and I almost forgot!

Dax said MaMa tonight - and then pointed to me! :)
This is funny - because he used to say it when he was itty-bitty... but then stopped saying it...
I'll have to admit he signed and said "daddy" right after that, then said "Honey" (just this past weekend - it's really cute, too - like "onyee"), and then finally said "ma-ma" today - and KNOWS what each of those means.
He's been able to point at people when WE say them for a while now, though... he could point at Ba-Pa first, truly...
So actually - the timeline is more like - signed "daddy"; said "ba-pa"; pointed at "daddy" and "ba-pa"; pointed at daddy, Ba-Pa, Honey, Moo-Ma, mommy; pointed at all of them, including Popi; and finally SAID "ma-ma" AND pointed AT ME tonight (not just a picture)! Anooj just said Dax signed "Grandpa" today when he asked Dax where Ba-Pa was! wow.
Geez. He's signed "daddy" forever, it seems like... so that feels pretty good to be a verbal word now, for me. I think it might be absence (saturday school) that makes the vocabulary grow (fonder).
:)
xoxo kiddo - you're pretty great - you didn't even have to sign and point to me to make me say that.
:)
-mommy.

Wow. I suck at posting! Here goes....

Ok - so in just the last week alone, Dax has learned to say "Honey," has learned to slide down a slide without holding my hand, and has begun to feed himself brekky without ANY assistance - meaning, I have left him to his own devices to eat his OATMEAL while I get dressed (I have posted pictures of this in the past)... and he did GREAT! :) That's a HUGE step for us.
Not only that, but he's now absolutely fine with childcare at the church - we were doing pretty good there for a while, but we digressed about a month ago, when Dax bonked his head on a ping pong table, and he threw up because he was so distressed about it (he actually didn't even get a bruise - so thankful!), so the next day he threw up in childcare when I left him there for Building Blocks... but the sweet angels there didn't come get me when it happened. They swiftly packed up the room, got all the babies out, and kept on plugging away! I can't even tell you how much I owe the lovely ladies of Watermark childcare on Wednesdays and Thursdays/Fridays...! They're saints.

Also - in July, Dax started being able to eat peanut butter! *whew!* what a great and awesome thing peanut butter is... I can't even tell you. It's fabulous for snack times, on crackers, with bananas, by the spoonful... and we've now even worked in an ENTIRE (1/2 of a) peanut butter and jelly sandwich to our mealtimes! That's SO great!
Dax will happily eat just about whatever's in front of him - but I have noticed that he's not completely happy with the same thing twice in a row - unless I've skipped a snack, or he's slept through a snack. Otherwise, I try to keep it mixed up.
He's always loved his veggies - so I can often stick with peas for lunches and dinners for a while (until I get sick of serving them, really - and then we'll switch to broccoli or something else). But peas are quite easy - so who'd argue??

We're just floored with the kid he's turning out to be. After church today, we were all at lunch, and Dax leaned over to Anooj and went "uhh-uhh-uhh" with his mouth ready for a kiss - he just wanted to kiss his daddy! After Anooj gave him a kiss, he leaned over for one from me! What a sweet, sweet feeling that is! I can't even tell you.
He's just a bundle of love bug. And I just want to eat him up all day.
:)

He knows a ton of signs now, too - which makes our days SO interesting, and so much more worthwhile - he can tell me what he's thinking, what he wants, and what he sees - it's just amazing! I've been meaning to get a list of the signs he knows... but it'd probably be too boring for anyone to read... but the ones that seem the most important to us are: careful!, eat, hat, airplane, cracker, more, water, milk, PLEASE, HELP, shoes, frog (ribbit!) - which can be any reptile right now, other than a crocodile, crocodile!, monkey, duck, horse, bug, stars/socks (they're really similar!), mouse (from Goodnight Moon!), bear (teddy-bear), and of course, ball! Our day would be so much more difficult if we didn't have them...

And he says: Hi! (he's said that for a while now, but it's worth mentioning again -it's so cute when he does it!); boo-boo (he says bo-bo); corn; gone (all-gone; it's SO funny when he says it); *shooooossh* for airplane; FIRE truck, truck, truck, truck, truck, AWWWW truck, truck, truck (this could be Dump Truck, Garbage Truck, Fire Truck - although that one's pretty unmistakably loud, or just plain old Truck); moo-moo movie (he says mo-mo, or wo-wo-wo for movie); HOT - oo! hot!; woo-woo (dog); baaabaaa (sheep/goat); owwwowww! (cat)... and I'm probably forgetting so many more...


