Woobie–oobie-oobie

Posted in Isabella/Munchkin by teamtradermom

Isabella loves her pacifier (which we call her “woobie”). She loves it so much that she kisses it many times throughout the day. She has always loved it, from the day she was born (well ok, from the day after she was born).

See, that’s where we went wrong. We introduced her to a pacifier too early. We were new parents, in the hospital, trying to console a screaming baby that would only calm down with a boob in her mouth. Well, I couldn’t very well have her attached to my chest 24/7 so we thought, hey, let’s use a pacifier. Big mistake. From then on she was hooked and there was no going back.

She will only use a certain kind of pacifier too. At the hospital, they gave us one called a Soothie that is specially designed for newborns. She loved it and wouldn’t take any other kind. This is problematic when you only have 1 of them and can’t find it. This happened when she was a couple weeks old. We looked EVERYWHERE and it was not to be found. We tried giving her one of the 20 other kinds that we had in the house but she would have none of it. We had to make an emergency run to Target, where we promptly bought up every one that they had on the shelf. We found it later that afternoon. Guess where it was. You’ll never guess, but try…I’ll wait…

It was in one of the candleholders on our wall sconce behind the couch. How it got there we will never know. It must have somehow bounced just right and then got flung 6 feet up and over, landing in the sconce. I laughed uncontrollably when we found it there because it was so unbelievable.

Now that Isabella is 15 months, I was thinking it might be time to start breaking her of the woobie. See, she not only needs it to sleep at night, but she insists on carrying not 1, not 2, but 3 around with her during the day. She doesn’t keep them with her constantly, but she likes to know they’re nearby. She also uses one of her woobies as a security blanket at night – she sleeps with one in her mouth and one in her hand. We often hear her cry out “oobie!” in the middle of the night if she’s lost one of them.

Her strong attachment freaks me out a little because I know that taking them away from her will be painful for all of us (Samson even begged me not to do it). There will be all kinds of screaming and crying and her little woobie-loving heart will break, as will mine.

The doc said it’s ok for her to sleep with one until she’s about 2, which gives us another 9 months or so. But I’m thinking we need to start weaning her off of them during the day. She has so many toys and stuffed animals and other things to do that she shouldn’t need her pacifier with her all the time. So, while I’m home for these 5 days, I’m going to work on it.

Pray for me.

If you hear wailing and screaming coming from the Ralston area, you’ll know what it is. No need to be alarmed. It’s just the Traders torturing their little girl. Or else it’s CJ screaming for more pain medicine.

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Kissy Face

Toddler Speak

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13Dec2010

Kissy Face

Posted in Isabella/Munchkin by teamtradermom

Isabella is turning out to be such a loving little girl. It’s really very cute and sweet. And I absolutely LOVE her hugs and kisses. There’s nothing better than coming home and having her run up and give me a great big hug.

However, sometimes I think she takes this kissing thing a bit far.

Before I get in to that, let me share with you the evolution of her affection.

Like any baby, she started out just laying there and cuddling. Then she started doing “headbutts”. See, I would always kiss her on the forehead and she got in the habit of leaning forward and tipping her head toward me so that I could kiss it. One time when she did that, she butted her head in to my nose. I said something like, “Wow, good headbutt Munchkin!” and so she started doing it regularly. It got to the point where we’d say “headbutts!” and she’d lean in and butt us with her forehead. It was cute.

Head butts

We figured it would also come in handy when she started dating. What better way to keep a frisky boy at bay than to headbutt him?

“Hey Tommy, thanks for a great date! [head butt]”

And we never heard from Tommy again…

The head butting thing started to go too far though as she got bigger because she would “butt” with more force. There were several occasions when she had us saying “ouch!” after her so-called acts of affection. One time I swear she broke my nose. So, we started teaching her actual hugs and kisses.

Kissing her hamster cow*

[That little green cow was actually mine as a baby. My aunt gave it to me when I was born. I’ve kept it all these years and now it’s Isabella’s. It’s well-worn and loved. CJ couldn’t tell what it was when I first busted it out of storage. He thought it was a hamster so now we call it the hamster cow.]

Now that Munchkin has the hugging and kissing thing down, she does it ALL the time and does not discriminate. She literally kisses just about anything that she likes. Here is a list of some of the things she has kissed:

People (CJ, me, and her grandparents)
Samson and Kate (my parent’s dog)
her stuffed animals
the pictures in her books
characters on TV
her pacifier
her socks
the Christmas tree
her toast at breakfast
her macaroni and cheese at dinner
the shower curtain
her bath water
the oven

There are probably more too that I just can’t remember. It’s funny when she does it but now I’m starting to wonder if that could be going too far. I’d rather have her headbutting guys than running around kissing everyone.

