My Name Is Now Mom

TerraDactyl has the most unique relationship with diapers.  She really enjoys playing with them.  She likes putting them on her dolls.  She likes trying to figure out how the tabs work.  She's tried to wear multiple diapers at the same time.  She even likes wearing them as hats.   Of course, wearing diapers as hats may have resulted based on her love of hats and not diapers...  I can't be positive.  Fortunately, she has the good sense to only play with the clean diapers.  I couldn't get a good picture of the pink swim diaper, but I just love the Dutch bonnet look.   But TerraDactyl doesn't only put diapers on...  She also takes them of.  Recently, at the end of a nap, DH went to get her up and TerraDactyl was butt-naked.  Literally.  She'd removed her sleep sack.  She'd removed her pants.  She'd removed her diaper.  And then, she'd peed.  Of course!  I've never been so happy that Ter...

  TerraDactyl has been showing an interest in climbing the sides of her crib recently.  So just before her second birthday, we converted her crib to a day bed.  The transition went amazingly well.  Like beyond my wildest dreams.  (knock on wood).  We put her down that night and she fell right to sleep.  No crying, no getting out of bed...  it was weird.  The next few days she even took her naps.   And when she woke up from her naps she'd stay in bed and wait until I came in to her room before she'd scramble out of bed (as seen in the previous video).  I was so nervous about switching up her crib, I'd heard some truly awful stories.   But it's not ALL sunshine and roses.  The other day, TerraDactyl decided not to take a nap.  She spent her quiet time putting every toy into her bed instead.  On the whole, not a terrible outcome.   The other day TerraDactyl was SO excited to greet DH when he cam...

TerraDactyl likes hats a lot.  She often insists on wearing hats.  Or even two hats!  Or she insists on us wearing hats.  Or she wears non-hat items as hats...  She really likes hats.  She also likes the Cat in the Hat.  Possibly because she can say both "cat" and "hat".  She was so excited when DH wore this red cereal box as a hat.  I'm pretty sure she thought he was the Cat in the Hat.   TerraDactyl also really likes mittens.  A lot.  I was trying to get her to eat one day and she insisted on bringing as many mittens as she could carry.  And then all the mittens had to be on her high chair tray.  It took quite a bit of effort to figure out how to get the food on the tray without making a huge mess.   TerraDactyl has also been experimenting with layers lately.  It's a bit hard to see them all in this picture, but she's got on a dress, a sweater, a vest, a fleece coat, and a rain coat.  All th...

One of the greatest frustrations of parenthood is commonly known as "bedtime".   That's why, at our house, we like to foster a calming, serene environment before bedtime.  Here are some of our common bedtime rituals. 1.  Going on a walk.  There's nothing like talking a family walk after dinner to settle everyone down. 2.  Take a spin around the neighborhood. 3.  Playing a family game.   These are all actual events that happened immediately before bedtime.  TerraDactyl tends to get pretty silly when she's sleepy.  It seems like it should wake her up, but sometimes I think it just wears her out.  

  TerraDactyl spent her second Valentine's Day feeling pretty under the weather.  (clearly I'm still working through those couple months I took off...)  She had a very low fever (99.1 degrees) and a whole lot of snot.  We lost a lot of our weaning progress because I was worried about dehydration.  I pretty much nursed her whenever she asked for it.   I think I was probably more upset about TerraDactyl's cold than she was.  We found out that regardless of how much TerraDactyl likes emptying out Kleenex boxes, she really doesn't like blowing her nose.  Well, can you call it "blowing her nose" if she never blows?   This is what happens when you feel bad for the sick baby and let her play just about anything she asks for... Clearly, the sick baby is tired of house arrest and ready to go somewhere .  She showed me just how ready to leave the house she was by strapping her baby into the car seat and then telling me to put the car sea...

Wait, that's not how the saying goes?  Huh.  Well, the tulips are up anyways!  TerraDactyl and I went to a Tulip farm with my first college roommate.  We were there for three hours and it went great!  TerraDactyl was a champ.  She walked almost the whole time.  And she required very little correction (where to walk, how to treat flowers, etc).   In fact, I think we ended up enjoying the tulips more for bringing a toddler along.  TerraDactyl forced us to walk more slowly and really take things in.   Plus, all the quirky photo props that were set out were so much more enjoyable with a toddler.   TerraDactyl LOVED the tractor.  LOVED it.  She probably would have sat on that thing for an hour if I had let her.  But, other people needed to take pictures on a tractor.   TerraDactyl was less excited about the selfies though... Oh yeah, TerraDactyl was also totally excited to pick up trash there as we...

TerraDactyl's first Easter egg hunt was a BLAST!  I honestly had no idea what to expect.  She's never done a hunt, and we were all by ourselves, so she couldn't emulate older kids...  But she caught on really quick.  And she loved it!  It was adorable!   TerraDactyl hasn't napped in over a week.  I go through the whole nap-time routine with her, and she's pretty quiet in her crib, but she's not sleeping, she's playing.  So DH and I thought we'd be fine planning on having the Easter egg hunt at 3pm.  Well.  She actually napped!  AND she slept until 4:30pm! So, it threw our whole schedule off.  But, it probably made the Easter egg hunt go smoother.  She's a happier baby when she gets sleep.   We didn't really do anything too amazing for the insides of the eggs.  Basically, we just put all her favorite snacks in there (Graham crackers, Goldfish, peanut butter puffs), you know, the stuff we give her anyways...

This is Floyd.  And he might be the most patient Boston Terrier ever.  He let TerraDactyl maul him for a week straight.  Riley wasn't around, but I am curious as to whether Riley would have been jealous or relieved that someone else was helping bear the burden of TerraDactyl's love and affection.  Floyd put up with soooo many hugs.  He was such a good dog.  And TerraDactyl has now learned that all dogs love her and want her hugs.  :)   My brother has been campaigning for TerraDacyl to be a Patriots fan since before her birth.  He's bought her Patriots pacifiers, bibs, hats... you name it.  Since DH and I don't exactly have any particular sports loyalties, that's basically the only team she's been exposed to.  Until a couple months ago.  TerraDactyl was definitely in favor of this #1 Buccaneer's Fan plushie.  Oh, and TerraDactyl went hog wild for the Razorbacks hat (pun definitely intended)!   Here's a pictur...

TerraDactyl has discovered cobwebs.  We have this game called climb (video below) where she walks up my body and then ends up touching the ceiling.  Anyway, this time, she accidentally touched a cobweb when she went to touch the ceiling.  It got stuck on her hand and she had a funny shake-it-off freak out.  I told TerraDactyl that it was a cobweb and then cleaned her up.   Later that day, there was a light reflection on the wall that looked like a cobweb, so she started calling it a cobweb.  I told her it wasn't, so then she points at the corner of the ceiling and starts saying cobweb (well it was really more of a "cob-cob-cob").  Of course, this time, there WAS a cobweb there.  So I cleaned it up.  We spent the next 15 minutes with TerraDactyl pointing out all the cobwebs she could find.  There were quite a few, (we've got a lot of spiders here next to our little forest) definitely more than I'd noticed!  But they're gone for ...