25-ish Weeks

Okay, I admit it, I'm getting a little bit behind on my weekly photos.  She turned 24 weeks a week ago yesterday, and I just took this photo on Sunday...and I haven't gotten around to the week 25 shots yet.  Parker loves playing with these blocks, and it's hard to find a time that he's asleep, she's awake, and there's decent light (being January doesn't help much either).

 

 

But, this toy-cluttered shot is probably a more accurate representation of our lives anyway.

 

Cecily is becoming a more interactive little girl.  She loves watching Parker play and even gives him a giggle when he tickles her.  For the most part, she's a pretty happy baby, although she does sometimes make you work for it if you want her to smile.

 

She's still fussing a lot when I feed her, so we've changed her meds from the Zantac to Prevacid.  It's a lot easier to get her to take the pill once a day than pour the liquid fire down her throat twice a day, but I'm not sure that it's really making a difference either way.  But, outside of mealtime, and when I'm trying to sleep, she's become a pretty happy baby.

 

 

We started her on solids a week or so ago.  She's loved the rice cereal and the avocado, but the pumpkin was a huge NO!  (I know, pumpkin is a random baby food, I just happened to have some in the freezer and thought I'd try it out - Parker liked it)

 

 

Unlike her brother, she LOVES the mesh feeder and will munch on anything we put into it.

 

Right now she is suffering a really nasty diaper rash, so I've stopped the solids until I can figure out if it's the food or the Prevacid that's causing it.  She's a little jealous watching us eat at the dinner table, but the poor little one has a very sore bum at the moment. 

 

Her sleeping is still pretty patchy.  She's pretty consistently taking three or four 20-30 minute naps a day, with the occasional 2-3 hour nap thrown in once or twice a week, just to keep us on our toes.

 

Her night-time sleeping remains lousy.  When asked, I usually say that on a good night, she sleeps in two hour increments.  The past few days have been closer to 1 1/2 hours.  We're starting to put her down un-swaddled; at the moment, it doesn't seem to make much difference either way.

 

She's getting more coordinated every day.  She loves putting things in her mouth, and can even occasionally get her binky back in after she swats it out.

Teething

 

Cecily is fully in the middle of teething and is currently putting anything and everything in her mouth.

 

Seriously, anything: 

 

But she also does enjoy her Sophie.  Parker never really got into the Sophie, so I'm glad at least one kid is going to get my money's worth out of this thing.

 

 

That said, I'm not expecting to see a tooth any time soon.  Parker's first tooth didn't come until 9-months, so I expect we have a lot of teething to go before we see any action.

Helping

Parker found an old electric toothbrush in a travel pack somewhere, he's been cleaning the walls with it since.

 

 

Parker is a huge helper in the kitchen.  Granted, his help usually involves doubling the time & effort involved in making dinner, but it's the spirit that counts.

 

It does, however, mean we have to have a lot of discussions about keeping our fingers out of the way when Mama's using the "very-sharp" knife.  He gets his own "not-very-sharp" knife and cutting board, but apparently mine is always more exciting.

Not my best offering

Yesterday was Wesley's 3rd Birthday.  We're having a party this evening, and in-exchange for taking Parker all afternoon, Denise asked me to bake the cake.  ...okay, it wasn't such a clear tit-for-tat, but she did ask me to bake a cake, and she did take Parker (not to mention arranging for Grandma to take him over-night).

I'm not really much of a fancy-looking-cake maker, I'm more of a tastes-really-good-but-just-looks-like-a-cake baker.  But, I know that 3-year-olds aren't overly concerned about gourmet cakes, as long as it looks cool and contains copious amounts of sugar, they're happy.

All that to say, I've never made a theme cake, and Wesley was asking for dinosaurs.  So, off to pinterest I go, looking for inspiration.  Had I had the time and talent required (or at least time for a practice run), I would have done something like this little guy:

But he is clearly beyond my ability at this point, so I went with something a little more simple.  When in-doubt, cover with toys and candy, right?

Hopefully it's edible.  I have a perfect chocolate cake recipe, but I've never made a white cake from scratch before and although the cake was PERFECT when it came out of the oven (flat top, just the right done-ness), when I came back half-an-hour later, the whole thing had fallen, so the cake part might be a little dense.  Which was when I was really wishing I'd just bought the cake mix I'd seen on-sale at the store, but who knows what chemicals are in those things? Apparently the chemicals are what make it light & fluffy. 

I have a pretty good idea that there will be more frosting than cake.  But what 3-year-old is going to complain about too much frosting, right?  ...right?

Happy birthday, anyway.

