West Coast Atkins

Today Syrahav turned 11 months.  I can hardly believe that she will soon turn one.  Jake and I have been discussing what we will do for her 12 month birthday, especially since we have no family around for miles.  One thing I am excited about is that we will be celebrating with vegan, gluten-free chai cupakes.  We’ve been gathering all the ingredients for them, and I’m so excited!

Syrahav has been teething relentlessly the past week.  Its been exhausting.  I’ve had more anger than I’ve had tears, not at Syrahav, but at God.  Maybe I shouldn’t even write “the past week”.  Syrahav only has 4 teeth right now, and we’ve paid with about a month of sleepless nights for each one of them.  Over a week ago was the first time we had almost a week straight of her sleeping through the night; we almost forgot she knew how to do that!

I can’t have caffeine right now (what breastfeeding mom would drink caffeine when their baby is constantly waking up at night?).  Syrahav has been caffeine sensitive, although I’ve been too afraid to test it out recently for fear I’ll be up even more at night.  Being sleep deprived with  no caffeine crutch has been difficult, especially when it comes to reading research articles on the computer screen!

We’ve been praying really hard the past two days.  We’ve been praying over Syrahav’s room, over our apartment, and even over Syrahav before she gets in bed.  We’re desperate for sleep, not just for ourselves, but also for her!  Its funny how praying for something I want so badly has ended up changing my own heart.  Tonight, I felt an overwhelming flood of compassion for my daughter.  Not that I didn’t have compassion before (well its hard to have it at 5am after a sleepless night), but a desire welled up inside of me to continue loving on her the way we’ve been doing.

I can’t imagine how painful it must be for her, and what she’s telling us, is that she doesn’t want to be alone in her pain.  She will often fall asleep in our arms in the glider, but as soon as we move to transfer her to the crib, she’s back to square one.  So its either, sit awake with her sleeping in our arms, or stay awake playing put in and take out of the crib.  I realized tonight, in a deeper way, that Syrahav feels safe in my arms.  When her teeth are bothering her beyond her need to sleep, she wants to know that she’s not alone.  She feels peace, comfort, and love in my arms, which makes the pain not so bad anymore.

Tonight, God strengthened my love for Syrahav.  Thank you God, for continuing to teach me what unconditional love means.  I feel so moved by this, and for some Godly reason, her teething doesn’t invoke anger in me anymore.   Maybe God has been etching His unconditional love inside of me, just a little bit more.

March 8th, 2010 | Leave a comment

Syrahav can now flush the toilet.

Sorry for the crappy quality of this photo.  It was the only one that actually showed Syrahav’s new skill at flushing the toilet.  Syrahav creeps in this space between the bathroom cabinet and the toilet as if it was made for her little body.  Syrahav not only likes to flush the toilet, but she also has a particular affinity for the toilet paper.  She loves to tug it until its unrolled quite a bit of paper onto the floor.  I have to keep a very close eye on her in the bathroom.  (Oh, you can see the diaper sprayer in the picture!)

Syrahav is at the midway point between 10 and 11 months.  She’s almost exactly 10.5 months right now.  She points at things she wants, very distinctly, and has been panting for food everytime she sees me eat.  She absolutely loves raisins (I think she thinks they taste like candy) and she can easily wolf down a handful of sauteed swiss chard. 

As many of you have seen on facebook, none of Syrahav’s teeth have come in easily.  We’ve endured, at minimum, two weeks worth of sleepless nights for each of the four teeth Syrahav currently has.  Since Friday night, Syrahav has been waking up only ONE TIME after we put her to bed.  This is after endless nights of waking up almost every hour of the night.  In the middle of these sleepless nights, Jake would always ask, “Did you eat chocolate?  Coffee?”  It was hard to think she was teething so relentlessly.  We pointed the fingers at everything we could think of.  I stopped eating chocolate.  I stopped drinking decaf coffee.  Nothing helped.  But I’m glad to note that it wasn’t the coffee or the chocolate.  We were just desperate for something we could control!

We start her bedtime routine around 6 and she’s usually asleep by 6:30.  She will sleep until about 7 am.  And yes, she’s been waking up only ONCE from 6:30 pm until 7 am the next morning.  And most nights her one-time-a-night wake up has been before Jake and I get in bed.  I want to say its been luxurious, but we’ve been catching up on all the tasks that got ignored from the past few weeks of teething sleep deprivation.  We’re very thankful that she is finally able to sleep through the night (for the most part).  There were some points where Jake and I were tempted to let her “cry it out.”  I’m glad we were patient with her rhythm.  It seems like the natural course was for her to start sleeping through the night, and I’m glad it finally came.

February 23rd, 2010 | Leave a comment

For all of you that are curious about what to do with the poop on cloth diapers, this post is for you.

As long as Syrahav has been breast fed full time, her poop washed out like yogurt in the washing machine.  Now that she has been eating more solid foods, her poop has been transitioning into people poop and becoming less like baby poo.  This has warranted the need for a diaper sprayer.

We decided to get the Bum Genius diaper sprayer.  But it didn’t work on our toilet.  I mailed it back today.

After searching the internet, Jake found a You Tube video on how to make your own diaper sprayer.  This was much more compatible with our toilet situation.  Here is the video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpfj_SeG4ro in case you are interested.

