The Sunny Side

Brynlee has learned some new tricks. It’s amazing how fast she is growing and changing. I look at her while she is sleeping sometimes and she looks like a little girl, not just a baby. For right now, I don't mind her growing and time passing because each new phase of her life brings new adventures.

I'm sure with my next one I'll be more sad to see the younger phases go. I do miss the days when I would lay her on me and she would cuddle. I guess really because she wasn't strong enough to move yet. At the time, I remember being irritated that she was disrupting my sleep because I had to hold her. Now I wish she would let me.

And she did just that last night. Ok so it was at 4am, after one of the worst nights she has had sleep wise she has had. She woke up every 2 hours last night. And I'm not exaggerating here. I think it must be teeth, since that is so unlike her. She loves her sleep just like her Mama! Anyhow, at one point she was so tired she let me hold her and rock her back to sleep. She didn't fight me, she didn't push me away. She wasn't trying to crawl after something. It was great! She NEVER lets me do that anymore.

Mitzie has learned to earn her keep a little bit around the house. Kind of. She basically runs around, and the baby chases after her. If I close my bedroom door Mitzie can't hide under my bed, so she is forced to entertain the baby. And she does. Is that animal cruelty? I almost think Mitzie enjoys it. If she didn’t she could hide upstairs undisturbed. Brynlee could just keep chasing her for hours.

Brynlee has learned that if I'm trying to feed her something that she doesn't want, she can gag and I will stop. Ok that's not entirely true. She used to gag and I'd try to feed right past it. Now she gags and then throws up on me. I've never seen such a gag reflex in my life. Easy gag reflexes do run in my family, but not like this one. I guess she got tired of me trying to shove food down her throat so now to avoid that she just pukes on me. I have learned my lesson. Now when I feed her I hold her bottle/spoon tentatively, to see how she will respond. If she starts to gag I run away. I'm thinking about getting a smock that I can feed her in. That way if she throws up at least it won't get all over me as it usually does.

Brynlee has found her voice. A very squealy high pitched one. She uses this voice at liberty. Sometimes it's late at night, sometimes it's early in the morning. Sometimes it's in the middle of church when the room is dead quiet. She warrants quite a few stares when this very loud voice comes out. I think that is why she does it. She is smart and knows how to get attention when she wants it.

She has learned what she is not supposed to have and where she is not supposed to go. Or maybe she hasn't. These are always the things she crawls to first. She has gotten pretty quick at crawling. It's funny to see the tops of her feet or socks all dirty at night from crawling all over the place.

Some of these things can be frustrating at times. I'm really really tired of getting puked on. Really. I got puked on this morning at 3am. I had to take a deep breath and count backwards from 10 for that one.

But I'm also really enjoying watching my baby grow. When I lie or sit on the ground she comes crawling over and crawls all over me like a Mommy jungle gym. She doesn't say Mama yet. She says Dada (of course). When she says "Dada" I say "Mama" back to her. She looks at me and then says "eh". Ok I guess you can call me "Eh" for now. There are worse things.

She is a lot of work, but on the sunny side of things she is a ton of fun too. I'm trying to focus on relishing the good things and not dwelling on the tough stuff (ie puke and no sleep). When it comes to babies they go hand and hand. I'm super excited for Brynlee and I to go on our first trip together next week. Mommy/Daughter travel time should be fun (or a complete disaster, I'm sure I'll blog about that experience later!).