Update Overload
I update the blog with everything that has happened this month that I was a slacker at. So you will have to click 'older posts' to view everything.
If you remember a couple of months ago I posted an entry letting everyone know that my little bundle of joy has an egg allergy. Well we can now add chicken to the list. The month of February has been a very rough month for little Cynthia. On the first she work up coughing up a storm and we soon found out that she had RSV. After two weeks she starts acting like her normal self again, but still has a cough. Another week goes by and the cough clears up, only to wake up a few days later with a cough, again, and a super runny nose. A week later, she still has a runny nose - it has running so badly that every know and again it bleeds, and a cough. Lets now mention that her sleeping pattern has also changed. She wakes up 2 -4 times a night and only wants Ben to get her. Ben is not enjoying that part. He wants his sleep. If I go in and see her, it makes to 10 times as mad as she was to start with.
So for the whole month she has been fighting off some bad bugs. To make things worse, I felt that she was ready to have meat in her diet. So Wednesday night we fed her chicken and sweet potatoes. Thursday lunch time she brought part of her lunch back up, Friday morning she brought her breakfast back up, and let me tell you, she loves her breakfast so it means something if she brings it back up. She has had a bad fever, on and off, of about 101.8 F. Then to put the cherry on the cake, after her nap this evening, she woke up with a rash covering most of her face, her back, butt, chest, well everywhere except her arms and legs. Poor little Cynthia. This month was a tough one for her. Lets just hope that March will bring her better luck and health.
Cynthia is a very chatty little girl. But every time we call someone for her to chat with, she stops talking. Today at lunch I was able to get her to tell a story and wave goodbye at the end. She is just the cutest little one. She will tell you exactly how it is and how she feels about it. This is our usual lunch time. She chats, plays, pulls funny faces, shakes her head (now nods as well). She is just a little character.
At lunch today Cynthia learnt to nod her head. She knows and understands the head shake, but has not got the nod down. Until today! I don't think that she fully understands what the nod means. I got her nodding and shaking on video and thought that the nod was so cute. It is still unrefined so it is all over the place. Once she got the nod down, she kept doing it and would hit her head on the spoon of sweet potatoes/peaches and get the food on her forehead and eye lids. When she got the food on the head she would close her eyes so hard that it would look like a bunch of little wrinkles where her eyes should be.
Since Ben has been working, I have been trying to teach Cynthia how to wave hello and goodbye. She has does not understand the hello wave yet, but she has got the goodbye wave down. It was so cute to see her develop her wave. Now she has got her wave down, there is no changing it yet. She stretches her arm as high in the air as it will go and just moves her hand up and down. Kind of like how the apes in the zoo wave. I call it her monkey wave. I tried to get it on camera, but she would not do it for me. Maybe next time. She did do a little wave, so you can see it.
Today I got my hair cut. I told Jessica (the lady doing my hair) that I wanted it coloured and cut. I did not want anything extremely crazy. I am easy going because I know that if I don't like the colour, I can re-dye it and if I don't like the cut, it will just grow out. Nothing is forever. She thought about it for a few days and then she had a great idea. I never knew what hit me. This is how she described it to me: not chin short, but not shoulder long - tons of layers, red/purple with copper highlights. Sounded a little scary especially the red/purple part, but I was up for it. So I gave her the reigns to my hair. Ben documented it all for the blog.
Step One:
Jessica had to cut my hair before she could dye it due to the nature of the cut and the length of my hair. It would have been a waste to dye my foot and half length hair and then cut it off. Here are the long pieces of my hair all over the floor. We were trying to figure out what animal got shaved.
Step Two:
The styling
More of step two
Step two complete.
Step Three:Blow dry so we could colour
Step Four:I got copper/carmel foils in my hair and then the red/purple went in. Jessica forgot to get gloves, so she had to use her hands to put the colour in. She now has purple hands.
Step Five:
Wait
Wash
Dry!
The Front!
The finished hair product! Honestly when I first looked into the mirror, I was shocked and taken back. I was not sure who this person was in front of me and I was not sure if I liked it. A few moments later, I went back to look at it. With no pressure. I then realized that I loved it. I think that it is fun and cool. I can wear it straight, flipped out or in or I can curl it. If I part my hair in a different way, you don't see any colour at all as well. So I have like 10 different styles all in one hair cut. I think that is really cool.
