adjusting

life with a baby is all about adjustments. adjusting your sleep habits, adjusting your expectations on personal hygiene, adjusting your house cleaning schedule, etc. my latest adjustment seems to be a bit of a milestone.

since nissa has been eating more and more solid foods, she's been eating less milk. i noticed it on weekends that i'd only nurse 4 or 5 times during the day, down from nearly 10 times a day when she was still a wee thing. i'm so excited, by the way, that i've been able to keep up my supply this whole time and breastfeed as long as i have; i think both of us are benefiting from it. anyways, less demand means fewer pumping sessions at work! so i'm down to one pump at noon and it feels great. i'm tentative about cutting back, but the supply seems to be holding steady, so that is reassuring.

i'm trying a little hard to adjust my activity levels. free time during the day is almost unheard of, so i'm trying to sneak in other ways to be active. i was not one of those breastfeeding moms that magically lost all kinds of weight by just nursing/pumping. i've lost about 5 pounds and have a good 15 more to go to get back to where i started, 25 more to get to where i'd like to be. of course, i'd do best if i had a regular schedule, but our lives right now won't allow for that, so i've got to make do with snatching up time where i can. one day i'll even get gibson out on walks on a semi-regular basis!

we've all had to adjust to nissa's increasing speed. nissa can get from one end of the room to the other in no time flat. just this week, she was behind the couch by adam, i got up to go to the bathroom and almost stepped on her coming around the couch. she had covered all that ground in a matter of seconds! last night adam thought she was behind him, only to discover her by me. part of me dreads her taking her first steps- if she moves fast now, what then?

speaking of walking, every day she gets a little closer to taking a step. nissa will stand, not holding onto anything, for growing lengths of time. she kind of bends her knees a little (reminds me of a sumo) but stands for so long!! just last night, though, i think she was giving serious consideration to taking a step. she got to standing between the coffee table and the couch and was reaching toward the couch, but it was just out of reach. you could see the little gears turning, her reaching just so, and i was just waiting for it. she eventually gave up and slowly, gracefully lowered herself to sitting. there's something she did NOT get from me- grace. hee hee.

lately i've been obsessed with this "o" face nissa has been making. sometimes she'll make "o" noises too, so i've been trying to focus that new skill into "what does santa say?" "ho ho ho". it just may work. unfortunately, though, i think it may be a face in response to some discomfort from her new teeth on top. she was making her face while crying last night (and refusing to sleep, of course), so i'm not sure. either way, it's super cute.

party girl

last night we went to our friends' house for a pumpkin carving party. nissa came along and it went pretty well, despite the combo of beer and carving. . .

we are constantly counting our lucky stars on how pleasant our little girl is. as it got later (bed time is usually 9 and we left about midnight) she got antsy, but nothing just letting her crawl around a bit didn't fix. she was probably just antsy from being held so long! she was curious about the kitty and the kitty handled the curiosity well, even letting nissa touch her face a little before relocating.

one of our fellow party goers commented to adam that he looks really happy. it was such a heart-warming comment and really opened my eyes to it- adam looks genuinely happy when he's around nissa (or even just talking about her, for that matter). adam's neutral face is very neutral, maybe even a little sad, so it's a significant thing for him to 'look' happy without laughing or anything obvious like that. it's a beautiful thing to see the joy that she brings to him. even just before the party, we got a little later start that we had planned because they were enjoying each other's company on the couch. i had put nissa on adam's belly on the couch to get some things together. nissa was very cuddly and playful and it was so sweet to see them just being daddy and baby together.

man, sometimes that kid is just too cute.

one "step" closer

adam claims to have seen nissa take a step, then either fall or choose to sit.

again, i haven't seen it, so i'm skeptical.

but last night we both witnessed something notable. we were downstairs on the couch and nissa climbed up to standing next to the coffee table. she reached over for her sippy (the non-handled one, i'm pleased to say, which she can maneuver just fine) and used both hands to take a sip. she stood the whole time (knees bent, but not squatting) and we both just stared for what seemed like forever. she put the cup back on the table then sat down and crawled off.

it was nothing if not impressive!

too cute with gibson

so yesterday after work, i let nissa roam the upstairs floors while i worked in the kitchen. she spent most of the time digging around her stuffed animal bin in her room:

but sometimes she'd wander out to explore. in her bin o' toys, there was gibson's old puppy kong. he likes to take it, chew it, then leave it somewhere for you to toss or otherwise give back to him. yesterday, when he'd leave it on the floor for something else, nissa would crawl over to it, sit down and pick it up, holding it out for gibson to take. she'd hold it in his general direction and everything. it was so amazing to watch her figure this out on her own: she knows it's for gibson and so she gives it to him. i'm so impressed.

