Our nursing time ended rather abruptly in September. Cora was bored and impatient during her bedtime feeding and began to play around and, well, bite. This would happen on occasion, but she did it repeatedly that night. Brad does not usually hang around during those times, but he was with us that evening. After witnessing the conflict, he decided that that would be the end of things. Putting a screaming Cora in bed and ushering a teary mama out of the room, he brought our nursing season to an end just like that.

It has been a little freeing, a little sad, and a little bit of an adjustment. It still feels like something is missing in her going-to-bed routine. I suppose that is natural since we did it for fifteen months and have only changed our habit for the last one.

Soon, Lord willing, I will be back at the routine of nursing, back to the around the clock hours, and the quiet, sleepy bonding moments. I am thankful for what has been and for what is to come.

***

Cora has steadily been eating more grown up food during her meals. Some of the latest favorites have included mandarin oranges, string cheese, homemade baked beans (almost any bean, really), cubed cheese, graham crackers, potato salad, shredded cheese, cauliflower salad, cheese, meatballs, scrambled egg (with cheese), strawberries, steamed broccoli, frozen blueberries, and ice cream! We pretty much have to avoid eating ice cream when she is awake or else it is miserable for everyone.

***

On occasion, she likes to pretend she is applying makeup. I let her know that it will be years before she gets the real thing. She does rock the single green eyebrow though, doesn’t she? (You can click on the photo to enlarge in case you want to copy her application style.)

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Cora’s go-to snack is an unsalted top saltine cracker. If she even sees the box or a sleeve of crackers in the cabinet, she dives for them! Also, at 69 cents a box, this makes mommy super happy that she doesn’t have to pay $3 for a 4 oz tub of baby puffs.

***

Sometimes, when we have some time to kill I dump out a couple kinds of baby food on Cora’s tray to play in. She usually tries to eat a little and then decides she would rather just live it up and play with her food. It’s sort of like the arts and crafts period of our day. As you can see, she kinda likes it. (Also – teeth!!)

***

Recently, Cora started showing interest in our utensils. And by “showing interest” I mean that when we would share a little bite from our plate with her, she would grasp the fork or spoon with a death grip and shriek in protest if we happened to succeed at prying her vice-like grip from it. In a moment of inspiration by common sense, I realized maybe she should try out some utensils of her own. She seemed especially interested in the fork, so I went to buy a baby-sized one. At the inaugural use of the fork, she happily took it and let me guide the prongs to the piece of food on her tray. After carefully piercing the food bit, she raised the fork up, turning it to her mouth…and then reached up with her other hand to pluck the food off the fork so she could place it in her mouth! I died laughing. She now occasionally feels ambitious enough to take a bite off the fork, sometimes she resorts to the stab-and-pluck routine, and other times she just decides to go at it with just the fingers. Funny girl!

***

Sometimes when her parents forget to feed her, she just resorts to whatever nature has to offer. In this case, dandelion fluff.

She made me a mother. By the grace of God, it was her life that gave me a new one. A new place, a new perspective, a new kind of sanctification. And I still do not fully understand this new life. (Neither hers nor mine.) There will be years – Lord willing – to learn more, but I think I will never fully grasp this role of a mother. I think it will always require learning more, waiting, hurting, and accepting, yet again, another failure and another lesson. Isn’t it funny how a tiny person can make you feel more inadequate than ever?

I am so grateful to be stretched in these ways. For so long I waited and wanted. And now she is here; this life is here. Now is the time to embrace it, to embrace her and the obstacles, joys, beauties, challenges and graces she brings to me. Oh, how blessed am I!

Pictures from the day I met the girl who made me a mama.

I know it won’t always be this way, but her “saying” no is pretty cute right now. A couple of recent anecdotes:

- I was watching/listening to a sermon online when she woke up from her nap one afternoon. As I was finishing it up, she was playing along side me. We got to a part where the pastor was making a point by saying a statement, and them emphatically shouting “No!” Then he would make another statement, and another “No!” When he was doing this for the third time, I looked at Cora and realized that she was firmly shaking her head along with each “no!” It cracked me up!

- While we have tried to childproof most of the house (or have just surrendered parts of it over to Cora), there are still a handful of places that we have to watch out for and keep her from. One of those is the dogs food and water bowl. While I know it likely would not be a big danger if she got into the bowls, still…gross. In spite of (or perhaps because of?) our frequent interventions to keep her from the bowls, she doggedly (ha!) goes after them on a daily basis. One day, I found myself repeatedly chasing her down, picking her up as she got in reach of the bowls, and firmly telling her “no” before setting her back down by her toys. After five or six times of this, I looked down to see her headed back to the bowls again – only this time she was shaking her head to tell herself “No” on the way over! Unfortunately, I still had to intervene, but maybe one day her she will be able to self-correct, instead of just self-reprimand!

The idea of saying “No” as a parent feels like a big deal. I don’t think that knowing when and when not to say “no” is going to come naturally. We want Cora to grow up feeling loved in every way. We want her to be loved in our allowances and in what we forbid. I know there are many more Nos to come, and that they may include meltdowns, tears, and embarrassing public appearances. And Cora might have some issues with it to! We will cross all those bridges when we get to them, however and trust that the Holy Spirit will teach us how to teach!

And, because pictures make a post way more interesting…

This girl is so often on the move, that following photo probably shows the side of her I see the most often!

Playing outside at GlaMo’s house!

