What Is Life Without Humor?

Mira, as many people including myself have pointed out, is such a little ham. Little kids this age tend to be really funny anyway, but most of the stuff they do that's funny is completely unintentional. As we've seen with the Angry Face, Mira knows exactly what she's doing to get us to laugh! And the more of an audience she has, the more, um, intense her Angry Face is. A couple days ago we went to visit my mom and got Mira going with her antics. Here's the video.

Notice that she kept trying to put the napkin around her neck. She's been doing that a lot lately with things like napkins, washcloths, blankets, spare items of clothing etc., and for awhile I couldn't figure out where she learned to do that. Then I realized she watches me put scarves on a lot. Wow, pretty clever, at least I thought so!

And speaking of clothing, she's getting very interested in clothing fasteners, like buttons, Velcro, and zippers. Especially zippers. If I pick her up and I'm wearing a zippered hoodie (which I am about 75% of the time) I can count on it being completely unzipped in just a few seconds. If she's wearing a zippered hoodie, it'll be completely unzipped in just a few seconds, and she'll take it off too. She's definitely getting this concept of "clothes" figured out. She helps get herself dressed by holding out her arms for sleeves and lifting her feet for pants/socks/stockings, and does the reverse when it's time to get undressed. Diaper changes, surprisingly, usually aren't a hassle. She sometimes tries to help by pulling up on the new diaper until it's in place! I'm just glad that she hasn't figured out how to take the diaper off yet. :)

She's getting better about feeding herself with a fork or spoon, depending on what she's eating. She still needs help getting food onto the utensil - when she tries she basically just pats the food down in the bowl. Still working on learning how to scoop. She'll get it eventually. She's also getting better with talking. Still basically the same words but she's using words more and in better context, it seems like. I'm noticing that if I ask her a yes/no question she'll actually respond with "Ya!" or what looks like a head shake, and she seems to understand what she's doing. Last week she woke up in the middle of the night and I was taking awhile to drag myself out of bed, but while I was hauling myself to her room I noticed that instead of crying she was calling out, "Maaamaaa! Maaamaaa!" And when that didn't work, "Daaadaaa! Daaadaaa!" A few nights ago we had some people over and twice in a row when someone walked in the door she waved and said, "Hi!" She's very good about pointing at something that she wants, which I take as a learning opportunity to teach a new word. Yesterday she was pointing at the TV and I asked her if she wanted to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She got really excited and started dancing (she dances to the song that they sing at the end of the show). This language acquisition stuff is pretty cool and exciting!

She's also gotten very curious about her belly button. I don't know what it is about belly buttons but they sure are fascinating! So when she's taking a bath or we're getting her dressed or whatever I ask her where her belly button is, and now when I ask her she tries to find hers! I'm also working on asking her where her feet are but she's not as interested in those.

She's doing a little better at walking every day! She still prefers to crawl because it's faster and more stable but every day she'll walk a little more often, and without waiting for us to coax her. She's also quite a little monkey. She's trying to climb everything - over her toys, on top of the dogs to climb onto the couch, and then climb to the top of the couch to look out the window, on top of the shoe rack... you get the idea. She was doing all this climbing before she could walk. So one of her nicknames now is Little Monkey. We bought a second carseat to go in Mark's vehicle so we're not constantly switching around the one that we have in my car. We set it down on the floor and she thought this was the best jungle gym ever! She did, unfortunately, tip over a couple of times, but I'd pick her up, she'd stop crying, and want to get down to climb some more. I guess she didn't learn her lesson very well. Mark says that when he was little he tried to climb a lot too and his outlet was gymnastics, so I guess we'll see where this goes...

Is Mom watching?

If I don't see Mom, she can't see me!

Wow, the view is so much better up here!

Last week Mark and I went skiing at the Canyons in Park City. Neither of us had been to that resort before so it was neat to try that out. I didn't know this, but apparently the Canyons is the largest ski resort in Utah and second largest in the country (Vail, Colorado is the largest). It really was huge! I lost count of all the lifts, and we were only able to ski about a third of the resort, and we were there all day. I think a resort that large you'd really only get your money's worth by getting a season pass. I really enjoyed it, and I even did some moguls! Not big ones, and the run wasn't very steep, but hey, I skied moguls and didn't even fall! Big confidence boost there. Unfortunately I think we're at the end of the season. There's plenty of snow at the resorts but it's that slushy icy spring snow crud. Well at least we were able to get a few ski days in. Maybe we should save up and buy season passes for next year.

