Super genius or rose coloured glasses?

Last night, I was cooking dinner and needed a lemon.  “Hannah, do you want to stay in here and keep playing with Daddy, or do you want come outside and get a lemon with Mommy?”  She looked at me for a little bit, contemplation written all over her face.  And then she took off running, straight to the back door.  As she touched the closed door, she turned and looked at me, excitement in her face.

The same thing happened the other day when I told her “Mommy needs to go pee pee.”  (Only she ran to the bathroom instead of the back door).

One morning, it was quite cold.  Hannah went over to the little portable, blows hot air type heater, grabbed the plug and then attempted to plug it into the wall (which of course sent me flying across the room with reckless abandon to stop said plugging in).

Every day, Hannah attempts to put on her own socks, pants, and shoes (but so far has been unsuccessful).

I tell her to get her dolly and give it a kiss.  She does.  I ask her where duck is.  She looks around, then gets it for me.  I ask her where pony is.  She finds her and brings her to me.  I ask her where tuggy is.  We hardly ever read Tuggy and say tuggy, but lo and behold, she touches tuggy.  “Where is your hair?”  I ask her.  She grabs her hair and smiles.  “Where is your leg?”  She touches her leg.  “Where is your hand?”  She looks at it and wiggles her fingers.  She tells us (non verbally) when she wants to be picked up to look out the window.  She lets us know pretty much anything she wants/needs quite easily.

So I wonder, is she a super genius, or am I wearing

Super Genius?

rose-coloured glasses?

Am I a Jedi?

Use the force you must

Hannah:

Am I a Jedi?  I’m not really sure what a Jedi is, but Mommy and Daddy often say that I must be a Jedi.  Sometimes (okay, most of the time) I stretch out my hand and reach as far as I can.  Mommy and/or Daddy look at me.  I look at them, then to the object of my desire, then back to Mommy and/or Daddy.  One of them stands up.  I start saying the name of what I want, but all that comes out is “eh, eh, eh.” because I am a baby.   Mommy gets closer to what I want.  I get louder.  Yay, Mommy grabs what I wanted and brings it back to me.  I smile and show them all my teeth because I know Mommy and Daddy really like it when I do that.

“You must be a Jedi,” Daddy says “you reach out your hand and bang, the object you want is there.”

I don’t know what a Jedi is, but if it means pointing at something and then getting it, then yeah, I’m a Jedi.

The wayward nugget

Her feet are kicking.  Her shoulders are trying desperately to wiggle out from under my hand and pop up so she can turn over.  Her torso is turns into a super bendy wiggle worm.  All extremities are flailing as I try my hardest to keep her laying down on the change mat, her feet away from her pooey bottom.  One hand is busy holding her down, the other trying to keep her feet away from poo as well as moving the pooey nappy away from her.  And then it happens.  A nugget is accidentally set free.  It rolls out of the nappy and onto the change mat.  Feet are flailing.  They narrowly escape turning an interesting shade of browney-green.  I dodge the flailing extremities and go in with a wipe.  Oh no, the wayward nugget escapes me and falls on the floor.  I can’t look for it now, there is a flailing baby with her bare pooey bottom hanging out laying (unwillingly) on top of a table.  No, I have to finish with Hannah first, then go in search of the wayward nugget.  Ok, Hannah’s bottom is clean, bottom creamed, nappied, and pantsed (is that a word?  Oh well, now it is).  I look under the table.  No sign of the nugget.  Bugger, where has it gone?  How far can a poo nugget roll?  What if Hannah finds it first?  Will she try to eat it?  Will she try to squish it in her pudgy little baby hands?  I can’t find it anywhere.  Inside, I’m freaking out a little.  The search continues.  It doesn’t help that the 70s/80s carpet is poo brown.  I can’t vacuum, that probably wouldn’t fare so well for the vacuum itself.   Freak out continues.  I peer under the freestanding fin oil heater.  The wayward nugget stares right back at me.  I can almost hear it laughing.  I move the heater, go in with a wipe, and finally, the wayward nugget is contained.   Who knew that motherhood would include elusive hide and seek games with wayward nuggets?  Not me.

Very fortunate indeed

Sometimes Hannah drives me a little bit crazy.  She often throws her food on the floor with a mischievous smug look on her face.  Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and cries for 2 hours.  When I take her to a shop and she is walking around, she pulls things off shelves, puts things in her mouth, won’t let me hold her at all, and generally wreaks havoc.  All mums grumble about some things that their children do, but I think it’s time for a change in perspective.  I am so lucky to be able to be driven a little crazy by my cheeky little monkey.  Everything she does, every moment she is here is a complete blessing.