Cecily's first solids

I have been extremely reluctant to start Cecily on solid foods.  It is just so much more convenient to breastfeed, you don't have to make it, you don't have to remember to take it with you, it's less messy, plus the whole diaper-situation.

But, just about everyone (including our Pediatrician and Cecily herself) has been telling me that she's ready, so I guess it's time.

I had planned to start her with avocado, but it appears that the avocado I bought won't be ripe for another month or two, so today we went the traditional route and started her on brown rice cereal.

I think she is a fan.

My (possibly faulty) memory from Parker's early eating days were that he was so eager to get the food into his mouth that he wasn't willing to waste a drop on his face or clothes.  Cecily, on the other hand, was perfectly willing to swim in the stuff.

You turn your back for one second...

Before I had kids, I never would have expected that I'd be the neurotic, helicopter-type parent.  But, much to my surprise, I am; I very seldom let Parker out of my sight (or the sight of someone responsible).  We went to visit a friend last week and her son & Parker were running up & down the stairs playing, I kept wanting to double-check that he would be okay by himself upstairs.

I don't have a real explanation for this outside of my natural worry-wort nature, and a 2-year-old's natural inclination to constantly break things and/or themselves.

But, this week, I was reminded of why I don't leave him alone:

Wednesday Morning, Parker & I consolidated some of my spices and I put the empty spice jars in his kitchen for him to play with.  I come back into the room and he had emptied the (large & full) oregano jar into his kitchen sink:

Oh well, the mess is done, so we spent the rest of the morning playing with oregano.

Later that day, I came into the dining room to find him sitting in Cecily's high chair with the lap top in his lap.

The next morning, I got up early to prepare an egg dish for church.  I had everything laid-out when both kids woke up at the same time.  I let Parker out of his room and in the time it took me to change Cecily's diaper, he was here:

See all those egg shells on the counter?  Parker did every last one of them.

 

I will say, although there were egg guts all-over Parker and the counter, he'd managed to keep them off the floor and there were actually very few shells that I had to dig out.

23 Weeks

5 Months!

Our girl is 5 months old!

I know it's been said already, but ever since we started the Zantac, Cecily has been such a happy baby.  She's smiling & laughing all the time.  She continues to be an opinionated little girl, however, so if she's unhappy about anything, she's not afraid to let the world know with her screaming. 

She's starting to get more coordinated.  She loves to grab hold of whatever she can reach & put it in her mouth.

I think we're getting closer to teeth, since she's always chewing and drooling.  But judging by the red marks on her gums, she might be starting with her lower canine teeth (pretty sure that's not what they're really called).  I realize that teeth are supposed to grow in a certain order, but that doesn't mean that they will.

Cecily is a pro at rolling over, tummy time is pretty much a thing of the past, she will roll over almost instantly after being put down.  I've seen her roll over back onto her tummy once, but she hasn't done it again since then.  She is often reaching for things, so she turns around & around in circles with her head as the center point.

Cecily still sleeps like a newborn, she usually takes 3-5 naps in a day, very seldom for more than 20-30 minutes.  Two weeks ago, she had two nights in a row where she slept through the night for 9+ hours.  Since then, she's been waking up EVERY HOUR at night.  Her Mama's tired.

I'm starting to think that we might need to send Parker to Grandma's for the weekend and let her cry it out a night or two.  ...maybe...  We'll see, I'm not ready for it yet.

We went in for a weight check this week, she's still a tiny one.  After her stellar 9-oz weight gain last time, she only gained 8 oz, up to 12lbs, 8oz this week.  The Dr said it's not great, but not horrible, so we're not worrying about it too much.  He did say that when I start her on solids I might want to mix a little olive oil in to up the calorie count.

At the moment, I'm not really eager to start solids.  She's probably ready, but what we're doing now is pretty darn convenient for Mama, so we're going with that for as long as we can.

We discovered this weekend that Cecily will not take the bottle, no matter what.  It's unfortunate that she decided this on a weekend where I was planning to be away from her on three separate occasions.  There was a lot of screaming involved and I think Daddy might be ready to go back to work tomorrow.

No Mama, is not too small

Parker has re-discovered the Jumperoo.  He wanted to try it out, I'm pretty sure it's not great for the structural integrity of the BABY toy, but whatever.  He is LOVING it.  He has spent over an hour in it across the past two days.  Which is probably more than the total amount of time he played with is when he was a baby.

He's been jump, jump, jumping and having a blast.

Cecily's had her turn as well.

But except for when her brother is playing with her, she doesn't really care either way about the Jumperoo.

Which is probably for the best since Parker isn't so great at sharing at the moment.