hat

Any given Sunday

This Sunday we took Keeley to the park/playground by our house. She had a blast. It was very different from the last time I took her. That time we pretty much stayed on the swings. That lasted oh, about 10 minutes and then we were done. Oh yeah, we also looked at some other kids on the way back to the car.

This time? Way different. Of course, we started on the swings. Always a crowd pleaser, those swings. Then we moved to the playground equipment. Fancy. Luckily, this park has a small children's area and a fancier big kids area. Keeley had a blast crawling up the steps and walking on the stuff. She twirled the twirly things and even went down the slide. I have to admit, the slide was not her favorite. Meh.

She waved at all the other kids playing around her. My kid is a polite one. She was so interested in what the other kids were doing. I guess I need to get back into some mommy groups now that she's discovered other kids. We'll save that post for another day, though.

All in all, a great day. Now I'll post some gratuitous cute-baby-on-playground photos. Lucky you.

Keeley Dawn: Month 10

Today you turned 11 months. This is your last month in your first year. Sniff. Ah, but this was an amazing month. I'm sure I say that every month, but this month really was. You took your first steps this month. And now you can almost walk across whole rooms. You get so excited when you walk. You look to us like, "Look what I can do!" When you get close to whatever it is that you're walking towards, you lunge for it. Luckily, you usually walk to us or the couch.

Your first Christmas was also this month. You were an angel. You opened each present and played with whatever was inside. Even clothes. It was like a fun game for you. Of course, on Christmas morning we had to take the present away after you opened and played with the gift for an appropriate time (30 seconds?) and then thrust another present in front of you. You had that many presents. You had to take a nap to get through them all. And that was just the ones on Christmas morning. I tell you, you are a lucky girl.

You've also begun copying us. If we bang on a pot with a spoon, you want to bang on the pot with a spoon. If I hold Baby, you want to hold Baby. We're lucky you can't talk yet or I'm sure you would've been kicked out of the YMCA daycare for swearing. The best is when you try to copy a facial expression or some sound we make. You can't quite get it right, but whatever you actually do is much better that what you were trying to do. Tonite you were trying to make the "fish face" but you weren't anywhere close. You ended up doing something with your tongue and it was hilarious. Oh, and you love it when we laugh at the funny things you do. It just encourages you more. When we laugh and you don't know why, you just join right in.

This month you visited the grave of your Grandma and Grandpa Lund for the first time. I hope we will make it every year. They would have loved you. Grandpa Lund was a GREAT horsey-ride giver. And Grandma Lund was the BEST to make cookies with. And she would've made you all kinds of outfits - both for you and your dolls. Oh, and if you ever wanted a cherry milkshake, Grandpa Lund was the one to go to. I still haven't found a better milkshake. Even at Andy's Igloo.

I just can't believe how much you're growing and changing. You've been watching my mouth intently the past couple weeks. You're watching how I move it when I say things. I swear, one day you're just going to start telling me a story. You seem to have so much to say. The other day I was showing Mimi photos of you on the tv and one of Buddy came up. You started going, "Buh! Buh! Buh!" You were so excited.

I love seeing things through your eyes. You bring so much more to my life. I wish I woke up as excited as you do. You are just so ready. Life is so new and fun for you. You're ready for it all. I am so proud of you. You are my girl. (You're sleeping now, but I really want to go kiss your head. I won't, but I really want to.)

Love you,

Mommy

Happy New Year everybody!