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Month: February 2006

8 Months

Dear Zachary,

When I think of you these days only one word comes to mind.  Amazing.  You amaze me on a daily basis.  Every time I turn around you are doing something that I didn’t know you could do.  You are eight months old today, 2/3 of the way through your first year, and I can’t believe how quickly it has passed.

s41101cb103617_4_0It has been so much fun to watch you grow and learn this month.  You started crawling last month, but this month you really perfected it.  You can move faster on your hands and knees than I can on my feet most of the time.  We had to invest in some baby gates to keep you confined to the living room.  If I put you down and turn around for even a second you manage to get into something you aren’t supposed to be in.  I decided that you must really like to hear mommy yell because everytime you manage to get into the kitchen you go straight for the cat food bowl and dump it out.  You also have quite a fondness for mommy’s book shelves and computer cord.  They seem to be your favorite toys.

When you aren’t crawling around wreaking havoc, you are usually pulling yourself up and reaching for things that I thought would be far out of your reach for some time yet.  It is officially time for all of my pretty stuff to be put away, as well as anything else that falls below the three foot level that you can get your hands on.  Pretty much anything that you can touch will end up either in your mouth or on the floor.  The word “no” is becoming much more frequent in my vocabulary and I think you are starting to learn what it means even though you usually just turn around and laugh when I say it.

s41101cb103617_18With Alicia’s help at day care you are finally taking more consistent naps and going to bed much easier.  Instead of nursing and rocking you to sleep, I now just have to put you in bed, turn on the mobile and in about two minutes you are asleep.  Sometimes you cry a little bit, but the last few days you haven’t even cried when I put you down. 

I still haven’t figured out how to get you to sleep through the night though.  It will seem like you are making some progress, sleeping 5-6 hours before you wake up, and then you’ll start waking up every two hours again.  You did sleep all the way through the night one night.  I woke up in a panic at 6:30 in the morning because I hadn’t heard from you all night.  Just so I didn’t worry too much you woke me up at least once every hour the next night.  I can’t even tell you how much I appreciated that.  I’m not sure what I did right that one night that you decided to sleep, but if you could clue me in that would be great.

s41101cb103617_10The other area where you have me completely flabergasted is when it comes to food.  You have always been a very good eater since you started on foods.  I recently started giving you some soft table foods and finger foods.  You really seem to enjoy feeding yourself.  You have become a lot more coordinated over the last few weeks and whatever is in your hand almost always gets to your mouth now.  You are also finally figuring out how to drink from a sippy cup.  What I can’t figure out is that sometimes you want to feed yourself and other times you get mad when I don’t spoon feed you every bite.  Sometimes you just don’t want to eat at all, which I really don’t understand because I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that feeling of not wanting to eat.  Momma and Daddy love to eat and we just assumed that you had inherited that from us. 

Some of your favorite foods that we have discovered are spagetti and meat sauce, goldfish, Gerber veggie crackers, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and pretty much any kind of fruit.  You have grown really tired of eating oatmeal for breakfast so we started exploring some other options.  Your favorite breakfast these days consists of Cheerios and about 1/3 of a banana.  You love it and it makes it much easier on me because you can feed yourself.

s41101cb103617_16You really seem to enjoy learning about your mouth and all of the fun things it will do.  You started clicking your tongue last week and laugh whenever someone clicks back at you.  You also have started to smack your lips together like you are kissing which I find to be absolutely adorable.

I haven’t mentioned it yet because I wanted to save the best for last, but my heart totally and completely melted when you finally started saying “Mama” last week.  You started saying “Dada” just before Christmas.  Then somewhere along the way you figured out how to say “bubba,” then “Mama,” and just in the last few days you are working on “nana.”  You seem to really know what Dada and Mama mean and when you get mad you usually scream “Mamamamamamamamama” which is ok, but could you please yell at Dada a little bit too?  I’m sure it can’t always be my fault!

s41101cb103617_14I still can’t believe how fast you are growing.  At 8 months old you are already wearing 18 months size in clothes.  You weigh 22 pounds now and have definitely surpassed your cousin Ryan who is almost 7 months older than you.  People are always surprised when I tell them how old you really are.

Daddy and I have been talking lately about how we wish we could have another tiny little baby to hold.  You are growing up so fast and we already miss those days when you would just cuddle up in our arms and sleep for hours.  Each day with you now is a completely new experience.  You are constantly changing and it is so much fun to watch.  I am so proud of you and everything you have accomplished already.  You are truly my inspiration for everything these days.  I love you so very, very much.

