When's the last time that I wrote a Friday Favorites post?Ages, I'll bet. I only have three items today:
* A blast from the past; My dear college friend Anca finally has a website which showcases her artwork. I think her paintings are beautiful. Check it out: www.ancabianca.shutterfly.com. I am also trying to convince her to open an etsy shop.
So, apparently I have an 18 month old now. And apparently, she's become somewhat of a nudist and a tattoo artist. It is amazing how much she changed in the past six months (which, I think, is the last time I wrote a post about her!)
Satya is awesome; she's obviously walking, in fact she basically only has two speeds that she moves: run as fast as you can and nosedive! It's pretty funny. Well, not the nosedive speed, but you know what I mean.
She's a great eater, is a bit anti-milk these days (we feed her goats milk as well as breastmilk) for some reason (will talk about that later); an excellent communicator and follows directions very well. She talks all the time, but mostly in her own little language. I like to think that she's speaking Japanese, because a lot of it sounds Japanese, and then I think oh, how impressive that she's already bi-lingual! LOL! We're always working on expanding her vocabulary and she'll shock us sometimes with words we don't expect her to pick up, but in the end, her absolutely favorite word is YEAH.
Not ya, or yes.No, Y---eeee----aaaa----hhh. Nice and drawn out too. It's pretty cute, and no matter how many times we try to teach her "yes", she responds with "Yeah". I am thankful that she doesn't say "no" yet. Phew!
Satya loves to read. We read all the time. She's actually letting me get to the end of some books now, thank goodness, I've been dying to know how they end! Ha!
She's pretty good at playing on her own. I think this little girl is going to have a great imagination and like to do a lot of creative things.
You know what else she's good at? Tantrums. Yup. Just last night she threw herself on the floor and flailed.
We're working on that.
So she's great and I love her more than I ever thought was possible, but there are two things that have me stressed out:
Sleeping and Nursing.
I am still breastfeeding. My original goal was to get to a year. Yay for me. Then I decided that I wanted to see if she could wean herself. I knew many people who's kids weaned themselves a bit after a year. Satya? I think if she had her way, she'd be nursing all the way til we drop her off at college. Seriously.
Back in January, I decided that I wanted her weaned by her 18 month birthday. I had it down to a feeding before nap and before bed
and all-u-can-eat-duringthenight. But then she was teething so badly, cutting two molars, a bottom front tooth and her eye teeth were swelling. I was like, honey, you nurse as much as you want! Once she was nursing more often during the day, she was sleeping much better at night. Only getting up once during the night (huge improvement, really!).
Now, that was about a month ago and we really haven't gotten back to weaning at all. Her sleeping isn't as good as it was and she's pretty much addicted to the boob like it's crack. It's becoming a very stressful thing in this household, so somehow I need to start weaning again and I would like to be done by the summer. I love breastfeeding, and I love the special time that we get to share together when we do, but sadly, our life just doesn't make it possible for me to spend sometimes an hour each time and makes it so hard for anyone else to take care of her (especially at night if I'm playing a concert).
I've been reading some info about "how to wean" and most of it says to let the child pave the way. That's great and all and we tried that, but I need suggestions! I have decided that toddlerdome equals the Art of Distraction big time. I can only distract so much when it comes to cutting out feedings.
I think Satya's sleeping habits go hand in hand with her nursing habits. Lately she's been getting up three times a night (UGH) and is getting about 9 hours of sleep at night. She doesn't go down for naps or bedtime without nursing first (although last night I did get her to go to sleep after rocking her and pacing for about 1/2 hr) and can I tell you how I wish I could go back in time and try to have her spend more time self-soothing and figuring it out on her own a bit more. I know many people that do the CIO thing, and we just aren't into that. But there has to be something I can still do. I feel like I have made so many mistakes with her when it comes to her naps and bedtime that I worry that I am going to be rocking her and pacing with her til she's a teenager.
Please don't get me wrong, I love rocking her, I love snuggling with her. If I could I would keep her a little baby forever, but my "life away from baby" is suffering quite a bit and we need change. There's a lot of tension between Lovey and I because of all of this.
Ok, now I'm just rambling. I just needed to vent and get this all out because I have been quite stressed out about this for quite some time. I also of course feel like I am not teaching her enough and not keeping her engaged every minute she's awake and yes, I let her watch Sesame Street. I like Sesame Street and grew up watching it....for the most part I think I turned out ok!
Ok. I'm done. If you got this far (bless you), here's another picture of my sweet daughter. Fully clothed and pretty clean!
