Monday, December 31, 2012

Callie mows the lawn

Taylor and Miki bought Callie this cool push toy that is made out of all wood. It's a classic toy and makes a good (not annoying) noise when you push it. I much prefer it to some of her other more noisy toys. I thought she wouldn't be able to use it for awhile because she can't stand alone yet but she figured out a way to use it sitting down! I told her she is in training to mow the lawn. It looks like mowing the lawn to me hehe. Pretty cute if you ask me.
It's New Year's Eve and here I am writing you a post. I guess a lot has changed this year, Juan and I are staying home and probably won't make it til the ball drops. But we love that little girl who changed our lives so much more than we could ever imagine and it just keeps growing each day. Here's to looking forward to an eventful 2013! Happy New Years a little early from me to you!



Sunday, December 30, 2012

Time for baby proofing?

Callie is really starting to push her limits. As you've seen before she crawls all through the living room, has crawled out the door, and now climbs up the stairs! Well she at least tries. When I took this video it was her first attempt. Later in the day she actually got up the step by herself!
The dogs are a huge motivator for her. She just loves them. They were wrestling and chasing each other around and she just giggles and screeches with excitement. She wants to get to them so bad. She crawls after them, but they still outsmart her and move much faster. She is gaining on them though... LT got on the first step. When he realized she could get on that step he moved to the second step but now she can get there too!
I think it's time we get a baby gate for the stairs and start baby proofing the house. She is ready learning to open cabinets and likes to play next to he dangerous and hard fireplace hearth. Guess that will be my New Years resolution.
I also snapped a few photos of her with her walker. She can stand at it holding on with no help now. She is trying to walk by herself with it too but needs help with controlling the speed and not tipping over still.









Saturday, December 29, 2012

Happy Birthday Grandma & shopping spree

Today we celebrated Grandma Nena's birthday with a BIG family dinner out at the spaghetti factory downtown. I tried to tell Callie in advance she needed to take a good afternoon nap early as she wouldn't get another. Apparently this was lost in translation to baby speak because Callie only napped 30 min in the afternoon! We tried to leave extra early for dinner and drive around so she might nap in the car but that failed too because it was raining and she was distracted looking at the rain out the window and hearing it on he roof and windows of the car. So we ended up driving around 40 min for a 15 min trip to the restaurant and no sleep! She tried her very best to cooperate and be good for grandma. She was proud of herself walking around with me holding her hands and even made friends with a 1 yr old baby boy! We left earlier than everyone else since she was getting cranky and close to bed time. We had a good time though and grandma was glad to have her there. Happy Birthday Grandma!!
Before dinner in the afternoon, Callie went on a shopping spree at kohls. We went looking for some new cotton only clothes since she had her bad eczema outbreak and we are avoiding all synthetic fabrics. It was her (or my) lucky day as they had a HUGE clearance sale. Everything was 75% off then another 25% off and I had a 20% off coupon for using my kohls card! We bought lots of great stuff in 12-18 month sizes. I even got a few 2T that didn't look too big. All in all she got 5 pants, 5 long sleeve shirts, 1 long sleeve onsie, 5 sweatshirts, and 2 pairs of pajamas for less than $50! Now that's a deal. So good in fact I'm considering checking out the other kohls tomorrow and looking at getting bigger sizes for when she outgrows these clothes. :)



Friday, December 28, 2012

Objective: distract

Callie's teeth have really been bothering her. She is very fussy and can't stop grinding her teeth and biting her hands. She also will just break out in tears with no warning. We have been trying to keep her distracted so that she doesn't think about her teeth. We knew we needed something really distracting today so we decided to take her to Sea World. It was very busy but luckily we don't go to any of the shows. We just like to walk around and see the fish, dolphins, whales and animals. Callie is also into people watching! She loves the kids there and watches everyone around her. Today we took her into the turtle encounters area which has a HUGE tank that Callie could stand right at the wall. She loved the fish and was trying to touch them through the glass. We only stayed 2 hours but it kept her busy for a bit and was a fun outing. In the afternoon we took her to Costco shopping for food and we got her some new pajamas too.
The big front tooth is just coming through the skin now. I wish it would just hurry up and come in as its really bothering her. This will be her 6th tooth and at only 8 months!
And on a positive note my oiling of her skin seems to be working as the eczema is starting to get better. We still aren't sure what caused the horrible flare up but hope allergy docs can figure it out.



