Jessica Dickerson – Page 10 – If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Zoo

July 5, 2013 11:24 pm

We took a little family trip to the Oakland Zoo a while back. Enjoy some pictures!

There was a little play area with animal statues to climb on.

Heather picked up a leaf while we were walking around, and she loved it and cherished it until…

…a goat ate it.

Heather forgave it, though, and I think the goats were her favorite part of the zoo, since she could walk around amongst them and pet them. They’re just her size!

And now, artistic animal photos by Kyle:

We had a lot of fun!

Critters

4:04 pm

I think it’s high time y’all became familiarized with Heather’s crib friends. In this first picture, she’s asleep under the blanket (“gankee”) I made for her (tied fleece, nothing exotic, y’all).

And in this second picture, she was hanging out on the couch several weeks ago with a cold. To help her feel cozy, I brought all her buddies out. From left, we have Eeyore (used to be “Oree,” but is now “Oreo”), Henrietta (“Etta”), and Heather Bunny (“Heh-Bunny”).

Since she started putting herself to sleep, these guys are a very important part of her life. Once, when she had a cold, I put Heather Bunny under her head as a pillow, to help relieve her congestion so she could breathe more easily. Ever since, she requests a Heh-Bunny pillow when I put her down. She just thinks it’s awesome. And Henrietta and Eeyore must be snuggled in tight under each arm, then her blanket laid on top. Then I turn her projector on (it puts animals up on the ceiling and plays music), give her her binkies, and she’s good to go.

18 Months

May 2, 2013 3:15 pm

Our little Heather Bear is 18 months old! It’s unbelievable.

As of her checkup this morning, she weighs 23 lbs 4 oz (57th percentile) and is 32.75″ tall (77.14 percentile). And she’s doing great! Everything is right on track.

Heather fell off the front porch last week and got her first duck lip. That’s healed now, but her nose is still scraped up. Well, and her knees are constantly scraped and scabbed. She falls down on concrete a lot.

She spends a lot of time in her crib, just playing. When she wakes up in the morning, before and after her nap, before she falls asleep at night. Some days, I think she spends as much time playing in there as she does out here. She just lays in there and watches the mobile projector and plays with her binkies and critters and blanket. Go figure.

And now, pictures!

She really enjoys wearing Kyle’s t-shirts.

And my hat:

Eating eggs like a big girl:

Oh, and speaking of food, she loves to feed Kyle and me. If she’s eating a cup of goldfish, for example, she will grab one, turn to me with her mouth open wide (modeling what I should do), and cram one in my mouth. If I don’t open my mouth for it, well, too bad. She’ll try to force it in between my lips.

Heather will also pretend to eat. She grabs an empty bowl and spoon, dips the spoon in the bowl, then puts it to her mouth. Or my mouth, while smacking her lips. It’s hilarious.

And a couple more pics from Disneyland:

We love her so much!

Vacation Part 2: Disneyland

April 28, 2013 9:48 pm

The second and third days of our trip (and the original reason for going) were spent with my brother Christopher, his wife Jenny, their two kids Miles and Hannah, and Jenny’s parents. We went to Disneyland! And it was super fun. There was a fair bit of walking around, deciding what to do next:

Miles was really excited to go to Cars Land. This is Jenny and him riding one of the rides there:

Aaaand those are the only pics we got of the family we drove all that way to visit. Oops?

For the most part, we stuck to kiddie rides that everybody could go on. Heather’s favorites were the splash pad in A Bug’s Land (where she basically chased the water around) and the carousel. Over the two days, we actually rode carousels six times!

Her least favorite rides were Pirates of the Caribbean and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Both actually scared her quite a bit. She recovered easily, though, once it was all over.

Our second day we actually split from the rest of the crew. Christopher got food poisoning and wasn’t up for Disney. They were all staying a day longer than we were, so they could put it on hold for a day. We could not, so it was just the three of us! The day started out chilly and drizzly, but it was lovely once the rain stopped. Nice and overcast.

In the carousel picture above and the first picture below, you can see Heather’s Ride Face. She’d be looking around, laughing and pointing, right up until a ride started. Then her face went completely blank and she just looked around, as if studying and trying to figure out just what was going on. As soon as the ride stopped, she’d become animated again. Silly girl. (Regarding the first picture below: No, I am not a crazy person. The ferris wheel car was sliding around.)

