21 Months

The last 2 months, Aryn has become a crazy child. Hilarious, and sweet, and amazing, but absolutely nuts. I have never seen so much energy in one tiny person. She is her father's daughter, without a doubt!

See? Climbing!! On EVERYTHING!

Once upon a time, Aryn was the easiest kid to put to bed. You lay her down, put the blankets on her, leave the room, and we wouldn't hear anything from her for 12 hours. It was glorious!

Well, she has put a STOP to that.

Now, our evening schedule is this:
7:15 - Bath
7:30 - Teeth brushed, lotioned up, pj's on
7:45 - Books read or Elmo watched and laying in bed. Door closed.
8:30 - Still talking, or yelling, or running laps in her crib, or playing with the dolls, or ... whatever else she could possibly be doing.
I can usually get her asleep at around 8:30

Now, you are asking yourself, "Why don't you just put her to bed at 8:30?"

WELL!!!

Because she wakes up at 6:30am, when Ryan gets up to get ready for work! We can't figure out what it is that wakes her up, but whenever Ryan gets up, she is up. And then starts our day of a tired, grumpy nugget - who doesn't listen, who whines, who throws fits, who is grumpy.

I've tried putting her back to sleep at 6:30, but she wants none of that - she wants to run and see Bauer and say hi to all her toys and go eat breakfast.

Yet on weekends, she's up at 8am! I fully blame Ryan and his dinosaur walking.

See how her lips make an "S"? This is her new look and I looooove it!

And the fits have started. Take her to the potty? Fit! Take away a dangerous knife? Fit! Shut off the 9th episode of Elmo? Ohh man, the fit!

She is running away from me - and towards the water - here!

It doesn't help that I laugh at all of these fits. But they're so funny! And cute! You just want to pick her up and squeeze her! But when you do, she gets mad and throws another fit haha!!

Aryn & Hunter

But while the last little bit has been trying, I can't express enough how much I am LOVING it. This kid is the sweetest, and funniest kid ever. She just comes up to you to give you hugs and kisses for no reason. And they're GOOD hugs. She even pats your back and rests her head on your shoulders. She runs to you when you open your arms, and her laughter... my goodness... her laughter. It will melt your heart. And the things she laughs at are amazing - just random things, she finds so funny.

Haha!

This little girl wants to be a "big kid" so bad - she copies everything everyone is doing and if she messes up, she'll try, try, try again until she gets it perfect. She actually BRUSHES her teeth - not just sucks off the toothpaste. She moves the brush and brushes those teeth - just like mom and dad. She feeds herself with a fork and spoon - and she's GOOD at it! She does everything she can to be just like us, and I don't blame her for getting angry when we don't allow her to perfect something (i.e., climbing onto the table. While mom and dad don't climb onto the table, she wants whatever we've hidden out of reach of her little hands on the table and she just wants that to be a big girl!).

I am learning everyday this little personality this kid has. And everyday I get more and more scared of her being a teenager (hahaha) and I fall more and more in love with her.

Potty Surfing

Aryn has recently started wanting to use the potty. When we were sick for 2 months, she basically lived in disposable diapers. I HATE BUYING DISPOSABLE DIAPERS! I love my clothies, and I just love her big fat cloth diaper butt. But with all the poosplosions and grossness that was coming out of that little body, I went with disposables for the entire sickness. She was happier, I was happier not having to clean up the grossest stuff I've ever seen, and it saved me doing a LOT of laundry.

I also held off going to the bathroom on the potty for those 2 months. She was miserable, tired, sick, and she would just whine when I brought her into the bathroom. Besides - the poor kid was peeing from her bum for 2 months that I think it was just easier for her to go in her diaper. So we held off, and it's taken us an extra month to get back on track.

I'm not a big "early potty trainer." I don't want to force Aryn to do something she's not ready for. There's no reason to potty train her earlier than necessary - I'm not in a race with anyone and I already know she'll do it when SHE is ready. Yeah, that's right. ;)

But the last week or so, Aryn has been telling me she has to go to the bathroom. This is a first for us! She has two signs:

1. Smacks her crotch.

2. Hides.

If she hides, I know she's pooping. Plus, I can hear her grunting. It's friggen hilarious.

When she smacks her crotch, she has to pee. I usually miss it, but she's doing so awesome! I'm so proud of her - she is peeing on the potty more often than she ever has before. Yay nugget!

And the potty is a fun zone again. We still get the occasional whine and freak out for having to sit on the potty (to which I take her off immediately - I don't want to correlate potty with freaking out), but for the most part she's doing awesome. I'm having more dry diapers than ever before and I am loving having her in her clothies again! I'm so proud of her!

Here's to hoping the next few weeks or month or few months we continue on this track. I'm not going to force her - if she's potty trained before 2 years old, that's fantastic!! If not, then no worries. She'll do it when she's ready!!

The last few months...

HELLO!!!

I haven't updated my blog since December. Why?
Well, it turns out that raising a high-energy toddler while working is actually a lot more work than I had originally thought! Awake times are spent playing and taking Bauer for walks and nap times are spent trying to get in a quick workout and getting all my work and emails done. Who has time to blog?

