10 months!

Our little Pipster is 10 months old (yesterday)!  Can you believe how time flies?

I have to give my boss a definite date to return....probably I should email her this weekend.  It's a busy weekend what with the gold medal hockey game and all - we're having a party.  Canadians take Olympic men's and women's hockey very seriously, yo.  Otherwise I can't imagine people showing up at our house at 7am!

Oh, and speaking of returning to work - looks like DH will be a stay at home Dad.  He's been doing some freelance, but hasn't got a full time job yet, so he'll stay at home.  This is good.  Someone needs to be home with her, and while I'm jealous it's not me, I think this will be a good thing.

Since I'll be back to work soon (only 2 or 3 months left! sad face.) once Olympics are over DH is going to start our renovation projects we have left.  Next on the docket - built in bookcases in the living room.  Wish us luck!  ;)

[Seriously, we are a big Olympics household.  Normally we don't watch TV until she's gone to bed, but it's on steadily for most of the day now!  DH is a huge sports fan.  We've been super Olympics lazy lately!]

Eating:
Have started giving her grains - steel-cut oatmeal, hulled barley, buckwheat.  All prepared in accordance with ma hippies.  You know, soaked overnight with a bit of vinegar.  For the buckwheat, I made it with butter and broth - very tasty!  I am a bit wary of grains (just started reading "Grain Brain")...but they do help her sleep better, I think!  I pray for grain discernment.  Really.  Scourge of mankind or nice thing that helps her sleep and put on weight?  I canna decide.

We do a mixture of her self-feeding and we helping a bit with the spoon.  We're on a good kick right now where every morning I make a blended veggie drink (it is SO pretty before I blend it I keep instagramming it!), and she drinks her portion throughout the day.  I am very pleased she likes it - I don't add any fruit, and I often throw a raw clove of garlic in there, but she's down.   And I really like that she's getting her veggies fresh instead of sitting in a jar for a few months.  I think my in-laws are not jazzed that the food is raw, but....I think it's fine (better, actually).

Breastfeeding is backing off a bit (more on that in the 'sleep' section).

Oh, and we've started her on MILK (full fat).  Like, from a goat or cow, not just from Mommy.  She seems to like goat milk more, and to like it more if it's not super cold.  We didn't even have a milk pitcher, we had to go out and buy one!  (Canadians drink milk from bags.  It's seriously better.  I was pretty surprised when I lived in the US to find they don't sell milk in bags.  It just makes more sense, y'all).  She's drinking about 6-7 oz a day, which I am amazed at (we were previously having a lot of trouble to even drink like 1/2 oz).  She can use a straw in a sippy cup - this seems to be the way she drinks the most.  The doctor said she can drink up to 2-3 cups a day, so I knew we had to get some drinking going.

I went out and bought some fancy organic milk in bags, and we freeze the bags we're not using yet.  This way the milk is cheaper than buying by the litre, so I can buy the fanciest milk around.  I think I saw some organic un-homogenized cow milk at the store, I will buy that after we finish the frozen bags of regular organic homo cow milk (Canadians also refer to full fat milk as "homo", and we don't even giggle.  I know this doesn't make sense sine 2% and 1% milks are also homogenized, but we call those "2%" and "1%").  Hippies are not down with homogenization, yo - although the jury is still out.

My current plan is to alternate cow and goat milk (by the bag).  They have different amounts of vitamins and minerals, I figure it's good to cover all the bases (cow has lower calcium but higher folic aicd, goat is the reverse, for example.  Although goat tends to be fortified with folic acid, depending on the dairy.).

Infant pottying:
Um.  I kind of have given up.  Sad, right?  What can you do!  She was starting to resist sitting on the toilet, and if she did sit there she didn't seem to pee as much as she used to.  Like, hardly ever.  Just this week I decided to throw in the towel and move her change station back to her bedroom.  She's also stopped being quite so squirmy, so you can get a diaper on her without doing gymnastics anymore.  It helps if I give her a shoe to munch on - she LOVES eating her shoes.

Cloth Diapering:
So good!  A friend of mine just had #2, and they're cloth diapering her!  We handed down our prefolds to them.  Isn't that nice that now they can handle a whole 'nother child without blinking?  And she'll give them back if we are so blessed with a number two of our own.  :)  I plan on doing some diaper reviews soon, since we have about 4 billions different brands now, and I have some opinions.

Milestones:
Pretty darn good cruiser now.  Can now stand a few seconds on her own, but this is still pretty shaky.  Can climb stairs (with adult supervision!) very fast.