Mark and me at Canyons

 I am glad for the nicer weather though. I think I might be prone to getting Seasonal Affective Disorder, where you get kinds down in the dumps during the wintertime because of the lack of sunlight, because right around the end of January every year I notice myself feeling a little depressed. Not horribly, but it's hard to feel happy all the time when there's hardly any sunlight, plus it's so dang cold out you wouldn't want to go out in the sun anyway. Luckily spring is here (and the weather is cooperating) so that means more outside time! And since Mira is just about primarily walking now, I can start taking her to parks. Yay! In the meantime, I got a new umbrella stroller for these short little walks. My grandparents sent Mira a very generous birthday check, and I was trying to decide for the longest time what to spend it on. Finally I decided on a really nice umbrella stroller.

 For an umbrella stroller, this is really nice. It has that removable canopy (which we'll want out here), a cup holder, a basket underneath, it reclines, and it folds up really small. And it's pink. :) Our other stroller has a lot of bells and whistles, and it's really nice but it is difficult to cart around and for short trips it was a lot of deal with. I've taken Mira for walks in her new stroller a few times and she enjoys it. So bring on the sun!

 And now for some big news... I'm still being cautious about this because I'm worried it's a fluke but it's happened several times in a row so I think it's safe... Mira has been putting herself to sleep! Mark was putting her to bed a couple weeks ago and put her in bed awake. We waited for her to scream but she never did. So that's how we figured out she'd go to sleep on her own if Mark put her down. But she's a Mommy's girl and is still really attached to me (although it's getting a lot better) so I was nervous about trying it with her. One night last week she was awake for hours at night - I don't know if it was teething or a growth spurt or what but we just could not get her back to sleep. So finally I got frustrated and set her down in the crib and walked out. I told Mark I'd let her cry for a little while so she'd get worn out and then go in to her. We waited and waited and waited.... Nothing. She'd put herself to sleep! And since then I've found that if I start rocking her to sleep and get her so that she realizes she's tired, I can put her in the crib almost completely awake, walk out, and I won't hear a peep from her. Even for naptime, which I was worried about because, you know, it's daytime and more stuff goes on during the day, same thing. Isn't that awesome??? I was so worried about how I was going to get her out of this habit of only falling asleep when she's held and then having to put her to bed completely asleep. I foresaw an epic battle of the wills and lots of crying and screaming... But no, she did it all on her own! Amazing! I'm really excited about this one. Sleep has been one of the biggest stressors for me and I kept regretting that I hadn't taught Mira sooner how to fall asleep on her own - but it turns out that she taught herself. Now if we could just get her to stop waking up in the middle of the night... Although maybe that will get better now that she's learning to put herself to sleep. I find that I don't sleep as well at night because I keep waking up wondering if she was crying, and I'd like to get back to sleeping through the night again.

I just had to include these pictures because they're so cute. Neo, one of our cats, always sleeps outside Mira's room when she's sleeping, even during the day when she's napping. It's like he's guarding the door. He's such a dog. (We have to block the door with the laundry hamper, otherwise the dogs push the door open and sniff around and otherwise make noise that results in Mira waking up.)

And here's a random video of Mira in her crib.

(As I'm getting ready to post this I'm realizing it's officially my birthday now. I guess I'll have to write something about that next!)

She's A Walker!!!

We knew she could do it but it was just a matter of her having the confidence. Finally a couple days ago Mira decided she would walk all the way across the room and back again! She still likes to crawl a lot but she is definitely walking now! Mark and I are so proud of our daughter! Here's some video overload.

Also in big news, Mira had her 1 year checkup last week. We were a few weeks late getting in but I figured as long as it got done before she turned 13 months we were golden. Here are her 1 year stats:

Head circumference 17.5 inches (28th percentile)
Height 30 inches (72nd percentile)
Weight 21 pounds (43rd percentile)

She grew 10 inches and put on 15 pounds in one year - that's a lot! Especially since it means she more than tripled her body weight. Yikes!

The only downside of the appointment is we found out she had an ear infection. I guess you can't be a kid without coming down with at least one of those. I feel a bit like a delinquent mom because I had no idea! She wasn't pulling at her ear or anything. She had come down with a nasty cold a few weeks ago (right before we left for Disneyland in fact) and her runny nose had never gone away, but it hadn't occurred to me that maybe the runny nose was because of an ear infection. I knew she was teething (she has 5 teeth now), but her nose was exceptionally snotty for teething. Well, apparently kids can sometimes get a snotty nose with ear infections, so now I know for next time. And she had been a little cranky lately, but again, I figured it was because she was getting over her cold and she was teething. It's easier to diagnose other people's kids, I guess. Well, no harm done, she just got put on a course of antibiotics and whattaya know, her symptoms cleared right up. Now she's snot-free and happy again! And sleeping better too, which is always nice. :)

I think Mommy's glove is a little too big...