I was checking out the top 25 “Mommy blogs” when I came across this one: http://www.corasstory.org/ about a baby who died of an undiagnosed congenital heart defect while nursing on her mother’s breast.  I bet that Mom would kill to be able to be up for 2 hours at night with her baby, be thrown up on, peed on, have her hair pulled, witness tantrums, and be driven a little crazy sometimes.

Next time Hannah does something that may get on my nerves a little bit, I will think of Cora’s story, and remember that my precious little Hannah is a joy no matter what she is doing, especially considering that she too has a heart defect (little hole in her heart).  We are truly blessed and fortunate.

Yesterday (in photos)

Hannah:

I had fun yesterday!  Here are some photos of my day.  Mommy says the camera is being silly (she was using the point and shoot instead of the big one because she says the big one takes too long for the flash to warm up between photos), so they’re not the best photos, but they still tell my story.  *waves* Bye bye!!

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Why to atheists try to get others to think as they do?

I was watching Wife Swap the other week and the dad of one of the families was an atheist.  He had his own internet radio program that’s sole purpose was to dispute God and try to get others to believe the same as him.  This was also his job, his only income, surviving on donations from listeners.

I’m a little confused though.  Why do atheists (not all, I don’t want to generalize, but in my experience, those whom I’ve come across hold true to this perception) try to get others to also believe there is no God?  I know why you’re thinking, why do Christians try to get others to believe as they do?  Good question.  We try to get you to believe as we do for your own salvation.  It’s actually quite hard to talk to non-Christians about Christ.  Hard, uncomfortable, and it sometimes leads to being left out, ridiculed, patronised, and even persecuted.  But we still do it.  We do it because we believe that if you don’t believe that Jesus died for our sins, and if you don’t follow him, then you will go to Hell.  So we do it for you because we don’t want you to go to Hell.

I’m not sure why atheists try to sway us, it doesn’t get them anything, it doesn’t get us anything, I just can’t figure it out.  So please, if you are an atheist, or agnostic, or what ever, please let me know.

Mommy took me to the park!

Hannah:

I was SO bored in the house today.  I’ve played with my toys so many times.  BORING!  Mommy used to take me places to play with other babies, but she hasn’t for a while, something about school holidays, and she’ll take me soon.  I don’t know, but I’m so bored at home!  So, Mommy took me to the park!!  I love the park.  The ground is really funny at the park.  I can pick it, drop it, lay in it in make angels, push it around, etc.  Why isn’t the ground at my house like that?  I also really like the swing, but there was a boy on it the whole time we were there, so I couldn’t go on it.  I really like the park.  I saw another baby, maybe a bit older then me there, but her Daddy wouldn’t let her play with me because she kept trying to poke me in the eye.  That’s ok, I like to poke people in the eye too.  It’s just what we babies do.  It’s like doggies, they always sniff eachother bottoms when they meet.  Well, we poke eachother when we meet.  Maybe Mommy will take me to the park again tomorrow!  I really like it at the park.  Here are some photos.  Bye bye *waves*!!

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Bring on the underwire!

It’s exciting, but sad at the same time.  That’s right, Hannah is officially weaned.  I have successfully breastfed her for an entire year, so it’s kind of exciting to have my boobs back, but sad that we don’t have that close bonding anymore.  Hannah seems to be feeling a bit upset about it and has been super clingy every morning.  If I put her down, she reaches up her cute little arms as high as she can, looks right into my eyes with that sweet “mommy, please pick me up, I love you!” look on her face.  How can I resist?  Plus, I want her to feel like she is still special and worthy of my time, so I have been carrying her around every morning as I prepare our breakfast.

I have been preparing for weaning.  Every night when I fed her, I gave her less and less time on the breast.  Then the other night, she slept all the way through, not a peep until 7am.  That was it, it was time.  I did have to commence patting for twice the next night, but I didn’t give in, and she went back to sleep.  The night after that, she woke for a while at 12am, cried loudly, then went back to sleep.  Last night, she slept from 7:30pm to 7:30am.  I hope that becomes the norm.   There has been no sign of the melons I used to get after missing just one feed.  I wonder what happens to all of the unused milk that must be hiding in there somewhere.

Finally, I can bust out my pre-pregnancy underwire, nice looking bras.   Hmmm…where did I put them??

Ok, so about 5 minutes after I wrote this post, I started leaking.  So much for fuss free weaning.  Let’s just hope there is no mastitis in my future.

Apparently, I suck at measuring

Every mother wants a dishwasher.  You’d be surprised (or maybe not) how many dishes one little one year old makes.  There’s all the sippy cups (one at each meal), little bowls, plates you warm things up on, little spoons.  Ok, so it doesn’t sound like much, but multiply it by 3 meals per day plus snack, plus another 2 sippy cups of milk each day, and you’ve got yourself a lot of dishes.  Oh, and don’t forget to add to all that the dishes you use for yourself and the rest of the family.  That’s one huge mound, every single day.

