Someone stop me in two weeks and make me write a blog post so I don't have to try and remember everything that happened in the past month.
This month, Paige has really become talented. She has mastered crawling and loves to follow me around the house. She especially seems to enjoy whining as she crawls to me, then climbing up my leg as far as she can and crying at me until I hold her. But really, she has loved the freedom to explore and play. She climbs through the legs of our coffee table and her high chair, she takes toys with her around the house, and she has discovered the magical doorstop that makes a fun noise when you pull on it. She will also sometimes lift herself up like she's going to bear-crawl, but has yet to actually move forward with that position.
Paige can also pull herself up to standing. She learned how to do that in her crib, which meant we had to lower the base to keep her safe. Now, when she doesn't want to sleep, she'll crawl to the edge and pull herself up the side and cry out for me. It's cute, but at the same time, it makes sleeping harder. I have to convince her that she really does want to sleep and needs to lay down to do that. She will pull herself to stand at my chair too if I'm sitting and she's on the floor in front of me. She wants to see what I'm doing, I guess. Or be held. Either one works.
She loves to treat me like her jungle gym, too. Paige thinks my hair and my glasses are fun to pull, and she is enamored with my mouth when I talk and loves exploring it by shoving her hand in my face. She will also grab my bottom lip and hang onto it as she climbs on me and explores. In other words, holding her is not nearly as peaceful for me as it use to be, and my glasses seem to continually have fingerprint marks on it, no matter how often I clean them. I also tend to bring her into bed with me in the morning when I want extra rest and she's awake. It's not very restful when she climbs back and forth over me and sits on my head, but it's mostly due to my being loathe to wake up some days. I also have to play goalie with her when she's on my bed to keep her from falling off the edge. Gravity is such a foreign concept to her.
As interested as she is when I talk, she loves talking herself. She makes all kinds of different noises with her mouth--basically everything except "mama" or "dada". I've become pretty good at understanding her, especially when she wants to eat. She is very vocal about asking for food, and really persistent when it's food she can't eat. She loves playing by trying different tastes. She knows if she sits in her high chair, it's time to eat. Paige still seems to prefer fruit over veggies, though she also eats beans, peanut butter, and Chex. She also enjoys applesauce pouches. Whoever thought those up were genius. I want to get some reusable pouches to make my own. Any recommendations?
Because everything is so interesting to her, she gets distracted really easily. This is helpful when she's upset and we can convince her to forget why she was crying, but this is not helpful when we are tying to keep her focus, like while she nurses or when we change her diaper. She's become a "snacker" while nursing. Daddy will often have to leave the room so she'll actually eat. And diaper changes are just so confining, apparently. She wants to roll and explore, so changing her is not nearly as easy as it use to be. Bath time is also another distraction. Splashing the water is just a temptation she can't resist. Paige has yet to make a large mess with the water though, so the splashing is still cute.
Paige also is friendly and doesn't seem to be stranger shy yet. Strangers at the store love talking to her because she rewards them with a big smile. She laughs easy, too, and is very ticklish. Whenever I hold my hand up like the tickle monster and slowly move it closer, she preemptively squeals and squirms. It's pretty adorable. She gets excited when we pull out toys for her and loves to stick them in her mouth instantly. In fact, most anything she can reach, she puts in her mouth. We're at that stage, I guess. Paige likes playing with her reflection in the glass on our TV stand, as well as in mirrors--she will smear her mouth all over it.
There are a few things Paige doesn't like. One is being in her play pen. She use to be fine with it, but now she knows it limits her, and the five to ten minutes she's confined in there while I shower is the worst part of her day. She doesn't particularly enjoy filling her diaper now that she eats real food. I have to be careful with what I give her so she won't be constipated. We had a few rough days at the beginning with that, but we both learned. She has yet to sprout any teeth, but I wonder if she's teething sometimes with how fussy she'll be over nothing. But for the most part, she's a really happy baby. She will often ask nicely before resorting to full out crying when she's not happy with the situation.
Alright. I think I've covered all of her new tricks, though I'm sure I'm probably forgetting something.
This month, we were able to spend time with both sides of our family. With college starting back up, my mom traveled up north to help my brother and sister move in for the new semester. She stayed here for a few days, and, as always, it was so fun. Paige likes Grandma, and Grandma likes Paige, so Mommy gets a break! It was also fun to help my sister Susan transition into being an adult. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago I was in her shoes and getting situated for college. Five years can go fast.
