Yesterday Hannah drew a lovely picture. Well, it was a bunch of scribbles with some different coloured circles in the middle. But you know, I think it was lovely.
She rolled it up, took it to Aaron’s spot at the dining table, and set it down.
“Did you make that for Daddy?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she smiled as she told me excitedly.
“Oh, Daddy will love to get that when he gets home.”
There it sat, all day.
When Aaron got home, he found it on the table.
“Did you make this for me?” He asked her as he unrolled it happily.
“Yeah.”
“Wow! It’s really nice!” Aaron told her.
“Actually, it’s for Grandma.” Hannah told Aaron as she took it out of his hands.
Oh snap!
If you enjoyed reading this, please vote for my blog. All you have to do is click the link below. That’s it… And if you are an email subscriber, clicks from your email don’t count. If you would like to vote, please go to my blog and vote from there. THANKS!
Hannah (holding a crayon): “Mommy, can I colour on the couch?”
Me: “No sweetie, we only colour on paper.”
Hannah: “Can I colour on my leg?”
Me: “No sweetie.”
Hannah: “Can I colour on…(thinks for a bit) my face?”
Me: “No sweetie.”
Hannah: “But I can use face paint on my face.”
Me: “yeah, but face paint is special paint just for your face.”
Hannah: “Can I colour on my neck?”
Me: “No sweetie, only on paper.”
Hannah: “Only on walls.”
Me: “Only on paper.”
Hannah: “Only on your foot.”
Me: “Only on paper.”
Yeah, she’s super cheeky. Just like her daddy….
Like my blog? Click the link below. Just by clicking, you vote for my blog and help me get back to the top 5. Come on, click… it’ll take 1 second of your time…..
How do you know if your child has done a poo? You pull open the top of their pants and nappy and peer in of course. You could go by smell, but sometimes that’s a false alarm. Kids fart. Farts stink…. You get what I’m saying. We always check Hannah’s nappy this way. Yes, she’s still in a nappy. Sigh. She refuses to wear big girl undies and flails like an octopus on red cordial caught in a net if you try to put her on the potty. Plus I have a newborn. That doesn’t exactly leave a lot of time for potty training. Giant sigh (about the potty training, not the newborn…).
Anyway, that is totally not the point of this post.
The other day, Hannah, cheeky girl that she is, went up to Aaron and pulled at the back of his pants.
“Did Daddy do a poo poo?” He asked her.
“Yeah.” She said, a cheeky grin plastered on her face.
“I don’t think so, Daddy does poo poos on the potty! Let me check,” Aaron humoured her as he put his hand down the back of his pants, pretending to search for non-existent poo.
“What??!!! Where’d this come from??!!!!”
Hannah looked at him mischievously, as she erupted in laughter.
Aaron held up the tip of a yellow crayon. “How did this get in there?!!”
“I PUT IT THERE!!!” She exclaimed proudly.
I sat back, watching and laughing my head off. Aaron has always been the joker of the family. A “torment” as Grandma puts it. He’s all light-hearted and silly like that. So yeah, I think it’s HILARIOUS that Hannah torments him back.
Aaron handed the crayon back to her.
She walked straight back to Aaron, pulled at the back of his pants and in went the crayon again. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Don’t forget to vote once per day to get me back to number 2! Please. Pretty please? Come on, you know you want to… Do you know how long these cartoons take? It doesn’t take very long to show your appreciation by clicking the voting banner link. I’m just saying….
I think it’s good to let toddlers play by themselves sometimes. It develops creativity and imagination. I like to close all the doors in the house except the one leading to her room, and of course the kitchen which leads to the playroom. That way she can run around the hallway to her heart’s content, and if she feels like playing in her room by herself, then by all means, she can go for it.
She loves going in her room and pulling all of her shirts off the hangers, pants off the shelf, and singlets out of the drawer. Mostly she just puts them on the ground, but she loves trying to put them on too. Often when she comes out of her room, she is running, giggles coming out of her mouth, 5 shirts around her waist, and a pair of underpants on her head.
Sometimes she sits in her room and pulls half the books off of her shelf, looking through each one as she goes. Upside down, right side up, it doesn’t matter, she looks at them just the same. She talks as she points to the pictures in her books “OH! Kangaroo! BIG Kangaroo!”
Usually I can hear her in her room, having a great time, giggles here, sentences there, thuds as pulls books off the shelves.
