A Family Is Us

Update on sleeping!

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000-06:00

Since I don't post enough on this blog, it was only a few posts ago that I mentioned letting Little Lady cry a bit at night. She actually went right back to sleeping through the night after that, for about a week! Then both kids got cold/coughs which made her sniffly at night and she woke up with a drippy nose every few hours. Then she started getting 3-4 more teeth SIMULTANEOUSLY. So that was fun, because she was up every 45 minutes or so OR she would just cry for 2-3 hours straight. I even gave her Tylenol, which apparently did nothing. It was a horrible 1-2 weeks.

I am hoping it's over now and we can go back to sleeping through the night? Meanwhile, I will try to get some pictures of her mouthful of teeth!

Tea Party, as narrated by Little Sir

2012-02-02T14:31:00.000-06:00

So sorry for the huge gaps in posting! Life can be a little crazy with the two littles, and I'm not always taking as many photos or videos as I should lately. In addition, I got a little stomach bug the past few days.

Little Sir is really a big guy! He talks and talks, and is starting to use prepositions and pronouns correctly. A toy wasn't working the other day, and he told me "Mommy, it broken! Fix the batteries!". He is very big on "underneath" and "under", the locations of things in relation to other things. Yesterday when I was feeling sick and Sister was teething, we watched a Baby Van Gogh video and he narrated the whoooole thing for us! He would just name everything going across the screen: umbrella, flower, stars, blue, paint, bee, a toy... on and on.

Considering how verbal he is getting to be, it's weird that he seems to be going back through a phase of throwing fits without telling us why he is upset, just like he did when he was around 18 months old and couldn't figure out how to communicate what he wanted/needed. His Mother's Day Out teachers asked me about it today - he NEVER cries at school at all, but 3 times today he just stopped what he was doing and started crying big tears. I was kind of relieved that he did it for them because he does it for me and I thought I have been somehow frustrating him or paying attention to the baby and not noticing why he was upset. But if he does it for other people then it can't be me... I spend a lot of time just asking him why he is crying, why he is upset, does something hurt? Does your tummy hurt? No. Do your teeth hurt? No. Does your ear hurt? No. Are you sad? No. Are you mad? No. Are you happy? No. I have no idea what is going on!! He has gone to "time out" a lot more lately because he will start YELLING when he gets upset (he cried for them but he YELLS for me) and not tell anyone why or what he needs. We tell him that no one wants to play with someone who is screaming so if he is going to scream then he can scream in "time out". But I wish I knew why he was doing it? So weird.

Anyway, here is a cute video of Little Sir and Daddy having a tea party. Yes, the tea set and dolly actually belongs to Little Lady and I tell him all the time that she is letting him play with it, it isn't actually HIS. I don't think he chooses to understand that, he plays with it almost every day! {video here}

Driving the little car

2012-01-23T14:27:00.001-06:00

Little Lady got a toy push car from Nanny and PawPaw for Christmas, which she LOVES. She loves to go around and around the house in it like in this video {video here}:

In fact, she actually loves it a little too much. When it is inside the house, she refuses to do anything but sit in it and wait for someone to push her around. Then sometimes she gets bored waiting and starts to climb on it.

Therefore, sometimes we have to hide the car out in the garage. Just makes everyone a liiittle too excited!

On sleeping and crying

2012-01-12T10:27:00.000-06:00

Little Lady is almost 11 months (next week)! Hard to believe she's nearly 1 year old! But at the same time, she does act pretty mature. She can give little exchanges, like if you say "hi" or "bye", even in casual conversation, she'll wave. If you blow raspberries at her or make a smacking sound with your mouth, she will return either of those sounds and clap her hands, she is so excited! I am also pretty sure she says "mama". When she sees me she will go on and on with the "mamamamamamaama!". And a few times when Christian is around she'll say "dahdahdahdah", so she might know his name too. She also has 3 teeth - two on the bottom middle and one eyetooth. She looks like a funny little half-vampire when she smiles with that one upper tooth.

In those respects, she's a little ahead of Little Sir at her age - he didn't have any teeth, wasn't making any serious talking noises, and hadn't really gotten the hang of waving. But at her age, he was already walking. So far she's not interested in walking at all. She's content to pull up and stand beside things, climb up and sit on top of things, and crawl, crawl, crawl.

One other thing he was ahead of her in: sleeping through the night.

She actually did start sleeping "through the night" (by which I mean she slept until 4am or 5am, needed a bottle, and then went back down until 6am or 7am) around 9 months and I was so excited! I thought, yay, she beat him by sleeping through the night sooner than he did (he was 10 months). But then, about 3-4 weeks later, she quit doing it. She is now back to waking up every 2-3 hours, and last night she was on track to be up every 45 minutes. We've taken her to the doctor to check her ears, thinking she might have an ear infection but everything looked fine. She isn't cutting any new teeth. Also, she stops crying pretty much immediately when someone comes into her room. That doesn't happen if a baby is in pain. What she wants is someone to hang out with her, feed her, and help her go back to sleep. UH NO. She is fully capable of going all night without eating (as we saw from her early sleeping-through-the-night). She is fully capable of putting herself back to sleep. When we do give her a bottle she only drinks 1-2 ounces before throwing it out of the crib (it's cute how she literally throws her bottle, except at 2am, then it's not so cute). If this was a growth spurt and she needed the extra nutrition, she would actually be eating something significant, but she's not.

So last night, after I read Jill from BabyRabies' post about allowing her daughter to cry, I decided we can do this - I am going to let her cry. The child was MAD. Mad, mad, mad. She threw a big fit in there for about 2 hours straight - 11:30pm to 1:30am. Then she finally wore herself out and slept until 6am. I felt really bad about it, I went in a few times but she was just angry and I couldn't console her without getting her up and getting her a bottle, which I was determined NOT to do.

I always said I did not believe in CIO, and I still don't believe in it for babies. But honestly, she's nearly a toddler. She doesn't have anything wrong with her. She just wants some cuddles. And I love to cuddle her! However, I also need sleep. I haven't slept through the night since some time in 2008 or 2009, and I'm over it. Hopefully, I'm helping her too - she is so much happier when she gets enough sleep. She's a pretty happy baby overall. I sure hope we are doing the right thing for my little dumpling.

Thankful for clothing!

2012-01-09T07:30:00.000-06:00

Since I make all the blog posts from this blog into a blog book each year, I want to make sure that I record all the blessings we receive so that we can tell our kids later.

One thing that might not seem like a big deal is clothes for me. I am trying very hard not to spend much money as we recover from last year's financial surprises. At the same time, I've been pregnant for 2 years straight and don't have a lot of clothing yet that still fits or made it through the 2 years of being stored. Most of what I am missing is winter clothes, so I've been layering summer clothes under cardigans and other tops.

On New Year's Day we went to an annual brunch that our friends Roger and Jes host each year. When we got there, Jes told me that Roger had just finished a photo shoot for his work and had a bunch of leftover clothing. I could take it, if it fit! I was so excited! There were a ton of clothes that fit, and a lot that I can wear in the winter as well as some summer stuff. What a blessing! I am so thankful for the way that clothing was provided!

For our Secret Santas

2012-01-08T11:25:00.000-06:00

I know it's waaaay after Christmas, but I never posted pictures of our kids opening their gifts from their Secret Santas. I am sure the Secret Santas would want to see this!

Little Lady with a sock monkey doll - someone knew how much Little Sir loved his sock monkey at her age!

Little Sir got cars! yay!

Opening Secret Santa gifts...

And it is...

Play doh and cars! His favorites!

What was inside hers (forgot to take a picture of her opening it)

We had a great Christmas Day! I'll post more pictures of what we did that day later, but this post is specifically for our Secret Santas. Thank you again!

Greygee

2012-01-01T22:19:00.000-06:00

Little Sir made a firm attachment to one of his blankets about 6 months ago, and the last few months he has become very specific about it. It is an off-white plush blankets with jungle animals sewn on one corner. When I noticed him wanting it in order to sleep, I bought a second identical one online "just in case".

The name of this blankie is Greygee. I am guessing on the spelling, but that is how it is pronounced. It used to be that is how he pronounced Blankie, but recently when I called it Blankie he corrected me: no Mommy, no blankie - GREYGEE.

So now we take Greygee everywhere. Greygee hangs on the back of his chair at the table while we eat. Greygee goes outside. Thank goodness there are two of them, because Greygee gets really gross dirty. When Little Sir is not looking, I take the dirty Greygee and switch it for a clean one, throwing the dirty one in the wash.

It's really cute, he's so earnest about it!
It's fun to have Greygee in the family :-)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T17:14:00.000-06:00

Our family is excited about celebrating Christmas here at home, hosting our various family members, and celebrating the amazing Christmas miracles we've been blessed with. Since our original Secret Santas and Christmas miracle, a second Secret Santa has also visited us with more gifts for the kids. We are humbled and blessed. There are lots of gifts under the tree for our kids, despite the fact that we didn't spend anything. We are thankful for the blessings that have been provided for us. It does make me wonder about why I don't hear these Santas coming and going outside my house, though!

One thing I love about not traveling on Christmas Eve is that we get to attend services at Watermark (our church). Little Lady is currently running a fever from either teething or a cold, so we couldn't put her in childcare. Rather than be discouraged, as I have in the past, we decided to just bring her in and sit way up high in the upper level. She enjoyed hanging onto the rail (very secure, don't worry!) for a while and then took a nice little nap while Todd spoke.

You might remember that our first Secret Santas gave us some cash to go see Santa Claus in the beautiful outfits they gave the children. We went to see Santa at A Real Bookstore in Allen a few weeks ago, and here's the picture:

Thank you to our Secret Santas, who are "the hands and feet" of the God that we are celebrating!
I feel like this has been the least hectic and the most meaningful Christmas that I can remember. I hope that we can continue to take this spirit of humility and peace into future Christmas seasons and teach it to our children.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Thank you for following along with our journey!

Our Christmas miracles

2011-12-20T07:30:00.000-06:00

I have been trying all day to think of how to write this post that would express how thankful we are for the wonderful blessings that have been provided to us in the last 24 hours. I see God in all of this. It's probably trendy to attribute blessings to God, especially at this time of year, but I have seen blessings like this all my life - enough to believe that it's not just random and that God is not just a great big Santa Claus in the sky. I don't know if He gives us trials so that we can trust Him, or so to show us that we are powerless and He is powerful. I feel like it's probably both.

If you follow my other blog, you know we have been facing some tricky times with our unbreakable lease and dual rent/mortgage after buying our new home in November - so much that we cancelled gifts this Christmas. We were amazingly blessed by a Secret Santa who brought us wonderful gifts we can give to the children, for them to see Santa (which they did - pic to come soon, I need to scan it!), and a gift card toward our Christmas meal (got it today!).

In the last week, a potential renter has come along. We are very thankful that it is someone Christian knows, so the house would be helpful in reducing this person's commute and hopefully beneficial to both parties. The only catch is that, in order to make it affordable for this person, we would have to pay their rent for January plus an incentive equal to one more month. This person would move at the end of December (we've already paid December even though the house is empty), meaning that we'd get out of the lease after paying 2.5 months rent while someone else is living there. There is also an additional fee for breaking the lease. The total amount was very daunting for us, but just barely workable. We knew it was our only shot, because the other potential tenants have just not been working out in the last month. So we took a deep breath and prepared to let go of pretty much everything. We actually felt OK with this. My husband, for all his theological interest in unbelief, actually has an amazing faith. He encouraged me that we would be OK and I agreed.

As soon as we had decided to move forward with this arrangement, we received a very generous gift from some friends at our church. Which might seem weird, except that it's sort of something we believe in. There's a passage in Acts 2 of the Bible that explains how the early believers in Jesus came together and shared everything they had - people who had more gave to people who had less, and that way everyone had enough. You know, kind of like socialism! (that was a joke) When we were dual-income-no-kids, there were times that we gave similar gifts to our friends. It felt weird to be on the receiving end at first, but I remember being on the giving end and I know that we'll be there again one day. I can't wait!

Shortly after that miracle, another miracle came along in the form of a bonus for Christian's work that was much larger than we anticipated. We really do not count on bonuses or even expect them, so this was amazing. Especially in this economy. We are blessed that he works for a company who is doing very well at this time.

We are in awe of God's amazing goodness. I would like to thank each one of you for your prayers, and even all your help in spreading the word to rent our house. So many little encouragements along the way.

We definitely do not deserve all that has been given to us. But isn't that really the message of this season? We do not deserve the baby in the manager who was born just to die in our place. And yet... there He is.

Thank You.

Homemade Cinnamon ornaments

2011-12-19T15:30:00.000-06:00

Last week I did a fun craft with Little Sir while Little Lady took her morning nap. We were "grounded" to the house for the morning because some guys were installing our gutters.

I got this easy recipe for cinnamon christmas ornaments from one of the bloggers I follow and know in real life, Adell! You just dump a bunch of cinnamon into a bowl and add enough applesauce to make a paste. I used 3 large containers of cinnamon. It only took a few cups of applesauce to get the right consistency.

Sister actually helped us before she went down for her nap.

Then we cut out the shapes - he called them "play doh".

Onto the cookie sheet.

And in the oven at 200 degrees until they were hardened. The ornaments make the house smell wonderful. I wanted to eat my house all day long.
The finished product:

Now, does anybody have any ideas on how to mail these without breaking them?!

RHOA neighborhood carriage ride

2011-12-18T22:13:00.000-06:00

Our new neighborhood association put on a fun event where they had horse-drawn carriage rides around the neighborhood this evening. We went with the 2 other couples from our community group - one is in our neighborhood and the other is from farther south. Little Sir seemed unimpressed by the horses but he seemed to like the lights even though it wasn't dark yet at 5:30pm. Little Lady liked the empty bag from some fruit treats that someone shared with her!

We lost our camera somehow...

2011-12-14T16:01:00.000-06:00

...in the move. So, I've been taking all the kids' pictures on my iPhone. Fortunately, it's a 4S so that means the camera and video is pretty good. We do still also have our very old Pentax DSLR. I (Jenny) do not actually know how to use that complicated thing, but I keep thinking maybe I should try to learn. For Christmas, you know!
But, here are some photos I've taken lately on the iPhone.

Pigtails on Little Lady...sort of. It's really difficult to keep her still long enough to do it, and 15 minutes later she yanked one out.

They love to play together in the play kitchen from Nanny and PawPaw!