Heather also enjoyed Dumbo, because she likes elephants.

I just want to put in a comment about the Baby Care Center in Disneyland. Of course, the bathrooms all have changing areas. But the actual Baby Care Center was fantastic! We popped in to change Heather’s diaper just as we were leaving, and man, it is posh! The staff are dressed up like old-school child attendants (I don’t know how better to describe it, but think of a traditional nursemaid, I guess) and the whole place is so cozy. There are areas for nursing and places to warm bottles/heat up food for toddlers and the changing tables are deluxe. They actually change the paper liners every time they’re used! It’s also where they take any children who get lost in the park, and I honestly can’t imagine a more soothing atmosphere. And now, moving on to more elephants:

This is the parade. She really liked the floats and even mimicked the princesses’ arm movements. But I think what she’s really pointing at in this picture is those balloons. She went crazy-go-nuts every time she saw one: pointing, babbling, laughing, and running after it. We didn’t get her one because we figured it’d be a pain on the car ride home, but she sure loved them.

I was, of course, nervous about how Heather would handle this trip. Long car rides and sleeping in hotels are not the norm for her. But she was a champ! I think that most of the success of the Disneyland days was due to the fact that we were very mellow about our time at the park.* We got up and went in the mornings, but returned to the hotel for Heather’s nap in the early afternoon. Then we went back to the park for the evening, until Heather needed to go to bed. We certainly could have seen and done more than we did, but it wasn’t worth making Heather miserable over. So we did what we could and were satisfied. Our real reason for going wasn’t to see the parks, after all, but to see family. So it all worked out.

The day we left town, we met up with the whole crew again for lunch in Downtown Disney. It was good to see everybody again, especially since we’d missed them the previous day. All in all, it was a really good trip. Yay Disney! Yay fun! Yay family!

*And the binkie. As always when Heather is on the edge, that was key.

A Long Overdue Update on Heather

April 20, 2013 3:31 pm

Okay, the last real update on Heather was around Christmas, I think. [shame] Here goes!

She walks and runs like a pro these days. And dances. And laughs.

As of her 15-month doctor’s appointment, Heather did not say one single word. Not even “mama” or “dada.” But now, I count 30! For the record, her first word was “eye,” said while poking me in the eye. The second was “bubbles.” Some are very clear, like those two, but others are a bit trickier to decipher, like “flower” (row-ee) and “cheese” (gee). And although she’s been saying “dad-ee” for a while now, she’s just barely starting to say “mama” or, sometimes, “mommy.”

I have an app on my tablet that plays animal sounds, and she loves to imitate them. She’s pretty good at it, too! My favorite is her rooster: “ock-oo-oo!” On a semi-related note, she is convinced that giraffes neigh (they look like horses?) and snails hiss (“snail” sounds like “snake”). I can’t convince her otherwise because I have no proper sound for those animals to teach her.

Let’s see, what else? I completely weaned her around 13 or 14 months when she started biting and refused to stop. We’d been down to only nursing before bed for a while, but with the biting, it stopped being a soothing part of the routine. So I stopped and she really couldn’t have cared less. So we haven’t looked back! She’s a pretty good eater, too. There’s not a lot she won’t eat, though she will sometimes decide she doesn’t want a certain food for a while. A week or two later, she’ll be back to scarfing it down. I would say that her two favorite foods, though, are easily eggs (fried or scrambled) and macaroni & cheese. She’ll eat astonishing amounts of either.

Oh! She now goes to sleep entirely on her own. I don’t think I can communicate how much my life improved when I stopped having to get her to sleep. At her 15-month appointment, Heather’s sleep had gone completely haywire and I was at my wits’ end. Her pediatrician recommended a modified cry-it-out method (with frequent checks) and addressed my concerns about it. I decided to give it a shot, and it worked great! I can now put Heather in her crib and just leave. She puts herself to sleep. It’s fantastic! Although, in the last month or so, she’s started taking a really long time to fall asleep. Like, over an hour. She doesn’t cry–she plays happily in there, and does eventually go to sleep. So I don’t know if I should adjust her nap/bedtime, or if she actually needs that time to herself. We’ll have to see.