Wordless Wednesday: Anything with Wheels!

We bought him a car mat at Ikea this week & while he was napping I set it up for him as a surprise for when he woke up. I love that he just lay down on the mat & started playing like the big boy that he is!

Schedule Shifting

Pierce has a crazy schedule. It is one he set himself, not one I put him on. He wakes up anywhere from 6:00am to 7:00am (usually closer to 6, though) goes down for his nap at 10am (yes, 10!) wakes up at 1:00 (although lately it's been closer to 12, but he really does need 3 hours) & goes to bed sometime between 7:30 & 8:00.

I don't know why he has such an early nap, especially since he gets tired in the late afternoon. Not tired enough to nap, mind you, but tired enough to act out, not listen & hit me. Good times.

I have wanted to shift his schedule for so long, but every time I tried, my house would end up Cranky Central not only before he went down, but even after he woke up. Call me selfish, but crankiness all day is something that I would really like to avoid.

Although lately, as I mentioned above, he has been napping for only 2 hours. Yesterday he slept until 7:30 & it was glorious, but he was still ready for his nap by 10:30 (I was going to try to stretch him to 11:00 but that wasn't happening) & he woke at 12:30 so the day's schedule followed as usual.

But today he woke up at 8:45 (and believe me, it was even more glorious than yesterday morning, I kept waking up, seeing that the sun was coming through our window & thinking to myself "No, no, he'll be awake any minute now. Close your eyes & go back to sleep, quick!") so I decided to make the best out of the situation. I bribed my husband with sex asked my husband if he would like to accompany us to Ikea & he eagerly agreed. Ikea is at least a 30 minute drive & usually takes a whole day to walk through, but we took the shortcuts to the places that we were interested in which was mainly the Children's Ikea. I was pretty sure we would have Epic Toddler Meltdown at the store, but Pierce was very well behaved & happy to spend the entire time in his stroller. After a little shopping and a quick lunch, we headed home. I brought the pacifier (yes my 22 month old still uses the paci for sleep time GASP!) with us just in case he wanted to fall asleep in the car & when he got fussy we gave it to him, but he never fell asleep. When we got home it was 1:00 - normal toddler nap time - and we put him down for a nap. He slept is 4 hours & when he got up we played, had dinner & took him to the park. We left the park at 7:30 & headed to Michael's to purchase some cardstock for his birthday invitations & banner. I was pretty sure we were going to have a tantrum in the store because he a) doesn't like sitting in carts & b) was used to going to bed at this hour. But we got through the shopping trip with no tantrum!! I was impressed. We came home, gave him a bath & put him in his crib by 9:00.

I am VERY happy with how the day turned out today. This is truly the schedule I'd like to be on. I hope we are able to maintain it, because so many toddler programs happen during the morning when most toddlers are awake.

The 12 Step Program to Liking Snow

Have a baby.

Seriously.

Every year for as long as I can remember I have HATED snow since it is basically a tangible object that represented that which I hated most: cold and winter. Even when I was little, when it was supposed to be outside in my snow suit throwing snowballs and rolling up snowmen, my parents had to force me to go outside in the winter. I wanted to stay inside all the time.

The last time I remember looking forward to the end of summer was the summer of 2009 when I was hugely pregnant and hot and uncomfortable every minute of my life. (I hated being pregnant. I really did.) Of course, the weather getting cooler was the first thing I looked forward to, the second being my due date.

Pierce was born Oct 2, so he kind of missed his first winter. But this winter is going to be different. This winter, even though he can't walk and he doesn't really play with his toys so much as get into everything he's not supposed to, he'll play in the snow. At least once!

I don't know how it'll go. I'm hoping that if it's a fail, it'll only be a regular fail and not an epic one. But I honestly can not wait to get outside, sit him down in the snow and watch him play with it. He will most likely try to eat it at some point, but that's okay. I can't wait to watch him experience snow. Because, really, in Canada, all we have is Tim Horton's, hockey, and snow. And even you yanks have Tim Horton's now, so it's really just hockey and snow these days.

Pierce lost weight

Pierce had his 12 month check up and immunizations on the 14th and we found out he lost 2oz from when he was 9 months old. The doctor is referring us to a pediatrician to follow his weight for a little while.

I have to admit, I was freaking out while discussing it with the doctor, but I had also been suspecting that he was losing weight. We moved up to size 5 diapers a little while ago and lately I've been wondering if we should switch back to size 4s because the 5s aren't fitting him as snug as I think they should be.

I felt like a horrible mom. I know that the reason he lost weight is because I wasn't feeding him enough. I guess I just didn't know how much I was supposed to be feeding him and since I was feeding him in conjunction with breastfeeding I figured he was getting enough. Obviously that was not the case.

One thing that kind of irked me was that my doctor asked me if I was still breastfeeding and when I told her yes, we were still breastfeeding four times per day, she said that it's possible that there's something wrong with my milk and that's why he wasn't gaining weight. She guessed that it's possible he was getting all his hydration from my milk and that's why he wasn't drinking his homogenized milk which has a lot of fat in it and suggested that I stop breastfeeding. I was a little annoyed at that advice because I know that the World Health Organization as well as Health Canada recommend breastfeeding at least until the child is two years of age. I've decided to just ignore her advice, though, after speaking with some of my twitter friends. :)

So lately I've been making a conscious effort to basically just throw food at him. I've been making him tuna salad sandwiches since he really seems to like tuna and that's pretty much the only meat he'll eat other than chicken. He's been having a big bowl of mixed grains cereal with fruit and some grapes as well as a yogurt in the morning for breakfast. Then I just spread some cheerios on his tray and let him eat as many or as little as he wants while he finishes his milk. He's also had some toast with peanut butter (no allergies here, yay!) and I've steamed a few pieces of broccoli in the microwave for him as well. I guess I should probably just be glad that my kid likes broccoli.

