Nostalgia, Peace and Quiet

Today we met Tara and Bailey at Kangaroo Kids. Tara and Bailey hadn't been to the new location yet. We shopped while the girls played in the play area. They offered free coffee! Soon after we got there, Rebecca and Ella Kate stopped in. Kaitlynn played with Ella Kate. She tested out a new stroller with her. Rebecca strolled them around the store. She had a hard time getting them to get out of the stroller, too.

Before the Nursing Moms group started we ran into Whitney and Ellie. I hadn't seen them since last year. Probably sometime in April at the Nursing Moms Group. Ellie has gotten so big and looks so different, so grown up. It brought back memories being there right before the group started and seeing the people we were in the group with. It made me sad that that part of our lives are over with. It made me thankful that I had a place to go for a year of our lives that meant so much to me. I made some really good friends there and I hope Kaitlynn has too.

Kaitlynn fell asleep in the car on the way home from dropping the research products off. We did that after we left Kangaroo Kids. She napped for almost 2 hours.

Genny dropped Whitney off and we went to my mom's. My mom watched Whitney and Kaitlynn while Dave and I attended a meeting. Thankfully the girls were good for my mom. Whitney was asleep when I picked them up from my mom's. Kaitlynn fell asleep in the car. When I got home, Dave brought Kaitlynn in and put her to bed. Whitney slept until Genny came to pick her up. It's been a nice quiet evening!

Breastfeeding

Check this link out.

Kaitlynn's First Signed Word

Before and during my pregnancy I said I was going to teach my baby sign language to aid in communicating. After Kaitlynn was born, I was still interested in teaching her sign language, but didn't know much. I only picked up a little bit when I ran the adult day program at Judevine Center for Autism. Then it kind of got put off and I kind of forgot about it. Kaitlynn and I attended this New Moms Network at St. John's Mercy on July 25th and that day they had someone there to talk about signing with your baby. New Moms Network is a group St. John's Mercy offers to first time moms. Kaitlynn and I only attended once because the time the group met just didn't fit into our schedule. Anyway, the speaker that day was a lady named Ann Gray. She teaches Baby Sign classes at Gymboree. I learned how to sign several words that day (some I already knew) and learned to sign "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". My sign vocabulary consisted of more, nurse, milk, cracker, cookie, mommy, daddy, dog, cat, drink, and eat (I know a few more words from Judevine, but these are the words Ann taught). She also recommended checking out http://www.signingtime.com/. I was so excited about signing with Kaitlynn and I probably consistently signed with her for a week or so. Then I would sign a word every once in a while, but definitely not consistently enough for her to sign words back to me or to make the connection, for that matter. Well I was wrong about that! Dave, Kaitlynn, and I were in bed on January 14th and Kaitlynn was crying and doing something with her hand. Dave said she is signing she wants to nurse. I looked at her and was like "Oh, my gosh, she has been doing that for a few days to a week and I didn't realize that's what she was doing." I felt like a total idiot. It was the sweetest thing. We use the sign for milk to mean nurse. She won't do the sign every time, but will do it. She also says "na na" which means nurse. When she was about 4 months old she would say "ne ne" every time she wanted to nurse. I would nurse her every time I heard "ne ne", but eventually she stopped saying it. So now she says "na na" or signs "milk" or just lifts my shirt up or just cries until I nurse her. She likes to keep me on my toes! For Christmas, a friend (Patrick) bought me the book "Baby Sign Language" (and a vegetarian cookbook). He knows me too well!