Well, if I stopped playing on Facebook all the time, I WOULD (have the time)!!

So, I'm going to make more of an effort to blog and spend less time on that darned crackbook. I don't even like Facebook!

Anyway, back to Aryn!

The last 5 months has been a whirlwind. Aryn has gone from being a baby to a full-on toddler. I mean, she is a TODDLER. She is figuring out words, she is running around, she is throwing fits, and she gives the BEST hugs and kisses. Oh my goodness... those hugs and kisses.... they seriously make you want to lose your mind on cuteness.

January:
Post-Christmas excitement! So many new toys, so little time to play with them all - so, she didn't play with them. At all. It's actually kind of ridiculous. She has a few favourites - a cabbage patch doll that came to us named - by my dad - Roberta Linda. She looks just like Aryn; pretty sweet!

February:
We headed off to Hawaii for 2 weeks!! Best.Vacation.EVER. We had so much fun! Aryn was awesome, and it was so great for everyone to get to know her. She loved the beach, and the swings, and really just entertaining everyone. She was just awesome. And it's great to know that the older she gets, the more fun she'll be on vacations! Oh baby girl - I hope you remember at least something from this trip!

March:
March brought on a new look: "The Mean Look." I don't know where she picked it up, but one day she was sitting on the potty and I wasn't paying attention to her and I looked up and there it was: the Mean Look. She was just glaring at me. I burst out laughing, and so did she. And now, it's an everyday thing. She gets mad at you: the Mean Look. You take something away: the Mean Look. She is trying to be hilarious: the Mean Look. She does it on command now. It's friggen hilarious.

She also started doing this ballet-type spinning dance move this month. I'm not sure where it came from or how she learned it, but it's the cutest thing ever.

March 17th marked Ryan and my 5th wedding anniversary! We ended up going to the Westin over night for the first time, leaving Aryn at home with my parents. We did something we haven't done in a long time: WE SLEPT IN!!!! It was glorious. But I sure couldn't wait to see my nugget when we got home! Unfortunately, we came home to a sick little girl who had just broke out in a case of Hand Foot Mouth disease. It was the first time she'd ever been sick, and - won't you know it - it was Day 1 of a 2-month sickness in our house. Man alive, that was NOT fun! I'll talk more about it as we go!

April:
Easter tends to be a little bit of a bittersweet 'holiday' for me. A few years ago at Easter I had my miscarriage and every year the holiday reminds me of it. While I don't regret the miscarriage (because then I wouldn't have Aryn!) it's still a sad memory. But man alive, did Aryn ever love it! I had gotten really sick, so Ryan and Aryn went to the farm for the day to see his family while I stayed home - talk about anxiety! I'm always ok being away from Aryn, but my two loves driving away on a 2-hour drive is a little unnerving. They had a great time, and Aryn got a beautiful Easter dress from Grandma Diana, to add to the beautiful Easter dress I had got her! Two beautiful dresses - that's one lucky girl!!

She started smiling for the camera again!

And this kid LOOOVES the zoo!! Here's a photo of our baby group! We love our baby group!

The end of April didn't pan out as well as we would have liked... nugget got sick and got a bad fever one night. She was breathing poorly, and we knew she was coming down with her second bout of croup. She was having such laboured breathing that we took her to the hospital to see if we could get something to clear her lungs a bit - the poor girl was just crying and sad so I knew we needed to do something!

They took her temperature and she was burning up so they got us in right away. We got a room, they gave her something to help her breathe, she threw it up and instantly fell asleep. Ryan left to run home and get us both new clothes, my parents left, and while everyone was gone, Aryn's fever spiked and she had a 2-minute seizure while I held her in my arms. The nurses at the hospital took control and assured me that febrile seizures are "common" with no long-term effects. It took some convincing, but the more research I do, the more I understand they are correct. My poor little girl. We ended up staying at the hospital until 2am with a breathing mask and oxygen being pumped into my baby. Scariest night of my life. She slept most of the next day and it took about a week for her to feel back to her old self. I'm tearing up just thinking about it!

May:
We finally got over all of our sicknesses last week. I ended the bout with a killer earache and infection and couldn't hear out of my left ear for a week! But now we're finally ALL healthy! Thank GOD! That was a crappy 2 months!

Dancing with dad...

She loves playing in the sprinkler!

This kid LOVES dogs!

Her first real haircut!

During all of this, we also started work on our basement, we found our basement window leaked and thousands of dollars later, we figured out that all it needed was to be re-caulked. So.... we hate the damned window downstairs haha! But our drywall is up (mostly... we tore some down to fix that window!), we have to get baseboards and doors, and then I can paint and then it's carpet and electricity and plumbing!!! Then we have a functional basement!! WOOT WOOT!! This weekend we're putting in our backyard patio, which we're pumped for cuz we loooove outdoor fires with a glass of wine.

Life is good! We learn everyday something new about ourselves and about Aryn and we couldn't ask for a better life.

Now here's to hoping I keep this blogging thing going!!

D

Dancing Time!

This is a video of my niece Veronica, nephew Joey and Aryn dancing in our living room. Pretty hilarious!

Toilet Humour