Oh Dear

Let me preface this entire post by saying Cami is an absolutely easy, wonderful, loving, funny, gleeful little baby.  I am sometimes amazed by how much I love her simply because I enjoy being around her.  She constantly cracks me up, and is working so hard at walking (we have a record of four steps...FOUR!) and trying so many new things to be a "big girl".  She rarely acts scared (except for those darn elevators, weird), and never makes a peep when I hand her off to Grandma in the morning.  However, this lovely, strong-willed personality is making me quake in my Sperry's as I see her become more certain of what she wants to do.

I've written before that she sometimes smiles at me when I say no and then does the action anyway.  The other night was on a whole new level.  After Cami's bath, she crawled into the bonus room.  We have a TV in there that she has been told repeatedly not to touch (as is the case with all TVs).  She crawled up, touched the TV, and immediately looked at me (she so knows what she's doing).  I said "No, no, Cami," rather loudly.  She smiled, and while looking at me with a serious "and what are you going to do about it?" look, smacked her hand on it again.  I gave her my teacher face, which easily stares down crazy, pubescent 8th graders, and said no again, louder.  SMACK.  Turn.  Smile.  At this point I decided it was time for a hand pop.  She knows what she's doing, she knows what "no" means, let's do this.  I walked over, said no, and popped her on the back of the hand.  SHE LAUGHED.  While looking me in the eye, she laughed.  AND THEN DID IT AGAIN.  So I popped her a little harder, and she laughed again.  Sigh.  This clearly has no effect at this point.  I proceeded with the tried and true "get as far from the TV as possible" strategy and we went downstairs.  Where she started messing with the blinds in the living room.......

Inspector Gadget

We have taken to calling Cami Inspector Gadget.  This little baby can suddenly have Go Go Gadget arms (or legs, or toes) and grab anything around her.  Things we think we've placed out of reach magically appear in her hands after she has used her Extend-O-Arms.  It's also quite applicable because she is curious about EVERYTHING.  The other day she stood up at the dishwasher and was able to stand on tippy toes to reach the top of the kitchen counter.  Oh no.

This is also combined with her being really close to walking.  Toddling is a quite applicable term for how quickly she can get moving holding on to finger tips.  Quick mover and Go Go Gadget arms.  Bad combination. ;)

Bobby Pin Conundrum

Before Baby That Puts Everything in Her Mouth:  Darn it, two bobby pins fell out of my hair.  Oh well.

After Baby That Puts Everything in Her Mouth:  Two bobby pins are gone!!!  Where did they fall out???  Cami's going to eat them!  (scouring every room in the house after baby is in bed)  I can't find them!!!!  Oh my gosh, they're probably in her crib!  She's going to eat them in the middle of the night and choke and then have to have surgery to remove them after the perforate her intestines!!!!  WHERE ARE THE TWO BOBBY PINS??????????



They are still missing.

Hanging out at our friend, Robert's, birthday. :)  This was before the Bobby Pin Incident.

Freeze Crawl

Cami fully understands the phrase "no no."  She fully understands many phrases (some quite complicated, like "why don't you take your soccer ball through your tunnel?"....what???), but sometimes I wonder if her compliance with what I ask her to do is coincidence.  But, I know she knows what no no means because she is fairly good a stopping what she is doing and turning to look at me.  However, she has a new response, the freeze crawl.  In this response, I say "no no, Cami."  Mid-stride, she completely freezes.  Then s-l-o-w-l-y continues her motion towards whatever she is trying to get.  I say "no no" again and get a freeze....but a shorter one until the molasses crawl begins again.  I think she thinks I'm not going to notice she's moving if she does it really slowly.  I suppose the freeze crawl is better than the times she stops, looks at me, smiles, and does whatever I told her not to do anyway.....

What Was That You Said?

Yesterday, Cami was fussing. She has two new teeth (her top middles) that are breaking through and she's not too happy about it.  She had been a little fussy since she woke up from her nap, so I was, quite frankly, ignoring her (she was standing at my knees banging on them, which made it hard....).  I was consumed in an all-important task of checking Twitter.  Did Ryan Lochte get a million followers?  Will he invite someone to lunch and convince them to say Jeah?  Miley Cyrus cut off all her hair. Spice Girls reunion!  Important matters.  Cami apparently decided she needed to pull out the big guns and the next thing I hear is "Ma MA....mamamamamamamam. MaMA."  WHAT????????  Well, then she had my full attention and while I was clapping and cheering.....she resumed fussing.  And has yet to say mama again.  However, about 30 minutes later we were in the car on the way to dinner and then (perhaps she felt she didn't have our full attention?) we hear "DA DA DA DA.  DADA!"  YAY, CAMI!!!!!  We're so proud of our big girl.  Now, if only those top two teeth would stop hurting, we'd be in good shape. 