The Back!
A Side!
What do you think of my new style?
Today we went over to the house of the lady whose kids I babysit. She is going to cosmetology school. She said that she wants to look after her babysitter so she will cut and colour my families hair for free. I have been dieing to get my hair cut and coloured for a few weeks now. While we were there, Cynthia found the piano. And did she have some fun learning to play. I have edited all the video's that we took so there is only one video with at the piano. Does she not just look like a natural?
Cynthia loves to help with anything that is happening. I baby sit two little kids three mornings a week. One of the kids is 6 months and the other is 2 years. The 6 month little girl was crying in the room instead of napping, and Cynthia walked over to the door of the room and started crying as well to get my attention and tell me that I needed to go and see what is wrong with the little one. She is such a little sympathetic girl. She wants everyone to be happy. Well Ben was changing the laundry out and Cynthia had to help. She walked over to Ben, pushed her way to the dryer door and started to unload the dryer all by herself. If she keeps this up she is going to make one lucky man very happy! (Never mind making me happy with her helping around the house!)
We made British scones as a family tonight. Just a little fun activity before a long week of not seeing Ben. I put an apron on Cynthia because if you are cooking in the kitchen, you need to wear the correct attire. I had to fold the apron in half and wrap the ties around her twice for it just barley fit. Cynthia had such a blast playing with the dough. She helped put the ingredients into the blow - needless to say we got soy milk all over my foot, Ben's foot and the floor. Then she got to mix the butter into the flour. To make things short, she really got to help at every step of the process. She is the best little assistant anyone could ask for.
Mixing the butter into the flour mixture.
Check the dough stuck to the fork. She was supposed to look at the camera.
She started to add her own ingredients to the scones. We got a pen box and a bean soup recipe. Gotta have a soup recipe in the scones!
Got a little side tracked while helping Ben knead the dough. She tried to add her own spices from the spice cupboard to the dough.
While Ben kneads the dough, Cynthia makes her own little mixture with things that she can reach on the counter top. We had the soup recipe, a Mountain Dew bottle, a potato scrubber and a few other things. She later grabbed my pink dish washing gloves.
Here Cynthia is helping mix the dough.
Today we refilled our flour bucket and Cynthia felt the need to play in it. She got the masher and started mashing it. It was just so cute. She would not leave it alone, even when we were refilling it. She needed to be right there and have the first scoop at it. We ended up having a bunch of flour all over the floor, but Cynthia had the time of her life and that is all that counts!
Cynthia learnt a new trick today. It is called 'Getting off the couch without landing on my head.' Cynthia can now not only climb onto the couch, but climb off the couch without getting hurt. Sadly, we cannot keep her in one place anymore.
Cynthia = Free Spirit!
I love Valentines Day! Any excuse to get spoiled is a great excuse. Growing up I never had a special someone so I was never spoiled. The only Valentine's Day gift that I ever got was from a little boy that was a few years younger than me. He gave me a slab of chocolate. It was cute. He was a great kid and a wonderful friend. So when I met Ben I was excited. We were hopelessly in love and it was Valentine's Day. But as luck goes, neither one of us had money so anything that we did had to be small. I made Ben a train for his present. This was no ordinary train, it was made out of graham crackers and was decorated in cool colours and Valentine's candy. Ben got his hair cut for me and that night we had heart shaped pizza. I also called into work sick that night because I was not feeling well. The following year came and went and due to the lack on money, nothing was done. This year was a little different. Ben is doing very well at his new job and we had a little extra money. Ben works every Saturday from 8:30 to 7pm. Friday night Ben knocked on the back door, I answered it and he handed me a bouquet of a dozen red roses. The thing is that six roses were real and six roses were chocolate. I love my bouquet of roses!
Thanks Honey for making this Heart's Day a wonderful day! I love you lots!
Like most little kids, Cynthia loves to put things in her mouth and chew on them. We find little teeth marks in everything that she has been around. A few weeks ago I noticed that there were little teeth marks on all four sides of Cynthia's crib. I thought that it was the funniest thing so I showed it to Ben. Ben told me how cows and horses eat the wood to their fences. Last night when we were putting Cynthia to bed I had a look at her marks on the crib and found that she was now pulling up the grain from the wood. Also there were marks on the top of the crib from her top tooth (soon to be teeth).