But the other day, it was quiet. She’d been in there for a while. Last time she was in there for a while being quiet, she had shut her door so I wouldn’t know what she was up to (CHEEKY!) and somehow managed to get a hold of her wipes, pulling nearly all of them out of the packet. When I went in, she jumped a little, knowing she isn’t meant to be getting out all the wipes. “Just one.” She told me nodding her head as she tried to take one more to wipe Mickey Mouse’s bottom. He was nicely laid on the change mat, ready for a nappy and a bottom wipe.
I went in her room, totally expecting to find an entire packet of wipes scattered about her room, a cheeky look on her face. As I approached the door, she started giggling. And jumping.
“How did you get in there?!”
More giggling. More bouncing. She was clearly very proud of herself, excited at her new feat.
She loves climbing in there now. She does it all the time. We asked her to do it for the camera last night, so here it is, little miss cheeky doing her new trick. Just keep in mind that despite being 22 months old, she is very small, at least 2 inches shorter than all of her friends, and she only weighs 10 kilos, so this isn’t really easy for her.
Just so you know, I only had a roll of masking tape around my wrist because I was in the middle of getting Baby Boy’s room ready for trim painting…..
Please vote for this blog, click on the banner below once per day 🙂
Hannah LOVES drawing, colouring, putting stickers on things (which unfortunately has extended from her notebook ONLY to her bike, my legs, her clothes, the walls, the doors, and of course, my clothes, thanks to Grandma, who decided to let her put stickers on her bike. Sigh.), building things with duplo (fine, fake duplo, the real stuff is way too expensive!), etc. Maybe she’ll be an artist one day, who knows. She really likes cooking too, so maybe she’ll be a chef. Anyway, that is not the point.
So yesterday, Hannah woke up from her nap very early. She wasn’t crying, she was just playing, making adorable noises, and talking to herself, so I left her in her cot to do just that. When 3pm rolled around, I decided to get her up. I walked into her room. “Hi Bubba!”
She looked up and greeted me with the most accomplished, proud of herself smile I’ve ever seen.
“What did you do?” I asked her suspiciously.
She handed me some pieces of paper she had torn out of one of her books, and then torn up some more, smile still plastered on her face. “Made it.” She said proudly.
Hannah and Mommy. See how useless the baby seat belt is? She can turn around in it....
Hannah and her dolly on the plane
Note to self: Do not check in for a flight and go through security with a toddler all by yourself.
Who knew it would be so hard? Not me. I thought Hannah would just sit in the pram, giggle at people, squeal at people, and of course, get every single person around hers attention. But no, that was not to be. She wouldn’t let me even put her in the pram. Instead, she made like a wet, slippery, floppy, flailing wiggle worm, rendering my buckle her into the pram efforts useless. Of course it wouldn’t be so easy.
Sometimes you see a child running wild and you just think “why doesn’t that parent do something?” or “that child needs a leash.” Well, Hannah is that child, and I am that mom. We can’t help it really. She is full of energy, curious about everything, and super smart. She isn’t content just sitting in the pram all day, looking at things. She wants to be in the midst of everything. She wants to run around and inspect everything, and I want to let her. But not while in line to check in for a flight. Our check in line went a bit like this: Hannah ducks under the rope and takes off. I run after her, pick her up, and deposit her next to the pram. She helps me move the pram forward in line. Repeat process. Add stares from everyone around us, probably with thoughts of “Oh my goodness, WHY doesn’t that silly mum just put her in the pram??” or “how embarrassing, I’m glad I’m not her.”
We had to check the pram in at the oversized luggage counter, complete with on the spot x-ray. Hannah was very interested in the x-ray machine and cheekily ran to the other side and pushed the start button. Then she ran off. I know you’re not supposed to leave luggage unattended, but that’s kind of hard when you have a freakishly fast 1 year old who likes to run off on your hands. Start folding pram. Run after Hannah. Continue folding pram. Run after Hannah. Put pram on x-ray conveyor belt, run after Hannah. I didn’t know being at the airport was such a workout.
Getting through security was even harder. Have you ever tried to put backpacks, bags, watches, etc. off and on while trying to keep a toddler from running away? Put bag in plastic tub on conveyor belt. Run after Hannah. Dodge annoyed stares from everyone in the line behind you. Put next item in tub. Run after Hannah. Dodge stares, don’t make eye contact. Repeat. Go through metal detector. Repeat whole process but putting everything back on this time.
