You might be the parent of a 10 month old if...

You might be the parent of a 10 month old if...

 

- you spend 95% of your day saying, "Not in your mouth," "Spit it out," "Out!" or "What are you eating?" and doing the ol' finger sweep in your baby's mouth.

 

(The best is that one time, Eli had a wooden token of Gavin's in his mouth, so I told Gavin to put his hand under Eli mouth and just say, "Out!" very firmly. Eli promptly spit the coin out and Gavin laughed and said, "This is fun, mom! Watch!" and then he started shoving stuff into his brother's mouth, just to get him to spit it out. That one backfired on mama!)

 

- you've ever wondered if your child will be featured on the TLC show "My Strange Addiction" for his or her love for toilet paper. If a bathroom door is left open, I'm pretty sure there is a high pitch sensor that is triggered that only babies can hear. My child will bum-scootch into the nearest bathroom as fast as his little diaper will go, roll an entire roll off the tube and happily eat as much of it as he can before he hears, "Not in your mouth," "Spit it out," "Out!" or "What are you eating?" and feels the ol' mama finger sweep in his mouth.

 - you can't walk more than 3 feet without stepping on something, be it a toy, soother, spoon, pot lid, piece of cracker, chewed soggy toilet paper, cheerio, or some random other thing that your baby has found and dragged all over the house. I've taken to just wearing shoes in the house. I invite you to do the same when visiting.

- you've ever felt like cheering after using a snot sucker. Gross, I know, but parenting has no boundaries and once you actually get a sucker that works and you see the fascinatingly disgusting amount of snot that comes out and the relief it brings your baby, you do want to cheer. Bonus points if you've called your husband over to look. And should I even mention the satisfaction of picking one of those rock hard little boogers out of their teeny tiny nostril? How can something so big be in there??

 - you will totally understand me when I say that breastfeeding a ten month old is ridiculously frustrating. He's like a disco light - on, off, on, off, on.. oh and he jumps from one side to the other like it's the newest Olympic sporting event and he's in the running for a gold medal. And should I even start on the yoga poses he decides to practice while nursing? He's mastered downward dog perfectly, but here's a piece of news for you, buddy! I'm pretty sure it's impossible to nurse while standing on your head, so STOP TRYING!

- you torture your child daily, often twice or even three times a day. How dare you, mother! How dare you insist that your 10 month old take a nap! The way that my son screams when I place him with his full belly and dry bum in his comfortable crib, and then have the audacity to cover him with a blanket sewn with love, in a nursery at the perfect temperature, with soothing noises and a dim light, would have you believe that it is nothing short of some kind of ancient torture. He will scream as loud as he possibly can, tugging vehemently at your heart strings, while he rolls over, closes his eyes, and floats off into lala land. It's a tough life, I tell you.

 - you pretend to be okay with hearing your child repeatedly say "da-da" all day long, but yet, secretly when you are alone, you prompt that kid to say "ma-ma" every chance you get. "Ma-ma. Say Ma-ma. Ma-ma. Maaaa-maaaa" No? Fine then!         "Mama?"

- you've decided to stop feeding your child. Yup. It's true. I no longer feed my kid. Now, I simply lay out his food or plop it on his tray, but I refuse to try to spoon feed him. He hates it. He wants to do it himself, even if it means he's eating a handful of tuna mixed with grapes and some peas with a banana. I try to spoon feed him yogurt, just to contain the mess slightly, but we usually wind up having a tug of war over the spoon full of yogurt and the yogurt gets flung on me or him, or the wall, or an innocent bystander. It isn't pretty. On the plus side, I've also stopped feeding my dog because she just cleans up all the food on the floor.

- you own at least 4 soothers and never know where any of them are. Bonus points if you've ever crawled around on your hands and knees in the dark of the nursery, trying in vain to find one on the floor that has been thrown from the crib, all the while your child is screaming at you like you have neglected him or her for weeks. Here's a hint. Stop wasting your time looking in the easy places. They are always, always shoved up against the wall, under the crib, in the farthest corner that you can barely reach.

- you have called for back-up help while changing a diaper. No joke. It has become at least a two person job. Remember the glorious days of changing a sweet smelling breast milk baby poop from a cooing peaceful baby? Those days were amazing, my friends. Now, it's like trying to put a diaper on a slick greased up, monkey that will fight you tooth and nail for the last banana in the jungle. Seriously, those breastfeeding yoga moves have paid off for your little munchkin, because by now, he or she can sense when you are about to lay them down to change their diaper and they will instantly transform from your sweet, playful "da-da" talking baby into a loud, squealing creature who can contort his or her body into ridiculous positions and hold them for endless amounts of time. And did I mention the super human strength and speed that is bestowed upon your child by the thought of changing their diaper? It's impossible to try to tackle this task on your own. You will wind up, at some point, with your elbow covered in poop. Don't ask me how, but it happens. every. single. time.

