Month: June 2006

Taylor got a double-dose of grandparents last weekend when Gene and Linda came out to visit. T.J.’s grown so much since the last time they’ve seen her. Grandpa Gene let her try out his cell phone, which was brave of him because a baby and her cell phone are not easily parted. Once she had that device in her hand, she didn’t want to give it up! We spent most of the weekend driving around looking at properties and Taylor was a good sport considering how much time she had to spend in the car. Gene and Linda were pretty good sports too…they hardly threw any tantrums at all!

Taylor’s learning how to throw spectacular tantrums. You really have to see it to believe it! She will sit down on the ground and place her forehead on the floor. In yoga, they refer to it as “child’s pose” and it’s supposed to clear your mind and make your breathing more efficient. The problem is that when T.J. does it, there is great sobbing and drama involved, which I’ve never seen happen in any of my yoga classes. It doesn’t sound like she’s “rejuvenating and energizing her outer being” – it’s more of a “hysterical melting down of her entire being”. All the while, a mantra is running through my head: “Make it stop…make it stop…”. Namaste.

I took a few pictures while Gene and Linda were here, but I think all of the best pictures ended up on someone else’s camera. Here’s the best of what I got:

This week certainly was eventful! Taylor’s Grandma C.R. came to visit last weekend, so we got to spend some time together. On Saturday night, T.J. and C.R. had some bonding time while Zach and I went out on the town. Taylor’s molars are coming in, so she ran through the full spectrum of emotions, alternating between being happy-go-lucky and not-so-happy-go-lucky. Great joy and great sorrow in a single moment…such is the life of a toddler! Zach captured some great pictures of Taylor and C.R. together:

On Father’s Day, we went out car shopping. Appropriately, we ended up buying a minivan. A FAMILY car! Now, I personally have no stigma with driving a minivan and I love the car. What does grate on my nerves a bit, though, is when people call me a “soccer mom”. I don’t really have a problem with the title, inaccurate as it may be, but people say it with a snicker and a smirk that implies that it’s a derogatory term. I’m a product of a soccer mom and she’s scrappy, I’m scrappy and hopefully Taylor will be scrappy, too.

Havin’ a snoozle in her car seat:

Taylor had her one year checkup yesterday and she weighs 20 lbs, 7 oz. She just seems to be hovering around the 20 pound mark, not wanting to get much bigger. She’s in the 45th percentile for her weight and the 60th percentile for length, so she’s not too far off track.

We have a raisin junkie on our hands:

I think our family is singlehandedly keeping the SunMaid Company in business these days. Taylor is obsessed with raisins….she LOVES them! I buy the value pack of boxes about once a week and she goes through them in the blink of an eye. Their marketing is brilliant, too, because they have the brightest red and yellow packaging. If Taylor catches the slightest glimpse of a box she will insist on having it in her hand. I keep them everywhere…in my purse, in my car, in the cupboard…and she finds them all. We went to the beach last weekend and she sat in the water with her raisins. The box got completely waterlogged, but she was content to work her way all the way down to the soggy bottom. We’re just thankful that she’ll eat something. She’s so picky these days that if it weren’t for raisins and bananas, she might not eat at all! Actually, she will eat, but she seems to prefer the nibbles that she discovers on the floor to what we put on her plate. I’m contemplating laying out her meals on the floor so that she can just graze. Mmm….floor snackins’…taaaaaaaaasty!!!

Taylor REALLY loves the word “No”. She doesn’t actually say it yet, but she shakes her head any chance that she gets. Sometimes I find her just smiling away and shaking her head for what appears to be no particular reason. It’s hard not to laugh at her when she does it. I guess we really shouldn’t be surprised…after all, we say “No” to her far more than we say “Yes”. The list of things that we tell her NOT to do is quite long and sometimes when I hear myself say them out loud, I can’t believe my ears. Just a sampling:
“Taylor, please don’t take the rubber stoppers off of the cabinets and eat them”
“Taylor, we don’t lick the bottoms of our shoes…they’re dirty!”
“Taylor, DO NOT put your fingers in the poopy diaper!!” –When Taylor doesn’t listen to that one, it’s usually followed up by: “TAYLORDONOTPUTYOURPOOPYFINGERSINYOURMOUTH!”
The “no’s” just pile up around our house and, to her credit, she’s relatively good about listening to us. At this rate, though, she may not learn “yes” until she gets to college.

Some milestones this week:
* She turned the corner with her walking skills. She still crawls, but walking is now the primary mode of transportation.
* Taylor can now tell us what the doggy says…”woof, woof!”
* She can locate her tummy & her ear. Very interesting that those are the body parts she picked up on. I’ve been trying to get her to point to her nose forever, but so far that’s a no go.
* I bought T.J. a wind-up toy – a little fish with a fin that flips back and forth when you wind it up. Taylor had the toy for about an hour before she figured out how to wind it up on her own. AMAZING!

Sooooo sleepy:

After a full year of being parents, I feel like Zach and I were truly put to the test this past weekend. A brutal case of the stomach flu swept through our home, knocking us out one by one. Taylor was the first to be hit. She woke up quite ill on Friday morning and so we stayed home and just slept for most of the day. Her symptoms weren’t terrible, but she definitely wasn’t herself. By Saturday morning, the virus had worked its way to me. Thankfully Zach was well and so he took care of Taylor, but we ended up taking a trip to the emergency room so that I could get rehydrated. No sooner had we returned from the hospital when Zach came down with symptoms and he was down for the count. I guess we were fortunate that our timing was off enough so that at least one of us could be a functioning parent at all times. Zach and I both agreed that this was perhaps the worst stomach flu that we had ever experienced. It took us some time to feel like we had recovered. Taylor was out of sorts for a full week, though, and is just now starting to get her appetite and energy back.

This expression pretty much captured her mood for the past week:

On the plus side, Taylor’s illness didn’t stop her from picking up some new skills. She learned how to wave “bye-bye” and she can now sign the words “more”and “eat”. She also created her own sign for when she wants something. She puts her hand out, palm up, with her index finger and thumb outstretched and her other three fingers in a curled position. It’s really very dainty. T.J. loves to turn the lights on and off and open and close the doors in the house, so whenever I’m carrying her and we walk by a light switch, out goes her little hand! One of my favorite things that she learned to do is to blow kisses. To the untrained eye, it looks like she’s just spitting on her hand, but we know better…

Happy and healthy once again…