You've come a long way, baby!

Today was really great.
It was fun to celebrate our little miss Sadie all day long. We sang happy birthday to her when she woke up this morning, which she seemed to really like.
She had a nice breakfast (oatmeal & bananas) and she stumbled all around the apartment, babbling and moving things here and there.
I gave her a bath and she took a long nap. So long, in fact, that we missed our photo appointment at Sears, which I only scheduled on a whim yesterday, so that was no big deal. Aunt Joanne will be here the next 2 weekends, so we'll get lots of great photos to mark her turning one.
I bought her 3 balloons at Safeway (she calls them "moow!") and we spent some time at Grandma and Grandpa's. She hung out with Stitch and I did my best to help with some party-prep for tomorrow. Sadie took her first tumble (read: face-plant) off of the couch, but didn't even need mom (me) to get over it. Grandma did just fine; imagine that!
Later we had a party in San Jose to attend. It was an Olympic Send-Off party for our friend and amazing triathlete, Becky Lavelle. She made the Olympic team as an alternate after a really rough year and we are all so proud of her. It was nice to celebrate her achievement with dozens of her local fans.
Andrew searched for somewhere for us to have dinner, and since a local Ethiopian place came highly recommended on Yelp, we headed on over. Dinner was delicious and Sadie gobbled up all sorts of authentic, organic, delicious cuisine like collard greens, roasted and mashed chickpeas, potatoes, green beans, and onions all in savory sauces. At least one of them was pretty spicy, so I got a little nervous at one point that she might not keep eating, but she just asked for water and went on eating.

She especially loved the injera, which is the spongy pancake-like bread that you use in lieu of utensils. It tastes kind of like sourdough bread and it's apparently very high in iron. Bonus.
Here's a video of Sadie "ordering" her 1st birthday dinner.

We arrived home just minutes before the exact moment of her birth - 9:42 PM. I've been expecting to get all weepy but it hasn't happened yet.

This year has been so blessed and we have had the most fun with her.

Happy Birthday, Bean! We love you more than you know.

a year ago today...

365 days ago I woke up very early with labor pains, and I was thrilled. I was 12 days past my "due date" and was scheduled for an induction in less than 48 hours. I had tried all sorts of home remedies to go into labor naturally, and I even had my first acupuncture experience to try to induce labor (it was so relaxing that I fell asleep!) My mother-in-law had been here for 2 whole weeks from Massachusetts in anticipation and let's just say we were ready. Really ready.
Little did I know that it would over 40 hours later that I would finally get to push my baby out. Our plan to labor at home as long as possible was challenged by one of my body's reactions to intense pain once labor really got going strong: vomiting. Who knew? Assuming that dehydration and fatigue were going to be a problem, we went to the hospital where things felt pretty much completely out of our control. At 4 AM the next morning (roughly 6 hours after being admitted) we were told "get induced or go home" because the IV fluids, etc. had slowed my labor way down. To make a long story a little shorter, we stayed and went through a bunch of interventions, a less-than-ideal epidural ordeal, several extremely tense moments, and ultimately the happiest, most awesome experience of our lives: a baby girl emerged from me and into our lives and hearts forever.
I look forward to doing it all again. :)

first words

Color me proud.
Sadie is taking leaps and bounds forward into the world of communication. We've been doing sign language with her for months now and she first started signing at about 7 months. She would sign "milk" while nursing. It was another full month before she used it in context to tell me she wanted milk, but it was exciting nonetheless. She now signs water, eat, bird, dog, light, hi/bye-bye, and she's close to using signs for when she needs her diaper changed. Lots of signing parents use the sign for "toilet" instead of the signs for "diaper" and "change" so I need to pick one and use it consistently. She seems to understand many more words when I sign to her, and she often looks at me to tell her what something is, so I need to study my books and learn some more.
Her verbal communication is also exploding. She's got "mama" and "dada". Ball is "bah". Duck is "duh". Last night, moon was "moow". She says "baby" perfectly, and loves babies! She also claps whenever we say "yay!"

She is an incredible mimic, so I think we can expect new words every few days pretty soon, which just blows us away.
I can't believe that before we know it, we'll be able to have a conversation with her. It seriously gives me chills.

if she's not wearing PINK...

Today Sadie and I were on a quest for a picture frame. I had some professional shots taken of her a couple of months ago at one of those places at the mall, because we had a gift certificate from Christmas (thanks Uncle John & Aunt Shannon). I still don't have any pictures of her in frames, and nothing decorating the walls of her room, if you can believe it - but that's a whole other topic. I have a coupon for a local framing place which expires in a few days, so I'm on the hunt. We went to 3 different places and somehow still didn't find the right thing (trying to put 5 photos in one frame with custom matting, if you care)
Anyway, as we strolled through one place, a lady passing by exclaimed "What a handsome little guy!" Sadie was wearing a bright red sweatsuit embroidered with colorful flowers (thanks Marie) and she looked very girly to me. I thought it was worth mentioning because it actually happens a lot when we're out, unless, of course, she's in something pink.
Don't get me wrong - It actually doesn't bother me in the least that complete strangers don't know whether she's a boy or girl. A smiling lady exclaiming "What a handsome little guy" sounds a hell of a lot better to me than "...and when are you due with your next one?"
On second thought, maybe THAT would be the clincher to get me away from the computer and into the gym.

p.s. Sadie doesn't care if people think she's a boy, either!

