Year of the Ox

My brother's wife, Yoon Mi, and her mother, bought Hadley an authentic Korean hanbok for Christmas this year. Since it is the asian new year, and the Year of the Ox, Hadley has donned her most gorgeous new outfit to be Bell of the Ball. (She and I are both Year of the Boar). Normally, I can't even put a shirt over her head without a full on tantrum. So I was nervous about putting on the Hanbok which comes in 7 parts, including a purse. But she LOVED it.

Even after our photo shoot, she sat an played with the dress, enjoying the different textures and bright colors.

She even kept the hat on the whole time! She looks like she belongs in a magazine.

Weening a Child from a Bottle to a Sippy Cup

Ok, I'm giving a shout out for some help. Mamas out there, could you please let me know how you weened your kid from a bottle to a cup?

THE PROBLEM
Hadley will drink water or juice out of a glass and/or a sippy cup, but only during her meals. She usually drinks less than four ounces a day total. Since her 12 month check-up, she has 3 bottles (20 oz.) of milk per day (now supplemented with Pediasure). But she is so attached to her bottle, that she will only drink milk out of it.

For the past 3 months, every week, I have tried to get her to drink milk out of a cup. However, she refuses, fights it, and will not drink the milk at all. So I pour it in a bottle and she downs the whole thing. Can you say total manipulation?

THE ISSUE
Because she is underweight, she needs her whole milk and supplement. If she weighed enough, I would toss all the bottles and see who had the stronger will. (Me, me, pick me please.)

Other than all out warfare, does anyone have any ideas? I'm having visions of her going into first grade with her bottle attached to her backpack. Ok, not really, but sometimes worst-case-scenarios do sneak into my head.

Getting Into Everything, One Drawer at a Time

The cabinet magnet locks have finally been installed on the crucial ones that Hadley should not get into, but we have so many. The one downfall of a great big kitchen.


At first, when she couldn't open the dog food cabinet anymore, she freaked out. But then she realized she could still get to the towel, cookie cutter, pasta, and her spoon and cup drawer.


I had to move her snacks because she started feeding them to the dogs.


As with any kid, she always manages to get into the spots that you absolutely don't want her to go. So if you feel like you need help baby proofing your house, I'll rent her out to come over and show you what needs to be taken care of. She's like a drug sniffing dog in that way.

Diet Update

Just so you don't think I've gone off the wagon and am drowning in a sea of candy wrappers and muffin tins, I wanted to let you know that it is Day 12 of the diet. Drum Roll please...I have lost 5lbs. My pants fit looser, my stomach is flatter and I am finally feeling normal again. As of today, DG is down 8lbs and looking Triple XXX sexxxy.

But let me tell you who is NOT on a diet in this house. Little Miss Hadley has been low in the percentiles for quite some time. I've been trying to fatten her up since we got out of the hospital. But unlike the rest of us, when she is full, she stops eating. Except when she is working to eat her weight in blueberries. Even though she seems like a great eater, she is about 3% under the curve. So with the Doctor's recommendation, we are starting her on PediaSure today. I also took the plunge and gave her peanut butter for the first time. I figured getting her 4 immunizations at the doctor wasn't enough. Might as well dip her in a potential allergen as well. So for the next few months, nothing but vanilla milkshakes, peanut butter sandwiches, and avocado puddings for her. Now that's a diet.

The Vocabulary of a One Year Old

Words she says:
Dog, Dada, Mama, Nana, Papa, Tica, Apple, Orange, Banana, Avocado, O, Up, All Done, Burp, Moo (cow), Ah ah ah (monkey noise). Her current word of the week is UP. As in, up the stairs, UP out of the crib, and my favorite, I need a hug, pick me UP.


Signs she knows:
More, Eat, Drink, Down, Book, All Done, Milk, Chicken Dance, Gimme, Hi and Bye, and Poop (ok, I'm still working on this one).

This week, her vocabulary is exploding. Yesterday when I was reading her Charlie Harper's ABCs, she started saying the words on almost every page! Ape, Owl, and Turtle were her favorites.

The Life of a Toddler

It has been an ideal situation for me to be able to stay at home with Hadley and not have to put her into daycare. (minus the sucky part of not working and making any money) Though now that she is almost 14 months old she really needs more interaction with kids so that she can learn socialization skills. So this year, I am making an extra effort to get us out of the house. I joined an online group of Denver Urban Moms that have different activities every day of the week. Just last week, I finally started to participate with Hadley and I think it's been good for us. Not just to get out of the house, but to open up her world to other kids, sharing, and communication. I also joined a Gymboree which is a gym for kids. We went to our first class last November and she LOVED it. It was like I had opened her world up, and she didn't realize there were little people out there just like her. She had 10 month old girls running circles around her, and for the first time, she pulled herself up on me, stood there on her own, and watched them all. Shortly after that, she took her first steps.

Last week, our schedule was booked:

Monday: Barnes and Noble Story time with Urban Moms
Tuesday: National Western Stock Show with Lora, Olivia, Sara, Reese and Phinn
Wednesday: Gymboree
Thursday: Music Harmony with Urban Moms
Friday: Open Gym at Gymboree

This week, we have a cold. I know this is what happens when little kids touch everything and put their hands in their mouth. I'm not interested in being a germ-o-phobe because I want her to begin building antibodies against all the crap she comes up against. Though the mutant snot coming out of her nose looks like something dead from Ghost Busters.

The Remote

Oh look, my favorite toy, the remote.


I hope no one sees me with it.


You think I have the remote? What remote?


Oh, you mean this remote?


Well, I guess static electricity can be fun too.

