Amelia Takes On the World

I feel like I see pregnant women everywhere. And its giving me baby fever - I mean my baby is now a toddler and I often miss the little baby moments I savored. However, we aren’t quite ready for that yet (did you see the post about her teething??), so instead we thought we’d share some of our favorite baby items in the creation of Amelia’s Worldly Store. Don’t worry, I’ll include things for moms too.  There will be a permanent page and link in her sidebar - Enjoy!

Hey everyone!  Its teething and cranky Amelia here to let you know my Thursday thoughts.  I thought my molars would be in by now, but they hurt me, particularly at night - its not fun.  I’m sure my parents would tell its not fun either since I wake them up to join in the pain.  And its a cruel cycle- I’m not sleeping as well at night, and then at daycare one of the other kids always wakes us all up early - and so I’m doubly tired and then I don’t sleep well at night again.  Last night I was so tired I didn’t even want dinner - only a bottle please!  Hopefully they’ll bust through soon and it will all be over.  My parents mentioned something called coffee to help them wake up, but they wouldn’t give me any.

This past weekend I was distracted from teething but having such a fun weekend with my friends Carson, Shipley, Eliza and Slayton.  They all hugged and loved on me, it was great.  I was the ‘baby’ - but I’m 13 months old now so I don’t know why they kept calling me that.  Mom is going to try and edit a few of her favorite pictures to post on here.  If you want to see the full album you can email her about it and maybe she’ll let you take a peak.

This coming weekend we are headed to Nonni and Grandpappy’s house - I’m so excited!  They are even going to take care of me while my parents have a night out on the town in St. Augustine.  Hopefully the weather will be nice, but my parents said someone named Gustav might visit causing raining.  How does a person bring rain?  Oh well.  I’m sure I’ll figure that out as I get older.

I hope all of you have a wonderful and safe Labor Day Weekend.  I’ll think of all my friends as I splash around down in Florida.

Love,
Amelia

PS These are unedited photos… mom says she doesn’t know when she’ll have time to work on it.  I keep her busy busy all the time!

My gosh Amelia, you are 13 months old now.  First you are one and a ‘toddler’, according to baby center, and now another month has gone by.  I’m in shock at how fast the time passes.

One of my favorite things that has happened this month - you love your baby dolls.  You hug them and rock them and pat them, and it melts my heart it is so adorable.  I’m trying to teach you to kiss them but that looks more like an open mouth bite at this point.

This past weekend you celebrated 13 months old in a big way.  On Friday you started trying to stand by yourself and by Sunday you took two steps - twice - I can officially say those were your first steps.  Its so fun to see you try new things.

One of my favorite toddler things is how cute they are when they wave, and so I hated that for some reason you decided you weren’t waving any more.  I think you went on a month-long strike at least!  But the waving returned full force at the end of last week and it is so adorable.  Welcome back toddler wave.

We’ve been working on the sign for thank you, and you’ve done it at least once, if not more… you are also doing another sign I need to ask the teachers about - I thought it was milk (it was similar but not quite) but that was clearly not what you wanted when I gave you milk….  we’ve also been working on body parts.  You are quite good at finding ‘Amelia’s head’!  Next we are working on belly.

You are talking more and more but I am apparently not very good at picking out the words.  One that you clearly use now is ‘up’.  So that adds to the list of mama, dada, all done, baby (though haven’t heard this in awhile), yeah and hi (also missing at the moment).  I know you have to be saying more than that, but I just can’t distinguish them yet.  You are still great at answering questions and having conversations with us - you know what tone to use to answer, and are so adorable while you do it.  As most  toddlers, you learned how to share your head no very early on - but I’m excited we’ve finally taught you nodding your head ‘yes’ - and you use it particularly when telling us stories.

You have 7 teeth through right now (that 8th one is stubbornly visible but not through - for weeks now), with molars starting to come in as well.  Hopefully this will bring on a reprieve from the teething for at least a little while once they are in.   The teeth definitely mark you as a toddler and not as a baby, but your grin couldn’t be cuter.

You are still an amazing eater though there are a few things you don’t like - you don’t like bananas (weird for a baby), you don’t like pasta with tomato sauce (I didn’t either until college), and you are not a huge watermelon fan (though any other melon? Eat it right up).   And you don’t like sweets (you looked like I was poisoning you with sorbet the other night) - not sure how that works since I have a huge sweet tooth but maybe that’s from your father.  You love meats from steak to hot dog to deli meat, you love veggies - particularly green beans, limas and peas, and you like fruit.  Bread and oatmeal are always favorites and you can’t get enough of graham-flavored crackers.  I think you’ve entered the stage where you aren’t gaining as much weight anymore - you are so active I think you need every calorie of what you eat to get around every day.  Its great to introduce more foods and figure out your likes and dislikes - who know what this month will bring.

This past weekend we went back to the cabin again, this time bringing along a bunch of your friends - three two-year olds and a four-year old.  You loved the other kids, though sometimes you wanted to sit on my lap to watch the chaos from above.  They were all so sweet with you - giving you hugs and kisses.  The best part was the fishing - all of the kids, including yourself, were so excited when a fish was caught.  The squeals of delight are one of the best reasons for having our kids - true enjoyment.  (Also hysterical when the fish would jump and the kids would run away screaming but come right back to touch it again).

Amelia - you are my baby girl even though you are growing up fast.  Your daddy and I love you so much and are happy that we are moving into the stage when we can be affectionate with you.  There is nothing better than a hug or kiss from our Amelia.

Love,

Momma

So I can make these adorable cupcake popsicles.  For those who don’t know, I have a tv at work - after all, we have tv stations so it kind of makes sense.  With the Olympics going on, have to say I’ve been watching someone else’s network (shhh don’t tell).  And after the morning coverage its just stayed there throughout the afternoon all week (weird retro-story on Days of Our Lives earlier this week - black & white fantasy - I dunno).  And so I happened to see a re-run of Martha Stewart and they had this on:

Cupcake Pops and Bites

And I was intrigued - aren’t they adorable?  And they weren’t that hard to make depending on what you wanted to do with them.

I decided to do more research and here is the blog for Bakerella - apparently she is here in Georgia too. I’m not a huge baker, or cooker these days for that matter, but I really do love to do it - so I can’t wait to try them!  She has tons of other fun stuff on her blog too, so enjoy and I’ll let you know when I have a party to make the cupcakes and post pictures here.

Kelly

Hi everyone!  Wow, a whole week since I last posted my thoughts.  It was a fun weekend - I love hanging out with my cousin - she let me cuddle her doll (my favorite thing to do right now), and we rode in a wagon and used the swings.  This weekend we are headed to the mountains and I’ll get to follow around Eliza and Carson all weekend - they are such big girls - they a whole year older than me.  The boys can do silly boy things, I don’t care about them.  Hopefully we’ll do s’mores again! Not that I can eat them yet, but I love the graham cracker part.

Not much has happened this week - daycare is fine, in fact I really like the toddler room.  I’m still not walking for them - but I do push the shopping cart around outside.  Apparently I sleep on the cot with my bottom in the air but that’s how I’m comfortable so who cares.

Today we had to wear our favorite color to school - mom gave me the option of red or pink and I choose pink.  That way I got to wear my new headband too!  Its very stylish and I like to be stylist.

My favorite activity this week has been getting into the cabinets for the TV.  Mom tries to block them, but I can move what she uses.  When she catches me I close them really fast to pretend I wasn’t doing it, but I think she knows…. I have to learn to be more sneaky.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Love
Amelia

It took me awhile of digging through our video - but I found the video of Amelia’s cousin Madeline saying she was the cutest thing on Earth…. I included a few seconds of other kiddie pool footage along with it. Ignore me in my bathing suit - made me realize I really need to get a new one.

Also a fun note tonight - my baby may be one of the only ones that really doesn’t like pasta - weird. And no sweets either - but give her green beans anyday. Tonight for dinner she demolished her turkey meatball, spit out any pasta that made it to her mouth, picked out the green beans from the veggie medley but then ate the lima beans, green peas, carrots and corn - in that order, and also ate her strawberries and wheat toast - about equal love on those two. Not sure this is my child sometimes!

The cute tutus you see Amelia wearing, as well as the headband which will start appearing soon, are from my good friend Asha - you can support her by checking out her online store! Enjoy! There is a permanent link down the right hand side of the blog.

Here is Amelia wearing the headband!  Too cute.

For a fun Sunday afternoon, we decided to get the cousins together for a picnic. We also had ideas about a watermelon summer photo shoot but the plethora of yellow jackets changed our minds on that one. So instead we just walked around while the cousins enjoyed the ride! They even shared dolls with one another - too cute.

It seems like every week we hear more and more about kids and food allergies.  There are theories about introducing foods too early, introducing foods too late, allowing small amounts of the allergen, trying new foods every three days after no reaction, etc and more.

Unfortunately this is something for us that is starting to hit home.  Early on for Amelia she seemed to get gassy and fussy at times, and the gas drops did not help.  This seemed to be tied to times she’d also have ‘greener’ diapers - and we finally seemed to tie it to times I was having large amounts of dairy, since I was her source of nutrition.  Cut back on dairy and she definitely seemed to get better.  Later on introducing formula, we tried a dairy-based and she seemed fussy so we just went with soy - Amelia loved it and it seemed to work well.   When she was approximately 9 months old, I accidentally fed her a baby food that had both heavy cream and egg yolk - and that led to massive vomiting in the back seat of the car on our road trip to Florida (and can I say what a champ Chris was cleaning it with every wipe we had in the car while I dealt with Amelia?).

So we waited…. and around her one year birthday we started letting her have things that had minor amounts of dairy - frozen waffles, pancakes, etc.  And she seems fine with that.  Cheese she did okay with in a tiny amount.  However yogurt and whole milk both turned her skin red, and in fact when she rubbed her eyes they swelled up - so that’s back on the no list for now, though we still will allow things with minute amounts of dairy.   Now that she is almost 13 months I thought it’d be a great idea to try scrambled egg - why not? Great source of protein for breakfast, she is past the one year mark…. unfortunately after her 1/2 scrambled egg her mouth area was red and hivvy and her nose started running, and then her stomach emptied out - though thankfully the diaper route this time.  I am also thankful that it did not seem to affect her breathing.  We’ll be adding egg to the allergy list and calling an allergist today.  I guess we should not be too surprised, both myself and baby daddy have allergies and they say the genetic inclination is a key part of it.

I feel so bad that something I’ve introduced caused her harm - but yet, do you not introduce foods?  I know we are going to become a peanut-free, nut-free home just in case for now.  I don’t want to risk a reaction that could be even more serious.  No shellfish either.  She seems great with soy, and hasn’t had any fruit issues which seems to cover the top kid allergens.  I’m thankful hers haven’t been serious reactions yet, and I’m thankful they are both ones most kids outgrow.  I wish we knew more about food allergies - it seems like there is so much information, yet no idea really what to do about them.

If you have a food allergy story, I’d love to hear it in the comments.  Also any dairy & egg-free recipes your kids love?  I’d love to hear about those too!

Baby Momma