 Well it only took until March but we're finally getting enough snowfall in the mountains to make skiing worthwhile! The last couple of weeks Mark and I have been going skiing and trying out some different resorts. A couple weeks ago we went to Snow Basin, which was apparently where some downhill events were held during the 2002 Winter Olympics. The snow was perfect then but it was freezing cold and so windy that the chairlifts were swaying all over the place. Plus there were whiteout conditions so we could barely see what was coming up. It was still fun though. I hadn't gone skiing in years so it was nice to get back into the groove. I look like the "special" person going down the hill though. And it doesn't help that Mark is an excellent skier - he used to be on a ski team and he can do double back diamond runs like it's no big deal - meanwhile I'm snowplowing the whole way down the mountain... We're a good combination! Ha ha.

Last week we went to Sundance. The weather was gorgeous!! But the good snow is already gone! It was icy and rough in the morning and slushy in the afternoon, so I kept catching an edge and turfing it. Although part of the problem could be my skis. My skis are old rentals so they're not very good. Once the end of the season gets here I think I'm definitely going to invest in a really good pair of skis. And a helmet - I find myself holding back when I'm skiing because all I can picture are the horrible head injury patients I take care of at work! Not the best approach.

Here are some pictures from our Sundance ski day:

Mark and me at the summit

Looking out over the Utah Valley

Over this mountain is Mt. Timpanogos, the seond highest peak in Utah, which Mark and I climbed a few years ago.

This week our plan is to go to Canyons and maybe the week after Wolf Mountain. We have a bunch of free passes so that's why we're going to so many different resorts. Normally my favorite resort is Alta because they don't allow snowboarders (no offense to my snowboarding friends!) but they're quite expensive so I don't think we'll get up there this year. Hopefully next year the snow will be better and we can start skiing earlier in the season.

Besides the walking, I just can't believe how fast Mira is growing up! The other morning I decided to see what she would do if I let her try to feed herself with a spoon. I've been avoiding it because she usually likes to just toss the spoon over the edge of the highchair but I guess when you're hungry it's a different matter. I made her oatmeal with fruit and darned if she didn't know exactly what to do! She just needed some help getting the oatmeal onto the spoon. The rest she did herself, and she tried so hard to scoop the oatmeal up too! I was so impressed. But then when it's your own kid you get impressed pretty easily and with the silliest things. :) So I think we're going to start really encouraging her to use a fork or spoon as much as possible because obviously she's ready.
Some things, though, you just let them use their hands - like brownies. We gave Mira a brownie for dessert and she LOVED it. She's definitely my daughter! She just went to town with it, and then I said those infamous words: "Angry face!" Oh man... I got lots of pictures and I just couldn't stop laughing!

Yummy brownies!

Nom nom nom...

She's so good at sharing!

Gotta get every last bit!

What a happy girl!

And here's when I said, "Angry face!" I dare you to look at these pictures and not laugh.

So so funny. I love this girl so much!

As far as work goes, I'm trying working 3 shifts in a row again. I hadn't worked 3 in a row in over a year - with a little baby it just was not feasible to do that. But now it's getting to the point where it might bot be feasible for me to work my shifts all spread out. It's so hard working straight nights and having a baby at home. Your sleep schedule gets so wacked. I think if we can make it work I'm going to try doing the 3 in a row from now on, just because if my sleep is going to get all turned around it would be better to do it all at once instead of all spread out throughout the week. Then I never have time to recover, plus I'm basically at work ALL the time. I love my job but it is stressful and it can be depressing to only see the worst of the worst. Mark and I have had some discussions about the best way to schedule my work because my chronic lack of sleep is turning me into an evil witch, and that's not fair to anybody who has to be around me. We're going to try this 3 in a row, but some other options we've discussed include me going to day shifts, which I really don't like. I haven't worked a day shift in years, I hate day shifts, I hate mornings, it would be a massive pay cut for us, and I wouldn't get to see Mira at all on the days that I work. I'd be gone from 6 AM until 8 PM, and that would suck. But... I'd get more sleep on day shifts. Sleep counts for a lot, unfortunately. I don't think we're quite that desperate yet. We've talked about having someone watch Mira every morning Mark works, even if I'm off, so I can sleep in more and not have such a massive swing in my sleep patterns. Before Mira was born I would stay on sort of a night schedule all the time for this reason. This option is also tempting because Mira's only up for a couple hours in the morning before her nap anyway so I wouldn't be missing much... but I'm not sure that would be feasible either, for obvious reasons. Not to mention there's something called Mommy Guilt that makes me feel bad for not taking care of Mira every waking second.

