Katsuke

I love being surprised by what Alia is capable of when she’s in the mood. She’s pretty apathetic regarding most neat indulging-mommy-moments, but every once in a while she goes above and beyond what I would expect of her.
Yesterday she decided to put her books back on the shelf. It was still kind of messy but she tried so hard and she’s only 14 months old, so I thanked her and left it. Today she couldn’t care a lick and left books all over the living room floor.
She got a new book for Christmas with “mommies and babies” cat-kitten, dog-puppy, etc. We’ve gone through it about five times now and this evening on a whim I pointed to the puppy and said, “Where’s the mommy?” She matched all five of the babies to their correct mommies… then rolled onto the floor, tried to eat the book, and had a major screaming fit.
She loves to sort. She sorts her books, the cans, the magnetic letters (I found all the “n”s and the “u”s that looked like “n”s on the floor in a neat pile tonight). She’s also particular about where her toys go. I dared to put one of her pop-up boards in her bedroom yesterday after she went to sleep, first thing this morning when I opened her door she carried it into the living room. It’s very hard for me since I’m a perfectionist, but I’m trying to teach unperfectionism to a child who I can see easily turning out to be more of a perfectionist than I am.
In other news a few days before I started work Alia decided she was done with breastfeeding. There was some tapering down, but I hadn’t even adjusted to her only wanting to eat once a day when she decided to go cold-turkey. Apparently the “minimum expected age” of child led weaning is about 2.5 years, but I will not delude myself into thinking Alia is anything other than determined to have her own way.

I can’t wait for her to start talking. We think she may gotten board with the few words she knew because she’s not really talking with real words anymore. I’ve only heard her say “bye” once in the last month and she will really only say “hi” to children and animals. She’s stopped saying “kitty” and “hello,” and as far as I’ve heard she hasn’t been saying “mama” and “dada” as much anymore. She still jabbers, not as much, but she still does. She did point at one of the dogs on Christmas and say “dog” but that was a one time occurrence.
She is getting better at non-verbal communication. If she gets hurt she will come over and hold the area that hurts.

The best thing, though, is if you ask for a kiss you’ll normally get a kiss.

And that’s Alia for you!

Oh boy, have I been neglecting this.

I found myself, instead of cleaning the kitchen, in the middle of losing things. How does one find themselves to be in the midst of losing things? Isn’t the act of losing objects something we only find out about later when we need it?
Apparently not.
I thought I was cleaning the kitchen and singing along with my music when in the middle of a sentence I realized I had just closed the Etc. Cupboard and the last thing I had been holding was a potholder. Sure enough, there was my oven mitt in amidst the extra spatulas and vinegars. After that awakening I went through the rest of my cupboards and shelving units and found a few other misplaced items. At least I’ve never put odd things in the freezer, right? At least not for more than a few minutes… or counting those accidental… umm…
Lets put it in a better light; I have never put foods that belong in the freezer or fridge into the cupboard.

I’m just a little scatterbrained.
Wouldn’t you rather be thinking about the cute antics of a baby than dishes or whether or not you put soap in the wash machine?

• Oops I left my iced tea touching the back of the fridge. Yesterday I found about a 1/3 of a gal. of ice in it. It’s so nice and cold. #

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• I am rather disturbed by the fact that, according to Sitemeter, someone searched specifically for my blog … in Singapore… #
• Also excited that I’m starting to get about 8-10 hits a week from people looking up nature information. #

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Nathan was attempting to back up my computer so as to be able to install Windows 7 and it failed.
Why did it fail?
Even compressing my files the sheer amount of pictures I have on my computer wouldn’t even fit on the external hard drive. I’m now in the process of making a final, complete, orderly burn of my pictures so I can delete them off my computer and make it possible to back up my computer.
Or I could be sneaky and leave them on so Vista stays…

