Sorry it's been so long. If anyone is still out there,

Happy Father's Day


in lieu of actually writing anything (why would I want to break this great streak I have going here?) here are some pictures of my two favourite people in the world.














Thanks for being the best Dad my daughter could ever have Joe.

The downside of all this happy crappy isn't it great she's growing up stuff, is the fact that she can now make her demands quite clear.
When she first said the word 'cookie' it was simply adorable. Now, she not only says cookie, but she also tells us which kind (usually 'mum mum') and if we're out of them, won't really take kindly to the animal cracker substitution.
She doesn't passively sit and watch whatever happens to be on the tv anymore either. She will insist on seeing 'Elbo' (Elmo) or 'happy' (Youtube videos). And no, she doesn't want to sing 'eieieiei' (Old Macdonald) she wants to sing 'tink'(Twinkle Twinkle Little Star')
And that sweet little girl who always put her arm into the sleeve so helpfully, has morphed into a crazy child who has to dress herself entirely, or there will be trouble. We're talking, if you even try and make sure she isn't pulling on her shirt through the neckline, she freaks out and refuses to wear that shirt anymore. We now have to factor in at least an extra 15 minutes for getting her dressed in the morning. Then again, we can just leave her with the clothes and go do something else.

the one thing that she does these days that is just 100% adorable is her 'okay'. She never says 'yes'. It's always 'okay' with a little nod. She always says it in a 'that's a great idea you had, sure I'll go along with it' kind of way. It cracks me up every time.

Holy Shit.
Last night, Joe and I are positive she came up to me, gave me a hug and said 'I love you'.

Well, the trend has continued. She is in her crib by 10:30 every night. Sometimes she is asleep when we put her in, sometimes she is awake. It doesn't seem to matter. She doesn't put up a fight about it at all anymore. The only downside about it is that I feel almost obligated to stay up after I tuck her in. I have been staying up much later than I am accustomed to and I think it's starting to take its toll.
It's crazy that I am more sleep deprived now that she is sleeping well on her own than when she was breastfeeding for hours at night.

In other news, the two of us took in the family day celebrations in the Beaches yesterday. Well, really we just walked around and tried not to get into stroller pile ups with all the other strollers that jammed the sidewalks. It was a mess! I keep telling myself that I should take the carrier for things like this, but she's getting so heavy these days that when I am faced with the choice, I've been opting for the stroller even when I know it will be a bad idea.

I'm actually quite frustrated about taking her out to places these days. It's not really anybody's fault. It's just that I find she's at an awkward age for a lot of these things. She's too old to just sit in her stroller/carrier and watch things, but she's too young to take part in a lot of the activities. I don't know, maybe I'm just not giving her a chance. I'm mostly basing this on a couple of pre christmas events we went to where there were tons of crafts and games but they were beyond her skill level, so all she could do was run around the venues. I didn't even want her to do that yesterday because I really felt that if I took her out of the stroller she'd be crushed by the crowds.

A sleep update:
Her sleeping is definitely better than it was last week! In addition to the fact that she has slept through the night for a few days now - to the extent that Joe had to wake her up at 11am this morning, I have been successful in putting her in her crib while she is WIDE AWAKE a couple of times now.
Our usual bedtime routine is we brush our teeth, we change into our jammies and she comes to bed with me and nurses until she falls asleep. There is usually some reading and playing in there too.
After she falls asleep, Joe usually takes her into her room where she sleeps for the night.
It was all great until she stopped falling asleep while nursing. She was clearly tired and would pretend to sleep, but she was very awake.
The first couple of times it happened, Joe would take her and walk around with her until she finally passed out. This usually took a couple of hours. Then one night, everyone was exhausted and I told Joe to just put her in her crib and we would deal with the fallout. As expected, she cried when he put her in. So he took her out again, but instead of strapping her into the carrier and walking her, he just stayed in the dark room and held her until she calmed down (a couple of minutes tops). When she was quiet again, he put her back in the crib. She stayed calm while he tucked her in and left the room. That was it for the night.
I was so impressed by this, that the next night when she was refusing to nurse, I asked if she wanted to go to her crib. When she finally said yes (after I asked a few times) I grabbed her and put her into the crib. She cried, I picked her up and cuddled her, I put her back into the crib and left the room. As I left, she gave a halfhearted cry and that was all.
Last night, she stopped nursing before falling asleep again. I picked her up and took her to her crib. She fought being put into it, but I stayed in the room and just soothed her for a couple of minutes. after a while, I was able to put her down. She was still wide awake but didn't fight as I tucked her in and left the room.
It was strange. We could hear her moving around and we could hear some of her toys jangling for quite a while after I left, but no babbling and certainly no crying.
We are kinda stunned that it is this easy and are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I've been meaning to post for months now, but It's just been so busy around here that it's hard to squeeze out the few minutes at a computer to do it!

Despite the crappy weather, Joe has been taking the child out to the drop in centre in our neighbourhood. She loves it there. She gets to run around a huge space and interact with tons of kids.


the only problem is that she doesn't seem to be too fond of story/circle time there. In the last week, she's been getting up in the middle of circle time, grabbing her dad's hand and walking him out of the room. A couple of time she did this right at the beginning as soon as she realized what was going on. I'm not sure what this bodes for her future in the academic world, but at least she knows her mind.

Other things going on these days, we think we entered the 18 month sleep regression (she just turned 17mos earlier this week) a couple of weeks ago. She's usually a great sleeper, but lately, she won't go to sleep at bedtime and Joe has to walk her around before she knocks off about 2 hours later than usual. If we're lucky, that's it, but a couple of times she's woken up at 3am and it takes another 2 hours for her to get back to sleep. Unfortunately for Joe, after all that, she still wakes up at about the same time as usual in the morning.
Possibly related to that is the fact that her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. We now have to really watch what we say around her because she WILL repeat it.
Among other things, she can say coat, hat, shoe, milk, apple and cookie (funny, she says that one all the time). She can say and point to her (and anyone else's) nose, ear, mouth, teeth, eye, toes and bellybutton, and when asked, she can tell you what the sheep, cow, chicken and pig say.

I really can't believe how big she's gotten. We keep looking at her and going 'wow, she's a kid now!'

Oh, and we've started the toilet training. well, sort of. I put her on the seat once a day for as long as she will stay and if we're lucky, something happens. We haven't been very lucky yet.

Because nothing says Christmas like a terrified child trying to escape the clutches of the man in red.



Happy Holidays everyone!