yackety yack

Indulge me in some bragging this morning.

My weekly Baby Center email arrived the other day

Your 14-month-old: Week 3

"Ball," "dog," and "bye" may be your child's favorite — and only — words at this point, though some early talkers may have as many as 20 words in their vocabulary.

And I thought... 20? Ha! Kiernan says more than 20. So we started writing them down, just as a record of what he could do at this age. And lucky you, I'm sharing ;)

ball
soother
bottle
shoe
sock
door
car
bus
tv

mommy
daddy
grampa/papa
mom

eye
nose
mouth
teeth
chin
bum
toes

pasta
banana

kitty
duck
dog
puppy
kitty
cat
bear
book

moo
neigh
baa
boo
meow

more
up
down
no
peek
row
wow
oh boy
go go go
dodo
night night
boom
poo
all done/gone
buh-bye
santa
hi
it's a
the
whee
ding ding
beep
home

58 words - that we could think of ;)

On another happy note, finally heard from the doctor and K screened normal on the sweat test - so no Cystic Fibrosis. I never really let myself believe he could possibly have it so it wasn't an enormous relief, just a nice confirmation.

Happy Thursday!

Automatic no starts very young

I know a lot of men, ok maybe not just men, who have an automatic no. Anything you ask them gets a negative answer until you talk it through a bit more. Eric apparently was like this as a toddler so I guess it isn't surprising Kiernan has inherited this trait :)

"Kiernan, did you knock over that toy?"
"no"
"Kiernan, do you need a bum change?"
"no"
"Do you always answer in a negative fashion?"
"no"
Dora: Do you see a sign?
Kiernan: no
Dore: pause..... Right! There it is! ;)

They're generally questions you know he doesn't understand, he just knows it's a question and that no seems to be the right way to respond. CRACKS US UP!

There's a new contest over at the Apples'n'Oranges blog - go check it out!

Test results

are still not in! BOO! Even though I thought I'd have them by the end of last week.

Lucky for me, I've managed to not let it worry me at all. I'm irritated, but not worried. Hopefully rightfully so!

Not so fun for the little trooper

Our morning at CHEO went pretty well.... although not a fan of the 5 minutes of electrodes buzzing on his arm, Kman got through it pretty well. He then got to run around the hospital for half an hour while his sweat got collected in an interesting little contraption strapped to his arm. There was a bit of blue dye on the contraption which turned the sweat blue. There didn't seem to be alot in there at the end of the 30 minutes, but it was enough - so yay!
Then we had to have the blood test. They took a lot of blood! :( Two full vials. That'd be like, 20 vials for me! Maybe. I think. Anyways, it sucked and he cried, but not uncontrollably like some of the other babies we heard - cuz K man is such a little trooper with all the tests we've had to put him through. And as always, I love CHEO. All the people we deal with are so fabulous! So give them money or something! ;)
We should find out by the end of the week what the results of the test are - negative of course ;) I will keep you all posted.

Who needs a radio

When you can just grab a phone, hit redial, and dance your heart out to the beep beep beep?

Until you have your heart broken when daddy takes the music machine away.

Throwback Thursday : ballet

Here is me reenacting part of a ballet recital we'd just gotten home from, using my sister as a prop :)

I took ballet for several years I think, but the most memorable moment of the entire experience was from before this, when, at a recital my dance instructor explained to the entire crowd that I wasn't holding a position correctly because my legs weren't straight. I guess she had to make sure people didn't think she was a bad ballet teacher and scar her young student for life in the process :P

Weight loss - an update

So I haven't lost any weight, BUT, I have an update this week! I have made progress.

I a) bought a new scale. Something that was very necessary!
and b) went and worked out today on my lunch with a coworker for the first time in almost 2 years!!

It's a start, and I'm proud. Because I hate hate hate working out!

I'm a NaBlah dropout

Not sure if anyone noticed, but I'm not managing to blog every day, so I'm dropping out of the Nablopomo.

I took lots of cute photos of Kiernan this weekend though :)

How can you ever want to go through that again?

A lot of bloggers seem to be pregnant right now - and feeling REALLY sick. The conversations about how to get through the morning sickness have been bringing back some of the memories of my pregnancy and just how awful I felt.

I also have an acquaintance who is pregnant, with her 4th, and sick for the first time. And thinking about it, and trying to give her tips and suggestions, reminds me how miserable I was. And yet, I don't REALLY remember. I remember that I would be moaning and groaning and crying in misery. And I remember enough that it's still a favourite line of mine to offer to go through labour for anyone if they would just go through the pregnancy for me ;) But because I don't REALLY remember it, and because I don't feel it NOW, I don't think it will stop me from going through it again. Even if I have another non-sleeping baby. Because despite the fact that I have the amazing non-sleeping baby, he's also the light of my life (oh how I hate to be so cheesy).
Nothing gives me joy like hugs from my little guy, or watching him discover a new game (currently, his favourite is bye bye *wave wave* (turns around and then turns back) hi! hi! *wave wave* bye bye *wave wave* (repeat :)

Contest time people!

It's time to start thinking about Xmas presents and what better way to get them for people than to win them! ;) Contests, here I come. Check out all the great ones coming up at 5 minutes for mom and I'll post about more as I hear about them

You're going the wrong way!

