Category: Tabitha

I don't like to do these retrospectives on Tabby too often, but this photo just had to be shared. Our sweet girl turned 19 months old on Saturday and it reminded me that we're now closer to 2 than 1. I can hardly imagine what the next 5 months hold for her. The “new things” pile on so rapidly I can hardly keep track of everything.

Tabby continues to be quite the little chatterbug and regularly cracks us up with the funny things she says. My favorite recently occurred when she was happily gnawing on a piece of fruit leather and Loki came over to see if he could share. She normally is happy to share with him, but fruit leather is a big-time favorite of hers and she responded to his unwanted sniffs with a very firm “No! My cacka!!” (no, my cracker).

Physically she is at a very independent stage. She wants no help from us with stairs (or anything else) and runs and hops and does a funny little dance when she gets to wiggle after a long time in her car seat or stroller. Outdoors is still a favorite, but she now wants to be on her own feet and explore every inch the world on her own. She starts tumbling class in a couple of weeks and I predict it will be a big hit. The recommendation has been made for her to be moved to a big-girl bed by 2 years for safety reasons and I can see why. So Daddy is busily designing her a big-girl bed and getting ready to meet the March 2009 deadline.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy looking down into her crib and watching her sleep peacefully and pulling her blanket back up over her (again) while I still can. It's all gone way too fast.

Tabby's new word for the day yesterday was “Yuck!” Why? you might ask. The evening went along well enough to start. Typical and all … nap, dinner, walk, Tabby went to bed, Matt and I cleaned up and retired to various leisure activities. Around 8:30, about an hour and a half after Tabby had gone to sleep, I heard crying and coughing over the monitor. I also heard Matt going up the stairs, so I let him. Within a few seconds he relayed that Tabby had puked all over the place. He brought her into our bathroom where I cleaned her up and he started on the mess in her room. Once we were done, we went into help.

Tabby, apparently feeling somewhat better after the event was fascinated by the mess. “Yuck,” I told her repeatedly, so she wouldn't touch it. She giggled and pointed at the mess and said “Yuck!” about 10 times. We got it all cleaned up and put her back to bed and didn't hear a peep from her all night.

Since Matt has more vacation than I do, he'll be staying with her today. I hope it was just an isolated upset tummy incident and not a bug … but I guess only time will tell. Today she'll learn a new word, “Brat” as in Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast. 😛

Tabby's favorite thing right now, aside from running around like a crazy person, is to “see” what we are doing. Usually cooking things. Be it stirring or the rice cooker or whatever, she is always interested. This is cute but annoying, especially when we're making dinner. Chopping veggies is next to impossible when you're holding a squirming toddler.

Enter the Kitchen Helper. I felt like a dork spending $130 on it, but Matt said he couldn't make it for that much, so we went for it. It has been the best $130 spent EVER. Now we can make dinner happily with Tabby looking on and “helping.” There's a rail around the top, so she doesn't fall, and as she gets older it will be a great height for her to really get into the helping. This totally reads like a paid review, but it isn't and I really do love it … and so does Tabby.

Speaking of Tabby, I think I mentioned that she's been very cranky after she gets home from her sitter's lately. 2 hours of screaming and frustration (and eye rubbing) and then to bed at 7. So today we tried something new … I picked up Tabby early from her sitter's and we went home and had a nap together. We both enjoyed it and I was amazed at the improved mood she was in this evening. Happy, smiley, even FUN. Hopefully we can have a repeat performance once in a while anyhow.

I've got no idea where the time's gone. How is she 18 months old? It has gone by so so fast.

In the last couple of months, we've seen such huge changes in our girl. She is more of a little kid than ever. Her vocabulary is exploding with a new word every day, sometimes two! Our Hawaii trip was been a wonderful time for Matt and I to spend lots of time with her and I think she enjoyed it as much as we did. All of her most recently acquired words are associated with Hawaii. Shower (which sounds somewhat like shower), gecko (dead-on), sounds for both a chicken and a rooster, fishy (sounds like ISHY!), and I'm sure 10 others that I can't think of right now. She's also stringing a word or two together to address her greetings and farewells, as in “Hi Mama!” And, possibly my favorite thing, is her singing. She sings “Row Row Row Boat” then we fill in the next bit and then she does a sort of mumbly “merrily merrily merrily merrily” and then we finish up for her. She also fills in the E-I-E-I-Os and the animal sounds on Old McDonald. I will have to post a video of it sometime.

In physical development we've reached the stage of running and climbing. To the extent that we'll let her, she walks everywhere on her own and tests her boundaries as much as possible. Sometimes she totally freaks me out with her brazeness, but I remind myself that it's good to let her develop these skills while I'm around to catch and assist.

Her favorite thing to do right now is run around like a crazy baby, especially outdoors. Hawaii honed this passion to a fine point. She also loves mooching food of people, being read stories, “seeeee?”ing whatever it is the adults are doing and screaming if we're being “MEAN!”

She makes me laugh practically everyday. She makes me proud every day. And there's not a second that goes by that I don't feel incredibly blessed to be her mama.

What's going on?

