So many "opinions"

I’m getting a bit irritated. Why do people constantly have to compare their baby to others? I get so sick of hearing how other babies are doing this better or that better than Miss H or they’re bigger and that’s so much better for some reason… every baby is different, Miss H is just Miss H, she’s going to be who she’s going to be and it’s not a bad thing that she’s only 28 something inches and 19 lbs. She’s 10 months old, I don’t know why that sounds so horrible for a 10 month old. But my brother loves to talk about how much bigger his son S is than Miss H and he’s 1 and ½ months younger than she is so he’s just doing SO WELL! Now that I’ve started ranting about this I’m really tired of thinking about it……..jeez……..I’m just under a lot of pressure lately to do certain things and it’s driving me nuts. Everybody’s bragging to me that their kid is off the bottle or only takes 1 or 2 a day and using a sippy cup the rest of the time……Hailey still has 4 bottles a day, one being with bedtime. She only uses a sippy cup in the morning w/ some water and at dinner w/ some water. She uses it just fine. But I don’t know that she’d sit and drink a full 6 or 8 oz. of formula from a sippy cup. I can’t see her doing that. She’s like me, I’m never thirsty. She’s not one of those kids that has their sippy cup hanging around all day drinking more and more juice or whatever else kids drink these days(my nephew is one of those kids). Not that I don’t give her one, she always has water available. She just doesn’t get thirsty. I’m the exact same way. And then there’s the pacifier issue. She loves her pacifier. She uses a Soothie. She still uses the green ones that are meant for 0 to 3 months. They make harder ones for older babies that are blue and pink, so they can’t bite through them. She doesn’t like it. She’ll pop it in her mouth and try it for a while because it’s a new color, but then she’ll pop it back out and pop her green one in. But the issue is people think we need to wean her from it. WHY? I don’t see why. Who cares if she sucks on a pacifier to comfort herself. Why does this matter? It’s a soft Soothie, it’s not going to give her buck teeth. People make comments all the time how she always has it in her mouth (which isn’t true) and doesn’t that keep her from talking blah blah. People brag to me all the time “well my daughter/son never took one!” like that’s just a HUGE accomplishment and means either 1. that their son or daughter is so much more advanced because they didn’t want a pacifier or 2. that they are awesome parents for not letting their kid have a pacifier. I don’t care if people don’t give their kid a pacifier. Why do they care if Miss H takes one? Why is this such a bad thing? And then there’s the fact that she only has 2 teeth. This is not something I can control obviously, but people LOVE to brag about their kids getting teeth. Even my cousin said her daughter had a full set by 1 yr. of age. YAY for her! Every single time somebody says something to me about her only having 2 teeth, like she’s oh so behind in her development or something, I remind them that my dentist (whom I really like and trust) said that the later in life they get their teeth and the later in life that they lose their teeth the better. Something about healthier teeth that way. So I’m not concerned one bit. Do I think it’s bad when other babies get like 8 teeth by 4 months of age? No, I could care less. I’m sure they won’t have bad teeth. It doesn’t concern me a bit what teeth other babies have and when. I do wish Miss H would get more teeth so it would be easier for her to chew, but I really don’t care otherwise. Another thing I’ve been ridiculed for…rocking Miss H to sleep. Or holding her too much in general. I hold babies. All my babies will be held, unless they don’t want to be. I do not believe that holding a baby spoils it. People ask me how come Miss H never lost any hair or had a flat head like a ton of babies I know. I tell them I don’t know, that the only thing I can think of is she would never let me put her down and loved to be held…she never just laid there on her back for any length of time at all. “OHHHHHHHH so THAT’S why, you HELD her…” like that’s a horrible thing! Like “oh I’d rather my baby have a flat head than HOLD her, God forbid I spoil her to death!” Miss H needed to be held. I gave her what she needed to feel secure. Some babies don’t like to be held, they’d rather be laying on the floor, and sometimes they get flat spots, and THAT’S FINE TOO! But that’s not what my baby wanted. And now she does NOT want to be held all the time, she is a perfectly normal baby that likes to cuddle sometimes and then crawls off my lap to go play. She does fine in shopping carts or her stroller, I don’t have to carrier her everywhere I go. I did not spoil her. And the rocking to sleep issue…yes I rock her to sleep. I was rocked to sleep as a baby/child. I loved it. I felt so secure and warm and safe. I enjoy rocking babies. I always knew I’d rock my children to sleep. I can tell when Miss H starts to get tired(yes we do not enforce a strict bedtime, because I am not that kind of a person, and yes she does get tired about the same time every night--9 or so--even though she doesn’t have a bedtime) and then I get her bottle made and her vaporizer running. She knows the bedtime routine, it’s a little series of things she does herself. She closes the bedroom door behind us. She looks behind the rocking chair and under her crib(paranoid like her momma I guess), she checks her crib to make sure there are extra pacifiers(pointing them out for me to see) and then she turns off her own light and the second we sit in the rocking chair she pops out her pacifier ready for her bottle. She drinks her bottle, and when she’s done she hands it over to me and puts her pacifier back in her mouth. And she’s out. Just like that. So easy. Since she was 4 and ½ months old. I stop rocking and lay her in her crib. She turns over on her side and goes right to sleep. But I’m doing it all wrong. I’m supposed to put her in her crib while she’s awake, let her scream and cry until she cries herself to sleep. Uh sorry, not going to happen. Glad it worked for you. But it is not happening in our household. I don’t see why I’m doing such a bad thing when my daughter goes right to sleep with no fuss, feeling safe and secure, and then sleeps through the night no problems and gets up about 8:30 or 9 the next day. When she’s older if she doesn’t want to be rocked we’ll do something different then. But I don’t have any anxiety at all about her bedtimes, they’re peaceful for the both of us, and I don’t have any fear at all that it won’t always be this way. She’ll be fine. And then other people have commented on her eating habits. She eats a lot. My mom’s favorite comment is “I just don’t see how her little stomach can hold all of that food!” I tell her I don’t know either, but it does, and she stops eating when she’s full. She is not overweight by any means. Or underweight. A month ago she was 18 lbs 12 oz…that’s fine. She has a fat roll on her legs, she has a big ol Buddha belly that makes her little 12 to 18 months jeans tight on her…she is not too small! My brother’s baby is a month and a half younger than Miss H and well over 20 lbs…he is very thick. And do I ever look at him and think “man he is too fat or big”??????? Uh……NO……he’s himself, that’s just who he is, it never crosses my mind how big he is until the family brings it up (which is quite a bit, they love to compare the two)… And also she eats pretty much whatever we’re eating as long as it’s healthy. I don’t do the 3 day wait test to make sure she’s not allergic. She’s never had a reaction to anything so far and I don’t even know all the stuff she’s eaten. When I fed her spaghetti over a month ago and she gobbled it right up, a friend with a little boy the same age as Miss H ridiculed me like crazy for giving her ground beef. “Don’t you know they aren’t supposed to have that?!?!” WHY?? She was fine. She loved it. She digested it perfectly. Her poop is perfectly normal, formed and smells like poop. She didn’t get a belly ache or get cranky. Why no beef? I don’t care. I make sure and don’t give her anything she’ll choke on. Nothing is too hot. And she eats so healthy. She loves carrots and peas and squash and sweet potatoes, etc. and she loves bananas…and she loves her baby yogurt. She eats very well. But everybody has something to say about it.

