Not too much to report on, this has been a bit of a low key week. I think it is because I am still batteling this allergy thing, it acts like a sucky cough and I am congested and can't breath half the time, but it's not Ashma and its not a cold, it is just compacted sinus from the weather changes, so there isn't much I can do. Today my glads were swollen and hurt, I can't sleep because when I lay down I have a coughing fit which wakes Holly and is well pretty uncomfortable, so transitioning from awake to asleep and vice versa is a killer. Whine whine whine.... blah I know....
My little bubble butt has been a pain when it comes too sleeping too. Isn't she cute sticking her bum in the air like that its her favorite way to sleep, well and then some of the time she has her blanket over her head too. She likes to wedge her self into the corner pressing up against the crib. But she has been fighting her naps and not wanting to go to bed, the other day she had a night terror again, this one was really bad. That day she had only taken two thirty minute naps, but I wasn;t expecting it because it was too naps and she just woke up early from them and wasn;t cranky and fell asleep right away, but minutes after we transfered her into the crib she woke screaming.
This one was so bad she threw up several times. I was standing in her room Joel had just handed her to me in hopes that maybe I could sooth her, but her eyes were still closed so I realized it was a night terror and then up came the vomit and all I could think was the excorsit. It was horrifying and I was covered in it. I had to undress both of us all the while she was screaming and then I changed her and cleaned everything up, and I took her into bed and just held her tight. All the while her eyes were still closed and she was still screaming like a banshee. After a few more minutes she would settle whimper and then scream.. this went on for another several minutes, I don't remember if I gave her another bottle at this point, I may have and then she threw up again, this time wasn't very bad, more like a spit up from a cough, but this time it it seemed to wake her up a little bit. So she started to look around. We took her at this point into the living room and put on baby Einstien. She was still crying quiet a bit and it didn't help much but then we went to lay down again and this time she was gulping and whimpering but eventually settled. the whole ordeal was maybe 30-40 minutes, but Joel said it felt like forever. I think the scary part is that she isn't reachable when she is in that state, Joel tries to wake her and engage her and talk to her, I have read that that makes it worse, and you become part of the nightmare, so i like to be in the dark dark and just hold her tight and be there and she eventually calms, but it is incredibly humbling to be so out of control and unable to do anything to help. Its pretty sad that she has been having these night terrors so young, they say they don;t start until closer to two years old, but she has had a hand full now, and I know thats what it is.
Today she refused to go down for her mornign nap until almost 11:40 and luckily Sally her PT was able to come back at 1:45 instead of 12:30 letting her sleep for an extra hour, but then at 5:00 even though she was yawning I tried to put her down for a nap and she refused and got pretty cranky about it, so we got up to play and then Joel tried to put her to bed around 9:00 because she was tired and had been awake for seven hours, but she was having none of it, so I calmed her down and waited and then we tried again at 10:15, we had Karma and Saneesh over and we planned on watching lost, but she refused to let Joel put her down, as soon as I left the room she would scream, I would sing or hum or hold her and she would be calm, then if I tried to leave she would yell, so finally joel told them to leave and that I had to put her to bed. While I was laying down with her she stayed calm, but it took about 30 minutes for her to fall asleep and it was almost 11:00.
Doesn't she look like such a big girl in these pictures, I am remembering back to when I first made these pillows and she used them to pull up on and now she is big enough to sit on them like a chair, it is amazing. Every time we turn around she is taking something off of the table that we didn;t think she could reach so she is getting taller by the minute. She isn't really using her sippy cup well, but she is getting more practice with it daily, we fill it with juice and she likes to shake it and walk around with it she takes a couple of sips here and there, but she isn;t really drinking a lot. But its a start and I am Happy with the progress.
Sally was thrilled with Holly's walking today. She says she is very controlled and she was impressed with her turning and piviting and even her falling is slow and controlled. She is navigating obsticles like pillows or toys on the floor, and taking mini steps up or down over door stops or on and off the carpet. She is even squating down picking up a toy and then walking while holding onto it. She has the skills to stand on her own rather then pull up but hasn't figured that out yet, so it is one of the things we worked on today with Sally. She showed her a few times how to do it. Our session went pretty well.
On Monday we missed our playdate at Chloe's because Holly refused to sleep in the morning, and went down at 2:30, since the playdate starts at 3:00 and she slept till 5:00 we didn't go. I have een pretty busy all week and since falling alseep hasn't been easy I haven't been napping with Holly when she naps, as a result of that I have been pretty tired myself. I guess the apple doesn;t fall far fromt he tree, with a mommy who has sleeping issues, of course she will too. It is sorta scary the things that you see in your kids that simply can't be learned, and present themselves at such a young age.
Yesterday we went to the Eye Doctor, he was wonderful.. he was a pediatric opthamologist and said that holly's eyes were healthy. There were two conditions that are common for kids with Fragile X that dr. hagerman wanted us to check up on, and she was fine, but he said we should come back in a year for another visit, to do a yearly check-up until about 4. At that age, she should be able to do a regular vision test and if her eyes are still healthy then she gets turned over to the pediatrician for checkups during well visits, until she has issues with the vision tests. Which we of course hope won't happen.
We found ourselves rushing out of the house becasue again she went down for her nap late and I wanted to give her every possible moment of sleep before waking her to transfer into the car, and the ride there was about 30 minutes, afterwards she got very cranky and did not want to be in the car seat so we headed over to Sadie Dey's and I let her play for the rest of the afternoon. She didn't go down for another nap till almost 7:00 and slept till 8:00 so of course she was up till midnight that ngiht too... man I should stop whining about sleep issues, can you see this is a theme.. I should call this the gripe and moan post.
I have just had a lot to do, I had a WASC conference call this week, today in fact, which went swimmingly, but I had to rush to review and analyze three reports over the weekend, and I was the lead reader so I was in charge of the call, which was a little stressful of course until the call started. But also I am dealing with an issue related to the title company, apparently someone things there is a judgement against my house from the previous owener that the title insurance didn;t catch, of course this is from 2004 when I bough the house, and the original Judgement was 2000. So it is a pain in my butt that I have to dig out my title insurance for my storage files of 5 years ago, and then find the office and go down there and deal with this, because of bad debt that the previous owner had, I mean why doesn;t the lawyer go chase him down and find him rather then relying on me a responcible person to clean up his mess. Well tomorrow we are having a playdate over here, so I will try and remember to take a bunch of pictures and have a happy post posted soon!
Life is good, I am just in a whiney mood. We are both feeling worn out, but we are hanging in there.
Here is Holly trying on her new digs before we head to the beach and the parks with Water. I love those little sun glasses, she likes playing with them, bu they don;t stay on for more then about 3 seconds. Her little clogs are wonderful, but they don't really fit her yet. She tries to walk in them, but they have large soles and are squishy and too big. In a few months we will try again.
Here is the little miss playing with her Magna Doodle! She is actually "Drawing" I am so amazed. She loves taking the little animals off of the top and is just learning to use them to imprint the shapes, but she mostly takes the pen in and out and scribbles with it. It is much easier to draw with the magnets then having to apply real pressure of a crayon, but this is how you learn.
Doesn't she look like I could be sending her off to school with her book bag. I love this little back back on her, and once she has a few favorite toys she can put them in her bag and carry them around with her when we go out to play. But in the mean time, it was fun to put it on her for the picture. Unfortunately she will need a real back pack much too soon.
This is Holly's new baby doll. She loves to take the hat off and "try" to put it back on. She uses the doll in speech therapy with Stephanie and they feed the doll with a spoon and give her a bottle and a kiss. It is amazing the imitation she does. She amazes me every day.
I know... A Scary picture. She is mad about something here, and well with all the cute and happy pictures I always post, I wanted to share a grumpy one. Holly has a thing about other people touching her or getting into her personal space. So my guess is that in this picture, Sienna is trying to close the door on the house, or go through it which just makes holly very mad, so she is having a fit. She is really upset, on one hand, but on the other its like elephant tears, because as soon as I pick her up, hold her and remove her from the offending situation she is all giggles and smiles again. I think this has something to ho with her sensory issues.
I wanted to share this picture of Joshua. He is such a sweetie. He is about 20 months old now and is really starting to blossom, he is often very shy. I think Holly was having a hard day though, as she tried to follow him into the toy box and crawl on top of him into the other one (see she doesn't mind getting into other people's personal space) and Joshua didn't like that much so he slapped her. Poor Holly, she started to scream, and then Joshua started to scream, but she was fine. It took about 15 seconds to calm her back down, and by then Joshua wasn't in the toy box any more, as his mom (Horrified and apologetic) removed him, so Holly climbed in happy as a climb.
One last picture from our play date at Chloe's, This is Sienna, I think she is about 34 inches tall and she is just 14 months, she is a big girl. She is still getting the hang of walking, she she has the tendency to sort of hang on things and people as she is getting around, Holly is not a fan of this, but I keep letting her get into these situation, because really having other kids in your space is a way of life, especially if one day she has a little sibling that she will have to share her space with, so i comfort her, but don't try and prevent it before it happens.
I guess this is the post of angry faces. Here we are at Willard park off of Derby, one of our favorite parks, better known as the "doggie" park by Sarah and Isabel. I think in this picture she is frustrated because she is having trouble climbing back up the side onto the bouncy surface. She was a little impatient with Mommy getting over to her and had a bit of a tantrum. I was trying to see if she would work through the frustration and keep trying, but balance that without letting her get to frantic. Its a fine line to walk.
Speaking of fine line... That's something that I would love your thoughts on, I totally get Holly and I push her to be out of her comfort zone but then provide a safe and comforting and secure place for her to go back to before she then reaches and pushes out again. So we are often in situations where it seems like she is grumpy and fussy and that she cries at every little thing. Other moms say, aww maybe she is tired, hungry, ect. But I know she just had a bottle, was recently changed, and woke less then an hour ago from a nap. She is just getting a little over whelmed and expressing her whininess of it, but still wants to "stay" yet these helpful moms give me looks like, hmmm maybe you should take her home for a nap she is unhappy... She isn't really, she is just working really hard at processing everything, and gets frustrated, and was taught how to express her feelings. I usually just ignore the comments, nod and smile or say, oh she just woke from her nap, but I don't want people to think I am a bad and neglectful mom because I let her stay at the park and continue playing when she is whiney and cranky and sometimes making those very unhappy faces.... Do you deal with this too, or do you just take your kids home? 
Here she is happy as a clam pushing a baby around in its stroller, of course it was someone else's toy, but the little girl was a bit older and on the swing and decided to share and let Holly play with her toys, it was very nice of her. Here is little Sarah hanging out next to the Dragasaurus thinking about crawling over and climbing on. She really likes rocking back and forth on it. She is such a tough little girl, she will tilt over and fall off and not even notice, simply pick herself back up and move onto the next thing, I think holly would be hollering in about a split second flat, its interesting observing different temperaments and building a tool set to work with them all. So this was my random, extra pictures and random things post. Hope you enjoyed, coming tomorrow is the first of a 6 part series on our trip to Mendocino.
She is ginormous, look at how big and grown up she has gotten. She loves to go outside and play in the park and the grass and she will pound on the front door and bring me my shoes and try to get me to take her out when she has the hankering. I worry for when she grows a few more inches and can reach the door handle. It is a simple lever so it won't be hard for her to open, we will have to install something new.
Once she heads out the door she is ready to "Go, go, go" I am trying to teach her to wait and not go down the steps and I tell her edge, but now she is doing this thing where she pushes and tests her limits. I say Holly Edge, and she gives me this mischievously look like, well I know I should sit and scoot but perhaps I should just take my foot and dangle it over the edge. Of course when we are talking about my steps that's not a good thing. So I often hold her hand and sometimes I have to yell no.
