Lovely Memorial Day

We had such a lovely day today. We decided it would be our first day at the lake beach as a foursome. While Abby napped this morning, Jake and I packed a picnic lunch and watched the temp rise from 55 degrees at 8 am to 75 degrees by 10. We got to the beach about 10:30 and we were the only ones there for about an hour. Mike and Abby set up our base camp in the shade by a picnic table and Jake and I set up our full sun satellite camp near the water and Mike and I kept swapping places. It was a great way to keep Abby completely out of the sun (she can't wear sunscreen until she's 6 months old) and Jake completely occupied with one on one attention the entire time. By noon, the beach was more packed than I'd ever seen it and Jake was making friends right and left. He and an older girl built a series of drainage ditches together and got really into it. We had our picnic lunch in the shade and Abby feel asleep in her pack and play around noon. By 1pm, we were all very sun-tired and we headed home to the most wonderful gift (for me!) of all - a quiet naptime of nearly two hours for everyone. Mike went out to get a massage so the house was bone quiet. I have not napped so well in months!

After nap we brought some brownies to our new neighbors, wandered down to Gram's house for a quick visit, and had a nice quick pasta dinner. There is NOTHING like the first real day of summer!

Here's Jake and me playing in the water:



Sleeping beauty, once she stopped gaping at all the trees:

Jake Flies his Kite

We had a great time last Saturday at Kite Day. It was a well attended event on a beautiful sunny and very windy day. We saw lots of friends there! I have a few clips of it. Here's the first: Jake flying his new kite in the middle of the action.



Here's another, a video Jake took of other kites. I liked the music!

Some great laughs

Peekaboo after a good meal always does this to her. (Apologies for the camera quakings!)

Abby Charms Daddy

Abby Turning Over!

Abby and Jake at 20 Weeks

Time for some more comparisons. The more I look at old pix of Jake, the more I see Abby!

Here we have a similar finger suck (sans pinky):




In a direct stare pose, the faces are remarkably similar:





And when in the exersaucer, the toy with the music gets the most attention:



Mike and I looked at our two beautiful kids tonight over dinner and realized how lucky we are. We were tired, one of us had a stomach ache, the other a back ache, one kid was moaning and the other was talking nonstop, but we still feel like the luckiest parents in the world!

.. and that's it.

Two nights is her best run. The next night she was up twice, last night once. But if she can do it twice, I'm hoping it won't be too long before I get another lovely long night of sleep!

Ohmigod. Twice in a Row!

Holy REM, batman - she did it again! 7 pm to 4:30am this time. Up again at 7am. Slept on her back the whole time. We've had oatmeal three times a day for the past two days - maybe that's the secret?

Drumroll: We have a night sleeper!

My little Abby slept through the night last night!

She went to bed at 7pm and didn't wake until 5 am, then after a quick bottle, went back to sleep until 8am.

Which is wonderful and amazing. Now I just need to take some naps because to sleep all that time what she did was turn over on her belly and she grunted and cried out every hour between 12 and 5 and I kept thinking she wanted to eat so I watched the monitor at every peep and I got even LESS sleep than I usually do! At 2:30 she seemed to be really crying and I thought, ok, now she's hungry, but by the time I got to her room she was settled again, with her little face turned the other way now.

But the key is, she did it once, she can do it again. Hopefully, she actually will sometime before she's 18!

And I will turn down the monitor tonight. She'll need to really cry to wake me!

Pain is Worse than Being Tired

Yes, I'm tired. I have been woken up 2-3 times a night since mid January and I daydream of a long night of uninterrupted sleep. But I have discovered something worse: pain. And the kicker, sleep deprivation plus pain together. It is not a pretty picture.

For a week now, I've had really bad lower back pain. Surely related to hefting my not so little little girl every 20-40 minutes throughout the day and 2-4 hours at night. I've tried heat and stretching and advil and still, after a few good lifts (out of the highchair and upstairs to get dressed after breakfast, for example), I am in severe pain again. Can barely stand up. It is driving me mad.

Add to this a tiny urinary infection that appeared two days ago and I was absolutely bonkers yesterday. Felt like I had to go to the bathroom urgently all day long - when i did it was painful. And then my back would hurt. And then Abby would cry to be moved. Rinse and repeat all day long. Ugh!

After some antibiotics, the infection is pain free today, and I've changed the way I sit to feed Abby and am lifting very carefully. I stretched after every feed last night before getting back into bed and it seemed to help. I truly hope I can get through this back thing soon. I cannot endure this much pain until she learns to walk!

Grandma Lynne's Visit

Here's a family post, from Grandma Lynne's email and pix she sent to her friends about her visit. We all were so glad to see her!

Just to keep y'all up to date on the beauty of my grandchildren! Jake was suffering from a fever this visit and was perhaps not his usual peppy self, although most of the time his energy was quite impressive. Abby is growing rapidly, nearing 20 lbs at four months and challenging her poor mommy's back. She also has the world's most beguiling smile, the full body model that reaches down to her pretty little toes.