I have to say, the only people, VERY SURPRISINGLY that have had nothing negative whatsoever to say(in the past few months), are the in-laws. They love her to pieces. They think she’s just perfect. Now I don’t care when my mom makes comments about Miss H’s eating because she isn’t meaning it in a bad way, and she’s my mom, I love her to pieces(she’s my best friend). But other people it bugs me, like my dad’s family, grandma, friends, etc….so anyway the in-laws NEVER say anything like “oh she’s still eating baby food?” or “She can’t eat that yet???” or “she’s too big!” or “man she should be walking by now”…….everything she does they think is the cutest thing in the world. Their grandson is going to be 2 next month. They do talk about how Miss H is doing things sooner than he did. But not like it’s a bad thing like other people. They do what we want, how we want it when it comes to her. I think they like it that we’re pretty easy going…we don’t get mad when they hold her the whole 2 hrs. she’s taking a nap. They like that we stay over at their house til whenever Miss H starts getting cranky(10 or so if we’re somewhere other than home) and don’t rush off at 8 because it’s her bedtime. The only thing they have ever said lately, is his mom made the comment Saturday about her hair barrettes…she asked “so she doesn’t put those in her mouth and choke on them?” and I told her that I don’t let her play with them and that when she does find one yes she does pop it in her mouth but she does not choke because I’m right there grabbing it from her mouth. She didn’t mean anything by it, she was purely curious. Back when Miss H was a newborn and I was showing her the hair barrettes we had for her when she got older, she made the comment to me “well keep those out of her reach so she doesn’t choke on them!”…….I was so pissed. DUH lady…yea like I’m going to leave them laying around and I’m going to let her out of my sight so she’ll just be choking left and right…how dare she think I didn’t have enough common sense? But after being a mom for a while I feel differently, I know she was just concerned, and I also know things pop out of her mouth that sound totally wrong but she does NOT mean them that way. I sympathize with this because unfortunately I’m the same way. Also, the drama and tense situations are gone now that Miss H is older, because his parents KNOW how outspoken I am, and we had many situations when she was younger where I told them exactly what I thought and didn’t hold anything back. They know the boundaries, they respect them wonderfully, and everybody gets along great now, just like I always wanted. Ok how did I get off on the in-laws? Gosh I need to stick to one point…I’m so bad about rambling.

