Guess who is FOUR months old today?
Our Miss Daisy is growing up so fast! I'm so much more aware of how fast it is going by as I try to sear these memories into my head in some effort to remember these sweet days when I no longer have a baby at home. Don't get me wrong, I think babies are hard and a lot of work and I don't get out of the house nearly as often as I want to, and I'm definitely not a baby person in general, but I am a MY BABY person. I love my little ones so much. I love that I'm ending my brood with such a sweet little girl like Daisy. She is so smiley, easy to please, easy to calm, and just EASY. The only thing she hates to do is sleep, and if I wasn't so determined to have her on a healthy sleep schedule we would probably have far fewer tantrums in that area as well. Even now she still wakes me up at least once a night. I put her to bed between 7:30-8pm and nurse her again between 10-11pm before I go to bed, and she typical wakes up between 4-5am for a feed and then goes back to sleep until I wake her up at 7am - yes I wake her up... have to stick to our schedule :-)
I have a feeling that she will be an early crawler and walker just like her big sister. She rolls all over the place and puts herself so high on her hands when she has her tummy time. Daisy has taken to sleeping on her stomach all on her own recently. With all my other babies I have transitioned them into sleeping on their stomach around 6 weeks of age. Daisy wanted none of it, so I have always put her down on her back or her side. Just in the past two weeks she has decided that she likes sleeping on her tummy after all. The best part of my day is when I get to go in and get her up in the morning or from her naps. The instant smiles on her face seem to be as big as the muscles in her face can manage. When I pick her up she grabs anything on me that she can and pulls her body close for a nuzzle.
We love this little sweetheart! She also loves her older siblings and has a great big smile any time one of them is near and she can hear their voices. She especially loves Dale, but he still has very little interest in her. The only time he pays her any attention is when she tries to grab his blanket (which is a big no-no) when we are sitting on the couch watch cartoons. Dale demands cartoons in the mornings and he loves to grab his blanket and sit right next to me while I nurse Daisy. I wish he was a little more interested in her and I'm hoping as she become more mobile that maybe he will finally be her friend.
Beautiful little doll!
Who couldn't love such a sweet pout?!
I tried to get Dale to put his face next to Daisy for a picture but as soon as I tried to coax him, he was determined to do the opposite.
Instead of pictures he decided he wanted to play with his little laptop that he got for Christmas....which he NEVER plays with.
One day last week Dale really put me close to a complete breakdown. I seriously wanted to leave home and not come back for a couple of days. He's just so much work! This kid doesn't play with toys, he plays with household objects. Forget the play room, he'll take the following any day:
1. Junk drawer in our kitchen island - where he can find tape, scissors, keys, the camera, etc.
2. Garage - where he can find all of Justin's tools or get into my van and honk, break stuff, turn on blinkers and lights, etc.
3. My bathroom - where he can eat and destroy my make up or every single chapstick we have.
4. The sheds out back - where he loves to eat the grain we feed the chickens and lambs since it has molasses in it. And there is no keeping this kid in the house! We put a high lock on the garage door but were unable to put one on our patio door because it's metal on the inside. The dead bolt is a little higher than normal, but that doesn't stop Dale...
5. The garden - where he can remove plant labels, pull out watering spickets and hoses, pick unripe veggies and throw them on the ground. He refuses to ever pick a red ripe cherry tomato, instead he always opts for the green ones...which he never eats anyway.
6. The laundry room - where he can raid the spare fridge for a few minutes without anyone knowing. I stocked up on Lunchables when they were on sale about a month ago and Dale would sneak in there at least 2-3 times a day and open a Lunchable just to take out the cookie snack inside... He also loves to pull the baby sprouts Justin grows under a light in the laundry room. Last Sunday he got in there without us knowing and pulled every single sprout Justin had so carefully nurtured to life (probably about 25 of them). We've come to hypothesize that maybe he thinks he'll find a carrot under them since he loves to eat the carrots from the garden.
7. Cabinets in the kitchen. We are talking WALL cabinets. He pushes a chair up to the counter, climbs up and gets into everything! I've finally had to move everything tempting to the cabinet above the fridge because it's the only one he can't reach. Above the fridge we now have all treats, Nutella, crackers, peanuts, and even some vitamins. Apparently I should have moved the peanut butter up there too. He wasn't raiding it so much anymore, but I guess with the Nutella gone he decided it would be good enough...
This picture was taken just a little later the same day as the peanut butter:
and this is permanent marker all over my travertine in the kitchen, just a few days later, at 7am (this kid doesn't waste time getting busy in the mornings!)
Luckily I was able to get most of it out with hand sanitizer and a Magic Eraser.Last Sunday Dale destroyed all our sprouts for the garden, ate my lipstick, pulled out our adolescent sprouts sitting in the window (we grow the sprouts in the laundry room and when they get bigger Justin transplants them to bigger pots in the window for a few weeks before he transplants them again into the garden), decided to help himself to a large bowl of fruit salad I had prepared for dinner and had chilling in the spare fridge, grabbed a body of hair shine spray from my bathroom and sprayed it all over the bathroom (greasy stuff!) and then ran out into the kitchen and started spraying again (which is when I caught him), and then got a bottle of probiotics out of the fridge and dumped it on the counter and helped himself to it (that stuff is expensive!). I was sooo done with that kid! All of that in one single day!
As I write this I should also add that today Brighton had baseball practice at 5pm. I really didn't want to take all four kids because Dale does not listen and doesn't stay close and wanders a lot, so I was getting the play by play from Justin to see how soon he would be home. When it was time for me to leave, Justin was literally less than 10 minutes from home and Dale had been out in the backyard happily playing on the dirt pile for over 20 minutes. I told Adaira that Daddy would be home really soon (and Frances is always downstairs if there is an emergency) and that I was going to take Brighton to practice. They were both out in the backyard playing when we left. Justin texted me less than 9 minutes later to tell me he was home. Come to find out in that short period of time, Dale of course decided he wanted to come inside the house, brought in a mason jar he found out in the shed, and threw it down and busted it on the kitchen floor. Adaira picked up a piece of it and cut her finger....STORY OF MY LIFE. 9 minutes? Seriously? When he'd been out there playing for over 20?
I love Dale so much, I really do. He makes me laugh more than any of my other kids ever have, but he is SO. MUCH. WORK! I am just praying that the fact he is so active, figures so much stuff out and is so curious, yet DOESN'T TALK, just means he is a super genius :) Fingers crossed!
***This added a day later on March 7th***
While we are on the subject of Dale's trouble making schemes, let me add that this morning prior to 11am, Dale managed to accomplish the following:Found him literally INSIDE the fridge after I finished putting Daisy down for her morning nap. He has discovered the chocolate stash we keep in the top right shelf on the door. BUSTED!
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