Making New Friends

One of the things I struggle with raising an only child is whether or not she's being "socialized" enough. I fear she's not interacting with other kids on a frequent enough basis, and usually when she is with other kids, I can't watch her to see how she's acting around them (church nursery etc.) I've wanted to do more playdates with younger kids and their moms, (because let's face it, we all need some socialization, too!) but until recently, I didn't really have any friends with kids.

The past couple months, I have made several new friends, and the majority of them have kids or will have them shortly! This is a wonderful new development for not only me as a mom, but for Aria as well. She finally has people to play with! I mentioned last week how we have started on Wednesdays going to a local gymnastics studio for play time and lunch, and it's been really nice the couple times we've gone. While Aria still prefers playing and running around by herself, she is definitely showing improvement in the tolerance-of-other-kids-in-her-personal-space issue she's had since birth. In fact, she's even given one little boy (her #1 admirer, at that) a hug twice now.

We're also still working on the "share" issue. It was one of the first words we taught her, and she does really well with "sharing daddy's phone" with him or "sharing the piece of trash on the ground" with the trash can etc. We had just never been able to put it into practice with other kids and toys. But today, she shared. A toy. With another child. I was so proud. :) I will say, she was not thrilled to give up one of her bright yellow balls to this new kid, but she did. And I was beaming with pride.

Hopefully, Aria won't be an only child forever. Unless your child is a twin, they've also been an only child at one time. How did you teach them how to share with others? Did you do organized play dates as well? Do they have cousins close to their age to play with (a luxury Aria will never have, I'm afraid)? I would love to hear your ideas and solutions!

Shake, Tumble and Roll: The Techniques of the Tripping Toddler

Aria moments away from employing the "Thud" technique.

As Aria learns to move around more quickly, she doesn't have a lot of patience for slowing down. This causes for a lot of odd dances to stay upright and, occasionally, falling flat on her face or tucus. Now, for those parents who have not yet been through the "learning to walk" stage, there are several different falling techniques your young toddler will employ. I will now explain them in depth, so as to aid in the understanding of curious parents.

The first is what Josh and I simply refer to as "Thud" because there's no glamorous ending; it's just a simple "THUD" on the ground flat on their rear, as though they suddenly meant to be sitting down. After a look of mild confusion to indicate that they did not indeed intend to be sitting at that present moment, the toddler can return to a standing and/or walking position quite easily.

The next would be the "Wobble, Wobble, One Touch." This takes place when the toddler starts to lose his or her balance, but instead of falling backwards, they begin to fall forward. This must be avoided at all cost, so as to save the parents expensive medical or future dental bills. Thus, after wobbling around attempting to maintain their balance, the toddler will then lean forward, touching one hand to the ground to stable his or herself. At this point, once they have reached a safe position, they can either lower themselves to the ground safely, or push themselves back up again.

The third is what I tend to call the "Much Too Downward Dog." This occurs when, unlike the last technique, there is no time to wobble around and steady oneself; instead, the toddler just throws both arms down in yet another attempt to avoid hitting the ground face first. Unfortunately, since there was no time to regain balance, the toddler will then just fall over sideways, while still maintaining a nearly perfect "Downward Dog" stance. This technique is best utilized when in a large open area, so as to not hit one's head during the Downward Dog Descent. Even if this technique is pulled off flawlessly with no injury, there still tends to be a tad residual trauma left over, that may cause for a wimper or a full-blown hysteria fit, depending on the child and their state of mind.

I hope these three basic techniques, their explanations and their expected emotional outcomes will be of use to you and your child as you go through the stage of learning to quickly maneuver oneself about.

Learning new things!

While on vacation this past week, it seemed as if Aria was learning new things at leaps and bounds! She now understands what we are trying to tell her, which is HUGE (although, she still likes to ignore us and pretend, even though we can tell she actually understands.) This week, she started raising her arms up when we asked "how big is Aria" as if to say "THIS BIG!!" It made for a lot of laughs and outrageous cuteness. She now claps when we say "patty-cake," yay!!" or "clap!" which is super cute - sometimes she misses and just looks at her hands like "what do you think you're doing?!"

Aria also broke her second tooth early last week, and her toothy grin is just too adorable. She's crawling on all fours a lot more now and climbing up stairs at astounding speeds. She's standing up much easier, and I know it's just a matter of time before she takes off running!

Going Shopping!

