Its been a while...

Wow! Our life has been pretty busy the last few months and so much has happened! To catch us up:

Samantha showing her friend how to crawl.

We officially are moved into the intern house and have been for a few months now.

Samantha started crawling two days after we moved in!

She finally got over her diarrhea after having it for 6 long weeks!

So as of today Samantha is 9 months and 6 days old!!! Not only is she crawling but she is also pulling herself up on the furniture. She can bend down to pick something off the floor as long as she is supporting herself and she will sometimes walk along the furniture. She loves following me all around the house and loves to see what I am doing! Having her be mobile has been so awesome so far because the whole crying when I leave the room thing has finally ended since she can just go wherever I go!



Crawling and pulling up has also allowed her to reach many other things she couldn't before and since we also have a much larger house there is even more to get into. But we have been training her as you have probably read and she is very good at understanding what we say (although she doesn't always like it!) She now knows "Don't touch" "Don't eat it" "Let go" "no"  and "come here". Eighty percent of the time she obeys right away but occasionally with something she really wants she will give us a little fight, but we always make sure to win so that she doesn't lose.


As I mentioned earlier she finally got over her diarrhea. Pottying was going great for short time there afterwards but as she started getting more efficient at crawling she began cuing to us less. I have heard from other moms who EC that it is pretty common for babies to sort of "pause" when they hit a new major milestone like crawling or walking. Some mom's think that they literally stop caring and others see it from a more logical perspective. They are able to do and see so much more than they used to and just like we will wait until the last minute sometimes to go to the bathroom when we are preoccupied they will as well. The difference is that you and I know our breaking point and can accurately judge so as not to hit the point of no return. But an infant who is learning their body and gaining self control doesn't know that point yet. So I have had to start going off of timing again.

But she was so dang cute sitting like a big girl!

Another issue we have had was what potty I was putting her on. I bought a travel seat that lays inside the adult potty before she was born to use in public. But once she was big enough to use it I liked it so much I started putting her on it at home every time except in the middle of the night when I still use the Baby Bjorn. She was so cute sitting on the big potty like a big girl! And she was good at it too! I became comfortable enough with her on it that I would step away from her to get her diaper together or leave the room for a second which was a big mistake.

 One night I sat her on the potty right as we got home from being out. I left her side to take off my boots only a few feet away. I was talking to her and she was turning around to face me when she misjudged her balance and toppled right onto her forehead with her body collapsing on top of her face. She barely hit the floor before I swooped her up into my arms. My heart was racing and she was SCREAMING! It was the second most scary moment of her life! After a couple of minutes she finally calmed down and we assessed the damage. Just a bump on the forehead and broken capillaries on her little nose. She looked like Rudolph for a couple of days! I felt so bad that I ever got comfortable leaving her. I obviously stopped after that.

 But I also started noticing that she was pretty consistently not pooping on the big toilet and would instead wait until she was in a diaper (which you can imagine how frustrating that is given how far we have come). She would poop in her little potty but not the big one. Then I had a "duh" moment. Her little feet dangle off the big potty so she has no ground to bear down against when she has to poop. Imaging trying to poop sitting on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you. so we started sitting her on the little potty again in the bathroom and voila we've got poop in potty again!!! So maybe her falling off wasn't such a bad thing after all...just kidding!!!!!!



So Chris was laid off in November for the rainy season as expected and money is a little tight, also as expected. And I have been sewing things for Samantha and as gifts and everyone kept telling me I should sell them so I decided to start my own business! I am still working on all the details so currently I only have a facebook page but soon I hope to get my etsy page up and running. It has been so much fun so far deciding the name and creating the design. And I had my first two clients, my mom and a very close friend! But her you got to start somewhere right?! If you are interested please check out my page here and please like it also!

 So due to being so busy the last couple of months I failed to take Samantha's 7 and 8 month pictures. But I was sure to take her 9 month ones so at least I will have 1, 3,6, 9 and 12 month shots for her birthday (which I am so excited about!!) Here are other random pictures from the past months and her 9 month shots. Hope you enjoy!!!

A Christmas Eve nap

I found her sleeping in her crib like this today!

