2 Months Old

Lydia is 2 months old today. Whew. Three kids is no joke.

Just found this draft, almost 11 months later. Three kids is definitely no joke.

Lydia Drinks From a Cup!

It seems silly to have a post devoted to just this, but this is probably this year's most memorable "milestone" for me. After being cut off abruptly from nursing after my hospital stay a few weeks ago, we have really been struggling to get Lydia to drink any kind of liquids. We tried bottles, various sippy cups, and various straw cups. With everything she would chew a little on the straw/nipple/spout and get upset and push it away. She had no idea what to do with the cups, and eventually started getting upset at just the sight of them. So for a while we were using a straw to drip water, milk, and diluted juice into her mouth all day long. Very tedious, and she really wasn't getting enough to drink. But, at long last, she started drinking from a straw cup a few days ago!! The next morning after this amazing feat, she acted like she'd never seen the straw cup, but she slowly warmed up to it during the day, and drank a lot at dinner. This repeated for a few days, but then finally today, she was happy to drink all day long. Whew. I have never been so excited about cup usage. I really don't recall it being such a struggle with Noah and Sarah. Or maybe I just had more time to actually wean them versus just cutting them off all of a sudden. Either way, I am done with breastfeeding (FOREVER), and Lydia is consistently drinking from a straw cup, so it's time to celebrate.

Lydia turns 1!

My littlest baby is 1!!! It has been such a crazy year and I barely remember any of it, but I am so thankful for my sweet Lydia. It seems like just yesterday I was holding this tiny little peanut of a baby, rocking her to sleep, and laying her on my chest for naps. Now she's crawling all over the place, cruising around, and getting better at maneuvering the stairs every day. 

Lydia has been such a sweet tempered baby and an awesome eater. She will eat just about anything I put in front of her - and she'll eat a LOT of it. I haven't been keeping very good track, but I feel like she often eats just as much as the older kids do! Some of her favorite foods are strawberries, raspberries, peaches, yogurt, grilled cheese, and chicken nuggets. I give her vegetables too if we happen to be eating something that's soft enough for her, and she seems to like eating those as well. She only has two teeth, but she doesn't let that stop her. She is having a hard time with the drinks though. She was abruptly cut off from nursing last week because I somehow got mastitis again, and this time the infection leaked into the bloodstream, which landed me in the hospital on IV antibiotics for 3 days. Everything is fine now, but I was advised to wait until after finishing my oral antibiotics before nursing again, and since Lydia is already one, I'm not going to start again and then wean again. But poor Lydia. :( When I came home from then hospital I cried every time she cried to be nursed. It was so sad!! But it's been about a week now and I think she's moved on. Unfortunately I am now using a straw to drip cow's milk into her mouth for her to drink and every time I try to get her to actually use the straw, she gets upset. I just keep telling myself she'll grow out of it eventually…

Lydia is a curious little girl and is always moving around and exploring things. She's not putting things in her mouth as much these days, but for a while every time I turned around she had some new hazardous thing in her mouth. She's always checking out Noah and Sarah's toys, climbing up and over things, and when she's bored she'll make her way back to the dining room to see what random Cheerios and other leftover food she can find on the floor. She is, overall, a pretty chill baby and doesn't cry much, but she does get startled very easily by loud noises. When Noah and Sarah start shouting, whether it's an argument or just being rowdy, Lydia starts looking around with a panicked look on her face and starts crying. Just yesterday I was drying my hands in a public bathroom and she started crying from the dryer sound. When she gets scared, she has this pouty crying face that's just so cute! 

It's been a fun year. Babies are so cute. Now, let the toddler fun begin!

Noah turns 5

Eating his fave: chocolate with chocolate toppings.

Noah turns 5…and goes to kindergarten. How did it happen so fast??

Of course I'm super excited to have one less child to schlep around with me all day long, but of course I'm also super sad about letting my first baby go. He has been in half-day preschool for a while now, and he even had that one year in full-time day care, but this time he's not just going to be physically away all day. I feel like it's his first step towards life on his own (am I being too dramatic???), and I know that's a good thing, and that's what we want for our kids, but it is still hard for me to think about it without getting weepy. I actually missed his birthday yesterday too, and every time I or someone else mentions the birthday, I start tearing up. Peter re-lit a few candles on the cake leftovers and we sang happy birthday Noah again, but really for me, so that made me feel better - only even more teary because of the sentiment.

