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Monday, April 20, 2009

I have seen my fair share of parents who think that their child is the most amazing, wonderful child in the world. Their parents praise them for turning oxygen into carbon dioxide and then wonder why they are called into their childrens' school to talk about inappropriate behavior. I have gone without bread during a shopping trip just to avoid said children and parents in the grocery store. I missed my PBJ that week, but sometimes sanity is more important. All of this, along with my knowledge of development, has made me very careful about distinguishing truly amazing development from really cool accidents.
Recently, Emma has hit some huge developmental milestones recently. She has begun visually directed reaching as well as mimicking crawling motions while on her stomach. She has actually started playing with her toys, attempting to pull apart links and batting at her toys attatched to her jumperoo. Just a few minutes ago she started laughing out of the blue at her spoon, which shows great strides in her social development. Her pediatrician in Muncie always said she was very advanced socially, as she has had good eye contact and focus almost from the get go.
As huge as all these things are, the biggest milestone she has reached is her 4 month birthday. Her new pediatrician was impressed with her development and she is right on track for most things, and advanced on a lot of her social development. She is in the 85th percentile for hieght and the 25th percentile for weight- she's going to be an amazon! Since she's been extremely hungry lately, she got to start solid foods! Her first food was Earths Best Rice Cereal, and then some cereal mixed in with pears. She is getting used to it, but still can't stand the texture. Interestingly enough, she eats the food better off of my finger than off of the spoon. This weekend we're going to try peaches and cereal! I just can't believe that she's already starting solids, and I'm definitely not ready for the diapers that go with it! I might have to start triple layering the diapers, Full House style.
Speaking of diapers, we've crossed the border into using cloth at night. In an effort to save money, I'm perfecting our cloth at night routine and seem to have come upon a system that seems to work. One Gerber prefold on top with a flat fold on the bottom all in a gDiaper. It holds all night and we save 3 disposable diapers per night. That is 21 diapers per week, 84 per month, and 1008 per year! The environmental impact of those diapers not going into a landfill is huge, but I am much more impressed with the financial benefits. Mommy needs a new pair of Blahniks!
That's it for tonight folks, but let not your heart be troubled, I'll be back as soon as I dig myself out from all these dirty diapers!



Links:
Observations on the Development of Visually Directed Reaching
gDiapers
Earths Best
4 month developmental milestones
Manolo Blahnik

Monday, April 13, 2009

There's no place like home.....

I've been having an internal struggle lately. While I am happy with my life, my family, and myself, I'm less than happy with where we live. The interior of our house is actually very nice. it's similar to our university apartment, but mush bigger and better quality. However, our neighbors are crazy and I don't feel safe here. The girl i hang out with is always complaining about the housing, which is grating on my nerves, especially since she is 19 and was living in much nicer housing before they moved here. I feel like they deserve to pay their dues, while David and I have already been there. I know this is stupid and immature, but I feel like David and I deserve to move into better housing before they do because of that. I know that's stupid and immature and I keep trying not to feel that way, but I do. I just have this feeling that our bad luck is going to continue and never get any better. It never does. I'm trying really hard to be happy with my situation and appreciate everything good in my life, but I just keep getting upset over this housing situation. I wish our luck would change just ponce. I wish something Marines related would go our way.