Try to hold a noodley, wiggley, child at the same time while you have a backpack on your back, a camera bag on one shoulder, a nappy bag on the other, a sippy cup in one hand, and Hannah’s purse in the other. Oh no, which gate was I going to? I went in search of the info board carrying noodley wiggle worm. I found it. Hannah wiggled free. I knelt down, put my arm around her and looked at the board. Hannah didn’t want to stay stationary, so she put herself face down on the floor and started crying. Darn it. Everyone was staring. Why was there a child crying face down on the floor while her mother was kneeling down, loaded with bags, hand on child, looking at the info screen? Ignore everyone, grab child, go straight to parents room, let her run free. Let out sigh of relief. Wait for Aaron (who was coming straight from work).
I was never sure about those child leashes, but now, I really think they have their place. Like airports for example. That would have solved a lot.
1. Throw all of your food on the floor and then say DONE! and/or GONE! while giving Mommy a cheeky but innocent look.
2. After Mommy takes off your poopy nappy, flail your feet and bottom around and watch Mommy get increasingly frustrated as she dodges your pooey bottom and tries her hardest not to get poo all over herself. Increase giggles as Mommy gets more frustrated.
3. Sip water out of your cup but instead of swallowing it, spit it back out, all over yourself, so Mommy has to change your clothes (she could just leave you all wet, but if she’s like my Mommy, she wouldn’t do that to you while it’s still cold out).
4. Bite Daddy’s nose. Make sure you get the inside of Daddy’s nose. Giggle, giggle, giggle.
5. While Mommy is folding laundry, innocently walk into her room, then quickly grab a stack of clothes and run off.
6. Open your closet/dresser, whatever you have, and throw all of your clothes around your room.
7. As soon as Mommy or Daddy puts your shoes on, run away, sit down somewhere, and then take them off. If you’re feeling really mischievous, hide one or both shoes.
8. Unzip Mommy’s purse (I wonder why Daddy’s don’t have purses. They seem so convenient. Where do Daddy’s put all of their Daddy things?) and pull all of its contents out. Make sure you open the wallet (I use my teeth, it’s far easier) and take out all of Mommy’s cards. Just for a bit more fun, grab something that Mommy really needs from the purse and run off giggling.
9. Open the pantry and take out the tupperware of spaghetti. Open the tupperware, dump out all of the spaghetti, then walk all over it so it breaks in little pieces. Pick up some of the pieces and deposit them all around the kitchen. Don’t try to eat them, they don’t taste very nice when they’re not cooked (I know from experience).
10. Point to Mommy’s chest and say “Booby.” Hahaha.
11. Pull Mommy’s shirt up and try to steal the shiny sparkle-y thing that she keeps in her belly button. I Haven’t been successful in the quest so far. Maybe one day I’ll be able to get the shiny thing.
12. Pull down Mommy’s shirt and try to take the spot off of her (she calls it a mole. “Hannah, Mommy likes her mole there, don’t try to take it off…”). I scratch, pinch, and sometimes use a combination of both.
13. Make sure Mommy or Daddy or Grandma is watching, and then go touch the garbage bin. Keep touching it and give them a cheeky grin (because you know you’re not supposed to touch it, and they know that you know).
14. When you play outside, find a puddle, run straight into it, then jump up and down. Make sure you get your shoes soaking wet, all the way through your socks, and preferably up your pant legs as well. I also recommend sitting down in the puddle and slapping it with your hands.
15. When you are having a bath, stand up and run around so Mommy can’t get a hold of you to wash your face and hair (I hate having my face and hair washed!). Laying on your belly and kicking your feet in the water, making lots of splashes is great too.
16. Say “Daddy!” and when Daddy looks at you, flick the straw of your cup so water hits Daddy in the face. Laugh heartily when Daddy says “Hey, you got Daddy in the eye,” and then do it again.
17. Run into your room and then when Daddy tries to follow you, shut the door. When he opens it, giggle, giggle, giggle, then close it on him again. Repeat as desired.
18. Spill something on the floor (or find something that is already there). Put your index finger in the middle of the spill and then move it around. Try to make the spill spot as big as possible.
Sometimes it’s very hard to get Hannah to eat her dinner. I cook up something nice, just for her, put it in front of her, give her a spoon (not that she uses it for eating, but she likes to think she can), and hope for the best. She gives me a cheeky cheeky look, and then feeds the floor. I’m no expert on floors, but I’m pretty sure they don’t require nutrition to function properly. A big wave of the arm and the entire meal, bowl and all, lands open side down, all over the floor. Whinging follows, along with loud screams of “DONE!” I don’t know how she’s done when she didn’t eat anything, but whatever.
