That Didn't Take Long

Meredith started yesterday trying to pull herself up on things. She just figured it out :) Of course, it helped to have the sax case there to help her up.

Uh Oh!

She can't crawl right yet but she can now climb the stairs!

First attempt last night.

Success this morning.

Another attempt after nap time got her to the 2nd step. And that's as far as I'm going to let it go. Time for the gates!

Rubber Bands Are Funny

At least to a baby :)

Ever Eat a Dragon Fruit?





 

It wasn't too bad, really light, slightly sweet flavor. We did buy it from Winco so who knows if it was ripe enough or what. Never know what you are going to get but everyone had fun trying it out :)

Nine Months Old!

Wow, NINE months!! Crazy to think in a few short months she will be a year old!

At nine months, Meredith can pull herself all over the place. She still isn't quite crawling but the last couple days she's been getting up on her hands and knees and has taken a few crawling steps. Meredith claps on command now and waves bye-bye. For not being able to fully crawl she sure is quick and now goes anywhere she wants. I'm thinking it's about time for the big gate as her favorite spot is now the kitchen floor. Maybe because she can move faster in there :)  She has two teeth on the bottom now. We keep waiting for something on top, some days we think we see them bulging but most days nothing is there. She still is just a happy, happy baby!

Love those cheeks and her two little teeth!

I Am Trained in First Aid, Can I Help You?

I am officially certified in CPR/First Aid :) Woohoo!! The last time I took a class I was 19 and it was required for a class I was taking in college. I've always meant to go back over the years and re-certify but I haven't.

A friend from the dojo was telling me about a first aid class coming up at her son's preschool and I jokingly said something about doing it too and she jumped on it and encouraged me to come. At first I was very wishy washy about it but then that same day Meredith started choking on something she was eating and there was that awful panicky feeling I get when then that happens because I couldn't remember how to help her. Fortunately she's pretty good about coughing it out but that totally made up my mind. It was already going to a really busy day but I was determined to go and get trained. Rob assured me he'd take care of everything else and the baby. It helped that my dad was willing to get one of the boys to where he needed to be too.

It was yesterday, February 11. It took place at Kate's son's preschool in Hillsboro. Ok, I was secretly hoping I'd get a call from Kate saying it was cancelled. It was more from the fact that I was REALLY nervous about leaving my little girl that long. I haven't been separated from her but for a few hours and this thing was from 9 to 4. I was sure she was going to be totally mad at me by the time I got home. Anyway, I got to the church where the preschool was located and I couldn't find an open door! Kate was no where to be seen either so I started getting a little worried. I walked about the church trying to find someone and on my way back to my car Kate pulled in, phew! I followed her in the one door I didn't try, duh. There were only a few of us, 5 moms when the trainer started the class, and then a dad and I think his older son joined us later.

The trainer proceeded to get to business. He showed us a video and between every section would pause it and explain more or quiz us on what we'd learned. The most interesting thing was how CPR/First Aid has changed over the years. It's been 18 years for me (gag, I can't even believe I can say that) so naturally methods will change but a few of them surprised me. The guy training us, Jeff Woodin, leads the whole Heart Association group up here in Oregon so he's very into what he does. He's also a paramedic. Jeff liked to talk. We probably could have been done 2 hours earlier but oh well, his stories were interesting :) The coolest thing I learned was about the AED, Automated External Defibrillator.
You know, those things with the pads that paramedics can hook up to you to shock your heart. The Association has really been pushing to get one of these in every business, school, and church in Oregon. I think they finally made it mandatory, schools and churches have until 2015 to get one. They just are so cool because you grab it, follow the pictures to place the pads and then the thing talks you through the whole process! It would be really hard to screw it up. I just thought it was such a nifty device and for sure, every place where people gather should have one. A 12 year old could figure out how to use one. I think Jeff said that if you can start CPR AND have the use of an AED in the first few minutes of an emergency the odds of survival go up like 75%. It was a big number. Anyway, I got to pretend to shock my dummy. Other than feeling like a dork because I couldn't get the backing off the pads and the machine kept telling me to place the pads, it really was very easy to use. Technology is amazing!