I haven't written much about Noah here on my blog in a long time, because it is so much easier to write about milestones and whether or not a child has hit them. Now he's like a real person and it's harder for me to capture. Noah is really something though. He can be so sweet, dependable, and loving - and then whiny, bossy, and irrational 5 minutes later. He loves his sisters, and even though he's fighting with Sarah every other minute, if someone else crosses Sarah he'll be there to punch him/her in the face. Literally. And then I am mortified, again. He's always looking out for Lydia by trying to feed her, give her baby-safe toys, steering her away from dangerous things like the stairs and toilet, and in general letting me know when she's about to get into some dangerous situation. I'm interested to see how this relationship will develop as Lydia gets older!

Watching a movie together.

They love putting their chairs out and having snacks like this.

Noah currently is obsessed with super-heroes and light sabers. I think he has a deep need to see justice carried out, and these stories of good guys beating the bad guys just really resonates with him. Maybe it helps him find some sense of security or something, since he's kind of an anxious little guy. I think he's also really into the alter-egos because he can be very shy about expressing himself. And light sabers, well, who doesn't love light sabers, right? I don't think there's a cooler weapon to fight bad guys with! Noah loves non-super hero books too, and in general loves reading and being read to. I just hope he'll keep loving books as he gets older. I may be a math teacher, but for some reason I am so much more invested in developing a love for reading in my kids. Maybe I just take it as a given that they'll love math and science.

That's all for now. Next post will be pics of me following the bus next week. :)

9 Month Update

Lydia is 9 months old!! And this is probably her third post!! :(  Oh well. Sorry, baby. I also missed her 9 month appointment this week. Totally forgot. Felt crappy the rest of the day. So, no specific news on her growth, but I think I can roughly estimate that she is a tall and chubby baby. And she has no teeth. She can army crawl pretty fast and is starting to get up on her hands and knees and working on pulling herself up. If I stand her up somewhere she usually falls over pretty quickly, but she's getting there. Today she managed to shuffle her feet forward a few steps while I was holding her hands. I know that a walking baby = trouble, but let's be honest, a baby who only wants to army crawl all over the place is just yucky. Lydia seems to be tracking pretty similarly to Noah, as far as the gross/fine motor skills go. She still has a pretty calm disposition overall, but she is a little mover like Noah. It is always a struggle to change her diaper and clothing because she's constantly trying to roll away and play with something. She also isn't all that content to be confined in the play pen and jumperoo anymore. So she mostly crawls around on the floor, finding paper and random small objects to put in her mouth. If she isn't putting dangerous things in her mouth, one of her older siblings is sitting on her like she's a horse. 

Lydia is also now picking up and eating baby puffs and Cheerios, always a very exciting milestone for me because that means something else to keep her occupied while I try to eat. Yes! We're also nearing the end of her first year, which means the end of nursing!!! I am ready for no more nursing. Ever. Even though Lydia is so far from even starting preschool, I'm already looking forward to life beyond pregnancy and nursing. I love my little baby and every day I am sad that she is growing up while I'm too busy dealing with things like potty training and tantrums, but I am so excited to move on. Babies are cute to snuggle with, but toddlers are more fun to play with. :) Someone please remind me I said all this if I ever mention anything about having another baby.

Lydia - 7 months

Lydia just turned 7 months about a week ago and she is still (fingers crossed) such a calm, laid-back baby. She sleeps when she gets tired, eats when she gets hungry, and doesn't really fuss in between those times. She transitioned to solids pretty well, and eats just about everything that I give her, which is still mostly fruit and vegetable purees and yogurt. I'm just waiting for the day when she starts rejecting the food. It'll come, I know it…it's just a matter of time. Next step is finger foods. I'm always so nervous to make that leap!

