The Dilemma

So James and I are getting pretty good at this whole "baby" thing.  We know when she's tired and when she's hungry; we can tell when she is mad or hurting or just whiny; we can identify the times when nothing but the vacuum will make her smile. But we have one area that is still a major question mark for us.

Yep, the car. Poor little Heidi!  I had been talking to her about the arrival of Kynzie for months! I got a professional carseat installer (that's right, they have those...) to install the carseat and make sure it was perfect for KK.  I put several baby einstein cd's (and my beatles lullaby cd - totally awesome) on my phone so I would have wonderful, inspiring music for her to listen to while riding in the Jeep.  I bought sunglasses that velcro around her head so they would stay on and prevent the sun from getting in her eyes when she was enjoying the drive.  And I got a mirror so I could look back at her smiling face while I drove.  Then Kynzie came and it was time to put all of my preparation to the test!!

And she hates it.  Absolutely LOATHES the car.  What?!  First of all, little Heidi is one of my all time favorite things.  James and I bought her with our children in mind!  The Jeep was purchased with thoughts of road trips with our kids! And she screams the entire time she's in it.  Awesome.  I shouldn't have been surprised...she is soo much like her mother.  Here are two examples:

1. The Seatbelt.  James is always yelling at me to put my seatbelt on.  I hate seatbelts. They don't let you get comfortable! I am always putting the shoulder strap behind my back or sticking it somewhere so it will hold the waist strap so far away from me that I could fit two of me in the seat. I guess I should have known that KK would be the same way.  As soon as the straps go down around her she is grabbing at them and straining to see if she can push them away from her. Hates hates hates the seatbelt.

2. The Rear-facing Seat.  If you know me AT ALL then you know that I am a rather social being.  I thrive off of social interactions.  I am pretty sure that if you look up extrovert in the dictionary, there is a picture of me next to it. I am not so good by myself. (which might be why I asked the DirectTV guy at best buy to stand there and talk to me even though I didn't want to buy what he was selling...it's a little sad)  Well, shockingly enough, Kynzie is the same way.  I don't know for sure, but I think she dislikes being back there by herself with only the back of the seat to look at.  When James is with us, I normally sit back there with her so she will  have someone to talk to and she won't feel so abandoned.  But when it's just the two of us, she has to sit back there all alone and sad...it's no fun.

My mom says that once she can face forward it will be better, so just another 11 months or so to go...

Luckily James found me a white noise cd that I put on my iPhone, so now we have something that calms her down on my long drives to Target and HEB :)

Picture Picture

So since the last post had no pictures in it, how about a whole post of just pictures?!  OK!

 Here's a great shot of the mo-hawk discussed in the previous post! She hasn't lost any more hair, but it's not growing back in yet either... Luckily she is super cute sans hair!

 

Look Look!! KK loves her bumbo!  She just started sitting in it yesterday, and we are both loving how comfy it is!  Plus, it's a great place to play with her favorite toy frog :)  She just loves sitting up.  Before yesterday, we would just sit her on our lap, but the bumbo is much more stable for her back and neck, and it leaves both of my hands free to play! The frog has huge eyes that she loves to look at and his webby feet have some material inside that makes them crinkle when you bend them. She loves the sound!

Side story about the frog: This was the first toy that KK and I started to play with.  She liked it because it has huge eyes that she can stare at; I liked it because it was green.  One evening my nephew, Bauer, came over and decided to take out all of her toys, play with them, and then line them up on the nursery floor in order of "funness".  As he picked up the frog, I opened my mouth to tell him all about the eyes and the crinkly feet...and froze. Immediately upon grasping the toy, Bauer grabbed the yellow ring under the frog and pulled it.  The whole frog erupted in vibrations!  What?!  I have been playing with this thing for a MONTH and I never knew it vibrated! For crying out loud, I never even pondered why there was a yellow ring at the bottom of the frog. And turns out it makes the toy like 100 times more fun! It bummed me out a little that a 3 year old knows more about my baby's toys than I do! So I made him play with all of the toys again and I took notes.  Ok, maybe I didn't, but I probably should have...

Plus also, doesn't she look flipping adorable in purple??

Kynzie is one month old! Yay! One of my assistant principals gave me the idea to have a special onesie for each month of her first year. Then I talked to James about it and he made a different picture for each month!  They are all Pooh and super cute! I can't wait for you all to see the other months!

Last but not least...THE SMILE!  This is the first picture of her beautiful smile!  It has taken us countless pictures and over 2 weeks to capture this elusive expression, but we got it in the end! She is smiling all the time now -- not just when she has gas :)  It's so wonderful! She is so beautiful and it makes me feel like maybe I'm not too bad as a mother if I have a daughter that is THAT happy!

Now I am just waiting for her to laugh for the first time :)

Hair, Rhinos, and Breastpumps!

I have been having small, random thoughts about KK for the last two days, but since none of them could individually become a post, I haven't messed with it.  However, I now feel as though I have enough small thoughts to compile them into one hodgepodge blogging event -- incoherent though it may be...

Kynzie is going through an unfortunate hair phase.  And by that I mean that her hair is falling out!  Turns out this happens to babies?  I had no idea.  This, in itself, is not so bad.  Yes, we were pumped when she came out with so much beautiful dark hair. And yes I was enjoying watching her hair grow and get longer.  But just having hair fall back out would have been a minor setback.  What we have is something far more bizarre.  Kynzie has lost all of the hair on the top of her head except for a small racing stripe down the very middle.  It's a weird monk-like do with a small mohawk added in...I've been trying various come-overs, but nothing's working so far.  And let's not forget that none of the hair in the back is falling out, so it is becoming a lovely shade of mullet.  Beautiful.  Actually, it is still beautiful, which is the most shocking part about it!  How can she still be this gorgeous with hair like that?? It seems to defy all logic and reason, but it is so nonetheless.  I am, however, looking forward to the time when her hair begins to act normally!

