Ok, per Miss Bonnie's request to me while I was visiting Mike and her at work, I am updating my blog.Hmmmm, let's see, quite a bit has changed since the last update.
First off, I'll start with my garden. I planted some flowers in my backyard yesterday morning and they look so pretty! (...if I do say so myself. :) ). Anywho, I've been really wanting to plant flowers in my backyard for a looooong time...well, ever since we did up our backyard....but I've never been able to get around to it. Correction. I DID plant some seed back in the winter, but seeds suck and only some of my flowers grew, but then Mike killed them because I'm dumb and put him in charge of watering the flowers. LOVE YOU, MIKE! No really, it's not his fault, he works all day, I should be the one that waters the plants! SO, we went to the Wal*Mart and the Home Depot on Saturday and Monday nights and got me a bunch of different flowers (calla lilies, gerbera daisies, roses, carnations, etc) and yesterday morning at 6 a.m. my tushy was outside putting those suckers in the ground! It took me two hours to get them put in in nice little even rows, perfectly spaced, but I have to say it was well worth it, they look great, and now my back yard has a little more color!
With the grass and the cement and the porch swing and now the flowers, it's really starting to look like a functional backyard back there! Now, all I have to do is get my fruit and veggie garden planted before it gets too hot!Oh, that reminds me, About a week ago, my mom and I got together at my parents' house and we reupholstered her extra porch swing and she gave it to me. It looks fantastic, Thanks Mom!! It's really nice to have a place to sit back there; it's nice to actually be able to use and enjoy my backyard!!
NOW, onto Diana. Diana, Diana, Diana, my sweet little drama queen. She's been going through a lot of new developments lately:
1. She's rolling over onto her back now, 
(she got tired and fell asleep)
2. She's going through her "clingy" stage (and might I add it started a month and a half earlier than my doctor warned me it would). 
Man oh man, is this stage ever difficult! She seems to have started to go through all her latest changes all at once, but this one takes the cake. She use to LOVE LOVE LOVE when ANYONE held her. I used to joke that she was an "attention-whore" (pardon the crude expression) because she would do anything to get you to pay attention to her and love on her. Now, unless you're her mommy or daddy, she doesn't want you holding her AT ALL. She will actually cry and scream until Mike or I take her back from whoever is holding her. It's seriously the oddest thing, especially since it just happened literally all of the sudden. Her clingyness has also affected her nighttime sleep. When she started getting clingy is when she stopped wanting to sleep alone at night. Over the past two weeks I've spent several nights sleeping with her on the couch. She would sleep just fine if we were around or if one of us was holding her, but the minute you laid her in her bed her little eyes would pop open and she'd look at you like you were abandoning her (literally), and she'd start to scream...and scream....and scream...for hours. SO, some nights she'd have to sleep with me, but I really REALLY love sleeping in my bed, so the other night we fed her really well, changed her diaper, turned on her mobile, and then let her cry for an hour and a half until she finally went to sleep (Mike went in once after about 45 minutes to rub her back and give her a kiss goodnight). And guess what? Now, when I lay her in her bed, she doesn't make one peep, she just looks at me, smiles, then goes to sleep, EVEN AT NAP TIME! HALLELUJAH!! It's a freaking MIRACLE! So, now that we have that problem solved, it's on to the clingyness. I've talked with my mom, and I now know what I need to do to break her of her need to be held by me and only me 24/7 and how to get her comfortable with people again, I just know it's going to be a long and slow process, so I'll definitely need plenty of patience!
(This is what happens when I put her down and leave the room)
3. Her eating habits are slowly changing. Today we experienced another small breakthrough. She's now eating every 3 hours instead of every 2 (let's hope at least that this is permanent and not just a phenomenon of today). Also, she has graduated onto eating about a teaspoon or two of rice cereal every other night before she goes to bed. She was at the point (again, about a week or two ago) where she was breastfeeding literally FOREVER before bed time, and still seemed hungry when she was all done. SO, I spoke to my every-intelligent Momma who knows EVERYTHING about babies (especially since she had 11 of her own and now has 22 grandbabies), and she recommended that I give Diana a tiny bit of rice cereal once a day if she seemed like she was still hungry after feeding. So, I tried it out and at first I have to say that Diana wasn't too crazy about it, but then I put a TEENY bit of sugar in it to flavor it up along with some formula AND I make it nice and warm (actually, it almost has to be HOT), and now she'll eat it with a big smile on her face, and she does REALLY WELL at eating it, too! Mike is convinced that she loves it now with sugar in it because she's a Steadman - because Steadman's are ADDICTED to sugar - and that may very well be it, but honestly I think it's because her food now actually has FLAVOR to it. I mean, would YOU want to eat rice cereal plain? Babies have taste buds too! I know, call me a horrible mother, but my baby is healthy and happy and that's all that matters to me! :)
