Ok, here we are…Your LAST month before you turn an entire year old! I’m not even going to pretend to think about what happened to the past year. My dear Campbell Beth, it has been a long year and I can totally understand how it’s been one year since you were born. It’s so crazy, but everyday that passes I think to myself, “what was I doing today a year ago?” I think back to being pregnant with you and how miserable I was. How I just wanted you out and how every day of that last month was a complete struggle. I am so glad to be writing this post a year later with you having been out here in this big world for almost an entire year. It doesn’t feel like just yesterday that you were a snuggly newborn. That honestly feels like ages ago. Maybe it’s because you’ve changed so much or maybe it’s because we have done so much in your first year of life and the daily monotony of a schedule or routine hasn’t gotten the best of us. What ever it is, I’m sure glad it doesn’t feel like it’s gone by in lightening speed to me. I like when life slows down a little bit.
This past month has been HARD. And I’m not even talking about parenting you and your brother. To be honest with you, I think you two are so easy and I think we only felt like we were in that “survival mode” that some speak of, for about the first two weeks of your life. That was when we were trying to adjust to a family of 4 and having 2 kids just 23 months apart. Your dad was sick when you were born and I had no clue how to juggle two babies. BUT it got easier and easier after that. And now I feel like I have been doing this two kid thing forever. It has always felt pretty natural to me and I’ve never really felt like I could lose my mind or that I’m just spent by the end of the day. I also feel like it’s because I have a lot of energy myself so that truly helps with this parenting game. Anyways, I’m so glad you chose us to spend your life with. I hope you feel the same 🙂
So let’s back up to the beginning of the month…Your grandparents came out to help your dad out because I went up to the mountains for a weekend get a way with some of your best friends mommy’s. Your dad probably didn’t need the help and could have done it alone but I felt better about your grandparents being out here to just alleviate some of the work. And thank goodness they did end up coming out or there would have been no girls weekend for me. I’ll skip over the details but my sweet girl, you and your brother got deathly sick somehow. I left the house feeling kind of run down myself but didn’t think you two had the same thing as me! I didn’t receive much information while I was away but your dad did keep telling me that you were up several times a night and then would sleep all day long. That isn’t like you. When I got home on Sunday you had been asleep since about noon (and had only been up maybe an hour since your morning nap) and then I didn’t see you until around 5:30 or 6pm that night because you slept the entire day!! I didn’t think anything of it really because sometimes you just sleep a lot but when I saw you your eyes could barely open, you couldn’t breathe, you were coughing and you just looked overall miserable. It kind of scared me because you’ve never been sick before and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby that looked so bad in my life. You were only up for about an hour before you wanted to go back to bed 😦
So we didn’t start the month off with a bang. You and your brother were dreadfully sick for the entire week after I got home. Actually we were all really sick and I had TWO huge tests in my class that week along with all of us being pretty sick. When I took you and your brother to the doctor it turned out that you had a double ear infection and you may have had the flu over that past weekend but it was too late to do anything about it so we didn’t get you tested. Emmett also had a double ear infection along with testing positive for type A flu and an upper respiratory infection which ended up inflaming his lungs and caused him to wheeze all week. It was a horrible week and none of us slept. Well, you would sleep long stretches in the beginning of your illness but you started teething around the same time as your illness and you have continued to teeth all month and those darn teeth still haven’t broken the surface so you continue to wake up at least once a night. It was pretty much the week from hell and I’m glad it’s behind us.
You’ve become so incredibly interactive too. Your dad and I split you and Emmett up so I could take him skiing for the weekend and he could stay home with you. It worked out amazingly well and you and your dad got some very crucial one on one time that you’ve never been able to have with him. I think your dad now feels 100% confident that he can take you anywhere for long stretches of time, after all, you are the easy one right now. Your dad taught you how to throw your hands up over your head when someone says, “SO BIG” to you and you are now putting your palms of your hands to your cheeks when someone says, “HOME ALONE”. You also get into these giggle fits like nothing I’ve ever seen. You sound like a squeaky toy when you laugh and I have to admit, it’s pretty adorable. You are also using your “words” when you want something or want someone to pay attention to you. The other day when we were all saying goodbye to someone, out of nowhere you looked over and said, “bi!”. Everyone in the room just sort of stared at you wondering, “did she say what we think she just said!?” Of course you haven’t said it since. You are also ALWAYS saying “mama” and I’m pretty confident when you say it you know exactly what you’re saying and that when saying “mama” you mean me. You still love crawling to us when we egg you on or call your name and if you are just done and are ready for a nap or bed you will crawl over to me and pull up on my leg and reach your hands up for me to pick you up.