- you have tried to bribe your baby to lay still so that you can change that above mentioned diaper. Here's the thing, babies yet don't comprehend the dollar value, so promising them a million dollars to lay still simply doesn't work. Also, you don't have a million dollars and you don't want to set a bad example by lying. You could try to distract your child with a toy that you spent $24 dollars on, but who are we kidding - they'll toss that aside like the green beans you've been trying to feed him or her. My recommendation is to bribe them with something that isn't a toy that they aren't usually allowed to touch - older sibling's treasured toys work great, but in a pinch I've used markers or crayons, a locked cellphone, a shoe and even in a weak moment, a dog's toy. Hey, don't judge me. If he isn't moving, I can have that diaper off and on in 3.4 seconds, sans a poopy elbow.

- you've ever entertained the thought of putting your child in a cage. It would be a really nice cage, like a playpen, only bigger and with padded walls. You'd furnish it nicely with some toys and snacks and you'd even rig up some kind of watering station so they could drink whenever they wanted. You've dreamed about it. C'mon - if they were in that cage, they'd be happy and safe. You'd be allowed to shower for longer than 4 minutes. You could eat a meal while it's still hot. You could enjoy a cup of coffee. You could simply sit. You could do all these things without wondering, "is the bathroom door shut?" "is he crawling on the stairs?" "is he eating the carpet?" "is he bugging his siblings?" "is he going to eat the muddy rubber boots again?" "is he going to choke on lego?" "is he getting stuck behind the couch again?" A cage would solve all these problems.

- you've ever prayed for time to stand still, or a remote control to simply press 'pause' so that you could relish and soak in every moment that your sweet baby is 10 months old. You hold him a little longer than you need to when he falls asleep in your arms. You adore those open mouth, ridiculously wet sloppy kisses. You hug and cuddle and smile and squeeze him every chance you get. You breathe deep that exquisite baby smell on his head and in his neck. Yes, you've wished for time to slow down because you know that all too soon, he'll be 11 months, then a year, and then five, and these days will long be forgotten.

Precious Zzzzz's

I am a very light sleeper. I mean I wake up A LOT during the night. Eli still isn't sleeping through the night, but really, that's not his fault. I spoil him by going to him when he cries. ;) I know, I know. I also wake up with pretty much every little noise and at least twice a night to pee.

Also, can I just say that whoever decided that men and women should sleep together in the same bed, must have never slept together in the same bed with a man before. Or, maybe my husband is just special. First off, he takes up a lot of room. Often when he rolls over, somehow I wind up getting smacked in the head. Second, he gets nasty breath while sleeping so if we ever happen to be facing each other, I will wake up because of the odor. I've figured out that rather than asking him to roll over (because he'll get cranky) I just shove my pillow in his face and instinctively, he'll roll over. He wasn't a fan of this method once I told him what I do, but hey - tough love, baby.

Chris is also a talker. He talks in his sleep a lot (which is ironic because he really doesn't talk when he's awake). It's not just quiet mumbles during the night, but full on normal volume conversations. However, just for the record, it's not normal conversations. It is usually filled with the most bizarre content.

Now, you know I would never lead you on without a concrete example. So, here you go. A few nights ago, when Chris started talking, I reached over and grabbed my phone and started typing. (Next time, I'll video it for proof. He still thinks I made this up, but I couldn't make this up if I tried.)

"Don't stomp your stick. That'll break your bird." "Then I'll have to deal with people with broken birds."

I know, right? So funny. As I was sharing this story with a few people, I realized that I don't think I've ever shared the tales of Chris's sleeping when we first got married. I've got a few good ones.

1. A few weeks into our marriage, I wake up because Chris is straddling me, grabbing my shoulders, screaming at the top of his lungs, "THE ANIMALS ARE COMING!" over and over again. I, of course, am trying to wake up because I'm in a deep sleep so I figure it must be a life or death emergency and so I'm panicking and trying to get up out of bed, but I can't because Chris is sitting on top of me, yelling. So romantic, right? Eventually I figured out that he wasn't being heroic and trying to save my life, but rather was sleeping.

2. When we were first married, I was working part time at a local restaurant while going to university. One night, I was out late and Chris had already gone to sleep.  I come into the bedroom and I see Chris sleeping, but something is amiss. You see, we always slept with a fan beside the bed, but I don't see the fan. Upon looking closer, I discover that Chris is holding the fan, no scratch that, hugging the fan, like someone would cuddle a teddy bear. As if that wasn't absurd enough, the fan was still oscillating about an inch from his nose, clicking as it tried to turn from side to side. When I burst out laughing, he woke up and was all confused as to what was going on. I often joke that he was cheating on me with his biggest fan.