She's pretty solid on the baby sign 'all done', and I swear I've seen 'milk' in there a few times.  She can point at the milk when she wants it, which is new.  I'm adding more signs in every day or two for different foods, she's watching me, but so far she's not dexterous enough to do them.  Or just doesn't want to.  ;)

She's sort of chatty, and she might have a few words.  She definitely says "Dada"/"Dad" type words, and "Nay nay nay" (for no), sometimes "ma ma" type words, but that is less linked to me.  She can kinda say a baby version of "hug", and can say "baby" but I don't think she means it.

She can high-five, kiss, come to Mommy/Daddy on command.  So she kind of already meets her minimum 12 month milestones.  Good girl.  She will also laugh if you are laughing - very cute.  DH will sometimes fake laugh, and she'll join in, which is funny and cute.

Favourite Songs:
I'm still not doing much singing.  Need to get back into a class.  She likes this clapping song I made up.  OH, and here is the best second verse to the "Itsy-bitsy spider" I've ever heard!  Y'all northern ladies will be feelin' this!

The Winter Itsy-bitsy Spider

The Itsy-Bitsy spider climbed up the water spout

Down came the snow and froze the spider out!

Out came the sun and it didn't do a thing,

so the Itsy-Bitsy spider had to wait for spring!

Baby Health:
Good!  We're over all those colds.  :)  Her weight was good at the doctors at our nine month well baby group - she's still on that 15% for weight.  Height (50%), head circumference still fine.

My Health:
Am over all those colds too, thank Goodness!  So sign of AF yet.  I was at the doc's for my own checkup, and they asked when my last menstrual period was, and I was like "um...about July 15th-ish....2012".  hahhaa.  I like that.  I still feel so blessed.

I do have a Gyno appt booked for the end of March to see about my lady parts.  The doc suggested in the meantime I see a Pelvic Floor Physiotherapist.  Did you know that was a thing?  I had no idea.  So I went to see one yesterday.  She recommends all ladies go after birth.  Interesting, right?

Also, they can help with endo pain!  Who knew?

Sleeping:
Much progress has been made - she's down to waking up 2-3 times a night (and now we call 'night' 7pm-7am).  I don't think due to any magical sleep training, but I think the extra carbs in the day plus WHITE NOISE have been helping a lot.  We bought a white noise track on iTunes, and play it when she sleeps her naps and overnight - this helps to cancel out some of our creaky house and busy street noises, I think.

We still are on a path to cut down how much nursing she has a night.  We have a whole timer system going.  I sort of keep messing it up.  We're right now allowing 1.5 min per side after the letdown (which can take ~2 min).  BUT, this relies on me telling DH to start the timer at the letdown...well, last night I swear I was sleeping, I totally forgot, DH was not pleased.

He also doesn't feed her every time she wakes.  If its up to me I feed pretty much right away, her crying tears at my heart.  So he's in charge.  It's hard! But it's the right thing to do.

All done!

~9 months old

Well, one day after I had posted that Pippa wasn't doing any baby signs yet - she started doing "all done"!  :)

It is very cute.  I will try to catch it on video.  It is like a new world, she can tell us at least this one thing!  Sometimes we don't like it ("are you sure you're all done your carrots?"), but we're trying to respect it.  I think we don't do "all done" the most common way, because I just tried to google for a picture of it and found all sorts of pics of how we don't do it.  Oh well!

In health news, Pips has a bit of a vomit/diarrhea combo deal going on.  The doc says it is going around.  Poot!  Should be done by tomorrow.  The real question is whether or not DH and I will get it!  Chinese New Year is coming up, it would be a shame to not be able to partake of the big family meal!

We're also planning on sleeping over at his parents, so DH can ring in the new year with family, and everyone can eat breakfast together (if we eat the first meal together we'll be together all year).  We're also madly cleaning up today - it's a luck thing, no cleaning on New Years day, so it's a good reason to 'spring' clean before CNYE.  Until DH and I were married, I had no idea what a big deal Chinese New Year is!

Oh, and a word about banana baby food - I will say, I think I have been shopping at 'Bananas R Us'!  On a weekend trip to America (to visit a friend who has a baby due soon!  super fun!) we found lots more veggie options in packets (I was limited to packets when buying cruise food).  I brought home a few so they'd be around if I ever was in a fix and needed some food pronto.

9 months

Our baby girl is 3/4 of a year old!  Man, how time flies!

 Our little baby girl is even bigger now!  Can't believe it!

Eating:
Still mixing purees/mooshed food and a bit of her feeding herself.  She really loves gnawing down on a carrot or piece of apple.  Still haven't fed her any grains - gave her a bit of buckwheat yesterday, she wasn't too jazzed by it.  I will try again later.

She loves greek yoghurt!  So I give her that with an egg yolk for breakfast some days - helps her to eat the egg yolk.  I had to throw out all my nicely prepared beef liver after the power outage (we were out ~60+ hrs), I'm just now getting around to preparing another beef liver.

On the cruise she ate the baby food I brought for her, and we fed her off our plates when appropriate.  So...store bought baby food is like, mostly bananas? I'm not super impressed.  Even the fancy organic ones are mostly bananas and apples.  Um...babies need veggies and protein too, ja?  They would have kale or broccoli on the front and in the name, but if you tasted it...bananas.

I did like the lentils we brought, and gave her some lentil curry that I made this week - she likes!  :)

Still breastfeeding like mad.

Speaking of cruise - here is our baby girl on a beach in the Cayman Islands!  That was a fun day.  DH, Pippa, my Dad (heretoknown as G-Dad) and I hung out at the beach.

Infant Pottying:
I think the cruise week has put us off track a bit.  She was in disposables all week, we hardly pottyed her at all.  She really protests when we put her on the toilet.  But once on, she settles down and pees if she needs to.  I'm hoping this is just a stage and she'll be back to it soon.

Her poos have gotten less gucky, so I can just flip them into the toilet, it's not too much fuss.

Cloth Diapering:
Yes, still on it - except for the cruise week.  My little Pipster is a VERY squirmy baby.  It is now super hard to put prefolds on her - she just won't stay still!  Even with the 'leg over' technique.  So I've ordered a few more velcro diapers (yes, yes, I'm a diaper hog!).  I can put the velcro ones on her while she's standing up - which is what she loves to do in the bathroom, just stand and hold on to the edge of the tub.

Milestones:
Sort of the same as last month.  Is better at standing.  Does some cruising but not very often.  We're trying to teach her to 'high five', but it's in the early stages still.  Meets all her 9 month milestones.  Hasn't done any baby signing back to me yet.

Favourite Songs:
Um...haven't been doing too much singing!  I need to sign up for another baby signing class, so I keep my head in the game!  We're old enough now for 'Mr Bear Says Hello'.

Baby Health:
She did get a cold this month, and has a bit of a cough still.  Otherwise good.

My Health:
I did come down with the same sickness that she had.  I developed quite the chest cough on the cruise, which I am terming "cruise cough".

My lady parts did not quite heal as I would have liked after the birth, I will make an appt to see about this soon.  Still no sign of AF.

Sleeping:
Here is our focus for the next month.  She's still feeding about the same number of times a night as ever.  DH and I have decided to bite the bullet and sleep-train her next week (we're planning to go visit some friends on the weekend, we'll start after that.  When we're 'done' we'll go to my hometown to visit Pippa's new born cousin!).  I think it will be rough.  But hopefully it will work, and will have been worth it.

We're planning on reducing her night feedings by one minute a night - to theoretically shift her eating from night into day.  She's still feeding like 3-4 times a night, and that's not going to be cool when I go back to work. I have a friend who this worked for, so hopefully it will work for us!  :)

8 months!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Thoughts are with you all this holiday season!  :)
I can't believe I have an 8 month old baby!  In my head this is the transition from little baby to big baby, and here we are!

Eating:
We're still on mostly purees, with some pincher practise (organic peas).  I've given her sheep and cow yogourt, she seems fine with it.  She still hasn't refused anything yet, but she's now keeping her mouth shut to indicate she's done.  We're lucky she's so far such an easy girl!  I'm not sure she knows that she can refuse food.  :)  I suspect this time might be over soon.

She eats twice a day, I'm thinking of adding a 'snack' in the morning as well.  Also, I've given her some coconut cream this week - fat good for the baby!

We go away on a cruise next month, I think I will bring store bought food to cover the week.  Customs won't allow homemade food through, so I think this will be our best bet.  If there is some food I can give her that we're eating I will, but I will have baby food as backup.  I'm thinking the packets will travel well.  Any mommy tips about travelling with food?

Breastfeeding still the rest of the time.  Really, it hasn't slowed down at all.  Tried giving her formula once, but she was having none of it.

Infant Potting:
We've moved to changing her diaper on the bathroom floor since she's such a squirmykins (in the middle of a diaper change she can pull a fast roll and suddenly be on her tummy - yikes!).  Way safer.  And I can use the 'leg over' technique if I have to! 

