Fun with String

It is one of my New Year's goals to blog more this year, but with a winter intensive class starting in a few days I don't really see that happening for a while. That being said, I didn't want to delay this post so that local moms can take advantage (or anyone who wants a silly activity).

Last weekend we took Vivian to PS1 to see an art installation featuring a room full of string. I am talking about an entire room filled a foot deep with balls of string. It is like a ball pit for grown-ups. I can't tell you what the artists purpose was, you can read about it here. I can only tell you that you leave your shoes at the door and jump into a big pit of string. It was highly recommended on the Sunnymoms email group (a listserv in my neighborhood) and it did not disappoint. Totally worth the entrance fee for me and Greg (kids under 16 are free). Vivi loved it and so did we. We jumped in the string, we fell backwards into the string, we buried ourselves in the string, we dug a hole in the string, we pulled on the string. It was a hoot. We probably hung out there for an hour and Vivi did not want to go. The rest of the museum was ho-hum for an almost 2 year old but I would highly recommend going just for the string. It runs through the end of January.

And here is another cute shot of Vivian. She is adorable as usual in her ladybug raincoat my mom gave her. We are amazed at her language skills. She is starting to drop her baby pronunciations of words as she learns the real way to say things and her sentences are becoming more and more complex. So much fun!

And for those who have not seen me in a while, a photo for you. Another resolution of mine is to spend a few more minutes each morning on my hair and make-up for a more professional put together look. I have been really lazy with an unwashed ponytail and no make-up most days. That has to stop! I got a haircut today, have been studying hairstyling blogs and bought a new ceramic flat iron. Hopefully I will find a new routine that is not too labor intensive and will share it here.

Hopefully you will see and hear more from me soon! Happy New Year to you all.

Fun in Texas

We recently went down to Dallas for a few days to visit our besties John and Aimee. 90 degree weather, great food, lots of fun, and drive through margaritas (that is a strange story for another time). It was a nice way to spend the limited amount of time I got off between semesters and a fun way to spend Mother's Day.Vivi's favorite sculpture at the Nasher. Seriously she kept running back to it and pointing and staring.
I love Texas!
John and Aimee on our walk home from dinner.
Rosey cheeked. A little sweaty from our time at the arboretum.
Playing in the frog fountain.
Peter Rabbit's house. Do you like my sun hat?
At John and Aimee's loft. I love this chair, it is just my size. Where did that kitty go?
In the tee pee with Daddy.

Vivi charms everyone she meets. She loves people so much. It was a nice trip overall! We can't wait to see J&A again.

Our Girl is One!

Wow, time flies by. After the holidays we went into crazy mode for the month of January. I won't get into all the details but things are quieting down now. On February 23rd we celebrated Vivian's first birthday! Well, we didn't actually celebrate until the weekend but I just wanted to post a few photos of our girl.Here is Vivi on the day of her birthday, striking a pose. Really she is thinking "why the heck am I on the table?". She is with her pall Charlie the Cheetah, her favorite stuffed animal. At this point she is in 18 month clothes but we are finding them snug already. She weighs 23.5 pounds and is 31 inches tall. That is almost 14.5 pounds and 10 inches of growth in 1 year! Amazing. Vivi has 10 teeth, two of which are a little toward the back and have been tougher to cut. She is a very active walker who practically runs around the house. Here she is pulling out items from her hiding spot. I like to leave things in this little cubbie next to the tv for her to discover. Vivi has been climbing stairs for a while now so we have to be ever vigilent to put up the gate. She has learned to climb off the bed and couch but has had a hard time continuing that training onto the stairs. She will do it for a couple steps but then gets bored with it and wants to turn around and step off like a grown-up! Yikes. We will keep working on it. Her shirt is wet here after being cleaned up from dinner. You have seen how messy she can get feeding herself! Speaking of which she is a master eater. We are working on self feeding with a spoon. She is completely off of bottles and drinking from sippy cups though we are also working on using regular cups. At daycare Vivi has been moved up to the one year old room where they no longer use cribs or highchairs. They sit at little table all together as a group and eat their meals. We decided to continue this at home and have Vivi sit at the table with us which means her highchair is more like a booster seat. No tray. We put her food on a plate and she has done well with it so far. We are trying to teach her that if she doesn't want to eat anything she can move it to a pile to the side instead of throwing it on the floor. She still prefers the out of sight, out of mind approach. I however, am tired of cleaning food off the ground.Here is Vivi at one of her virtual birthday parties. We had a little Skype party with each set of grandparents so they could watch her open her presents and have some cake. Lots of fun. When my parents were on the computer Greg held the laptop and she followed him around "chasing them" for 15 minutes straight. It was very cute. We are still waiting for hair to grow. The mohawk region of her head has gotten a lot thicker and MIGHT have a little curl to it but we are still waiting for any real length. Here is Vivi "brushing" her hair. She copies my hand motion but doesn't actually touch the brush to her head. Such a funny girl. Here is Vivi practicing wearing her swim cap. We signed up for swim classes at the YMCA and they require everyone in the pool to wear a cap. We were a little nervous because Viv hates to have hats or headbands or anything else on her head. However, when we put the swim cap on (it is pretty big as you can see) she just acted like it wasn't there. Good thing. That was a battle I wanted to avoid. I bought her a cute pink skirted swimsuit and a swim diaper and we were all set.I wish I had a better shot of us at the pool but photos weren't allowed. Greg caught this shot on the down low which is why it isn't very clear. Vivi likes being in the water and seems to enjoy our classes. We mostly just bounce around and sing songs at this point. It is more about being comfortable in the water than anything else. She is the biggest baby in the 6-12 month class and is pretty good a kicking her legs. I think we may sign up for music together once swimming is over. It has been fun spending Saturday morning hanging out with Vivi and other kids/parents. Not something I get to do a lot since Greg is the one who handles all the daycare interaction. So after one year Vivian is doing great. She is a high spirited and happy baby/toddler. We were just commenting on how much easier parenting is at this point since she is more self sufficient and it is certainly more fun everyday as her personality grows. She just learned to shake her head yes and no and it is hilarious to watch since her whole body shakes along with it. Happy Birthday Bubba!!