• We have tied and will possibly break a 107 year old record here in Denver. 18 days of 90+ temperatures. 99 yesterday. At 7:30 when we were standing outside and the sun had already started dipping below the horizon, we were sweating bullets. I think it's scrambling my brain.
• Little sister finished taking the BAR EXAM yesterday. Unfortunately, she doesn't get her results until like October. That's barbaric.
• I ordered Tabby her own tent to take with us to Hawaii. It folds up into a 15″ round which was a big selling point for me, because it will fit in a suitcase whereas te pack and play? will not. Let's just hope she likes it.
• Matt gets back from his biznasss trip today. I like this for many reasons, but I am also glad because now we can resume the watching of the Heroes Season 1 box set.
• I've been working my butt off trying to get back into running after taking 4 wks off for bootcamp. It's been suprisingly easy, probably because I gained lots of muscle in bootcamp. But I've been doing all my running indoors on the treadmill, cuz I do not like heatstroke.
• After each hair-soaking workout, I have been whipping up one of these babies to give me a bit of protein and a LOT of cooldown.
• I mis-sequenced our automatic savings and our mortgage payments with my direct deposit of paycheck and overdrew by $437 yesterday. Oops. Today the account is back in the black. Wonder if they're going to ding me with a fee …
• The summer Olympics start in about a week! I'm an olympic junkie (though probably not as bad as my sister) and cannot WAIT to spend some QT watching swimming and gymnastics.
• Tabby pooped in the shower on Monday. It caused me to be 20 minutes late for a meeting owing to cleaning her and IT up and I swear … some of the funk is still lingering, despite many applications of BLEACH. But perhaps it's in my head.

Tabby turned 16 months old on July 4th. I will reiterate what every other mom on the planet says, “I can't believe how fast it's gone by!” And I can't. Wasn't she just the size of a loaf of bread what? yesterday?

I am thrilled at how well she's doing and I keep seeing her grow and change every day. She seems to know another new word every day (is this the language explosion they talk about??). Bubbles. Baby (with the sign). More (also with the sign). Pill (we say, “you're being a pill”). Papa. Grandma. Gaga (what she calls Kelly). Woof! Car. Banana. And on and on. She's also signing more and more … “please” is the big one she's using to her advantage.

She's also started babbling to people on the phone. Before she'd babble on her play phone when no one was there, but when we'd put a real phone to her with someone on the other end, she'd clam up. Now she's happy to babble on and on and on. It's damn cute.

She's mimicking us more and more too. She's picking up things off the floor, little pieces of paper, etc. and putting them in the trash. And she wants to walk on the treadmill all the time. And her newest request is to “see” whatever it is we're doing, cooking, reading, etc. and join in. And she's still every bit as affectionate as possible, giving kisses and hugs and patting whoever's holding her.

She's truly a joy to be around and I wish I had even more time to spend with her. It all goes by too fast. And even as I write this, I know I'm missing 100 things that I'd like to remember.

It was so nice to get away for a while. We went to Vail to hang out with the usual suspects plus my uncle's family and celebrate the forth in the newly renovated condo. We had a great time … playing Wii, chatting, listening to music, cooking, hiking, mountain biking, taking naps, etc. etc. So much fun.

Tabby was totally off her schedule. Naptime? Mealtime? What's that? She went to bed after 9 one night and before 6:30 another night. Naps were sketchy. Meals were frequently a series of snacks. But she had a wonderful time hanging with her grandparents, auntie, great aunt and uncle and second cousins. She had somone's attention the whole time and I don't envy her babysitter tomorrow!

Matt and I had fun hanging out with Tabby and having some freetime thanks to the many people who were willing and eager to play with Ms. Tabby. My mom and dad had her sleep in their room the whole weekend and it was even sweeter going to sleep listening to the sound of the creek knowing we could wake up on our own schedule!! I am so well rested it's amazing.

Now we're back home. Laundry is turning in the dryer. The kitchen cupboards are bare (save a TON of greens from our CSA share … again! grrrrrr), to be refilled tomorrow. And we're back to the grind. It all went by way too fast! Hope yours was lovely.

Yes, another extremely busy weekend has passed me by. 'tis sad, but true. What'd we do, you ask? This … and that. Errands, like always. We got our second CSA share on Thurs evening and now we have so many greens I have NO CLUE what to do with that they're about to spill out of the fridge. After work today I'm hitting the library to pick up two cookbooks that deal with farmer's market cooking. Hopefully that will jumpstart my imagination. Either that, or I'll be eating nothing but salads all summer.

Saturday we went to a family friend's wedding party. I call it that because they got married in Hawaii and this wasn't wedding or reception, but a shindig afterwards to celebrate. We had a very nice time … it was at a historical house with large grounds surrounding it and Tabby got to run amuck to her heart's content AND eat wedding cake. Really, does it get any better than that?

I actually put on make-up before the party which happens, literally, only about 10x/year (if that). So imagine my surprise when yesterday she took my blush brush out of the drawer in the bathroom and started brushing it on her cheeks! She repeated with a lipstick on her lips! It was sooo cute and really made me realize that I've got to be super careful what I do in front of her because after ONE TIME of seeing me apply makeup, she mimicked. Yikes. That's pressure, folks.

We also went hiking (just 2 hours this go-around), and running and tried to go to the pool. But big fat rain droplets started falling upon us as we arrived and so we went home. Tabby was so tired she could hardly stand up and she went to sleep BEFORE 5 PM last night. I had no idea if it would be a nap or a full night's sleep and I wasn't surprised when she woke up around 6:30. We hung out for a little while and then she wanted to go back into her room … I tried to read her a book, but about 2 pages in, she pointed to her crib, so I brought her over and she pointed again. I laid her down in it and she waved 'buh-bye' to me. I didn't hear from her again until 6:30 this morning.

Oh yea, we also had the most amazing breakfast EVER.

UPDATE: My mom reminded me that she's seen grandma put on makeup probably a dozen times before. So … clearly not the first time to see blush in action, but she did remember where I kept the makeup paraphernalia after only one iteration.