Mommy and Me

Alexa and I went to our first Mommy and Me class on Friday. It was a music class held at the hospital that my friend, Dana told me about. Dana and I both grew up in Hollywood. She's a year or two older then me and our brothers are the same age so she was Sean's sister and I was Ricky's sister (which was the just the start me being known as "Ricky's sister". More on that some other time.). Anyway, we both ended up in Tallahassee and both ended up pregnant at the same time. She is one of those random people that I haven't really talked to in years, yet I stalk her on facebook. And apparently she stalks me too which made me feel slightly less awkward and creeperish. So, the point, Alexa and I went to this class. It was at 11:00 which is probably one of the worst times for her schedule so we left here early so that she could nap in the car on the way up to Tallahassee. I actually ended up sitting in the parking lot at Michael's, knitting (yes, I knit. Do you have a problem with that?!) while she finished her nap. Speaking of knitting, I have this hat that I just finished for Nick and it's huge. If you know of anyone who has a monstrous sized head, please let me know because I'll send him a hat. Back to the class. Picture your stereotypical mommy and me teacher complete with guitar and everything. OK, so she was there leading us in song as I took pictures of my kid (and Kaydence) crawling around the room. About half way through the class I realized that I was the only obnoxious one with a camera. Dana was taking some pictures with her phone but that's easier to disguise. Slick. I probably should have been interacting more with Lexi since it was a mommy and me class but you know what, she was way to interested in everything else that's going on. She spent the first 5 minutes with me and then she kept creeping further and further away. Oh, and she was the only one who threw a fit in the class too, of course. They gave out different things for the babies to hold and play with for each song. The first thing was a drum and mallet. When they came around at the end of the song to take it away Alexa was not having that. Sigh. She did better with the other stuff though. All in all I think she had a good time and I had fun. We are going to have Thursdays and Fridays to ourselves so I think it will be a fun thing to do to get us out of the house a little bit. And it's nice that we have a day to recover from daycare/work on Thursday. It's a pay as you go kind of thing so if we don't want to go one week it's not a big deal. Plus it gives me a good excuse to go shopping afterward. I'm already in Tallahassee, I might as well! Here's a picture of Alexa and Kaydence planning their next move.

Our Top 5 Baby Items

Ugh, I've been a bad blogger. Sorry. There are thousands of excuses but I'll spare you and just say that I'm sorry it's been so long...again. So, as (kind of)previously promised, I give you my top five must have baby conveniences. These are of course minus the obvious things like bottles, pacis, cribs, stuff like that. I started thinking about this because a couple of months ago my mom asked me what was the one thing I would recomend to a new mother-to-be that I didn't realize I would need. That kind of got me thinking. And then I asked Nick what he thought and he had completely different ideas that I didn't even consider. So with both of our lists together and again, minus the obvious stuff that everyone has, here is our top 5 list:

5 - Any toy that plays music. I know, this is kind of a cop out, but we really could not live without our music makers. Alexa has known how to turn on the music on her mobile (which is now just the sound box) for months now. She has a sea horse that she also sleeps with that plays music when you press it's belly. Any time I want to get her attention or distract her from crying all I have to do is show her a toy that makes music. Yes, I realize that singing provides lots of music and singing is free (trust me, she gets her fill of me singing. I joke that she thinks her life is a musical because pretty much everything comes in the form of a song) but music makers at least give your voice a rest.

4 - The removable try on our high chair. I realize that most of the trays come off to get the baby out but ours (which is a Chicco) has an extra, clear, plastic tray that snaps onto the top of the main tray. As we have entered the fun and extremely messy phase of self feeding this past month, I have totally come to appreciate that tray thing. It snaps on and off easily and instead of bringing the whole, big, awkward main tray to the sink to be washed you just wash the top tray. The mess is contained and it is fantastic!!!

3 - Wipes warmer. Who wants to have their butt wiped with a cold wipe in the middle of the day, let alone in the middle of the night?! Not I and not my baby!

2 - Pacifier Clip. I find this one funny because we never actually registered for one. Niki gave us one in a pile of hand me downs from Kinley and she even said to me that she never actually used it. Just goes to show you that what works for one person is pointless for another. Now, we've been really good about keeping the paci only for naps and bedtime. However. When a baby is acting a fool in public, the paci comes out real fast. I discovered the wonders of the paci clip at dance. Alexa would sit at the front of the room in a bouncy seat or bumbo while I was teaching and I let her have a paci to keep her relatively quiet. Five minutes later the paci would be on the floor. Nasty. One week I brought the paci clip with me to try it out and it was awesome! I can't tell you how many pacis it saved from the floor on countless trips shopping and at Disney. When my mom asked me the question about the one thing I would reccomend, a paci clip was my answer.

1 - A Video Monitor. By far. We don't even have one of the fancy portable ones or one that has a color monitor or measures the room temperature. Nope, just an obnociously large (I think it's a 6 inch screen) monitor that sits on my bedside table. This is definately the best baby convenience that we own. And my mom thought it was dumb at first. That was until she came up here to baby sit for a week. There is a camera that goes in the baby's room (we have it on the wall above her crib so we can look down on her) and just the one TV looking monitor. Let me tell you that I will get up and walk across the house to look at the monitor before I will walk into that child's room to see if she's really sleeping. We use it to check on her at night. We use it for any time she takes a nap. It's wonderful.

So there it is, our top 5. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Like I said, I find it interesting that what is trash for someone is a must have for someone else.

My Crib Story

So I completely forgot to write about how we had to drop Alexa's crib down to the lowest level. Before I even begin, let me say that we dropped it down to the middle one months and months ago. Probably when she was about 5 months old. Amanda taught her how to pull herself up in the crib (thanks Mandy.) so we dropped it down then just in case. Since then Alexa is obviously pulling herself up all the time. In fact, when I walk into her room after every nap, she's standing in the corner of her crib facing the door with both elbows on the top and her chin resting on her hands. It's pretty cute. And let's go ahead and use that as a reference to how high the top of the crib came on her. It was about armpit level. So about a month ago (I told you I was late in telling this story) I was laying in bed one morning listening to her talk to herself in her crib. I knew that Nick had gotten up already and he was probably sitting on the couch drinking his coffee and waiting for her to wake up a little more before picking her up. I was facing away from the monitor (more on the video monitor in my next post) and I noticed that her talking changed. It wasn't distressed or anything but something about her little noises changed so I rolled over to peek at her on the monitor. Let me tell you that that child had both arms up on the top of the crib with her right foot also on the top of the crib and was hopping off her left foot to try to jump over. Now let's all take a moment to appreciate that it was relatively early in the morning (not my best time thanks to night shift) and I was still pretty much asleep. I jumped out of bed and I imagine that I looked something like a cross between mom walking to her bed after falling asleep on the couch and those cartoons where the animal's feet are racing but they are not getting anywhere. You know what I'm talking about. I finally got my footing, started running out into the family room yelling "she's trying to get out of the crib!!!!" At that point Nick got of the couch and started running to her room. He reached the door first, yanked it open and Hot Stuff was standing in her crib looking at us and laughing. Needless to say, I picked up the baby while Nick went to get his screwdriver to lower the crib all the way down. I think she may be part monkey.