• Reading WoT… Egwene is the BESTEST!!! #

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I thought I’d let y’all know what Alia has been up to and learning, it’s quite a bit.
She’s gotten to the point where she loves to help, it is so sweet. I was cleaning the kitchen floor and dropped the dry rag so I could fill a bucket with cleaner and she picked it up and started rubbing the floor. I grabbed another rag and we cleaned together. She also really REALLY wants to help vacuum, which has lead to a couple collisions between the girl’s face and the vacuum handle. She also loves to help carry the garbage out, I take the big bag and she takes the little bag and we walk out to the dumpster together. Heaven forbid I help her take the garbage out, she carries that bag!
Nothing is safe she can climb. Every chair has been climbed, my desk has been climbed, she can climb in and out of the tub. The only things that are unmanageable as yet are the piano bench and our bed. Alia certainly has a nack for it, gee I wonder where that came from.
She loves the piano - both banging furiously and “playing” slowly. I hope she can have piano lessons someday because when “playing” slowly it sounds good, not discordant at all.
She likes to “read to” us, especially Nathan. She’ll bring a book over, open it up, and talk while going through it.
The time change has been very hard, I don’t like waking up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning and Alia doesn’t like to change. I just hope by the time the next one comes around that it won’t be so completely inconvenient like the last two have been. I just feel so bad for her because here we were just getting a good routine and then the government’s nasty little daylight saving time comes and messes everything up for us.
And while the little one is just as stubborn as ever the communication gap keeps slowly closing. The very fact that I can say, “We’ll go outside soon if you stop fussing,” and she gets it has made life so much easier and happier.
We’re working on biting, but this time it’s not malicious biting - she’s just watching me. I don’t bite people, but I use my teeth as an extra hand sometimes and she’s noticed. It’s the same thing with feet, she imitates my use of feet even though she has no need to. So when she wants to climb on us sometimes she tries to use her teeth as an extra hold.
She’s going to bed well, I can put her down awake and she stays in bed and goes to sleep. She still wakes up at night, but the fact that she doesn’t have to nurse to sleep has made life easier.
She has been puzzling out her new shapes-through-the-holes toy, so far she’s only gotten the squares but she is persistent.
She still loves the canned food shelves and the tupperware cupboard. I frequently find all the canned food rearranged onto different shelves, she almost always puts them back on the shelves just in different places. The tupperware cupboard is something better though, she can pull them all out and then sit in it. She’s even learned how to open and close the door… from the inside.

In short she’s a precious and precocious little missy who has been quite a joy, even with her new toddler temper-tamtrums.

• I’m not looking forward to readjusting a little one’s sleep schedule… AGAIN! #

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Not quite, but sometimes I realize I’m a slight “bah-humbug” kind of person regarding holidays. Please keep in mind that these aren’t personal convictions, just laziness or apathy.
Yeah, it’s fun to dress up for Halloween, but if no one going to see why even bother? If we were still in Fort Wayne I would’ve dressed up Alia and taken her into my old work because dressed up little kids are super cute, but we had nowhere to be. I didn’t want to spend money or time on a costume that Alia wouldn’t even want to wear (seeing as it’s clothing, and she doesn’t like clothes), no one would see, she won’t remember, and has a good chance of never being worn again.
We have one little pumpkin that I only bought because it was decorative and cookable, we may be eating pumpkin soon (I don’t know if it hurts to have it thrown down the driveway and bounce the whole way). Other than that there’s a toddler and two cats that despite being 2 years old still have not outgrown kitten curiosity. All that together adds up to a hostile decoration environment.
Once Alia’s old enough to care, then it may be worth it, but for now I just don’t care enough about all that stuff.

I decided that since my time available for undivided attention (aka, nap time and after bedtime) today has been taken by apple canning, cake baking, laundry, and dishes - not nature research - I would shoot off a quick post here.
A year! A year! 365 days ago I came home in tears because I knew there were only two possibilities and neither one was something I liked the sound of: bedrest or inducing labor. It all turned out well though. I got my cutie pie 364 days ago, and got to get home and finally relax 363 days ago.
After all was said and done you know what made me chuckle the most? The nurses laughed and gave me a funny look when I said I wanted to be out the next day when I first went in, and I was! We actually would’ve been out within 24 hours of my IV going in except the pediatrician wanted to keep Alia for observing because of her “low birth weight.”
But my little baby is going to be a year old.
The cake is baked, the streamers are going up tonight (there’s no way I could do it with little “helping” hands), and I’m ready to sleep.
Here’s to a happy baby birthday.