Selective mommy memory

I am pretty positive that I have selective mommy memory. There are certain aspects of Ella's babyhood that I seemed to have conveniently forgotten- until Marian was in the midst of doing the same thing. Or I lied to myself and told myself it wasn't so bad.

Like how I somehow forgot the awful period of time when Ella was a newborn and refused to sleep or stop screaming unless she was being held and we used to have to take turns rocking her. I'd be so tired that I would have to stand up while holding her and I would wake Jim up at the point where I was literally falling asleep on my feet. We'd do that in 15 minute shifts all.night.long.

Yet until we had a newborn again I had blotted that from my mind. All I remembered was how wonderfully Ella slept until she hit about 5 months old.

Anyway, this selective mommy memory came to mind again when Marian started crawling and cruising around. Here's how I remember Ella's early mobile days:

Ahh, so proud of herself! 

Taking my clothes out of the drawers! Isn't that adorable! 

Look at that sweet little thing go! 

Oooh! She can stand! Isn't that TOTALLY AWESOME??!!!

Here are the things I erased from my mind about the whole mobile baby process: 

-They put tons of random shit in their mouths. Like little pieces of fuzz and hair and dog toys and the cheerios your toddler left on the floor. 

-They somehow manage to find every single little thing they aren't supposed to play with. My kids seem to love the dogs toys. Maybe the fact that they have been pre-slobbered makes them more attractive. 

-Cleaning your floors on a daily basis becomes an absolute necessity. Because otherwise you end up completely disgusted at how much dirt and dog hair clings to their magnetic little hands. And dirty floors gives them more stuff to stick in their mouths. 

-Babyproofing is like throwing down the gauntlet. "Oh, so you think I can't climb over the baby gate? Just watch me."

-They have this sixth sense for when your back is turned. Think you'll have time for that 30 second bathroom trip? Think again. 

Go ahead and try to pee. I'll just be chewing on some wiring. 

The worst part is I know once Marian is a bit older all the not-so-fun aspects will be a distant memory.

Randoms...

Here's a hodge-podge post of what's been going on here:

-Had an amazing weekend in Raleigh with one of my besties, Kristen from BeerCat Brewing. Almost four whole awesome days of gabbing non-stop. Being back there made me realize just how much I miss living on the East Coast and how much I wish we lived closer to one another. I have lots of friends here in BFE, but none that "get" me in the way Kristen does. I can't wait to have our next get-together.

-Came back from Raleigh and almost immediately got sick with viral pharyngitis. If you aren't familiar with it, it's like strep throat without the benefit of antibiotics. Plus the lovely addition of full body aches, chills, and hot flashes. I lost five pounds from not being able to eat anything besides ice cream for almost a week. During the worst of it I couldn't even drink water, but for whatever reason I could have ginger ale.

-Jim threw me an amazing Mother's Day weekend. Sushi? Check. Alcohol? Check. A date night so horrible that we can laugh about it for years to come? Check. (Note: my side-eyeing of events at the BFE Community Center is now completely justified.) Relaxing morning? Yep. Alcoholic beverages, ice cream, and not having to worry about a single meal? You bet. Super awesome craft "from the kiddos"? Oh yeah. Jim made me a super cute votive candle holder and then had the girls paint it. I know a lot of moms are like, "Eh, I don't want some craft from the kids, give me jewelry." I'm the opposite. I LOVE stuff that my kids make, especially when I'm not the one who has to come up with the activity, wrangle the kids into doing it, and then clean it all up.

-We had our first salad of the season made completely from stuff in our garden. Minus the cheese, of course. Because what is a salad without cheese?

Anyway, now that we are all mostly healthy again and things are semi-calm here, it'll be back to posting like normal.

7 month update

Why is this month's update late? Well...look at this picture and figure out what I have been doing instead of updating the blog:

Summary of this month in one picture

That's right folks. We now have two children who are busy getting into trouble.

Weight: Last time I weighed her on our super accurate scale, she was 16.5 lbs

Height: She's sleeping right now but I'll update once I get a chance to measure. ETA: As best I can tell, she is 27 inches. Measuring a super squirmy baby is hard!

