Picky Eater

I think we have a picky eater in the making. Kendall so far has loved all the food she tried, the first time she had it. But she no longer likes sweet potatoes. Jason and I were at some friends for dinner the other night and i had brought along a jar of baby food sweet potatoes for her. She started to get crabby cause she was hungry so i made up her food and started feeding it to her (when she gets lunch she has baby oatmeal and a fruit and dinner she has baby rice and a vegetable) the first couple bites she was OK with it and then after that she started making funny faces and would cry every time i stuck the spoon into her mouth. So I gave her a drink and she stopped crying and I went to feed her more and as soon as it was in her mouth she way crying again. I gave her a cheerio and she stopped crying, i put the spoon back in her mouth with more sweet potatoes and she started crying again. So needless to say i didn't finish giving them to her. She ended up having mashed potatoes (we had made for our dinner) and cheerios.


Last night for dinner she was doing the same thing with carrots. My dad was feeding her while i went on a short hike with my mom and sister. He was giving her green beans and carrots and rice. She gobbled down the green beans and rice but every time he tried to feed her carrots she would have a little fit. We only have so many baby food options so hopefully she doesn't get to picky. The funny part about it all is, the first time she had both sweet potatoes and carrots she loved them cause they are a little sweeter then the green vegetables and the squash. Pretty soon here in the next couple weeks she will get to try meat for the first time, that should be interesting to see how she reacts to that.

Cross your fingers!!

I went in this morning and had a meeting with the lady from the Early Head Start Program, Kendall has been accepted into the home-based program. She mailed me out a packet of information i had to fill out and then we went over everything this morning. We are approved to be put onto the waiting list for the center-based program we just have to wait until a spot is available. Currently there are 3 spots that have opened up and they were going to pick the kids today who get them, so cross your fingers she gets one.

How the waiting list works is, you fill out your paperwork and you go in and talk to the director and based on the information you tell her and the information you give on your paperwork, she gives you a score. The higher your score the higher you are on the list. The people at the top of the list have priority over the spots. They have openings come up every time kids graduate into the regular head start. While we wait for our spot, we will be on the waiting list but actively participating in the home-based program they offer.

In the home-based head start program, once a week a caseworker (not like child services or child support caseworkers) comes to your house, and they watch you interact with your kids and they teach you how to make homemade toys and suggest different activities they can do based on their age. I was sceptical about this at first for some reason i don't know but i think it will be a good thing. We have our first meeting this Wednesday.

In the center-based program, it is very similar to daycare but it is more educational and helps the babies out with their development skills. They feed them and help out with nutrition and help them learn new things, it is very interactive and with Kendall being such a busy body i think she will love it. So now we just have to sit and wait. If we get one of the spots I should hopefully hear something by the end of the week.

Disrespect

I have a really good friend who I don't get to see as often as I would like, she is busy with school and lives 3 hours from here and when she is home she is working. But this post isn't about her its about her sister. I wont name any names cause i don't want anyone to get mad, I don't think any of you know who it is anyways, but just for the story sake lets call her Sally).

Sally got pregnant a couple months after I did (she was only 18 at the time) and her son is almost 5 months old. You can tell she is a young scared mother by her actions, and she may even have some post partum depression. She lived out of town with her BF (who was not a good guy) while he went to school and she sat home and did nothing all day long while she was pregnant. When the baby was about 1 month old she finally got smart and left her BF and her mom found her a nice little house to live in and paid the rent for her even and she took that for granted. Her mom eventually maybe after a couple weeks told her if she wasn't going to ever be at the house she wasn't going to foot the bill for it. So Sally, found someone who was willing to take care of her child and let her live at her house for free all she had to do was pay for her gas to get to work. Yet again she took this for granted and went out and partied non stop, slept with random people (the way she is going she is going to get herself knocked up again) and went off for days on end without seeing or taking care of her son. She wouldn't go to work and now she has no job. Over time she kind of grew out of it. She still goes out regularly and who has her son I don't know cause the baby sitter eventually got smart and kicked her out (she now lives with her mom).

