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It’s finally here…Layli’s first birthday will be on Friday! We’re going to have a small party for her and naturally, I had to hand make her invitations. Below is a picture of my handiwork…I’m quite proud. We decided that we’re not going to put any limitations on gifts since it’s her first birthday and she won’t really know any better. But we’re thinking that for future birthdays however many birthday toys she receives, she has to donate that many of her old toys to a charity…hopefully we can find something where she can actually go and deliver the toys herself so she can experience that.
I turned 30 last week and despite the fact that being alive for three decades is something to celebrate, my birthday wasn’t all too exciting to me. Usually on my birthday I can’t wait to celebrate me…but this year it was different. Now that I’m a mom, birthdays have new meaning. I feel like Layli’s birthday is my birthday. Whenever I think about the day she was born, I can’t help but get emotional. I feel like I should be celebrated on her birthday because the day she was born is so incredibly special to me.
A close friend of mine called me to wish me Happy Birthday and also to share with me that she’s pregnant. She has no idea how much happiness that little piece of news brought me…I think I was more excited than she was. When I was pregnant, mothers who didn’t even know me would be so excited to hear I was having my first baby. I thought it was comical at the time but now I understand it…parents are all in on the secret…that life’s greatest joy lies in your baby’s smile. It’s an experience that we all understand intellectually but don’t truly know until we go through it. This is why our mothers can’t wait for us to have children as soon as we get married….because the joy you experience when you have a child is complete, perfect and miraculous.
In the mortgage business, the end of the month is high stress time. Yesterday morning at about 7 am, the stress set in. I work from home on Fridays so I was trying to manage my accounts and keep an eye on my crawling/climbing 8 month old at the same time. At one point I was allowing my stress to eat away at me for a couple minutes when I realized that I hadn’t been watching Layli! So I quickly surveyed my office and found her staring at me with her face smooshed up against the glass door. I just started dying laughing…that was exactly what I needed.
Before Layli was born, Billy and I both wanted a boy. I mainly wanted a boy because I knew that was what Billy wanted. When the doctor told us she was a girl we were totally in denial…we walked out of the office in silence, holding hands, lamenting our son’s non-existence. Over the next few days I became much more excited about the thought of having a girl, but Billy didn’t truly get over it until Layli was born. I had no idea how much he was going to adore her. I guess I just didn’t think about it. Billy is the type of person that kids idolize but he doesn’t share the same affection. Don’t get me wrong, he loves kids, but he’s just not as into them as they are to him…no matter how cute they are. From the minute Layli was born, she had her dada wrapped around her miniature pinky. He is totally enamoured with her and has said that he’s glad we didn’t have a boy- he loves that he can “oh & ah” over her and it might have been different if she were a boy. So I’ve been thinking lately, besides the obvious, what is Billy so crazy about? And it came to me…baby girls are men’s dream women! Think about it:
He can figure her out. Her needs are simple and in many cases predictable.
She is always happy to see him and happy in general. Not only that, but she doesn’t need thoughtful gifts or chivalrous acts to make her happy…just his smile will do it.
She’s no drama. She rarely complains, and if she does he’s pretty sure how to fix whatever she’s needing (dirty diaper, hunger, sleep).
She’s beautiful.
She accepts him for who he is. She’s fine with his shameless addiction to chess and in fact encourages it by sitting still with him as he plays for however long.
So there we have it. The truth behind the term “Daddy’s Girl.”
I recently heard about these baby snacks, Baby Mum-Mums, that are gluten, egg, nut free and a bunch of other good-for-babies things. They’re really great because they dissolve rather than leave crumbs so they’re relatively mess free. We gave them to Layli tonight and she practically inhaled them. It was awesome because rather than feeding her baby food, she could just hold it and feed herself which was SO nice. Anyway, I definitely recommend them; they’re a really great snack! They are made in Australia but there are local retailers that sell them…
Wal-Mart
Fred Meyer
Haggen
Harmon’s
Rosauers
Yokes
Super One
QFC
Layli’s half birthday was last month which was surprisingly a little emotional for me. I can’t believe my baby is a half year old already! I started thinking about what I want to do for her first birthday. The thought of her receiving more toys worries me since she already has a closet full of stuff. So the hunt for gift giving ideas began. I think the best idea we’ve come up with so far is in lieu of gifts to ask our guests to perform random acts of kindness and then have them recorded in a scrapbook at her party.