Christmas cards ordered !?!

Yes, this year I am actually ahead of schedule. I decided to order Christmas cards this year and the company I like was running a 20% off special if you order by Sunday night. Luckily we had our Christmas card photo ready. A couple weekends ago we were all ready for Church but didn't manage to get Vivian napped and fed in time to make it there on time. We got an A for effort but didn't make it to morning service (we are trying to transition from evening service to morning service). Since we were dressing up I had us all change into jeans and we went down to the river front to do some photos. It was a really nice day. Here are a few outtakes that didn't make it on the card.photos with a baby were much harder than I expected. She doesn't understand looking at the camera, let alone smiling when there is no one looking back at her. This little fit actually lasted on a couple seconds so it is funny that we caught it on camera. She mostly just looked off at other people.Yum, concrete! I just read an article about how we keep our kids too sterile these days and they don't get to play in the dirt and ingest microbes like kids should. I guess concrete does a body good. I love the skyline in the background.

I love the photos of people swinging their kids in the air so we tried it. It just looks like we are trying to rip her poor little arms off. Not cute at all!

Whenever we hold her up in the air Vivi gets super excited. Gotta love that face. This is on my work computer right now. I especially love the blue sky backdrop.

Who me? Such a sweetie!!!

Happy Halloween

We received this goldfish hat as a hand-me-down last winter. It was way too big so we stuck it away in a drawer and forgot about it. A week ago I was looking for Vivi's winter hats and rediscovered the fish hat. Greg has always thought it was a laugh riot and after sticking it on her head again commented it was practically a Halloween costume in and of itself. We just needed a shirt with some waves on it. I immediately thought, "why not a wave dress!". And our little babe was transformed into a goldfish for Halloween.I used a dress that we already had (and that fit well) as a pattern. I cut both sides out of linen and then cut waves out of cheap felt from Michael's. After piecing it together I stitched down each wave along the bottom using my sewing machine. The next wave down hid the stitches. I added a few seaweed pieces to the bottom and used fabric tack to stick down some of the wave peaks to keep them from folding over or showing too much of the linen. Once that was done I surges around the entire piece to keep it from unraveling and then stitch the front and back together. I was going to stop there but just couldn't leave the edges unfinished so I turned them all and stitched them down. A couple pieces of velcro and it was done. This is not really the most sturdy dress but I figured she would only wear it an hour or so. If she were older and into dress-ups I would have made it more usable since Halloween costumes were a huge source of dress-up material when I was growing up. I loved that.

Here she is in her little costume. White tights, shoes and onsie provided a nice backdrop. You can't tell from the photos but the hat had a fish tail sticking out the back.

Now we didn't really "celebrate" Halloween in the traditional sense. We went over to some friend's house for a little get together and Vivi wore her "costume". It was fun and she sure was cute.

Happy Father's Day

Father's Day was rather quiet here in the Cruikshank household. Vivian decided to get her daddy a bucket of his favorite candy, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Here she is testing the products. Only the best for her daddy! These candies passed the test. Oops, not good at sitting up yet!