I'm so grateful that I've finally learned when he's tired, when he's hungry, and when he needs to go play outside and get some energy out. Those are cues I missed for quite a long time - and any normal person would question why that might happen, but I can honestly tell you that I was too busy trying to SEE them... I was too busy trying to survive, and trying to find out what was going on - that I didn't notice when the time was right to make things happen... like naps...
These are tough for every mom...
Some days I spend nearly the ENTIRE day trying to get Dax to nap... And the problem with this, is that our babies are just LEARNING MACHINES. And once they've learned that one action begets another, they'll keep doing whatever it is that got them what they wanted... to test it, yes - but to LEARN it BETTER... And on those days, Dax seems to learn that if he stays awake for one more song, or gets one more book read to him, then he can do it longer the next time... And those can be bad days...
For both of us...
But I've gotten SO much better at reading his cues - and a little fuss (when he realizes that he's about to lose the nap-battle with himself and just cannot stay awake any longer) can be SO worth it, if it nets us more than an hour of naptime.
:)
Anyway - we seem to be in a nice ebb-and-flow right now for our family.

Besides that I'm in school, and working, and trying to keep the house clean (what??), and being a full-time mommy, full-time wife, and a business owner...
It's been a little chaotic lately, to say the least - but I feel like we're all adapting pretty well for the effort so far.
:)
I'm proud of us in the Thakker household.

I think I've been beaten...

There haven't been a whole lot of things in my life that I've done and have just sucked at... except for a few video games... my first marriage... I don't draw very well... (I'm sure my friends can think of a few other things I've done and sucked at - so I'll leave that for the comments section) :)
But parenting has left me completely baffled...
I mean, save from the easy aspects - clothing, diapering, general feeding - those have been fairly easy. So if I leave it at that, I could say I haven't totally sucked at this - my kid's still breathing, has grown quite a bit, and he's got clothes...
But the rest has just kicked my a$$.
Like, I don't know why Dax isn't sleeping at night... he was up every hour last night, but finally got about 2 hours straight between 5 and 7... We've tried a bedtime routine - a bath, then reading, singing, rocking, etc... no dice. And it's not that it just started to not work - it's NEVER worked. He's only slept more than 2 hours straight as many nights as I can count on my fingers... flukes, really.
He's pretty easy to get back to sleep - I rock him and pat his back, and he usually crashes out within 5-10 minutes, but sometimes even that doesn't work, and he just gets frenzied.
Breastfeeding has just served to give me more guilt - everyone says that he must not be eating enough in the day to sleep well at night... But I feed this kid every three hours, for at least 30 minutes, and I've even incorporated three solid food meals into the day on top of those feedings...
My mother in law saw him yawn the other day, and told ME that he was tired - but honest to God, when I try to put him down for a nap when I see him yawn, he rolls around and plays and screams in his crib for 20 minutes before I pull him out...
He'll take a quick catnap after he's dome nursing, but if I lay him in his crib, he instantly wakes up (or WILL wake up within 15 minutes).

So I'm trying something new.
Today I'm pumping only, and feeding by bottle, so I can get a measurement of exactly how much he IS eating during the day. I missed this morning already (I was so tired at 8, I laid down with him this morning, and he ate for nearly an hour because I was too tired to get out of bed once one half-hour had gone by).
But he took a bottle today at lunch, and I measured that he had 7.5 ounces...
and he still won't take a nap - I hear him playing in his crib, which is now turning to whining...
I better go get him.
Anyway - if anyone has any good advice for measuring feedings, how much a 10 month old SHOULD be eating at this point - I'd be grateful. Also - tell me what kind of nap routines seemed to have worked for you so far... I'm at a total loss.

I'm just hoping that the sleep will come as a byproduct of eating more than enough during the day... but I'm pretty skeptical at this point.

More on that...

5Dec2008

"The Commando"... and Molly!

:)

It's Bathtime!! (and SLEEPtime!)

Ok - if you're still looking for the best tubby that will make it easier on you to give your baby a bath, then I have to tell you to look no further!
Dax has outgrown being able to lay in the sink as I bathe him on that yellow spongy thing... and I have tried many different tubby helpers... many of which either don't allow Dax to be in the water at all (which is really stupid, in my opinion... even as a newborn, I wanted him to be IN the water), or had stupid hot-water warning goodies like these (our bodies are a nice toasty 98.6 degrees. A bath full of water that's 50 degrees is not only going to eventually make your baby go into hypothermia, but it will REALLY piss him off!), or make it so painful on your back to bathe them in the actual tub, that you might as well just get in the tub with him (which is also not a bad idea, honestly).

But this! This tub is magnificent!
It's the Primo Euro Infant and Toddler Bath (mine's white, but you can get it in colors, apparently) - and it's BIG (not to mention, cheap!). My back was not aching when we finished our bath last night, and just when we thought that bathtime was not going to wear our baby out for bedtime (we had seriously just had that discussion about two hours before I purchased this tub, and which is really what we were hoping for - a little routine that included a nice warm tubby time to make him sleepy for bed), Dax had SO much fun squirming and splashing and kicking in this thing, he wore himself out and slept... well... like a baby! It was fan-freaking-tastic!

I'll have video up of this after tonight's bath (I bathed him alone last night, so I'll have daddy take video tonight), because it's just too cool not to post my naked baby having a ball in his bath.

