I've hedged on reporting on Ninja for reasons disclosed on my first post on my new blog. But now I want to talk about her.
She's great. Really great. Looks mostly like DH but she has my mom's eyes. She's almost one year old (!) and she's around 32 inches long and weighs 23 or 24 pounds. She's not gonna blow away anytime soon.
Baby-led weaning went great and she is really starting to pick up steam on eating solids. Sometimes she eats as much as 3/4 of an adult portion of dinner!!!
We're still nursing and I'm beginning to think about when I want to start weaning. (I guess, if I weren't considering FET, I'd probably nurse for another year but I want to stop by summer, hopefully, in case we decide to try a frostie by autumn.) Breastfeeding got a LOT easier 2 or 3 months ago. Ninja stopped her months-long nursing strike - and she stopped being so easily distracted, plus my oversupply evened out at the 6-month mark - so I don't mind doing it at all.
As for motor skills, she's crawling, pulling herself up, and has taken a few tentative steps. When she sees other kids her age walking, she contorts herself into yoga moves to try getting up. Her fine motor skills are excellent (I think baby-led weaning, with its emphasis on picking up bits of food, helped with that).
She talks. At 7 months she could say 'mama' and 'dada' and use them discriminately. She can also say 'book,' 'done,' and 'hi.' I think she can say a few others but I'm not sure yet.
She understands tons of sign language - and she responds with her own gestures - but she doesn't sign back, really, which disappoints me, to be honest.
As for personality, she is a hoot. Bubbly, smart, and funny. Loves to cuddle and also loves to play independently. When she's tired or sick, though - like any other kid - she just wants her mom.
She hates to sleep. Sleep has been the number 1 challenge for us. After half a year of trying to put her down, I could finally get her to take 1-3 10-40 minute naps/day. Yep, that's it. We're down to two 40-minute naps daily but I try to stretch out the second one otherwise she's exhausted and crabby by 5 p.m. (Add to this the trains that constantly blare and screech and you've got a crabby One-Hit_Wonder, too.) And she doesn't sleep well at night. It takes hours to get her down - although that is starting to improve - and she wakes up every 45-120 minutes. Co-sleeping has come to an end as of this weekend because she just won't fall asleep if she's next to me. I miss her. :(
Quirks: hates clothing, loves baths, doesn't care if she's wet or dirty, has become a bookworm, gasps for joy when she sees other babies, and french-kisses me out of the blue if I've just eaten something that she likes, too.
Monday, January 17, 2011
A real Ninja update
Posted by one-hit_wonder at 4:20 PM
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3 comments:
Yipee for comments!!! It is so wonderful to hear about Ninja! She sounds wonderfully delightful!
Lily will be three and in the last two weeks, she has JUST started going to bed easily and sleeping through the night. We've been through massive separation anxiety, allergies that led to pneumonia, nightmares, etc that made me think sleep would never come.
We read Dobson's book "Bringing up Girls" and the most interesting thing in the whole book was that we learned that baby girls start getting massive surges of estrogen starting at 6 months and it lasts until 2.5 to 3 and it causes little girls to NEED their mama. I thought it was interesting that Lily finally decided it was ok to sleep by herself (like turning a switch) two months before turning three. Now she hangs with her dollies, stuffed animals and books until she crashes.
: ) : ) : )
Except for the crummy sleep, she sounds so wonderful! Hope we get to have a playdate sometime to introduce the girls to each other.
So sorry to read about the marital woes. Moving, changing jobs, and having a child all hugely stressful, so I'm not surprised things have been tough. Hope the counselling really helps things to improve quickly.
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