The things I really wanted to learn, child/infant CPR/choking, were at the very end, the last 1/2 hour. I had to laugh when we went over how to help a choking baby. You hold them semi upside-down in one arm and use back slaps on the child. I asked the instructor what I would do because my baby is such a chunk. I don't think I could hold her on one arm without dropping her. He said to treat her like a child and stand her up and kneel behind her. Or hold her in real close to my body on my one arm while doing it. I just hope I never have to find out. Good to know and remember how to do it but I don't ever want to have to use it.

We got done right at 4 pm and I rushed out to get home to Meredith. I was hoping that since I hadn't heard from Rob all was well, and it was. She didn't even seem to miss me! Though she did snuggle up and nurse a bit longer than usual :) It is good to know that if I had to I can leave her for much longer periods of time now. I'm just glad the whole day worked out. It was fun taking the class with Kate, I'm glad she said something. I told her if anything happened at the dojo we would probably start giggling if one of us ran up and said "I'm trained in first aid, can I help you?". You are supposed to ask when you approach someone so of course in every single situation in the movie someone was conveniently close by and would say that, and there were a LOT of situations covered. Just got to be a joke :)

Sleepless Nights

Just thought I'd share a chuckle. This time you get to laugh at Rob and I as parents.

We have been swaddling Meredith since she was born to try and get her to sleep. It seems she has really needed it. We even found larger sized muslin blankets to wrap her up in because she's so huge and was busting out of the other ones we had. We went a step farther and started wrapping her in TWO blankets to try and keep her arms locked down. It seemed to us that she'd wake up at night because her arms would get out. It worked great up until about 2 months ago.

Well, she is 8 months old. I decided we just needed to suck it up and let her scream it out and let her get used to comforting herself and putting herself back to sleep. We did it with our first three and it only took about 2 nights with each child before they were completely sleeping through the night. I also did it when they were much younger. Being super busy with 5 kids and dead tired all the time I have not wanted to deal with even one night of letting her learn so I've put it off and put it off. Unfortunately we are to the point where she wakes up several times a night anyway and we aren't sleeping at all so what's a few more nights of no sleeping?

Friday night we decided we were going to do it. We weren't going to wrap her up.We were just going to lay her down and let her scream it out. I fed her, it didn't bode well that she stayed awake through the whole feeding, she usually never does. We left her unwrapped and laid her down awake in her bed. I hunkered down with a new game on my Kindle and waited for the screaming to commence. She babbled a bit, Rob fell asleep but I stayed up playing my game convinced she would start screaming any minute. Next thing I knew it was 11 pm, Rob was still out and I realized that it had been over an hour since I'd heard her babbling. Seriously? There was no way she fell alseep on her own without screaming. Rob woke up as I was finishing up getting ready for bed and I had him go check on her to make sure she was really ok. She had rolled herself over and fallen asleep, just like that. Wow. I didn't get my hopes up though as her habit has been to wake up in the middle of the night and then doesn't want to go back to sleep. Next thing I knew the alarm was going off at 6 am and both of us realized she never woke up!! I can't tell you how wonderful it felt to have slept ALL night for the first time in a long time. I acually wasn't dying by 1 pm yesterday and feeling like I needed a 4 hour nap.

Yesterday rolled on by and soon it was time to put her down again. I was sure Friday night was a fluke. I got myself all geared up again for a bed time full of screaming. This time she did fall asleep when I fed her and Rob laid her down, unwrapped, in her bed and walked away. She did wake up at one point, we heard her about 2 am, but I held Rob back and said we'd let her scream and see what happened. Darned if she didn't cry for about 10 secs and then go right back to sleep!! Again the alarm woke us up at six and neither of us had lost any real sleep to a crying baby.

Really? Just like that that? No screaming, no crying, no frustration? All this time we could have been laying her down, unwrapped, and she would have been sleeping through the night? Arrrggh!! I'm beggining to wonder if her waking up was BECAUSE of the swaddling. If all she wanted was to just be able to roll over in her sleep. Geeze.

So here Rob and I had ourselves all geared up and ready for a fight and all for nothing. Really makes me wonder how many of our sleepless nights didn't have to be that way.

Here's to hoping this will continue. Being who I am I am not totally convinced it will continue but fingers are crossed and I'll just take any night I can get that we aren't woken up!!