One Month!

 

Our baby girl is one month already!

 

 

I know everyone says this, but it's gone so fast.

 

 

Cecily's sleeping pretty well, with usually at least one 4-hour stretch at night.  The hardest part is waking her up for her meals.  Once she's no longer starving, she konks out and very little in the world will wake her long enough to finish her feeding.  Which is why I'm stuck stripping her naked at 3 am, and then wiping her down with the washcloth.

This could be part of why she's not growing quite fast enough.

 

The other reason could be the sheer volume of spit-up.  For the past two days, she & I both have had to change our clothes at least once due to regurgitated milk.  She's lucky my milk supply is better than it was last time, so I'd certainly be crying over spilled milk.

 

For the past two weeks, Cecily has had a terrible case of baby acne.  The crusty/scabby part seems to be getting a little better, but she's still pretty spotty at the moment.  I wish I'd scheduled our newborn family photos the first few days we were home from the hospital before it started, as it is, we might be taking her newborn photos when she's in college if I have to wait for the acne to go away.

 

 

She made her first cooing sounds yesterday.  She's seldom awake and not eating (or screaming because she'd like to be eating), but her happy awake moments are starting to get longer.

 

Parker still loves, loves, loves, his little sister, although I think that over the weekend he manifested his hidden jealousy by not sleeping, at all.

 

If you'd asked me how I was doing a few weeks ago, my response would have been, "Great, we're doing great, the 2nd is so much easier than the first!"  If you ask me this week, I'd probably say, (insert long pause) "We're good".  We really are doing quite well, but I think that the sleep deprivation and taking care of two kiddos is starting to pile up and I'd probably benefit from a few moments to myself for a good cry (and a cocktail).

 

None of which was helped by the great zoo fiasco of yesterday, but that's another blog post.

 

But, all-in-all, I love these two kiddos and I can't believe I'm lucky enough to have them.  I'll sleep when they're in college...and that's probably when I'll get to cleaning the bathroom as well.

 I love the way her little eyebrows go up when she's waking up (or when I'm attempting to wake her up during a feeding).  Parker did the same thing.

 

By the way, don't you love this little romper?  It's from Etsy, but I can tell I'm starting to get my feet back under me because I'm totally starting to think about where I could find similar fabric and make her a few more.

Cecily still prefers to sleep swaddled, but when she does fall asleep without the swaddle, her hands go straight up "over" her head...just like Mama (except I can actually reach the top of my head).

 

Zoo: Fail

Last week, I took Parker & Cecily to the zoo.  While we were there, we saw one of the elephants being scrubbed and checked.  Parker has not stopped talking about the "elephant shower" since then.

 

So, Wednesday morning, we decided to go to the zoo so he could see the "elephant again".

 

When we arrived, we wandered through the Tropical Rain Forest exhibit.  While looking at the gorillas, one of them charged the glass, right where Parker was standing.  (If you've never been there, there is nothing but a piece of glass separating you from the gorillas where we were).  It scared the living daylights out of Parker.

 

Once I calmed him down, we moved on to other animals, but every time we got close to any exhibit, he'd turn his head & cry "No, no!" over & over.  The poor boy couldn't even handle seeing the elephant (who was getting another shower at the time).  We finally had to go home since he couldn't handle it.  Including our lunch break, I think we were there for less than an hour.

 

Hopefully he isn't scarred for life.  Although, he spent all afternoon talking about the "elephant shower", so I guess there's hope.

Labor Day Weekend

 

It's not very often we have a weekend with no plans.  And a three-day weekend with no plans is even more un-heard of.  But, when you have a newborn, things are different.

 

Anyway, since we had the weekend free, we decided to take the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston on Saturday morning.

As you can see, Cecily was fascinated.

 

We walked onto the ferry, so it was a really simple trip.  There's not much to see in Kingston, but they had a nice farmer's market, and we found a great brew-pub restaurant for lunch.

 

She's still fascinated...

 

Parker, however, LOVED the ferry.  He & Keith spent the entire trip home running around the ferry, checking the place out.

 

In all, it was a great little day trip, and we were home in-time for nap time (not that he took one, but that's another story).

Parker's 2-year appointment

I took Parker in for his 2-year appointment today.

His stats:

Weight: 26.3lbs (43.6%)

Height: 32.5" (4.24%)

BMI: 17.5 (73.84%)

Head: 49

 

This was Parker's first time being weighed & measured as a big-kid.  He went into hysterics when we tried to stand him on the scale, which is funny since he plays with my scale every morning.  Then he went full-on ballistic when we tried to get him to stand up against the wall to get his height.

 

Did you notice Parker's height?  He's in the 4th percentile, 96% of all 2-year olds are taller than him.  So, apparently, the basketball scholarship is out.  The doctor didn't seem too concerned about it, but he did give the impression that Parker's probably not going to be especially tall.  Sorry kid.

