Firsts

Woo-hoo! Carrie went pee-pee in the potty tonight! (Yep. I just used the word “pee-pee”. Get over it.)

This was all because she was stalling before bedtime. First she insisted on using the potty, sat on it for maybe half a millisecond, then ran into her room. When I followed her and said it was time to put on a diaper, she said “no, more potty!” and ran back into the bathroom. We did this three times, and the last time she actually sat long enough to do something! Yippee! No one was more surprised than she was, I think.

Carrie’s asked to use the potty before just about every diaper change for at least the past month, but this is the first time she managed to produce anything. Is this the start of potty-training? Probably not. Is it a step in the right direction? Definitely.

Carrie’s sick. She woke up at 2:00 this morning, and I thought she felt especially warm. (Keep in mind I spent two days asking people if Carrie felt warm only to find that her temperature was completely normal.) I pulled out our handy temporal artery thermometer, and she had a temp of 101. (See? Moms know. I knew she was feverish two whole days before the thermometer figured it out!)

I gave her some Tylenol and got her back to sleep. Until 4:00. And then 5:00. And then at 5:30 (EST) she was up for good. Counting the time shift that was in there somewhere and having gone to bed at midnight (EDT) I’d guess I got about 5 hours of sleep.

Carrie was a trooper for the whole ride home, though. By the time we got within an hour of home she was starting to act like she was sick and uncomfortable but for the most part she was amazingly good. I do have to keep Tylenol in her system – the box says 4-6 hours, but if she goes more than 4 her temp goes up to anywhere from 101 to 103. I’m a tiny bit worried about how high it will get overnight. I think it’s going to be a long night.

One funny story from the road, though. We stopped at a sit-down place for breakfast (we left a little after 7 since we were up anyway), but then just hit a McDonald’s for lunch because we wanted to get Carrie home as soon as we could. Carrie turned her nose up at the cheeseburger, ate 2 1/2 fries, and totally rejected the apple juice. However, her Kashi cereal and a single-serve applesauce container we had in the car, plus her sippy of water, were perfectly fine. I guess it’s probably a good thing that she refuses to eat fast food, just a little less than convenient!

Carrie had her first haircut today! It’s not the drastic straight-cut bangs I had feared. I brought her to my stylist and she did a really good job sort of layering it so I could push it off to the side and not have it look so severe. And when it falls forward (which it does frequently) it’s no longer hanging right in her eyes.

She did beautifully, sitting on my lap with no protests, and let Michelle work on her hair for a good 10 minutes. I was really worried about how it would look and how Carrie would handle it, but I’m glad we did it. She looks a like a little pixie now. We’ll just grow it out when she’s old enough to leave barrettes and pony holders in without trying to eat them.

Oh, and does anyone have any good recommendations for tear-free baby shampoo & conditioner? Carrie’s hair seems a little dry just using our Aveeno baby wash & shampoo combo.

Baby’s First Shiner.

Yep, Carrie’s got a black eye. Well, sort of – it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. She was carrying a hard plastic toy and tripped and fell onto it, and she’s got a nice reddish bruise on her eyelid and right below her eye. I’m expecting it to turn purple by tomorrow. There’s a tiny but very superficial part of me that’s concerned about whether it will be gone before her birthday party in two weeks…or better yet, by the time we get her hair cut next week. The rest of me is just extremely thankful that she didn’t seriously hurt herself. I’ll admit, my heart stopped for a split second when I saw that bright red mark right under her eye…I was thinking it was much worse than a bruise.

It’s scary being a mama.

Carrie’s been pulling up on furniture and people for quite a while now – since Mother’s Day, actually – but today she actually just stood up in the middle of the room without any assistance. She’s been getting so much steadier on her feet, and choosing to walk instead of crawl more often than not. My guess is that she’ll be running (and climbing) around the house for her birthday party!

And I think it’s the way she stands now, but she looks so much more like a little girl than a little baby that it takes me by surprise sometimes.

This morning as I was getting Carrie dressed, she rolled over on the changing table (yes, I had a hand on her, and no she didn’t fall). Then, to my absolute amazement, she pushed up on her hands and knees and started rocking back and forth. She gave me this huge grin, like she was saying “Look Mom! Look what I can do!”

My little baby is growing way too fast! Pretty soon she’s going to be crawling away at top speed.

Carolyn had her first taste of rice cereal today. It was pretty watery – essentially I gave her rice-flavored milk with a spoon. I followed a suggestion I had read to mix 1 tablespoon of cereal with 4 tablespoons of milk, but I stopped after I mixed in 3 tablespoons of milk because it was so very liquid I didn’t think it would stay on the spoon!

She made a few funny faces at first, but she didn’t spit it out. There was a slight crusty coating of dried rice on her clothes – especially her socks – when we were done though, because she had a fantastic time grabbing for the spoon, and usually got the part that was supposed to end up in her mouth.

Tomorrow I think I’ll make it a bit thicker. And maybe put the tray on the high chair – that might prevent her socks from getting all sticky!

Carrie went to bed at 9:30 last night…and woke up at 6:00 this morning. She fussed a little around 11, but settled herself back down. This is the first time she’s slept through the night in her crib! When she woke up, she started fussing, but she wasn’t screaming or sobbing. And when I walked in she was playing with snuggle puppy – well, if you can call stuffing as much of snuggle puppy in her mouth as possible “playing”. Now I just need to remember how to sleep through the night, and hope for a repeat performance.

I have quite the collection of Avent feeding supplies – both bottles and disposable nursers, plus a couple of sippy cups – because I have an Avent Isis pump. (Is this too much information?) We’ve given Carrie a couple of bottles, but the last one was two months ago. Silly me, I didn’t think there would be any issues, but she absolutely refused to take a bottle while my parents watched her during my rehearsal Monday night. I tried giving her another bottle yesterday, and it looked as though her real gripe with the whole thing was that she needs to be laying down to take a bottle. (We won’t go into the fact that she lays down to nurse – apparently that’s ok.)

I ended up going to Target yesterday to find a different type of bottle and came home with the Playtex VentAire bottle, figuring that because it’s angled, she’d be able to sit up more and might raise fewer objections to the whole experience. I gave her about an ounce in it this morning, and she took it with no complaints. I left her and the new bottle with my parents this evening while I went off to yet another rehearsal. When I called my mom during a break to make sure that Carrie had managed to have her dinner, guess what? She was feeding herself. Sitting in her little rocking chair, kicking her feet, and holding her own bottle!

Apparently, I’m out of a job. Well, not really, but I do feel much better about the fact that Carrie won’t starve while I’m a little busier than usual for these next couple of weeks. The show starts two weeks from tomorrow!

5 little hearts, all in a row: The first one said, “I love you so.” The second one said, “Will you be my Valentine?” The third one said, “I will if you’ll be mine.” The fourth one said, “I’ll always be your friend.” The fifth one said, “Until the very end.”

For her first Valentine’s, Carolyn got a single pink rose from her Daddy, and a Baby Einstein gift set. She loves Baby Mozart, and she liked the Language Nursery DVD until the dead DVD player ate it, so Denis found a set with Baby Van Gogh, Baby Shakespeare, and a Bard bath puppet. We don’t let her watch a video every day, but when she does she’s totally enthralled, and giggles all the way through it.

A year ago today, Denis predicted that I was pregnant and that it was a girl. He was right on both counts. And I promised I’d mark this day on the calendar – after all, he was right for once – so consider it marked.

And Happy Valentine’s Day!