i'm impressed too by our eating as a family the last few weeks. with nissa eating a meal at the same time as we eat dinner, i always try to eat with her. lately, though, we've been eating (the 3 of us) at the dining room table like a family. it's pretty nifty. i plan to instill good eating habits with nissa and i think eating as a family together will help make that happen. i have to say i LOVE the new "my little seat" i got for her for traveling. it's essentially a fabric booster seat that you tie onto a regular chair that, combined with a phone book or 2, serves as a high chair for nissa and she can sit right at the table. since it's fabric, it folds down into this tiny little package- great for traveling and easy to toss in the wash when it gets messy. with it set up in the dining room, she eats "with" us and i don't have to drag the high chair back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room. i love the high chair in the kitchen too much to leave it in the dining room full time.

i think it's cute how we assign/take credit for the little things that nissa does. adam claims her affinity for climbing the steps, since he was a climber as a child. i reluctantly take credit for her ability to keep going after bumping her head so many times (not the bumping, just the resilient nature to not let it phase her). we had to retire the bumbo for a recent evening of head bumps. she likes to climb into/around it, getting herself into some precarious positions. the other day she managed to do a face-plant out of it. she shook that off in a heartbeat and went right back to climbing on the bumbo. not 3 minutes later she got herself in a different awkward position that led to her falling backwards. this, she was not too fond of and started crying. amusingly enough, when she cries from falling, she does not want to be comforted with a hug or any such cuddly business; she usually cries more. i find picking her up, a quick consoling word or kiss then plunking her back down is the best course of action. she's quick to forget her bad experience by returning to climbing, walking, etc.

one other amusing thing of note: nissa has 2 toys she plays with, the walker toy (featured in another post) and a ball bopper. both have holes where the balls go. both end up stuck with random bits in them. for example, her walker toy has 3 balls and 3 shapes (flower, star, triangle). one day i couldn't find the triangle and looked all over for it. turns out it was stuck in the ball popper. it took some effort, but i got it out. another time i found my milk pads stuffed in the ball bopper because they were in a bin of clean laundry i was folding. once i found her fish teether wedged into the walker toy. that was tricky. it's gotten to the point that if we're looking for something, to check those two places.

scaled the steps!

so, while adam stepped away last night, nissa and i had an adventure. she, yet again, crawled off toward the back of the basement. instead of letting her get to the way back (she loves the dog's bowls) i directed her attention toward the stairs. with a little spotting, she climbed them all! it may be my imagination, but i like to think she enjoyed it and is appreciating the different perspective on places she usually sees from up high. we plan to baby-proof more of the house, so she has more room to roam. she sure does cover some ground when she wants to!

p.s. i've since video-ed her in action:

ugh. monday.

here i am at monday again. another weekend gone by too fast. it was fun, granted, and somewhat productive, but gone too fast.

we had the wonderful opportunity to host a surprise party for our friend karl saturday night. he turned 30 with little fanfare, so we helped his fiance host a party 2 weeks after the fact to change that. we had a modest crowd for the surprise (and he was surprised!) and a fair number of folks stop by throughout the evening, so it was a success. we even resurrected my 30th birthday party theme of "muppets and martinis" to rave reviews. we showed episodes of the muppet show and offered a menu of 6 or so different martinis based on characters (miss piggy was a cosmo, kermit was an appletini, sam the eagle was a classic martini). i was so impressed that our guests actually ventured out and tried some of the lesser-known ones, like fozzy's honey martini. we got lots of compliments on our home, our bar, our dog, even our baby. nissa stayed home that evening and hung out till about 11. she crawled around, ate fried rice and played with fabian and nancy, and otherwise enjoyed herself as much as a 10 month old can. i put her to bed, but about an hour later she was back up and crying, refusing to go back to bed. i brought her back downstairs and we hung out some more. she wasn't fussy and i was ok with having her up, but by 1:30 all of our guests had gone home. adam's convinced nissa's presence scared everyone off. i hope not, but wouldn't be surprised. she's a baby, she'll be fine. don't worry!

and she was fine. we all slept in till about noon and she took a solid 2.5 hour nap later that day and was in bed by 10 (a little late, but not bad), very close to her usual bed time. she wasn't cranky or tired either, much to our relief. nissa even showed off a new trick yesterday; almost scaring me half to death. while i was scrambling around trying to find my cell phone, i wasn't paying as close attention to her as i should. adam was helping me, so also not paying attention to nissa. after a few minutes i look around and see her standing on the first stair to go upstairs, reaching around to scale the next step. i was impressed and petrified at the same time, but i did my best to put on a happy face and fetch her from the stairs as quickly as i could manage. unfortunately, now the stairs are all she aims for if she's on the floor in the basement.

since nissa is so mobile lately, i think we're going to try and take advantage of the clean house and make more of the house available to her for maneuvering. sure, there's no way to 100% baby proof a house, but i think we can make a good effort and at least open up more of the upstairs to her, so she can roam about while i'm in the kitchen at least. we'll see.