And one last one for the night...

3. I always sleep with water by my bed. One night, I opened my eyes to see Chris reaching over me. I thought, "That's odd, Chris doesn't usually drink..." and then he promptly turned the glass of water upside down all over me. As I sat up and screamed and jumped out of bed, Chris woke up and asked, "What did you do?" Needless to say, I slept on his side of the bed the rest of the night, and he was on the couch!

Now, with all that being said, say a little prayer for me! I'm off to sleep in this crazy house!

All About Mama

Mother's Day 2013. I adore this tradition of getting a picture all together. It's all I want every year, but trust me, it's getting harder every time we add more children! ;) Gavin is actually the worst for trying to get him to look at the camera. We took about a gazillion. I'll settle for these ones.

Here's a link to last year's pictures. So glad I get to have Eli in my arms this year!

Sunshine

Hallelujah! The sun is shining!

 Seriously - today was just one of those days that was so good for my soul. It was a bright, warm, sunshiney day with no wind. I even got a sunburn. This week has been a tough one for people around me and I am just so thankful to be home with my three, healthy, happy, amazing babies.

 This was probably my favourite part of the day. I love my family. (Chris has tied a rope around the car to pull it and he was pulling the other two in the wagon. Gavin and Eli were even holding hands at one point.)

 

 The new helmet law is in effect, which now requires children to wear helmets when biking and when in a bike trailer. The older two are used to this, but Eli is having a rough time adjusting to wearing his helmet. We try to stick it on him a few times during outside play. Of course, once I saw how fast Chelsea pushed him in the car, I was pretty okay with the whole wearing a helmet thing.

I just love this profile of Eli. Still such a baby face. 

Oh, and I also picked out my Mother's Day present - fun patio furniture for the front porch. Chris and I even sat on it this evening, after the kids were in bed and watched the traffic go by. Yup. Thrilling.

Wildly Random

Alright, it's time for an update. So here it is. I've discovered the reason I'm annoyed with blogging. I received a warning from blogger that I had exceeded my storage limit for photos. Now, I have to resize every picture before I post it. I find it annoying to have to download the pics and then resize them. It's just an extra step. Then I wind up putting it off more and more until I have a month to catch up on! So, here you go... the last month or so of H-brand living.

We had annual dentist appointments. Gavin has some major issues - overbite, grinding, teeth too tight together - the list goes on... But, we are still 100% for no cavities. Praise the Lord for that. I'm pretty sure they get that from their daddy as I have more fillings in my mouth than I care to admit!

 Gavin has just grown leaps and bounds since last summer. He got this bike for his third birthday and probably sat on it three times. This summer, he is just a riding away. Oh and I just realized he isn't wearing a helmet - I swear to you this was the only time. Once I realized he was actually going to be riding, we went and bought him one right away!

This boy brings me so much joy. He is incredible and sweet and funny and always so so happy. Here, he's hanging out in his favourite place, the pantry.

 Chelsea's insane growth spurt (we bought her size 11 indoor shoes for Kindergarten in Sept, then 12 in Dec, 13 in Feb and just yesterday size 1) meant that we had to retire the princess bike (with 16" tires) and upgrade. Here she is proudly showing her 20" bike. I was a little leery that it might be too big, but she has mastered it.

 Mastered it despite the fact that there was still snow on the ground. Grrrr... this is spring, right??

 Gavin continues to amaze me. Yup, I'm that annoying bragging mom. He is just so smart. He loves reading. I'd say about 50% of our daily conversations involve him reading, asking how to spell something, or asking what words say. Please don't think he's got it all together. He's incredibly, frustratingly, annoyingly helpless when it comes to physical tasks such as getting dressed, putting a jacket or boots on or wiping his bum. I wonder if I will ever miss hearing, "Moooooom, I'mmmm dooone!" He just doesn't even attempt these tasks or if he does, it always ends in tears.

 Always happy. No joke.

 

First time on a swing. Eli loves being outside, which is great, because we are outside a lot. Hopefully it warms up this week.

 These two have quite the relationship already. Eli loves chasing Gavin and wrestling and playing with him. Gavin is so good about it too, for the most part. It melts my heart to see them already enjoying each other.

 We spend a lot of time together. I adore his squishy-ness.

Grandma Pat came out for a few days. Can I just say how much easier life is with an extra adult around? Sigh. It was blissful even. I was able to go grocery shopping during nap time. I was able to quickly run to a store without buckling three car seats. I had someone to hold the baby while I dealt with the other two. I had adult conversation. It was amazing.

 But, as with every visit, eventually we have to say goodbye. Chelsea finds it the hardest. I'm pretty sure Gavin thinks Grandma is still out shopping somewhere.

Alright, now I realize this post is more for my mom and I, but hey, there you go. An update. I promise I'll be back sooner next time!