The other day at the park Holly was playing with Daddy. Mommy was tired from a long day and napping int he park for a few minutes on our way home from picking him up at work. They were swinging at first and then they took a break. She was wandering around and then got so excited she ran back towards him and the edge of where the bouncy turf and the sand meet up. Joel told her Edge I think, but she wasn't watching where she was going or listening to him, and she stumbled right over.
It's an incline so she mostly slid down the side and fell to her butt, but then she kinda twisted and then made a little face plant and got herself a mouth full of sand. It sounds so mean to say it out loud but, "It Served Her Right" She needs to start and learn that she has to be careful and that there are consequences to her actions. Of course she isn't really going to learn this now, but it was ironic that she fell in a way that she couldn't get hurt but just made her very mad, when I was particularly worn by her pushing her limits and not listening when I told her to be careful at the edge.
A friend of mine told me about how she cooked Chard for herself and her husband with a little bit of garlic and butter and then took the rest and pureed it. She said her Son loved it and ate it all the time. So since we get greens all the time in the veggie box I decided to have Joel make some for her. He later told me that it was actually Kale, which is not nearly as sweet as Chard, but regardless she hated it. It was pretty gritty and the flavor was strong, but it was all I could do to get her to eat it. She took a few bites and on maybe the third or forth she spit it up.
Over the next few days I tried to get her to eat it by mixing it with Green beans, Sweet Potatoes, Yogurt. We got through one full container but I didn't have the heart to try and coarse her to keep eating it when she already seems to be outgrowing purees and she truly disliked it. We unfortunately have three more containers frozen in the freezer, but I am going to give them to Sarah.
Holly is such an active little goblin she sometimes resists her naps for hours. She gets sleepy after therapy but when I try to get her to lay down to rest she is bouncing off the walls. She will drink her bottle and then jump up when she is finished and try and do somersaults on the bed. So I often take her out front to literally run around in circles on the grass. The other day I saw outside were a few little kids playing, so I rushed out letting Holly stay in her PJ's and quickly made friends. Holly is usually happy to play on her own, but having the opportunity to follow around other little tots is her favorite past time.
There were two brothers, one just a few months younger then Holly and the other almost three. They were with there aunt and her daughter also almost three. There Mom was sick and she had driven down from Sacramento to help out for the day. They were exploring and had no agenda and when we came out to play they were climbing trees and picking flowers. We had a lot of fun hanging out and chatting and running through the grass for almost an hour, and then she was indeed ready for a nap.
We have been going out to eat a lot more recently because holly is so good at restaurants if we take heed to not linger too long and keep her entertained. This is much easier to do if we arrive when she is hungry, as feeding her our food is a really good way to entertain her. We of course also mostly go to very inexpensive places that are kid friendly, but after a long work day it is nice to not have to cook, and with take-out there is still trash and dishes and mess, so going out lets us spend a lot of quality time together, all three share a meal and gives Joel a chance to take a break. The other day we went to public market and this is what we found.
Why yes, that is a giant ball pit tucked away and hidden in a place we have been to a hundred times and never discovered before. Holly was in baby Heaven. It is actually between the Gyro and Slushy place right where we sit almost every time we go, but it is around a little corner, actually behind the slushies, and there was also this tiny quarter carousel also. Technically the ball pit was for children 35-45 inches and Holly is only about 31 or so yet Mommy isn't one for following the rules so I sat on the side and let her play and kept an eye out for the big kids. It took her a bit of time to get used the enormity of it all and the first time we went she stayed close and simply watched the older kids. But mostly it is just amazing that there is a FREE and GIANT ball pit just around the corner from our house, a place open until 9:00 PM and it has food for the Parent's. How Awesome is that!