Two years also goes by fast. Stephen and I celebrated our second anniversary. It overlapped the time while my mom was visiting, so she took Paige for the day so Stephen and I could have a real date. He took off half the day of work and we went out for lunch and did a lot of window shopping. We got home earlier than my mom did, and for a few hours, we were just hanging out at home babyless. I'll tell you--it's weird. I wasn't sure what to do with my time. What did I use to do before I had a baby? I spent time sewing, but still, it was quiet without Paige. I missed her.
Over Labor day weekend, we went to Meridian to visit Stephen's family. Paige did really well on the drive, but the whole weekend she had trouble with sleeping overnight. We tried everything we could think of to prevent her from waking up so much, but why she wouldn't stay asleep still remains a mystery. She would have to nurse to go back to sleep, and I worry I've created a bad habit with that because she still has not slept well since we got home almost a week ago and needs me several times through the night. I'm hopeful we can come up with a solution quickly, because we need our sleep! I've been spoiled to have such an easy baby when it comes to the night, but this is almost worse than the first few weeks after she was born.
Besides that, we had a great trip to Idaho. It was nice to relax with the family and spend time with them. We played games and watched football and cheered for Jason during his cross country meet. We went to the construction site for the new Meridian temple. It was really beautiful. It was also fun to take Paige to church and show her off to to people. I'm always game for bragging about Paige. She had fun playing with her uncles. She was so entertained just by watching them. It's harder when it's just her and me at home all day. I'm not as energetic and loud as a group of little boys. She also enjoyed playing with her cousin Elise. Lately, she's been excited to see other babies her size. Overall, the trip felt too short, but it was a nice vacation.
Over the past month, we've invited different families over to have dinner with us. I like being a hostess, and Stephen knows this. He went out of his comfort zone twice and invited people over, even though he's more introverted than I am. We had the Adams, a couple from our neighborhood, come with their twins that are a month older than Paige. It was interesting to try and eat and play games with three babies to four adults, but it was a lot of fun, too. I had fun seeing the similarities and differences between them and Paige and recognizing how developed she really is to be able to keep up with older babies.
We also invited the Stringhams over. Stephen is currently coworkers with Ryan and use to be with Alyssa as well until she became a stay-at-home-mom after she had Sidney a month after Paige was born. We also use to live close to them when we were in Provo, so we used to hang out with them there. It was good to spend time with them. I had visited Alyssa a week or two before we had them over for dinner, and then I spent the next morning with her at a baby-wearing meeting. It's really helpful for me to have mommy friends and to have someone say "Me, too!" when I talk about my life.
Lately, I've been having a lot of back problems. Really, though, I've had back pain since I was pregnant, and giving birth to and caring for Paige hasn't made it much better. I enjoyed running, but, near the end, my back hurt too much for me to run fast or far, and these past few weeks I've stopped running all together. I went and saw a chiropractor, and, after he adjusted me, I felt like I got hit by a truck for the next few days (and I know what it feels like to be hit by a truck, just sayin'). I did one return appointment with him but didn't feel like it was a good match for me. I'm trying another chiropractor, so cross your fingers for that. I had a consultation last week. I'm seeing him again this upcoming week, and I hope he'll pop my back in just the right ways. At the consultation, he said my hips were so misaligned, my legs were half an inch different in their lengths. Ouch! Stephen has been helping as much as he can with massages and heating pads, but I want this to be fixed so I can live my life without pain each day.
Other eventful happenings this month: Stephen's work had a Boondocks night, which is like an arcade that has mini golf and laser tag and stuff. It was harder to do things there with Paige, but it made for a nice outing as a family. We rented Into the Woods and watched that as a couple. Really good! We also went to the library and borrowed Tales of Earthsea (Stephen had never seen it before *gasp* and it even had dragons in it (Stephen really likes dragons)). Stephen had to be on call for his work one Saturday, but it was nice that he could work from home still and help out with Paige. I also finished painting our coffee table. It was a free gift from a friend and use to be red with a wooden top. I changed it to have gold legs and a black chalkboard surface, so now Paige and any other future children (or, let's be honest, Stephen and I) can draw on it.
We did other things, too, but this is long enough. We're staying busy in our lives, and Paige just makes it that much more busy, but it's so fun and so worth it. Now, if we could just all sleep through the night again, that would be great.