(zoo trip, 4/3/11)
The other day we were at Aldis (a grocery store) and were making our way down the aisle. I looked down at her sitting in the cart and realized she was leaning completely over to one side, just beaming at something. I followed her line of sight and realized she was grinning (and waving and “talking”) to an older couple two aisles over. They were enjoying it and waved back, which of course thrilled her even more. If she just gets one person to respond to or interact with her, all of the sudden she thinks she is all that! She will start looking around at everyone in sight, waving at them or smiling at them to try and get their attention. Sometimes she will blow raspberries at people to try and get them to laugh at her. Interacting with others is the highlight of her life!

(zoo trip, 4/3/11)
I love that she is such a cheerful and friendly baby. She certainly seems like an extrovert, and it makes me curious to see if that is something that sticks!

9 month pictures

As we got closer to the “major” road, I got a little nervous about crossing. There was no crosswalk. (Does that make me a jaywalker?) I decided to continue on the side of the road (no sidewalks, boo) until I felt like there was a decent break in traffic to make my crossing the safest possible. As I was walking between cross streets I saw the perfect space open up. I rushed to the road ahead and then (not so) calmly sprinted across the road. I felt pretty good about it until I looked down and realized that Cora was no longer holding her sippy cup. I started having flashbacks to our family Valentine’s evening (a story for another time) and desperately scanned over the street I had just crossed. Fortunately it was not in the middle of the big road, but it was at the front of the cross street, just waiting for some unsuspecting mini van to crush it to bits. I said a couple PG words and waited for another pause in traffic. As I spotted the perfect moment to cross, Cora’s hat blew off and flopped around behind us a few feet away. I panicked, but managed to snatch it up before it went too far, and then hurried across and grabbed the sippy cup. Darn sippy cup.

At this point, I was considering going back home. But what would all this pain and misery be for if I did not press onward? It would be for naught. So we crossed one more time to get where we needed to be. The rest of the trip was through some mostly peaceful neighborhood roads, save a large (fenced-in) German shepherd and a noisy Latino group tearing up part of the road. During this part of the trip I noticed that Cora’s feet were exposed and getting a lot of sun. I realized on the trip back the sun would shine even more directly on them. After insulting myself for not thinking of putting socks on her little feet, I tried to come up with a solution. I had no extra material of any kind to use to cover and protect her! I finally decided I would solve the problem once we finished our shopping trip. After making our purchase, I took the food out of the plastic bag and put it in the basket under the stroller. Then Cora’s feet went inside the Wal-Mart sack, with the top part of the bag tucked under her little bottom so it would not blow away! I’m sure we looked a little funny, but it made my mommy-heart worry a little less.

Oh – and on the way home, we crossed the “major” road without a hitch.

So is the life of a new mom.  I remember the amazing feeling when Cora transitioned to one meal in the middle of the night (by that, I mean the middle of my sleep time).  And then there was the day that I realized she was not taking very long to eat each time.  Instead of 45 minutes, she was done in fifteen.  Then it was only taking ten minutes.  And suddenly, she did not seem all that interested in one of her evening cluster feedings.  So I dropped it.  Before I knew it, Cora was eating only six times a day, eight minutes feeding time, tops.  Within a span of four months, I went from spending 33% of my day making sure she was eating to spending barely 3% of my day feeding her.  It has been wonderful.

Right now, Cora eats around 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 8pm and 11pm.  I am trying to figure out if she really needs that last feeding.  When she was two and three months, I did it to make sure she could make it through the night.  I did not want that luxurious sleeping-through-the-night thing to stop!  Then it just became habit.  I fed her right before I went to bed.  Shower, dress for bed, brush teeth, feed Cora.  It has just been part of the routine.

I am starting to think that she may not need this feeding anymore.  She is typically in a deep sleep when I get her for this.  She usually only wakes up because I also do a diaper change at this time.  Also, sometimes her daddy gets a little exicted to see her and his enthusiasm wakes her up…  Anyways, I think I will experiment.  I think I will push that last feeding up a little, maybe feeding her around 10pm for now.  What I cannot decide on is if I should drop another feeding entirely.  She can go much longer than three hours between feedings, so I do not know why I am cramming them in there.  It was the same sort of thing when I went from seven to six feedings.  She would eat, but I could tell that it was not exactly necessary.  In addition to that, it also seems like her schedule (as far as wake and eating times goes) is not working for her as well as it has.  Maybe shifting feeding times around some would help that.

When I do a shift like this one I am considering, I temporarily allow myself to become the opposite sort of “parenting style” for a while.  Instead of maintaining a schedule, I watch for Cora and what cues she gives me.  I am thinking tomorrow that I will let her nap as long as she does and maybe even wait until she shows me she is hungry before I feed her.  I will follow her pattern for a day or two and then rearrange things to work within that.  It is good for me to remember to reevaluate often (though, at the same time I feel like I never stop re-evaluating, I can get stuck in my habits and ways!) and listen to what “Cora says.”

Hopefully I can finish 1 of the 5 different books I’ve started.

Hopefully my leg gets to feeling better.

& hopefully my basketball team wins a game.

Actually, I’m not very hopeful for any of these.

We are going to write together.  On this blog.  

Sometimes I stay up late…and Brad goes to bed.  

Except for when I go to bed…and he stays up late.

Guess who is staying up late tonight?

Coming Soon: a book review on The Secret Life of Bees or Treasure Island, depending on which one I finish first.