Stroller Strides

Sometime early in the year I read or heard about these fitness classes, Stroller Strides, and found that we do have some offered nearby. So near the end of the school year, I contacted the instructors for more information and finally, last Thursday, Abby and I attended our free first class.

Abby loved watching me sweat and I haven't had sore muscles like this since college. They offered a special for teachers, so I signed up right away. Here's to being a buff mama by the end of summer!

Quick Post

Quick post on two things that have happened in the last couple of days, some good, some bad:

Good:
Abby got up the gusto to do some more walking on her own. She made a game out of it and got really excited. Very cute.
Anny and Abby went up to Baltimore with a friend and had a great time! (I don't know if Anny will post about it, but Stephanie did HERE.)

The Not-So-Good:
Abby pooped in the tub. It was funny, and my brother and S-I-L were over which kind of made it funnier. Lucky for us it was at the end of her bath, so I scooped her out and Anny got bleach doody duty.

The Just Plain Bad:
As I've mentioned, Abby is still co-sleeping with us. We're working toward transitioning her to her own crib again by the end of summer, but we're not there yet. Until last night, we have had no problems outside of her twisting and kicking me in my sleep. Last night, though, was bad. Abby sleeps in between us. Last night she got fussy and ended up on my side of the bed at some point. (You can see where this is going) At 1:00 on the dot, I was awakened by BOOM and crying.

Yep, Father-of-the-year candidate Rob Monroe let his only child fall out of bed in the middle of the night. But I think I'll stop writing that speech now.

She was fine and went right back to sleep. Between us.

Tonight we pick up the efforts to get her into her own, caged protected bed.

Abby Getting Some Web Attention!

We put the best-of-the-best pictures up on our Flickr page (HERE) and on occasion I tag a couple to the ParentDish group. Well, turns out they really liked on this week!

Click HERE for the ParentDish post of our little girl! Since she was chosen for a picture-of-the-day she is eligible for the picture-of-the-month!

12 Month Check-Up

For starters, I love that it's called a "well baby visit" rahter than check-up these days. Anyway.

On Wednesday we had Abby's 12 month well-baby visit! Here are the vitals:

Weight: 23 pounds (70th Percentile)
Height: 29.5 inches (77th percentile)

That means she is a big girl, but proportionally big. (good thing)

She got three follow-up shots. That went over better this time than before, mostly because rather than trying to comfort her solely by rocking and cuddling with her, we said and signed "all done" and she quieted down immediately. She was even calm enough that she gave the pediatrician a hug on the way out the door.

Very cute.

So, she's officially a toddler and has been given the green light to new foods like nuts, milk and strawberries. Food issues are the one thing that I was all "first time parent" about, but now that is over!

Abby's First Birthday Party!

Saturday was Abby's big day, in more ways than we could have thought! We had a really good turnout for her birthday party, but her day started way before 2:00.

When Abby first woke up it was way too early - 5 am. I swooped her up and rocked her back to sleep for the next hour and a half so that we had a bit of a head start on sleep for the day. We headed off to the Farmer's Market where she was the center of attention in her new Red Wagon!
On the way home from the grocery store she fell back asleep, it was about 9:15 by then. Instead of letting her get a 30 minute nap in her crib, I once again rocked her to the tune of another hour. All of this forced/extra sleep was in anticipation of an afternoon of missed naps and great excitement. Turns our our gamble was worth it!

Abby was showered with gifts and attention and loved every minute of it! She got to play with her friends Evan and Luke and had one more trick up her sleeve for the day......

Once about half of the crowd had left Abby WALKED!!!! Anny was in a chair and I was on the couch and Abby went back and forth with no help several times! Yes, all apologies to my wife, but Abby is the kind of child to wait for a crowd to blow our minds!

There are no pictures or video of the walking, but there are plenty of the party and day. Here's a slide show of the day:

Birthday Review of The Day

Yesterday was Abby's First Birthday! We played things a little lower key because her party is not until Saturday. We did not do cake, though there is a rumor that mom and dad broke out Samoa's from the freezer after Abby was in bed.