“Hey Tommy, thanks for the date! I love your new car [kiss the dashboard]! Sorry for spilling your popcorn earlier when I kissed it. Didn’t realize you were about to offer me some. Thanks for the flowers too – they are beautiful! [kisses flowers]. Well, I better go. See you at school on Monday! [kisses Tommy]”

Oh well. As the old saying goes, better to have a kissy child than a pissy child! And after all, you can’t spell “kiss” without ISabella!

*Photos taken by Heather Busselman, who did an awesome job with Munchkin’s 1 year pictures.

1Dec2010

Toddler Speak

Posted in Isabella/Munchkin by teamtradermom

Having been a mom now for 14 months, and seeing my daughter interact with other babies/toddlers, I’ve determined a few things.

The “gibberish” that baby’s speak is really their own secret language.
Even though none of us know what they are saying, they can all understand each other.
I’m also pretty sure that it’s a combination of Chinese and German.

I have 2 stories to back this up too:

1. Famous Footwear

One Saturday afternoon in August, CJ and I went shoe shopping and brought Munchkin with us. He needed new volleyball shoes and I needed both vb and running shoes. He tried his on first while I entertained Munch. Then we switched. While I was wandering the aisles, Munchkin suddenly yelled out some gibberish. Another toddler in the store, that was a couple of aisles away, answered her! We laughed and the other girl’s dad even came over and said, “Wow, they’re talking to each other – and I think they know what they’re saying!”

My guess –

Munchkin: “Hey! Let’s ditch these parental units and go get some booze.”
Other Girl: “Right on! I’ll create a diversion and then we both run!”

2. Cousins

My sister has 3 kids – a girl and 2 boys. The youngest boy, Ben, is just 7 months older than Munchkin. On Thanksgiving, they were really getting in to playing with each other. They jibber-jabbered all day and no one thought much of it. Then towards the end of the day, as we were cleaning up, Munchkin wandered in to the kids’ play room at my mom/dad’s house and grabbed a book. She brought it out and placed it on the bench in the kitchen. Ben took an immediate interest in it and they started looking at it together.

As they were flipping pages, they were “chatting”. We laughed at how much they were talking to each other and wondered if they understand what was being said. Just then, the book got knocked over behind the bench. Ben pointed to it and said something along the lines of, “Moosh eak ah suh tay!” Munchkin replied with, “ook” and immediately walked around to the back of the bench and tried to get the book! It was like he had just commanded her to do something in Baby-ease and she did it!

So there you go. My theory has been proven. Babies talk to each other in Chi-man and are plotting to take over the world, one mommy and daddy at a time.

29Nov2010

Deck the Halls

Posted in Holidays and Seasons by teamtradermom

It actually was a lot easier than I had envisioned it to be. For some reason, I was remembering decorating from Christmases Past as being hard work and taking all day. But not this year! Maybe because I was a woman on a mission – you see, I was trying to get it all done during Munchkin’s nap!

Here is the before picture:

There’s my family – CJ having his coffee, Isabella running around and Samson begging for food. Typical Sunday morning. Also, notice that one of the canvas paintings on the wall, next to the TV, is upside down. This is where I point my finger at CJ. He does that on purpose to see if 1) I notice and 2) I will fix it. Yes, I’m a little OCD and yes normally that would bug me to no end. But what he didn’t realize is that I actually like it better that way. Ha! In your face buddy!

Anywho, that is how the living room looked around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, right before I laid Munchkin down for her nap. Then I got to work! First we had to re-arrange the furniture. Normally we put the tree in the space where the curio cabinet is but that was before we had a curio cabinet. Now we can’t put it there so we figured it would go in the corner, and hence the bookshelf and couches needed to be moved. So we did that and vacuumed in the process (by the way, we got a new vacuum on Saturday and it totally rocks! This was CJ’s anniversary gift from me. I know that seems akin to a husband giving his wife a blender but believe me, he actually requested it).

Here is the living room after moving the furniture but before decorating:

Then it was time to start bringing up the boxes. Instead of hauling them all up at once, I did it one at a time. Figured that way, if Munchkin woke up during the decorating process, I wouldn’t have this huge pile of stuff taking over the whole room that I had to somehow keep her away from. CJ extracted the Christmas Tree from its storage spot while I did that – no small task either.

