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!