Now, let me tell you more about this tub, and why I think it's so freaking great.
It has a butt holder support, for both toddlers and infants (it says not to bathe them together in this thing, though, so if you have a toddler and an infant, you'd bathe them alone, and two toddlers would probably render this thing moot).
The infant side has a nice sloped headrest and curved butt support - no more FREAKING out about keeping his head up and literally having to hold your baby the entire bath - you just have to make sure he's not going to twist around and get his head in the water... I, of course, did not follow the directions, which say to only add 3 inches of water in there (why on earth they think my baby couldn't drown in 3 inches of water, as opposed to 10 - he's equally likely to drown in 1, 2, 3, or 10 inches of water, if you don't understand this* - is beyond me, and makes for a very cold bath), and I filled the tub up to a ridge on the side... (I actually filled it ALL way up, held him in there, and let water out until he was not floating in the water, and the water wasn't up to his ears - very cool that you can do that.)
The toddler side also uses the butt support, but it faces the other direction - holding your baby there as he sits - when he can sit up. It also keeps him fairly well covered in the water, which is fantastic!
This butt support is what makes this so nice on your back! You DO need to attend to your baby* to make sure he doesn't slip into the water, but it's not as intensive as the other bath goodies.

Once you see the video, you'll realize why tubby time was fun, AND useful - and why we got a good 6 hours of sleep from Mr. Dax last night!
:)

Now, we've also tried this very cool duckie tubby but since Dax isn't sitting up by himself yet, it falls into the "kills your back" category for now... but it should be very good when he can sit up, and would also make a fun summer-time floaty in the pool*

*(with MUCH adult supervision, of course - you should never EVER leave your baby alone in or near water - see the note about 1-3 inches of water from the previous paragraphs... )


-------UPDATED-------
Bathtime video!

On hold...

I'm on hold with Verizon, and have been for nearly an hour... which gives me time to think about the things that I haven't been writing about!

Dax is smiling a lot more lately. :)

We had his 8 week checkup at the midwife yesterday, and he's a whopping 13 pounds, 10 ounces! What's cool, too, is that my midwife told me I can't feed him too much. I can't hold him too much. And I should try to sleep with him more (which is what I've been doing, since discovering how to breastfeed lying down in bed with him - and feeling guilty about him wanting to feed to sleep, or cuddle with me to sleep, instead of wanting to be held by his daddy). She also said his "witching hour" (as I've been calling it) is really normal for breastfed babies - they'll "tank up" (or "cluster feed") before they go to sleep at night, feeding every hour or nearly constantly for several hours. I was starting to think Dax had colic - he was fussing and eating so much from 8 to midnight, sometimes 2am - which now I get it that he'd be staying up late because I wasn't feeding him as much as he needed to finally go to sleep for any longer duration than 2 hours! Go figure!

We had a nice long night of sleep after a big day at Honey and Popi's last Sunday - Honey mentioned putting a swaddle on him to hold his arms in, so he wouldn't feel like he was falling, or keep slapping his own face in his sleep (waking himself up suddenly and screamingly) - something we tried to do when he was new, and he wasn't having it - he had to have his arms out. But this time? It worked!! I used the arm-swaddle piece of a swaddle set (sleep sac and arm swaddler thing) - and just pinned in his arms, and I'll be darned if he didn't sleep for 7 freaking hours straight! I was like Snow White when I woke up that morning at 6 am - birds and forest creatures were flying around me - it was great!

And it hasn't happened again since.

Dax has a new "cry" for a new emotion now. He cries when he's tired - but he keeps himself up, like he doesn't want to miss anything! So now he cries when he's hungry, cries when he's gassy or has to poop, and now cries when he's sleepy and doesn't want to go to sleep.

I've already had a period (I know, TMI for some readers) - but that's pretty quick in the scheme of back-to-normal for moms; I got it about 6 weeks after Dax was born. And I now weigh less than I did when I started this crazy ride, too!

And Dax is finally using his cloth diapers! We finally got him in them on Mother's Day, and we haven't looked back. I've only got 24 of them, so I do laundry about every other day, and if I'm not paying attention, I have to do them two days in a row. If I had 12 more diapers, and a larger diaper pail, I could do them every third day... which would make it seem less "dramatic" to get the diapers done. So I'll have to buy them slowly to bulk up my stash (or sew my own too - I have some I just need to sew up, but I also have Dax's curtains to finish, more spit-rags to finish, and then I can think about those diapers).

What else?

Mom started chemo on Monday, and seems to be handling it pretty well. I think the anti-nausea medicine is a GODSEND. And that's what will get her through most of this, I think. We'll go down there on Sunday to see how she did after week one.

I feel like I'm finally getting a little more sleep, or at least I'm getting used to getting no sleep... :) So I'm starting to feel like a normal human again. Not bad - 2 months to "normal". :)

The book I won - From the Hips - is really a pretty cool book so far. It's just what it said it would be: "a comprehensive, open-mided, uncensored, totally hinest guide to pregnancy, birth, and becoming a parent." I highly recommend it for soon-to-be, or brand new mommies.