Lydia is getting pretty good at sitting these days. She'll still fall over because she hasn't quite connected falling over to hitting-head-on-floor, but otherwise she can sit up for a while. She has also become very curious and just this past week started inching forward! She's almost always on her stomach now and is constantly reaching for things nearby. If there isn't anything close by, she'll rotate around on her tummy until she finds the closest interesting thing, and then start inching her body towards it. It's still a full body effort right now, but I can see her movements becoming more coordinated every day. Once she makes it to whatever item she's got her eye on, she puts it right in her mouth and is chewing on it. She doesn't have any teeth yet, but Noah and Sarah both cut their first teeth right around this age, so I'm thinking we'll be seeing a tooth soon.

These milestones are always so bittersweet for me, especially for Lydia because I am so sure this is our last baby. It has been a pretty tiring year, with three kids under 5, so I am really eager to get to September, when Noah will be in kindergarten and Sarah will start preschool. At the same time though, I want the time to slow down…I just know Lydia is going to be a rascal like her older siblings so I want to savor her sweet baby stage! Maybe it's because this is our last baby, but I don't think I ever really appreciated how precious the baby stage was. Every stage has its own fun, for sure, but I am convinced that there is never a sweeter time than now. All babies have are smiles and chubs!

February 2015

Okay, this post was supposed to be posted a month ago…oops. Not too much time to update/edit for Feb, so here it is. Haha.. Even as I write this right now, Noah and Sarah are trying to sneak some cookies because they think I'm not paying attention.

It's a new year, so it's time to revive this blog! It was a hectic end to a great year. After Christmas festivities in Virginia, we headed up to New York for a week to see family and friends. Everyone had a great time and now we're back catching up on sleep and getting back to the normal routines - or at least trying to, despite all of the school delays and closings. I'm a little more motivated to be organized and clean, but I'm sure that'll wear off soon. I'm also a little more motivated to post an update on the kids so here we go. (Clearly I wasn't that motivated, since it took a month to actually get this posted)

Lydia - 5 months old

Lydia is eating, growing, and sleeping well. Yay! She's still sleeping in the cosleeper next to our bed, so the next step is to move her out. She actually slept in a different room from me when we were in New York and I really missed her! :( I'm really trying to hold on to her baby-ness because…there will be no more babies! She started to roll over to her side and spent most of her days lying on her playmat when I first wrote this post, but she's now started rolling. She's rolling off the mat all the time, which makes Sarah very upset for some reason. Lydia is still pretty laid back and calm, which is nice since her big sister and brother can be intense. We just recently set up the crib in her new room and are getting her ready for the eventual move. I've been having her nap in her new room these past couple of weeks and she seems to love it. Now we just need to install her new blackout shades and clear out the rest of our junk from the room and it'll be all ready! Nursery, set up. Hahaha.

Sarah - 2 years, 6 months

Sarah is so tiring. She is extremely stubborn, defiant, and always testing the limits. But she is also extremely friendly, cheerful, and funny. Such a ham. So it's hard to stay mad at her for long. The terrible twos are still going strong with this one and I'm ashamed to admit I'm kind of scared of her. Once she gets upset it can be so hard to reel her in, so depending on what situation we're in, a lot of times I'll just give in to her demands to avoid the screaming and kicking. We decided to set up her big girl bed about a month ago and I was really worried about her getting out of bed and not going back in, but she was super excited about the big girl bed that on the first night, so she didn't get out once! It was so amazing. She came out once on the second night, but after some screaming and crying, she was willing to lie down in exchange for a drink of water. Then she fell asleep. Whew! So far, she just needs a few drinks of water or a few minutes of cuddling and she's good to go.

Noah - 4 years, 5 months

Noah is getting so old. I just got an email the other day about a kindergarten readiness presentation at his preschool in a few weeks. OMG. I have been waiting eagerly for kindergarten but now that the day is getting closer, I'm starting to get sad - and it's only February! But, you know what they say about the days being long and the years being short. Before I know it he'll be getting on that school bus. In the meantime, I'm trying to make the most of the time I have with him at home, so I feel bad when I'm always busy cooking, cleaning, or tending to the girls. Since he's older, he doesn't need me as much, so he kind of gets neglected all the time. When I do have those 10 minutes of time just for him though, I like to think he really enjoys it. When Sarah takes her afternoon nap, I usually take that time to try to teach Noah to read and sometimes bake something with him, but now that I'm phasing out Sarah's nap, it's harder to squeeze those things in. There just isn't enough time in the day (or enough energy in me) to give every kid their own time.