The EastER Egg Hunt That Wasn’t

April 10, 2012 By


So, two weeks ago we planned to take Scarlette to her first easter egg hunt with my niece. Only we had to cancel at the last minute because we ended up in Urgent Care that morning.

Then we decided to reschedule and hold our own easter egg hunt for the girls ON Easter Sunday. Except we had to cancel that one too because we ended up in the ER a few nights before.

My baby has preemie lungs, y’all. It happens.

We almost made it an entire year post NICU discharge without an ER visit, which is pretty impressive for a 25 weeker. Still, she hasn’t fully recovered and the last few days have found me with a sweet, sick baby sleeping on my chest.

I put her dress on Easter morning and we took her in to see her Easter basket. In true Scarlette fashion, she went straight for the new Gracious May headband* we got her. And by we, I mean me. Jeff’s like “stop putting huge flowers on her head.” In my defense, I can’t help myself. I’m southern. I can not suppress it. And also, I bought the one labeled “petite” so I was technically taking his input.

Three minutes later she was back in her pajamas and cuddling on his shoulder. I don’t think that baby’s feet have touched the floor in days. Also? She’s had about three bites of applesauce in the same timeframe. That’s how you know my girl doesn’t feel good, by the lack of appetite and sass. This house is normally full. of. sass.

That’s also why there are approximately two photos of Scarlette on Easter. I joined Instagram, by the way. Thank you Android, for finally jumping on that bandwagon.

So we traded easter eggs for a pulse ox, but she’s home and that makes us happy, if not exhausted. It’s been a long two weeks. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow. I hope y’all had a wonderful day of celebration on Easter!

*That’s not a paid endorsement or freebie, I just always get lots of questions about her headbands so I thought I’d post where it’s from. Since her wardrobe is 98% hand-me-downs, I splurge a bit on her cute headbands.
15 Comments Filed Under: Scarlette Year One, The Daily Scarlette

Story Time About Story Time

March 30, 2012 By


We are officially out of lockdown! Goodbye winter quarantine, hello spring!

So in celebration of being able to leave our house,  I decided to take Scarlette to the 0-2 Story Time at our local library. Support your local library, amen.

My child loves reading, as evidenced by the photos above. I mean, you saw the cutest video in the world, right? And if not, don’t tell me that you skipped watching a video of my baby. I prefer to remain under the impression that everyone finds her as irresistibly cute and charming as I do.

Since she is all about books and loves it when we read to her, I naturally assumed that she would love it when other people read to her and thus, would love story time.

The first rule of  parenting? Never assume anything. Rookie mistake, y’all. Rookie mistake.

The thing is, here’s the thing: while she really does love listening to people read to her, it turns out that she loves attacking other children more.

She saw the other children sitting so nicely on the circle rug, all criss cross applesauce with their listening ears perked to hear a tale about bunny rabbits and she was like “OTHER BABIES! MUST! GRAB! ALL! THE! OTHER! BABIES!”

And as I gently restrained her from launching herself at the them, she threw herself on the floor and began what I like to call ” Scarlette’s First Meltdown In Public.”

Never having really been in public with Scarlette, I was completely unprepared to handle this situation.

I mean, I’ve pictured that moment in my head. The one where she loses it and I calmly and swiftly resolve the situation while the other mothers glance at one another and nod their approval, in silent agreement that I am a fantastic mother and obviously they should invite me to join their play group.

In real life, however,  it went down like this: “Holy crap my child has never thrown a fit like this before. I have no idea what to do. Should I take her out? Do I leave all my stuff? Where do I go, the library is not really all that big? OMG is she seriously kicking her feet right now? I really need to do something because I feel like an idiot. I’ll just start handing her random things out of her diaper bag. Crap, I was not expecting that other little kid to take her teething ring away from her. I have no idea what the social protocol is here. Do I just take it back? I’m going to just take it back. Great, now the other little kid is digging in my diaper bag for Scarlette’s snacks. Oh, crumb. Why are libraries so flipping quiet? That is only making my kid’s screaming sound even louder. I vote we all start talking in libraries. Not talking in the library is a stupid rule. Good, they turned on some music. She likes music. Yay, let’s clap! WHY IS SHE STILL CRYING?! This is not how I pictured story time. Maybe if I let her go she will calm down. Okay, letting her go was a terrible idea. How long is story time anyways?”

Then the story time lady handed Scarlette a sticker, which she promptly set about trying to eat and that occupied her through the next round of The Wheels On The Bus.

After that we attempted making a bunny rabbit craft and by attempted I mean I handed Scarlette the paintbrush and she repeatedly threw it in the floor. There is a one eyed, one legged bunny hanging on our fridge.

And that is the story of our first visit to story time.

Tune in next week for another episode of Motherhood: I Have No Idea What I’m Doing.  ;)

40 Comments Filed Under: The Daily Scarlette, The Toddler Years

Funny Girl

March 22, 2012 By

 

Scarlette is getting to the age where I have funny stories to tell on her because she’s developing such a little personality.

We’ve just recently started venturing out with her. I took her to the grocery store this week and had my back to her for a moment while checking out. The woman in line behind me said “Excuse me, does your baby know sign language?” “Yes, she does” I answered, a bit confused. I mean, that seemed like a random thing to ask someone.