Love,
Mama

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FYI

For anyone that may have my old gmail adress, I have now changed it.  I chose that name before I was really using this site and now it just doesn’t make sense anymore.  You can now reach me at voicesinmymind at gmail dot com.  If you are one of the select few that have my other address, that one still works too.

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Validation

I think I just realized what is missing from my marriage.  Validation.  Validation of my thoughts, my wants, and my needs. 

Lastnight hubby and I were watching TV for a few minutes after finally getting Zach to bed.  I made some comment about what we were watching (which I cannot even remember now) and turned to hubby waiting for a response. 

I stared at him for about a minute or so while he stared at the TV and waited.  Nothing.  Dead air.  Finally I said, "…and you wonder why I never talk to you anymore."  He then said, "I heard you."  So then we got into a big argument about why he didn’t give me any kind of response.  He didn’t have an answer for that which just irritated me even more.

A few minutes ago I was reading a comment on one of my posts and I realized why it bothered me so much that he did not respond back to me.  I was waiting for validation of what I had said.  It really didn’t matter what he said back.  I just wanted to know that he thought about what I said.  I wanted to know that what I said mattered to him.  But, apparently, it didn’t.

The more and more I think about it, I think this may be the cause for many of the issues in our marriage.  Don’t get me wrong, we are pretty happy together, but we have our ups and downs.  Lately there have been a lot of downs but we are trying to work on it.  I’m not putting all of the blame on him either.  I’m sure I’m just as guilty of this as he is.  In fact, I know I am.  I blow him off all the time when I don’t feel like discussing what he wants to discuss.  I guess this just gives me something new to work on.

This blogging thing just started out as a fun way to pass time, but it may have just given me the answer that I’ve been searching for for quite a long time.  I love reading the comments on my blog because they totally validate the feelings that I am trying to express.  Perhaps all along I’ve been finding here what I’ve been missing at home.

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Unrelated Random Thoughts

  • I do my best writing in my head during my drive to work in the mornings.  My head is not clouded with all of the happenings of the day.  I am actually alone.  I can choose to have silence or listen to music.  What I do in my car usually sets the mood for the day.  Most of the things I write about here come from my thoughts during my drive.  The only problem is that 9 times out of 10 they are forgotten before I have a chance to write them out.
  • Hubby was watching a movie the other day where a woman gave birth and they showed her holding her newborn right after.  He said that it almost made him want to have another one already to remember what it felt like to hold your baby for the first time.  For the rest of the night I could think of nothing but those first few days with Zach and how wonderful it felt to hold him in my arms.  I wonder if it will feel the same when we have a second child as it felt with the first.  The original plan was to start trying for number 2 when Zach is about a year old, but now we’re thinking we might have to hold off until the finances are in better shape.  If it weren’t for day care costs there would be no issue.  I desperately wish I could figure out a way to work from home and still pay the bills.
  • Work has been stacking up lately and I just can’t motivate myself to get anything done.  I can complete a little project here and there, but it seems like when I need to work on the big projects I just freeze up.  I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I just don’t want to be here.  I have thought and thought and thought about looking for a new job, but it just doesn’t make any sense for me to leave.  A new job would almost definitely mean a cut in pay and probably a huge cut in benefits and I just can’t afford to do that right now.  Everything that I am finding that I could qualify for is at least $5000 less a year than what I’m making and that just won’t work.  I feel so stuck.  But, at least I know my baby will eat and have diapers.
  • Drinking almost a 1/2 gallon of tea before 10:30 in the morning is not such a good idea.  I think there will be a path on the carpet between my desk and the restroom by the end of the day.
  • I finally got my little Media Manager plug-in working (over there –> on the sidebar) so that I can now easily update what I am listening to.  I love music and sharing my new finds with other people, but I’m not a music critic and not very good at writing about it.  So now I can just link to the cds I’m listening to and if you are interested, you can check them out.
  • In the very little amount of free time I have I’ve been working on my personal web site, which I might have mentioned before.  I’m trying to switch over to running the entire site on WordPress, which means I really have to learn some php.  Hubby got me a couple of books on php for my birthday and every time I start trying to read them I start falling asleep.  The content isn’t really that boring for a geek like me, but it’s hard to read when you aren’t getting any sleep.  I went ahead and used a pre-made template for the blog layout to speed things up, but I really want to be able to do some editing on it and add a couple of new pages.  And, maybe, just maybe, when I finish that one I’ll start tackling the layout of this site.
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The Weekend That Was

There was a time in my life when sitting at home on a Saturday was about the worst thing I could think of.  I would always try to find something to do.  If nothing else, I would go shopping, go to a movie, or at least go out for dinner.  Somewhere along the way, my priorities totally changed.  My weekends are so busy anymore that I rarely ever have a chance to stay home on Saturdays.  But, somehow, the planets aligned just right this weekend and I actually stayed home for a whole entire day.

