"Ooohhh" she says :)
The INSTANT we turned down the toy isle of the store. Lisa and I had mildly convinced ourselves that Stellanne was bored with her toys. And really she is. My mom got her a piano, that she likes to play with, but the blocks and rings aren't as exciting as they once were. The only problem with that being that when she isn't getting enjoyment out of her toys...she wants enjoyment out of you. Not such a good thing when you are trying to make her dinner.
So we went to wally world this weekend and walked over to the toys. We don't frequent the toy section of wally world and litterally as we turned the corner into the toy isle, Stellanne says "Ooohh" Some toys she was more interested in than others. One of the toys we got was a leapfrog catipillar, that my mom picked up for 1/2 of a second to see what it was and Stellanne started SCREAMING the instant she put it back on the shelf rather than handing it to her.
I'm not sure we are teaching her good manners; but it's hard when your kid reacts so happily when she gets to play with a new toy. 2 of the 3 toys we got her talk, or sing or play music. She seems to be more vocal since we got them. But that could be my awareness.
Lisa and I have made it our goal to get Stellanne to say mama. She hasn't even barely made strides towards saying mama. She can, however, sing. And frequently sings while you rock her to sleep; its rather precious. One of these nights we'll have to record it, and put it on our flickr account because I'm sure she won't do it for forever.
AND another big milestone that I didn't want to hex was that Stellanne is now mostly sleeping through the night. She does wake up for a few minutes in the middle of the night; but she can put herself back to sleep. I think it has to do with starting her on 3 meals a day of rice cereal. We mix it with apple sauce and at night she gets a little bit of veggie. She is still drinking breast milk; but she is definately an eating baby. We try to give her little bits of what we are eating. Last night we had breakfast for dinner and Stellanne LOVED the pancakes. We tear her up little pieces and spread them on her tray, she takes great enjoyment out of picking them up and making it into her mouth. When she's done....she throws the food to the dogs. And they LOVE it. Plus it makes having her at the table much easier. We try to eat dinner as a family every night (and mostly we do) so once she's done with her food we let her "play" with our food until we're done.
I think it also helps that we have her on a routine. After dinner we take her upstairs and she gets a bath. The only part she doesn't like about the bath is having to actually get clean. And since she "helps" us while she eats, she can tend to get VERY messy. I try to put her in the bath, wash her VERY quickly and then as a reward, she gets all of her toys dumped out. She takes great delight in picking out which bath toy to chew on. Our only problem in the bath is that Stellanne is a bouncing baby, which isn't safe for the bathtub, so we have to sternly warn her that she needs to stay on her bottom, and her response is to laugh at us. So after her bath we take her in her room and lotion her up and put on jammies. Recently we've been letting her choose the jammies, just because it amuses us. After she is all "ready" for bed, she goes and drinks some milk with Lisa, which while she doesn't eat that much, it does serve as a "slow" down routine. Plus I think Stellanne just really likes that bonding time (which is good because Lisa isn't ready to give it up). Afterwards, we read her a book, she is a big fan of Sandra Boyton. Which is nice because the other night I tried to read her "My First Shabbat book" And the reading went something like this.
On Friday nights we celebrate Shabbat. With Candles, Wine, Challah...and none of the other stuff pictured here. We celebrate Shabbat to be mindful that G-d made heaven and earth in 7 days and on the 7th day he rested. OH except we actually believe that the earth was made from the big bang theroy and we celebrate Shabbat to be reverent to G-d. (Lisa laughed at this one). On day one G-d made heaven and earth (but not really even though one could argue that because of their exsistance there is a G-d) On day 2 god make the earth and seas (which was more of a chemical reaction....) and so on until we got to And on day 6 G-d made man and man made woman (which lets be realistic....men are way to ego centric to make something that isn't exactly like them, so it was probably the other way around - except we believe in evolution anyways.....)On Saturday some Jews go to synogague (but not us) and after attending services they continue to rest (but not us, because we have chores to do) At sundown on Saturday we have a Havdalah cerimony (but not us, because really...we have a hard time even celebrating Shabbat in the first place) to say goodbye to Shabbat (sounds a little like a mental problem.....saying goodbye to a day) Lisa and I are terrible jews; but I guess as long as we teach Stellanne the reasons behind what we believe we'll be good reform Jews. My favorite Rabbi used to say that a lot. Reform Judiasim is an informed choice. We know what other people believe....we just don't belive it.
Okay so on to after the story, we get her bink and blanky and then turn out the light, then we rock (while she sings herself to sleep) and right before she's asleep we lay her in her bed (to teach self soothing). Sometimes (like tonight) she pretty much stays asleep, othernights she sits up and plays in her bed for 20 more minutes before falling forward and falling asleep. We usually have to go in and readjust. It's very cute. And oh so nice that she is sleeping through the night. Now we just have to work on sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday......