Butterfly

Today we had a very rearranged schedule. All week Holly has had trouble falling asleep, I fear she is taking after her Mommy and is too much of a night owl. It has been midnight almost every night. So this morning she woke up at 10:30.

This late start caused a delayed breakfast and no nap. Sally was running late so then around 12:45 Holly fell asleep. Sally decided that she would get some lunch and run an errand and let Holly nap. Sadly she only slept for about 45 minutes and was woken up with a big poopie diaper, but then she had a bottle and was much more cheerful.

So Sally came back and we had a good session. We played with some new cool snowflake blocks that interlocked. There were also these really cool eggs that you could open and the little chicks inside had different faces and squeaked. Holly was more interested in the little container it came from. In the afternoon we played some more but she was tired and cranky because her nap was interrupted. We had some yogurt and carrots and then crawled into my lap and fell asleep.

I transferred her into the crib and got a call from UC Berkeley Infant Study program. We were participating in a study about parenting philosophy and babies first year. We talked about feeding, sleep, and parenting issues. This was a follow up to a 1 week journal and questionnaire we filled out in December. Joel will be doing his interview next week. Holly woke up and we listened to some music and then Joel came home and played with her while I caught up on some organizing and chores that I had been meaning to do. We had some friends over tonight to watch Lost; Holly didn’t go to sleep until 11:30 again. I am not really sure how to get her on a better bedtime schedule. Waking her up earlier in the morning won’t do it, and the day she had only one nap, she still stayed up super late.

Yesterday was a much better day. We had a blast going to Studio Grow, the Wordless Wednesday pictures really say it all, but I will include some little stories here.

I am amazed at how social holly is. She loves other kids so much and is so curious and observant. While playing in the ball pit there was a little girl who was playing caterpillar she was wriggling inside a crawly tube and standing and looking out the front. She walked over to holly and said hi and then she wriggled out of the end of it and turned into a butterfly with her arms waving in the air and dancing around. As you can see this tube is opaque and very narrow, I am not sure if it is supposed to be so extra twisty and narrow or if that is from bent rims and overplay.. Needless to say I let Holly out of the ball pit a few minutes later, sat her in the large room to go and explore and she went right over the the tube. She crawled through it with no prompting and then when she got to the other side she sat looked at me and put her arms up. I was shocked.

Next we played with the climbing structure in the Wordless Wednesday pictures. What was most exciting was that she climbed up into the blue tube which was easily 12 inches off the ground and then on the other side, felt for the floor, with one hand, found the ground and climed down. This was some very advanced crawling. She played all around going in and out and over the little ledges.

Then she crawled into the next play room, as the kids were not by us and she went to look for them. There was a little girl in there who was playing with the blocks and building a maze. Holly wanted to “help” at first the little girl kept straitening the blocks as holly messed them up. She would push them strait and then when she turned to get another, Holly would push it out of place. So I told her that she should finish building the maze and then when she was done we would go around and straiten all the section. She has two younger siblings so she was accomadating. Holly had fun banging the little block on the big one and watching the girl make the maze.

The another little girl came in to play and jumped onto the “stage” to do a dance for her grandmother. Holly was so intrigued with her energy she crawled over and pulled herself up to say hello. Then she started to pat down on the stage edge as if dancing too. The little girl loved the extra audience and would come over to Holly and dance by her and holly would start to laugh and cheer when she came near. I think it is the first time I saw her laugh so much at someone else other then me and dad. It was amazing.

There was another little boy who was almost exactly 24 hours older then Holly born at the same hospital. His mom and I joked that we may have run across each other in the halls. It was great to see that they seemed to be right on course with each other developmentally with the crawling and pulling up. He liked to follow holly around and joined her near the stage.

Later when the kids stopped dancing they went to play in a tent. There was an older girl, who wasn’t as friendly and bossing the other kids around. Holly wanted to see where everyone went so she crawled over to the tent to say hi and play, but the girl told her no babies aloud. It was kind of cute. So I told Holly no babies and we went back to the ball pit for a while.

They have these roller coaster tracks that you ride a little car down a wavy track, she had a lot of fun on that, but wanted to crawl back into the other room. She found her way to the tent after the other kids moved on and was quite please with herself. Later she was playing the Asheem the other 10 month old and she crawled over to the block shelves and proceeded with sliding each block to the floor one by one.

Asheem came over and wanted to knock the blocks down too, but it seemed kind of dangerous, so his mom moved him over to the next shelf and while we chatted the two of them had a great time dropping the blocks. It was amazing how they were so much alike. And us mom joked about this being the good thing about being here; we won’t have to put them all back. I felt like the staff must feel futile trying to pick up with little kids following around them messing things up as soon as it has been cleaned.

The only bad thing that happened was Holly had a little bit of Sensory overload while we were in the lunch room. We went in and Holly finished a whole container of Squash. She was still hungry so we opened some bananas and then two little girls came in, so she started to get distracted. The little girls were Chinese I think and they were two in a playgroup of about nine, so after a few minutes the rest of them and their moms came in. So it was like 18 people having 6 different conversations in Chinese and at first I thought wow this is wonderful she can be exposed to the different sounds and language but she just sorta “wigged out” and started to cry and couldn’t handle all the stimulation.

So I picked her up and pulled her into the quiet room and then made her a bottle. After a few minutes she was calm and rearing to go. I let her crawl around the baby room for a bit and she was over by the gate ready to go. She actually was able to push it open and started looking for some more fun. After lunch we had all the fun I already described above.

We left at 6:00 and she fell asleep in the car, so I ran some errands to make an exchange at Bed Bath and Beyond, and then at Babies-R-Us. We picked up Daddy at 7:00 and then decided to go out to eat. We went to public market and Holly ate the rest of the Bananas and then we browsed around the bookstore. It was a fun day.