Taking Over The Little Gym

Well, maybe not taking over, but definitely exploring.  Last Tuesday, I took Cami to The Little Gym with our friends Amanda and Mauer.  She sat right by me, holding on to my arm and did not seem to have ANY fun.  She was in full-on meltdown by the end and wouldn't even listen to the song that ends the class.  Yesterday, we gave it another go and she did AWESOME!  It definitely helped that GiGi was there and Cami had another familiar face to smile at, but she crawled away from me right when we sat down and wanted to see Mauer and explore the circle.  She jumped and did her exercises (although we vetoed the somersault....she freaked out when I flipped her last week) and played with the balls and the bubbles.  The only time she got fussy was when the teacher tried to demonstrate something with her.  She craned her neck to see who was holding and her realized it was definitely not someone she knew and her little face just crumpled.  HUGE improvement....so proud of my snugglebug!!!

Mommy Fail and Mommy Success

Just when I think I'm becoming more confident in being a Mommy....failure strikes.  This time it was no big deal, I only made my child freak out that she was going to choke.  Ha.  

Cami loves her peas.  So, after watching her mash up the (easily dissolving) Gerber puffs and MumMums and have success with a couple carrot chunks, I thought I'd give her some real peas.  She loves peas, so of course she'd love eating the real thing, right?

I boiled my fancy peas (HEB Central Market Organic, only the best, of course....we'll ignore the fact that hardly anything else she's eaten has been organic), and made sure they were nice and soft and had cooled off.  Cami had eaten the rest of her dinner, so I decided to just try a couple.  I gave her one.  She took it and began to chew.  Success!  I got her to smile to see that it was mostly gone and gave her another.  She began to chew.  I'm amazing, I thought.  Cami continues to chew...and chew...and chew.  The outside of the pea is still in her mouth.  She starts to look a little upset.  I can see it written on her face:  Mommy, why is this not dissolving into nothingness?????  She starts to fuss and I start to panic that she's going to breathe in and get the external pea portion lodged in her throat.  I try and get her to stick out her tongue.  I show her how to say "Ahhhhhh".  No luck.  I try to open her mouth.  She jerks away and fusses more.  Pea still in mouth.  I don't want to just force my finger in her mouth and push it down further (I'm a trained First Responder after all...that's a no no for choking....they just never taught us how to handle pea shells).  So, I do the only other thing I can think of.  I call my mom.

I doubt my mom was expecting "Cami has part of a pea stuck in her mouth and she's getting upset and I can't get it out and I don't know what to do!" when she answered the phone.  However, despite probably rolling her eyes (don't deny it, Mom), she patiently told me to give Cami some water.  "They're still there!!!!!  And she's not drinking it because they're still there!!!!!"  So she patiently instructs me to sweep it out with a hook motion (oh yeah, I think they taught us that in First Responder class....) and alternate giving some water.  I successfully removed the pea casings.  Crisis averted (although Cami was shooting me dirty looks).  Mommy fail of the day.

Now, Mommy Success is a little bit of a misnomer.  Every part of this Cami would do instinctively whether or not I was ever around.  However, she has become quite the active little crawler.  I would put a video up, but my phone is in the midst of dying a slow death and not cooperating.  She giggles while she crawls when she picks up speed and is pretty much loving every aspect of being mobile.  Especially the fact that she can examine dirt, stairs, electrical outlets...all the good stuff (I've also had a little success with "No-no" but that I'm sure will end up being a fail when Cami gets better at throwing a fit).  I love all the giggles and smiles and romping around the living room and front hall and it makes me feel like I'm doing an okay job.  And then, my active little overachiever, did TWO new things in one day!  She has been eying things above her the past couple days and this morning started pulling a LOT on her crib rails.  I thought her figuring it out would take a few days.  Nope.  30 minutes into her 2nd nap she woke up (Sigh, I thought) and began pulling on the rails and in about five minutes was standing up and looking around her room.  Lucky for me, she fell over and went back to sleep, but geez, quick learner.  She also waved bye-bye today.  She's swung her arm around a couple times in a manner which may or may not have been a coincidence, but today she pretty clearly waved.  Ah-mazing.  

 And, tomorrow, she'll be asking for a cell phone.  Or something like that.