Good Grief!

As Ellie creeps, well runs, toward her first birthday, I am finding myself dealing with all sorts of new feelings. Pride, excitement, a little sadness, and one I didn't expect... Grief. I realize that I have been grieving for the baby I will never hold again. Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have a perfect child. She is ahead of the curve developmentally and I wouldn't wish it any other way. But at one year, it really hits home how quickly babyhood passes.

And as much as I love and adore the child she is becoming, I miss my baby! I wanted to write everything she did down, but what new mother has time for that? And now I feel like I may be forgetting things. There was a little face she would make when she was newborn that I could never quite capture on camera. Now I know I'll never see it again. It is heart wrenching.

I feel selfish feeling this way. There are women who want children and don't have them. There are mothers who have lost children. I know that this feeling cannot compare to their grief. But it is grief just the same.

How can I deal with the sense of loss as she grows more and more independent? The last thing I want is to stifle that in her. I also don't want to miss what is happening right now because I'm too busy mourning what I won't see again. It's such a balancing act.

I guess I just have to take a cue from Ellie and live for the moment at hand as much as I possibly can.

 

Inspired to Find Inspiration

Back in November, I bought myself some art supplies.  I've had an idea for some art that involves painting and photos and I wanted to finally try it.  We switched around our apartment so that both Scott and I would have more space for our activities and I ordered what I thought I would need.  But now it's all just sitting in a pile on my side of the room.  I just don't know how to get to it with a baby.  I was a procrastinator before, but now it's just ridiculous.  When I'm motivated, I can't get to it.  When I can get to it, I'm exhausted.  

But in the next couple of weeks I will be really making an effort to get things going.  I'm planning on buying myself a printer for my photos and it will need a safe space.  I can't wait to have the ability to print out my own photos!  I am excited to think about getting some pictures hung in the apartment as well.  

A big part of why I bought myself an iPad was to be able to store photos and plan projects on the go.  Also to be able to blog at will with something other than my iPhone.  So another project I will be working on in the next couple of days is organizing all the photos I've accumulated since the last time I promised to blog more often!  937 on my iPhone alone!

So I generally feel like I'm on the verge of being more creative.  I'm hoping that getting these last few things accomplished will nudge me over to the point where I'm actually creating something on a regular basis.  

Ellie's Work Friends

I obviously feel very lucky to have found a job where I can bring Ellie along. Even more so that both homes have friends for Ellie to play with! Here are some pictures of Ellie with her "co-workers."

 In this picture, Ellie is showing Graham how to go about selecting the tastiest leaves for chewing at the park. Graham seems to be taking the lesson quite seriously!

Here is another friend from Graham's home! This is Ramona! Ellie is learning to be gentle with animals and will now even say gentle ("EN ta") while petting Ramona!  

This is Ellie and Jack. We usually arrive to Jack's house before he is awake. When we go up to get him out of his crib, I will put Ellie in with him for a minute so she is safe while I get him dressed. Whenever I do this, Jack toddles over to her, gives her a hug and a kiss, and then turns on the crib toys for her. She is typically grinning ear to ear the entire time. 

Last, but not least, is Jack's dog Mia. Mia loves to play around the babies and is amazingly gentle with them! She also loves to hang out around the table during meals. It didn't take either baby long to figure out that she could quickly get rid of any food they didn't want! 

So needless to say, I couldn't really have it any better! It's so fun to watch them interact and I believe that Jack and Graham could be lifelong friends for Ellie. Time will tell.

Test Blog Using Blogsy on my iPad

I got my new iPad today and have been having fun playing with it all evening. Now I've installed a new app in order to more easily blog from it! So here's a test blog with a test pic just to see how the features work.

Ellie's Potty

Almost every morning, Ellie wakes up with a dry diaper.  Within a few minutes, however, she is soaked right through her pajamas.  I had tried to sit her on a potty that we had been given before she was born, but she is still so little, she just about fell in!  So I recently looked up "little potty" on Amazon to see what was available and I found the perfect potty!  

Ellie's Little Potty

My plan with the potty was to just see if I could avoid that initial morning soak of the day.  I certainly had no intentions on "potty training" my nine month old.  I started on Christmas morning and sat her on the potty in the bathroom while I sat on the "big potty."  As soon as she heard me go, she went!  I was so excited!

The next morning, I did the same thing and she went again!  This has been the case every morning since I've started!  But today I thought I'd try to put her on the potty any time her diaper seemed dry or dryish.  She peed on her potty FOUR TIMES today!

I think that she is already making associations with her potty that allow her to release that muscle.  I'm still not attempting to "train" her, but I do feel like this will possibly eliminate the need to train her at all in the long run.  I'm theorizing that if I put her on the potty often and give her the option to go there, she will eventually choose that over her diaper.  I plan to teach her the sign for potty starting tomorrow and hope that once she learns it, she can tell me if she wants to use her potty.  

Visions of Minivans Dance in Her Head...

I don't know if it has been previously blogged yet, but Harold, my 1998 Ford Escort, died in the beginning of October. It was decent timing, the Durham family I worked for was becoming a Carrboro family that weekend and Scott and I were already talking about how we could start saving for a new van by March.

So we just went with it. Ellie and I have become pros at the Chapel Hill bus system! Time seems to be flying past with the holidays and the mild North Carolina weather has been something to be truly thankful for!

But now I'm missing the time I'm losing without a van. The buses are free and they run often, but they are horribly indirect. Jack's family lives only five minutes away, but it takes an hour to get there and another to get home. Three days a week equals six hours of my life that I could be using doing other things.

Recently, I've started to paint. I would love to have more time to indulge in this past-time! I would also love to get up at 5am on a Saturday, pack up my computer, and sneak out to a coffee shop to do some blogging before Ellie wakes up! Ellie's bedtime is nonexistent because we get home at 7:30 most nights and she misses Scott and he misses her. So they are playing and spending time together when she should probably be getting ready for bed. Or she falls asleep on the way home and wakes up full of energy way too late. I have sort of given up until we have a van.

Anyway, it's just for a short time. I'm sucking it up and looking at the positives. No gas or upkeep to pay for. I've been losing weight with all of the walking. Sitting on a bus is pretty stress free when compared to driving amongst the masses every morning. So in all, I've got nothing to complain about.

But I still can't wait to get that van!

Nonna

Ellie calls Scott Dada. It is very obvious she means him when she says it. When we are at work, she rarely says it unless something reminds her of him or if I ask about him. At home, she will use it all the time. She knows home is where her Dada is.

For a little while, she was calling me Momma, but it went away. Well, she still uses Momma when she is mad at me. If she wants me and I can't come immediately, she screams, "Maaamaaamamamaaa!"

But she has recently started to say Nonna a lot. At first I just thought it was a new sound. However, we have realized that it's Ellie's affectionate name for me! She says it in the sweetest voice! It sounds like Momma, but with n's. I don't know if she's heard people call me Rhiannon and picked up on it, or if she's just made up her own thing for me, but I love it!