Abby woke up extra early, beating out my pre-planned wake up alarm of the song "It's Your Birthday" by Justin Roberts. (If you have iTunes, you can hear a sample HERE). I had the alarm set about five minutes before our normal alarm. Abby woke up about a half hour early! I still managed to get the iPod going and we sang to her to open her day.

At school they celebrated, too. Anny got to go, but since I left early on Wednesday for the end-o-year party, I didn't hop over. Anyway, Anny said that Abby soaked it all in. Loved the attention and the special party hat. We sent fruit cups and they were a huge hit! One of the babies had never had grapes and she went crazy over them.

Before dinner, Abby "helped" me put together her new Radio Flyer Wagon! By "helped" me I mean that she spun the tires and waved a screwdriver at it. Once it was all put together, she got in and played by herself, opening and closing the seats and playing with the canopy cover, for quite a while. See picture:

From June 2008

For dinner Anny and I had burgers, but Abby had peas, burger and leftover fruit from earlier. Absolute heaven. No, we did not give her a cup cake or any sugary goodness.

Abby went to bed a little late after opening gifts and cards that have arrived already. The big party is Saturday, so I should have some more pictures up soon!

12 Months of Pics

Lots of looking back right now while looking forward. These are 13 pictures from our Flickr account. This is where I plan to post one picture a day for the next year.

(It's a movement called Project 365. I'm mostly hoping that it will encourage me to be more regular with picture-taking and get some more creative pictures)

(and I'm posting directly from Flickr, so it is a bit of an experiment here...)

12 Months of Pics
Originally uploaded by armonroe

First First Birthday Post (Updated!)

This is the first of what will probably be several posts today! Happy Birthday Little Girl!


First Birthday Faces from Anny and Rob on Vimeo.

I didn't add music becuase it's really short and that would be a bit weird. For the next year I plan to take a picture every day so hopefully next year's faces video will be longer and have other features. For now, enjoy!

Here is a picture that blends two. On the left is a picture from June of 2007, on the right is a picture from (late) May of 2008. You can easily see how big she is with these two!

A Fun Filled Week has Begun!

Abby's birthday has been celebrated once already, and the festivities will not end for a while!

There is a group of good people from our church that go to the local Wendy's each Sunday following worship. (Sorry, Sarahlynn. Wendy's really is an every-week occurrence for us! You should see what they've done to the Frosty!) Since we're not sure what's happening next Sunday, Abby had her first "Happy Birthday" sung to her following lunch last week. I can attest that there is something really cool about having a choir (like, real choir) of people singing such a song, in harmony, to your kid. Very cool.

On Wednesday we will go to Abby's school to celebrate in the classroom's end-of-year party. It sounds like all of the parents and teachers will be there, so that will be kind of cool. The flyer said there will be "happy hour types of food" so I'm hoping for some chicken wings. Not really. We will celebrate the growth that the children have made, and present the teachers with a little something.

Thursday is Abby's big day! We don't have anything planned except a dinner at home and opening gifts that are from far away places that needed to be shipped. Some came wrapped, but some did not. It looks like I have some constructing to do! YAY!

For school we have decided to send fruit cups for each child because there will be so much sugar on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Hopefully it will go over well. Who are we kidding? If it does not go over well, the children will deal with it anyway!

Friday is Abby S's birthday. (One of the three Abigail's out of three children under 1!) There will be more school celebrating, but we're taking it easy at our house! We are hoping to have dinner out with some folks as a pre-party party.

Saturday is the Big Birthday Party! We're not sticking with a theme or inviting many people. Okay, we invited many people only because we have lots of family around here. Last month I had planned on cleaning once for two parties, but in between said parties I have created quite the mess. I think I'll be cleaning the house tonight to make room for all of the people coming over!

