Some New Things (and our day-to-day lives)

So, it seems we have some new things going on in the Brink household.

-          Emma is scooting across the floor on her belly. While she can’t seem to grasp how to move her arms once she’s gotten up on all fours, she sure has gotten down how to use her feet to push herself all over the room on her belly. If we put something she wants across the room, look out!

-          Emma can now walk in her walker… backwards. Yep, backwards. She can’t go forward yet, but if we put her on a slick surface (no carpet) she just goes and goes until she bumps into something.

-          Noises: “Dadadadadada.” She does that one while she has a binky or bottle in her mouth. “Bbbbbbbbbbbb.” She does that anytime you first pick her up. Then most recently, she’s been gulping. Like if you have nothing in your mouth, but you pretend to be gulping down water. No clue what that’s about. Also, high pitched screaming. She just will stop what she’s doing, look up at you and scream so high and loud. We tell her that Mommy and Daddy are quiet people, but she doesn’t seem to care. Lol.

-          Emma now kisses without being made to. She, of course, has her mouth wide open and she just presses it to your face. Then she leans back and smiles while she waits for a “thank you” in return. She’s so delighted to do this, and I absolutely love it. And sometimes it’s not as cute – like when your mouth is open and she just sticks hers right inside yours. Ick. Lol.

-          Putting her to bed is now an hour long ordeal since she can now sit up on her own. She just says “sorry, I’m not ready to go to sleep” and sits right up to play with her blanket, or mobile, or her feet, or whatever she can get to. It’s a pain in the butt and we knew it would be. We just aren’t adjusting well to it. Us Brinks like our sleep (with the exception of Baby Brink it seems).

-          Em now tries to play with Okie. That’s all good in my book, but not in her Daddy’s. He hates for Okie to lick her. So, if Gene’s home it turns into a bunch of yelling at Okie. If he’s not home, I let Okie go to town because Emma just laughs and laughs. Another new thing is Emma has discovered that Okie has a tail, and she wants it! Lol. Poor Okie. She’s handling it all great though.

-          Emma has mastered the sippy cup. However, we haven’t transitioned formula to it yet so she thinks she can throw her cup on the floor whenever she wants to. I think once she sees it’s her “milk” in there she will stop that. If anyone needs s suggestion on a good sippy cup, we have had the best luck with the Avent one. Technically, we have 4 different ones and she drinks out of them all. But, for beginners, the Avent is best in my book. Downside though is it’s only 4 ounces.

-          Binky chewing. So Em has never been too keen on her bink. She would only ever take it when she was exhausted, to fall asleep with. She normally hated it and screamed when she first got it because it meant that it was naptime. Well, she loves it now. Only, she loves to play with it. It’s the cutest thing. She just turns it over and over in her hands and sticks it in her mouth, pulls it out, and then starts all over again. It can be any bink, but she has the most fun with the ones that have the loop on the outside. *Side note, because she’s been playing with them, we keep losing them!

-          Emma has been obsessed with our cell phones. So much so that she would throw fits. So, we found an old one and took the battery out so she could play with it. Well of course, like everything else, it goes straight to her mouth. Within minutes we could see slobber IN the screen. So then we started wondering if she could somehow suck it out of there and what kind of stuff they put in there, and we took it away. We bought her a play cell phone and a play remote for the tv, and she doesn’t care for either one if our cell phones are around. So if you don’t hear back from us until after bedtime, that’s why. Lol.

-          So far, since we’ve been given the green light to give Emma table foods, we’ve tried potato salad, french fry and baked chicken (all a tiny bit on the tip of my pinky). French fry she’s fine with, but she doesn’t really know what to do with it once it’s in her mouth. The other two, she cringes. Lol. I think it’s a texture thing because there’s some baby foods that she cringes at – like mixed veggie.  Oh, I also gave her a taste of my yogurt one day, but I’m so afraid of giving her something she’s not supposed to have that I haven’t done that again (even though she liked it).

So, that’s a taste of what’s been going on at home. It’s downright exhausting at times. So much so that when I have a free night or weekend I get paranoid that I won’t get to catch up on my sleep so the whole time we are out I think about how I could be sleeping, or cleaning, or organizing. Oy. I’m never going to get the hang of it all.  To give you an idea of my day (this is a Wednesday):

5:15am – Gene gets up and gets ready for work.

5:45am – Gene wakes me up again to say bye, and he heads off to work.

6am – Get up with Emma. Change her, feed her a bottle.

6:45am – Shower, get ready for work (all while toting Emma around with toys).

7:15am – Fill up her bag with clothes, extra clothes, fruit, etc.

7:30am – Start loading the car with the bags, Okie and Emma.

7:45am – Drive to Mom and Dad’s.

8am – Leave Mom and Dad’s for work.

8:30am – Work.

5pm – Leave work. All the way home talk to Mom about what Emma did for the day.

5:30pm – Home. Visit with Emma and talk to Gene about how our days were.

6pm – Figure out the dinner situation and pick-up around the house from the morning. The other one of us feeds Emma a bottle.

6:30pm – Dinner while Emma plays. We watch Channel 9 shows (Berenstain Bears, Anne of Green Gables, Peep and the Big Wide World, Pokoyo, Caillou, etc.).

7pm – Playtime. (Gene will sit on the computer – his relaxing time)

7:30pm – Feed Emma Prunes. (Gene will sit on the computer – his relaxing time)

7:45pm – Bathtime. Gene will make Em a bottle and refill her cool mist vaporizer.

8pm – Bedtime routine (Lights dim, bottle, sleep sheep, put in bed).

8:30pm – Free time. I usually watch tv until I fall asleep on the couch (by 9:30pm). Gene kicks in here and washes bottles and will throw some clothes in the washing machine or load the dishwasher. Then I go to bed and he plays a video game (every now and then he will come to bed with me).

*Then Emma usually wakes me up about 3 times a night (but I don’t have to get out of bed), and then lately she’s been getting up-up once a night.

5:15am – Gene gets up and gets ready for work.

You got it from here. Lol. To think, I used to get 10 hours a night on average. Oh well.