So anyway I’m tired of people giving me their 2 cents about Miss H. She’s my kid, I know what’s best for her, she’s perfectly healthy and people need to back off. Ok so enough with the bitching for now…

I need ideas for things to feed Miss H now that she doesn’t really care for baby food. I need breakfast, lunch and snack ideas. Dinner is usually ok, she eats what we eat. But I do need ideas for things like how to cook sweet potatoes(are the canned ones the same as fresh??) and input on what you all fed your kiddos when they were eating more regular “adult” food.

Last night Miss H did the cutest thing, she made me laugh so hard. She was sitting on my lap reading her new Peek-A-Boo book my mom got her for Valentine’s Day. It has flaps you lift up to see the pictures underneath. I was pointing at things and naming them, like I always do…”duck!” “puppy!” etc. and then I told her “Now you point!” and she reached over and grabbed my hand and made ME point, plopping my hand on the page over and over making me point to the puppy and duck. It was like she was saying “No, YOU point mom, that’s YOUR job.” I laughed so hard. She’s just too stinking cute!! And then this morning she was so clingy when we got to the sitters, doing her fake fussing and holding onto my legs…until I asked her if she wanted some “num nums” which is what she calls her food…then she turned and pointed at the high chairs like “yea let’s eat!” What can I say, the girl loves her food! LOL

Well I took tomorrow afternoon off so I can spend some quality time with Miss H. I miss her so much. I hate the fact that the sitter spends more time with her than I do. That’s just not fair. I can’t wait until hubby gets out of school and gets a job so I can stay home with her. I don’t care if we don’t have some big new house, or new cars. I don’t have to have all that to be happy. But I have always wanted to stay home with my kids and raise them myself. My mom was a single parent and she did the best she could but I hated my daycares and I always told myself I didn’t want my kids to grow up like that. 2 more years…

I went to lunch today with a coworker that is from France. It was pretty fun. I’m not one to make new friends just like that, and usually I really shy away from situations where I’m going to be alone with a person I don’t know that well because the conversation usually bombs and I’m left feeling so stupid. But we talked the whole time, it’s really easy to talk to her for some reason and we talk about all sorts of things too. It was nice to just sit and have a conversation about real issues for once but nothing too serious at the same time, and nothing to do with work either!