Daycare

Juliet's first day of daycare was yesterday and it went really well.  I dropped her off at about 8:45am and stayed with her about 20 minutes before leaving.  She didn't cry or cling to me at all - she was quite happy to go to one of the daycare workers and start playing with their toys.  After I left, the workers took her and the other babies for a walk in the strollers for about an hour, then I picked Juliet up soon after they got back.  She was really only there about an hour and a half, but there were no tears and she seemed to be genuinely happy there.  What a relief!


Right after we arrived, Juliet sat with one of the teachers and played happily.


As had I prepared to take her there in the morning, I wondered whether I should put on mascara as I thought it would likely end up all down my face as I cried my way home.  But as it turns out, she did so well there that I didn't end up being sad at all when I left her - instead, I was proud.

One of the comments from the daycare workers was that Juliet was such a happy girl.  Apparently, when they took the babies for a walk, they put Juliet in the coveted position of the front of the stroller, and passersby would comment on how smiley and happy our little Juliet was.  This made me feel good about her being there.

Today was Juliet's second day of daycare and it also went well.  She was there for much longer today - from about 9am to close to 2pm.  She did really well again, although the daycare workers had trouble getting her to nap - she refused to go to sleep in her designated crib.  That's totally my fault, though, as I am still nursing her to sleep for most of her naps (and the other naps are either in the car or on walks).  I don't think she cried while she was there, which is totally amazing to me given how much she hated the caregivers at my mom group and would cry almost the whole time she was in their care.  Turns out she doesn't have stranger danger after all - she just hates certain strangers!

The daycare creates reports every day where parents can see how their child did that day and in today's report, they wrote, "Great second transition day! We are so happy to have Juliet and your family in our class.".  Awww...so nice!

After picking Juliet up from daycare today, I brought her home and she had a playdate with my friend and colleague, Erica and her son, Ben.  Juliet is kind of grabby but luckily Ben is grabby, too, so they enjoyed poking each others' faces.  In between all the grabbing, they both took a moment to enjoy some Mum Mums.

Mmmmm...these crackers have no flavour but they are fun to crunch on.

Juliet had another visitor this evening as grandma came by because she was viewing a condo nearby.  Turns out she liked it so much that she ended up putting in an offer, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that it will work out.  I try not to get my hopes up too much with real estate transactions, though, as most of you know that it took me and Leo two years to find a house and we had many failed attempts before we were eventually successful.

Grandma brought some silly glasses for Juliet to try on.  The funny thing is that there's a sticker on the glasses that says "100% UV protection".  Like anyone's going to wear these things for longer than about 2 minutes as a joke.

Two, One, Zero!

Well, tomorrow is the big day - Juliet starts daycare.  Tonight we've spent the evening preparing...it really feels like the first day of school or something.  She has a whole list of things she has to bring tomorrow (diapers, wipes, extra clothes, pictures of us, etc.).  As I type this, Leo is folding her clean laundry, so we're almost ready.

Let's take a step back and go through what Juliet did this past weekend.  On Saturday morning, Leo took her to music class.  Then, in the early afternoon, we went to a church fair where they were selling used items and we picked up a few things for Goobs, including a sleepsack for $3 (they retail for $70 new!).  It was a nice day, so we went for a stroll along Bayview, and when we came home, we headed over to Sylwia's for Gabriel's first birthday party.  We had fun and Juliet even tasted some of Gabriel's birthday cake!  It was really rich and I think she might have had a sugar high afterwards.  She got kind of hyper and was difficult to handle, so I think we'll have to be careful with giving her too much sugar.  While we were there, she also had a piece of an orange for the first time, which she seemed to like.  I have since bought an orange and tried to give it to her and she refuses to eat it (of course!).  Maybe the daycare will have better luck in getting her to eat fruit.

Leo looks through some used books and VHS tapes at the church fair.

This was taken on our walk along Bayview.  I took the picture in front of this store because I love the Hydrangeas in the background.

At Gabriel's birthday party: shoulder fight with the birthday boy. 
It looks like Gabriel and Mitch were winning!

There were several kids play areas at the party, including a water table.  Juliet just played with the toys but wasn't interested in splashing around with the water.