What happens when you don't nap

2011-12-13T07:03:00.000-06:00

Saturday Little Sir pulled one of his infamous refusing-to-nap tricks. By supper time he was apparently pretty sleepy. He started to fall asleep IN HIS CHAIR. This is not the first time he has fallen asleep while eating, so Christian took a video. {video here}
NOTE: For some reason, Christian's iPhone took the whole thing without sound, so it's silent. Sorry about that!

We were actually able to transfer him to his bed after he fell asleep, and he was asleep for the night by 6:30pm! Unfortunately, he also woke at 4:30am FOR THE DAY. So that's kind of unfortunate.

Our Secret Santas!

2011-12-12T07:30:00.000-06:00

Last night I was washing up bottles and sippys downstairs while Christian was bathing Little Sir upstairs. Little Lady had a really drippy nose and hasn't felt well for a few days so she was already asleep. I guess it was around 8pm-ish when the doorbell rang! It startled me a little because it was so dark outside. When I went to the door, there was no one there but there was this big red box with a gold bow!

Imagine this is on our doorstep, I didn't take a picture until it was already inside

I looked up and down the street but didn't see any cars. It was pretty cold, though, so I didn't try too hard. I figured if they wanted me to catch them they wouldn't have left. Christian said, "What if it is full of bees?!". I can only assume he watches some kind of weird killer bee movies on TV after I go to bed at night.

I brought it inside and once Little Sir finished his bath, we let him help us open it. Inside the box was a note that said, "The Bradford Family: Have yourself a Merry little Christmas in your new home. PS Open the boxes now :) You may need what is inside when you do pictures with Santa. Love, Secret Santas". There was also a Sprouts gift card (a local supermarket that I really like, right near our house, it carries a lot of nice natural and organic stuff often cheaper than Whole Foods). There was even a little envelope with some extra cash that said, "For a picture with Santa? Or maybe just for baking cookies :) Your call.". I am DEFINITELY going to do one or both of those things.

Here is a list of the things inside the box: a Christmas dress for Little Lady, a Christmas shirt for Little Sir, a doll for Little Lady (I am so excited about this! I wish she had been awake! I should wait until Christmas to give it to her, though!!), a Melissa '&' Doug musical set, a Melissa '&' Doug pizza set, a set of crayons and coloring pad, and the rest of the greeting cards that the note was written on.

Since Little Sir was with us when we opened it, we did let him open up the pizza. However, he will most likely forget the crayons and coloring pad so I am going to wrap those up to put under the tree for Christmas. IF we are lucky and he forgot about the musical instruments, I am going to wrap those up too. He has a scary good memory sometimes, though! It's OK because I have some BlogHer swag left over that I was going to wrap up for him but I didn't have anything for Little Lady.

I feel like we are so blessed by our friends. Maybe I will find out who it was, or maybe not. I am almost sure it is someone we know from church. Which does not narrow things down at all since most of our good friends go to Watermark. Still, I believe this is a God thing. He knows what we need and what we want and He works through others. It is humbling to think that we would be recipients when there are so many other more needy families out there. But I also know that we have done similar things for our friends in the past and how much we loved to be able to do things for them. And we look forward to being able to do it again! It is a great big circle of giving and sharing and that is how it should be in a family.

So, to whoever you guys are: we love you, and thank you for loving us! We are so thankful and excited! I am loving the Sprouts gift card too, because it turns out I will be cooking Christmas dinner on Christmas Day so it will come in handy! Thank you!!
{See the YouTube video of us opening the box here - it's over 6 minutes long, so beware}

Merry Christmas, everyone!

How to subscribe to our blog

2011-12-11T07:30:00.000-06:00

I've had a few friends tell me that since Google Buzz has gone away, they don't get our blog posts in their email anymore. This is true, so I thought I'd give you a few other ways to get the blog without leaving your Google email/Gmail. I am going to list them for you based on how you use the internet.

If you really only read this blog.
Aw, ya'll are sweet! Really, though, this mainly applies to our family. If you liked getting the blog posts in Google Buzz so you can keep up with us, all you have to do now to keep getting only this blog in your email is subscribe to our email feed. Here's a special box:
Every time we publish a blog post, it will be emailed to you. Almost exactly the same as Google Buzz except without the "Comment" feature right at the bottom.

If you are keeping up with several blogs and no longer have time to visit every one individually.
I'll tell you my secret: Google Reader. It's an RSS reader, but don't let that terminology worry you. All you have to do is go to reader.google.com when you are already logged in to your Gmail. It is part of your existing Google account, so you won't have to register - you just tell it what blogs you want to follow by using this button:

Just type http://afamilyis.us into that box and you've got my blog!
You can even copy-and-paste that bold text above!

I hope that Google Reader helps you discover and follow lots of new bloggers - I know it's been a lifesaver for me as I've discovered more blogs that I love over the years. I also love that it works great on the iPhone or other smartphones - you can access reader.google.com from your phone and have the exact same interface that you have on the computer.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

9 months and 2 years, 1 month stats

2011-12-01T07:30:00.000-06:00

So I forgot to post Little Sir's 2-year stats last month. Here they are:

Height: 35.5 lbs. (75-90th percentile)
Weight: 25 lbs. 12 oz. (10-20th percentile) - he's a little skinny!

Yesterday was Little Lady's 9 month appointment, and here are her stats:

Height: 27.5 inches (50th percentile)
Weight: 17 lbs. 7 oz. (25-50th percentile)

Little Sir-isms

2011-11-30T20:46:00.000-06:00

Little Sir says the cutest things, I wish I could remember all of them or write them down faster!

This morning when we were sitting on his bed in the new house for the first time, I hadn't washed my hair in 2 days or even combed it. He climbed up next to me and touched it gently and said, "Mommy pretty hair". It was so sweet and I didn't realize he even knew the word "pretty".

He also likes to sing songs, mostly "The Rainbow Connection" and "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam". This is how The Rainbow Connection goes: "rainbow, rainbow, dreamers, cubbers, meeeeee"
This is Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam: "Jebus, Jebus, SUNBEAM!"

Today we came home and Daddy was here, but he couldn't see him. As Daddy came out to meet us, he said, "Oh! It IS Daddy!"

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T23:20:00.000-06:00

* I just found the point-and-shoot camera we lost in our move, so I'm posting things I missed and back-dating them *

We spent Thanksgiving Day with the Edingers in Kilgore this year. The day after Thanksgiving, GrampE and Christian and Josh drove to Dallas to move us into our new house!

But for the day, we had a good time hanging out with Aunt Janell, Uncle Tim, Gigi, and MomMom, as well as Uncle Josh and Aunt Christina and cousin Natali.

Love this picture of Aunt Janell and Gigi, sorry Little Lady is a little blurry...

Aunt Janell and her namesake

Cousins!
Natali looks sassy, as usual, while neither of my children are even looking at the camera...

In this one, my littles look angry.

Oh well, Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great day, and so much to be thankful for!

Flashback: First Haircut

2011-11-23T23:15:00.000-06:00

I just found the point-and-shoot camera that we lost in the move, so I'm posting a few posts and backdating them so that hopefully they'll show in our 2011 Blog Book!

November 23, 2011: Little Lady's first haircut!
I took her along with us to Snip-It's in Snider Plaza where Little Sir gets his hair cut. They are really good there and it's clean and fast. Little Sir enjoys getting a little toy each time they go.

Little Lady got a little trimmed off her hair and the lady even put her hair in a little pony tail with bow!
However, Little Lady was QUITE upset... I can't say she enjoyed it but she made it through!

We are homeowners!

2011-11-16T13:43:00.001-06:00

We closed on our new house yesterday and got the keys last night!

Thanks soooo much to Todd Tramonte Home Selling Team, especially Matt Cafrelli for how awesome they are and continue to be, even after the sale! They are helping us organize the renovations and letting us use their moving van. If you are looking to buy or sell a home, tell them we sent you!

Getting over it

2011-11-14T08:44:00.000-06:00

In case you were wondering where I have been, see the posts on my other blog Everyone gets sick and Antibiotics! Antibiotics for Everyone!

I love my kiddos but I really feel like they have been ATTACHED TO MY BODY for about 4 days straight. I am a real stickler for bathing, but at one point I went about 40 hours without being able to take a shower because Little Lady would not allow me to put her down. Currently, she is holding onto my shoulder while I type this sitting on the floor. Little Sir is less clingy, but he is going a little stir crazy since we can't go out as much while everyone is coughing for fear of contaminating other kids.

Here is a cute video of her favorite standing practices: pulling/shaking things with her whole body, holding on with only one hand while standing, and using her free hand to suck her thumb while standing. Very talented! {video here}

Little Sir sayings

2011-11-09T15:43:00.003-06:00

Little Sir is starting to say some hilarious things, unexpectedly. Recently, we have been talking about trucks a lot because he got a book with a bunch of different types of trucks from the library. The other day, we were merging onto Hwy 75 and I saw we were going to pull up next to a truck carrying an excavator construction truck, so I pointed it out to him because I thought he would enjoy looking at it. As it was coming up beside us on the highway, he said, "Oh, mommy - truck! Watch out! Truck!"
Then, as we merged beside it and continued down the highway, he seemed relieved and said, "Oh! It crazy!"
I laughed at that one!

Halloween 2011

2011-10-31T22:54:00.001-05:00

Happy Halloween!

We already celebrated Halloween with the playgroup about a week ago. I have some pictures of that, it was so cute.

Thank you so much for hosting, Tara, Rosslyn, and Bronwyn!

We started our Halloween evening today by having a pumpkin pizza from Papa Murphy's!

Then we went out and Little Sir had a lot of fun. I made a movie of it {video here}:

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In case you were wondering where Little Lady was, she was in the stroller in her pumpkin costume during most of the trick-or-treating!

Her little teeth

2011-10-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

In case I haven't covered it before, Little Lady has had two good little lower teeth for at least 2 months. I have tried and tried to get photos but it's a little tricky. Here's the best I have so far.

Little Sir's 2nd birthday!

2011-10-27T12:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't yet posted pictures of Little Sir's 2nd birthday, it's been almost a week!
We celebrated a little at home with homemade cupcakes on Thursday, but the party was on Saturday.

For the party!
He had a lot of fun at Mimosa Park, with a Yo Gabba Gabba theme. I don't go overboard on parties, so we just had some nice themed pieces and a lovely cake made by Meringue Bakery. We had pizza for the food, because that's one of the only things Little Sir will eat reliably.

The cake was probably my favorite part, cause I didn't make it and it was awesome. Here it is before Little Sir got ahold of it:

And when he saw it at the party, he touched it immediately.

Another favorite part was Christian shaving part of his beard into chops and dressing up as DJ Lance Rock.

At first, Little Sir was not too impressed but some kids on the playground were REALLY impressed!

You might have noticed that we also have this cool Yo Gabba Gabba boombox. We bought it to play MP3's for music during the party but it turns out to be Little Sir's very favorite birthday present (aside from the play kitchen from Nanny and PawPaw, which is another post).

Cousin Mazzie was so cute in her Foofah Yo Gabba Gabba outfit

In case you were wondering if Little Lady was there, she was. Here she is swinging with her grandmas!

Here's a final shot of the three of us and the cake:

Happy birthday, my little guy! We love you so much!

Videos: Little Sir talking, Little Lady crawling

2011-10-18T20:45:00.000-05:00

Two great new videos of the kids doing fun things. The first Christian took of himself and Little Sir before bed where you can hear Little Sir doing a lot of good talking. When he says "cheese", that is what he calls the camera because we always tell him to say "cheese" for the camera {video here}:

The second is a video I took on my iPhone of Little Lady doing a really good crawling stretch. She gets around everywhere now this way! Pretty much abandoned the army crawl in lieu of this real crawling. This video also includes blowing raspberries, which she loves to do. It's really juicy, too {video here}:

State Fair fun

2011-10-16T15:07:00.000-05:00

This week we went to the Texas State Fair on a Wednesday, which was a GREAT idea! Because we always both worked in past years (or didn't have kids), we had always gone on weekends. It was always crazy packed and difficult even with a single stroller. But going on a weekday is AWESOME! There is plenty of room for strollers and even the Children's Zoo area had plenty of room. Plus, we got in for $2 with a donation of 3 canned goods to the North Texas Food Bank.

I think our favorite part was the Children's zoo area. They had all kinds of really unusual animals that loved to be petted through the gate. For some reason when we told Little Sir that we were going to see animals at the Fair he kept saying "zebra!". I told him I wasn't sure if there would be zebras, I didn't want to get him too excited about it but sure enough, there were zebras!

I think this is some kind of antelope type thing (I am sure that is not the right name for it)

Here is the goat that ate the dixie cup we were supposed to be holding it's food in.

Although Little Sir rarely eats any kind of meat, he ate almost all of Daddy's corn dog. He carried it in his fist for probably an hour.

I didn't get many pictures of Little Lady because I was wearing her when I was taking photos. But here is a really cute picture of her in the grass in our front yard this afternoon.

Updates on development

2011-10-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

List of what's been going on:

As you can see from the fall pictures, Little Sir is loving his hats. He was disliking the sun getting in his eyes so I told him if he wore hats that would help, so now he asks for hats when we are in the sun. Smart guy!
Little Lady has started moving at a faster and faster pace. In addition to the army crawl, I caught her doing a real all-fours crawl at Mother's Day Out on Thursday!
She is also sitting up on her own from a crawl position, and pulling up and standing while supported.
Little Sir is talking a LOT more and in limited sentences. He started saying "Good morning, Mommy. Good morning, Daddy. Good morning, Finn!" when he comes into our room in the morning. I didn't even teach him that! I guess he just picked it up from me saying it. I have also heard him say, "Oh, dear!" which I guess he got from me too!
He is starting to recognize that names go with people. Several times he has asked for his babysitter/nanny Sam when she is not here. He also asks for PawPaw sometimes. The other day we went to the zoo with his friends Cate and Zane and as we were leaving he said, "Bye bye Cate! Bye bye Zane!".
Little Lady still suffers from separation anxiety when I go anywhere, and still will not take a bottle from anyone but me. I can usually time it where I feed her before I leave and can go somewhere in the evenings for a few hours while she stays with Christian. She does go on long crying jags while I'm gone, which is sad. But she is fine so we do it anyway.
She made it through 2 Mother's Day Out weeks so far without them calling me to pick her up! However, in between those weeks we took her to childcare at church and got paged to come pick her up after 10 minutes. So... baby steps, I guess.
Since she is so mobile, when I leave her playing the living room and go into the kitchen to get something, she will start crying and pathetically dragging herself to the kitchen. It's sad but also kind of funny.

