"Can't you explain to Lady about Sundays?"

Just like the scene from Lady and the Tramp, we must teach Billa about Sundays. It is now 8:10 in the morning as I write, but it feels like 10 in the morning. I have been awake for 57 minutes, made my daughter breakfast, had my first cup of coffee and written out my to do list for the day. [sigh] Such is the life of a toddler's parents.

I think I may have written about this prior (or not, it requires navigating away from this page to check) but we converted Billa's crib to a toddler bed recently as a result of her new sleep habits. Billa had been waking up at about 5 am and wouldn't go back to sleep unless she was in bed with us, which isn't that big a deal, but it was really frustrating to have to get out of bed to go get her (that wasn't the only reason we converted her bed, mind you, but it was a big deciding factor). While she has gotten better about getting out of bed and coming into our bedroom at these times, it hasn't come without a price: she has fallen out of the bed twice now (even with the toddler railing--it doesn't hurt her, just startles her BTW) and some nights she just sits in bed crying until one of us comes to walk with her to our room.

I have to laugh though; we've definitely come a long way in 15 months! I remember those long nights of getting up every one to two hours to feed Sybilla and desperately promising myself that my next cup of coffee would be my last (this was of course repeated several times throughout the day). By the time she was 8 months old we had her sleeping through the night and I was no longer experiencing black outs. And I remember naively thinking that we were golden and would never have to sleep train again. WRONG. Apparently sleep training is forever!

We have also reached another landmark in 15 months: it has now been 2 weeks since I have breastfed. Surprisingly, all four of us are doing well. (Four, you ask? Kelly, are you sure that coffee has kicked in yet? Yes, it has and yes, you read that right. Four: Billa, me, Elsie and Daisy, my two breast friends.) Occasionally Billa will pull on my shirt in the very early mornings and say "Beebie? Beebie?" and I gently tell her that Mommy has no more milk, that it's all gone and she ceases and desists. I didn't think it would be that easy, but it was. Out of all the things we've endured, stopping breastfeeding was the easiest. However, the process has resulted in a new name for her pacifier, which at times ranges from Popo to Paci to Bobie. It took us forever to realize that the sound she was uttering when she wanted it was "BOOBIE." Yeah, we never saw that coming.

This morning, she called it Bubba and I am content with that. Personally, I think Bubba is a hilarious name for one's pacifier. I am starting to think that each one of the remaining three pacifiers has an individual flavor, personality and name because she has referenced each of them with different sounds. And yes, we only have three left. Well, technically four if you count the one that lives at daycare. But we have not bought new pacifiers in months and are currently working on getting rid of them after our visit with Dr. Patil on Friday, who harped on us about the paci usage (we were actually prepared to hear this--some of our friends are also patients of hers and they too have received the paci lecture).

Which brings me to well check stats! Billa is healthy as a horse. Unfortunately, she is eating like one too. Because of her weight growth curve, we're now cutting the whole milk down to 2% and increasing the protein and fruit/veggie intake and working on good eating habits. It's not that Billa is fat, it's just that she sits in the 97th percentile for weight now, which is out of sync with her height and head circumference curves. Billa is incredibly active causing Dr. Patil to be concerned with her eating behaviours as opposed to her eating habits and weight. Billa would eat all day if she could and she puts the food in her mouth fist over fist when she eats. To make it worse, Daycare Lady actually told me on Friday that Billa has been stealing food from the other kid's plates when they're not looking! Grrrreat...

Billa's stats were, BTW:
Weight: 28 pounds, 97th percentile
Height: 31 inches, 50-75th percentile (Ha, she's 2' 7"!)
Head Circ: 47 cm, 75-90th percentile

Learning our first lesson on inertia

So there's the latest update. We're now on a family mission to eat right and get more exercise, we're working on eating like a lady, and once we have all that down, then we can start to teach Billa about Sundays... because fielding an angry neighbor's complaint about "owning a rooster" is not on my list of things to do today!

Toodles!
Kelly