On Saturday night, Grandma came over and babysat which gave Leo and I a chance to go out and see a movie (The Hunger Games).  On Sunday, Grandma also babysat Juliet as Leo and I went out to brunch and then to go visit our friends Chrissy and Trevor.

Grandma took this pic of Juliet after feeding her lunch.

Today, Juliet and I went to the dentist - we both had appointments.  It was sort of a lapse in judgement on my part as I realized that I had booked our appointments for the same time which doesn't really work when one of those appointments is for a baby.  I would need to sit with and hold Juliet as the dentist examined her, so we couldn't realistically have appointments at the same time.  I knew Juliet's appointment would only take a few minutes but mine would take close to an hour (because hers just involved a quick check as opposed to a cleaning) so I had no idea how I was going to amuse Juliet while I sat in that dentist chair.  I was really nervous that the whole thing was going to be a disaster, but luckily Juliet got up really early this morning, so she was ready for a nap just as we were on our way to the dentist.  She ended up napping in the stroller as I was getting my teeth cleaned, and woke up about 5 minutes before the hygienist was done which was fine.  Her appointment was next and everything looked great.  The hygienists, the secretaries, and the other people in the waiting room were all charmed by her smile.


Juliet sits with the secretary at our dentist's office.

Wish us luck tomorrow :)

Three

Juliet and I had a very busy day today.  This morning I had another physio appointment and this time I took Juliet with me.  I'm going to physio because I have De Quervain syndrome - another name for it is Mommy Thumb.  Basically, I have been picking up Juliet improperly by putting too much of her weight on my thumbs whenever I pick her up under her arms.  Over time, this has caused a sort of tendinitis in my right thumb.  Anyhow, at my initial appointment earlier in the week, the physiotherapist said that I could bring Juliet with me for our appointments and so today we tried it out.  I figured it would be a lot easier on all of us if Juliet was napping while at the appointment, so I left 25 minutes early and drove around trying to get Juliet to sleep...but of course it didn't work.  So while I was getting treated (which involved acupuncture!) Juliet was crawling around on the exam room floor, trying to get into everything.  It was more scary for me than her because there were times I thought she was going to pull at my acupuncture needles while they were still in my arm!  Ouch!

Juliet's nap schedule got thrown off by going to this appointment, so she only had one nap today but surprisingly wasn't overly cranky because of it.  During the afternoon we ran a bunch of errands - we went to Winners to get some additional bum cloths, grocery shopping, Epi for a donut, Bagel House for some bagels, and to Scholar's Choice to get a birthday present for Juliet's buddy Gabriel.  Look how happy she was when picking out Gabriel's gift:  (Gabriel, if you're reading this, don't look at the picture if you want to be surprised at your party tomorrow!)

Happy Birthday, Gabe the Babe!

Tonight for the first time we gave Juliet some cow's milk (homo milk) to try.  She seemed sort of confused after tasting it, but she drank some more so she definitely didn't hate it.  Although I plan on continuing to breastfeed her in the mornings and at night once she goes to daycare, she will need to drink something other than water while at daycare, so we decided to try cow's milk.  I'd love to be able to give her pumped breastmilk but my supply has decreased so much (because she's taken to solids so well) that pumping is becoming increasingly difficult and time consuming.  Every night I've been pumping for half an hour only to get 1.5 or 2 ounces of breastmilk.  So anyhow, hopefully the cow's milk will work for her/us.  Knock on wood - her intolerance for dairy seems to be over for now - I've been drinking milk all week and we haven't seen any symptoms in Juliet.  But obviously we'll be keeping a close eye on her tomorrow after having the cow's milk today.

Four

Today, Juliet and I attended our Thursday playgroup.  In the past, this playgroup was made up of about 8 moms and babies, but now that a lot of the babies have turned one and are now in daycare, fewer and fewer people show up to playgroup.  Today there were just 3 of us moms and babies, but we still had fun.  The babies didn't interact very much today - they mainly interacted by grabbing toys from one another.  Juliet is now an expert crawler, so I spend most of the time making sure she wasn't getting herself into too much trouble while trying to maintain a conversation with the other moms.