Little Sir is apparently COMPLETELY UNABLE to play independently. It drives me insane. If anyone knows how to ~~make~~ help him learn how to play without me for 15-20 minutes, please tell me. I haven't been able to cook a real dinner in about a month!

That's all I can think of for now, more recent pics this weekend!

So many pictures, so little time!

2011-10-06T15:26:00.000-05:00

Ya'll, it had gotten to the point for the last few days that I have soooo much to post on this blog that I am putting it off every day because the amount of information is daunting!

I have actually been really good about taking pictures lately, so if you ever want to catch up and I haven't posted for a while, make sure to check my Flickr photostream. (there's also a link on the right side of the blog)

We've had a ton of photo ops around pumpkins lately, and another one coming up next Monday at our playgroup. The first was at the arboretum for our professional photos with Joy Neville Photography.
See all the photos here.

Then we went back the following Monday with Little Sir's playgroup, here's a shot of the whole group. Such big kids! They all met in Square One at our church as newborns and are still hanging out together!

I also got more cute sibling photos...

Little Sir just loves to kiss his sister, and he does it all the time, even when we don't ask!

That is it for today's photo catchup post. Tomorrow I'll do another post about the kids' most recent developmental milestones!

Her new favorite trick

2011-09-27T11:42:00.001-05:00

She has to be helped up, but she loooves to play standing up!

More firsts for Little Lady: shopping cart and sitting up

2011-09-18T16:35:00.002-05:00

The kids and I have all been a little sick the last few days - mostly me, but Little Sir also had a few nights of coughing and Little Lady's nose has been running. So we didn't do much this weekend. We did get to see GrammE and GrampE on Saturday and then on Saturday evening we all went to Central Market to get some groceries. They have really cool shopping carts there that hold both kids, so Little Lady got to ride in a cart for the first time. I took this video of her having a ball! {video here}

In another big leap for her, she has figured out how to go from army crawl/tummy to sitting up all by herself. I got a video of her first few tries this afternoon. {video here}

The only disadvantage to this is that she used her new ability to sit up in the Pack N Play instead of lying down when she didn't want to nap!

Attachment parenting...no, REALLY, really attached

2011-09-12T21:45:00.001-05:00

So have I mentioned how attached Little Lady is to me?

Really, REALLY attached.

Like sob-until-she-chokes-when-I-leave-the-room attached.

Not necessarily the best situation.

So far, she will only allow herself to be fed by me. She takes bottles of whatever (formula or breastmilk)... but only from me. Will NOT take one from Daddy, a babysitter, church nursery workers, or Mothers Day Out teachers. We have even tried letting Daddy come up next to me as I am feeding her a bottle and hold it with us and: NO. All eating stops until he moves away.

Unfortunately we only made it 3 hours into Mothers Day Out last week before I had to go up there and feed her myself. They were nice enough to let me leave her again for another hour before the school day officially ended.

We are working on having me leave to do something on my own at least once a week in the evening to help her get accustomed to being with Daddy. So far, it works best if I feed her before I leave and make sure I'm not gone more than 3 hours. She starts really cranking up the crying by then but technically that's not too long for a 6 month old to go between feedings.

My poor little attached girl - her happy place is holding my hair with one hand and sucking her thumb with the other!

Labor Day, birthday party fun, more crawling

2011-09-08T22:34:00.000-05:00

Time for catch-up again.
Little Lady likes to rock onto her all fours now, although she's still only army crawling.

We had a great time at Sam's birthday party last weekend! There was another party that I didn't get as good pictures of, but here are some from Sam's. Unfortunately Little Sir was kind of antisocial and only wanted to play on his own. He'll get over this, right?

We had a great Labor Day, the weather here is so great right now that we walked to Mimosa Park in the morning.

I can't even remember what we did the rest of the day but it was really relaxing!

Little Sir updates

2011-08-30T13:59:00.000-05:00

Little Sir doesn't get quite as much face time on this blog sometimes, but he is doing well. His speaking skills are getting much better. He says a lot of words that I don't always understand. He seems to have trouble with the "f" sound right now so he substitutes the "t" sound. It took me a long time to realize that when he would say "ott", he meant "off" - like he wanted me to take something off.

He also says " mon!" and "mere!" when he wants us to "c'mon" or "come here".

By far his favorite word is still "NO!". We have never heard him say yes. If you ask him a question and he wants to answer in the affirmative he will just repeat the last word you said instead of saying "yes".

One sentence he said that was very clear, and so far his only noun/verb combo: "Daddy poop".
Nice. Also applicable at the time he said it. (TMI)

We aren't trying to potty train or anything, but he does tell us sometimes when he has to poop before it happens. Then I try to get him to the potty if I can, just so that he knows that's what it's for.

Yesterday he told me that he had to poop, but would not allow his diaper to be removed, so he laid down on the floor of the bathroom next to the potty with his pants down and played with stickers and his Elmo Potty book until he pooped in his diaper. Probably not the way it's supposed to work, but.... whatever!

He got some golf clubs from Nanny and PawPaw this week that he loves! He is not using them correctly but he has fun.

He is our big little boy and we are having a lot of fun with him!

Foods so far

2011-08-29T18:04:00.001-05:00

So far Little Lady has tried the following foods and these are her verdicts:

Banana = yum!!
Oat cereal = good
Avocado = ick
Green beans = ok
Carrots = good
Apples = ick

(apples)

Army crawl!

2011-08-24T22:48:00.000-05:00

Today YET ANOTHER milestone for Little Lady!! She took an honest-to-goodness army crawl today!
Until now, she's just been rolling wherever she wants to go. But today, she got her legs on in there and scooted! She's been pushing up with her bum and arms as well.

I didn't get a great video but this is what I got on my iPhone for Daddy to see. Please pardon the kissing noises in the background, Little Sir was jealous so I had to kiss on him to keep him out of the video {video here}:

Little Lady 6 month appointment

2011-08-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

We had Little Lady's 6 month doctor appointment yesterday and here are the stats:

16 lbs 3 oz
26 1/4 inches tall
42 1/2 head circ

All of the stats are on the upper end (closer to the 75th) of the 50th-75th percentile. Very much like Little Sir was at this age. We are blessed with healthy, strong babies! Who apparently do not need sleep to get healthy and strong...

She's getting really good at sitting up, as she is practicing here in the examination room!

2011-08-20T07:30:00.001-05:00

I just realized that I posted the video of Little Lady in the bouncy twice.
*sigh*

I am sleeping more, but obviously still not enough.

Anyway.

Little Lady has a new milestone worthy of a video: she is eating solid food!

I really was going to wait until her 6 month doctor appointment on Monday, but she has really been getting upset unless we let her sit at the table when we eat, and lately she has been trying and trying to grab food away from me when I put it into my mouth. She even managed to actually snag a few things.

Finally, I decided to mash up some banana and see what she thought of it. I set up the video for the very first bite because I was sure she would reject it and make a funny face like Little Sir did with his first food, and I wanted to show Christian.

But, she LOVED it! She kept leaning forward grabbing for more. She's had banana three times now and gets so impatient between bites that she nearly comes out of the Bumbo. I think we will probably need to put her in the high chair just to keep her still enough between bites!

So, here's the video. Again, funny conversation I'm having in the background with Little Sir about how he should eat his noodles. {video here}

Happy 6-month Birthday, Little Lady!

Leaps and bounces and sitting up

2011-08-19T08:15:00.001-05:00

*updated* I just realized that I posted this video twice in two separate posts. Sorry about that.

Little Lady is soooo wiggly lately that I took out the bouncy swing and set it up for her. She was off and bouncing immediately, with huge smiles! Here is the video I took - Little Sir was really upset because apparently he remembered the bouncy swing and he wanted to do it too! Needless to say, he's waaaay too big so that made him really mad. {video here}

She's also sitting up so well that we brought out the activity table with two of the legs removed so she could sit up and play on it at the same time. She loves it!

Again, though, this caused great distress for Little Sir because he also remembered the table and was distraught when he saw it with only two legs. He kept crying and trying to stand it upright. I believe he thought it was broken and couldn't be fixed. I had to work to get him to understand it was supposed to be like that for sister.

We had another HUGE milestone yesterday and I'll be posting the video tomorrow morning!

Sister bounces

2011-08-10T17:26:00.001-05:00

Today I put Little Lady in the bouncy swing in the doorway for the first time and she loved it!

Little Sir, however, was very upset. Apparently he remembers the bouncy swing and is extremely jealous. You can hear him crying in the background of this video: (video below)

YouTube Video

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Baths, sitting up

2011-08-09T13:29:00.000-05:00

I feel kind of bad that I haven't been keeping up with Little Lady's milestones like I did with Little Sir. We're still not sleeping much more around here, and we've been out of town the last 2 weeks off and on - one 8-hour car trip 2 weekends ago and one plane to San Diego and back for BlogHer this past weekend (just Little Lady and I, alone).

Little Lady was a big hit on the plane, the flight attendant loved her so much that she asked if she could hold LL as she greeted the passengers coming onto the plane for the second leg of the flight in San Antonio:

While we were at BlogHer, Little Lady got much better at sitting up, maybe from sitting in my lap during sessions? I don't know - but she is getting much more stable upright.

Because she is more stable, she's been able to sit in the bath (we are hold her her up - but, still!) with Big Brother.

She is also starting to crawl (I use that term loosely, but she can definitely move across a room!) over to Little Sir and take things away from him. Yesterday I gave him a mini-granola bar in its wrapper while they were sitting on the floor in the living room while I went and put some things from lunch into the sink, and when I got back she had taken the wrapper from him and was gumming it, while he just sat there and pointed at her like "Look! Look what she did! This is not my fault!".

My guess is that it won't be long until we see the "army crawl" from her, so I'll try to make sure to catch that on video!

Current state of tummies

2011-07-25T22:48:00.000-05:00

Just thought I would post a quick update on Little Lady's tummy situation. We took her off both Prevacid and Zantac because the gas was so bad on both that it was just not worth it at all. We are still on the waitlist for the pediatric GI doctor. I did call our pediatrician back to let her know that we quit using the Zantac and even though Dr. L is out of town on vacation, her partner called me back personally and talked to me quite a while on the phone. They are such a great practice that way - they will often call back personally and I like the other doctors in the practice just as much as Dr. L, because they are all very down-to-earth and practical.

The doctor said that it still sounds like reflux to her and she suggested that since Little Lady is 5 months already, to go ahead and put some rice cereal in her bottle. She explained that this is not to rush her into solids, but what it does is "weigh down" the milk in Little Lady's tummy to keep it from splashing back up her esophagus as readily. It's the splashing up that is causing her the pain. By putting it in the bottle we won't confuse her by offering solids too early - she probably won't even notice she's swallowing thicker liquid.

We have been doing this now for about 4 nights. Of course, we had to get around the fact that she has actually been refusing a bottle of any kind for about a week now. The first 2 days I ended up using a syringe to squirt the mixture into her mouth. We went on a date on Saturday night and she had no choice but to take a bottle from the babysitter. After that, she has been doing much better with the bottle. Today she took a bottle willingly twice from me!

It's not exactly a miracle cure. The first two nights were great. Last night was horrible. I think that might have been my fault, I might have let her lie down too soon after eating and she woke up screaming 45 minutes later and screamed for about 45 minutes. What happens is that she falls asleep while eating her last meal of the evening and my tendency is to just set her in her Pack N Play when she finishes. But what I need to do is just hold her upright for 20 minutes at least. It's a risk because sometimes she wakes up again and then it's impossible to get her to go to back to sleep. I need to just risk it, though, because it keeps her from being in pain.

It also seems that this is a two-part problem. Part one is the reflux, of course. But Part two is that she is actually a) very VERY attached to me, and b) kind of a drama queen.

If I even leave the room sometimes, she just loses it. Sobs uncontrollably. Shrieks. Cannot be comforted. Daddy makes her mad, mad, mad because wants MOMMY!! This is not good, this is noooot what I meant to do. Little Sir was always so independent! We could leave him with anybody and he just didn't care! I have no idea what to do with this unnaturally attached baby. Sometimes she won't even let me set her down during the day. Which would not be a problem if she let me wear her in a sling or wrap, but she HATES being worn in any of my carriers. NO FUN.

Also, she is sort of a drama queen. One day I was at the mall with her and took her into the family bathroom where I could roll the stroller into the bathroom while I went. When I flushed the toilet it startled her. She got so upset I had to go into the nursing room and nurse her to calm her down. Now that is just craziness!

In conclusion, while we continue to try and treat the reflux, some of the problem also seems to be her personality. She just gets really worked up, really easily. It is sad to see her so upset! But that is just how she is sometimes, I guess.

Here are a few pictures of Little Lady from a beautiful princess birthday party we attended for our friend Campbell who was turning 3! I'll post the rest of the pictures soon.

Movin' and goin'

2011-07-20T12:52:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the long silence! The kids are just growing and growing over here.

Little Sir is saying more words now and does seem less frustrated. He's 100% in this big boy bed now, although it usually takes us 30-45 minutes of going into his room every night and at naptime to get him to stay in the bed and not wander around the room. He only naps about 2-3 days a week at this point. I think he is skipping naps because it is so bright and so hot in his room now that we moved him to the room with the bay window. I spent nearly $200 on thermal blackout curtains but they really cannot keep the light and heat out of such a huge window. I'm sure it does not help that he opens the curtains and looks out while he is supposed to be napping. The room is so small that no matter where we put the bed he can reach them from his bed.

Right now Little Sir loves airplanes and doing interactive things like playing with toy tools and sorting these little craft puffs that I got in the dollar bin at Target. He also loves flashcards with letters and numbers. He can identify the letter O with no trouble, and also the number 4. Most letters are either A, B, E, or C to him. He tries to count things using his fingers but the syllables he is using are not usually right. It's really cute!

Little Lady is really moving and going these days. She loves her exersaucer the best, and can really stand up on her strong little legs while she's in it. I can hardly put her on the mat on the floor anymore because she can roll her way right off of it. I'll put her down for a minute and come back and she's rolled several yards away. She is getting much better with her hands, and can accurately grab nearly anything near her face and pull it directly into her mouth. Little Lady thinks her brother is the most hilarious person ever! Every time he talks around her, she laughs. It doesn't matter what he is saying, she thinks it is the funniest thing she's ever heard. I tell him all the time, "Look! She loves you! She thinks you are hilarious!". Sometimes he grabs her hands and smiles at her.

We're still struggling with her night/evening screaming periods where she is obviously in pain. It may or may not be reflux, we don't know. We have an appointment with a pediatric GI doctor but the next available appointment was September 1, so that is how long we will have to wait.

I am working on posting more pictures, but wanted to just jot down what is going on with the kids right now!

Mischief leading to the Big Boy Bed

2011-07-08T13:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the final straw for Little Sir and his crib.

After attempting to wear him out in the morning with a trip to the splash park with the playgroup and lunch at The Great Outdoors, I brought him home and put him into his crib as usual for nap. I had a conference call from 3-4PM.

Apparently, none of the mornings' activities wore him out enough and he didn't nap. Not surprising, he refuses to nap about 2-3 times every week. However, this time he was really up to some mischief.

When I came in after my conference call, I found that he had:

removed the curtain from the window above his crib and stashed it behind the rocking chair
removed a slat from the wooden blinds by breaking it into 3 pieces, and
removed the cover from one of his favorite books

In addition, of course, to throwing everything out of his crib.

It was so crazy I had to take pictures.

Standing in front of his handiwork

Gesturing "I don't know how this happened!"

Where he stuffed the curtain he took down

Blinds missing a slat. We will have to pay for this before we move out.

Well, this was the final straw for the crib. There isn't space in the room to put it anywhere not near a window, so NOW IS THE TIME to move to the big boy bed, ready or not.

We put him in the big boy bed last night and followed the advice we found online, going into his room and picking him up and putting him back into the bed every time he climbed out. When we do that, we don't speak to him or make eye contact. Just go in, pick him up, dump back into big boy bed, go out. We only had to do that for about 45 minutes and he went to sleep! He slept the entire night in there.

I am trying it again today for nap and so far I've only had to go in for about 30 minutes and he seems to be down... Can it really be this easy?!

Now, to get Little Lady to sleep flat in a crib, and we'll be all set!

Baby reflux, Prevacid, probiotics

2011-07-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

Poor Little Lady has had a rough week or two. The doctor gave us a prescription for Prevacid at her 4 month appointment which I thought surely we would not use. Unfortunately, her reflux has gotten so bad lately that we had to start giving it to her.

What she has is "silent reflux", where she doesn't spit outwardly, but swallows it so that it's just a gurgle. I can hear the splashing and choking when she lies down, though.

It got to the point where she couldn't lie down flat to sleep, and since she is now actively rolling over and over, sleeping in her swing is getting a little iffy because she rolls over and ends up hanging over the edge sometimes.

Unfortunately, the Prevacid comes with gas. Really bad gas. So although she can lie down at night when she's on the maximum dosage, it has been giving her such bad gas that she can only sleep 45 minutes or an hour at a time all night long, every night. She nurses constantly even though she isn't hungry, because her tummy hurts. Between feedings, she kicks and thrashes constantly so that neither she or I can sleep.

I don't know how I would have survived without help from Heather, whose two boys have been through this before. She is the one who explained to me that I needed to give the Prevacid 30 minutes to one full hour before Little Lady eats for it to work best. She also told me that if we split the pills up into 1/4 of a pill each time, the gas is less severe.

Those things helped a lot, but the gas persisted. After 3 nights of only sleeping 45 minutes to an hour at a time, I added probiotics because I remembered it helped Gina's baby with reflux. Unfortunately, all I could find was the powdered infant probiotic. Little Lady completely refuses to drink it from a bottle, even when mixed with breast milk. I have been trying to squirt it into her mouth with a syringe but she is sneaky and spits it right back at me. I don't think we've got a full dosage once in 3 days.

It was my mistake to simultaneously try to wean her off Prevacid, or at least move to a lower dosage. Less Prevacid plus not enough probiotic has created a really bad last 24 hours. Poor thing is just choking and crying pretty much all day.

Our doctor is out of town but I called the practice and told them that Prevacid was causing too much gas. They suggested... probiotics. They did mention drops specifically, though. So tonight Christian went out and got some drops, after trying 3 stores. Tomorrow we will be back on the FULL maximum dose of Prevacid, broken up into the 1/4 pills, plus probiotic drops. Hopefully we'll be able to get the full dose into her using drops.

We'll see if this helps. Keep your fingers crossed for us, and we appreciate your prayers!

I am really looking forward to seeing her sweet smile again, instead of the sad pain face!

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T14:40:00.001-05:00

We're taking it easy today, Little Lady says "Happy Independence Day", wearing her red, white & blue, on her first day in the exersaucer!

Moving bedrooms

2011-07-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

Since we made the decision to stay in this house another year (and then promptly started to change our mind again, but that is another story...), we needed to somehow get both kids in one room. In other words, eventually move Little Lady into the crib and Little Sir into a Big Boy Bed (twin size). This is a 3 bedroom, and we would like to move the office stuff out of a bedroom altogether but, um, there is nowhere else to move it. Very small house. Very small.

The rooms in this house are super small as well, but the room in which we were keeping the office/computer stuff was slightly bigger and more conducive to fitting both a twin bed and a crib in it. I know because I measured and made a to-scale grid on graph paper. That is how OCD I am. The conclusion was that we needed to switch the rooms. Front bedroom stuff would go in the back bedroom and vice versa. Also, we had to sell the daybed. Guests will henceforth be sleeping on a queen size air mattress in the newly located office.

I made a board on Pinterest to figure out how to incorporate the design of a big boy bed with the design we currently had in the crib and wall decals.

Here is the arrangement of the rooms BEFORE. {video here}

Here is the arrangement of the rooms AFTER. {video here}

As you can see, the wall behind the big boy bed is currently blank, but we have these animal decals which were in his original room in the house before this one, which I have not put up yet. If you are wondering if this Blik really re-sticks, the answer is: YES. This is the third room I have put the safari decals on and it still hangs. It's definitely not as sticky as it was, but it works. And it never leaves marks when I remove it!

There you have it, this is what we've done so far to love (or tolerate) where we are.
FOR NOW.

NOTE: I was not given any of the things in the rooms for free, especially not the Blik, that stuff is expensive. However, if Blik would like to give me some free Blik, I would say YES, PLEASE!!

ANOTHER NOTE: No, Little Sir is not sleeping in the big boy bed yet. He refuses. See this previous post.

Campbell Green splash park!

2011-06-29T16:28:00.000-05:00

Last weekend we had a lot of fun at the Campbell Green splash park in Richardson!
It is a free park, open to the public. It's so big there is plenty of room for everyone even with 2-3 birthday parties going on.

Here are some neat pictures!

At first he was uncertain

He started to have fun...

Sister asleep in her stroller

A view of the park

There are no vending services but plenty of things come by:
The ice cream truck!

A snack cart!

And then Little Sir decided to drink the water - EW!!!

What's cool is how curly and reddish his hair gets when it's wet! Isn't it cute?!

We can't wait to go again soon!

Little Lady 4 month checkup

2011-06-22T19:02:00.000-05:00

Little Lady 4 month stats:

14 lbs 5 oz (50-75th percentile)
25.5 tall (75-90th percentile)
40cm head (25th percentile)

Sorry, I don't get much sleep these days

2011-06-21T08:00:00.015-05:00

I like to add that phrase to anything I do that is stupid or doesn't make sense. I think it's possible that a lot of people are under the impression that both my children are sleeping through the night by now. Or, at least that one of them (the toddler?) is. That would be a negative, my friends. Not only is Little Lady still up 2-3 times a night, Little Sir is now waking at least once and sometimes twice for random screaming or, as in the case of a few nights ago, vomiting. I really have no idea why either the screaming or the vomiting happens because he cannot talk and he has no interest in explaining.

The children like to time things so that just when Little Lady is finishing eating and I am going back to sleep, Little Sir wakes up. I get up with him, which wakes her up again. This way we can keep mom awake for around 2 hours, woo hoo!

Recently, this description of what it is like to (not) sleep at night went around Twitter and I LOVE it because it is SO TRUE (there is some language in it, but I think it is hilarious). I especially laughed till I cried about "By the time I head back to my bed, the baby has turned into a starfish". That happens, like, every night. Also, Little Lady is now kicking me, hard, between feedings when I should actually be sleeping. She kicks me until it is time to eat again. I would put her in a crib but, um, Little Sir is in the crib, so there's nowhere else to put her right now.

They have a similar tactic going when it comes to nap time. Some kind of pact where if one is asleep, the other must be awake. Not even talking yet, and they have somehow ganged up on me.

I would estimate that my normal amount of sleep is somewhere between 3-4 hours per night. These hours are not consecutive - usually only 30-45 minutes at a time.
Also, Little Lady is now reacting negatively to my breastmilk any time I drink any caffeine at all, which is totally awesome.

Anyway, I would go on more about this but I've lost my train of thought because I don't sleep much.

He's like the velociraptor of toddlers

2011-06-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

Little Sir is perhaps sometimes too smart for his own (or our) good, I'm afraid. He is proving to be able to escape or thwart all kinds of situations and products that are supposed to contain other toddlers.

Example 1: Suction cup bowls
One of our friends was using these bowls with suction cups on the bottom to feed her toddler, who is a month older than Little Sir. The little guy would eat calmly out of this bowl without picking it up, dumping it, or throwing it, because - hey - it was suctioned to the table! I thought that was awesome since we DO experience picking up, dumping, and throwing of food at pretty much every single meal. I went out and bought the exact same brand she had. Have you seen them? They look like this:

As you might be able to see from the picture, there is a little lip on the suction cup that you pull to release the suction when you want to remove the bowl.

It took Little Sir less than 5 minutes with the bowl to find that lip, pull it, and detach the bowl.
Product FAIL.

Example 2: Door knobs
You know how they make the doorknob covers to keep kids from opening doors?

Yeah, he can open those if he is eye-level with the door - as he was when he was in his old room, standing in his crib and reaching the door. Every morning, he would open the door and holler out of it for someone to come get him. This is part of the reason we had to move the rooms.

Example 3: Big Boy Bed
To be fair, I knew this was going to fail when we started it, but we have to try because Little Lady NEEDS the crib (she is a giant, she outgrew the bassinet and has been sleeping in her swing for about a month now).

However, some of my friends' toddlers were able to be tricked into thinking they couldn't leave their toddler/twin beds with the use of extra-long bed rails and pillows. The idea is that the toddler sees themselves surrounded by "walls" and doesn't think they can get out. I even took a picture of how one of my friends did it with her son and I replicated the bed rail and pillow placement for Little Sir's Big Boy Bed. Here is the picture of the other little boy's bed I copied:

Obviously not my son, because this child is IN the bed...

It took Little Sir less than 10 minutes to pick up each one of the pillows, move them, and then climb right out of the bed and run around the room screaming. Which is also what he did until 11PM last night when I finally gave up and put him back in his crib. At one point, we found him in the rocking chair reading stories to himself. At another time, he had opened his sister's armoire, pulled out some of her new shoes, and shredded the tissue paper stuffing all over the room. Good times.

I'll be posting more on the moving of the rooms and the move to the big boy bed in the next week or so...

Different babies

2011-06-15T16:51:00.000-05:00

Little Sir started a new Mother's Day Out program this week, which runs 3 days a week for 2 weeks out of each month during the months of June, July and August.

Tuesday was his first day and he had a ton of fun! They even teach him about Jesus and bible stories at this new program. He made me these really cute projects.

Their theme was Boxes this week!

While he was gone, Little Lady and I went to the grocery store. This is what made me realize the difference between my two children. I took Little Lady into the grocery store at the age of almost-4-months in her infant carrier in the cart. She just sat in her carrier, staring at me and smiling and sucking her thumb. After a while she fell asleep. She never made a peep except to smile and gurgle and sometimes hit her toy with her fist. IS THAT CRAZY OR WHAT?!

Even at the age of 4 months, going to the grocery store with Little Sir was an adventure. He could not sit still, he wanted to move, move, move or he would talk, cry, or yell. I had to wear him in a carrier or a wrap and even then he would try to smack everything around him, including me. The whole thing would work him up so much that it stressed me out.

Of course, going to the store with him now is a complete circus. I get through it by bribing him with food and toys and grabbing as much as I can, as fast as I can, in an attempt to get out before the shrieking starts. It does not always work.

But going to the store with Little Lady is AMAZING. I could just go up and down the aisle however slowly I wanted. I could comparison shop and look for coupons. She would just sit there and smile!!
Here is a picture of her when we got home:

What the WHAT?!

Now I understand why all the other mothers I know were able to get so much done when they had their first children. They would do these extensive crafts and go places and do things... I could never do any of that with Little Sir because he would freak out in the car and he couldn't sit still and he never EVER napped (still doesn't like it). But Little Lady is the kind of baby EVERYONE ELSE had first! Wow. Complete difference. It's neat to see both personalities!

Working on sitting

2011-06-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

Little Lady really enjoys having us hold her in a sitting position lately. She makes me hold her like that way during dinner, which isn't exactly the most convenient thing. I end up getting food in her hair.

So we pulled out the ol' Bumbo and she seems to enjoy practicing sitting up in it. We do have to prop her back against something because her head really isn't too stable yet.

Little Sir's First Haircut

2011-06-10T20:57:00.000-05:00

Little Sir got his first haircut 3 weeks ago. It seriously took me this long to upload the photos and write a blog post about it. I'm sure his hair has grown out since then. It took him 19 months to grow enough hair to cut! We went to one of those special kids' haircut places and waited for an hour because it was a Saturday. I guess we should have made an appointment...

He got to sit in an airplane and watch Elmo so things went well at first.

Then he realized what was happening

And there was much crying.
I think she was able to cut a good deal of his hair but probably not much because of the writhing.
Still, it looks nice! I think it will grow in thicker now.

Hitting things

2011-06-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

Everyone around here is hitting things right now.

Little Lady recently figured out how to bat things with her hands (OK, I think it was about a week or maybe 10 days ago that she first figured it out). It's very cute, here is a video I took on my iPhone {video here}:

Little Sir, also, is a fan of hitting. This is NOT so cute. He hits: mommy, daddy, random objects... He also throws things. Sometimes he throws things AT us. I think it is all part of the frustration he has because he hasn't figured out how to speak yet. He has almost 30 words but he doesn't realize he can use those words to ask for things he needs. He just gets mad and starts crying until we guess what it is that he wants.

So we borrowed Baby Signing Time from the library and have been watching it over and over... I'm pretty sick of it, but tonight he signed "milk" at us today when we asked him if he wanted milk! I was so proud of him! He did used to know quite a few signs but since he started learning words he's refused to use them. I am hoping he'll start using them again to relieve some of his frustration.

Just so you don't think he is all bad, here are more poor resolution iPhone pictures of Little Sir...

... mopping the floor for mommy

... at the park one day when he refused to play on the equipment but instead walked up and down the concrete dividing wall, all alone

... holding his sister in his lap for the first time! He asked me if he could hold her.

I promise he was not suffocating her. He just wanted to feel her mouth. She was smiling at him like crazy - she LOVES when he comes around, she just stares and grins and grins. They are going to have so much fun when she gets big enough to play!

Random catchup

2011-05-27T21:49:00.000-05:00

About 100 years ago, the kids and I went to the zoo with Sandra and her kids because she has a zoo pass. Little Sir really enjoyed this. Little Lady was like, eh? She slept most of the time and just sat in the stroller grinning the rest of the time. I tried to get some pictures but ended up with really only a few, 2 of which you can't even tell we're at the zoo.
Giraffe:

And here are the two I took of Little Sir climbing around on a bench while we stopped for lunch. He looks very mischievious.

Little Lady continues to be pretty easygoing and just as smiley and happy as Little Sir was at her age. I guess we just have smiley babies. You would never guess to look at them that they hate to sleep. She is starting to nap a lot less. But she loves to be changed!! And she is so cute and tubby when I am changing her:

Yes she is wearing a disposable diaper, but that is because it was her overnight diaper...

I took her to the chiropractor today to work on her weird bendy neck. She was a little out of alignment, which was fixed, but she's still doing the bendy thing. Weird.

She's starting to really want to be propped upright more, or she wants to lay on the mat with some toys so she can kick her legs and work on rolling over. When I put her in the swing or bouncy she gets mad because she wants to be sitting up or laying somewhere that she can kick or twist.

Unfortunately, she HATES all the slings and babywearing carriers we own. As soon as I try to wear her, she starts screaming. The minute I take her out, she's all smiles again! It's unfortunate because it would really help me chase Little Sir if I could wear her more.

In other news, Mother's Day Out is out for the summer, so we'll have a few weeks with no break for me! Then Little Sir will be starting at a summer MDO program at another church nearby. I think this will be fun for him because they are actually going to teach him about Jesus even though he's only 19/20 months old! He probably won't get anything out of it, but it's cute and I appreciate their effort.

Poor Little Sir. He is so very frustrated lately at not being able to communicate. He has completely quit using baby sign language (he refuses) but he also will not use the words that he does have to tell us what he wants. Instead, he randomly starts shrieking and crying and you have to wildly start guessing what it is he wants.

This is how my side goes: Are you hungry? Eat? You want eat? Toy? Car? Something hurts? Ear hurt? Teeth hurt? Diaper? You have poop?

His side: stare at me, start screaming again. Throw himself on the floor and keep screaming. Pick up nearest item and throw it.

*sigh*

How long is this going to last before he figures out he can use the words he's learned to actually TELL ME THINGS?!

We are still around

2011-05-22T22:05:00.000-05:00

Lately we have let Little Sir run around in his towel from Ikea after his bath, here is a super cute picture that Christian took of him playing on the laptop in his towel.

He looks like a little Jedi knight running around the house in his hooded towel. At least it keeps him warmer than when he was running around stark nekkid. He actually has the ability to remove the towel, and he'll do it if you don't watch him.

We went through a period of time where he got really bored of the bathtub and threw huge fits at bath time. I went out and spent about $25 at Buy Buy Baby and got a whole bunch of new bath toys. For a few days after that he asked to take baths throughout the day, and one day he took a bath at 5:30 just so he could play with the toys (usual bath time is 7:30).

A less fun trend: he has been waking up at 6AM or so. NOT COOL AT ALL. Little Lady usually gets up to eat around 5AM and at 6AM I am just lying down to catch one more hour of sleep. Recently, I haven't gotten that hour. It also prevents one of us (either Christian or I) from being able to shower, making the morning really chaotic. What is the deal?! I thought it was related to the ear infections he's been having but we just finished antibiotics so surely they are gone now! I would just leave him in there but he wakes up crying like something hurts. I cannot wait until he is able to speak and express to me why he is crying. I go in and ask him all the different body parts and if they hurt and he just stares at me. I don't think he understands the word "hurt".

Little Lady's hair has started to lay down more flat. It still sticks straight up in the back but the front is angling downward more and more. I wish I had a picture but right now I don't. I'll post one soon! She only rolls over occasionally, I haven't been the greatest at giving her the tummy time she needs, I'm trying to get better at it. And no, she isn't sleeping through the night. Although it would be awesome, I don't really expect it from her, since her brother didn't do it until 10 months. Hopefully in 7 months she'll be on track too.

In unrelated news, we just re-signed a year lease at this house. Not what we had planned because we still haven't figured out how to fit both kids in this place, but there really weren't any viable alternatives available right now. Little Lady is still sleeping in our room in her bassinet because we literally have nowhere else to put her. She's a pretty big baby, but I guess until she learns to sit up she can hang out in there for a while yet. I'd love for the kids to share a room, but Little Sir's current bedroom is so small that there is literally not enough floor space. I even drew up a grid on graph paper that is to scale so that I could move the little pieces around and see if I could make it fit. I think the only solution is going to be for us to switch the office and his bedroom.

I will be working on that in the next few weeks and will probably catalog the process on my other blog.

I'll work on getting more pictures and videos posted!

Thumb sucking

2011-05-09T15:08:00.001-05:00

Little Lady has now not only discovered her flailing hands, but has started to suck her thumb! Some parents might try to discourage this behavior, but I love it because she can soothe herself by sucking on her fingers rather than me having to rush around trying to find a pacifier!

Random cuteness

2011-05-08T23:18:00.000-05:00

I have pictures from this week and weekend to upload which I have not done yet, partially due to the fact that I got some kind of horrible food poisoning on Thursday, which knocked me out for almost 2 full days. I am so behind with everything that I actually forgot to pay our rent and the Mother's Day Out tuition. Awesome. So while I continue to try and make up for things I screwed up, here is a really adorable video that Christian took of Little Sir playing under a sheet: {video here}

And another random picture of Little Lady napping, after she had just finished screaming her head off for no apparent reason:

Little Lady: Rolling over

2011-05-04T09:30:00.001-05:00

Little Lady has been rolling from tummy to back several times the last few days! Here is a video:

YouTube Video

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

R.I.P. Gabby Bradford

2011-04-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

As some of you who follow me on Twitter might know, our cat Gabby was attacked by a dog in our own (fenced) backyard last Thursday. I have no idea how the dog got into our yard, but when I came home with Little Sir and Little Lady from Mother's Day Out on Thursday I found this small white-and-black terrier wearing a collar attacking Gabby in the backyard. I ran out and yelled at it and lunged at it, but it was NOT afraid of me at all, and kept attacking our cat. I finally took a swing at it with some small sticks and finally it decided to just leave, it squeezed through our back fence.

Since I had both kids, I had to call Christian to come home and take the cat to the vet. After $540 of x-rays and whatever else costs $540 at a vet, they kept her overnight and said they thought she would be OK. They gave us pain pills for her and suggested we keep her in the garage away from stress and the other cat.

She was definitely NOT herself when she came home. She just laid on her quilt, and every time we moved her, there was a pool of drool where her head had been. If you know Gabby, you know that being still and being compliant are not necessarily her strong points in life. Christian gave her a pain pill Friday night but I am not sure if it worked or not.

This morning we left home around 10ish to visit some garage sales and go to the White Rock Festival with friends (post on that later!), and when we returned she had passed away. I am sad that it appears she might have been in some pain. I wish we had known she was in pain, we could have had the vet put her down peacefully rather than the possibility that she might have suffered these last 24-48 hours.

Christian dug a hole in our backyard and buried her. Since we rent this house, I took pictures of the grave because we'll have to leave it when we eventually move. In the grave I put some twisted-up twist ties, which were her favorite toy.

Also attending her funeral was a squirrel.

In the last few months, Gabby has ceaselessly pursued this squirrel and its family, who have a nest in one of our trees. She never minded that she has no claws and could not have done anything if she did catch the squirrel (she was not supposed to be getting outside but she was tricky and motivated... that is another story).

When Gabby was lying in the yard after being attacked and I was waiting for Christian to come take her to the vet, this squirrel and it's partner chattered and yelled at her the whole time. I think they might have been mocking her. But the squirrel must have felt bad about that, so it attended her funeral to pay its respects. {video here}

Rest in peace, Gabby. We are glad you are not in pain anymore.
And I am going to find that dog.

Little Lady 2 month checkup

2011-04-29T11:04:00.001-05:00

23 in tall (90th percentile)
12 lb 3 oz (90th percentile)
Head (49th percentile)

Big baby!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Easter Part 2: Family

2011-04-25T22:04:00.000-05:00

For Easter, we took a quick trip to East Texas to celebrate. It was also cousin Natali's birthday party!
We left on Saturday around noon and were back on Sunday by a little after noon. This was actually much shorter than we intended (we meant to stay for lunch and head back in the afternoon), but Little Sir had a bad night of hardly any sleep after being way too excited to nap the previous day, and he was a complete mess by that time. Poor guy slept the whole way back.

Backtracking: first was cousin Natali's birthday party! So hard to believe she is 4 years old already!! It seems like it was not that long ago that Christian and I were newly married and headed out to a camping trip when we got the call that Christina was in labor. By the time we turned around and headed to East Texas, Natali was born!

For this party, Natali had an awesome bounce house!

Little Sir was pretty scared of it, though. I think the unsteadiness of it was unsettling for him.

Everyone ate cake! (I missed taking a picture of the candles because I was nursing Little Lady)

Little Sir tried out Natali's tricycle and enjoyed the horn the most.

There was a little girl there who LOVED babies and wanted to hold Little Lady constantly!

Little Lady is just as easygoing as Little Sir was at that age (and still is) - she's happy when anyone holds her, and doesn't mind who it is.

We spent some time with Gigi that evening and I got some good pictures of Gigi and Little Lady

Also some really sweet pictures of Little Sir and MomMom

We stayed at Gigi's house that night and the next morning got up and gave Little Sir his (Elmo shaped) Easter basket.

In his basket: 3 books, a "spill proof" bubble wand set, crayons, and a coloring book with stickers. He also had a giant chocolate Easter bunny which he did not care at all about, so I am currently in the process of eating it for him. Because I am willing to sacrifice that way.

I didn't get Little Lady and Easter basket because a) she doesn't need anything, and b) she has no idea what is going on. I hope that does not make me a bad mommy. I didn't get anything for Little Sir his first Easter either, and he was 6 months old.

Then we got everyone all dressed and headed out to have Easter breakfast at GrammE and GrampE's church. I didn't get any pictures of that, but here is Little Lady in her Easter dress:

Little Sir just wore the same thing he wore to the Easter egg hunt last week. Boys are soooo much easier to dress...
We did get this one picture of the 3 cousins in the church nursery:

We saw a window of time where we could get on the road and everyone would sleep so we took it, although I wish we could have stayed for the main service and lunch.

However, we are working our way toward attending church on Easter. If you recall, last year we did not make it to church at all. This year, we made it inside a church but not to the service.
NEXT YEAR!
Next year, we will attend a service on Easter! With both children!

I will leave you with two more random cute Easter pics

Easter Part 1: Playgroup

2011-04-24T15:22:00.000-05:00

The kids and I got to celebrate Easter early with Little Sir's playgroup last Thursday. Our friend Stephanie and her son Sam set up a beautiful Easter celebration at their house! Here are some pictures of the snacks and setup:

Little Lady came along to observe, since she wasn't big enough to participate, but she dressed up in her "hip hop" outfit:

Little Lady and Little Sir's Easter baskets from Sam and Stephanie!

In the baskets were adorable ears and bunny tails!

After playing for a while, the kids searched for Easter eggs!

After hunting eggs, they all had special lunch bento boxes!

Then, we put them all on the couch to take a group picture!

This is probably the first playgroup picture Little Sir has been in since he was around 4 months old! It's so cool to see how big all his friends have gotten.

We are so thankful for Stephanie and Sam - we had a great time!!

Part 2 of Easter, the celebration with family, is coming soon...

Gymnastics

2011-04-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

A friend of ours told me about a gymnastics class at a local gymnastics center which is offered once a week for 45 minutes for kids 18 months to 3 years. It is INCREDIBLY cheap so we signed Little Sir right up! He has been having a ton of fun with Coach Steve, who is really great with the kids. I haven't brought a real camera to the class yet but here are some shots from my iPhone!

His first visit, watching Coach Steve and another little girl.

And a video of jumping on the trampoline for the first time! {video here}

Just this week he got up the nerve to jump in the foam blocks pit...

18 months old!

2011-04-20T20:02:00.000-05:00

Today was Little Sir's 18 month birthday! And also his 18 month checkup at the pediatrician.

Here are his current stats:
Height: 33 inches
Weight: 24 lbs. 4 oz.

I can't remember his head circumference but it's in the 50th percentile, which is great for him because his head was small for so long!

We are a little uncertain as to whether he might be having trouble hearing. They used the little hearing test machine but he has some fluid in one of his ears that made it difficult for the machine to get a good read. So we are going to go back in a month and try the machine again.

He is still having bowel issues, the doctor has put him on Lactaid instead of milk and some probiotics to help his stomache heal from the irritation. Hopefully that works because it's now been 14 days with these issues. Poor guy. He doesn't seem to notice except when we change his diaper.

I can't believe it's been only 18 months! It seems like he's been a part of our family forever!

Little Sir's Words

2011-04-16T21:24:00.001-05:00

I've been keeping a list of the words Little Sir knows and can say. Some of them aren't very clear but he says them very decisively:

Uh oh
Ball
Bottle
Nose
No
Banana
Mama
Dada/Daddy
Elmo
Go
Bubble (bubble means bubble, but also "bath" and any body of water)
Duck
Ear
Teeth
Shoes
Star
Sky
Squirrel

Chopsticks, friends, cheeks and nudity

2011-04-12T16:22:00.000-05:00

Recently our friends Heath and Devon came into town and Little Sir got to play with their son who is about 6 weeks older than Little Sir. They still really do "parallel" playing right now and not directly together, but it's fun for them both! I love anything that wears Little Sir out so that he will nap!

We all went out to a chinese (?) restaurant where we like to eat dumplings. Little Sir got to use his first chopsticks. I guess maybe he has seen us eat with them at home or something because he used them very accurately! Of course, the first time we got it on video he was eating a granola bar with them, having skewered it first, but I promise he did it correctly later... {video here}

And here is a picture of his friend, who looks like such a big boy!

Poor Little Sir, he has had quite the bout of poo issues lately. We are on Day 6 of the problems - the doctor said it is viral and could last 7-10 days. This is gross, but the poo is actually acidic and has caused really severe diaper rash. Because we cloth diaper, we'd never experienced diaper rash this bad before. One of the best cures for rash is to go diaperless, so we let him do this several times over the weekend. It's getting MUCH better after doing that. But I had to take tons of pictures of Little Sir running around in his nekkid-ness because it was so funny and cute. I want to post the pictures on this blog, but I don't want to embarrass him later in life or put nekkid pics of my child on the internet indiscriminately, so I am going to tell you to visit Flickr here and if you are my "Friend" on Flickr (meaning you have a Flickr account and you have logged in - click on the upper right corner of the page where it says "Sign in" in tiny letters), then you can see a picture that is marked for Family and Friends viewing only! Again, click here and MAKE SURE YOU ARE SIGNED IN.

Lastly, Little Lady is getting quite the chubby cheeks lately. I had to take these pictures of her doing tummy time, where she gave up on lifting her head and decided to smash her fat cheeks into the couch and start nursing the upholstery:

Materna-tea (Little Lady)

2011-04-09T22:23:00.000-05:00

Just as there was a Materna-tea for the babies born at the birth center the month Little Sir was born, there was one for the month Little Lady was born and we went last week! And when I say last week, I mean two weeks ago, but whatever.

A Materna-tea is an event where all the mamas get together with the babies and tell their birth stories and eat snacks and then afterward, we put all the babies in their diapers on the grass and take pictures (or inside on the carpet if it is rainy, but it has been great warm weather for both my Materna-teas).

Here is one of the pics - can you guess which one is Little Lady? She was one of the biggest babies!

She is the one in the green diaper with all the hair!

And, just for comparison's sake, here is again a picture of Little Sir at his Materna-tea:

Again, in a green diaper... I promise I didn't do that on purpose!

Smiling?

2011-04-08T17:33:00.001-05:00

Little Lady has started regularly doing something that looks like smiling? What do you think?

Little Lady in the world

2011-04-01T08:18:00.000-05:00

For our big announcement, check out my blog post on Conscientious Confusion yesterday.
Let me save you some time: I quit my job today. Now you can go read all the details.

What I really need to get on top of is updating these blogs. I have been trying to take some more pictures lately, and just uploaded a few to Flickr.

Last week Little Lady got to meet her (middle) namesake, Aunt Janell - here is a picture of everyone at Jason's Deli near our house!

Last weekend, she got to meet GrampE for the first time - poor GrampE has been sick since she was born and unable to travel to see us. Hopefully we will be traveling down to see him and GrammE again soon!

I feel really bad that I haven't documented Little Lady's day-to-day life as much as I did with Little Sir.
So I took out the camera and filmed her doing tummy time and attempting to lift her head. This was actually last week and she has gotten MUCH better at it since. Also, it's a little deceptive because she is hardly ever on the official tummy time mat - most of the time she does her tummy time on OUR tummies, when we are holding her.

Last weekend we also took both kiddos to Breckinridge Park here in Richardson. Everyone had a lot of fun...

Until there was TOO MUCH FUN and everyone melted down in the car on the way home.

And here is one more picture of Little Lady in her stylish outfit, all ready to go to Mommy's work so Mommy could quit:

Scottish Rite Children's Hospital playground

2011-03-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

This week we visited a playground in an unexpected place - the Scottish Rite Children's Hospital. One of the girls in our playgroup discovered it. They have two play areas: one for older kids and one for little ones. Despite what it sounds like, you don't have to go in to the hospital - the playground is actually across the street a bit, near a parking lot where you can park.

I loved the way the little playground was so safe for Little Sir. The turf was that soft rubber, which is much better than concrete and even better than pebbles or wood chips.

Again, I wish I would have got more photos but here are a few

There were some statues in the park, Little Sir went up and held hands with the kids in the sculpture!

Random pictures

2011-03-17T20:31:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to keep taking pictures, I just haven't uploaded them all yet.
Here are a few from my iPhone. It's only a 3GS, so the quality isn't great.

Little Lady's first dress! 5 minutes after I took this picture, she pooped all over it.

Whole Foods Lakewood location had a 2 year anniversary party where they had the most amazing petting zoo with a Llama, chickens, goats, ponies, bunnies, and a zebra. Unfortunately I only got a picture of Little Sir with the chicken. I thought I got more, but I guess not...

Then another video of dandelions

2 kiddos

2011-03-12T11:04:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the huge gap in posting. I am thankful to have had a lot of help from family in the last few weeks, so that Friday was actually the first day I was completely alone all day with both kids. It was…interesting! I had plans to take a walk, but we ended up staying in almost all day except for a brief trip to Whole Foods in the car in late afternoon. There was one point where I had a naked toddler and a half-awake newborn corralled in our home office on the daybed where a cat had unexpectedly vomitted and the toddler was screaming to be let down because he did NOT want to watch cartoons anymore (what is wrong with my child??), but he had to because the Eco-maids were cleaning the rest of the house. But that only lasted about an hour.

I should probably do a little catchup on both kids.

Little Sir
He is very big on throwing fits right now. He can manufacture tears instantly and for any reason, such as getting his diaper changed, taking a sharp object away from him, or removing his empty bottle before he has decided to stop chewing on it (yes, he still refuses to drink milk from anything but a bottle. I know, I know…I keep trying different sippy cups but so far no luck-he will only drink water or juice from a sippy, not milk. Don't tell our pediatrician! We are totally going to get in trouble for this at our 18-month appointment).

He has a few more words now, mostly words he repeats when we say them. He is very clear now about the difference between Mama and Dada, which is cute. Up until now, he called us both Dada and didn't seem to distinguish between the two of us.
He is completely obsessed with washing his hands and brushing his teeth, so much that we have to keep the door to the bathroom closed or he won't leave.

He is waving bye-bye because he wants me to leave him alone so he can wash his hands in peace.

He also loves going outside and will put on his monkey leash and stand at the door waving bye-bye. Related: he will NOT hold hands when outside or in public, which is why we have to use the monkey leash. I have been given some dirty looks in public for having my child on a leash, but would you rather me use a monkey leash on my child or let him get hit by a car in a parking lot? OK, then.

He got a book called "The Belly Button Book" and loves to have it read and then look at your belly button. There have been several nasty tantrums when it is time to go to bed and you have to leave him, taking your belly button with you when he would prefer that it stay so he can laugh at it. Here is a picture of him and PawPaw reading the book.

Due to the constant tantrums, we did try taking him off dairy for a few days but it doesn't seem to make much difference. I am not sure if the tantrums are for the new baby, because he isn't being taken care of by our nanny anymore (missing her), or possibly even because he is getting some of his back teeth in. He has a total of 8 teeth now, which is good for him. Two are back teeth (molars?) and aren't all the way up yet. Or maybe he is just practicing for turning 2 years old (kind of early for that!).

He loves to go in the back yard and blow the fluff off dandelions he finds there. We didn't teach him how to do this, he either learned it from GrammE or he just came up with it on his own! Here is a video of blowing on dandelion fluff. (video here)

Also in this video you can see his red galoshes - I got these for him at a consignment sale for rainy days but he LOVES them and wants to wear them EVERY DAY with ALL CLOTHING. So, there you go.

Little Lady
I am super excited that she is gaining weight much better now, and although she still doesn't have a root reflex when it comes to nursing, she is now able to tell us that she is hungry and is nursing regularly.

Asleep in a gift wagon from Christian's workplace

She is doing tummy time and puts a lot of effort into raising her head up!
She also has this hilarious face that she makes where she looks shocked. We have no idea what this face is in response to, if anything, but she makes it all the time!

I haven't got a good picture of her smiling, but she actually smiles quite frequently. I know babies aren't supposed to be able to smile "for real" at only 3 weeks old, so maybe it is gas? But it usually isn't in response to anything biological that we can tell.

Even though she's gaining weight, she still isn't as big as Little Sir was at her age, so the BumGenius 4.0/3.0 All-in-one One Size diapers are still too big for her. The disposables were really making her little bum red and irritated, so I broke down and ordered some prefolds and covers. I have 2 Thirsties covers, one Bummis, and 3 Bambino Mio (which a friend gave us for free). It's taken me a while to figure out how to fold the Indian pre-folds I bought to prevent blowouts, but I think I'm getting better. I'm sure I will master this right about when she gets big enough for the BumGenius and I don't need them anymore...

So, we are all still alive and well over here. How are you?

I luv Daddy

2011-03-03T10:34:00.000-06:00

Things are looking up

2011-02-24T15:04:00.001-06:00

Thanks so much to everyone who commented and wrote or called about my last post!

Today, Little Lady and I went to see a wonderful lady at our church who is a lactation consultant at a major Dallas hospital. She organizes the classes for new moms at our church and provides breastfeeding help as well. She was kind enough to meet me up at the church with her portable infant scale so we could weigh LL both before and after feeding. Of course, LL latched and started sucking like a champ when someone was watching! I was just glad she ate!

It turns out that after one 3-minute and one 4-minute nursing session, LL got only a little less than 2 ounces! That's a very typical amount for a feeding, despite the length of time she sucks being far less than the normal for a baby her age.

We think what might be happening is that my milk just flows very fast, which means LL doesn't need to nurse as long, and also that it might overwhelm her sometimes, causing the need for her to pop off the breast and recover. At which point she sometimes falls asleep.

She does still have the potential for a tiny bit of jaundice, which needs to be monitored so that it doesn't cause her to sleep too much and miss feedings. Fortunately, the clouds lifted a little this afternoon so I could sit with her by a window with indirect sunlight, hopefully that will help.

Little Sir has been on antibiotics for over 24 hours now and, after a rough morning, he's feeling a lot better now!

I think we also have the Care Calendar thing figured out, also due to help from friends from church (and my mom)!

I loved this post from Gina, The Feminist Breeder recently where she spoke about the value of her "village". I am so thankful for our village at Watermark!

Flowers delivered today from my work!

Most recent chaos

2011-02-23T12:10:00.000-06:00

Don't forget to read Little Lady's birth story!

Just wanted to send a quick update to friends & family who I haven't been able to call or email and let you know what's going on and why I haven't called or emailed you back.

Little Lady has been having some breastfeeding issues since her initial success immediately after birth. It seems she doesn't actually have a rooting reflex…she doesn't have the ability or inclination to initiate breastfeeding on her own. We've seen the doctor twice now and she is still within the "safe" range of weight loss, but she is losing weight rather than gaining for sure, considering she only nurses a maximum of 8 minutes total each time, and unless I force her to, she will go without nursing for 3 hours or more. We have been feeding her with a syringe of pumped milk and today were told to try and start a bottle if necessary. It is a very time-consuming and laborious process to pump and syringe feed, and then start it all over again. Also, have I mentioned that I hate pumping? HATE IT. I was really looking forward to NOT pumping with this one, but I had to start pumping on Day 2 of Little Lady's life just to keep her fed.

As for Little Sir, he started getting sick the day we brought Little Lady home, and has progressively gotten worse. We took him to Little Lady's doctor appointment today and the doctor found that he has a double ear infection combined with sinus issues. He is a miserable little guy who hasn't eaten regularly in about 3 days now. His sleep is fitful as well, due to the coughing. A few times he's coughed so hard that he has thrown up. What's sad is that I wasn't even there to be able to see it or take care of him because I am in a constant cycle of feeding Little Lady, who isn't even eating what I feed her.

In addition, if you have asked about bringing us food, there is something wrong with the emails that are going out from our Care Calendar, which is causing problems with anyone being able to sign up to help us. All I can tell you is: yes, we do need meals. And here is the login information, even though I realize it isn't "cool" for me to be posting it. My sweet friend Mel sent it out on our behalf, but something is wrong with the emails or Care Calendar or something which is preventing everyone from getting the link. With all the sickness and feeding issues, I don't even care. I just can't figure out how to meal plan and shop and cook in addition to all this.
http://carecalendar.org/logon/66381
and enter the following:

Calendar ID: 66381

Security Code: 8139

We are hanging in there! The babies are sweet and fun and I love them.

We also LOVE OUR NANNY who has literally saved our lives multiple times in the last week. We are so sad this is her last week with Little Sir, and I am trying not to think about her leaving. I know she is going to a great new position with some friends of ours, so that is a huge comfort. But seriously, I have no idea what I am going to do without her. * tears *

Little Lady's Natural Birth Story

2011-02-22T21:59:00.000-06:00

Don't forget, I'll be having guest posts starting on Thursday, February 24 on my regular blog Conscientious Confusion, during the time I'm out taking care of our new little girl! Be sure to read the great posts by some awesome bloggers!

~~~~~

Little Lady's Birth Center birth story

I had the day off work on Friday. First, we had our regularly scheduled prenatal exam and then my plan for the day was to go get pedicure and massage. At the appointment, I was 4cm dilated and about 50% effaced, which is normal for my body considering the amount of prelabor I have had for weeks in both my pregnancies. Unfortunately, when I got to my spa appointment, the massage therapist cancelled last-minute (while I was at the spa), so I had only a pedicure and a brief neck massage. I had not slept well the night before - typical pregnancy insomnia had me up at 4:30 AM and could not go back to sleep after that.

While I was getting the neck massage at the end of the appointment around 3PM, I had a contraction that felt very real. I ignored it, but headed home instead of doing errands, so I could take a nap. I kept having fairly persistent contractions from that point on, although not always very strong and not evenly spaced. When I got home, I got into the bath in order to slow the contractions down or make them go away, so that I could sleep. I laid down for a little over an hour after the bath, but kept having contractions that woke me up on a regular basis and nausea.

When Christian got home at 6 I did not feel great due the nausea and the lack of sleep and the contractions and cramping that would not go away. We had leftovers for dinner and put Asher to bed. I was starting to have to breathe through the contractions and they were about 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute. Christian was working on our labor playlist on the computer, even though we still didn't think I was actually in labor.

If it was labor, I did not want to go into it feeling so tired and nauseated, so I poured another bath and Christian got me a glass of wine. I wasn't able to finish the wine due to the nausea and I finally decided we might need to call the Beverly, the midwife on call, who had also been the midwife who had seen me at my appointment earlier that day. I told her that I was in the bath trying to make the contractions stop and she said I was welcome to try that for another 15 minutes or so and then call her back because what I was describing sounded like labor to her and she knew how dilated and effaced I had been earlier in the day. I got out of the tub after about 15 minutes and started shaking uncontrollably. Being in the tub had only slowed the contractions a little, a few had breaks of 7 minutes instead of 5. I had Christian call Beverly back and she said we should go ahead and come in. I had been texting our nanny and told her to go ahead and come over - the plan was for her to spend the night at our house, Asher was already asleep.

We got our stuff packed up and the nanny arrived. While I was talking to her I had another break in the pattern of the contractions (I wasn't timing them at that point either), but they came back fully and regularly in the car. We left the house around 10:40 and got to the birth center around 11PM. I was still bummed about having gotten no sleep and not convinced this was "real" labor.

When Beverly checked me, I was still only 4cm, which was disappointing after having annoying contractions all day. I was around 100% effaced, though, and Beverly said the only reason I wasn't more dilated was probably because my bag of waters was still intact and the baby's head wasn't low enough to press on the cervix and cause further dilation yet. She said if we wanted she could break the bag of waters and let the head go down, or we could just do a lot of power walking and work on positions that angled the baby down onto the cervix. We decided on the walking so we walked around the park for quite a while. At one point there was a gush of fluid (I was, of course, wearing my Depends, which are MY BEST FRIEND), but when tested, it was not amniotic fluid. I think the movement of the baby and the contractions made me pee myself a little which is embarrassing. Especially since it happened more than once!

Squatting into a contraction inside the birth center

After we walked for a while the contractions got harder but I was still only dilated to a 5. We went back outside with instructions to stop every 3 contractions and have me squat leaning backwards onto Christian while the contraction was happening. This is definitely the most flattering position EVER, and I was doing it at 2AM in a public park gazebo wearing a birthing gown.

It occurred to me while we were walking that I needed to mentally accept that I would be having the baby that night. I am a big believer in Ina May's theory that what goes on inside your head has a huge impact on the progress of your labor, and it was my belief that my refusal to accept the idea that I was really in labor might be hindering my further dilation.

The next time when we went back inside from the park to be checked, I was 7cm, which was better. I was also feeling very tired, I had been awake almost 24 hours at that point and the contractions were painful and close. We got the go-ahead for me to keep laboring in the tub. I love the tub. I went through transition in the tub during Little Sir's birth and this birth was the same. I tried very hard not to tense up during transition because I was so focused on trying to make sure my cervix opened more.

Cherie showed up and checked me around 2:45 AM, I think, and I was 8 cm. I think the check caused my water to break because something popped and I started losing my mucus plug. My vocalizations changed from humming to more like long grunting and I started feeling pressure to push.

I had the antibiotics hooked up to my port at that time because it was 3AM and had been 4 hours since the last time (I was Group B Strep positive again), but I needed to get out of the tub so I could get into a pushing position. Moving around while needing to push and hooked up to an IV is just the most fun thing EVER. I left the tub at 3:15 AM.

I only pushed on the bed post through maybe one contraction and the head started crowning. I felt the need to keep pushing even when I didn't have a contraction. We moved up to the bed to deliver and, oh, I HATE moving mid-push, I remember I hated it last time too. It is really difficult to move through that kind of pain and I thought I couldn't do it! While things were being adjusted on the bed, I was on my hands and knees between contractions and that was a huge momentary relief.

When the next contraction came, I was in position on the bed and ready to go. I was fully dilated so there would not be any trouble delivering the head without a need for anyone cutting anything. I was really focusing on using my diaphragm to push. I had recently spoken to our Bradley instructor about pushing, since I felt I didn't do it correctly with Little Sir and it wasn't terribly effective. This time it was more effective - again, I felt like pushing even without a contraction so I did that too. Overall, the pushing time was probably around 10 minutes total and then our little girl was born at 3:25 AM! When she came out, she had her hand over her nose, so her elbow was folded and it did cause a little tear when it came out, but it wasn't bad - I didn't need stitches.

Starting to come out...

She was covered in vernix and HAIR! To us, she looked almost exactly like Little Sir did in his first few minutes of life. Christian "caught" her just like he caught Little Sir, and put her on my chest where she stayed for over an hour. She nursed perfectly for about 45 minutes shortly after the cord was cut.

Then, after the birth, Christian got in the tub with her for a LeBoyer bath while I ate some food and rested.

We are so excited to welcome the newest member of our family!

It's a girl!

2011-02-19T19:36:00.001-06:00

We are excited to announce the early arrival of Baby #2, Finn Janell Bradford - she's a girl! She was 7 lbs, 12 oz and 20.25 inches at birth, despite being what the early ultrasound suggested was only 38 weeks and 3 days of gestational age.

For the purposes of my blogs, I'll be referring to her as "Little Lady".

Although we definitely didn't expect her this early, it was a really good spontaneous (not induced), completely natural and unmedicated vaginal birth at The Birth and Women's Center in Dallas (our 2nd birth there).

I can't wait to write up her birth story once I've had some rest and we've uploaded the pictures and video!

February 22nd?

2011-02-10T21:59:00.000-06:00

Today was our 37 week prenatal appointment - technically full term now! We missed last week's appointment due to the snow and ice in the Dallas area so this was my first internal check of this pregnancy. Just as I had suspected (and just like with my pregnancy with Little Sir), I am already dilated to 2cm and rapidly effacing (didn't get the effacement percentage).

Not surprising, since I've been having prelabor contractions for a few weeks, just like last pregnancy. These are a little more than Braxton-Hicks because they are often noticeably painful and they come in intervals for periods of time, just like most women's Early Labor contractions. The difference is that they go away. I am so used to them from the last pregnancy that I ignore them when I can. They do wake me up from sleeping sometimes and sometimes I have to breathe through them, but what can ya do?

Anyway, we got to talking with our midwife about the potential speed of this labor. Last time, my water broke naturally, but that alone did not start labor contractions - those didn't start until the midwife stripped my membranes, and then they hit within an hour. It was only 3 hours and 15 minutes from that time until I was pushing. Because of this history, the midwives are pretty sure this labor is going to be even faster - possibly more like 2 hours, total. That would be awesome, but we shared with them that our concern is that we might not have time to get Little Sir taken care of, since we live 20-30 minutes from the birth center depending on traffic. Having to pack him up and deliver him to the homes of our friends who are in different areas of the city could add another 20-30 minutes to that time.

It has been suggested to us that at our appointment on February 22nd, we come in very early in the day and try some natural labor induction techniques. That way, we can have Little Sir all taken care of with our regular nanny, and he can be with her all day while we try to see if we can get some labor going.

At first, I was really excited about this possibility. I am ready to meet this baby! And I'd love to be able to go up there without being rushed or panicked, and just really focus on the birth. But then I started thinking about it more...this is technically not a medically necessary induction, even if it is "natural" (they cannot/will not administer pitocin). With Little Sir, I went 2 days overdue and I wrote about the induction techniques we tried on our own. What if we try induction techniques and they don't work? I am afraid they might give me Cytotec! If we allow them to strip my membranes, that puts a time limit on labor because it exposes the baby to potential infection unless I deliver the baby within that time period. What if my body is not ready and the membranes are stripped but contractions don't start? Will I be transferred to the hospital and given pitocin? I think we all know how I feel about pitocin.

Anyway, we have one appointment between now and then (next week's appointment). Hopefully we can see at that time whether I'm continuing to progress (most likely I will have). If I'm at 4cm by February 22 (I was at 4cm, fully effaced, and the baby's head was at zero station at that point in my last pregnancy), wouldn't that indicate that induction might be successful?

What are your thoughts? Is this an unnecessary induction?

Eating Crackers in the Closet

2011-02-03T15:00:00.005-06:00

Here's another hilarious video of Little Sir, who decided to walk himself into the pantry and close himself in. Several times I came up and opened the door but he would just pull it right back closed on himself. While he was in there, he helped himself to his favorite box of rice crackers.
(video here if it's not embedded)

Playin' the blues

2011-02-02T20:39:00.001-06:00

As a silly joke, I got Christian a harmonica as a stocking stuffer this Christmas. It turns out that Little Sir LOVES that thing - he has loved to hear Daddy play it for him ever since he first heard it. Just today, when we were cooped up inside, Daddy showed him how to play it for himself! He's been trying for a while but now he is finally REALLY getting the hang of it.

I took a video of him playing and swaying to the music he was making when he first started making soft sounds with it, but by the end of the day he was blowing it hard and making some really genuine harmonica noises. He didn't want to put it down, even to eat (which was gross, because he blew food into it). He's such a musical little guy!

Here's the video of his first few tries:

What's even funnier was later, when he was throwing one of his characteristic fits about something, he still had the harmonica in his hands, so he was wailing and then started wailing into the harmonica.
He was totally playin' the blues about all his woes.
We were laughing at that one! Wish I could have gotten THAT on video!

15 month checkup

2011-01-26T11:42:00.000-06:00

Monday was Little Sir's 15 month checkup! As you might know, he has always been ahead of the curve in the 90th-75th percentiles for his height and weight, and when people tell me "oh, he is going to be tall", I have always countered with, "at some point he might just grow into his height and weight".

Well, it looks like I am right! He is now starting to "even out" and is measuring and weighing in more of the 50th-70th percentiles:

Weight: 22 lb, 14 oz. (70th percentile)
Height: 31.75 inches (I can't remember this percentile but I think it might be 50th)
Head: 46 inches (10th to 25th percentile)

Finally, his head is catching up and isn't measuring so small!

He got in a little trouble for still drinking milk from a bottle... apparently he should be drinking it from a sippy like he drinks his water and juice mixture at meals. So we tried again with the sippy and still no luck getting him to drink milk out of it.

He still only has about 6-7 teeth total. The doctor said this might be an indication that his bone growth is a little behind his actual age, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but just means he could grow taller at some point I guess.

He had a lot of fun playing with the toys and eating snacks in the examination room, here are some pics.

This one is my favorite, a perfect illustration of how suddenly his moods change nowadays:

Park Lane Playground

2011-01-25T15:44:00.000-06:00

Did you know there is a playground at the Shops at Park Lane (the shopping center with the new Whole Foods - THE ONE WITH THE CUPCAKE BAR)? I had no idea! Christian found it while I was at the Aveda Institute getting my hair cut on Saturday morning, he and Little Sir were playing there:

34 weeks

2011-01-19T18:05:00.000-06:00

Today was just a normal prenatal appointment, after this I think they go to every week.
Christian wasn't able to make it so I taped this video of the Doppler, you can see the little one movin' and movin'! (video here)

Sleeping is for wimps

2011-01-17T13:28:00.000-06:00

Once again, we've had some rough times lately with Little Sir and the sleeping. Thank goodness he's still sleeping pretty solidly all through the night (I, however, get up every 2-3 hours to pee. Which is driving me insane). Unfortunately, the naps during the day are getting downright sporadic.

I thought at first that he was attempting to drop one of his naps and go down to 1 nap a day. As much as I dread the thought of this, since the timing is terrible with Baby #2 due in the next 6 weeks or so, I was willing to work with him. Our nanny, of course, is awesome. For some reason he sleeps for her quite frequently. But when we have him on weekends or for a whole week like we did for the holidays, the child often went 2-3 days at a time with NO NAP AT ALL.

I'm not saying we didn't try. This Saturday we tried 5 TIMES to put him down for a nap, and each time it failed. I leave him in his crib usually for an entire hour before I give up (in the case of 5 times, he was with a babysitter who tried 2 of those times while we were out). He doesn't cry - it's not a matter of letting him "cry it out" because he's not crying, he's just refusing to sleep. He plays in there, with his blanket, his toys, and when he's thrown everything out of the crib, he plays with his own feet, sings, bounces around the crib standing up like a WWF wrestler bouncing off the cords of the ring, and now he has taken to reaching outside the crib and grabbing things like his laundry basket and the humidifier. He is a very creative child. He has long conversations which no one can understand and he makes up long songs which he sings and sings. In his crib, during nap time.

Of course when he gets up, he hasn't rested at all, so he is prone to completely bipolar behavior. One minute he's laughing and having fun, the next he is bawling with huge crocodile tears and no one can figure out why. He has also completely giving up baby sign language, which makes communicating with him impossible. Instead, he gets frustrated and throws huge tantrums, completely with writhing on the floor. Which is not a big deal when we're at home, but isn't so easy for me to deal with in public since it's hard enough for me to get down on the floor when I'm this huge, much less grab a 25+ lb. child and try to keep him from hurting himself or destroying things.

I would like to apologize to the 2-3 people who attempted to talk to me at church yesterday while I was waiting for the childcare to open and he was throwing a huge tantrum in front of everyone. I believe at several points I was holding him by his feet while he dangled upside down in an attempt to escape.

The thing is, he wanted to run up and down the hallways where there were tons of other moms and kids, and he is SO FAST with his running now that I can't keep up with him, in my current state. I really needed him to just sit on the bench with me and wait, but he would have nothing of that. Christian was parking the car because there were no "kids" spots left, so I had no help. Of course, as soon as Daddy showed up, he was fine.

~~~~

I have seen some great blog posts online lately from other moms with "challenging" kids. Most of them had super easy babies with #1 and thought, "Oh, this mom thing is no big deal! I can take 2-3 more of these kiddos!" and then Baby #2 came along and was just like Little Sir.

Is it wrong that makes me kind of happy?

I mean, at this point I have NO expectations for Baby #2. I have no delusions that there is anything I can do to have a "compliant" child or not. They might BOTH be like this. Who knows. One of my current favorite bloggers wrote a post "Shoulda Coulda Woulda Parenting" about all the things we thought we knew, that it turns out we don't. It has some cursing in it, but I kind of thing it is appropriate to the topic ;-)

The moral of the story being, if anything, my non-sleeping child might possibly have prepared me more for having 2 kids under the age of 2 than anything else could have. If I had one of those little angel children who eat and sleep exactly like the books say, Baby #2 might come along and make my poor little head explode.

As it is, I haven't had more than 2-3 consecutive hours of sleep in around 2 months and I am READY TO HAVE THIS BABY!

6 more weeks!

Poop

2011-01-13T14:41:00.000-06:00

I know that a number of our friends and family will probably coming by the house after Baby #2 is born, and I wanted to just tell you about why there is a "big boy potty" in the bathroom we use for Little Sir.
Nooooo we are not trying to potty train him at 15 months!

We are not THAT insane... yet.

For the last week, every single night, Little Sir has been pooping IN THE BATH TUB! So gross! Either directly in the tub or on the bath mat outside the tub as he is being dried off! Only one night did he skip the pooping, and then he pooped in his sleep and had to have a diaper change at 2AM. Which NEVER happens anymore!

Personally, I am tired of scrubbing the bathtub and putting the bath toys through the dishwasher to sanitize or washing the bath mat every night. So, today I bought him one of those little kid potties. I think we are going to try to aim the poop into the potty if we can. It also turns into a stool, which is super handy for beside the bath tub because now that I am so HUGE it is really hard for me to get up from down there when it's my turn to bathe him (usually Christian bathes him for this reason - also because Daddy is much more fun when it comes to playing in the tub than Mommy. Mommy = BORING). I also bought him a potty book with Elmo and sounds so that if he has to sit there for a few minutes waiting for the poop, he might be more OK with it. We tried aiming him toward the big potty, but he was scared of it.

So, keep your fingers crossed for Christian's ability to aim that poopin' baby at a more convenient receptacle...

Snow in Dallas

2011-01-09T23:12:00.000-06:00

Today we had a pretty good snow which actually did accumulate somewhat! I was surprised that it did, since it really hasn't been cold here the last few days.

When Little Sir woke up from his nap, we let him go outside and take a look:

Christian took a video of Little Sir's experience:

After walking up and down the street for a while, he was pretty wet so we brought him in and he was MAD, he threw a huge fit. He wanted to stay out there until his face froze off (it was getting pretty rosy). We just love throwing huge fits nowadays. Good times!

32 weeks prenatal

2011-01-06T16:41:00.000-06:00

Well we are down to having prenatal appointments every 2 weeks for Baby #2. Then, in February, it will be every week, as it is toward the end.

Because they are so frequent and, honestly, I don't keep up with everything so well, I haven't really been blogging about them.

Nothing really out of the ordinary, this pregnancy is very much like it was with Little Sir, except this time I am NOT going on bedrest! At 32 weeks I was put on bed rest last time.

This time, everything is looking good. It is very possible I might have some preterm labor symptoms off and on, but they are the same as last time and last time I went overdue, so no one is worried about it. Again, NOT GOING ON BEDREST.

Looks like this baby is a little smaller than Little Sir was - he or she has a LOT of room to move around in there, and is taking advantage of it. Never stops moving!! I am measuring right at the correct week, but the baby is just spinning and spinning and floating in there. Has a little tiny head (but so does Little Sir - still has a small head, even as a toddler). A slightly smaller baby could indicate a girl... who knows? As long as it is looking healthy (from what we know, it is), I am fine with it being a little smaller - hopefully that will make the pushing phase of labor go faster. I am really not very good at pushing, apparently. And it is the worst part.

So, that's all the updates for now.
8 more weeks or so to go!

Funny hat

2011-01-03T07:14:00.000-06:00

While we were in San Antonio, Little Sir encountered a lovely bucket with a removeable handle belonging to cousin Mazzie. He used to have one himself, which was confiscated when he kept eating the handle.

This time, he decided to create a necklace from the handle and a hat from the bucket. It was really funny because he was intent on keeping the "necklace" on his neck even though it was not round.

Step 1:

Step 2:

Complete ensemble:

Burger King

2010-12-28T08:00:00.023-06:00

On our way down to South Texas to celebrate the holidays with my in-laws, it became necessary for us to stop somewhere and let Little Sir run around like a crazy man to get his energy out. We would have aimed for a Chik-Fil-A but we were traveling on a Sunday and those good folks don't work on Sunday (good for them! I wish more fast food places would make an effort to give their employees a day of rest - I know how demanding fast food employment is!).

So, we ended up at a Burger King in Georgetown. I know what you are thinking - Jenny, don't you advocate against that kind of poor nutrition? And I will admit, we actually ate at the Schlotsky's next door (their bathrooms were nice and clean and had a well-maintained diaper changing station), and then we walked over to the Burger King. We did buy a chocolate shake, of which we drank about half between the 2 of us, so we were paying customers.

Little Sir really enjoyed the play time, shortly before he completely melted down again. It was a meltdown kind of day: he has a cold, he is teething, and we put him in the car for around 7 hours. He only napped a little less than 2 of those hours. But for a short time at Burger King, he was happy.

So: thank you, Burger King - now, can you do something about all the trans fats and high fructose corn syrup in all your food? Kthaxbai!

Christmas fun

2010-12-27T16:57:00.001-06:00

We had a fun Christmas morning here at the Family Is Us house - it was our very first Thanksgiving at our own house without having to cram all our stuff and a baby into a car right after getting off work the day before Christmas and drive somewhere. We were all able to go to bed in our own beds, sleep in, and when we got up, open presents!

Well, we did let Little Sir open a present on Christmas Eve. We would have let him open more, but he was getting pretty fussy from refusing to nap all day on Christmas Eve, so it was all we could do to get him to focus on the one gift without melting down. Here he is opening a gift from Aunt Christina, Uncle Josh, and cousin Natali, a new bath towel:

He liked it so much he stood on his head. This is a compliment.

Christmas morning we got up and opened gifts. I actually only got one still photo of Little Sir opening a gift. The rest were all videos.

I look fat in a lot of the videos so here is the one that I feel comfortable posting. It is a video of one of his favorite gifts, a tent which we got from Ikea for $10.

His second favorite gift was a car ramp set I got for free at BlogHer 2010 - it just goes to show you, how much you spend doesn't matter!

Speaking of cheap and amusing gifts, I bought some silly stocking stuffers for Christian and one was a pair of drinking straw eyeglasses. He made some chocolate milk at breakfast and Little Sir was very impressed by how the whole thing worked.

A final shot of Little Sir enjoying his tent with a shirt he got from GrammE and GrampE.

A better shot of the shirt: in fact, he did just poo right before this picture was taken, so the shirt is accurate.

Hope your Christmas was just as relaxing and fun!

5 Years

2010-12-23T10:18:00.000-06:00

5 years ago today, Christian and I began this family that is us!

If you want to know more about our wedding (or lack thereof), read this post from Texan Mama's wedding dress linkup.

It has been a good 5 years - I am so thankful that Christian is still around! I know it was difficult for a guy who spent 30 years doing his own thing to get used to living with someone who had also been living on her own for 27 years.

We have made lots of little decisions together, such as buying new furniture, buying and selling cars (we still miss you, veggie oil Mercedes!), and moving from apartment to house to house. And then there have been the big decisions, like when we decided to add Little Sir to our family.

One of the biggest things we have to be thankful for is our church community at Watermark - starting out with our Foundation Group and, after the first year, moving on to a Community Group. There are changes coming to that group as well, as people move on and we all adjust to having multiple kids. But we know that some form of community has been a huge factor in our continual striving for success in our marriage! Without accountability, someone to kick our butts when we are being dumb, an outside opinion when we can't resolve something, a sounding board for our decisions, and a place to go where we are reminded of the Biblical truths we need to live out in our daily interactions, our marriage would not be what it is.

To Christian
I am so thankful for your constant faith and encouragement when I get neurotic! For never worrying about where the money is going to come from because you know we will be taken care of. And for being such a valuable worker to your employers that you are never between opportunities for long! God has really blessed your faith. For being such an awesome birth coach and a wonderful dad. For still thinking I am attractive when I am super pregnant. For your sense of humor that even I don't always get. For your endless fascination with learning, philosophy, and theology - which I also don't understand, but am always impressed by.

Can you believe it has been 5 years and that we are about to have 2 children with our DNA? It seems pretty crazy. Can't wait to see what the next 5 years bring!

Huge already

2010-12-22T13:45:00.000-06:00

I ran across some photos the other day that I took RIGHT BEFORE Little Sir was born, i.e., 40 weeks or so, and I swear I am bigger now at 30 weeks than I was then. I can't find that 40 weeks photo anymore, but here is a photo of me at 35 weeks with Little Sir:

And here is me today at 30 weeks:

Obviously, I am bigger already.

Strangers in the stores are already making the comments about me having the baby in the store, and most people are assuming I am having "a Christmas baby". Noooo.... apparently I have something like 2 more months to go.

It's not like it's super fun for me, either. I have a lot more back pain with this one. So shut your face, people!

Communicating

2010-12-17T11:38:00.000-06:00

Little Sir has been working on his communication skills lately. He gets very frustrated when he wants to tell us something and we don't understand him. He's known the sign language for "please" for several months now, and while he used to know "more" and "all done", he started to disregard them and use "please" for everything. This is a problem because we don't know what he is saying "please" for! It could be to reach a toy, for some food, for something he is not allowed to have, to be picked up... anything.

So, we are working harder on "more" and now a new one "help". "Help" is good for when he wants us to help him with a toy or to do something he is having trouble with. He signed it to me just yesterday when he wanted me to pull an animal off of a toy that was stuck.

He is also started to get clearer with the few words he does know. He is pretty good with "bye". Every night when we put him to bed, Christian gets him into his PJ's and he sits in the glider with me for a story. He very clearly says "bye-bye" to Daddy when Daddy leaves the room. He also says "bye" when anyone approaches the door with their car keys.

This morning both Christian and I went into the office. I left first, and then Christian left when the nanny arrived. She texted me right after he left:
"Asher let me know u had left. When Christian left he said 'nanna bye-bye, dada bye-bye' lol! So he told me u had left too :-)"

I think that is the first "real" sentence he has strung together! I am glad he is finally calling me something other than "Da Da" also.

There is one other word he says repeatedly, it sounds like "Dee-doo". I have no idea what this means. He says it very clearly and sometimes he is pointing at something, sometimes he isn't. He looks right at you and says "dee-doo". Christian says maybe he is saying "thank you" but sometimes no one has done anything he could be saying 'thank you' about? I guess we'll have to just keep working on that one!

Things he likes

2010-12-14T10:02:00.000-06:00

We are getting to the point in a toddler's life where opinions are very strong. There are many things he does not like: meat, anything resembling meat, vegetables, sleep of any kind, diaper changes. He has also learned to throw himself on the floor and have fits, which is extra fun.

Fortunately, there are also things he does like:

His crocheted blanket - he loves to play hide and seek with this, to have you sit under the blanket with him
His keyboard and mouse
Sitting on mommy's balance ball
Fruit
Buttermilk biscuits
Reading books in his new glider/rocker
RUNNING!
SCREAMING!
Waving at random people in stores

For Baby #2

2010-12-05T10:00:00.005-06:00

Poor Baby #2, he/she gets no real face-time on this blog. Of course, we haven't seen his/her face yet, but still...

Anyone who knows us is going to be shocked, but we have actually picked a name we like that would work for a girl! It's a huge feat for us because we actually went to the birth center the morning I gave birth to Little Sir without any good ideas about girl names. Thank the Lord he was a boy!

We actually don't watch prime time TV, so we were not aware that the name we picked is apparently the name of a character on a VERY popular prime time television show. When BabyCenter released their Top 100 Baby Names this week, our name was not in the Top 100, but there was a note that some of the TV-show-related names are rising sharply in popularity. We are really bummed about this, since we go for unique names. But fortunately, the character on the TV show is male and we were planning on using the name for a girl. Well, we were planning on using it for either, but I think we could come up with another boy name if needed.

Things we have done so far to prepare for the new one:

just like with Little Sir, our very first baby purchase was (more) BumGenius All-in-One One Size cloth diapers! This time, we got the 4.0's. Honestly, I can't tell a lot of difference from the 3.0's, but I am excited to have expanded my stash! Wish we could have afforded the new patterns, but not right now. Maybe once we have the baby and know the gender...
more t-shirts with the little gloves on the end (the ones from Little Sir are so worn they have holes!) Worn in combo with cloth diapers and BabyLegs, they are perfect for all the diaper changes when the cord stump hasn't fallen off yet.
a kind of armoire thing from Ikea in which to put the new baby's clothing! Little Sir is currently taking up his whole closet and dresser with his clothing so Baby #2 needed a place for his/her stuff!
an amazingly cute giraffe-print Miracle Blanket - I know we already have several of these but this one matches the room so well!
a bassinet - the Nature's Purest Safari bassinet was on our baby registry but we found it on Craigslist for $50! It's in our garage right now...
signed up for Bradley childbirth refresher courses. I can't tell you how little physical preparation I've done this time around.... it's pretty bad. We are hoping these classes will remind us of the comfort measures, positions, and preparations we should be doing!
Sewed a valance for Little Sir's room so that we could used the curtains I made for the last house in this house. This is really the only decorating I am planning on doing, since they are going to be sharing a room at some point if we don't move again before Baby #2 is out of the bassinet.

I feel much better about getting these things done while I was still in my 2nd trimester and had the energy.

There are still things to do...

buy the birth-day things: olive oil, rice and tube socks (for baby and mama warming!), new undies and socks, and find a good nightgown to give birth in!
wash all the newborn clothes and blankets
make a new playlist for birth
buy a larger mattress for our bed (for co-sleeping)
find a glider/rocker we like and buy it
a double stroller (I am drooling over the City Select by Baby Jogger, even though it is pricey)

Christmas preparations

2010-12-04T08:00:00.008-06:00

We have our tree up!
Little Sir, helping with the tree:

We are doing two advent calendars.
One Playmobil, which we also did last year:

And one felt plush wreath, handmade by my grandmother, which is the same one we used when I was growing up:

I don't know if we will make it to see a Santa this year (I'd like to, but I'd have to take a day off work and Christian couldn't be there so that would be a bummer), but we are planning on attending the Richardson Christmas Parade this year! Hopefully we can get some good pictures!

His new trick: telephone

2010-12-03T09:05:00.000-06:00

We have no idea where he got this, but lately Little Sir has been picking up objects of all sorts and holding them to his ear, saying what sounds very much like "hello". He does it with: his computer mouse, play vehicles, small books, and even food. Here he is doing it with a piece of biscuit at breakfast:

He just picks up the biscuit, holds it to his ear, and says "hello". I can only imagine he is pretending telephone. It's just weird because neither of us really talk on the phone very much in front of him.

One day when he did it, his nanny asked him "Are you talking on the telephone? Who are you talking to? Are you talking to GrammE and GrampE?". When he heard their names, he ran to the hallway where the pictures of GrammE and GrampE and Nanny and PawPaw are and pointed at them! We asked him again later "Where are GrammE and GrampE?" and again he pointed to the pictures in the hallway! What a smart dude!