Jake spent all yesterday evening making and installing this diaper sprayer.  He has blisters on his hands today from twisting and pushing all of the piping together (its really hard; I understand now why this part was edited out of the You Tube video).

I was so excited for Syrahav to poop today so that I could use our new diaper sprayer.  She didn’t poop though, so I didn’t get to test it out.

Maybe we’ll post a pic or video of the new sprayer!  Just by itself though, not with a poopy diaper…

February 17th, 2010 | Leave a comment

I feel so badly when Syrahav is mad like this because it makes me laugh everytime I hear it.  Below, she was ready to get out of her high chair NOW.  She recently did this in the quiet library when it was time to go.  Jake says she sounds like one of the bad guys in Home Alone (can’t remember who he said it was–maybe Jake will edit this part for me).

January 25th, 2010 | Comments (1)

Go to the photo link at the top of the webpage or click here to check out our pics from December.

January 21st, 2010 | Leave a comment

This year was our first Christmas on the East Coast since we have moved to Seattle.  No offense to our East Coaster friends and family, but we probably won’t be flying home over the holidays for a LONG time.  Do I need to mention why?  Every reason why we never flew home before:  too expensive, too crowded, too many delays, too many people, etc.  On our detoured route to Philadelphia, we had a layover in Denver.  We actually saw Joey (Archer’s ex-boyfriend from high school) in the Denver airport (he is a pilot).  On our way to Philadelphia, the pilot informed us that we may not make it to Philadelphia.  We were able to make it, but never landed.  We just did circles about the city!  It was the big snow storm that hit right before Christmas.  The runway was covered in snow and the winds were too high.  We flew back to Pittsburgh, landed, and got a hotel for the night (out of our own pocket).  We had to re-schedule a new flight out of Pittsburgh to Philadelphia for the following day.

This made things tricky with a soy, gluten, dairy, and corn free diet.  I didn’t plan on traveling for a whole extra 24 hours.  I had packed almonds, apples, and larabars for the trip but they were almost out.  Luckily, I packed red garnet yams in my suitcase to make our famous mashed sweet potatoes on the East Coast.  I remember Jake thinking I was crazy for packing yams in my suitcase, but there was a real purpose in it afterall!  We had a microwave in our room as well as paper plates, so in 5 microwave minutes, I had dinner.  Jake ordered pizza.

Below are some pictures of our traveling adventures.  On the flight to Philadelphia, we had an extra seat in our row.  That was nice!  Below are some pictures of Syrahav on this flight.

Snack time on the plane. Syrahav is enjoying an apple. Notice that Syrahav is in her own seat.

Giving Syrahav a nap on our flight from Denver to "Philadelphia" that ended in Pittsburgh.

Syrahav had a blast in our hotel room in Pittsburgh.

Jake giving Syrahav a nap in the wheelchair room at the Pittsburgh Airport.

After a short nap, she's back in the 4-hour line, riding the luggage.

January 20th, 2010 | Leave a comment

Syrahav found some new locations to play take out. 

 She found the tupperwares on the next shelf up.  The lids weren’t enough.  She pulled herself up all by herself.  We need to move the vitamins and supplements on the 3rd shelf up, as you can see it is not too far from her reach. 

 The next shelf up on her book case.  I originally had some baby books for Mommy here.  Notice that I had to replace them with some stuffed animals.  She LOVES standing up on anything she can pull herself up on.

She figured out how to open the doors on the tv stand.  Now she gets to play take out with Papa’s DVDs.  I took this picture right as Jake said, “Don’t let her maul my Lord of the Rings DVDs” (I was hysterically laughing).  This picture was just taken yesterday, as her pink eye is almost fully healed (her right eye).

January 19th, 2010 | Leave a comment

We have been having some problems with our website recently.  Last week, all the files that store everything on our website disappeared from the server.  We had to import our website files from a backup location, which has made things glitchy.  You may notice a lot of extra after the periods in previous posts.  We’re trying to fix this.

January 13th, 2010 | Leave a comment

Syrahav LOVES playing Take Out.  That’s what we named it.  She really enjoys taking everything out of something.  She first did this with her toy box.  She would remove every single toy, one by one.  She also loves to remove the books from her book shelf.  If I put the books back on her bookshelf, she will race to remove them.  Even at bedtime, if she notices the books neatly placed on her bookshelf, she will crawl off the changing table (often times without a diaper) toward her book shelf.  (Oh, and yes, we had to move her changing pad to the floor—she’s way too squirmy & mobile!) 

This past weekend, we thought Syrahav would have fun playing Take Out in the children’s section at the library, but she had no interest in the baby board books.  Instead, she wanted to play Take Out with all the books on the big kid shelves.  We had to stop playing take out before the librarians got mad at us.

Just yesterday, I gave her the tupperware of lids to play with.  She was in Take Out bliss.  I thought that maybe I could finally get something done while she’s awake! 

The first picture was just taken yesterday while she was happily playing Take Out with all our lids.  The second picture was taken on New Year’s Eve, while Syrahav is playing Take Out with her books.

p.s. Note her shoes in the first picture.  Pink guitar shoes.  They are the first shoes she has worn since she was born.  She has not changed shoe sizes yet! 

January 12th, 2010 | Leave a comment