Here's what I've learned about Mommy Guilt: It sucks. It makes me think I have to do everything or I'm a bad mom. If I'm home and not in between night shifts, I have to be the one to care for Mira or else I'm a bad mom. If I don't raise her a certain way, I'm a bad mom. If I take time for myself, even if I desperately, desperately need it for my sanity, I'm a bad mom because I should want to be with my daughter every single second. That's because she'll be scarred for life if she doesn't bond with me, you see. I realize this way of thinking is not good at all but I think most moms suffer from some amount of Mommy Guilt. I'd just like to know how to get rid of Mommy Guilt because I think it's making me push myself when I should be more laid back about the whole thing. Be prepared to hear more from Mommy Guilt in future posts - I think it'll be showing up again.

Anyway, everything works out eventually and we'll get the sleep situation figured out. I've done 3 shifts in a row this week and it went all right so maybe that's all we need to do. In the meantime, it's going to be fun now that Mira is getting the hang of walking - now we can go out and do stuff! And buy her lots of cute shoes. Gotta have the shoes. :)

Mira Getting Her Cake and Eating It Too

Just in case anyone was interested, we did take a video of Mira getting her smash cake at her party and after deciding I don't like trying to upload a 5-minute-long video on Blogger, I added it to YouTube and linked it here. Actually, I've decided that in general uploading videos directly to the blog is a pain in the arse so I think I might just link everything from YouTube from now on. Please let me know if there are issues with doing it that way.

Little Miss Stubbornness is still refusing to walk on her own so I think we're going to start pushing her to walk instead of crawl - although it's going to be hard to convince her to change her primary mode of transportation when the current one is so efficient. She is such a little chatterbox and keeps us very entertained with her "talking." She was saying "mama" for a little while but now everyone is "Da." We often have conversations that go like this:

Mira: "Haaaaa!" (I think this means "hi" because she'll say it when she first sees someone)

Me: "Hi Mira!" (pick her up)

Mira: "Da da!" (patting my chest)

Me: "I'm Mama." (pat my chest)

Mira: "Da da!"

Me: "But I'm Mama."

She can say "ya ya" (I think it means "yeah") and she tries to say "kitty," but it comes out kind of sounding like "tee." If I ask her to find the kitty or find the doggy she chases after the correct animal, but she's definitely more of a cat person (like me). She likes the dogs but she gets so excited by the cats. She waves bye-bye and claps on command and we're working on teaching her how to blow kisses. That's her newest talent, giving kisses. They're the typical slobbery open-mouthed baby kiss but oh my, it was one of the best moments of my life when I figured out what she was doing! She'll usually do it on command too, and to the appropriate person, so if I say, "Give Daddy kisses," she gives Mark a kiss. It is so sweet! I can never get enough of it, I just love it!

We represent the Lollipop Guild...

We've also figured out that Mira is a little ham. Remember her "angry face" that I mentioned? I managed to get some video of it! This she will do on command every single time. And it doesn't matter what she's doing or what she's distracted with, if you say to her, "Mira, angry face!" she immediately does the angry face for us. Hilarious! I'm pretty impressed with her comedic ability, and she's pretty impressed with herself, period.

She's gotten really interested in stacking objects and figuring out what things will fit inside something else, like if a toy will fit inside a cup or a box. She has a set of stacking cups for the bath and she knows what order they go in to make them fit. She's very thoughtful and deliberate, and when she manages to get something stacked she grins and laughs proudly. I guess it's time to find a set of those colored stacking rings, she would really enjoy those. She's also starting to put things "away" when she's done with them. Instead of tossing her toy or book across the room when she's done with it she looks for something to set it on, like another toy, and tries to get it to balance. As she's discovering, a wooden ball won't stay put on mommy's leg, but it's interesting to watch her try and figure things out.