It got me to thinking…what about her future birthdays? I would love to do something like donate all her gifts to foster children or some other cause but I would feel bad if someone gave her something that they really wanted Layli to have. But then Billy came up with a great idea!- she can keep all of her new gifts but then she’ll have to give the same number of toys from her toy box away to a cause of her choice.
Any other ideas out there?
I love this picture. It’s like she’s telling me the punchline of a really great joke.
Last night we had some people over to our house. One of them was an 78 year old man who just lost his wife two months ago. They were married for 58 years! That’s almost twice my lifetime! I felt really sad for him to be alone now but I also thought what a blessing to have spent a lifetime his spouse.
These days, Layli is a little weary of strangers. She needs to thoroughly check you out before she’ll let you hold her and even then she may still cry in your face if you pick her up. This man took a great interest in her from the minute he saw her and I just knew that he wanted to hold her. But I was so worried because I didn’t want her to reject him after all he had been through. There were five other “strangers” there but she was most interested in him. After a while he picked her up and I held my breath and faked a smile…she just looked at him as if to say, “Finally I can take a look at you up close” and then she was totally content in his arms. I was elated, beaming with pride that my daughter chose to bring happiness to this man who was in much need of it! It almost makes the other times that she’s wailed in peoples faces acceptable. I like to think that she’s highly intuitive and knows who truly needs her affection.
Billy and I choose our home based on one feature…the trees in our backyard. We chose this house over many other ”better” homes mainly because they just didn’t have the stunning green belt that we do. We love trees so much that they are even a common decorative theme within our home. Before Layli was born, I would lie on our bed watching the trees sway and daydream about what life would be like with our new addition.
Every morning I bring Layli into our bed to nurse her. Then I sit her up and she does the same thing I do…stares at our conifers, mesmerized by their dance. It amazes me that they have the same affect on an infant. She can watch them for minutes (which is hours in baby time). They can calm her instantly; if she’s upset we just take her outside to watch the trees and she’s fine- as if mother earth herself soothes her. How interesting that in all my prenatal daydreaming, never did I imagine that my daughter would sit quietly and appreciate these majestic elders, allowing them to bring her peace, like they do me.
I’m one of those old school moms who doesn’t sleep with her baby. I know co-sleeping and family beds are the thing to do these days, but I’m just not that mom. My sister-in-law told me a while back that being able to put yourself to sleep is a life skill and that is really something that has stuck with me. I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to sleep or have trouble falling to sleep. So since she was little we had her in a co-sleeper and kept her swaddled up tight and she did just fine. When she was four months we transitioned her to sleeping in her crib in her own room (she was use to taking naps in there so it wasn’t so foreign to her). She did just great! We created a routine of washing her hands, changing her diaper, putting on pajamas, reading two stories (Baby Elmo & Goodnight Moon), saying prayers, nursing her and then putting her in her crib to go to sleep. She took to it right away and didn’t really put up a fight so we were really lucky. During the days I usually nurse her right before her nap to help her get sleepy and when I put her in her crib she just rolls over and falls asleep and I’m in mommy heaven. Well the last couple weeks Layli has decided to change our flawless routine! Now, after I nurse her, instead of being sleepy, she starts squealing with delight and flashing those delectable dimples (she got ‘em from her mama) and looking at me as if to say,”how could you possibly part with me right now, I’m so much fun!” Aye!
So I’m a working mom, for shame. I work in the office three days a week while my mom takes care of Layli. And then the other two days I pretend to work from home. I’ve pretty much wanted to be a mom forever, so it surprises me that I actually enjoy the three days of “freedom” at work. I had convinced myself that I didn’t need the expensive $250 breast pump, and that the frustrating $50 hand pump did the job just fine. After four months of nursing drama, I finally broke down and bought the expensive electric pump and I WISH I would have just got it from the beginning. I had no idea how much nursing completely changes your life (more-so than the child herself, it seems sometimes). The electric breast pump just brings a little relief to such a time consuming-but wonderful, of course, responsibility.
This week we decided to try using gdiapers instead of the disposables we were using. I always admired people who could do cloth but I just felt like I wasn’t “that kind of mom.” A couple weeks ago, I realized that my pure, perfect daughter’s first impression on the world will be the mark of 6,000 dirty diapers in our landfills. I hate that thought and so I started researching different options and reading about the cloth vs. disposable debate. Well gdiapers seem to be the perfect answer to the problem. We have only been using them for the last week but so far so good. We’re still using disposables at night because, when it comes down to it, I’m still a California girl and I just don’t want to wake up to a wet diaper/pajama/sheet/baby. But at this point, I’m pleased with the change.