Thursday, December 27, 2012

GI update

Callie had her follow up with the GI specialist today. She thinks she is doing really well and we are going to try reducing or even eliminating her medication over the next few months. The hope is that by her first birthday she will no longer need any medication. We are going to wait until her teething and eczema are under control before we try reducing her medication otherwise it's hard to know if the fussiness is from one or the other.
My biggest concern was her eczema and possible food allergies. The dr was concerned that it is pretty bad and is sending us to allergy and immunology specialist to see if she has any food allergies that may be causing this. In the meantime we have eliminated gluten and also are switching to cotton only clothing. We were using a lot of fleece with the colder weather but her back is covered in eczema now.
We were able to get in for allergy on January 7 so it's not too long to wait. In the meantime I am using organic coconut oil, organic sesame oil, and my homemade diaper cream to try to lessen it.
Poor baby can't ever catch a break. Here is that smiley kid and a photo of her back at the dr office today.









Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Day with Daddy

Callie and Juan spent the whole day together today while I was at work. They had a really good day. Callie slept more than usual with long naps and had fun playing with all her new toys. Grandpa came over with the last Christmas present.... A swing!! It sits on the deck so it's easy to use whenever we want. It's actually a repurposed adult bench swing frame with a baby swing attached. Pretty cool huh? Grandpa is very clever. Callie enjoyed the swing with daddy. Thanks grandpa!





Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A Very Callie Christmas in Cali

Callie celebrated her very first Christmas today. We missed out on the snow in CT last night and instead had Christmas on a nice 65 degree day in sunny California. Hopefully next year when we are in CT we can have a white Christmas. I seem to have bad luck for missing the white Christmases.

Callie must have heard the reindeer on the roof as she was up ALOT last night. Either the reindeer or the excitement of Santa coming. That or the eczema flare up, or the constipation, or the new front tooth coming in. She sure has been fussy lately but who can blame her with all that going on. She was up at 5:30 AM and ready to go. Juan gave her some more prune juice after she got up to try to help get her poor belly moving again. Here they are on the floor drinking it up.

We held her off for an hour before we called CT to open gifts on facetime. Thanks to the excellent Christmas iPad gifts from my dad last year we are able to talk to them and see them all the time. Facetime is seriously a godsend for us so that Callie gets to interact and see her Grandparents even 3,000 miles away.  Anyways, back to the story, I planned in advance to make sure I had the video camera ready to go since I promised video and thought it would be a nice keepsake. Seemed all good so I left it by the tree. Then of course when I go to use it the battery is nearly dead and we only got less than 2 minutes of video in the morning. Oh well. Here she is calling GiGi, Grampa, GaGa, Ashley, Uncle Ed and Heather on facetime even though it gets cut off right away.

Then after the video went out we proceeded to open all the gifts Callie had. She opened a few herself before she got tired of ripping paper and was more interested in the actual toys, the ornaments, the tree, etc. So we opened the rest for her. We said bye to everyone in CT and had breakfast and a nap before heading over to the Chavez household. Here she is with all her morning present opening loot. And that's less than half the stuff she got all day. Spoiled much?
She happily rode over in the car with her new iPhone to keep her busy in the car seat. For those of you that don't know, the ride is a total of 4.5 miles, less than 10 minutes and yet she normally screams the entire way there and home. Jeez, what an impatient child. I am sure we are making it worse by giving her an iPhone to keep her occupied but my sanity wins out. You know when I used to say, I would never do that if I were that kid's parent!..... yea well I take it all back. Do as you feel you need to.
Once we arrived at the Chavez house we had a great breakfast with eggs, meat, chilaquiles, tamales, and more before opening gifts. Callie was wearing the very appropriate bib at breakfast that says "Who needs Santa when I have grandma".

 By now I had the video camera charged and we took some video of Callie opening her first 2 presents. It is rather long, like 15 minutes, my apologies. I am not into video editing, it just takes too much time and I cant bother. If you want to watch her, here it is. Otherwise skip forward. Or if you want to just see the good part with her opening gifts skip about 4 minutes 30 seconds in for the good part.


Callie almost made it through the nearly 1.5 hours of opening gifts.  By the end she was tired, hungry and grouchy. We packed up and took her home for a nap. Juan and I also took a nap since we had been up early and it was just an exhausting day.
Callie got a ton of great stuff, so much more than she asked for, hehe. A big thank you to all our family and friends who bought Callie gifts. It was so much more than she needed, but she has already shown she likes playing with all of them. Here is a short video of her playing with LOL Elmo and her new wood walker. Other highlights were the Elmo guitar (she learned from Bogar how to play yesterday) and the bead maze cube.

We also got a family gift from my parents of a BOB jogging stroller. We decided we should take it out for a test run, so we went for an afternoon stroll with the dogs. It works awesome, right over the curbs, bumps, no issues whatsoever. Callie also seemed to enjoy it as she can sit up a little more than in her regular stroller and also she can see right out, no tray stopping her from leaning forward or seeing. Thanks for the awesome stroller, we can't wait for GiGi and Gramps to get her in a little over a week so they can take her out walking in it. We missed having them here for Christmas but called them 3 times on Facetime today so we really got to see and talk to them.
All in all a very good Christmas. We are thankful to have all we have but mostly for all the love we have in our family and extended family. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas too!






















