Gompers Growing Up

I love my daughter with all my heart. But sometimes she can be exhausting. It seems like she has an inexhaustible supply of energy. Crawling around, playing with her toys, climbing Daddy, talking at the top of her lungs, etc. But all babies need plenty of sleep too, and those times when she’s napping or sleeping are wonderful.I realize that what I’m writing is nothing new. Any parents out there reading this are nodding their heads and laughing. A sleeping child is a beautiful picture of innocence and peace. But when it’s your child it also represents FREEDOM. Yes, now you can catch up on those e-mails, read a book, watch that tv show or movie you’ve been waiting to see, or maybe a little light housework you’ve been neglegcting since it’s easier to do without a baby attached to you. Since I’ve started back to work on night shift, I usually nap. Of course I did that before I started back to work, but now it’s more important. Here are some pictures of Gompers sleeping.

Sometimes we nap at the same time. She thinks Daddy’s comfy.

This is when she was little, first night in her new crib.

And sometimes she just crashes where she is, yes she is sound asleep here. I love this picture!

Well, that’s all for now. Check back for another thrilling installment soon!

But parents have to do it. This thought came to me yesterday as I was cleaning up Beth after lunch. It’s not just the diapers, those aren’t too bad. Especially before she started eating real food. After that it started to stink. She’s brought a tear to my eye a time or two.  She usually poops twice a day, and if it’s just pee that’s even better.

No, it’s also the food, which got even more messy when she started feeding herself. Her latest thing is to take a handful of food and fling it to the floor when she’s getting full, or if she’s not too fond of the taste. Wouldn’t be a problem, but we feed her at the dining room table. And the dining room’s carpeted. We have a plastic sheet under her, with Pooh bear on it of course. But she gets it past the edge of that from time to time. Or she’ll drop it in her lap, or down the sides of her chair by her legs. So when you get her face and hands clean and pull her out of the high chair, you get to clean her bottom half. Then you clean the tray, and the seat, and the Pooh Bear mat, and the carpet. Then you look over everything one more time and find some food you missed. Then you may have to change her clothes because the meal was something messy and she got some past the bib. Then you can relax. Right.

Or it’s her toys. We have a big plastic bucket in the living room where we store a lot of her toys. And every day, when she gets done with breakfast, she begins pulling them out of the bucket and playing. She doesn’t have one toy she fixates on, she’s pretty democratic and plays with all of them. Which means she pulls them all out of the bucket and strews them across the floor. So when she goes down for a nap, or goes to bed for the night, you pick up all the toys and put them back in preparation for the next playtime.

But enough ranting. Since my last post she’s finally cutting in her sixth tooth, she’s expanding her vocabulary, and she still melts daddy’s heart with her smile.

Ever notice how the things you see every day seem to stay the same? On the one hand, Beth looks the same to me because I see her every day and her growth isn’t as noticeable. On the other hand, as I posted earlier, it seems like she’s growing every second. Sarah got a great idea from her sister Becky, and I’m really glad we kept it up. Anybody planning on having children, I really recommend this little exercise. We’ve all seen the old standby of marking the children’s growth on a wall or door frame, and I always loved the board Lisa made for Sarah Anne’s kids (I want one of those Lisa, but not till we move back out there. Shipping it would be a nightmare!). But until they can stand up straight and hold still it’s a little difficult to keep an accurate chart. Becky’s idea was to take her picture every month on her birthday next to something that wouldn’t change. We chose a giant stuffed Eeyore. At first, it’s really easy because she doesn’t move. Once she started crawling it got a little difficult to get her to hold still for a picture. It helped that she’s a little ham, she knows to smile when the camera comes out! Anyway, enough of my rambling. here are her pictures in order. My apologies to those of you that have been posting all those great pictures, I need a nicer camera and a working knowledge of Photoshop.  Or for Shari to come up here once a month….

That’s it for now, maybe I’ll figure out how to post more than one picture in a row for next time. keep those comments coming, it’s nice to know some one reads my ramblings. Love you all and miss you terribly. And Ohio blows.