All About Cecilia: Part 1

Trying to steal Daddy's Samoas

When Genevieve was somewhere between 13 and 20 months (I can't recall the exact time frame), I wrote several posts listing a total of 101 things about her.  I enjoyed going back and reading all of those tidbits, so I wanted to compose the same type of posts for Cecilia.  I am getting a little bit of a later start, but, well, the girls keep me BUSY!

Here goes:

1. You, Cecilia, are 17.5 months old and getting a larger vocabulary by the day.  You say these words or some variation of them - chicken, up, more, mama, mommy, dada, daddy, Gigi (Genevieve), puppy, NO, thank you, hello, TV, bed, cracker, cheese, ow, yellow, blue, two, bye, hi, down, all done, go, and some others I can't recall at the moment.

2. You have been a drooly, teething mess since you were 8 months old.  We think you'll have all of your teeth by the time you are 30.  You wake up in the night chewing on your hands and crying.

3. You are a daredevil!  You climb on anything you can and jump down from things that are way too high for me to feel comfortable.

4. Eating is not really your thing. I'd like to blame teething, but maybe you are just WAY pickier than your big sister.  One day you like peas; the next day, you throw them on the floor.  One day you will eat blueberries and ask for more, the next meal you act like I am a demon for giving you blueberries.

5. You hate to be confined.  You hate sitting in the shopping cart.  You fight getting buckled in your car seat.  You want nothing to do with being strapped into your stroller, but you do like riding in the stroller.  The same is true for the bike trailer (which is acting as a double stroller currently).  Going anywhere with you is a challenge because of this.

6. You have a stuffed dog we call "Puppy".  You love him!  You carry him all around and want to take him wherever you go.  He sleeps with you at night but gets thrown out of the crib every time you wake up.  You hug him and kiss him and sometimes try to feed him your food, which makes you laugh.  It is so precious hearing you say "Puppy" and watching you snuggle him.

7. When it comes to giving kisses, you will only kiss Genevieve (and Puppy).  If I tell you to kiss Daddy, you lean in as if you are going to, but then you present him your forehead so HE can kiss YOU!  If I tell you to give Genevieve kisses, you go right up to her and kiss her making the smacking sound and everything.  You love her best!

8. Dumping the bucket of Play-Doh and all of the accessories gives you great pleasure.  It keeps you busy sometimes, and is a preferred activity while you are squatting and pooping.

9. You know what it means when we say we are going somewhere in the car.  You even say "go".  Today I told you we were going to go in the car to the grocery store.  I was packing the diaper bag when I looked up and saw you standing by the pantry door with your puppy under one arm and your water bottle under the other.  You were ready to go!

10.  YouTube nursery rhyme videos/songs make you immensely happy and calm you when you are screaming in the car.  We have to be careful of our data use because of this!

11. You cannot stay away from night lights, so we have to unplug them and put them up high or keep doors shut.  If I forget, you will go up to your night light and say "owie".  Then you pull it out and say "uh oh" and then "Mommy!" as you hand it to me.  What a little stinker!

12.  Teething has not been kind to you.  You currently have ten teeth and are working on getting two more molars.  I think one of them has broken through, and the other is about too.  You have been drooling like crazy in recent days.  You have basically been a cranky pants since you were 8 months old.

13. You love animals but especially dogs. Anytime you see a dog or a picture of a dog, you point and bark.

14.  You make lots of animal sounds including elephant, duck, dog, cat, sheep, horse, and bird.

15.  You are generally a good napper.  You nap anywhere from 2 to 3 hours; I sometimes have to wake you up for fear that you'll never go to sleep at night!

16.  You are learning how to wash your hands and did a pretty decent job last night.

17.  You know how to take out the outlet covers and are not deterred by "NO!"or time out. You take them out and try to put them back in, or you proudly bring them to me.  You also like to try to stick your fingers in the outlet.  Sigh.

18. Just like your big sister at this age, you have poop issues.  Despite eating foods like grapes, raisins, and pear puree, and having MiraLax in your water every day, you withhold your poop and still occasionally struggle with rabbit pellets.  Maybe if you would actually eat a balanced diet...

19. Your newest word is "poop", and you like to throw out this word to get out of going to bed.

20.  You have been having skin issues on and off since birth.  You have had a rash around your mouth that flares on and off daily and have had a few hive looking bumps on your face and one on your arm recently.  Because of that you had your blood drawn at the pediatrician today for a blood allergy panel that tests for 32 different things. I asked that they add onion into that for a total of 33 items. Now, we anxiously await the results that will most likely all be negative.

21. Everything is a fight with you now as you are becoming more independent.  As mentioned previously, putting you in your car seat is a nightmare and completely exhausting.  I have to push you down and quickly pull one strap over your arm and buckle it.  You scream, cry, stiffen your body, and attempt to escape.  I have to hold you down for every diaper change, but lately, my bribes have been working.  Even putting shoes on to go outside (your favorite place) is a battle!

22.  Last night after dinner, you made the sign for bath over and over.  You were very insistent, probably because you dumped your quinoa all over you.

23.  You have a cute, little mullet just like Genevieve did.  It makes me laugh every day.

24.  Daddy cannot eat fruit snacks without your fruit snack radar going off.  He has to go in the pantry and eat them in secret.  Today, I gave you your own package, and you walked around eating them like they were the most special treasure.