“Well, she keeps looking at my food and signing ‘eat’ to me” she said.

Apparently, my child saw her bunch of bananas and was like “Hello total stranger, PLEASE FEED THOSE TO ME RAT NAO!”*

Scarlette has also discovered my anatomically correct boy baby doll. Don’t even try to tell me you forgot about this. I had planned on giving it to her when she was older but she saw him in my closet and dragged him out. Then I had to put one of her diapers on him because she was fascinated by his boy parts. She loves this doll and will randomly walk over to him and hug him. “Such a sweet girl to your baby” I tell her.

She had toddled away from a half-empty bottle of milk so I scooped up both it and the baby doll, pretending to feed it. “Look Scarlette, Mommy is feeding the baby!” I told her. This is what my baby book says to do y’all. It says to engage her in pretend play with baby dolls. So I did. Scarlette whipped around, reached out and yanked the bottle out of my hands. She took a sip from it and then threw it on the floor.

I picked it up again, because I’m glutton for punishment and also because I wasn’t sure if she was jealous or just hungry. You know, because sometimes she puts her bottle down and then she spots it ten seconds later and is all “MILK! I AM SO THIRSTY! I HAVEN’T HAD MILK IN FOR-EVER! MILK! MY PRECIOUS! MYYYY PRECIOUSSS!”

So you know, there’s that.

This time she reached out and hit the bottle out of my hands as hard as she could. Then she proceeded to smack the baby doll across the head. I also tried brushing the baby’s hair. That sent the hairbrush flying across the room. The good news is that she has a really good arm. The bad news is, I’m a wee tiny bit nervous about her first play date…

Also? I feel as though we’re all in agreeance about the idea of her being an only child.

*”rat nao” is southern for “right now” as in, that is how we sound when we say it.

14 Comments Filed Under: Adventures In Preemie Parenting | A Blogumentary, Scarlette Year One, The Daily Scarlette, The Toddler Years

Dear Scarlette | @ Sixteen Months

March 9, 2012 By



Dear Scarlette,
It’s official. You’ve turned me into THAT mom, the one who effuses about her baby any chance she gets and pulls out photos the second she sits down to dinner with friends. I can’t help myself, people are like “Hi, how are you doing today?” and I’m all “LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY BABY, SHE IS A GENIUS AND ALSO LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS, I’LL HAVE THE NACHOS WITH EXTRA CHEESE HOLD THE JALAPENOS, THANKS.”

Your great-grandmother called me this week and I spent an hour telling her about all the things you can do, never mind the fact that I just sent her a video of said accomplishments. Like about how I’ve read Llama Llama Red Pajamas (thanks Aunt Nikki!) to you so many times that you’ve memorized it and you turn the pages at exactly the right time. Genius. Or how you can show us your head and your nose and your belly. Or how you can do some of the motions to “I’m A Little Teapot” and I am slayed by the cuteness.

You graduated from physical therapy this week and we are so proud of you. All that time spent in a hospital bed + being born so early meant that your muscle tone was very, very weak. When we first started physical therapy, we spent the entire hour just trying to get you to open and close your hands. And this week you walked across the room and looked over your shoulder at Miss L like “Walking? I got this.”

She told us it was such a joy to see you doing so well because she doesn’t get to see that very often, working with micro-preemie babies. We watch you do a jaunty little stroll across the room and are continually reminded just how blessed we are.

Lately you’ve been testing your boundaries a bit and we’ve had to tell you “No Ma’am” quite often. For awhile it made you cry but now you stick out your bottom lip, toddle over to us and wrap your arms around our necks. You’ll hug me and say “Mama” and oh my gosh that sort of sweetness is killing me smalls! “Stay strong!” your daddy and I encourage each other, because really, you’re such a sweet girl even when you’re being a bit naughty.

Right now you love writing on your chalkboard wall, playing with your baby doll, and dancing around to your daddy playing Free Fallin’ on the guitar. You also love seeing pictures of yourself and you often bring me my cell phone so that I’ll take your picture. After I snap it, you’ll turn the phone around so you can see yourself. Normally I show them to you but this week you freaked me out when you took your little pointer finger and started scrolling through the photos on the screen yourself. Listen, if you can do that I think you can sit your bottom on a potty, that’s what I’m saying.

I love you punkin’ pie,
Mommy

16 Comments Filed Under: Dear Scarlette, Scarlette At Home, Scarlette Year One, The Daily Scarlette Tagged With:

Having A Ball

February 20, 2012 By


Jeff taught Scarlette how to throw a ball this weekend. Not surprisingly, she’s already better at it than me. I guess we know who she gets her athletic abilities from.

Unrelated: I was playing around with my facebook timeline cover photo and then I decided to make it a freebie so I saved the template as a layered .psd file and wrote up a tutorial for it. I posted it along with step-by-step instructions here so if you want to use it, it’s all yours! It’s a beautiful day here and we’re taking today off from the interwebs to enjoy playing outside! YAY SUNSHINE!

8 Comments Filed Under: Scarlette At Home, Scarlette Year One, The Daily Scarlette, Uncategorized
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »