To those who are celebrating, Happy Thanksgiving! To those who are not, Happy Day…..hopefully!
It’s Avery’s second Thanksgiving and we’re celebrating at our house just like last year, only this time it’s just Going Mom, Avery, and myself. We’ll miss seeing our families, but it just worked out this way and that’s okay. Plus, I know we’ll have many more future holidays to spend with our family.
Looking back at pictures from Thanksgiving last year, I can’t believe our little ball of mush has grown into a bigger (but still little) ball of life!
Here she is, motionless, last year…
…and one more, still motionless…
But noooowwww, we’re lucky to get her to sleep during the day (or ever!), and she’s full of life and gives us wide-grinned smiles every day.
Letting us know she’s fluent in tongue.
Yeah, they grow too fast, huh? Now we have an active little girl on the verge of walking (we think), talking (we also think), and constantly learning about the world around her. Hopefully, she’ll start learning how to help in the kitchen and maybe lend a hand next Thanksgiving. Too early?
I cooked everything but the turkey yesterday and the plan is to drink copious amounts of coffee, go for a family run/walk around the neighborhood, and watch as much of the videos we’ve taken since Avery was born last November. Oh yeah, and enjoy our small Thanksgiving feast.
Our menu for day includes goat cheese garlic mashed potatoes (Kelley’s favorite and #1 request), mashed sweet potatoes with cinnamon and stevia to sweeten, roasted brussels sprouts and garlic (my favorite), microwave cranberry sauce sweetened with stevia, free-range turkey, and crust-less no-bake pumpkin pie.
It’s not much, but I’m excited, and as long as we have goat cheese paired with mashed potatoes, my wife is excited too! Hopefully Avery will enjoy the spread too, and maybe NOT throw it on the floor.
Whether you’re celebrating Thanksgiving or not, hope you have a great day!
Do you have any traditions you must do every year?We don’t, but I’m hoping to create them now and celebrate them every year with Avery and Kelley.
And so on and so forth. Thus is the typical conversation most parents have with their babies.
When you start life as an at-home parent your infant, silence is inevitable and expected. Sure, there’s crying and cooing, but unless you’re caring for other kids at the talking age, you have no one to actually converse with when at home.
We only have one kid, so it’s just Avery and me spending every day together, learning and growing along the way. I love it. It’s fulfilling, rewarding, better than sitting in an office (to me), way better than daycare (financially and physically), and it sometimes drives me INSANE!
Oops, did I say that? It’s not when she’s extremely fussy and screaming out loud, or when she’s pulling out my leg hair as I’m trying to cook meals for day; it’s the silence. Crying, I can take, but sometimes it gets quiet, a little too quiet.
Don’t mind me, I’ll just sit here and stare.
As I first mentioned, it’s expected from an infant, but at a year old and close to making actual words with her babbling, it’s just awkward when she turns silent. I’ll be working in the kitchen as she’s happily pushing her boxes across the floor (yes, we’re classy) or we’ll be playing in the front room, but all too often, she turns silent and stares into space.
I know you’re thinking, “Must be poop!”, and I used to think the same, but that’s usually accompanied by grunting and a strawberry-red face. I’ll check anyway because you never know (right?), but 8.3 times out of 10, there’s no poop in sight……or smell.
Luckily, there are solutions to most problems in the world, and I’ve found six that help combat the awkward silence as an at-home parent. As she grows, many of these will act as a wonderful base to build upon and hopefully expand her vocab skills and mind.
1. Explain what you are doing. When I’m in the kitchen (it’s a lot!), I’ll catch Avery staring at me as I work. Instead of just carrying on in silence, I’ll explain to her exactly what I’m doing as if she’s a student anxious to jot down all of my notes. I do this for everything from the exercises I do when working out and even during diaper changes. This gives me the pseudo-conversation I sometimes miss and helps keep her engaged in daily activities.
2. Explain what they are doing. Since it would be narcissistic to only talk about yourself, describe the actions your kid is making too. This goes along with number 1 above, and will help them begin to understand their capabilities.
Yes dear, you are accurately portraying Chucky, the killer doll.
3. Make eye contact when speaking to your child. In doing so, your child may be more inclined to communicate. Of course, watch what you’re doing too; like changing dirty diapers!! I’ve tried looking into her eyes while explaining how I’m cleaning her bottom and next thing I knew, well, you know. #ParentingFail
4. Read to them often. Even when they can’t stand still and try to tear the pages from your hands as they scream, keep reading! Avery does this to Going Mom and I daily, but trust me, you’ll help build vocabulary skills and maybe even have them reading before others their age. Make sure to choose books with big, bright colors and fun pictures. Moby Dick is not the best book to start with. 🙂
5. Acknowledge their sounds and actions. When Avery started blowing raspberries, we made sure to return the action and let her know what she was doing. Now that’s she’s babbling a lot, we repeat (as good as we can) the string of “words” she spouts out and encourage words like “momma” and “da da”. Lately, Avery has become an expert at sticking out her tongue on queue and it makes my wife and I so proud!
6. Play music. You don’t have to have “The Wheels on the Bus” on repeat, play actual music, whatever you like, and it’ll be fine. This is a big one for keeping sane and having some kind of background noise at all times. Almost every day, I turn on Pandora with a mix of my favorite channels and frequently sing out loud with Avery staring at me in bewilderment. Despite the strange looks you might receive, have no doubt that your kid will pick up on words that help expand their vocabulary. For this reason, I tend to stay away from the Eminem station….
Although you can never fully escape the awkward silence when you’re an at-home parent with only one kid who’s not yet talking, these six solutions will help get you through this time and help build your child’s speech and learning skills as well.
Phew, we survived her first birthday! Better yet, so did she! There were more people around than Avery was used to and way too much going on, but she eventually warmed up to the crowd.
The cake, being the first time she’s had sugar, might’ve helped a little. Her cake was actually a pumpkin brownie recipe I used as a base but cut out some of the sugar called for and used stevia in place. This is what we served as dessert to our guests and no one said they didn’t like it, so that’s good, right?
We are still in recovery mode after the long weekend, so I’m cutting it short and just making this a photo dump of the big day. Enjoy!
You spend hours creating my cake, I’ll reduce it to rubble in under a minute!Ummm, dad, your nose is in my eye and both of you are in the way of my cake!While demolishing her cake, it suddenly hit her……”I’m one!!!”It only makes sense to be in your birthday suit, opening birthday gifts, on your birthday, right?Chocolate Pumpkin Brownies for the guests. We had a lot left over!!Seriously, anything that lights up is an instant win!Going Mom opens gifts, I write who they were from, Avery plays with wand and paper. Sums up most of the party!I hope she always feels this way about sugary food!We made cake from the chocolate pumpkin brownie batches I baked and Kelley used Greek yogurt for icing and blueberries for the “1”
Fun times indeed! Hoping to post a follow up with a quick summary of events and more photos of the fun Avery has been having with her new toys. Maybe she’ll even be walking by then. Hmmm, how long have I been saying that now???
An at-home dad on a mission to keep it real when it comes to food, fun, and raising a healthy, happy family.