Lynne

Abby's New Exersaucer

Abby loves her new exersaucer. She's taking her time exploring the toys. I think her favorite part is getting to feel like she's standing up!









And here we have a lovely post-bath baby:




She loves her baths now. I got a new baby tub and she likes to be held in a sitting position and look down at her feet underneath the water. I lie her down in the sculpted part of the tub to rinse her hair at the very end - not her favorite thing. But once she's sitting up again, she's happy! If anyone is looking for a new tub, I highly recommend it. It's called a EuroTub.

Our Big, Beautiful Girl

Had our second pediatrician visit with Abby yesterday within a week. Last week, her new pediatrician declared we were overfeeding her and gave me the draconian advice to let her cry it out and cease to feed her at all at night. This advice was based on her off the chart weight of 18 pounds 10 ounces and height of 26.7 inches at 3.5 months. She said Abby was consuming too many ounces and that I had to limit her. She sent me into a tailspin of worry and research and many lost nights of sleep as I tried to keep Abby to a set number of ounces per day, by keeping her from eating at night unless she was REALLY hungry. (I rejected the cry it out advice as even Ferber says don't try this until they are 6 months old. And I simply will not let my very hungry child cry for 12 hours straight.) Delaying her with pacifiers and bottles of water did nothing but piss her off and exhaust me, and I have been a zombie for a week as a result. Now when she wakes she informs me in no uncertain terms of exactly how starving she is, and then she scarfs down whatever I give her. She's not playing around - she's hungry!

So, we went back to see her old pediatrician yesterday. He changed practices last month, but Abby and I drove to town to see him again and it was so worth the trip. He's the one who helped me through all of her early feeding issues and knows how hard it was for her to be satisfied with breastfeeding. He charted her growth from birth on his computer and said despite his former colleague's thoughts, there is NO WAY Abby is growing too fast. Her growth is above the normal curve, but is happening at the exact same slope as normal growth. She started out big and she continues to be big. And he calculated and charted the ratio between weight and height (which the other dr didn't do) and noted that ratio is in the 50-75 percentile range, totally average. In other words, her weight is matching her height as it should. He also asked to hold her, remarked on her trunk control and urge to stand, said how beautiful she is and told me to keep doing everything I told him I had been doing, including starting her on solid foods, which she seems to love!

Needless to say, we are switching both Jake and Abby to his new practice forthwith. A good pediatrician is worth a little driving. And my sleep and sanity for a week is payment enough for the poor advice we got from the other dr.

Abby and I walked out very happy indeed.

Early May - A:Four Months, J: Almost 4

Abby seems to be hitting some new developmental levels. Yesterday, she discovered she had feet and legs. I was holding her up in a sitting position and all of a sudden she pushed herself into a full stand! I had no idea she was going to do that but once she was upright she positively beamed! This from a girl who is still learning to keep her head upright and has yet to learn to roll over! She has then spent the last two days trying to use her legs everywhere - to kick in the bath, to inch herself backwards in the crib, and to attempt to thrust herself out of every seat we have by raising her butt up and pushing down with her feet. She is strong and very determined! We are scared that between that and her weight (approaching 19 pounds and the limits on most of her swings and seats are 20), she needs some safe new places to be parked.

So today was a shopping day. She made out like a bandit, getting a new exersaucer, which she loved in the store, and a new Bumbo seat.

Here she is yesterday, enjoying her new spring outfit:

Jake used his last 5 stars to get some magnet clips. We were clipping nature items to the car before dinner last night:

Abby's #1 activity (after eating) is watching her brother. She'll do it for an hour at a time, almost without blinking or moving. Often he has no idea he is the show:

He's doing some good developing himself. He is super articulate about everything and has a very intuitive sense about people and what they want. Tonight he told Mike he would play longer with Gram to give Mike a chance to talk to Gram's daddy for a while. Earlier today he asked me to please look for something downstairs, but added if I couldn't find it, to let him know and he would come look (all verb tenses intact.) Yesterday he asked if he could do something and I said probably not and he said, well, if you change your mind let me know. You might change your mind! And he helped us test the features of every exersaucer in the store today, quite thoroughly!

Last night Abby took out her pacifier and then put it back in by herself!

Aren't I coy?

The Bumbo seat today revealed to her that she really does have feet!

She also got Jake's musical toy to play a few times. I'm not sure she got the connection between her actions and the sounds, but liked when I cheered at her success!

She also tried some rice cereal last night for the first time. The sour expression on her face was priceless, and happened too fast to capture on film. What is THIS? And none went in at all. Tonight was a different story-she moved her mouth around a lot and even though it didn't seem like she was swallowing, suddenly I looked up and she had finished the bowl, with very little on her face or her bib. And she seemed pretty happy about it!

Little Miss Abby at Babies R Us

I like this seat, Mommy. Can we buy it? Please?!?