That may not seem like such a big deal to most people.  But, if you are still kind of a new mom who has a 9-5 job during the week, a family to feed, diapers to buy, a baby to take care of who is starting to have a little separation anxiety, a husband who hates (and pretty much refuses) to run errands (unless it involves food, but not grocery shopping), and are desperately trying to hold on to the small semblance of the social life you used to have, it is a big deal.  There is always something I have to do or somewhere I have to go on the weekends.  I have to really schedule things right in order to have a whole day at home.

Friday night we did our obligatory night at our friends’ house so that the boys could jam on their guitars and M and I could have our girl-talk time.  I was a little squeamish having Zach over there because their youngest had been sick all week, but they promised that the whole house had been covered in Lysol before we arrived and that the sick one was quarantined to her bedroom for the night.  But, so far, we have no signs of illness so I’m pretty sure he’s ok.  Plus, I really enjoyed the girl-talk time. 

Saturday, as I might have mentioned, we stayed home.  I did send Hubby out to pick up some lunch (because I pushed grocery shopping to Sunday and there was very little food in our house).  Hubby even got up with the baby and let me sleep in until 9:30!  Since Zach is finally old enough that he can entertain himself for a while, I sat down with my computers (yes, I was using 2 at the same time) and worked on my personal website on my laptop while I worked on ripping my cd’s to my desktop (so that hopefully sometime in this century I will finally get some music on that mp3 player that Hubby got me).  The website is coming along nicely, but I’m pretty sure it will take me another year or so to finish with all the cd’s if I don’t run out of hard drive space.  Around 5:30 I put away the computers, fixed some dinner, got Zach settled in for the night and then sat down with Hubby to watch a movie. 

All-in-all it was a very nice day for me.  But the best part happened that night.  Zach slept ALL NIGHT LONG.  I woke up at 6:30 Sunday morning panicking because he hadn’t woken up yet.  I totally had myself convinced that there was something wrong with him but I was too afraid to go check.  After laying there for about 20 minutes with my heart racing, I finally heard a little cry in the baby monitor and jumped up to go rescue him.

Sunday was a pretty normal day for us, except that I had pushed back the grocery shopping and diaper/formula/baby food shopping trip so I still had those to do.  We stayed at my dad’s house much longer than usual after lunch because Zach fell asleep just as we were about to leave and since he hadn’t had a morning nap I didn’t want to wake him up.  By the time we left there and I did my two shopping trips, it was almost 7:00.  Then I still had to go home, unload the car, put everything away, fix dinner, do dishes, give Zach a bath, and do some laundry before bed time.  Needless to say it was a pretty hectic evening.  So, of course, when I finally got to bed, Zach decided he was ready to wake up.  I had high hopes that he would sleep through the night again but it didn’t happen.  He was awake about every 2 hours all night long.  I’m feeling a bit like a zombie today.  Too bad my boss didn’t give us the day off for President’s Day.

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The Word That Melted My Heart

Sometimes you just don’t know how things are going to hit you.  I headed home lastnight as usual, picked Zach up from day care, drove home, went inside, and started getting ready for dinner.  I put Zach in the highchair with some snacks while I got his food ready.  I was talking and playing with him as I moved around the kitchen and stopped by to give him a little kiss on the cheek.  As I turned away from his chair, he belted out "Mama!" 

I turned back around to see him and he proceeded to yell out "Mamamamamamamamama!"  Seriously, the kid has been saying "Dada" since Christmas and I was getting a little tired of it all.  He did say "Mama" a couple of weeks ago, but I think it was purely an experiment with sounds.  This time, he knew what he was saying. 

I know they say that babies don’t associate words and meanings, but my kid is smart and he knows what he’s saying.  When Hubby walks into the room he says "Dada" and this morning every time I walked away from him he would say "Mama". 

Do you have any idea how hard it is not to just swoop him up and smother him in kisses when he calls out to me?  Maybe I’m making a big deal out of it, but every time I hear him say it, it just makes my heart melt.  It is so nice that he now has a word to use instead of crying when he wants me!

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