Vivian and I worked out a deal where I would get up with her at 6am for her first diaper change of the day. That is usually daddy's job and it also happens to be the time of day she prefers to have a big poop. So we agreed that I would do the diaper change so daddy could sleep in IF she agreed to save the poop for another time. She was totally on board for that.

Next we made daddy delicious waffles for breakfast at his request. Then after Vivian's morning nap she presented her daddy with his bucket of treats and a card she "signed" with a little hand print.

It maybe wasn't the most glamorous day for Greg but he enjoyed it. Greg has turned out to be a dynamite dad. The best that Vivi and I could have hoped for. We are so lucky to have him! Happy Father's Day Greg! Love-Alexis and Vivian

The Third Month

The third month was an action packed one full of really great changes as well as difficult ones.
Vivian got to meet her paternal Grandparents. Greg's parents came out for an extended weekend visit to hang out with their only grand-baby. It was really wonderful. They fell in love with her instantly and it was so cool to watch. They couldn't get enough of Vivi. Greg mentioned to me privately that he had never heard his dad making those kinds of baby noises before in his life and that is was so awesome. It is always amazing how you can know someone forever but then you throw a baby in the mix and you see a new side of someone. They were instant doting grandparents. It was really hard to say goodbye when their visit was over. I am definitely beginning to understand why all our friends leave NYC the minute they have a baby!
While they were here we went out to eat for the first time (the baptism dinner was a few weeks after this). I was really nervous about taking the baby to a restaurant since she was pretty unpredictable still. We chose to meet for breakfast since she is a happier baby in the mornings. She did great. She started to get fussy but Grandma got her to relax and she sat quietly while we all enjoyed our meal. Boy was I relieved. That was a great first!
Month 3 also brought more intentional movements. Vivian's arms finally quieted down as she learned to control them. She began reaching for things and pulling them towards her. In the beginning of the month she did most things with fists but as the month progressed she started to uncurl her fingers and use them. They spend a lot of time in her mouth now.
Vivian developed an affinity for one particular friend. A stuffed cheetah we named Charlie. They have become bed buddies. She loves to bury her face in his soft fur at nap time. She loves sleeping with him so much that I searched online for a second cheetah to send with her to nursery school.
Helping mommy do laundry.
We went one afternoon and visited Daddy at work. I had never seen his new office so it was fun for both of us!More visits with friends. Recognize that nap dress?
I wish I had a good picture of it but the smiling has become a very regular thing. She is a very smiley baby and the smiles have gone from grins to big open mouth smiles. She also learned to giggle. She doesn't laugh a lot but when she does it is really cute.
After some sleep training in the third month to get Vivi onto a napping schedule we saw big differences, all for the better. She stopped needing a pacifier during the day. No more long hours of bouncing a fussy baby. No more late night colic/fussy sessions. She is just so much happier when awake and going down for naps is pretty smooth. It really brought some structure to our lives which is great. It is amazing what regular sleep can do for all of us.
I really did the sleep training in preparation for nursery school which started this month. I went back to work and Vivi started going with Greg to work 3 times a week to attend the nursery school associated with his University. It was a bumpy transition. Vivi of course didn't seem to mind but I was certainly sad to not spend all day with her anymore. The books warned me that going back to work would be a little like when you first come home from the hospital and they were right. We had to adapt to a whole new routine. Emotions ran high. We were getting less sleep at night because Vivi wanted to eat all the time again instead of sleeping through the night which she had started doing prior to daycare. The books warned about that as well but I didn't mind. Things have gotten easier now that we are a few weeks in and have been smoothing out the new routine. Getting back into the groove of work was actually pretty easy. I have been very busy so that takes my mind off missing her during the day. Greg goes and sees her sometimes at lunch and then reports to me how she is doing which is great. Her teachers are really nice and genuinely seem to care. That was really the only hard thing this month. The photo is from the day that Vivi came to visit me at work. Right now Greg and I are both working from home one day a week which has definitely helped the transition. My first week back he brought Vivi down to NYU to see me and meet my staff and some of the faculty.

Then the day before her 3 month birth anniversary Vivi pulled this trick....

She had been trying to roll over for a couple weeks but always needed help from Mommy. This day she not only did it on her own, she mastered it instantly. We were amazed. At first she need to be holding the rattle to do it but by the end of the day she would roll without a prop.
The 3rd month was really a change in Vivi's strength. Not just in rolling over but also in holding her head up and holding it steady. Tummy time really changed. She could hold her head and chest up easily and for once didn't seem to mind doing it. Tummy time is no longer torture in her mind.

It has been a big month. I really can't believe my little peanut is so big and she handled the changes so well. We love seeing each little developmental change happen before our eyes.