I recently found these life calendars for sale.  I have to say that I just think they are the coolest thing ever.  They’re basically just a huge poster-sized grid of squares with numbers across the top for the week of the year and numbers down the side for the year of your life.  There is just enough space in each square to write a word or two. 

I bought one for B and one for me.  (Actually I bought a 3-pack to get free shipping so I still have an extra.)  I also put grommets in the top corners so that it would be easy to hang them. 

I think that this is the gift that I would pick to give at a baby shower from now on.  (Actually, I’ve never been invited to a baby shower other than my own, but if I was, this is at least one of the gifts I would pick.)  It’s so perfect to be able to just record a few words per week as baby gets bigger. 

I love the idea of writing in a word or two for B each week.  I’ve kept a baby book for him which has been really cool, but I know that I’m unlikely to stay up on documenting his whole childhood in the same detail.  A couple of words a week is perfect.

I figure I can make short notes on when his ‘firsts’ happen, the toys he likes, the words he’s saying, the cool things we do, trips we take, etc.  It’s a super quick thing to do each week, but over time will grow to be a cool record of his childhood and perhaps even his adulthood.

I flipped back through B’s baby book to help me fill in his calendar until present day.  This is one of those things that I wish I had sooner. 

I love my life calendar too, although it is not nearly as filled out as B’s (yet).  It makes me think about how I spend my time, the life ahead of me, and what I want to accomplish.  It makes me think back on my accomplishments and appreciate all of the things that I have done. 

It’s interesting to notice the dates that I actually remember by heart from my life.  It’s surprisingly hard to fill in things from my life.  What year was it that I graduated from high school?  When did I start my job?  Some day soon, I am going to sit down and spend some more time filling my calendar in a bit.  I guess I want something to show for my life. 

A few years ago, I went through and shredded all of my old journals.  Mostly, they weren’t full of all that much great stuff, but I do sort of wish now that I had saved them to help me fill in my life calendar first.  I’ll have to see how much of my past I can really piece together based on old pics, etc. 

I do want to use my life calendar as a tool to appreciate and remember my past, but mostly, I want to use it as motivation to live this week to the fullest so I have a cool word or two to put in the current box.   I want to fill B’s life calendar (really his life) with cool stuff too!

Check out the Wait But Why store if you’d like to get a life calendar for yourself or someone you know.  (Not an affiliate link, just something I think is cool.)

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That said, I don’t know that I’ve found any one phase so far more or less difficult than the others.  They all offer challenges and rewards mixed in.

It can be hard to adapt.  I finally figure out how to best deal with the challenges of one phase before we’re on to the next.  Recently, I’ve come to this realization that it’s time to figure out how to deal with a new phase.

My problem lately has just been trying to keep B busy.  I’m home pretty much all the time with him, but I work from home too which makes it even more challenging.  Sometimes I really just want to focus on the things that I need to get done. 

There are so many cool things about where he’s at developmentally right now.  He is so curious.  He spends lots of time trying to figure things out.  I’m seeing real signs that he’s starting to understand some of the things that I say.  He’s way more interactive and fun than a newborn.  He’s learning to stack blocks and push toy cars around the house. 

He also still sticks everything he can in his mouth.  He is happy to sit and play with a toy.  For a while.  As long as he knows somebody is nearby watching him.  And that the somebody is not focusing on something else that they want to do. 

He doesn’t want to go too long without my attention.  Once I quit whatever I’m doing and go sit on the floor to play with him, it only takes a minute or two before he gets distracted and crawls off to play with something else leaving me abandoned sitting on the floor holding a picture book about dancing dinosaurs.  They are very cute dinosaurs. 

There are some times when I really wish I could find something just to entertain him for a bit so I could do some stuff.  There are also a lot of times where I really want to find fun activities for us to do together.  It can just be really hard to gauge what is right for his abilities. 

The activities that I remember from childhood all happened when I was older – riding bikes, making troll houses, going down the slide, playing make believe, trying cooking experiments, drawing, etc.  None of us remember our baby/toddler years making it that much harder to figure out what the heck one is supposed to do with a baby or toddler.  This is made harder for those of us that didn’t have younger siblings or ever spend a lot of time with kids that age. 