Kynzie has changed so much in only a month!  When I think back to how much she was awake and alert the first couple of weeks, it's astounding to see how far she's come so quickly!  I bought her an activity gym for her one-month birthday and she loves it! She will sit and look in the mirror or stare at the monkeys.  Her favorite part, though, is the rhino and bird mobile in the middle.  She will stare and smile at it for minutes at a time!  Minutes are like hours to a baby much in the same way that one year is like 7 years to a dog...so you can see how huge this is!

I think James and I are becoming more adept at this whole parenting thing, as well.  When she cries (which is on the whole much less often than before) we can calm her quickly and know more readily what she wants.  I am starting to feed her before she cries because she's hungry and get her to sleep before she works herself up and cries for an hour!  Now, this is not happening 100 percent of the time, but we are trying really hard! Today was a great day, so this is a good day for a blog post of this nature.  Yesterday would not have been a good day to discuss my parenting skills, as I spent most of the day confused about what she wanted and sad that I couldn't seem to give it to her.

**Warning!  The following is of a relatively personal nature, so be prepared**

I am breastfeeding Kynzie and have not yet started pumping at all.  It has been a pretty daunting task for me.  I have this amazing pump (Medela) and I've known that I should probably start soon, but until late last week I hadn't even opened the backpack to see what was inside!  When I finally did it scared me even more because there were soo many parts and tubes and buttons...oh my...  So I found the manual online and read the entire thing.  I even started reading it again in Spanish and then remembered that it would be all the same information and stopped.  That helped a ton.  I sanitized everything and got everything ready last week and it has been sitting in the corner of the living room since then.  Just staring at me.  The only time I have felt the need to pump is at night.  KK is sleeping so well that she will go 8 or 9 hours without eating.  Great for her, not so great for my boobs.  So tonight it begins!  Maybe...if I don't chicken out...I think I am going to go read the manual one more time.

cloth diapers, anyone?

Today we begin a new experiment: cloth diapers!

We got a couple different kinds from showers and I had been waiting for her to get big enough to use them! I have used soo many pampers swaddlers and feel bad every time i have to just throw it away. I know it seems silly, but it seems so wasteful to just throw away all of those diapers...

So I am officially starting her in cloth diapers. Pray for me.

For today I put her in the littleG diapers from babies r us. They were super easy to put on. There is the outer cloth diaper, then a plastic liner that snaps in, then the "pad" that absorbs everything just fits into the liner.  I am not a huge fan of the velcro on the cloth, though.  I would much rather have snaps.  And I have both microfiber pads that are washable, and biodegradable pads that you flush down the toilet. Somehow it doesn't hurt my conscious so much to flush the pads instead of throwing them away. I dunno...

So over the next week or so I will try every variation and see what works best for us! Hopefully I will be comfortable using these instead of having to constantly throw away diapers, but I am not above returning to the "poop and trash" technique!

Oh, and here are a couple of pictures of her in her littleG's! Shockingly, I decided to start her in the green one!  And she looks too fat for them, but she isn't; it's just to way she is sitting :)

Mission: Find the Hand

So today Kynzie decided it was time she explored the world around her a little bit more...and by that I mean that she was bound and determined to 1. find her hand  2. bring it to her mouth  and 3. suck on it!  This is more difficult than you might first imagine. She was at this for a good 2 minutes or so before I got the flip and began getting a video of it.  It's too bad because most of the quality exploration happened before I was filming (per usual).  However, this was too cute not to share anyway, and I have been wanting to figure out how to post videos to this thing.  She ended up quitting and just sucking on my fingers, because that is way easier, but we'll get there eventually!!

Silly Monkey

I don't have any stories to share this morning, but this picture is the background on my phone and I absolutely adore how cute she is in it!

You're welcome :)

When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you

KK has started to smile!

Well, sort of... Let me explain:

Kynzie has started to really get on a schedule--ish.  She wakes up around 8 or 9 and stays awake until about 10 or 10:30, then she is back down until 1 or 2, then she's awake until 4 or so, then asleep until 7 or 8, then awake until 11, then she does her big sleep until about 5, then goes back to sleep until 8.  It's a pretty awesome schedule!  Except for the days when there is no schedule and she keeps me guessing all day :)

My favorite time of day is definitely from 8 until 10 in the morning! She is the most awake then and the most aware.  We do most of our "play" during that time.  I put that word in quotations because she is still not really playing by any sort of standard except the one that I made up for us.  According to that standard she is blowing the top off the charts :)  Anyway, we play in the bouncer, the swing, or just on my lap.  I sing to her (mostly old hymns and Beatles--because it makes sense to us! Although I always start with the good morning song that I made up after she was born), I let her feel different textures, I make silly sounds, and sometimes I just talk to her and let her follow the sound of my voice with her eyes. She normally can't handle more than 15 minutes or so of any of them before she loses interest, but it's been fun!

The best part of our morning together time is when she smiles!  When I put her in my lap and sing or talk to her, she will look right at me and smile!  It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!  I am not saying that she necessarily knows that she is smiling at me, but she is and I love it! James and I tried for several minutes Saturday morning to get a picture of it, but it comes and goes so quickly we just couldn't quite catch it!  It almost makes me cry when she does it, because she is so beautiful and it just melts my heart! It's a good thing she can't talk yet, because that gummy smile would get her an-y-thing that she asked!