This bring pottying to the next level - she goes right on the toilet.  Cleanup is a DREAM.   She poos about half the time in the toilet now.  EXCELLENT.  Every poo in the toilet is waaaaaay less work for me.  Scraping the poo from the diaper into the toilet is fine, but often poo seems to get everywhere still.  Blech.  Even with gloves, still...it's a bit of a mess at times.  So I much prefer the poo directly into the potty!  :)

Cloth diapering:
Yes, we still are.  It's going great!  With the change of soap (to Tide free and clear) all my diapers are working fine now.  I've had to start stuffing them with more liners since Pips is peeing more since she's bigger.

My 'China cheapies' came and they're fine.  A bit on the big side.  I'm going to buy my friend who is expecting a whack load of them (like I think I'll be able to get ~21 for ~$100).  Exciting and fun!  Feel a bit guilty....but 21 pocket diapers is pretty much all you need!  Another friend and I will split it - we were kind of a threesome in university, it's great we're still close.

How I deal with grown up poop?  I have a scraper that I keep in a bucket next to the toilet with gloves.  I scrape the poopey diaper in, and rinse the scraper in the toilet, then put the diaper in the pail.  It's ok to have a bit of poop on the diaper, just not loads of it.  It all comes off in the wash.  :)

Milestones:
Super duper awesome crawler now.  Twice now she's actually crawled over other babies lying on the ground.  Pulls herself to standing pretty easily now.  She's really a physical kid, she's tough!  She's still not super keen on sitting.  She can, but she's not all that into it.  Likes playing at climbing a mound of pillows, although she doesn't actually climb yet.

Lots of babbling!  Says "da da" type of words often, but I don't think she's quite connecting it to DH yet, but we're trying to reinforce that.  Waves "bye-bye" with one arm - that's my favourite!  :)

Still hasn't been sick yet, knock on wood!

Favourite songs:
Alas, no automatic song smiles anymore.  Seems to like "Hello Pippa, and how are you?" the best right now.  Also likes "Let the fall leaves fall".

Sleeping:
No real change.  She still is generally up 2-3 times in the night for breastfeeding.  It can be a bit rough.  Sometimes its 4 times.

She's sleeping her own room now, so DH gets up and brings her to me.  I'm a super lucky lady!  I sometimes bring her back, sometimes DH does.  She does generally go right back to sleep, so that part is good - it's the being woken up out of a dead sleep that can be hard if it happens a few times in a night.  I do wish she'd go a bit longer between feeds, am trying to feed her more in the day, but not seeing much of a change.  Again, if it really bothered me we'd do some fancy protocol to reduce night feeds, but I'm not there yet.

Last night she did sleep from 11:30pm right to 5:30am - awesome, right?!!!

Move to crib!

What I said about keeping her in the pack and play a while longer? Lies.

My snuggle bum today can pull herself up on the crib sides! Yikes! So crib and pack and play will be lowered tonight, and we'll begin transition to big girl crib. Yikes!

She's growing up so fast.

7 months (better late than never)

Our 7 month State-of-the-Union!

Eating
We've started solids!  We started at 6.5 months.  She's had boiled (in bone broth) root vegetables (carrots, sweet potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips), avocado (pictured above), liver pureed with bone broth (from 100% grass fed cow), a bit of caviar (that I rinsed to make less salty), prune puree, squash puree, peas, pear puree I made with a bit of lime and gelatin...I think that's it to date.  Oh, and some pig's blood - you know, the Chinese dish?  Just a bit.  Iron.  She doesn't seem to love or hate much yet. Ok, ok, she doesn't seem to enjoy the liver so much, but she does eat it.  And I only give her a few baby spoonfuls every other day.

We were all for baby led weaning, but she was having some constipation problems, so we moved to purees.  We seem to be back on track, this week I plan to do half purees (I used the broth to puree) and half boiled veg she can feed herself.

Still breastfeeding the rest of the time, and I give her a little water or broth to help with the poo-ing.

Infant Pottying:
Going well!  She often poo-poos in the potty.  Now that she's eating solids, this is a huge deal.  Waaaay easier to clean up.  But it's up to us to race to the potty when she starts straining.  Still pee-pees in the potty when we make the cueing noise if she has to pee (usually she does).

Cloth Diapering:
We still are.  I will say this has gone trickier with the grown-up type poos coming now.  I don't quite have a good system down yet for getting the poo off the diaper when it doesn't all go in the potty.  It tends to sort of get everywhere (GLOVES are worn!).  Hopefully this will get smoother.