Teeth: She has both central lower incisors. She's definitely working on some other teeth but no others show any signs of erupting soon.

Diapers: We've tried a couple of different things that have worked. Right now we are rotating through three nighttime diaper solutions: a wool diaper with a bamboo/hemp booster, a fitted diaper with bamboo/hemp inserts + cover, and a bamboo all in one deal. Most mornings she is waking up dry. Then again, I'm not sure if it's the diaper that is making the difference or the fact that she isn't nursing a gazillion times a night.

Clothes:  Nothing exciting here- still 6-9 and 9-12, with a few 12 month clothes that fit. We did have to break out bigger socks. Okay, I probably should have brought out the bigger socks like two months ago but I have a toddler who freaked out over Marian wearing "her" socks and since the baby didn't care...

Sleep: With the exception of my weekend in Raleigh, most nights she is only up once. Usually right around 4am, which means if I'm smart and go off to bed at a reasonable hour, I can have 6+ hours of sleep. Most days she takes two naps, although if Ella is noisy and wakes her up early from the afternoon nap she'll take a quick catnap before dinner.

Food: We're mostly doing baby-led weaning now, primarily because with two kids I've found it's much easier to plop the stuff down on her tray and let her feed herself. Jim reminded me about puffs, which are quite possibly the least nutritious baby food ever but does give her plenty of practice on her pincer grip. Still usually one meal a day, except on weekends when she'll have some breakfast with us. And of course she's nursing probably a dozen times a day. She's also working on drinking from a sippy cup. She needs some help but she is a thousand times better at drinking from a sippy cup than she ever was from a bottle.

Milestones: Marian is now a full-blown crawler. In a matter of days the kid went from being slow and hesitant to being crazy fast. I turn my back for a second and she is into mischief. New favorite activities for baby include trying to sneakily eat the dog toys, crawling through one of our end tables, and seeing how many of Ella's toys she can play with before her sister notices. New activity for Mommy includes lots of baby-proofing. (You may ask why our house isn't completely baby-proofed. Well, Ella was a year old when we moved in and could be trusted not to touch certain things.)

Since she learned to crawl- which was, oh, last week- she has moved onto cruising. I am guessing we're going to have another early walker.

She's started babbling a bunch. Mostly a lot of "Blab ba ba BA BA blab!" and "Eh la la LA la LA la"- which we joke is her saying "ELLA!"

Miscellaneous: With the crawling has come a decided preference over toys. It used to be that Ella could tell her "trade" or "switch" while grabbing toys out of her lap and as long as the toddler gave her another toy, all was right with the world. Now there is a lot of tug of war type stuff and shrieking.

Although they have devised a game that is mutually agreeable. Ella pretends Marian is a dog and throws a toy for her to fetch. Marian happily crawls across the floor and grabs it. And repeat. Part of me thinks I should explain to Ella that her sister is not a dog. But then the lazy part of me thinks, "Eh, I can get five minutes of peace" and praises them for playing nicely together.

This is MY firefly

Playing doctor, or as Ella calls it, "Do doctor"

Clearly she's mastered drinking from the sippy cup

They see me rollin'...

One week!

This time next week I will be traveling to see my awesome buddy Kristen from over at BeerCat Brewing. If you remember, she came to visit me back in September, right before Ella was born (and if you don't see my posts here and here and her much better post here). When she came out to BFE, I was hugely pregnant with Marian. This time, she is pregnant with her second little one and is rocking the cutest bump.

I am way super excited. Kristen totally rocks and I am looking forward to spending a weekend gabbing away with her. We spent her visit talking for 72 hours straight, without having to worry about my cell phone crapping out or needing to run errands or kids waking up from naps. I'm surprised we weren't both completely hoarse by the time I dropped her off.

And although I feel like a bad mom admitting this, I'm looking forward to a weekend without my toddler. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love Ella. But I have not had a day away from her in almost 2.5 years. And I'm kind of ready. Sad and a little nervous about leaving her, but ready for a mini-break from all the not-so-fun aspects of having a two year old. Think of it as a recharge weekend. Or that she's getting a special Daddy-Ella weekend.