CJ left to run some errands and I worked and I worked. I got so into it that I actually forgot that football was on, and more importantly, that the Steelers were playing! In my defense, they weren’t on t.v. so I didn’t actually miss the game. Still, I’m usually johnny-on-the-spot about turning the NFL games on right at noon on Sunday, regardless of who is playing.

God was on my side because Munchkin napped for 3.5 hours!! I was able to get all the decorating done during that time! YES! Here are some of the highlights:

Nativity

Close-up of hurricane vase with ornaments

Isabella's friends

Dicken's Village

Candy dish

Stockings

Once Munchkin was up, it was all about spending time with her, which was great. Besides, I needed the break. After she went to bed, CJ and I tackled the tree.

Took us about 2 hours to do it because we had a few bulbs out and we have so many dang ornaments! But I love going through each one and cherishing the memories. Some I’ve had my whole life (cute story: my parents were closely watching their pennies when my sister and I were babies, and couldn’t afford ornaments. So, my mom took the mobile from one of our cribs and made each dangling animal in to an ornament. We still have them and they are some of my favs), others were gifts from last year (like the one in memory of CJ’s mom who passed away or the “new mom” one for me). I’ve started labeling them with the year, who it was to and who it was from because it’s easy to forget.

Finally it was done and looked great. I am a stickler for not having any “bare spots” (there’s that OCD again…) and I think we filled it up well this year. True story: way back when CJ and I were dating, we were snuggling and kissing on my couch when all of a sudden I jumped up, ran to the Christmas tree and re-arranged a few ornaments to cover a bare spot. He didn’t think that was very romantic of me. *shrug*

Here I am hanging the first ornament!

And here’s the finished tree!

I was exhausted by the end of it but in a good way. I love, love, love having the house spruced up for the holidays. Feels so cozy and happy. Munchkin loves it too. She got a big kick out of the talking Santa and the dancing snowmen we have. Seeing her face with all these new discoveries is priceless.

Tonight we tackle the family picture for our Christmas card…last year we had to take like 20 of them because Samson kept hacking or moving or licking or running away. Case in point:

He looks like he’s about to eat the baby! Notice the look on my face that says “I”m going to keep smiling even though I don’t know what the hell you are doing dog!!” Munchkin is even looking at him like “Wha?” Eventually we gave up and cut him out of the pic. Sorry dude. Hopefully both he and Munch will cooperate this year. Lord help me.

27Nov2010

That’s the way the cookie crumbles

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons by teamtradermom

Again I start a post by saying that I am exhausted. Baking cookies is hard work. I have a new appreciation for those who work in bakeries. I’m a wimp who sits in a chair at work all day. But, it’s fun too.

The Annual Atencio Women Christmas Cookie Baking Extravaganza commenced at 10 a.m. My mom, sister and I each had a handful of recipes we had chosen to bake and had 7 hours to do it (which was when we were meeting up with the rest of the fam for pizza). No problem, right? Well logistics tends to slow things down. There are only so many cookie sheets, pans, measuring cups, and spoons. Not to mention there is only one oven. So…there were times when we had a line of 5 cookies waiting to be baked and at a stand still until they could get in the oven.

We made a total of 11 today (6 of which were mine). My sis and mom are going to do more during the week but I wanted to get all mine done today because I knew I wouldn’t have much time otherwise. Here is a sampling of some that we did:

Chocolate chip cookie cups filled with M&M’s. The cool thing about these is you can fill them with anything you want, to correspond with the season. Aren’t they pretty?

Biscochitos, which are a traditional Spanish cookie (my dad’s family is from Spain). There are a few cookies we have to do each year and these are one of them. My dad’s mom used to make and ship ’em to us from Colorado. No one makes ’em like her, but we sure try.

Dark chocolate cookie kisses. A new take on a traditional recipe. My sister also make the traditional ones, which are a peanut butter cookie with regular Hershey’s kisses on them.

Sugar cookies (well, at least a picture of the cookie cutters). Another old standby!

Salted Nut Roll Bars. These are my dad’s favorite so we have to do them. They’re quickly becoming my fav too which is odd because usually I go for anything chocolate. These are a perfect blend of salty and sweet, with marshmallows, peanut butter, peanuts, and rice krispies mixed together on a cake base. Mmmmm…..

The three of us exhausted after all the baking. We always have a lot of fun and I love that we have this tradition. It’s something that both my sister’s daughter and my daughter will join in someday. Just another reason to love the holidays!!