She won’t eat her food, but I often find her pulling pieces of fuzz (pils?) off her clothes, blankets, toys, whatever really, and then eating them. Not just chewing, having a little taste and spitting them out. No, she will sit there and pull them off, put them in her mouth, chew, swallow, and then go back for more. I don’t know why a fuzz ball tastes better than her dinner, but to her, it certainly seems to.
Hannah:
Mommy tries. She really does. Mommy makes me all sorts of different things for lunch and dinner (I like my cereal for breakfast, especially now that she gives me big person cereal with yummy raisins in it). Sometimes I’m just not hungry, you know? I get lots of snacks too. Mommy always gives me raisins, rusks, yogurt, baby breakfast bars, cheese. I really like those things, so I’m not really hungry later. It’s really fun to throw things on the floor though. I like to wind Mommy up. Plus, it’s fun to see which way the bowl lands and if the food splats. Sometimes I wonder if I can get pieces of food all the way into my playroom!
When Mommy puts my fuzzy coat on, I can’t help but wonder what it tastes like. What does pink taste like? It doesn’t taste like much, but I like the way the fuzzy feels on my gums. It’s already in my mouth, so I might as well swallow it. Pulling fuzzies off my coat is something to do really. I usually only do it when I’m in my car seat or pram. It amuses me. But then I eat too many fuzzies and I’m not hungry for my dinner. Humph. I guess I’ll have to eat more for breakfast.
I was just being lazy, trying to get the job done in the shortest time possible. I sort of had to though as Bubba was getting into everything when she started crawling. I moved everything just out of her reach. Now she’s started pulling herself up on anything and everything she can find (the coffee table, couch, shelves, tv unit, our knees, even the vacuum cleaner), which means everything I moved before is no in her reach again. We’re running out of places to put things. Can’t put anything on the coffee table or it will be pushed, pulled, or thrown off, then eaten, bashed or chewed on. I have to follow her around the house making sure she doesn’t fall over when she attempts to “cruise” (pulling self up and then moving sideways along whatever furniture it was she pulled herself up on). She also seems to have this crazy notion in her head that she actually has balance and then lets go of whatever she is holding on to. FYI, she does not yet have balance. Luckily for her we are always there to catch her (hmm… maybe that is why she does it, she does love being scared, if peekaboo is anything to go by). I guess she can balance a little, she can hold on to stuff with just one hand and stay up just fine. She’s just a little dare-devil!
How is it that babies wake up for garbage trucks, people who talk too loud, noisy kookaburra’s, a loud fart, the front door opening, etc, but when there is a loud thunderstorm with cracking lighting overhead, nothing? Not even a little peep. I don’t understand baby sleep even a little bit.
I’m going to be sore tomorrow. I used muscles today that I forgot ever existed. That happens every time I start doing tae kwon do again. Ok, so I haven’t done it much since I was a kid, but a few years ago The Jess and I went for a while at the uni. I could hardly walk the next day. I’m sure I had a bit of a swagger, and goodness, did my body feel a bit special! I know I’ll be feeling exactly like that tomorrow. It was fun though, and a really good work out. I really miss doing tae kwon do. I did it from 4th to 9th grade when I was a kid, then stopped. Everyone thought it was because I lost interest, but really (sure, I’ll set the record straight even though it’s embarrassing) it was because I started my women troubles and was petrified that it would leak through to my white tae kwon do pants. I saw it happen to one of the other girls, and I did NOT want it to happen to me. What if after sitting on the mat stretching, I got up, only to find I had leaked all over myself and the mat? How would I ever show my face there again? I know, silly, but this is what a 14 year old girl thinks about. So, when aunt flow was paying me an unwelcome visit, I would tell my dad that I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t say why, he thought I wasn’t interested anymore (after this happened for a week straight for a couple of months), I was too embarrassed to tell him the real reason (you don’t really talk to your dad about such things), he didn’t want to pay for something I wasn’t interested in, and that was that, we didn’t go anymore. I always missed it though. You’re laughing aren’t you Dad? There is a place within walking distance to us that even has a women’s class on a weekday morning. Apparently you can even bring your baby/child as all the ladies do. Can’t go every week though, it costs too much. I’m very excited to get back into it though, even if I do look like I swallowed a giant coat hanger tomorrow.
Uh-oh, I could hear Hannah stirring. She had only been alseep for 20 minutes. She grizzled for a while, then all was silent. Success, she put herself back to sleep. Or so I thought…. After another half an hour, she was making protests, so I went to her room. She hadn’t gone back to sleep at all. Instead, she had been plotting how to grab anything and everything, pull it into her cot, and then play with it until she got bored. And to think I thought I moved everything far enough away from her sticky little grip. Clearly I underestimated my cheeky little monkey. When I opened her door, there she was, sitting in her cot surrounded by her loot. Cheeky little monkey!