This picture shows you the grain that she pulled up. You can also see the little drag marks from her teeth along the crib line.
If you look closely you can tell that there is a white mark on the top of the crib, that is from her top tooth. All the white marks are from her teeth.
Now that I have updated you all on what happened in January let me begin with what has been missed in February:
Sunday, 1 February, Cynthia woke up coughing like crazy. She had a runny nose and looked like she felt miserable. Since Ben and I are Sunbeam teachers at church, we decided to stay at home, so no one else got sick. The cough got worse and she was just one up-happy baby. The following Thursday we took her to the doctor to get checked out. The doctor told us that it sounded like she had RSV, she could run a test and be sure, but there was nothing that the doctor could give up to help. So it would really just be a test that never needed to be done. All we could do was keep her comfortable, and feed her as much liquid as she will take. We went back home to try and make the Princess feel better. She was not herself at all. She would not smile or giggle. She just wanted to cuddle all the time, and if you know Cynthia, you know that she does not cuddle at all. On one of her up moments, she played a little with her toys. She climbed into her toy basket and pulled the toys out on by one from underneath her. She did get stuck in the basket when she tried to come out. And that was the end of her happy moment.
As of today, she still has a cough and little runny nose. She is feeling much better. She plays and giggles. She is back to wonderful self. The Doctor told us that it would last about 5 -7 days, but the cough could take anywhere up to 3 weeks to go away. Well it took 10 days for my little bundle of joy to come back to her normal self.
Here are some cute pictures from January that were not posted. This little one is a different character every day!
Cynthia loves her crackers. Here she is with a whole graham cracker. She would not let us break it up for her. If I remember correctly, she ate the whole thing.
Daddy holding Baby holding Bear. Such love!
I put Ben's thermals on Baby Girl. She walked around like she was a little ghost. She kept standing on the arms.
Here she is trying to figure it all out.
I made this dress for her at Christmas time. I never took any nice pictures it. Ben found out and made me take some on her birthday. She wore this dress to the Temple.
Cynthia wanted to go to bed with her new teddy when she was taking a nap on her birthday. Here she is wrapped up with it. She thought it was the funniest thing ever. For the next couple of wraps she would grab a teddy and hold it to get wrapped up.
Cynthia had to test the balloons before we set up for the party. She needed to make sure they were all good for her friends.
The night before Cynthia's birthday we had some Indian friends over for the South African Bunny Chow. They helped also helped blow up balloons and knead the fondant for Cynthia's birthday cake. It was a fun and very interesting night! Good times!
When Cynthia gets her diaper changed she holds her feet at her face. One night she held her feet while Ben was trying to wrap her up for bed. So Ben wrapped her feet by her ears for her. That was it, Cynthia cracked up. She then started to lift her legs and with her arms grab the blankets and try and wrap herself. Such Independence!
Here is another teddy that she wanted to be wrapped up with. Such love for her little teddies. Every one gets turn.
Little Cynthia is always trying to steal my glasses, so this time I put the on her. She loved it and thought that she was special. We had to keep her hands away from them or they would have been eaten.
Here is a still of her eating the Bears face. Her hands and face turned grey!
Here she is going after its tail. How did she know that there was a tail? Such clever-ness!
When I was a kid, the best thing about baking was being able to lick the beaters. I remember sitting out my back door, eating one beater and holding the other one for my puppy to eat. Star loved to lick the beaters with me. I decided to teach Cynthia how to enjoy eating the beaters, since she is my cooking assistant.
One night I was doing the washing. I put the glasses in the sink and picked them up one by one to wash them. I pick this one up and only got half of it. I then pick the other half up. It was a 'clean' break. No little chips, just two pieces. We are still not sure how that happened, since it got up in the water and then picked right back up. Ben thought that it was the coolest break and had to take a picture of it.
Here is my little cooking assistant wearing my apron. She knows that when I put the apron on I am making something very interesting. So she has to have a view from my level. Either I have to hold her or Ben has to hold her right on top of me or she gets mad.
I put Ben's Safeway apron on her as a cape. She walked around the kitchen and then took flight. Look at the face of happiness!