We've discovered that she LOVES the show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She literally sits mesmerized and watches the entire show from start to finish whenever it's on - so that gives me 20-30 extra minutes every morning to get a few extra things done, which is nice. I'm trying to limit how much time the TV spends raising her so she can spend more time doing things like stacking and reading. :) She gets more excited about books than any other toy, which I take as a really good sign. She still doesn't really have the attention span to get through most books but she loves turning the pages and looking at the pictures and pointing at words while she "reads." One time she went up to her toy chest and was getting frustrated because she couldn't get at something in there, so Mark set her in her toy chest so she could get what she wanted and she sat down in the chest, picked up a book and started "reading." I really didn't expect her to enjoy books so much at this age. She recognizes what words are and I've even caught her pointing at writing on random things like food packaging and "reading" those. Sometimes I feel like this child is scary smart and we're in over our heads here. :)

Mira also has what my mom calls "sophisticated taste." We discovered that she loves kiwi, olives, blueberries and raspberries, and she'll eat pretty much any type of hot cereal (oatmeal, millet). She's starting to get kind of picky about vegetables, especially green ones. I know she loves veggies like peas and green beans because she used to gobble them up but now it takes a lot of coaxing. Luckily some intelligent person invented these fruit/veggie pouches that Mira absolutely loves - interestingly her favorite one seems to be the one with pears, peas and green beans. Sounds gross but she sucks it down in just a few minutes. Then I feel better about her getting enough green vegetables in her diet and she's none the wiser. Otherwise she'll eat pretty much anything you set in front of her. When she gets more teeth I'll let her have pickles again. I've held off letting her have them because she only has 4 teeth (they are just taking their merry little time coming through) but I know she would love those.

As far as her schedule goes, we're in a really good routine now. She wakes up around 7:30 or 8, we eat breakfast, I get her dressed and let her play for a couple hours, and by 10:30 or 11 she's ready for her nap and she'll usually sleep a good 2-3 hours. Then when she wakes up she eats lunch, then more playtime and snacktime. A lot of the time she's tired and could probably do with another nap by 4, but by then we're so close to dinnertime that I just keep her awake and she's in bed asleep around 8 or 9 at night. She's still about 50/50 whether she sleeps through the night or not. Generally she does but she still occassionally wakes up around 1 or 2 in the morning, but at least it only takes 30 minutes or less to get her back to sleep. If it takes longer than that, or if she wakes up a second time, she usually ends up in bed with me. I think she would be sleeping through the night more consistently but it seems like as soon as she does, something happens, like she starts teething again or she comes down with a little cold or we go on a trip to Disneyland or something else disruptive to our routine comes up and jacks everything up. Then we're back to square one because teething and getting over a cold and going to Disneyland take awhile to get through, at least a week.

Sometimes I'm seized with uncertainty over how I'm raising Mira and all I can do is worry that I'm doing something terribly wrong that will scar her for life and prevent her from becoming a contributing member of society. The big thing is sleep - I keep wondering if I should have been more strict about her sleep habits. By that I mean that I still rock her to sleep every night. Yep, epic parent fail. Or at least that's how I feel about it. A few times I've tried to help her self-soothe by waiting 5 minutes, going in and calming her down, then leave, wait 10 minutes, go in and calm her, leave, wait 15 minutes, etc. Apparently that's one way to help babies learn to self-soothe. Mira however gets herself so worked up that she's absolutely hysterical, so much so that there's no way she could calm herself down by that point, and besides the fact that I can't stand listening to that Mark always tells me that I'm making it worse and I should just go rock her to sleep. So I do. I could write a huge novel about how consumed by doubt I get about my parenting job, but I'll spare everyone and just say one thing I've learned about parenting is that you can have all sorts of wonderful ideas about how you'll raise your child and every single one of them goes right out the window. I'm glad I'm not the only parent in our house that "caves" though. Mark had said from the very beginning that our child would never be allowed to sleep in our room. If Mira wakes up more than once or is having a really hard time falling asleep, like when she's sick, I'll just say "Screw it" and bring her to bed with us, and half the time Mark's the one to bring her in. We figure that if she sleeps with us at least that way all of us will get some sleep, versus all of us getting no sleep. My mom's biggest bit of parenting advice to me was "Choose your battles," and obviously Mark and I don't care to fight this one. :)

Before you get all worked up - this is a ginger ale bottle.

She's a fast learner!

She tries this with any drinking container she can get her hands on.

Here's a video of Mira playing a game on the iPad. Notice how she uses her right index finger, just like she's seen me do it. She's getting a lot more deliberate about how she uses the iPad, as opposed to randomly tapping the screen. She's also forced me to put a passcode on my phone because she kept figuring out how to unlock the phone. Even now she can still manage to lock me out of my phone completely because she types the wrong passcode in so often, and I keep finding odd pictures and videos on my phone that I know I didn't take. She's going to be smarter about technology than I am!