Some other ideas I've had of food for him are English muffin pizzas and quesadillas. I haven't put them into execution yet, though. Mostly because we don't have the stuff to make them around the house and I haven't gone grocery shopping yet.

I'm running out of ideas, though. The kid can't eat tuna salad every day. Well, I suppose he could, but I know I wouldn't want to. So what are your quick and easy kid-friendly meals? I'd prefer something I can make quickly when it is time to feed him, rather than something I have to make in a big batch and then heat up later.

Please share with me, I'm a little freaked out about all of this and would really like some input.

P.S. He didn't handle his immunizations very well. It was the first time they gave them to him in his arms and he wailed. Poor thing!

Pierce's Birthday

Pierce turned 1 on Saturday. I was surprised about how well I dealt with it. Here are some pictures from the giraffe-themed party we threw for him.

The spread. We served macaroni & cheese, egg salad, tuna salad and bologna & cheese sandwiches, fruit and veggies and deviled eggs.

A close up of the banner. I made this myself using a friend's Cricut. I need to get myself one of those things!

I cut all the sandwiches into giraffe shapes using a cookie cutter and I made the labels with my friend's Cricut as well.

I bought plain brown cups and glued the yellow giraffe cut outs to them.

Here is the birthday boy enjoying an egg salad sandwich!

This is one of the only good "opening presents" pictures we got. Pierce was starting to get cranky and didn't want to sit still. Can you blame him?

I love his expression in this picture! The cake smash didn't get quite as messy as I'd hoped, but it was still fun to watch. Oh and just in case you were wondering, smooshed up yellow and brown icing looks exactly like baby poo. You're welcome!

"Oh hello. Was I supposed to share?" (I made two of the exact same cakes, one for him to smash and one for the rest of us to eat. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of them before they were devoured.)

I love this picture of the three of us.

And this picture of Pierce with my mom (his Baba) is great, too!

Me with my toddler!! (sniff, sniff!)


"Please don't let me float away, Momma!"

Pierce Sharing Popcorn with his Momma

Dirty Boy, Clean Boy, Sleepy Boy

Dirty Boy


Clean Boy


Sleepy Boy (Look Ma, no swaddle!)

I just changed two poopie diapers in a row

in less than an hour.

Pierce hasn't pooped in forever. I guess the broccoli I gave him backed him up a bit? Or maybe it was the bananas that I gave him before the broccoli that did it. Either way, I should've known this was coming.

And as I'm writing this, he just pooped again. Excuse me while I go change the fourth diaper of the day. He's only been awake for two hours.

And I'm back. So anyways, he hasn't pooped in forever. In an attempt to get him to poop I've fed him oatmeal cereal for lunch and apples for dinner for the past two days.

I've never been so relieved to see so much poop in my life.

And now, of course, my bed sheets are in the wash. Because, when you change your baby on your bed and he requires 3 changings in 2 hours, you get a little poop in places where it doesn't belong!

My morning coffee tastes better at 5:30 than at 7:30

I never knew that until this morning.

Up until just recently (as in, three days ago) Pierce has been swaddled to sleep. Yes, I swaddled my son until he was 8 months old. With pride. Okay, less with pride and more out of pure fear. He slept so well that I was afraid to mess with anything lest he turn into one of those babies that never sleeps and has his Momma walking into walls with exhaustion.

I agonized over how to rid him of the swaddle. Should we just go cold turkey? Wean him off of it? I was leaning more towards weaning, but that meant that it would be longer when he was finally sleeping without the swaddle, and I really wanted him to be able to sleep without us needing to bring the swaddling blankets with us if we were going to be out somewhere with him past bedtime. And I really didn't want to hear any more Judgey McJudgerson comments about the swaddle.

After months of doing nothing because I couldn't decide whether or not to go cold turkey, I decided to just take the plunge. Yes, I was scared, but he needed to learn to sleep without the swaddle at some point, and really he seemed to not want to be swaddled anymore when we went to put him to bed. I knew that he'd eventually learn to sleep and I wouldn't be so sleep deprived I couldn't function.

It's actually been going pretty well. I can't really complain. He doesn't sleep through the night, but he doesn't usually wake up too much, either. Last night he woke up a lot. The worst part of him waking up without being swaddled is that he's so much more difficult to get back to sleep. He has spent a lot of time sleeping in our bed with us when we can't get him to go to sleep. The first two days when he made it into our bed I just left him there, but last night when I woke up and he was fast asleep, I was able to successfully transfer him to his crib.

Despite the 5:30 wake-up calls this is going a lot better than I thought it would, so I'm happy, albeit a little tired!

So much has happened since I last posted!

Oh my gosh, I am such a bad blogger!

Just like the title says, so much has happened since I last blogged! Let's see.

Pierce is 7 months old now. He's growing like a weed and it is just awesome to watch him grow. We've started him on solids and that has been a lot of fun. He's also learned to sit up all by himself. He hasn't started crawling yet although I can tell that he wants to get places, he just hasn't figured it out yet. I'm sure it'll be soon, though!

We've started a bedtime routine with Pierce as I would really like to wean him of the swaddle. I think we'll start swaddling him looser and looser until he doesn't need it anymore. I am nervous about him waking a lot, although when I got home earlier today he was sleeping in the car and I carried him in and put him in his crib. That was about 45 minutes ago and he's still sleeping, completely unswaddled. Needless to say, I am excited!