Other than that, we had kind of a low key day.  Juliet had Indian food again for dinner, and then I went out for the evening to go to an organized outing with one of my mom groups (I got my colours done and a mani/pedi) so Leo was alone in putting Juliet to bed.  Apparently, it went quite well and she fell asleep without incident - Leo just had to rock her to sleep for a few minutes.

I hadn't taken any pictures of Juliet today, so I had asked Leo to take a picture of her for the blog and this is what he came up with - I think it turned out to be a pretty cute picture of her, but it looks like he set up a cage match between Juliet and Butters.  I hope no babies or cats got hurt!

Five

Today, Juliet and I had a playdate with our neighbours from the other side of our semi.  They have 3 kids; 2 of them are older and the other is a baby named Devin.  Devin is about 7 months old, so he and Juliet will be in the same grade when they start school - maybe even in the same class.  We've been in our house nearly five months and this is the first time we've actually gotten together with our neighbours.  With 3 kids, though, they are pretty busy - I know how busy we are with just Juliet, so I can't imaging having 3!  So anyhow, our neighbour came over with Devin and we had a little visit.  Devin isn't crawling or anything yet, so he and Juliet didn't really "play", but Juliet enjoyed reaching her hand out and touching his shoulder - this made her giggle.  He was super smiley and seemed to have a great disposition, just like Juliet.

 

This is our neighbour (she didn't really want to be in the picture) with Devin and Goobs.

Other than that, Juliet had a fairly typical day. 

 

Random, but I thought I would mention some of the strange things Juliet does, because some of them are kind of funny.

• If she's eating Cheerios, sometimes she refuses to eat the broken "O's".  Like, if they're half an "O", she just doesn't want it for some reason.
• She likes to put stuff into containers and then take them out.  As an example, she'll take her doll and put it in a basket, then take it out.
• When she's attempting to stand while holding onto something, she likes having a toy in her other hand.  Leo thinks it's to increase the level of difficulty, but I have no idea why she does this.
• We have a bit of an ant problem at our house, and every time I would walk into the front hall and see an ant, I would exclaim, "Argh!" in frustration.  Then I noticed Juliet would also say "argh!" each time we went into the front hall - I think she just thinks it's the thing to do while in the front hall!
• She loves to wave at everyone and everything.  She waves at strangers, she waves at Butters, sometimes she even waves at inanimate objects.
• She likes meat more than veggies - if she has both meat and a veggie on her tray, she'll clearly pick around the veggies to get all the meat before considering eating something green.

Here are some pictures of her playing in her pen. I had to go out for a bit tonight to go to physio (more on that another time), but Leo reports that she stood for up to 15 seconds while in the pen (without holding onto anything).

Six More Days

Since I only have a week left with Juliet before she's in daycare, I'm going to try to do a blog post every day so that our last week together is well-documented.  Yes, I suppose I'm getting a bit melodramatic about the whole thing, but she's our baby - I can't help it!

Today we went to Juliet's swimming class in the morning.  Juliet was a little clingy - sometimes she gets like that in the pool - but she did well and had no problems being dunked under water.  There are some older kids in the class (maybe they're close to 2?) and they cry every time they're dunked, so I was thankful that we started Juliet in swimming lessons so early.

After we came home and had lunch, we headed out for a walk and dropped by Juliet's daycare to hand in some paperwork.  While I was there, I asked to see the room she'll be in and I met a couple of her teachers and a few of the other babies.  As soon as I introduced Juilet, the teachers recognized her name and knew she was the one starting next week, so I'm glad they'll be ready for her.

I realized that I won't be breastfeeding Juliet during the day as of next week, so I made a conscious effort not to breastfeed her today.  It was going well until about 6pm when she started just getting cranky and restless.  She had just woken from a nap and had eaten fairly well today, so I knew that wasn't the problem, so I ended up just breastfeeding her.  We'll try again tomorrow :)

When Leo came home, the 3 of us went to a local fish and chip restaurant for dinner.  The funny thing is that we tried to go last week but when we drove by, the line was out the door so we had given up.  I thought we'd try to go tonight since it's a Tuesday and it shouldn't have been too busy, but we still ended up waiting 15 minutes for a table.  Juliet charmed everyone else in line while we were waiting - seriously, I think about 10 different groups/couples smiled with her and interacted with her.  That's been one of the biggest eye openers for me in terms of having a baby - they really bring pleasure to people, and strangers will just start talking to you just because you have a baby.  Anyhow, we finally got a table and after Juliet had her dinner (corn and rice), Leo fed her some of his fish and she seemed to really like it.  After our main courses, Juliet started to get restless while at the restaurant (it was close to her bedtime), so we got our desserts to go, and took her straight home and she easily went to bed.  Goodnight, Goobs.