Or does she?

I know everyone says it...

My mom took me shopping today to get a pair of jeans for my birthday. I am sad to say that I don't fit into the ones I really like, but I got a good enough pair. (thanks, Mom!) This is not the point of my post. At lunch, a man approached us to get a peek at Sadie, as she had been serenading the restaurant with very loud babbling since we arrived. He said she reminded him of his son at this age (almost 9 months). He then proceeded to reminisce about his 3 children for about 5 minutes. It was sweet, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that that will be me someday, telling complete strangers about the things my kid(s) used to do...
It's going by so fast! I already can't believe that since she's crawling, Sadie is technically past the stage of needing me and Andrew for everything. She can get around and into stuff just fine on her own, and she even pushes off of us to be let down onto the floor. She has heaps of energy and I keep joking that I'll lose the rest of my baby weight by chasing her around once she learns to walk and run. Maybe then I'll fit into the jeans I was trying to squeeze into today...
Here is a shot of her after our ladies' day out. She was bushed, and was asleep on my shoulder taking her from the car to the crib. I almost didn't want to put her down!

you can't make this stuff up...

Today, I took Sadie to an "open swim" at the aquatic center we've been going to sporadically for a couple of months. She loves the water, and I even brought her most recent favorite toy - a rubber ducky. We splashed and played on the shallow steps and I floated her out in the the deeper area a bit. There were a couple of ladies on a bench about 15 feet away the entire time, presumably watching their kids in the water.

A little while later in the locker room, one of them approached me to say how cute Sadie is, which I thought was really nice. It was a pretty quick exchange, but it was too good not to post a blog entry about. (I've been needing something to get me back here after a *gulp* 4 month hiatus!) Props to Crystal and K-Lo who I had lunch with today and also prompted me to get back to the blog...

Anyway, back to the weird locker room convo:

Lady: "Your baby is so cute!"

Me: "Oh, thanks; that's really sweet...Say 'hi', Sadie! Say 'hi!'"

Lady: "She's really really adorable...you must hear that a lot."

Me: "Well, yeah - I guess we've heard it before...thanks so much..."

Lady: "Probably at least twice a day!"

Me: "oh, I don't know about that..."

Lady: (leaning in closer) "She's really beautiful. (pause) She must take after
your husband."

* awkward silence *

Me: "...uh...um, well...yes, actually she, uh...she's got her daddy's eyes, and lips..."

Lady: (almost inaudibly) "I was teasing..."

? ? ? ?

Seriously. Ya gotta love it when a complete stranger decides to tease you about your looks.

Once Upon a Chicken

So, yesterday I had a mom's group thing in the afternoon that I was looking forward to. Sadie still doesn't have a real schedule, but I have been able to find some consistency with her morning nap. It's usually roughly 2 hours after she first gets up. So, when she went down, I immediately zipped to the kitchen to prepare a chicken to roast that night when I got home. Nothing fancy; I just followed a basic recipe from Cooking Light. Now, wrestling with chickens is not one of my favorite things - I'm fine with beef, pork, sausages, even lamb, believe it or not. It's just something about the fact that a whole chicken is, well... a whole chicken. Do you catch my drift? I digress. My point is that I was proud of myself.
Sadie slept for over 3 hours, so I was an hour and a half late to the mom's group and I spilled water on someone's jacket and beautiful leather handbag (thank god it was just water) so the day was not going perfectly. There's nothing like life with a baby to make you feel like you're living in a mild state of chaos at all times. Anyway, somehow the thought of my chicken waiting for me at home in the refrigerator made me feel good.
When I got home, I took the chicken out of the fridge, preheated the oven and filled the sink with a couple of inches of warm water. I figured putting an ice cold pyrex dish into a hot oven was not wise, so I put it in this bath to take the chill off. Meanwhile, I was playing with Sadie and doing various other things. I put the chicken in the oven, set the timer and sent a text message to Andrew letting him know when dinner would be ready. I fed Sadie and put her down for the night. I'm so pleased with myself at this point; the baby's asleep and dinner's basically ready. I rock!
When the timer went off, I smiled and walked into the kitchen to take the chicken out of the oven. I opened the door to see my finished product and was not amused to find that I'd left the saran wrap on it the entire time. Yup; there was melted plastic wrap all over the top of the chicken and on the sides of the dish. Nice. We just peeled most of it off and had our dinner anyway.
Andrew coined it "saran chicken", but hopefully we won't ever have it again.