My Bum Genius pocket diapers have started to repel.  Bah.  This means an instant leak as soon as baby pees.  Lame!  So I tried to strip them following instructions found online (loads of washing, use Dawn dish detergent).  They may be incompatible with the coconut oil I used on my diaper wipes?  I recently read that maybe it's my laundry soap causing the problem, Nature Clean.  I've used this for ALL of Pippa's clothes from day1, and never had a problem, but apparently it can cause repeling in some diapers (not her Happy Heinys, those are still AWESOME).  I'm currently deciding what to try next - I may keep washing them, or may give them to a friend unlikely to use homemade diaper wipes.

I have bought four more pocket diapers  - "China cheapies".  They are like 1/5th the cost of fancy diapers made in North America.  But now I feel guilty (they haven't arrived yet, actually).  So today I'm going to go out and buy a $20 AMP pocket diaper that is made in Canada and has great reviews.  Am excited.  Diapers are kinda a hobby, these days!  :)  And as they'll last for the *cross your fingers* next baby, a good investment.

Milestones:
Definitely knows her name now.  Doesn't always look at you when you call her, but that's cuz she's being cheeky!  ;)  Is a great "creeper", but isn't fully crawling yet with bum lifted.  Can really locomote around a room, whatever you call it!  She knows that when you move a toy out of sight it hasn't disappeared, she goes and tries to get it.  Loves peek-a-boo type games.  Sits up only for ... maybe 10 seconds before toppling.  Not super interested in walking at all, prefers her tummy/back, but she does stand with support.  She babbles quite a bit - we like to "sing" together, which is me imitating her noises.  Amazingly (to me), when I'm dressing her and she's playing with a toy, she knows to move the toy to the other hand because I'm going to need to put her other hand in the sleeve soon.  :)  She's not quite reaching to be picked up and held, but she's thinking about it.  :)

Favourite Songs:
You can no longer guarantee a smile by singing her fav songs.  Too bad.  I'm not sure if I just need to get her a new fav song, or she's done that stage.  With the exception of "Grand Old Duke of York" (that's the song, but we raise her up which is what makes her smile - and I don't sing it all weird and creepy like the vid), she still always smiles to that - except in swim class.  She will generally laugh to near/far type games with kisses.

Sleep:
No change.  Still wakes up twice or three times a night to feed.  We seem to know LOTS of babies that sleep through the night now.  But...I'm not bothered by it enough yet to enact complicated plans to get rid of a feed.  Maybe next month?  She's still in the pack-n-play next to our bed, so it's not terribly inconvenient.  I laid down the law said she can't move to her own crib until she's down to one feed a night.  I know we planned to move her at six months.... but this seems like too much for me, to get up 2-3 times and go into her room.

Things are going really well in generally, I'm really quite happy.  As she ages she's much easier to handle, I'm still really enjoying my maternity leave.

Baptism baby!

Pippa is 7 months old

Pippa was baptized this Sunday at Church!  It was a lovely ceremony.  :)  Loads of people came back to our house for lunch after, that was nice.  We counted 42 - woah!  Our little house was rammed, but it was very festive.

This is Pippa being held by a friend of the family.  We don't have too many great photos of the event/baby, alas, so this is what you get!  Thank you for the gown advice MHE!  I decided to buy here gown online, but not quite so fancy (DH would have never gone for a really pricey gown).  It was the Kayla gown.  It was reasonably priced and made in the USA, I was very happy with it.  It actually garnered a lot of compliments - and older English lady at church said it "made her day" to see a traditional gown!  Hah!  :)

I was SUPER excited the whole lead up to it.  How many times have you sat in Church during a nice baptism and wanted it to be your baby?  Loads.  Me too.  I couldn't believe it was finally our turn.

Pippa's Godmother will be her Aunt (DH's oldest sister).  No Godfather, as she's not married.  We're sort of all about family being the godparents - well, until we run out of Aunts.  ;)  My own Godparents are friends of my parents.  My Mom and the one Godmother fell out when I was a baby, so I've never met her.  Lame.  And the other ones we were all in touch (they have a girl about my age) until I was maybe.... 9ish?  Then they divorced and scattered and I never really saw them again.  Lame.  You can never divorce your Aunties, so our theory is they will always be in Pippa's life.  :)

Since both of DH's sisters don't have children, we kind of are having the kids for them, they are very involved.  That's good.  I likes.  :)  It's very good for Pippa to have lots of Aunties.  I have lots of Aunties (like, I have...10?), and I think it has benefited me.