The real thing that is crazy to me is that when all is said and done Abby will have no idea that it's happened. I might as well enjoy the ride, right?!!

MAMAMAMAMAMAMA

She's actually saying "Mama" at Anny these days. Dadada has been around for a while, and sometimes she even refers to me in the same manner, but often it's just babble. That's cool!

Anny is especially happy at the current "mamama" use. For several weeks the only time that "mamama" was uttered was in a crying fit. It sounded much like:

crywahcrymamamamacrywahcrymama

It would seem that Anny took this to mean that Abby associated "mama" with crying, and only crying. Not just minor I-fell-and-bumped-my-bottom crying, but the outright my-teeth-are-coming-in cry or I'm-so-tired-that-I-can-not-sleep cry or the popular the-dog-bit-my-toes crying. (that has not happened, for the record, but sometimes it would seem that the biting was taking place!)

I guess I can see how that would be distressing if I was the parent being cried about. I have to admit that the first couple of times I heard it I laughed out loud. It's funny, right? Seems that it is not as funny as I thought it was.

Now she has moved away from the scream "mamama" and is using it as regular babble and aimed at Anny too, so all is peaceful.

Ignoring Advice from the Pro

Everyone has advice. I think that is why I blog, I love to hear what other people think, and hope that once in a while I have something valuable to add.

There is only one person that I have typically used as the base line for decisions regarding Abby: her pediatrician. He has a wealth of experience over his years. He was the pediatrician for our best friend Charlene, however many years ago that was. (Let's just say I'm hitting a multiple of ten this year, and she's about six months older than I am....)

He has put our minds at ease when there has been a cough or an unexplained fever. The butt rash? Yep, he solved that in a couple of days of some magic cream.

But when the we agreed with Abby's teachers about her feeding patterns, we threw the doctor's advice to the wind!

We were given a very detailed plan for when to introduce foods, including specific fruits allowed and others that were not. This is a very useful guide we decided, but could not follow it closely at all. Actually, the rash refered to above was probably the cause of starting sweet potatoes before her little system was ready. Lesson learned.

When we had our parent-teacher conference earlier this year we were told just how much Abby was reaching for food, and probably ready to jump onto the finger-foods train. We began small, of course, but this was WAY ahead of the schedule provided by our doctor.

We looked the other day to check on the milk status (I'm hesitant about four things: milk, nuts, strawberries and pork) and noticed that at 11 and a half months we should begin to introduce solid foods like finger foods. Wow. At about 11 months Abby was pretty much done with puree's and moved onto table food completely. Now we are basically cutting food from our plates and givign it to her from there.

I hate to say our baby is advanced, because I believe that all babies get to certain things at certain times. We have several friends with older babies that will not touch a piece of food if it's not from a jar (purees), but Abby sure has moved on from that.

And it's saved us time, money and energy.

Pushing Too Hard?

I'm trying to be the best dad that I can be, you know that, right? I just want to be sure that you do.

I think that my silly expectations are impeding Abby's growth already. I remember in the weeks before Abby crawled I began to get excited about the fact that shew as not yet there. So very close, but she could just not get it. I tried and tried, holding her little belly up and moving her knees for her. Turns out that she got it when she was darned well ready.

Now we are at the stage where she is So ready to walk, and I think I'm doing it again. She will walk for a mile as long as there is something to hold on to. It could be a finger, a chair or even just the lightest touch of her hand on a pant leg. She has a push-behind walker toy here, and uses the one at church. She can practically run with those things.

I have to try really hard not to make her stand up and practically push her, in a literal sense, to take a few steps. I know that I'm asking for more trouble than it's worth by thinking that she should be walking, but it's just that she's SO close that it seems obvious that she should be walking today. Or yesterday.

One of the other Abigail's at school has already taken a few steps, and I think that I'm wanting our Abby to be as competitive. I know that I should not push that on her. Right?

Am I crazy for giving a little push? I try not to be obsessive about it, but I can just see it so clearly.