Baby Training

This can be a pretty controversial topic but I am now a firm believer in training our children from infancy. We started Ecing our daughter from birth. Whenever I noticed her peeing or pooping I would say "psst" to get her to associate the word with the action. At 5 days old we started placing her on her potty and saying "psst" to tell her to go potty and she went for the very first time at our command. At the time it could have just been timing or coincidence but as time went on she learned the association of "psst" and time to go potty. Now it is very evident that it isn't just about timing and it definitely isn't coincidence but rather we have trained her to go potty at our command. Obviously if you have ever read my blog before we don't catch everything yet but she is still trained according to many. (There is a debate among some circles about what potty trained actually means, ex. one is trained when they have zero accidents anymore or when one has an understanding of when and where to potty and occasionally may have accidents. I tend to lean more toward the allowance for accidents since most pregnant women have had an accident before and no one would say they are no longer potty trained) Now some people still find my family very odd for "potty training" my daughter so early. And there sure are a lot of critics of EC out there, but let me assure you my daughter is trained to a pretty far extent.

Now if you understand that she is potty trained-ish, then you should understand that any baby can be trained for other things as well. One of my favorite parenting websites/ministry is No greater Joy. Please visit their website or even better read their books To Train up a child and No Greater Joy Volumes 1,2,&3 for more information on what I am talking about in a broader sense. But for now, this is what has been going on with training my daughter.

I really dislike getting my hair pulled as I am sure most would agree. And little baby hands are notorious for hair pulling or getting at your jewelry or eyeglasses. And I just really don't want to have to always wear my hair up, never wear jewelry, or be forced to start wearing contacts again. So I wanted to train my daughter to not touch those things on me or anyone else. I started maybe around 2 months or so. She was able to hold her head up and her arms were starting to squirm around much more and would grab anything they came in contact with including hair. Developmentally she didn't know what she was grabbing and I don't think was able to distinguish between hair or anything else she would grab so I didn't want to just say "no" to her grabbing and prevent her from grabbing at everything. So at first we began teaching her to let go. When she would grab hair or any other undesirable thing we would say "let go" two times while tapping her hand  and then I would flick her hands until she let go. When she did I would smile and say "good girl!!!" which is also what I usually say when she potties in the toilet.

There weren't too many opportunities at first to train her but as she has gotten older more and more have arisen. Especially this last month. Her motor skills have improved drastically. At first she started reaching in the general direction for something she wanted to touch hoping to be able to grab it. Now she is getting pretty skilled at grabbing exactly what she wants. This whole time I have been training her to let go and this last couple of weeks she has shown HUGE improvement. She understands me now. It usually takes me 2 times saying "let go" and tapping her hand for her to let go. Occasionally I have to still flick her hand but she is definitely understanding what I am telling her. It is so neat to watch her little mind growing!

So now that she is able to grab at what she wants, we are starting to train her to not touch specific things. And now we are using the word "no". I usually give a flick the first time she touches anything because I want to quickly associate the word no with that object and then after she understands "no" I will just tell her once and if she continues to touch or touches again I will flick her hand until she stops touching. Since she already understands to let go when getting flicked it doesn't take her long to let go of something but if she still wants it she will keep grabbing at it a few more times. But has eventually always stopped. Its amazing! Once we can get her to understand the meaning of "no" our life will become much easier with an older baby! So stay tuned to hear more results!!!


 In regards to getting back on track with EC...

So big! She is starting to sit on her potty on her own!

Yesterday went GREAT! I caught every pee overnight which is the very first time!!! Very exciting!!! Part of it was me waking up obviously but another was she was holding longer waiting for me to wake up because I knew I was getting up right away. And then during the day we only had 2 very small misses. One was in the morning after she woke up. She usually has a couple of small pees after she wakes up and it can be hard to catch them all when they are close together. I missed while I was taking a shower. The other one was when I was out shopping. She fell asleep in my wrap and then we went to my mom's house where I didn't pee her right away and since it had been a while she just couldn't hold it. But only 2 misses all day and night is an awesome record!!!!

Last night wasn't too great... we only missed 2 but I like not missing any : ) And this morning has been all catches except for one when she was playing on her belly.