14 Months

i’m a few days late, but that’s only because i have finally reached the point of total exhaustion. in a good way.

somehow, caylin turned into a toddler overnight. right when i decided to take on 2 new web clients. my lack of sleep (entirely my fault for staying up late) coupled with her lack of sleep (staying up an hour later than usual lately)–to put it in perspective, i came home from work yesterday, took caylin out to dinner and to publix (brett stayed home to work out), unloaded groceries, played with her til bedtime (almost 9:15 last night, omg), and then i passed out. FOR THE NIGHT. i don’t remember the last time i went to bed at 9:30.

dude, she is INSANE now.

like, the past week, all she does is run a muck. chase loki. throw rocks. bang on the sliding glass door. climb the stairs. she screams NON STOP. granted, they are happy fun screams, and it’s hilarious (until you go deaf), but it is all. the. time. every night after dinner, from about 7 to 8-8:30, we all go upstairs, and close all the doors in the hallway except for the playroom and her bedroom. brett and i sit in the play room, and she basically runs back and forth for an hour, bring back random objects every trip. every so often we get up and chase her to get her going, fling her around, tickle her, tire her out. loki will lick her to death. she plays on her slide. watches her baby einstein. drinks her bottle. runs around some more.

and the screaming–can’t forget the screaming.

it’s just ridiculous. so much fun, but so hard to keep up with. everyone warned me about this part. they said i would be dead tired. truth is, i AM dead tired, but i feel more energized overall. minus last night–i think last night was just a culmination of the past couple weeks.

playing with her now is still (to me) less exhausting than it was trying to entertain her as an itty bitty infant, incapable of really even being entertained. she’s so much fun now. i love it. her laugh is infectious–she is the happiest little kid. i can’t get enough of it.

she points at EVERYTHING and yells, demanding to know what it is. we figured out a while ago that she doesn’t actually want what she’s pointing at. she just wants you to say its name. she does it in her books, too. it’s a fun game for a while, but at some point it becomes almost impossible to tell what she’s pointing at and we just give up.

at 14 months:

  • she has learned to sit down on things. mostly the bottom step of any staircase–she will sit down and stand up over and over and over and over and over again. most recently she has learned that she can also sit on loki, which is not good. and me while i’m laying down.
  • she licks everything these days, which is kind of weird. i handed her a loaf of bread when we were at target the other day–30 seconds later i look down, and she’s gnawing on it. there were teeth marks on the bag. last night, at publix, i handed her a tub of cream cheese–she immediately put it to her face and licked it. handed her a bag of pistachios–licked that. handed her a can of soup–licked that, too. so. weird.
  • she finally feeds herself her formula, but only laying down. tries to use a straw, but that doesn’t always work.
  • loves loki–playing fetch (which is awesome), sliding down her slide plowing straight into loki so she gets licked to death, faceplanting her (her idea of giving her a hug, it’s adorable until she gets a mouthful of hair)
  • she learned to do the lip finger thing. after spending about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to google this i give up. you know the thing where you put your finger horizontal (parallel to your lips) and move it up and down and you make the blub noise? that. that’s what she does. it’s awesome. WTF is that called?
  • she loves to push things and carry things. her stoller. her wagon. buckets. my bare essentials bag (carries it slung over her shoulder like a purse–it’s awesome).
  • she bit me for the first time the other day. it hasn’t happened since, and i think both of us were confused by it. she left tiny teeth marks, and looked at me like i was the weird one.
  • she learned to put on sunglasses. i have a pair of plastic sunglasses that i let her play with, and she puts them on. but only upside down and on the top of her head. she loves putting them on US still, but the new thing is that she doesn’t yank them off her face immediately like she used to.
  • i bought her one of those little red buggy cars (the flintstone type one that you walk yourself) and she loves getting in and out of it. backwards. everything she does, she has to do backwards. including her rocking horse and dragon scooter thing. not sure what that’s about.
  • she frequently locks herself in closet. she loves shutting/opening doors, but sometimes she ends up on the wrong side.
  • she LOVES her fruits and veggies. she’s always been a good eater, but she just devours this stuff. she eats a lot of my salad these days. obsessed with tomatoes and broccoli lately, and lettuce if i put ranch on it. watermelon, blueberries, strawberries–will all be gone in seconds. i introduced her to kiwi today and that went over well, too. it’s great. appreciating this one while it lasts.