 

Once we got over the trauma of standing on the scale, Parker did a great job.  He was pretty shy, but started talking near the end.  He spent most of the drive home saying "all done, bum" Yes, Parker, we are all done looking at your bum.  You'd think that the shot would be what stuck out in his mind, but not so much, I think he just likes to fit the word bum (or poo poo) into the conversation as much as possible.  He didn't exactly enjoy the shots, but he did a great job and had stopped crying by the time we had his clothes back on, and he very much enjoyed the lollipop (today I also learned that he's a chewer, not a licker, when it comes to hard candies).

 

We weighed Cecily today as well.  She is up to 8lbs, 7.5oz, that's 5oz up from last week.  But, we were hoping to be closer to 8lbs, 10oz, so we're back to trying to fatten up the baby.  I'm supposed to try & feed Cecily every 2-2.5 hours during the day, but at least I don't have to wake her up at night.  I pulled out the pump this afternoon and I'm back on the Fenugreek, Protein, & Oatmeal regimen.  I find it hard to believe that as someone who's been overweight my entire life, how exactly did I give birth to two light-weights?  Seriously, I still have 10 lbs of "baby weight" I'd more than gladly hand off to the actual baby.

Three Weeks

 

Our little girl is already three weeks old!

 

I realize that she is probably all of 4 oz larger than she was at birth, but I swear she is already growing so fast.

 

I think I'm super-sensitive to her every change since I know this is our last baby, so everything is a milestone: This is my last newborn diaper (since we've moved on to the size-1 box), this may be the last time she wears this newborn outfit (ignoring the 500 other newborn tee-shirts she has), this is my last 2-week appointment, etc.  Reading this, one could argue that I'm over-reacting...I probably just need more sleep.

 

Cecily, on the other hand, seems to be getting plenty of sleep.  I wouldn't mind if she did it in larger chunks at night, but she's doing pretty well and I really can't complain.

 

Sleep deprivation and sore body parts aside, I love this newborn stage.  I love cuddling up with my little peanut on my chest, and I know that this time will pass all too quickly.  Just a blink and before you know it, your baby's turning two.

 

I am especially enjoying to 2nd-newborn stage.  It's really too bad you can't have your 2nd-born first, I would have enjoyed Parker's first few weeks much more if I could have been as knowledgable/mellow that go around.

Happy Birthday Parker!

 

Can you believe that my baby boy is two already? Every day, this guy surprises me with what he can do or say. One of his current favorites is "of course", it seems to have replaced "yeah" as his go-to phrase, and it cracks me up every time.

 

Parker continues to be obsessed with bikes, he will point them out wherever we are, and he loves, Loves, LOVES riding his bike with Daddy.  Keith has taught him to cheer him on when they are riding up hills "Go Daddy, Go!"

 

Our little guy is getting so big so fast!  The other night, I went in to check on him before going to bed, I could have sworn the little guy could have been thirteen, he looked so grown up (except maybe for the footie jammies and sleeping perpendicular to the length of the bed).

 

Parker loves to help.  It takes a fair amount of attention on my part to keep him from wadding up all of Cecily's clean diapers and throwing them in the garbage.  He loves sweeping and giving Darcy his treats.

 

 

The past few weeks, Parker has been a little more "fragile" with "that intruder" joining our family, but overall, he loves being a big brother and giving baby "Sessie" kisses.

 

Parker has a running commentary going at all times, if the boy's awake, he's probably talking...about what he sees, about what he wants to see, you name it.

 

Every night, Daddy helps Parker into his jammies, reads him a story, and brushes his teeth.  Then, Parker comes to give me and "Sessie" a kiss.  I always ask him, "How much does Mama love you?" and he answers, "So much!" then "How much does Daddy love you?" "So much Daddy!"  We do the same routine at nap time, and I often walk down the hall listening to him say "So much, So much!" over & over until he falls asleep.

 

 

This morning, Parker opened the door for this first time by himself.  This is not a development I was looking forward to.

 

Parker is still working on his colors, so far he has Yellow & Pink consistently, and occasionally Blue & Green.  We'll get there slowly.

 

He's also learning to count, he knows one, two, and six, but not always in that order.  Two appears to still be his favorite number, so occasionally you can actually get him to tell you how old he is.

 

 

Our Church wasn't meeting normally this week, everyone is up on Whidby Island for family camp.  We had plans to go up there for the worship service this morning, but decided that spending hours in line for a ferry was no way to spend your 2nd birthday, so we skipped church and went to the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe.

 

Parker loved seeing the animals, and we watched the lumberjack competition.

 

Parker also loved watching the rides.  We went to the Puyallup fair (twice) last year, and I don't think he really cared either way about anything, this year he found the rides fascinating to watch.  We probably stood here watching the rides for about 10 minutes.

 

Cecily was about as excited as Parker was on his first trip to the fair.

 

Parker had a great time & was out-cold before we left the parking lot.

 

Happy Birthday little guy!  Your Mama & Daddy love you!