She’s getting it

I’ve mentioned before that Daphne isn’t a big talker. She’s been saying mama, dada for a while now, although there have been weeks when she was so obsessed with walking that she barely talked or even babbled. Currently she can say mama, dada, hi and Ginger (my parent’s dog, although she’s only said it a few times and it comes out Gin-Gin) and I swear she almost said “pat cake” when we were playing pat-a-cake earlier in the week.

I’ve been trying to encourage her to talk more by coaching, being very clear with my speech and reading to her. Until recently, reading was not something she really enjoyed. I’d pull out a book and start reading, then she’d sit for about 5 seconds, pull up on me and start cruising around the room. I’d keep reading, but would soon find myself alone with her stuffed animals as she cruised out of the room, down the hall. She’s better now and will sit in my lap, as long as I let her turn the pages.

So a day with us is pretty much like “My Fair Lady- the Toddler Years”, but instead of “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” it’s “Say bye bye, say hi to Grammy, do you want more/say more, say Poppa, say hi dada, hi dada (while waving).” And this morning we had a breakthrough. Chris came into the room and Daphne got all excited, stood up and clear as day said, “Hi, Dada Dada!!” By george, I think she’s got it! And I guess that counts as her first two word sentence. She’s said hi and dada before, but never together. Go Daph!

Felt Clip Craft Project

With the exception of Daphne’s birthday party decor, I haven’t done anything creative or crafty in months. And you know me, I always need a project to channel my creative energy or I get antsy. Since most of my sewing and crafting stuff is in storage, I decided to work on a few small projects for Daphne.

I’ve always liked the look of felt hair clippies for little girls and decided to make a few clips to coordinate with Daphne’s fall and winter wardrobe. Making this project even easier, I purchased the felt flowers already cut from Etsy seller Carefree Glimmer. I decided on some fall/winter colors, plus a pack of pinks and then I could mix and match. So here are the combos I came up with and a picture of each next to its coordinating outfit.

I will still need to add some embroidery, maybe some buttons and other little touches to each before they get glued onto hair clips. And I’m not sure I’ll make all of them. I mean, her Gymboree Cupcake Cutie cardigan is busy enough without a giant felt flower in her hair. I don’t know. But I love how the flowers match Gymbo’s Harvest Leaves line.

Once I get that done I might make a few other felt clips, like these from Tiny McSmall:

or these felt covered barrettes from Angry Chicken. And I want to find wool felt instead of using acrylic. Anyone have a good source?

Much Better

Daph’s hair looks so much better after a trim. I should have done this a few months ago.

Keeping her occupied while I trim:

Just a few more scraggly bits and I will be done:

And the satisfied customer:

It’s a good thing her hair curls, otherwise I wouldn’t have tried to cut it on my own. Just a little fact about me- I’m incapable of determining if something is straight. Seriously. I can’t even hang a picture straight with the help of a level. So it helps that the curls hide any imperfections in my trimming.

Costume

I found Daphne’s Halloween costume. Now I just have to find it in stock somewhere (it ships in 2-6 weeks at Target.com).

And since the average high in October is 82 degrees, I don’t have to worry about it not being warm enough. While I’m on the subject of Target and Halloween, they have some adorable Circo Halloween t-shirts and leggings for little girls. I’ll try and take a picture of Daphne’s set tomorrow.

First Haircut

Tomorrow I’m going to give Daphne her first real haircut. She’s looking more and more like a Hasidic Jew. I know that sounds odd, let me explain. Daphne was born with a head full of thick black hair and it was long enough you could twirl it around your finger. Here’s the little peanut still in the hospital. This was probably a few hours after she was born:

And I can’t tell you the number of people that told us it was just baby hair and it would all fall out. Well, it didn’t. Soon she had her punk rock spiked ‘do:

A few months later she rubbed a little bald spot on the back of her head. It didn’t start growing back in until she was sitting up. So the sides and top grew and grew, the back was short. Since her hair has some curl to it, you really didn’t notice the length difference. But now her curls are reaching down past her chin and the back is just now getting long enough to begin to curl. She looks ridiculous. See what I mean?

So the plan is to gradually trim up the sides until the back can catch up. I still want to be able to do pigtails. I hope she doesn’t wiggle around too much.

Origami Butterfly

I should be sleeping. But after a week of poorly timed vitamin taking and sick baby, my schedule is completely thrown off. So instead of resting, I’m up making origami butterflies for Daphne’s birthday party decor. I’ve actually never done origami before (unless you count those fortune teller things in elementary school) and was a bit intimidated when the instructions for this particular butterfly were 18 minutes long. But it turned out ok. I think I’ll hang some of these from the chandelier in the dining room and maybe decorate the birthday banner with them. The instructions are here, if you are interested.