Another aspect of the challenge is just that it’s so constant.  B needs something to be doing all the time.  It’s not that I try to provide him with too much stimulation or entertainment.  We don’t watch TV and I believe in the power of boredom to inspire creativity.  But a child that age needs a little guidance with the creativity aspect.  He can’t go find his own cardboard box.  I have to provide it to him.  Once he’s played with the box for five or ten minutes, he’s ready for something else.  It’s not hard to keep him busy for a while, but when it’s an all day every day job, it’s easy to run out of things to do. 

I also need a bit of mental stimulation.  There are only so many times that I can read the same books.  There is only so much fun that I can get out of building block buildings- a fortress for Octavia the Octopus, a course for the golf ball to roll down, a bridge for the blue blocks to flow under. . . I need things that entertain me too sometimes. 

Part of it is just that it’s hard to come up with things on the spot.  If I had a quiet fifteen minutes to myself, I could probably come up with some good activities.  But when he’s tugging on my pants making those high-pitched groan noises to get my attention, my mind goes blank. 

I want to interact with him.  I want to create an environment for him where he has things to explore and to do.  I want him to have new things to check out and learn about.  I want to create the opportunity for him to exercise his incredible curiosity. 

So none of this is to complain (OK, maybe just a little tiny bit of it is to vent a little).  Really, it’s for me to identify the challenges and then find solutions.  I figure I have the opportunity to rise to the occasion.  I want to try new things, find books and websites for inspiration, do my own experiments and see what I can find that B likes.

I also want to work on my planning skills (or just implement the planning skills I already have).  I need to pre-plan some of my activities so that I have something ready when I need something to do with him and I feel tired and dazed.  I need to work a little harder on having pre-defined goals for each day.  It’s so easy for the whole day to slip by when I’m just reacting to everything that is happening.  It’s easy to slip into survival mode and just focus on making it until B’s bedtime.

I feel optimistic.  I think problems are always so much easier when we take the time to identify what we’re really struggling with and then think about how to fix the problem.  It seems like a simple process, but it’s so effective. 

As I try out some different activities, I have plans to post about some of them.  (When I found out I was pregnant, I swore I wouldn’t have a mommy blog.  But then again, when I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t have a one year old!  My blog will still feature lots of random topics because I have way too many interests to focus on a narrow area.)

If you’ve made it through the baby/toddler years, feel free to leave comments with suggestions on cool stuff to do with a 1 year-old.  I could use all the ideas I can get my hands on. 

The post The challenges of entertaining a 1 year old appeared first on Live Hoppy.

Well, it has been a whole year since baby B was born!

It has been amazing to see how he has grown and changed.  He learns new things each day.  It’s exciting and cool and scary.

He knows how to pull himself to standing now.  He knows that if he throws food on the floor it gets his mom to pay attention to him.  He knows how to stack blocks and nest cups of different sizes.

He sort of knew what to do with a piece of chocolate cake.

The first year has been so tough and so rewarding.  Being a mom is such a blessing.

Here’s a few pictures from year 1.  He looks like such a baby in some of them!  Now, he is so rapidly turning into a little boy.

The post Baby B is 1! appeared first on Live Hoppy.

It’s strange because I’ve been a woman my whole life, but I never really thought about it all that much. Being pregnant and giving birth made me realize just how crazy strong and important women really are. We’re the moms. And yes, it takes dads to make new people too, but really it’s all about the mom. I have this huge new respect for all the other moms out there.  I never used to understand when people said things like that before.

Now, I appreciate how amazing and wondrous it is that I’ve created this new little being. Of course, it’s strange because in so many ways it was out of my control. I could not intentionally make such a precious little guy. It’s one of those weird miracles of biology, or if you’re religious, God.  Even more amazing and wondrous is the love and dedication I have to him, the hours and hours and hours I’ll spend taking care of him, loving him, working to support him.

