Kicks and Giggles

of colds and therefore, Chloe has her first real cold.  Last night we were up numerous time for nose cleanings so she could breathe and cuddles.  Today, we are using saline drops, and seeing if we can use up all the Kleenex in the house.  All this nose business is quite the struggle as she hates it.  She cries every time and her poor little nose is all red from so many wipings.  Tonight, I am going to give her some baby vicks and see if she sleeps better.  I may also use the Humidifier.  I would elevate her mattress, but is is at the point where I need to drop it again, so unless we do that before she goes to bed, it would just be dangerous to elevate the mattress as she tends to stand up in her crib quite often.  Hopefully she sleeps better, because in my opinion the best cure for any minor illness is sleep.

Today I went Christmas Shopping with Chloe in an attempt to finish the last of my shopping.  Unfortunately, I was not successful.  There is a huge difference in Christmas shopping last year (by myself) and this year (with an infant). 

Last year, I took a day and went to as many stores/malls as I needed to.  I took all day if necessary.  I did a little shopping of my own as well.  When I just ran into a store quick, I carried only my purse.  Getting in and out of the car took 5 seconds.  I only needed to find a parking spot for a small Cavalier. 

This year, I can go to maybe one mall, or one or two stores that are not in a mall.  If I “run in quick” I have to either get out the stroller or carry a very heavy (18 lbs) baby.  I go to only the stores that are necessary, so there is no “me” shopping (which Brian probably likes because it is cheaper this way).  I have maybe two hours to shop by the time I get into the city, so shopping takes more days, and more gas.  I have to find parking for a big ol’ minivan and getting into and out of the car takes closer to five minutes because I have to strap Chloe into her carseat and unload and fold up the stroller. 

Despite the greater difficulty of shopping with Chloe, I still enjoyed myself and am pretty close to done.  I have 2 more presents to get and I am pretty sure I know what I am getting.  I just have to go find it.  Hopefully, I can be done before December, so I can spend December focusing on Christmas Baking.  Yumm!  I am sure this is also more difficult with a very mobile baby, but I am going to give it a go.  At least this year, she won’t be eating the cookie dough, which is more than I can say for myself.

Every child needs to eat a bit of dirt at least once.  It is full of great nutrients!

Chloe has learned to do something new.  She would rather do this than sleep.  It is especially annoying during the wee hours of the morning, but at least she is cute.  (although I am partial)

To the man in the old green Chevy truck,

I am sorry that I decided not to tailgate the person in front of me as I turned left at the intersection, thus shaving valuable seconds off your travel time.  I am also sorry that I stopped and signaled to turn left into the gas station so that you could not keep speeding on down the street.  I am sorry that I instead chose to wait until the path was clear as I had my baby in the van and was not interested in hurting either her or myself or dealing with the headache that crashing my van would have caused.  Were the 35 seconds that I cut off your travel time really worth all the honking?  Were those few seconds really worth the rise in blood pressure and stress on your heart?  Was it worth the angry glare you gave me as you drove by?  Why are we as people in such a hurry anyway.  As soon as somebody is going 49 in a 50 zone, why do we get all angry and impatient?  When it takes somebody more than .2 seconds to go on a green light why do we start honking  and ask “Is there any particular shade of green you are waiting for?” (quote from a friends uncle).  Why do we not instead enjoy our drives and give our hearts and blood pressure a rest?  Is the five minutes we would have saved worth the extra stress we cause ourselves?  Is it worth the possible ticket we may get for speeding or reckless driving?  Is it worth the accident we may end up in?  Either of those will add more than 5 minutes to our time.  Please think next time you are driving.  Had you hit me or the black truck you almost swerved into because I wasn’t going quite fast enough for you, it would have added much more than 35 seconds to your travel time.

From, a mom who is learning that impatience on the road isn’t worth it and wanting to be a good example to my daughter who is watching everything I do.

A couple weeks ago, Chloe started crawling.  Now she is quite proficient and is using the majority of the furniture to pull herself to standing.  As she is still figuring it out, she occasionally falls.  Most of the time these are little crashes.  I say “Crash” and she smiles at me and gets back up and tries again.  However, every so often, she falls and hits her head on a leg of the rebounder or an end table, or one of numerous other things that happen to be in her vicinity.  She also gave herself her first bleeding nose last week.  She loves the electronics and often goes to our TV stand, which holds numerous electronic devices and does not have any doors.  On this particular occasion, she was playing with the Wii, which we lay flat.  As I went to move her, she hit it hard enough that it flew upward and forward and smacked her in the face, resulting in a bleeding nose.  Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come.  I had chronic bleeding noses as a child and hope she does not inherit that.  With her increased mobility it is becoming necessary to babyproof more and more of the house.  I wish I could find a gate that would just keep her in the living room, but as the one entrance is 6 feet wide, I think that I could be out of luck.  The longest I have found is five feet.  I don’t know why I was encouraging her to crawl.  Now she just gets into trouble.

Attempting to break into the leftover Halloween Candy

Even though it has been a week since Brian’s family was here and daylight savings time, we are still adjusting here at the Johnson house.  Chloe was sleeping 7 to 7 almost every night with no wake-ups at night.  She has not done that once since last weekend.  Last night we had only two wake-ups which I thought was great which kind of tells you how bad it has been.  She has also had trouble with decent naps, although that is seeming to get better these last couple days.  Hopefully she gets back on track soon, but I am pretty sure that no amount of pleading and telling me that she’ll be fine will convince me to screw up her schedule so bad again.  Some babies are fine having their schedule so totally messed up and some babies are fine without a schedule.  Mine is not, so although it may be a little inconvienent for social interaction, I am just going to have to deal with it in the interest of a happy baby.

Also, here is another reason I am glad I stay at home.  This is what it looked like outside this morning.  I got to stay inside and drink Hot Chocolate

Brian’s family was down this weekend for Amerdian Thanksgiving.  It is called this because it is halfway between Canadian and American Thanksgiving.  Also, his mom is American, so they celebrate both.  Anyway, it was a good weekend.  Chloe was absolutely enthralled by her four month old cousin and had to continually be moved away from her, as she seemed to think that whacking Kaytlyn in the face would be a good idea.  We had some turkey, did some shopping, the boys took down a tree, played some games and went to Jubilations Dinner Theatre.  It was pretty good.  Now we are recovering from the weekend.  Chloe was not able to go to bed at normal time with her normal routine once all weekend and we are dealing with changing her schedule to daylight savings time.  It is making for some odd naps, early mornings and a cranky baby.  Anyway, here are some pictures.