Until just recently, Aria's shopping experience existed only of staring at the top of her carrier and occasionally holding my coupon organizer on her lap. Not much fun for someone who likes to be in the middle of things... But NOW, she has her cart cover! She can sit in the cart, play with her blankie and toys and be able to see EVERYTHING! And she gives it her honest-to-goodness best effort to indeed see everything; she's always whipping her head around, talking to and smiling at people, and reaching out to touch things she finds interesting. It's like a whole new world has opened up to her. The grocery store is now her favorite place in this world :)

Her first trip in her new cover - to Lowe's. She loved the fan section, touching the rugs and carpets and looking at new refrigerators :) 

Playing with Food

I read somewhere recently that it was good to let kids get hands-on with their food from an early age in order to form some kind of "relationship" with food.... Now, I'm not sure I want Aria having an intense relationship with food at this point, but I thought letting her play with her food for once would be fun! Maybe I should have stuck with simple cereal instead of green beans .... :)

New Discoveries

well, this week was the first time aria crawled all by herself and in a straight line. she's been "scooching" since she was born (seriously, 3 days old) and in the past month, she's been moving a lot around the living room, but always in circles, never actually in a straight line. this past saturday, she crawled. in a straight line. right to my feet, which she's currently fascinated with. she's also incredibly proud of herself upon this new accomplishment, and always makes sure we're watching her when she decides to go mobile. attention addict.

she's also sitting up completely on her own now, until she gets so happy, waves her arms and throws herself off balance.

she's falling in love with music even more now - which is all right by me! mimi and grandpa got her a stereo system for valentine's day, and we've been playing music for her, and she's absolutely fascinated by it. she loves the blue glow of the stereo and the pretty music that comes from it. she's starting to dance to music on a regular basis, and also does a little dance whenever she gets excited - pretty adorable, i'm not gonna lie.

she's still  infatuated with "adult food" even now that she can eat real food - pizza esp. is far more interesting than pureed carrots, apparently. i can't even drink a pepsi in front of her, because she sees the blue can and knows it's something she wants and can't have and squeals at the top of her lungs lol. we've been keeping her distracted by giving her a stick of celery to chew on while we're eating dinner, but her occasional inability to actually get it in her mouth, while hilariously funny to watch, is frustrating enough that she can chuck it across the room....and then get sad that it's not in her hand anymore lol.

so many different little things that show how big she's getting...makes me sad, yet tickles me at the same time. she does the most adorable things (ie - climbing over josh's shoulder to get to his cell phone sitting behind him) but it just shows me how big she's getting. in a few days, she'll be 7 months. crazy. seems just like last week when we were bringing her home from the hospital. on the other hand, it seems like she's always been here...

tempus fugit. diligo vita. 

On Her Knees

aria is trying to hard to stand up on her own, but just hasn't figured out that she has to push herself up with both legs. right now, she's just pushing up one leg at a time, which means she ends up tumbling over on her bum. when she falls, we say "boom! boom!" and apparently the sound of those words makes her laugh, because whenever we say it she just laughs and laughs - it doesn't matter that she just fell.

she's also scooting all over the place and yesterday tried to crawl into our cabinet drawer that she had opened when i looked away for, like, 2 seconds. she's also attempted to climb out of her play saucer to retrieve her paci, pull herself out of her swing and lunge out of our arms in a valiant effort to nab the remote control (one of her current obsessions.)

other recent obsessions? well, let's see... our fake wood doors - every time i walk by one when holding her she reaches out to touch the doors. she won't stop grabbing my lips or glasses when i'm feeding her and her favorite toy today was when i gave her one of my old Thirty-One catalogs to play with (must be the pretty colors...) oh, and she's still in love with seeing herself in the mirror...go figure.

i'm not thinking it'll be too much longer before she's standing up on her own and trying to walk, at which point we'll have lots of "boom! boom!"s...

Peas are Yummy.

i had to keep telling myself that as i was feeding aria lunch today... until today, her reaction to peas has been less than positive, but after adding some formula and rice cereal to her peas, she seemed to appreciate them more... it was just i that had to refrain from gagging while i was feeding her, the smell of formula i have become accustomed to and the smell of peas i can tolerate, but the 2 combined was just almost more than i could handle. but she ate with such enthusiasm that my disgust was overtaken with joy that she was finally enjoying a green veggie! celebrate! until now, the only things we've been able to get her to eat are squash and sweet potatoes. i'm not even going near fruits yet, because with her genetic sweet-tooth history, we'd never get her to eat anything substantial if we brought in any form of sugar at this point.

last night, during the super bowl, aria was getting so annoyed with everyone eating and not sharing with her, she nearly swiped grandpa's cracker with cheese right right from his fingers! she leaned over so far and fast to gt to it, she pretty much fell out of my mom's lap! we all had a good laugh, but realized we needed to do something about this "food jealousy" issue... we gave her a stick of celery to chew on. many people recommend celery for infants while they're teething because it feels good on their gums, but aria was mostly confused by it - we've never encouraged her to put anything solid in her mouth before besides her bottle and paci, so the fact we were encouraging the celery probably made it less fun for her. but her face was EXTREMELY entertaining for us. i'm pretty sure she was NOT expecting it to taste like that, but she put it back in her mouth several times. hopefully, we'll have a veggie eater here soon! :)

what was your kid's first real food?

Aria after her first meal of squash!