With this in mind, I convinced Aaron a dishwasher was certainly needed.

“Make sure the new one will fit.” Aaron warned me.  I measured the current dishwasher (that is over 20 years old and hasn’t been used in as many years, and has a sort of funk what wafts out when you open the door) and went in search of our new dishwasher.

Score!  I found one on special for $399. I pulled out the measurements that I had neatly folded in my pocket, borrowed the sales lady’s measuring tape (which was floral so “none of the boys will steal it”), and measured away.  She told me it wasn’t necessary to measure as dishwasher were of a standard size, but I insisted and did it anyway.  Odd looks aside, I got my measurements.  It seemed this new dishwasher was about 6 inches shorter than the old one.  It would fit no problem.

Finally, 11 days later, shiny new dishwasher arrived to a very excited Grandma and me.  I assured the delivery man that the old dishwasher had in fact been disconnected some 18 years ago.  Despite all his pulling, it was clear that old dishwasher was still connected.  We opened the cupboard and couldn’t find any holes where hoses could possibly sneak themselves in and plug into the pipes.  Hmm… odd.  Delivery man had no time to sort such a mess out that day, so he offered to install it all for us, cut a hole in the cupboard, unhook the old dishwasher, put in a new (needed) S bend, and take away all the rubbish for $70 a couple of days later.  Sounded good to us.

Yesterday, Delivery Man came back, un-installed the old dishwasher, put in the new s-bend, and then came to a halt.  The tap the dishwasher needed to connect to was so old that it wasn’t the standard size.  Delivery Man (to be referred to as DM from now on) marched off to get some sort of adapter.

“The new dishwasher looks bigger then the old one doesn’t it?” Grandma asked while DM was out.

I looked over at the 2 dishwashers sitting side by side. Fear ripped through me.  It was obvious, the new dishwasher was bigger then the old one.  I took a more detailed look.

“It’s ok, we’ll just get DM to take off  it’s feet.”

We laughed as we told DM of our new predicament.  I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he offered to sort everything out for us.  He put the new part in, took the feet off, and then, the moment of truth.  Time to push the new dishwaher into it’s hidey hole.

We could only laugh, what else could we do?  It didn’t fit.  Well, okay, the left side did, but not the right.  I don’t know if the floor is uneven, the dishwasher, or the counter, but something isn’t quite right.  DM couldn’t do anything more for us.

All we have to do is shave a bit off the overhang of the counter and finally it will fit.  Since when did it get so hard to have a dishwasher?  New dishwasher is currently hooked up and sitting in front of it’s hidey hole.

Apparently, I suck at measuring.

She’s so cute

Yeah, I’m a sucker.  I waited AGES for Little Masterpiece Studio (whom I worked for a while back for like 3 years) to come to Chatswood or Penrith.  They didn’t come to Chatswood the whole time we were there with Hannah, and I narrowly missed them at Penrith.  I was left with no choice but to retract my loyalties and go to another studio to get Hannah’s photos done.  I know, I used to be a photographer, but 1) every time I get the camera out, Hannah runs towards it at a crazy pace with her arms open, and 2) I don’t own any studio lights.

I was browsing in K-Mart one day, looking for some pirate garb (as you do), when an older lady walked up to me and explained that Pixifoto (K-mart’s in store portrait photographers) was having a special.  $5.95 sitting fee, and you get a free 10×13.  Awesome, I thought I’d just go there, pay the cheap sitting price, get my free photo, bye bye, thank you ma’am.  I used to work in the industry, how could I not know that once I saw my beautiful baby’s face on those photos, I’d want them all??  So yeah, I’m a sucker, I spent $490 on photos.  Below are some for your enjoyment.

It looks like Hannah wants to go down to one nap per day.  For the last 3 days, she has cried instead of slept through her first nap.  Today, I put her down for her first nap, only to be met with crying again.  I got her up, let her play, gave her some lunch, and tried again 2 hours later.  Bingo, straight to sleep.  *Sigh* it’s time for one nap only.  I don’t know how I’m going to get to the gym now.  Yeah, that’s right, I joined a gym.  An awesome, new, has screens built into all the equipment that I can plug my ipod and watch anything on, wonderful gym.  They gave me an assessment when I first started which included me getting onto one of those new crazy scales that tells you your weight, BMI, % water, and even metabolism.  Now, I don’t know how a scale can tell your metabolism, but I’m not complaining because it told me that I have the metabolism of a 12 year old (a very very good thing).  Sweet, bring on the chocolate….  Anyway, I was going to the gym while Hannah had her first nap, then I could do other things during her second nap.  Now that she is having one, that kinda complicates things.  On a side note, our shower is absolutely terrible (no water pressure!), so as extra incentive to go to the gym, I shower there.  If I want a good shower, gotta go to the gym. 

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