I finally did it- I told the people next door to shut up. At 10pm someone was playing acoustic guitar and singing. That wasn’t a problem though, the songs were soft and actually lulled me to sleep. Then came the bongo (or similar) drums. They invaded my sleep and woke me from my wonderful slumber. Enough was enough. I pulled the blinds up and stuck my head as far out the window as I could, to see where the noise was coming from. On and on the badly played bongos went. Without thinking, I yelled. “SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Wow, I can’t believe I actually finally did it. To my surprise, they actually did. They shut up almost immediately. But then I felt bad. I should have been a little nicer about it. I should have maybe said “could you please quiet down, I’m trying to sleep.” Of course that might not have been so effective. Ahhh, I could go back to sleep. Or could I? Probable drunk and or high people had just been yelled at to shut up. Hmmm…would they try to do anything to me? I felt extremely glad at that moment that there are bars on all of our windows. I suppose they probably didn’t even know from which apartment complex, let alone unit, the shut up came from, but that is not what you think about at 11pm after being woken from your deep slumber to the sound of horribly played bongo drums, possibly by psychopaths. This time I really would have called the cops to make a noise complaint. loud tv and or music (the recorded kind, not badly played live kind) is one thing, but bongo drums?
How do you tell a 6 (almost 7) month old that they can’t sleep sitting up? Hannah will only breastfeed before she goes to sleep or has a nap. I know it’s not ideal, but she usually falls asleep while I feed her (I have tried many many times to feed her other times, but she is a stubborn determined little thing, and will ONLY breastfeed before bed no matter what I do), then I put her in the cot, she rolls over onto her tummy, and that is how she sleeps. Now though, after about 2 minutes, she wakes up. I’m sure she always has, but then she just repositions herself and goes back to sleep. But now she can get to the sitting position all by herself, so what does she do? She wakes after 2 minutes and then sits of course. The sitting then gets her all awake again, she gets over tired, she cries, I go in, lay her down, pat her back, she sits back up immediately, I lay her down, etc. I’ve tried staying in there while she plays around in her cot to get herself all tuckered out again. She will get tired again, but of course, the whole process repeats. I’ve tried letting her cry for 10 minutes initially, go in, pat for 1 minute, leave her for 3, pat for 1, etc. Nope, that doesn’t work either. As soon as I lay her down, pop! she’s back up. I don’t think she realises that she is only 6 months old. According to baby books, this whole sitting up from laying, crawling, etc. thing, is not supposed to happen until about 10 months. Needless to say, it’s been a long, tired few days, with mommy (sorry, I mean me. Once you have a baby, you start automatically referring to yourself as “Mommy” in the third person in hopes that sometime soon, baby will call you that too) going a little insane. She did get to 15 minutes this morning before she woke up. I guess we’re making some progress.
I’m glad Hannah doesn’t yet have top teeth, otherwise I would probably be missing a nipple right now. I tried to resettle her with booby (I know, bad habit, but I was desperate, the patting/sitting up cycle had been going on for an hour with no progress), but she wanted none of it. Instead of sucking, she decided to clamp down and not let go. Once I pried my nipple out of her cheeky little mouth, I could see teeth marks. That is something one never ever wants to see on their nipple. Ever. Lucky for her she hasn’t bitten me again. If she starts biting me regularly, or if she draws blood, I’m withdrawing booby from her permanently. I’m not totally cruel though, I’d still express and give it to her in a sippy cup. She would hate it though. She probably would refuse to drink it, and then after not eating anything for a while, I’d give in and she’d get booby again. Stubborn little thing (but oh so cute).
We have to find a new place asap. Hannah is getting into everything. She crawls all over the house, ripping everything off shelves, opening drawers and cupboards (and squishing her little fingers in drawers a few times. She is too fast, I’m right next to her, so I can see as soon as it’s going to happen, but by the time I get my hand between the drawer and it’s frame, she’s already shut her fingers in it), trying to climb the dishwasher when I’m unloading it, trying to open doors that I’ve shut so she can’t go in other rooms. The list is endless!! She much prefers random household things to her toys these days. At least she is easily entertained (even though it means I’m following her around the house, trying to make sure she doesn’t get into too much mischief!). Oh, and she is still being super cheeky at meal time too, giving me food showers and/or refusing to eat. Oh the cheekiness… (but we wouldn’t swap her for the world!).
Mommy Adventures 