Of course, our girls' weekend won't be totally kid-free. The Boob Monster will be traveling with me and Kristen has her own two year old. LB will get a crash course in being a big sister.

It is going to be an awesome weekend.  

Happy Easter!

 Happy Easter from our family to yours! We had a fun weekend of dyeing eggs, hunting for eggs, binge eating candy, and hanging out with friends. 

Each year I go kind of crazy with dyeing Easter eggs. I think I might enjoy it more than my kids, although this year Ella got pretty into it. We make hard boiled eggs quite often and every Easter I think we should dye eggs throughout the year (because why not) and then I end up forgetting. 

This year's finished product. Half of them are already cracked because Ella bashed them. 

Nomming on an egg. Not the funnest of teething toys

The mad scientist hard at work

The girls' baskets were pretty minimal. I totally cheated and put the stuff my mom sent in their baskets (a bib for Marian and a book for Ella) and gave them stuff they were getting anyway, like the Annie's bunny crackers that we ought to buy in bulk. They each got an outfit that my friend Laura custom-made (she has a ton of super cute stuff if you want to check out her shop).

Not quite sure what to make of her Easter basket

Modeling their new outfits

Doing an egg hunt with a toddler was...interesting. Last year we simply scattered the eggs around the floor and called it a day. This year we got the idea to actually hide the eggs. Since she did an egg hunt at mom's day out, we presumed things would go smoothly. Yeah, I should have remembered that she is a toddler and things never go as planned. 

We hid the hard boiled eggs around the play room. I thought it would be cute to hid one in the pan on her play kitchen. She promptly found it but refused to pick it up because (a) the stove is hot (duh mom) and (b) it wasn't done cooking yet (double duh). And so on and so forth. 

Then she moved onto the few plastic eggs we had hidden around the living room. She found the one by the couch and decided to re-hide it under a pillow. Every time we asked her to find more eggs she would go back to the couch, show us the egg, and inform us that "it's hiding." 

In any case, she had a fun time. 

Ella searching for eggs

Enjoying a cup of coffee in the midst of the chaos

Poor Marian, on the other hand, spent most of the weekend out of sorts, as she is battling yet another cold. Eventually we have to reach a point where neither kid will have a runny nose, right? Despite feeling crummy, she figured out how to pull herself to standing. Now she demands to stand all. the. time.

Oh yeah. This happened. 

 On the agenda for this week- going for lots of walks to burn off all the Cadbury eggs.

Things I learned today

Another day, another trip to the pediatrician's office. Ella's nasty bug- probably picked up when we were at the pediatrician's for Marian's check up (the irony is not lost on me)- is lingering and so I got to spend another lovely morning dragging the kids to the doctor.

Every parenting adventure has the potential for teaching you fun new lessons. Here's what I learned (so far) today:

-Getting a two year old to stay still for an x-ray is an absolute treat. Putting a stuffed animal on your head and asking her to watch for butterflies coming out of your nose helps.

-I am capable of breastfeeding the baby with one hand and using the other to pick up a toddler who is throwing a complete fit in the pediatrician's waiting room.

-It is pretty embarrassing when your toddler attempts to bite the doctor when she is trying to get a look in her throat.

-My two year old thinks having to pee in a cup is the best thing ever. And will throw a fit in the pediatrician's bathroom when you attempt to explain that the doctor doesn't need her to pee in a cup this time. But she will continue to ask to use every bathroom she spots in hopes of getting to pee in a cup again.

Naturally, after all that hassle, the verdict is simply that she has a virus. For the sake of my sanity and my liver, let's hope she is on the mend soon.

We can't catch a break

The tally of the past 24 hours:

-One crabby teething baby

-One mama with a sliced open foot, due to a knife that fell out of the drying rack

-One feverish crabby toddler, taken down by an unidentified bug

Watching George on the TV snuggled up with her BFF George

Ugh.