i feel like so much has happened over the past month. even today–we went to our neighbors’ little girl’s birthday party. madi turned 2 today. ashley and jason had a bunch of their friends over for madi’s birthday–they were all various ages, so caylin was just watching them in awe the whole time. she watched madi play in the sand–she did the same things madi did. one of the little boys was playing on the scooter, so she followed him around on the scooter. the 6 year old girl was coloring in a coloring book–instead of picking up a crayon and licking it, like usual, caylin actually started coloring with it, watching the little girl. it’s just NUTS to be able to SEE her learn things and imitate other kids.

it’s finally hitting me that we no longer have a baby on our hands. we have a KID now, and it’s only gonna escalate from here. she is so close to talking, which is awesome and terrifying. i don’t know if i’m ready for what’s to come.

i feel like i only ever talk about caylin on here lately in my monthly updates, which is ok, but it also means i’m avoiding the whole reason i have this site. i hate that my writing feels forced lately. this is normally my place to vent, but the past few times i’ve sat down to write, i just give up. i’d rather zone out instead.

there are a few announcements, i suppose. the biggest one being that i’m leaving my project at work in the next couple of weeks. saying goodbye to government work, for now. on wednesday, for the 2 weeks following, i will be 50% on the VA project i’m on now, 50% mobile team, and 50% commercial services infrastructure/dev-ops. i know those numbers don’t add up, but i have a feeling that’s what those 2 weeks will feel like. after those 2 weeks, i will be 50% mobile development, 50% commercial services infrastructure/dev-ops.

i’m stoked for the work i’ll be doing. it consists of my dream job–server side work, building out and managing customer environments, plus mobile development. this package comes with more responsibility, more leadership, which i really want now. it’s amazing. but… it is bittersweet. i’ve been doing government work since june 2009. i’ve been on the team i’m on since august 2011. it is SO hard to leave. i am keeping my cube at work, so i’m still literally in the MIDDLE of my team. but it’s not the same. i am absolutely in love with my prod ops team, and it’s really… really difficult to make the switch. again. they have become some of my favorite people on the planet over the past 2 years. absolutely irreplaceable. feels like family. it hurts.

other updates–let’s see. i’m still going strong with my workouts. still doing the nike thing, which i try to do at least 5 days at week. i’ve been pretty good about it. i haven’t been running as much lately, because i recently learned that shin splints suck. also, it’s getting cooler at night. running when it’s cold HURTS. my asthma hasn’t acted up in almost a year, but the couple nights i’ve gone running when it was cold–ouch. so that has kept me in line with my nike workouts. blessing in disguise, i suppose. until i get the balls to spend the money on GOOD running shoes. that’ll be a while. to hell with you, credit card debt.

after 8 years of wearing cheap, crappy make-up, i finally made the switch to bare minerals. i hate spending money on stuff like this. i still buy all my clothes and make-up at tj-maxx and target. i almost never get my hair or nails done. i never splurge on crap like this because i always end up feeling guilty, and like i could be spending it on FUN instead. or more importantly, caylin. or taking us all out to dinner. i’d never used bare minerals until my buddy’s wedding last month. one of carlie’s bridesmaids let me borrow her make-up, and that was what she used. i was sold on the first try. the following weekend, i was at tanger outlets at the bare minerals store buying my “starter kit”. i’ve been using it ever since, and my skin has never felt better. not to mention, it feels like i’m not even wearing makeup. kind of weird to get used to, though. because now i feel like i’m naked, and i keep checking it all the time to make sure it’s still there. i hate that i even feel the need to do that still, but maybe one day i will be happy with my face and skin. getting closer. my skin hasn’t felt/looked this good since before i ever wore foundation, which was pre-2004. this is good for me, though. one step closer in my journey to accept myself.

phew. getting there. slowly, but surely, getting there.