Getting to the point of my story, Sally is a avid Facebook user. She isn't one to make happy posts though, they for the most part are all pretty negative. The one in particular she made last night hit a nerve with me and i posted back (usually i just ignore them, and I have been seriously considering deleting her from my friends). She was talking about how much she hated her mom. I can see hating your mom if she abused you or was a deadbeat drug addict mom, who treated you terrible. But no her mom was a single mom, like herself , working as hard as she could to raise her daughter the right way as best as she could on her own. Lots of people commented on her post and she gets mad about what they say because they just don't understand. The post bothered me to the point that i had to post something even though she probably wont care about what i had to say. I told her: "There are times we are all mad at our moms but just remember..... If it wasn't for her you wouldn't be here and neither would your son. Think about how you would feel if he said the same thing about you." Her mom does not deserve to be treated this way after all the help she has given her and everything she does for her son.

As a mom, I don't even want to know the emotions her mother must be feeling to have your daughter say such hateful things about you, when all you have tried to do is make her the best person she can be and not only provide for her but provide for her son. In my personal opinion with how she acts I don't think she deserves to have her son. She may love him, but she does not take care of him and leaving him for days on end to party is not something a new mom does. There are so many people who would love to have him as a son and take care of him. This may seem a little harsh to some of you but if you knew her and saw and heard the things she said you would feel the same way.

I am sorry if this offends anyone in anyway but it is my opinion on the situation.

Discipline

I watch the Today show every morning when i am getting ready for work, well its more like listening from the bathroom down the hall and when i hear a story that catches my interest i go watch it. One of the ones this morning was about a lady who rather harshly I think disciplined her son for lying to her, and there was video of it, I have no clue how they had it. She would give him cold showers and make him drink hot sauce, not just put a drop on his tongue she would literally pour it down his throat. They are trying to send this lady to jail. But It makes me wonder. It makes you think about all the different styles of punishment out there. I am not completely opposed to spanking, I don't think of it as abuse but i am not going to do it for no reason, she would have to have done something pretty bad to deserve a spanking. There is a difference between swatting your child on the behind for doing something wrong and beating them for doing something wrong. When did spanking get turned into such a bad thing? The lady above is taking things to the extreme side, no child deserves to be treated that way. Is time out more effective, yes it could be if your child is throwing a tantrum and needs to calm down.

I think each parent has the right to choose how they want to discipline their children. But they also should know the difference between disciplining and hurting them. You are the only one who can tell yourself how it should be done and if there are 2 parents it should be done equally as a team.

Spitting up

Apparently I have a few different subjects to talk about today, that must happen when you don't get the chance to blog as often as you want. Let me tell you I love blogging and i love reading other peoples blogs, it is very entertaining. One of the first things i like to do when i get onto the computer in the morning is log into blogger and go check to see what blogs have new blogs to read.

Anyways.....back to the subject at hand. When Kendall was a baby she spit up a lot pretty much every time she ate. It was very frustrating cause i couldn't eat anything with a lot of spice or acid cause it affected her. So once she quit being so picky about what she ate and not liking bottles i switched her over to formula so she could have the consistency and I hoped it would make her stop spitting up as much. It didn't really happen though, she still did it quite a bit but as much as before and it was nice being able to eat whatever i felt like again. Now at 6 months old she hardly ever does it, which is such a relief cause i am not having to change her clothes or my own at least once a day because of spit up. Its also nice not having to clean it off of me in the middle of the night. I don't even have burp her anymore she does it all on her own if she needs to. Also it helps now that she is not just drinking her dinner she is also eating real food too.

A lot of babies spit up and it is because the opening at the bottom of their stomach is so small it cant contract correctly and they can't digest all their food properly causing them to spit up. Other times its cause they burp and some milk comes out with the burp, projectile vomiting i cant explain but let me tell you its not pleasant cause it gets everywhere. As they grow older the muscles learn to contract better and once they grow longer the opening stretches out a little more. Most babies grow out of it about the time they are 6 months old but there are a few exceptions where they don't. I know some people who have an 11 month old and she still throws up every single time she eats, they have taken her to specialists but they still have not come to any conclusions yet, poor baby girl. It was very frustrating to me when she did it all the time and I am very grateful she has grown out of it that i can only imagine how hard it must be for them, everyday for the last 11 months they have had not one break from throwing up. I am so thankful for my happy healthy baby girl and so grateful I have been blessed with such a good baby. I am off to start on the mountain of laundry that has accumulated from the week, until next time.

Date Night

The other evening Jason and I got to go out to dinner and have a few hours to ourselves. My sister had watched Kendall all day while i was at work and then said she would watch her a little longer if we wanted to go to dinner. So we went out and had us some dinner and it was very nice to just get a couple hours together alone cause it very rarely happens, so when it does it is very nice. We went out and had an early dinner of chinese and then went home and just relaxed for a bit before we had to get Kendall. So it was only a couple hours but it was still very nice just to have that little bit of time to each other. We have been so busy this summer with enjoying the warm weather and the camping and travelling we just haven't had enough time in the week to do everything. Once fall comes and things start to wind down it will be easier to have more time to go out on "dates" and spend time with each other while Kendall gets to spend time with a babysitter. I can't even begin to explain how much more relaxed I am when I get a little bit of time to myself, I am hoping it gets to happen a little more once things have settled down for the fall and winter.

Crawling Machine

I still think she is a little young but Kendall is so close to crawling, she can get herself up onto her hands and knees and once she gets up she starts to rocking but can't quite go anywhere yet. Every now and then she will push her legs and propel herself forward but she doesnt have the coordination yet to get her hands and feet moving at the same time so she usually just falls down. She will be scooting herself along the floor before we know it.

Lately she has been super crabby, she is getting a tooth in and i think its going to be the end of the world before it finally gets here. It is hurting her to the point of where she is not taking her afternoon nap. She will fall asleep and nap for about a half hour and then she wakes up and doesnt want to play unless she is sitting in your lap. She just wants to be held and its making me crazy. I wish it would just push through and let her be happy again. Two days in a row it has been like this, the first day wasnt as bad as yesterday cause she was still rested from the day before. Yesterday was harder cause she was so tired from being awake all afternoon the day before and she was just to exhausted. Hopefully today after a good nights sleep last night she will not be so crabby or clingy, usually she is very independant. She has still been taking her morning nap just fine its the afternoons that she is being bothered the most. I am hoping today is a better day for her, so far she seems to be pretty happy but its not the afternoon yet.

6 Month Doctor Visit

Kendall had her 6 month check up today even though she has been 6 months for about a week and a half. She had to get more shots and she toughed it out only crying from the initial shock of a needle getting stuck into her poor little (chunky) leg 3 separate times, once i picked her up she stopped. Normally she wouldn't have to go back to the Doctor until she is a year old but since she missed one of her shots at her 1 month appointment (they were out of the vaccine) she has to go back at 9 months and get the final dose.

Her doctor is very impressed with how independent she is and how she is advanced for her age in being able to sit up on her own (for a month she has been able to) and how she can hold her own bottle and stand with you holding onto her hands. Kendall was such a busy body while we were there, she wouldn't let the doctor listen to her cause she was to busy trying to eat the stethoscope, looking in her ears was a challenge, i had to hold her down and looking in her mouth was a lost cause, as soon as she saw the tongue depressor it was just another toy to her and it went straight to her mouth for her to chew on.

She can now expand her food selection by a lot. She has only had rice and baby food veggies. I haven't given her any fruit yet cause i wanted her to be used to the vegetables before i introduced her to fruit. But she not is going to be able to have the crushed baby oatmeal, noodles with no sauce, some fruits, cooked carrots and really any other vegetables as long as they are soft enough for her to gum. In about a month she will be able to start eating pureed meats (doesn't that sound yummy??). Maybe tonight I will try to feed her something fun and see what her reaction is.

She still wakes up about 2-3 times a night mostly because it has become a habit for her, so now i have to try to break her of it. Instead of feeding her a full bottle every time I just need to feed her until she is back to sleep. She should only be waking up about 1 time a night to eat, so to break her of this habit, the first time she wakes up i will just feed her a little but until she is back to sleep and then the second time she wakes up i will feed her a whole bottle and that should hopefully last her until she wakes up for the day. It should take a few days to a week to get her to where she is only waking up once a night, i might have to make her cry it out a few times until she knows that she is not going to starve cause she will get fed. Hopefully someday she will decide to sleep through the night, it would be great to get a full night of sleep again. I don't think it has happened once in the last 6 months. Wish me luck!!!

Crying it out

I think the time has come for Kendall to cry it out she is now 6 months old and still getting up 2-3 times a night to eat and it should only be 1 time. The only thing i can think of to resolve this is letting her cry it out. It is not going to be fun listening to her scream especially in the middle of the night but her night time schedule needs to be more consistent. During the day she does really well with her schedule she eats and naps about the same time, but at night it is a whole different story. Last night for example she went to bed at 8:30 and by the time i was ready to go to bed a couple hours later i went in the room and she was awake in bed. I had to put her in the swing and give her a bottle to go back to sleep, she had only ate 2 hours earlier so there was no reason for her to want to eat again. Then she also got up at 2 and 5:30. She needs to learn how to go to sleep on her own in the crib instead of in the living room in the swing. Sometimes usually if it is really late she will go to sleep in her bed fine but if she isn't entirely ready to go to bed at bedtime (around 8:30) she will just roll around in the crib and then eventually start crying. So hopefully this weekend or the beginning of next week (we might be going camping this weekend) we will be starting to let her cry it out.

Listening to her cry doesn't bother me a lot until its been a long time and let me tell you she can cry forever it seems. Also if she is going to be starting daycare soon (still haven't heard back from Head Start by the way) she needs to be able to put herself to sleep when it is nap time. So wish us luck on our journey to sleeping through the night, cause i am ready to be doing that again.

6 Months

6 Months

Brand spanking new

I can't believe it has been 6 months since Kendall was born, time has gone by way to fast. It is the most unbelievable experience getting to watch her grow and learn each and everyday. I couldn't imagine a life without her. She is so happy all the time and it is wonderful. She definitely makes Jason and I proud to be her parents.

Hi There!!!

Kendall can't crawl yet but she sure likes to stand. She will only hold on for a few seconds before she falls over, but when she is standing she is so happy she will just smile and giggle like its the greatest thing in the world. She just barely learned to sit up on her own and now she already wants to stand. She is trying to grow up way to fast. This Sunday she will be 6 months old, time is going by faster then i want it to. Before I know it, it will be time to plan her 1st birthday party.

Early Head Start

I had been kind of delaying it for a while even though I should have filled out the application before Kendall was even born, but I didn't. Our paperwork is now in the process of being evaluated to see if we qualify for Kendall to go to the Early Head Start program here in Hamilton. It is income based, so hopefully based on my income for the last year (July 2010 to July 2011) we qualify. I should hear back soon. If we qualify then we will be put on the waiting list to get a spot at the center, she said there should be an opening within the next month. Cross your fingers cause if we don't get in Jason and I have to shell out approx. $500 a month for daycare, that is a lot!!!! Since when did daycare get so expensive???? If you break it down, it comes out to about $30 a day. I don't know how people do it who have 2 or 3 kids. Even if they cant go one day for being sick you still get charged. I even know of one place who charges for holidays so they can pay their employees that day, which does seem fair to the employee but seriously?
Jason doesn't work everyday (especially in winter when there is very little construction) I think it would be silly of us to send her to daycare on days he is at home, when we are paying for daycare. The only problem with this is, I cant find a daycare that only charges you the days you attend. So even if he was home watching her we would still have to pay for that day because it is one of the days she is signed up for. It doesn't make sense to me, but if we don't qualify for the head start we have to find a place that will work with us.