You are a mover and are so curious. Any drawer you can open or cabinet you can find, you will rummage through it and pull every single thing out and even climb into it to find more. You trash our house on a regular basis and it’s hard to keep up with you somedays. You also love the toilet bowl water, the dog’s water dish, the toilet bowl cleaning brush, pulling books off of shelves, pulling stuff out of our end table cabinet and pulling lids, containers and cookware out of drawers in the kitchen. It’s adorable but also kind of annoying.
I’m not sure when you’ll be walking but you pull up on everything and walk while holding onto everything too. You really don’t like to hold our hands and walk. Whenever we try to do this you gently let go of our fingers and gracefully fall to the floor to crawl over to something to stand yourself. You are painfully independent and really prefer to do everything on your own. This also includes feeding yourself. You did love Michele’s purees for about 2 months but you are over anything having to do with being spoon fed. I was able to feed you some yogurt yesterday but I have a feeling the time is coming where I won’t even be able to do that. You just love to eat with your own two hands. We can set you up with your highchair and watch you eat for a solid hour. It’s actually pretty nice because as long as there’s food on your tray and something for you to do (like feed yourself), you will sit quietly for so long. This makes going out to a restaurant super easy with you.
Your dad and I are already noticing how much better you are at following directions than Emmett ever was which will hopefully make taking you and your brother out together in the future easier on me. I will hopefully have at least one kid that stays fairly close to me when told to “come over here please”. I love love LOVE that when we call your name your face lights up and you come crawling over to us with a huge grin on your face. When you do this you also try to pick some sort of object up along the way. Yesterday it was a piece of paper out of a book you ripped out. You are so proud of yourself when you do this and once you reach us you shove your hand in our faces and offer up your treasure. You smile or laugh as you willingly give up your precious gift to us. Of course after we take it you immediately want it back and will literally stop at nothing to take it back out of our hands but I do think this is the beginning of sharing 🙂 Speaking of sharing, you really don’t like it when someone takes something from you. Sometimes I take things from you because I’m afraid you’ll choke and you SCREAM and cry and it’s tough to get you to calm down! Last night it was a green pepper that you somehow bit off and had in your mouth and before that it was an apple slice that was too big. Dang, you did NOT like it when I took those food items away from you. You also think it’s super funny to push people’s faces from side to side. You kind of have this devilish look in your eyes when you do it which, I’ll have to be honest, kind of frightens me! You also LOVE taking Emmett’s pacifiers out of his mouth and then putting them in your mouth upside-down. You only use paci’s to chew on and you never put them into your mouth correctly. When you do, I can tell you’re only chewing on the nipple part.
Speaking of nipples, this is kind of personal but you went through a long stage of biting the crap out of me when you nursed and were done. You would bite me and then look into my eyes with your sweet eyes and just smile. I tried reprimanding you but that made it worse and you thought I was hilarious for trying to get mad at you. You finally stopped doing that but I thought I’d have to cut our nursing days short. Thankfully I don’t see that happening anymore and like everything else, it was hopefully just a phase.
This update has gotten out of control so I’m going to somehow have to end it. There’s probably a million more things I’d like to document from your 11th month of life but I’ll save it for next month as I’m sure you’ll be doing all the same stuff and then some. Campbell, you mean so much more to me than I could ever express in a blog post. Your tiny personality is coming through full force and you amaze me every day with the little things you are figuring out, your curiosity for life, and your ferocious “take on the world” attitude. Somedays I truly feel like you portray the attitude, “It’s Campbell’s world and you all are just living in it”. Baby, I love the way you think. Happy 11 months!
Thin Runner 