That’s a Lot of Pink

I have temporarily taken over my mother’s dining room table with decorations for Daphne’s 1st birthday party. I decided to spread everything out so I could see what I had, and what I still needed to get. It’s a pink nightmare currently:

I admit my first response after seeing everything laid out was, “wow, that’s a lot of pink” then I remembered that line from Steel Magnolias, “my colors are blush and bashful.” But I guess in Daphne’s case her colors are rosacea, extreme embarrassment and Oompa Loompa. And I’m ok with that. I don’t know about Daphne, but MY signature color is certainly pink. One of our family members made the snarky comment about Daphne’s wardrobe being mainly pink (which is SO not true). All I can say is the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I have so much pink and black in my wardrobe Project Runway could have a challenge where they refashioned it to outfit an entire gang of Pink Ladies.

This weekend, Mom and I will do a trial run of the cake. I need to get started on her birthday banner. I bought a bunch of pink, hot pink and orange scrapbook paper and want to try a banner like these two from Flickr (here and here) or like a few of the banners on my Etsy favorites (from the Etsy widget on my sidebar). I also need to figure out what hors d’oeuvres to serve and at the risk of going all Sandra Lee possibly a special cocktail. Is that totally inappropriate? I don’t think so. I mean, Daphne will be the only child there and obviously won’t be partaking. But with the possibility of my mom and dad in the same room for more than 2 minutes, I will definitely need a drink. Just kidding. (Not really.)

In A Funk

Yesterday I was in a funk. Today really isn’t that much better. It’s rainy and cloudy here, which doesn’t help. Normally on days like today I’d love to curl up on the sofa with an afghan and watch all 300 minutes of Pride and Prejudice (the BBC/A&E miniseries). Not possible right now while chasing Daphne. That’s ok.

Speaking of Daphne, we bought her a pink, Minky fabric, upholstered chair yesterday for her birthday. It’s from Target:

You might remember I had a hard time coming up with gift ideas. We had no problem picking out little toys, but couldn’t come up with anything for a big gift. I thought about a wagon, but with her new car she really doesn’t need both. She already has an adorable table and chairs set. Chris didn’t think a little toddler chair would be something she would like so we tried it out at Target last weekend. Daphne LOVED it. Her eyes lit up and she ran her hands over the soft fabric. Once we sat her in the chair she kicked her feet and smiled. You could tell she was thinking, “I’m such a big girl in this cool chair!!” Same thing happened with Daphne’s first purse set. Chris didn’t think it would be something she’d like, I disagreed. Daphne ended up loving it. Dude, don’t mess with me. I know what little girls like.  Just for comparison we put her in the brown fake leather kid’s chair, since it would better coordinate with the living room and be easier to clean.  No, she liked the pink chair.  That’s my girl!

Way too young to date

A little boy hit on Daphne today at Whole Foods. We were in the cold beverages aisle when I hear a woman’s voice coming up behind me. “My little boy just would not stop pointing and chattering about your little girl. We just had to come and meet her.”  I turn around to see a blonde baby trying to touch Daphne’s hair while waving and saying “hi, hi, hi!”  Turns out William is a little over a year old and thought Daphne was just all that.  After we introduced ourselves and got the “how old is yours?” thing out of the way the mom asked William if he thought Daphne was pretty.  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” (while trying to touch her face and hair)  If he could talk I’m sure he would have asked for her phone number to hook up for a play date later.  Yeah, Daphne’s daddy isn’t going to let that happen.  Not ever.

I thought I was going to have years and years to prepare for boys coming over to talk to Daphne.  Guess not, lol!

Feeding Herself

Today I decided to give Daphne the spoon while she was eating her applesauce. To my surprise she actually did pretty well feeding herself. My mom had asked if she could feed herself with utensils and honestly I hadn’t thought to try it. Hopefully that isn’t something she should have been doing months ago. I have no idea. But I have that fear since my mom never taught me to tie my shoes. I went off to Kindergarten without having that skill and I remember my teacher was just horrified. So hopefully there won’t be any important skills that I’ll forget to teach her. Here’s video of Daphne:

Oh, and I bought her a new high chair. She originally had a fancier German high chair, the Euro-Baby Family High Chair. I liked the idea of a wood chair and that it was adjustable for even adults to sit in, but it’s a pain in the ass to clean and the tray totally sucks. So don’t buy this one:

I got it for next to nothing as an Amazon Baby deal of the day. So I’ll either see if my sister-in-law wants it for her new baby (she’s due in March) or it’s going up on Craigslist. Her new high chair is from IKEA actually and cost a whopping $24.99 (it’s the one in the video). I love it! It’s a breeze to clean and get her in and out. I did some research before buying it last night and it seems like a great chair. I love how small it is and how easy it would be to travel with it. And it’s so light I can pick it up and hose it off if it gets trashed. Awesome.