The toddler is going back to day care

The joys of being a working mother!
We have left the toddler at day care again. I was on leave for three weeks. I started to work this morning! I am sad all over again. It feels like the first time when she was four months and three weeks and I had to go back to work again. She is now nearly 13 months old! I hope she will be okay and that she won’t feel deserted.
I have written a note to the new day care person/mother who has been appointed in the meantime after the previous one was fired last year. I hope she will be a very caring person. And I hope Mieka will like her. When they are as young as Mieka - babies and toddlers – the worry is always there that they won’t be able to verbalise when something is wrong.
Mieka has been spoiled rotten during the holidays. We, the parents and my family, were walking with her and holding her the whole time. The pointy finger and the shrieking got the attention she wanted. I hope the day care people are not going to complain and that she is going to be a sweet little angel. Maybe she will be so fascinated with her friends at the day care… (Thumbs crossed!)
Mieka is starting to walk three steps on her own. Her face beams when she has completed the steps on her own. It is VERY cute! But she still prefers to hold onto our fingers, and to complain until we rescue her with the finger. She has skipped the crawling altogether, and we rarely see the crab crawling now. She is by all means vertically mobile! The Year of the Toddler is showing big promises!

Baby update

11 months, 2 weeks:
The baby does not sleep through the night. Not yet! But it is going much much better, thank you very much! We had a bad week last week when she was sick, but it is going very well again this week. Getting up twice at night is a bonus to me, and I have decided to not consider it a sleeping problem. I get up, put her on the breast, and sit-sleep for 20 minutes before I put her back in her bed again. If she complains, I take her to our bed until I can carry her back to her bed. Powerwoman got used to the interrupted sleep in any case… Sleeping sorted!

Mieka is still crab creeping, and we have to especially wash her left calve which is black every night. She uses the left leg to maneuver herself on her bottom in the direction where she wants to go. But she LOVES it when we hold her by her hands to walk. She has also found the stairs to climb while we are holding her hands. She manages to climb with alternative legs, not stopping on a step – even though her short little legs barely manages to lift up high enough. She is able to walk holding on to only one hand, but it is still going wobbly.

I can leave her for longer standing up near things, which she loves. While she is vertical, we struggle to get her to sit down again. She stiffens herself, and we have to bend her to get her to sit. Or, NOT!
She loves playing with containers and taking things out and putting it back in again.
She still gets excited when she sees her own reflection in mirrors or windows, and she claps her hands every time. (The Blonde reaction. Smile)

I can make out a “hello”, “tatta”, “ta” and “Mamma”.
And she laughs her head off when she “frightens” us. She makes sounds like The Exorcist! (Very funny to hear! Luckily I heard another baby over the weekend that is making the same sounds, or else I would have been worried…)
Mieka eats very well, and she loves to eat with us. I put the same food we have in her plate, and we try not to cringe while she dives into it. She manages to get some of it into her mouth, and the rest that lands on the floor is vacuumed up by the dog. That’s the only time the dog stops barking, while waiting underneath Mieka’s chair…

We are amazed at how much Mieka has become a little person with her own personality! I just hope that these words are able to show some of it!
And she gave all three of us a huge big open mouth kiss this morning when we asked for it! Nothing better than that!

(Photo: Mieka with her arms stretched out behind her head, while sleeping in the car seat)

The pointy finger and the crab creep

It is amazing how much a baby can accomplish with a finger. Mieka points it in a direction, and we GO in that direction!
Point to mirror.
Go to mirror.
Point… Go…!
She has mastered HER world with THE finger!
That’s one way of moving…
I was also voicing my concern about the not crawling. But Mieka has started to get onto the left knee from a sitting position, and then move forward on her bum. The right leg is used to drag her forward. And she MOVES at an amazing speed. Is that the creeping they are talking about?
It looks a bit like a crab movement. The crab creep! She also leopard crawls backwards when she is put on her stomach. I am wipe-my-brow relieved! Years of paying for extra math’s classes have just been cleared from our account. I hope so? Or is the crab creeping and backward leopard crawling still not helping the gray matter to fire and make enough connections?

One step behind

I was reading the developmental manual Practica on Sunday night about month 9 in baby’s developmental phase. Mieka is already 10 months on Wednesday. I have three days to get everything of month 9 fitted in… Luckily there are a lot of things that she is doing by herself, which we did not attend to specifically. It is just the creeping-crawling phase, which she seems to not have any interest in at all.
I am constantly feeling that I am a step behind, since the pregnancy and the baby. I am beginning to wonder if it will stay this way. Maybe I should just surrender and take each day (even minute) on face value and cope with what it presents to me? That’s a coping mechanism which could work? But I have the nagging feeling that we can accomplish more, also because we hear of great women who find their balance with work and family and life. We have to challenge ourselves to BE more… What do you as the blog reader think?