Kiernan had another doctor's appointment yesterday and I was hoping that in the 1.5 months since his last doctor's appointment he would have broken past his 19.7 lb mark and hit that glorious 20lbs that most boys hit by the time they're like, 8 months old :P

Unfortunately, it was not to be. He is down to 19 lbs and that's not good. It's not horrible. It's not earth-shatteringly awful, but, it's not to be ignored.

The most likely scenario, and the one I'm 99.99 % sure it is, is that he's too active for the amount of food he eats. He's a picky eater, and I'm imagining that because he's always had such a sensitive tummy it's not always FUN for him to eat. On top of him not being a big eater, as he's started to wake less in the night, he's been dropping the amount of formula he drinks. Every time he drops a night feed he's dropping calories per day because he doesn't replace any of that in the amount he drinks when he's awake!

What's a mom to do?! Last night he fell asleep in the car without his nighttime bottle (not that we can get him to have more than a few ounces at bedtime anyways) so he woke up at midnight hungry. We gave him almost 8 oz! He'll drink it in the middle of the night, but do we want to encourage him feeding night instead of when he's awake??

So we'll be adding olive oil to his food again, trying to encourage him even more strongly to have milk during the day, and hopefully we'll get him to gain some weight.

In the meantime, we now have new tests we have to take him for to rule out the .01% chance it's something else. These fun options include cystic fibrosis and celiac disease. So November 21 we'll be heading back to CHEO for blood tests and a sweat test (can you imagine them having him run on a treadmill with sweat dripping down? ha ha). Oh well, I'm sure it can't be worse than the milk scan.

Any ideas on what to feed a picky eater who doesn't like to eat grown-up food and can't have anything with dairy or soy - please share! :)

I'm going to be scrapbooking until I'm 105 if I don't find some shortcuts

Angela at mommy bytes is giving away six HP Photo Books.

I did one of my honeymoon through KodakGallery but these sound really cool too. And even though I love to scrapbook, I'm never going to get everything I need to get scrapbooked done, so this would be ideal for our vacation in BC and Alberta last spring.

Multi syllabic baby

Even thought he somehow managed to have some of his first words be "itsa" and "da" for the most part when Kiernan has been talking he only uses the first sound in a word. Baaa can be ball, book, bottle. biii is a bird. teee is tv. sna is snack. do is door. mo is more, etc. the odd exception had him using a different syllable in the word. tee, other than being tv can all be kitty.

He was started to make exceptions in our names. Maaa-y, Daaa-y. And then all of a sudden the other day, we have Daaaddy! Daddy! Daddy! SO cute. I'm still Maaa-y, except when he decides he should also call me Daddy ;) But we have more, we have banananana, and we have titi, which sounds rude but is really kitty or tv :) He's so darned clever that Kiernan. It's all the crying and not sleeping - I'm sure of it.

On a total aside, the last two nights I've made pasta recipes from the most recent Chatelaine and they are DELICIOUS! If you get chatelaine, try them out - we had the pork peanut one and the lemony one. yum yum yum yum! (the internet rocks - I found the recipes online to link to :)

He's all about meeting milestones

Hello from BabyCenter!

Your 13-month-old: Week 4

Spirited and mild-mannered toddlers alike will experiment with ... how shall we say it? ... undesirable behavior. If your toddler indulges in fits of screaming, hitting, and biting, you can take some solace in knowing that his development is right on track. Discipline can be a challenge with kids this age, so try to build a little personal time into your schedule each week as a way to refuel your patience tank.

***

Today we had meltdowns at friends', at the grocery store, in the parking lot, and lots of standing and jumping on chairs and other obviously mischievious behaviour. FUN! :P But it's ok, the internet tells me it's normal ;)

I love fruitcake!

While most people run around avoiding fruitcake in their wedding cakes and as Christmas presents, I've found a group of friends who love it just as much as me! And today is fruitcake making day. Off I go to mix 8 lbs of dried and candied fruit with a mere 3 cups of flour to make cakes that can last for years and never go bad. And get more and more delicious as time goes on!

It's the first sign that Christmas is coming. YAY! :)

NaBloPoMo

I'm taking part in NaBloPoMo. See?

View my profile on NaBloPoMo


Now, I'm still figuring it out exactly, but here's the deal, I'm going to be posting a blog post a day all month (that'll get me back into the swing of this!) Hopefully it won't be quantity over quality, but we'll see. Fortunately, I'm all about the photos - and I'm sure you'll all enjoy seeing tons of photos of the K-man!

Check out my page, and be my friend, and come back to read the rest of my interview questions from Nutmeg, about how sleep-training is going, and about my weight frustrations.

And if you haven't seen it yet, you have until tomorrow to enter my giveaway for a shirt from Apples'n'Oranges.

GRRRR

Help! There's a dino on the loose (or maybe he's a gator ;)






Dressing K up and traipsing him about town was tons of fun. Maybe next year we'll let him try some candy :)

Throwback Thursday : Halloween edition

Halloween 1981. I'm a pirate (with the most piratey looking leg-warmers you've ever seen) here with my sister Farmer in the Dell. I LOVE the pumpkin!! :)