The other place we have been a few times for dinner is bay street. Cheap slices at Pizza My Heart, a Burger at Fudruckers, a taco from Rubio's and a huge courtyard for the little one to toddler and explore. Did I forget to mention there is a cold stone there too.. Yum Yum. On this particular night there was a concert on the green, which happens on occasion, these are really just people playing music, and a few people will gather, sit, maybe dance. The kids were having a blast. After the did tear down the kids also enjoyed walking around on the stage.
Now that Holly is mobile she is headed towards phase two... Running. The good thing about this place is that there are no cars and a big open area for her to walk around in. I recently purchased something from a friend of mine called the "Todd Le Go" which is a Wrist to Wrist Toddler Holder. Velcro and Button on my wrist and her's and then a scrunchy like stretch connecting us varying between 38 and 60 inches. This allows her to run around and "Go, go, go" but stay connected to mommy. This is of course in theory because I have only just gotten this from my friend who makes them and haven;t had a lot of opportunity to try it out. Holly is not a fan of having something on her wrist, so I have to keep allowing her an opportunity to get used to it so that I will be able to use it soon. And with that, I hope you enjoyed today's Edition of "Random Thoughts Tuesday"
Holly is sharing some Fruit Salad with Mommy, as we wrap up her dinner and think about bed time. Once she gets to bed she has other ideas.
After she crawls around the bed and gets into everything she can get her hands onto, she escapes.. Can you the look of glee that she has slipped off the bed.
And then there is the mischievous look on her face as she sneaks into the cabinet she knows she is not supposed to be in. She has her mind set to stay up and burn off some energy and when she is like this she is unstoppable.
She makes her rounds through the kitchen, because the bedroom door is the next stop after the cabinet. Where she empties out the pantry and her bins and finds something to chew on. She of course makes a stop off at the refrigerator where she asks for more, and waits for us to open it. She loves when we open the freezer where she organizes her teethers.
Eventually she makes her way to the toy box and then we try again, back to bed.. This time will she stay or does she need to make her rounds again.. You never know.. In all honesty, bedtime has been getting much better and most nights she does get to bed around the time she is supposed to. I also thought Oma might just adore these PJ's I think of her every time Holly wears them.
Joel's friend Tony from High School just recently moved to San Francisco from Florida. We are so excited to have him out here. It has been a lot of fun. He landed this amazing apartment in the City. From outside the door you can see this picture of Sutro Tower, I haven't been that close to it before, its a wonderful neighborhood in the hills above Castro.
The pathway through the gate is a few houses down from Tony and Tara (his girlfriend's) apartment. It is basically a sidewalk down to the streets below, isn't it amazing. 
I love this lamp. The apartment's owner designs lamps, and this is one of his hanging in there sitting room. Sadly it hangs low and is a hazard for head hitting so he will be removing it.
When we arrived Holly was sleeping, amazingly she stayed asleep up two flights of stairs to there place and let us snack and chat for about an hour before waking up. Though we would pay for her long nap later when trying to get her to bed for the night. This is the view out of the back window. Amazing right. 
This is Tony's sword collection, or well 3 of them, hand made by him. Yeah, not the most baby proofed of places. Once Holly work up our time was limited to maybe another 15 minutes of chasing her around before we decided to head out. It was fun though while it lasted. Mike, Diana, and Otter were there as well. But Otter, only 6 months old isn't mobile yet. They were heading out the door, just as Holly was waking up.
I feel so lucky to be able to stop in at 
To help keep Daddy focused, Holly and I decided to spend as much 
After exploring the 5 main rooms Holly was ready for a break and a quick Brunch. She actually ate an entire container of food.. I can;t recall now what it was though. She did however invent a new game while eating, the Container "Funny Faces" game. Not only did she like to squish the lid on her face, but she thought it was hilarious to squish it on Mommies.. What a funny face!@
The she made a stop at the train table. She quite enjoys these which i am sure 
Here she is trying to collect as many cars as she can. I 
Later we played int he baby Garden, she needed a break 
In this case though, she had a basket from the Play grocery Store and decided to instead fill it with 
Moving on, she decided that she would pull all of the pieces out of the puzzle and neatly line them up on the floor. She 
While at H
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