Pregnancy and Motherhood Archive

Yes, I’m a horrible speller. But no, the title is not a typo. This is a list of things that Sophia favors, some of which may be flavors.

• Sophia’s favorite toy is her blue Peep. Not that I’ve bought any super expensive toys for her, but Peep is the cardboard box of toys. Our not-a-nanny bought it for Sophia on sale after Easter for a whopping $1.50 (or 1.51 CAD or .75 GBP). According to not-a-nanny, Sophia picked out Peep.
• Sophia seems to like blue over other colors.
• Despite what the picture below shows, Sophia tends to use her left hand more than her right.  (My girl might be a southpaw just like mommy. )
• My darling baby girl is more likely to eat Peep than actual baby food.

On Thursday I received an email from our not-a-nanny (I don’t care what she thinks - I like her not-a-title :P). Actually, she sends me at least one email everyday with a picture attached. She’s awesome! I put the picture of the day on my work desktop. On this particular day the title of her email to me read, “A day for firsts…”  I was excited and disappointed at the same time. I would like to be there for all the milestones, but having someone at home that sends me email updates with the important stuff is a good alternative. My not-a-nanny is awesome. I don’t think I’ve told her so, but she is. In the body of the email, she sent me read,

Your daughter was up to no good today. I watched to see if she would do it, and she did… take a look at the picture. She’s in the not-a-walker now. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to remove the top part of the Pack & Play and make it a playpen. But she obviously can’t be trusted in the bassinet now. (On another level, I’m very impressed… she used her arms to pull herself up!)

You can’t tell from this picture, but Sophia isn’t standing. She did pull herself up to a kneeling position though.

Wednesday was Sophia’s second day of swimming. It didn’t go as swimmingly. Kurt and I had decided that because swimming was twice a week I would swim with her on Mondays and he would do Wednesday’s. I think we may reconsider that until after Sophia gets more accustomed to the water.

Poor baby cried and snotted all over herself. Actually I feel worse for Kurtie cause I think he was really looking forward to having a daddy-daughter activity. She did calm down when he did the Superman theme song and flew her around the water.

As soon as he finished the song it was back to the red-faced crying and snotting baby. Kurt even tried the M*A*S*H theme and it was a no go. We pulled her out of the water and let her calm down a bit.

When the class moved on from the shallow end of the big pool to the 1-foot deep baby pool on the side I told Kurt to give it another shot. She was NOT a happy baby!

I’ve mentioned before that we watch four episodes of M*A*S*H every night.  The shows start at 5pm when I get home from work and end at Sophia’s bedtime.  Every night when it starts we say, “ah it’s time to M*A*S*H the baby”.  We’ve noticed that when Sophia is upset to the the point of turning crimson that listening to the theme song will soothe her.  She actually stops crying and will move herself to a position so she can see the TV.  Our not-a-nanny has a button on her FireFox quick launch bar to a YouTube video of M*A*S*H.  Please don’t anyone tell Sophia that the title of her favorite song is, “Suicide Is Painless”.  ACK!

Yesterday was Sophia’s first swimming class. We were afraid she would scream and cry through the whole thing especially since she didn’t take her afternoon nap, but she LOVED IT! I mean she really LOVED it - A LOT! There was one part in the middle of the class where we sat the kids on the side of the pool and sang/uttered/or in my case mumbled Humpty Dumpty, then the kids would “jump” to their parent in the water. There were only two other kids (toddlers) our group and Sophia was the only infant. Sophia sat on the side with me holding her in place. Her chin was quivering because of the seemingly cold air on her wet skin, but she laughed the whole time! They did that three times and then we had them stand on the side while we sang/uttered/mumbled London Bridges Falling Down. On cue, they would jump in. I of course held Sophia in position, I lifted her up and into the water, but on the third “London Bridges” she pushed with her legs trying to jump in.

That first part with in the four-foot area of the big pool, but after that we went to the small side pool that was much warmer and only one-foot deep. The instructor dumped out a basket of bath toys and had the kids put them back in the basket. Sophia caught onto this pretty quick and actually put the one toy that came to her into the basket again.

We went to the Tulip Festival today. It was cold, but at least it wasn’t raining. The tulips are blooming late this year because of our funky weather so I may take Sophia up again in a couple weeks. Hopefully it’ll be warmer!


While we walked around the tulips fields, we saw a couple with a one-month-old baby that made us cringe. We kept our baby bundled in a jacket and two blankets - they didn’t. Uugg!

And then there was the mother telling her three-year-old not to muck around in the mud because he was wearing his new shoes. Why the hell would you bring a child through fields of mud in new shoes if you want them to stay clean?

This morning I set Sophia on our bed in the sitting position. She can sit for a few seconds before falling over, which I knew she would do before I was ready to grab her again. I set up the not-a-Johnny-Jump-Up and the child fell forward on the bed reaching for a toy. She laid flat on her tummy all pissed off cause she doesn’t like tummy time. She’ll usually tolerate short periods of being on her tummy, but sometimes she’s simply not in the mood for it. I left her there because I’m evil mommy. She finally got frustrated enough that she rolled over! For once, her useless arms were at her sides and not stretched out like a puppy on smooth flooring so she was able to roll over it. YAY!

Yesterday Kurt witnessed Sophia push herself off the boppy pillow with her elbows into a sitting position. She’s no longer a flailing turtle when she lays back - as long as the pillow is behind her and she’s not flat on her back. Hey, it’s a start!

The work part of my first day back was nonexistent. I spent the day catching up on email and learning about all the changes that had taken place in the last six months. Yes, I know as an American living in the US, that I’m so lucky I had six months of maternity leave. For anyone living a country that is actually family oriented and you get more than six months – I’m not above accepting your sympathy in the form of large sums of cash sent to my PayPal account. Actually I don’t like PayPal cause they take too much of the cut. I’m closing my account, so you’ll have to send your sympathies via money order.

The toughest part of my day was leaving my baby at home asleep with our not-a-nanny. I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye to her in the morning. I didn’t have the not-a-nanny’s email on my work email so one of my co-workers the not-a-nanny my new phone number on my behalf. She sent it with the message, “Because she’s just waiting for you to call her. :)” She wasn’t lying, I’m that pathetic. Before returning to work the longest I had ever spent away from Sophia was about two hours and I only did that about four or five times. Thankfully our not-a-nanny agreed to drive to my work at lunch so I can feed Sophia. Actually I think it’s probably less of a favor for me and more of a sanity saver for her since Sophia refuses to have anything to do with a bottle from her. Sophia with drink from a tippy cup from Kurt, but would get very upset if presented with one from our not-a-nanny. Sophia doesn’t like it when I try to feed her via sippy cup either. She’s one smart cookie; she knows I’m a walking milk cart.

I started to get anxious around 11am and so my co-worker showed me the email volley between her and the not-a-nanny, “First day is going well. She seems to be sticking to her routine, except the part where she cried instead of played. *sigh* But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared it would be. And it wasn’t for very long. She’ll adjust quickly to the new situation, I think. Babies are so resilient.”

Co-worker, “Cool, she’ll be super happy about that. It’s so nice to have her back at work, but I know she misses her kid.”

Not-a-nanny, “If it makes Erica feel any better, Sophia misses her, too. She was doing fine until she realized an hour into being awake that I was doing all the things that Mommy should be doing, but I’m not Mommy. *chuckle* Then she got very angry. I felt so sorry for her. You can’t just tell a 5 month old that she’ll see Mommy in less than two hours. They don’t understand. But she calmed down after a while. She even smiled and cooed a bit before naptime.” That didn’t help me at all. Both Sophia and I were very happy to see each other at lunch. The not-a-nanny told me Sophia would play for a while then looks up at the not-the-nanny, realize she was not-the-mommy and becomes upset. Apparently she did this many times throughout the day for the first couple of days. I guess Sophia adjusted faster than I did. I’m just getting used to going to work now after a couple of weeks. Sophia does really well with the not-a-nanny, but wants my attention as soon as I get home.

Sophia doesn’t like it at all when we break the routine… We watch four episodes of M*A*S*H every night. Kurt plays with her during that time and it upsets her if she hears the theme song come on and Kurt isn’t at least in the room.

On Tuesday I left very early in the morning to go to Seattle for a Microsoft 2008 product launch and I didn’t get my usually baby visitation at lunch. Our not-a-nanny was great and sent me three pictures from her cellphone to mine, two of them with Sophia holding her own bottle.  Apparently Sophia not only held the bottle, but even brought it to her mouth.  That day was the first day Sophia didn’t get angry for the not-a-nanny suggesting that she drink from a bottle. She got confused when the not-a-nanny ate her lunch inside a restaurant instead of going through the drive thru and then got angry when they arrived home without stopping to see me. I didn’t get home until an hour after my usual time and I was about to explode. I wasn’t able to pump in the morning because I left much earlier then usual, didn’t get my baby fix in the afternoon, and it was an hour after my usual arrive at home time. I walked through the door in pain and couldn’t decide what to do first, go to the bathroom or feed the baby. Yesterday morning I could see Sophia checking things off her mental list as we went through our usual motions and seemed relieved that the day seemed to be starting the way in which she had become accustomed.

This morning we threw her for another loop. Kurt stayed home because he has a couple doctor appointments, so while I was getting ready for work he answered Sophia’s morning wakeup cries. She was not happy. The only time she would stop crying is when I held her – no one else. I finally had to go, so I left her screaming in Kurt’s arms. All was well once I left. She seems to think that the other people in the house are only to care for her if I’m not there. – The little shit.