Chavez Kids Photoshoot

I have been holding off on posting these photos as they were part of Christmas gifts for the grandparents. A few weeks back the Chavez kids (plus me and Jeana, and the grandkid Callie) got together to get some family photos. We took 178 photos to get one good one since its tough to get everyone looking and Callie smiling. It was extra tough as we used my camera on a tripod with a remote shutter release. While this is easy for adults, it was hard for Callie as she wanted to look at us and not the boring camera. We were in Seaport Village so we kept waiting for a dog or person to walk by and tried to get her to look at that. I think in the photo we ended up with I actually turned my cell phone on to a video of her signing Jingle Bells with me and threw it towards the camera on the ground. She smiled at least, even though she is flapping her hands around. Eh, its perfect if you ask me and if you ask the grandparents, so there!!
Here are a few of the favorites from the photo shoot and we finished just in time for the sun to set.





Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Eve Party

We had the Chavez family famous Christmas Eve bash tonight. It was a Huge delicious meal! Callie even ate the turkey cut into small pieces, as well as broccoli, peas, and a strawberry for dessert. She had a great time visiting and seeing everyone even though she was overtired from her short afternoon nap. She showed off her walking skills in her Nike sneakers and was loving just being the center of attention. Grandpa Nacho was there and excited to see her and hold her. And Callie LOVED hearing Tio Bogar play the guitar and sing Christmas songs. It was a fun filled evening. She must have worn herself out because she fell asleep in the car In the way home! In her new car seat! Guess that means its a keeper.
Hope she sleeps soundly tonight and isn't woken by Santa or his reindeer. First Christmas tomorrow morning... I will be sure to get video :)

















Sunday, December 23, 2012

Elmo and grouch

Callie just loves Elmo. My parents sent her an Elmo ornament that sings "Up on the rooftop". Is that actually the name? I'm bad at Christmas songs but you get the gist. Anyways, Callie loves playing with it and listening to it sing.
Today though she was more like Oscar the grouch! She was up a LOT last night crying. She was upset and kept crying and only would stop if we would hold her. I think her teeth are really bothering her. After 5 hours of on and off crying I gave in and gave we Tylenol so she could sleep better. She was still up more than usual after that and woke up overtired and crabby. Despite her longer naps she was crabby all day. Callie the grouch, playing with her Elmo. You may say"she looks happy in the photos...", but that's because they are not actually from today :)
Hoping for a better night and day tomorrow since we will be celebrating Christmas eve with Juan's extended family.





Saturday, December 22, 2012

8 Months Old!

Callie is officially 8 months old. The past month has been busy and went by fast but also she has grown a lot. She weighs over 20 lbs and is in the 90th percentile for weight. Callie has mastered the army crawl and is quite fast. It's still a half crawl as she only uses one arm and leg but effective none the less. She can also get in and out of sitting by herself, although again she only uses her left hand. Maybe she will be a lefty?! Callie moved into a big girl car seat in my car this month and we just got the car seat for Juan's truck too.
Her reflux is doing really well with the medication, she almost never spits up. She has been sleeping better and I think the crazy necklace actually helps. I left it off for two days and she was sleeping worse, waking up 4 times last night :( I put the necklace back on today.
We have experienced Christmas presents and Callie loves ribbon and ripping paper.

Today was a big day! Callie opened her BIG Christmas present! We didn't know we were opening the big present first! Uncle Chuck and Aunt Joni sent Callie her gift and said she could open it before Christmas. We called Chuck on FaceTime while she opened it. If I had known what it was I would have videoed it. Callie opened...... Drumroll..........her own iPhone! Like seriously not a baby play one, an actual iPhone, 32GB too! He also gave her a special baby phone case and a rubbery case. I started to download her favorite apps. She is going to love this. She has been playing with my phone in the car but then I can't get calls and at home she wants to hold it all the time. Now Callie has her own phone! I think she may just be the youngest child to have an iPhone! I mean didn't I just get done saying she is 8 months?

Chuck always bought the coolest gifts when I was a kid. He sent all the stuff my mom wouldn't allow and gave cool clues. Chucks presents were always our favorite! I remember wanting a tv for my room and my mom said no, but then chuck showed up and got me one for Christmas! I think he just set a precedent for the same for Callie! Thanks Chuck! We love you a lot and Callie loves her gift. I'm not sure anything else can live up to an actual iPhone. Way to set the bar high!