25.  When walking, your last three toes on each food turn in and curl under a bit.  I was clipping your nails yesterday and noticed they were harder and discolored slightly.  I was worried that you had developed nail fungus, but the pediatrician said it is nail trauma from the way you walk.

Not a Baby Anymore

Reading a funny text from Joshua, Johnny, or Owen

This post was composed in November 2015.  I forgot to proofread it and post it.  Whoops!

Well, it's official (not really); Cecilia is not a baby.  Each day she is more and more like a big girl - a toddler.  She is super crazy and silly.  She is starting to do things to purposely make us laugh (pick food up off the table and look at us with food half hanging out of her mouth).  Cecilia has 2 bottom teeth and 3 top teeth with the 4th one almost through the gums (though I've been saying that for weeks now!).  Genevieve had 8 teeth by this time and wasn't as bothered by the process.

Cecilia gives her baby dolls hugs and kisses and pats their backs, but it is rare that she gives us kisses.
Cecilia is my snuggler and will come over at random times during the day to give me a hug or to sit on my lap.  She will run up to J and hug him and want to be picked up when he gets home from work or being gone for awhile.  She has started showing some jealousy and will push Genevieve away from me or come over and sit on my lap if she sees that I'm playing with Genevieve.  She also wants what everyone else has or wants to do what everyone else is doing, especially her big sister.  Cecilia really wants to use utensils while eating and has been working very hard to get the food onto her spoon and fork.  She can't always get the food to her mouth before it falls in her lap.  

Cecilia's language is developing nicely too.  She "woofs" when she sees or hears a dog and would love nothing more than to pet every dog she sees; she has been known to chase them down at parks.  Cecilia makes a meowing sound for a kitty and knocks on the pantry/laundry room door and meows when she wants to go in and pet Pawncho.  Surprisingly, Pawncho tolerates her fairly well.  Cecilia says a variation of "uh oh", usually when she drops something.  She says Mama and Dada and can sign milk, please, more, eat, all done, and diaper.  Music makes her happy.  She tries to say EIEIO when Old MacDonald comes on, and she seems to love The Wheels on the Bus.  If she is fussy in the car, I will put on some nursery rhymes.

A HUGE change with sleep has happened recently.  Cecilia is becoming easier to get to sleep, but the amount of time she will stay asleep is pretty unpredictable.  Sometimes, she only briefly nurses before nap and bedtime rather than nursing to sleep.  Other times, she guzzles down the milk and will NOT let go until she is practically asleep.  She frequently nurses for a bit and then sits up and points at her crib.  When I ask her if she wants to go "night night" in her bed, she nods her head yes.  I put her in her crib, and she immediately lies down on her belly where I indulge in patting her back for a few minutes.  She will either peacefully drift all of the way off to sleep, or protest when I leave.  If she protests, she cries for about 30 seconds before falling asleep on her own.  This is HUGE people!!  One night I was frustrated with her constant waking; she had woken 3 times between 8:30 and midnight.  She wouldn't fall back asleep via nursing, rocking, or lying in bed with me.  I put her in her crib and left.  She cried, but it was much more brief than I expected.  I layed myself down on the couch and waited for the screaming to begin, but there was only silence.  I fell asleep and woke a couple of hours later to silence.  Again I slept and woke two hours later to silence.  After six hours of no child waking me up, I should have been elated, but since she had never slept longer than 5 hours in a row, I was worried that she was dead.  I was imagining her wrapped up in the cord from her white noise speaker, or perhaps she had fallen out of bed and had a traumatic brain injury.  Of course I really knew she was fine, but I couldn't talk myself out of checking on her.  The door squeaked as I went in and saw she was sleeping on her belly with her little tush in the air.  As soon as I was next to her crib, Cecilia popped up and made the milk sign at me. I nursed her in the rocking chair where she was back asleep in 30 minutes. She slept another few hours after this, and I finally felt hopeful.  Two nights ago, she slept 7 hours straight (9-4) and then woke a couple of times after this.  Last night I got about 4 hours of sleep because she woke frequently and took a minimum of one hour to get back to sleep.  I knew the issue, but there was nothing I could do.  See below.

I am pretty certain that Cecilia feels the urge to poop in the night but will not just try to poop.  The poor girl has terrible constipation issues and sometimes needs help going.  When she eats about 3.5 oz of pureed pears a day, this issue is not as bad but is still a concern.  With teething, she has refused to eat much, and this isn’t helping the constipation.  She is also, dare I say it, pickier than Genevieve. She will not drink juice (I’m secretly happy about this), and for about a month would not eat fruits other than banana, which again, isn’t helping things.  I decided to try a small dose of MiraLax for her to see if it will help keep things soft making her less afraid of having a bowel movement.  She gets about 3/4 of a teaspoon mixed into her water each day, though I may bump it to a full teaspoon.  When Genevieve's GI doctor prescribed it for her issues around the same age, he had me give her half a capful, which I believe was just about half a tablespoon or slightly more.  This was not good!  She ended up having zero control of her bowels.  I knew to start much smaller this time around.  So far, so good!

There is so much more to say, but since Cecilia is turning 14 months tomorrow, I will write the rest for next month.  If you got this far, bless you for reading my wordiness.  I always think I'll just write a few things down, but then my fingers get to flying.  Before I know it, I have a whole chapter written!