A memory comes to mind. When I was in high school one of the girls gave birth. My high school English teacher gave her the assignment to write about her baby. For whatever reason, the teacher let me read what this girl wrote. She wasn’t the greatest writer, but I will always remember one line from her. She was writing about how she loved her baby more than anything and she said, “I love her more than I love my mom”. I realized then that a mom will love her child more than the child will love her back, which is so sad and beautiful at the same time.

I know I love my son so crazy much. He may never really know or understand. All the sleepless nights that feel like torture after a while and yet I still get up with him every time he’s awake at night and consider it well worth it. The expense which already has been considerable and will only grow to some astronomically large number by the time he’s an adult. The times when he’s happy and I could just leave him to play on his own, but instead read him stories or lie on the floor and play with him. The times when he’s fussy and I’ll drop anything I’m doing to comfort him.

Then there are the times when everything is just so perfect with him. When he wakes up in the morning happy and squiggly and ready for a new day. When he meets new people that admire him and I feel so proud of him. When I lie down with him at night and he’s snuggled up against me, I feel more content than I ever have before in my life. When I’m away from him for a little bit and I miss him, but then I come back and the relief and joy I feel at seeing him again is almost overwhelming. I love him and I adore him and I feel incomplete when we’re apart. In short, I have the strong and primal feelings of a mother for her young.

I worry about him like crazy. I feel so exposed now. There is nothing that would be worse to me than if something bad happened to him. All the news stories of bad things happening to people make me think of how I’d feel if that happened to my son.

Everything he owns comes with warnings- his bassinet, his stroller, his car seat, his changing table, his bouncy chair, his bath tub, and his toys all come with warnings about how babies have suffocated or strangled or fallen or choked or smooshed their heads or spontaneously combusted. It’s enough to make a mom feel crazy with worry- and I would worry enough without that. I check just to make sure he’s still breathing sometimes. When he’s napping and he makes some sort of noise, I think with relief, “Oh good, he’s still alive.”

I worry about when he’s old enough to crawl and get into trouble around the house. What if he bashes his head on the rock in front of our fireplace? Or slips on the tile floor? I worry about when he’s old enough to walk and run. He’ll want to climb on things. What if he wants a motorcycle some day?

He has a NASA onesie, but I tell him he’s not allowed to grow up to be an astronaut because it’s too dangerous. His dad tells him he can be an astronaut if he wants to. When he’s a little bigger and he understands more I’ll have to stop saying things like that. I don’t want to keep him in too much of a bubble. I don’t want him to grow up anxious and scared. I want him to be an independent little guy that can take on challenges. Maybe even I would want him to be an astronaut if he wanted. But I’m sure the worry I’d go through if he was would take at least 15 years off my life.

I know that he will never really understand these things. Maybe someday when he has kids of his own, he’ll get a glimmer of it. But none of us wants to think about how somebody wiped our butts for us for years or how we sucked on our mom’s boobs which makes it much harder to appreciate the love involved in such acts.

When I’m nursing my son, I feel like I’ve never been closer to anybody in my whole life. It is such a precious, snuggly, and nurturing act. These days he needs me, maybe loves me without yet knowing what love is, or maybe knowing better than he ever will again. We have such a special bond. And… he won’t even remember it in a few years. For me, it will always be one of the most precious times in my life. For all intents and purposes, for him, it won’t have even existed. But I know (or hope) on some level that all of my nurturing care and love will influence the way his brain forms, that he’ll be a different person for it even if he won’t remember it.

My intense worry for him, for his safety, for his happiness will only annoy him as he grows older. He won’t appreciate it. He’ll rebel against it, saying, “Mom, I’ll be fine.” Right now, I’m fairly certain that I am his favorite person in the whole world. But soon enough, I’ll be the lady that washes his clothes and makes his lunch which he will probably utterly take for granted. Then Dad will be his favorite person- the man he looks up to, the man who teaches him to fix his bike, to play soccer, to shave. But he will still be my favorite person. He will always be the little boy that I love so crazy much.

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