Leo feeding Juliet some fish (without the batter).

I forgot to put this picture in yesterday's blog update. 
This is Juliet playing solo while visiting Sylwia and Gabriel last week.

Countdown to Daycare

Well, the big news is that we found out that Juliet got into our first choice for daycare - it's the one that just opened up last September and the best part is that it's a 3 minute walk from our new house.  I know four other people whose kids go there and they are happy with the quality of care.  Juliet and I did a tour a couple of months ago and liked it, so Leo and I are comfortable with the decision to send her there.  The only bad part is that Juliet's space is available earlier than we thought - about a month earlier - so it's sort of sad that we will have to make this transition earlier than planned.  The flip side of that is that I will go back to work a bit earlier but will have some vacation that I will not have used up, so I will have a bit more time with Juliet over the summer when I can take some of that vacation.  But the countdown is on...Juliet starts daycare a week from tomorrow.


Grandma came across some of my old baby clothes so here is Juliet in some pyjamas that are over 30 years old! 



Leo and I were calling her 'Spider Goobs' in this outfit.

Juliet has been on a few mini road trips over the past week or so.  Last weekend she and Leo went to Oma's and visited Aunt Laura who was recovering from being sick.  While she was at Oma's, Leo reports that she loved the freedom to crawl around and she impressed everyone with her huge appetite.  She tried sausage for the first time and liked it.  She also ate some broccoli but would tend to eat all the sausage first before eating the broccoli. 

Juliet got to spend some time with her Great Nana while she was at Oma's, as everyone went out for breakfast.  Juliet tried ham for the first time.

Juliet spent some time with Aunt Laura and we all hope that she is recuperating nicely.
Note that only a man (ahem, Leo) would pair that lilac sweatshirt with that colourful jumper.

This trip was also a bit of a milestone for us because it was Juliet's first night away from me (and thus breastfeeding).  I stayed with Grandma and helped her prepare her house for sale, so I wasn't able to make it to Oma's.  We were all a little nervous about how Juliet would do without her usual middle-of-the-night breastfeeding, but I'm told she did pretty well.  Leo was able to give her some pumped breastmilk via a sippy cup and rock her back to sleep.   And for the first time in almost a year, I was able to have a full night's sleep (theoretically...my body is used to waking up, so I still woke up a few times throughout the night).  Poor Leo was so tired that he went to bed the next night at 10:30pm which is just about the earliest I've ever seen him go to bed!  Maybe we should do this more often so that he gets more practice waking up throughout the night :)

Juliet also visited Anjana, Bryce and young Nayan last week.  We didn't get any pictures of the two babies together (sorry!) but poor Nayan did not like Juliet's vocal screeches.  Sometimes she can be quite loud - she's not upset, she's just communicating - but Nayan is 4 months old and her noises were just too scary for him.  While we were there, we had takeout Indian food and Juliet had some butter chicken which she loved.  Even though she doesn't love vegetables, Juliet doesn't seem to have a problem with trying foods with different spices and sauces.

Last week we also visited Sylwia and Gabriel.  Gabriel just turned one last week.  It really is hard to believe that a little over a year ago, Sylwia and I were doing pre-natal yoga and had no idea what we were in for (well, at least I didn't!), and now we have one year olds!  It's crazy.  Anyhow, after some initial tears (Juliet had just woken up from a too-short nap), the two babies played well alongside each other.  And the playdate gave me and Sylwia a chance to compare notes on everything from food habits to daycare to sleeping tips.

Gabriel: "What'd I do???  I just want you to come out and play!"

...eventually, Juliet turned into the aggressor...

....awww...and then they played nicely together.