THE WEEK THAT WAS | 2018 – Week 2: January 8-14
For this week’s update, I didn’t kid myself and I’m typing directly on WordPress. I know the post is going to go on and I might as well do it right. Right? So anyway, here’s what happened with us this week.
SLEEP
Before I complain about things that are wrong with her sleep, here’s a happy development – she now wakes up with the biggest smile on her face and says ‘Hiiiiiiii’ as soon as she sees anyone (me, usually). 😍
But apparently, only good things get jinxed and talking about your problem or the jinx itself doesn’t help. You can’t jinx the jinx, so here I am a week later – no, no – 16 MONTHS of her life later – with her sleep schedule still my biggest parenting dilemma. Somehow her routine isn’t on a 24 hour clock and much to my chagrin I have come to realise that letting her have that second nap, the one that she badly wants, the one I cannot avoid no matter how hard I try, is the source of our recent sleep troubles. Even if it lasts only 45 minutes.
I know, I know. 45 minutes is a lot, and for someone who complains that her child doesn’t sleep enough, I have some balls saying only 45 minutes, but here’s the deal. Until two months ago, she took two naps of 1.5 hours each, so 45 minutes is bascially half of that.
Anyway, when I could no longer bear the tears, I let her nap yesteday from 5:15 to 6 PM and those precious 45 minutes gave her the energy she needed for SIX MORE HOURS! Can you imagine that? Both nights over this weekend, she’s slept around midnight. And woken up at a different time each day. I have no clue how to fix this, except let things take their own course and hope that it’ll get better on its own.
Another development this week has been that she now sleeps with her head on a pillow. We observed that when she rolled over in her sleep, she somehow landed with her head on the adult pillows that we put on her sides, just in case. So we now use the Little West Street Pillow that she has.
SPEECH
The new words in her vocabulary this week are:
- Nanana (for Banana)
- Tatata (for Natasha – my sister)
- Ta-ku (for Thank you) – though asking her to repeat this doesn’t get a response as quick as the other two.
PERSONALITY
This week I taught her to give hugs. Yes, I actually taught her. I am a hugger and it’s been long enough, and I couldn’t take these one sided hugs anymore, so I taught her. We started with hugging her soft toys – her bears (we have a family of three: a Papa Bear, a Mamma Bear, and a Baby Bear, two of them gifts from Tamanna. Apt, no?) and then the tortoise – Michelangelo (after one of the Ninja Turtles) and Penny (Penelope from Madrid). And when I was satisfied that she was hugging them correctly, she moved on to hugging me. She has yet to hug her Papa though. But I am loving these tight little squishy baby hugs!
She has also begun to understand and appreciate face filters on Instagram and Snapchat. She loves making faces at the camera and seeing how the filters will react to her expressions.
She’s still as chatty as ever and has imaginary phone conversations with… someone. I have no idea who. Maybe they’re not imginary conversations and she is in fact talking to someone we cannot see or hear. Very Conjuring-like, I know. I need to stop watching horror movies. But she’s very expressive in her conversations. Her observation is so keen that she pauses in between talking as if she were listening to the other person talk.
PLAYTIME & BOOKS
We got her a new Peppa Pig book last weekend, and it’s one that has a button that goes ‘Oink Oink’ every time it is pressed and that has kept her engrossed all week. In fact, this entire week she has been surrounded by her books. She pulls all of them out of her shelf and has multiple books open at a time. She still doesn’t let me get in and show her what’s on the pages or talk about it, but she does enjoy looking at them all by herself. Which is good, for now.
Our Shumee Toys’ Rainbow Stacker is still a hit with Laddoo. We received this when she was a little over 10 months old and at first she only took all the rings off the stacker. It was a while before she could figure out how to put them on and she still doesn’t do it in the right order, but she likes stacking the rings and whenever we need a change in pace, I go back to this toy and leave her with it. It keeps her busy for anywhere between 5-10 minutes. It’s not a lot, but you have no idea how much you can get done in such a short duration.
And apart from playing, Laddoo is also chilling – whether it is on the cool tiles on the floor, or her Teddy Mat, or the bed. She doesn’t stay there for long, obviously, because I’m not that lucky, but I hope she starts enjoying it soon.
OTHER STUFF THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK
- After almost four months since the last (and only) two teeth popped out, we can finally see signs of the third one cutting through her upper gum. Now it’s not definite and I cannot be sure till I actually feel the tooth, but there’s something for sure. Although by this logic, it seems like she will be almost three years old by the time she has 20 teeth.
- Laddoo now sings. It’s just La, la la, but whenever I mention singing or songs, she goes La, la, la. It’s quite cute, actually. Saturday night she actually gave a concert. Well, she was entertaining herself, but she went on for quite a bit.
- This week she also got another round of vaccinations. We took the ‘Oink Oink’ book along with us and made her look at it while the doctor gave her the shot and that distracted her enough to not break into tears. She did cry a bit, obviously, but not as hard as she otherwise would have.
- Her bye-byes are now automatically accompanied by flying kisses. In fact, she gave her paediatrician many flying kisses as we were leaving.
- We purchased an indoor swing for her just after her birthday but we never got around to fitting it. We tried fitting it in our balcony a couple of weeks ago but the rope is too short. We did make her sit in it and she loved it. So this week, my husband bought a few extensions and even with those, it was too short and therefore, hung too high. She had a great time in the swing and was totally comfortable in it, but we had to stand next to her constantly because it was too high off the ground. We plan to get some more extensions to make it as low as possible so we can let her chill in the swing and get a bit of free time ourselves. LOL.
ON SOCIAL MEDIA
On the Blog
On Being Mamma Bear
Here are details of the previous week that was.
I completed and updated 101 Excuses I can make, now that I have a Baby.
On Mrs. Writes-a-Latte
A-Z in 100 Words Challenge – Week 2 – B for Begin
On Instagram
That’s all for now. I’ll see you all again, soon.
Being Mamma Bear 
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