4. She talks ALL THE TIME now and is such a happy, personable baby.
Oh my goodness, does that girl love to talk! I mean it, she definitely got that from me! I'll actually be talking to her and she'll cut me off and started babbling at the top of her lungs at a million miles an hour. Seriously, just ask Mike! I told him that Heavenly Father sent me Diana first because he knew I needed someone to talk to! :) She gets VERY excited when she talks. So excited that sometimes it takes her a minute to find her voice, and when she finally does, her noises come out as loud as she can make them. It's funny! And unfortunately for her, she got her loud talking from her momma too. Haha, poor girl!
5. She's teething like MAD!
Ok, seriously, this girl is constantly drooling and/or chewing on her hands, clothes, blankets, anything she can get in her mouth. Actually, a lot of the time if I lay her on her stomach she'll attack the ground. Thankfully I always lay her on a clean blanket, so no mouth full of germs for her, just a mouth full of blanket and drool. She hasn't cut any teeth yet and probably won't for a few more months, since babies can teethe for quite a while before breaking teething. I just hope she breaks them soon so that we can get this unpleasant first part over with...although secretly I know it won't end until all her teeth come in. :(6. She LOVES taking baths!
And when I say loves I mean LOVES! She takes baths in the bathtub (no baby bath for her!) and the minute we lay her in the water she's kicking and smiling and squeeling at the top of her lungs. I usually sing to her too while I bathe her and she just LOOOOOOVES that too!! Oh man, I'm telling you, she's gonna be a singer when she gets older, she loves herself some music! I've never seen a baby so happy while bathing. It's ironic too, because when she was brand new she HATED HATED HATED taking baths. I mean HATED. She would cry the ENTIRE time! But then one day she realized that they were wonderful and now if 7 p.m. hits and her little booty is not in the tub she throws a fit. And I'm being 100% serious. She will scream and cry until you get her into the tub. SO, we've learned not to plan anything during her bath time because she's a wild beast during that time unless she's being bathed. Now, I only wish she was as happy about lotioning up and getting dressed after the bath. Now that part she still hates with every fiber of her being, but she's usually back to her normal happy self the minute the last piece of clothes is on her body. Silly girl!7. She loves going to the store but HATES to shop. She loves people watching. She loves having new things to look at. But she HATES being sedentary. If I take her grocery shopping or to grab a shirt, she's just fine, until I stop to look at something. Then, the lungs fire up. Oh yes, she'll shriek and writhe until I start moving again. I know, spoiled, spoiled beast. I told you, we're working on it! It's almost like her brain is trying to absorb as much new stuff in as little time as possible, and when I stop moving it hinders her brains ability to do that. Hopefully we can curb these tantrums and she'll learn to have patience. I hope I'm that good of a mother!
8. She L-O-V-E-S the TV.
Yes, you read it right, my baby LOVES to watch movies...and to watch her daddy play his video games. She's like a zombie if you set her in front of the TV. All her problems seem to go away and she zones out completely. It's actually pretty fun to watch and I've scared her quite a few times when I start to talk and it breaks her out of her focus on the screen. She definitely got that from me. My mom has a picture of me when I was about 1 year old sitting only inches away from the TV screen, my mouth WIDE open in concentration on what was playing. Thankfully, though, she DOES love to be outside and to move around, so I don't have to worry about her being a couch potato!9. And last, but not least, she still LOVES her Daddy!
'Nuf said.
Well, that's what's new for now, other than all that great stuff, we're all doing splended. I just hope we can get Diana going in the right direction with everything here soon. Keep your fingers crossed!!