Hugs and Kisses

Hadley has always been a total love bug, but in the last couple of months she's really become a cuddle muffin too. She'll walk across the room just to hug and kiss my knee some days. When she throws her arms around me and puts her head on my chest, it makes me all warm and gushy inside.


Sometimes I just want to wrap her up in a big Mom blanket, like here.


Please understand that I am sacrificing my dignity here by posting the photos of me in an obvious lack of cleanliness. But I figure her cuteness overpowers my stench.

Here she is learning how to kiss on the lips. Though we hope she doesn't pass these out as readily as she does blowing kisses to EVERYONE, including the tellers at the bank, the ladies at Starbucks, anyone sitting in the near vicinity to her on the plane, the bag boys at the grocery store, and the mailmen at the post office. Since she acts in such a familiar fashion to her Dad, like a shut-in starved for attention, I am making an extra effort this year to get her out of the house every day to do fun things. More on that later.

New Year, New Me

If you are a longtime reader, you may recall that back in 2005 I went on a diet. Not just any diet, the Slim4Life, life changing, attitude adjustment diet. Here is a detail of the Slim4Life Plan. Of all of the crazy diets I have ever done, this is the only one that have ever worked for me. I was even able to keep off the weight for almost 2 years, until I got pregnant. Then eating healthy was thrown to the wind as my body CRAVED massive proportions of all things carb and dairy, and dessert was a necessity after every meal. I'm curious, I should look back and see how many crazy food posts I had during my pregnancy, like my peanut butter and jelly french toast week-end.

So after one year, I have managed to lose all but ten of the pounds I put on. Usually I don't like to make New Year's Resolutions because I feel if a change needs to be made that I should make it, rather than wait. But this one just happens to fall at a time when my friend Molly has started Slim4Life, and I realized that it's time to stop making excuses and start taking some action. This spare tire around my belly needs to have it's lug nuts taken off and removed. I also tend to hibernate in the winter. I don't work-out, I barely leave the house, and think that because my body craves baked goods every day, that I should just fulfill it's need by constantly making pancakes, muffins, and brownies.

So today is Day 1 of a 3 day cleanse and prep phase. My goal is to lose at least 5-10lbs. so that I can at least consider fitting into some of my old clothes. Don't be sorry for me though, I totally carb loaded and ate tons of desserts this week-end knowing that I would go without for several weeks.

Born to Rock

DG and I have never owned a video game. We barely watch tv. We prefer to sit in the office at night after Hadley has gone to bed, back to back not talking and doing geeky internet things. You know, the perfect marriage.

Last night however, DG dragged us out to Best Buy (yawn) and while there, I saw a few guys playing Guitar Hero. I know it's been in the popular mainstream for quite some time, but last night it was calling to me. I stalked the guys until they left, and then swooped in and strapped on the axe to play a set. Then I couldn't figure out how to START THE GAME. Lame. After about 5 minutes, we were ready to roam the store and hijack the first 10 year old we could find who could figure this thing out for us. Finally DG got it going and started 2 games. But he sucked gong show style and got boo'd off stage immediately. That's when I passed the baby over and told him to let me show him how we like to rock with our cock out. Oh did I just say that?


Unbeknownst to me, he took a picture. I had to find out about it by logging into Facebook today! Rassity Frassity. I almost made it through the entire song of Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Going to Go My Way?". If we had this game, I would make it my bitch. It's probably best that we don't own it, or Hadley would sit in a dirty diaper and not get fed all day.

But really, DG is the one who really rocks. As evidenced here in this video that my Dad posted.

Crawling to Walking

Right before Thanksgiving, Hadley started to crawl and take her first steps. She has been getting progressively more daring until finally at my parents house, she would walk across the room to me. Then when she didn't think we were watching, she would walk unprompted from one piece of furniture to another. She still prefers to crawl about, but each day I see her taking risks and trying to go further.
As any proud parent, the best part of this video for me is her excitement after she totally bites it. That's my girl.

Did you see my pink glove on The Today Show?

Of all of the places that I have been on this sweet earth, my favorite city on the planet is New York. Nothing compares to the energy, the people, the shopping, or the restaurants. Since I graduated from college, I have been able to go to NYC at least every two years, and each visit is filled with amazing memories and some star sitings. This time, we saw Zach Braff walking on the street.

There are some cloudy memories as well such as Holly dragging me out of bed at 6:00 am after three hours of sleep because she knew I wanted to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, or me cajoling Joy and Holly up to dance on the Bar at Coyote Ugly at 2:30am after going to see a Broadway show, or some guys running out of a restaurant and inviting Joy, Tara and I in for a drink because they saw us walk by and their hormones flew. But that is another lifetime and another blog post.

Last Sunday at the end of our trip to Connecticut, DG and I left Hadley for the first time ever to spend the night with her Nana and Papa. We took Metro-North from New Haven, CT (or New Halen as DG likes to call it) into Grand Central Station in NYC. DG got us a screaming deal at The Algonquin Hotel in Midtown.

We were there for only 24 hours, so we had to make the most of our trip, visiting friends, eating, and doing all the fun things that I love to do around the holidays like look at the Sax 5th Avenue window and check out the hub bub in Rockerfeller Center. One thing I have never done is go to the Today Show plaza during a taping. Because it was only a few blocks from our hotel, around 9am, after checking out, we decided to do a walk through.

From an empty corner, we could clearly see Meredith Vieira inside doing the morning news. Sadly, Matt Lauer, Ann Curry, and Al Roker were on vacation. However we did get to see Lester Holt and Amy Robach as seen here in the pictures.

The camera man even filmed our side of the plaza, all of us screaming and waving for an opening seque back to the news. I think maybe my glove was in the shot.