Evelyn Jo-One Month Old

One Month!  Wow!  This time if flying by SO fast!  I can't believe it!  Yes, this is coming in late but that is the story of my life right now :)

The first month of Evie's life has once again been a learning experience for us as e get used to having two children.  It has been busy as life with your second child does not slow down much like it does with the first child.  She does pretty good in the car seat and doesn't fuss much when we are out and about which is wonderful.  She started out pretty easy going but between Week 3 and 4 she has become more fussy-almost colicky-unconsolable at times. April 27th was the first "tough" day.  I messaged Amber saying it was our most challenging day yet.  Evie cried most of the day and would only sleep for 10-15 minutes at a time and would wake up angry.  This was the start of a very trying period of time for us. Lets just say this definitely gets worse into her second month.  

GROWTH:

Evelyn is done wearing newborn clothes.  In fact, she was pretty much our of newborn clothes by week 2 or 3.  She is fully in Size 0-3 Months.  We did an at home weight check around 10 lbs.  Which at first I didn't think was accurate because in my mind I though she was close to 10 lbs at her two week check up but it was actually close to 9 lbs so 10 lbs sounds about right.  Her thighs are super chunky haha.  We are using cloth again 100% of the time and some of the newborn diapers are hard to get around her chunky legs.  So different from Elsie's little chicken legs.  Also she is a supersoaker.  Her diapers are completely saturated after 1-2 hours.  I guess that means she is hydrated.  

SLEEP

Evie is a pretty sleepy baby and many times we have to wake her to eat.  I do think this fact has impacted my milk supply.  At night time she will sleep anywhere from 3-5 hour stretches at a time. We do not wake her to eat at night since she is getting her 8 feedings in a day and seem content with this.  She is still sleeping in her small pack and play at night but will sleep during the day in the rock and play, swing, or the Ergo baby carried (a lifesaver for us this time around).  She doesn't really take a pacifier and oh there are times we really wish she did and times that we try but does little good. 

FEEDING

Evie is eating at least 8 times a day.  I will nurse her first and then she gets a bottle of formula afterwards.  We make up a 2 oz  bottle and most feedings she will polish that off without a problem.  Night time she doesn't eat quite as much but will still drink some formula.  There are even times during the day we have to mix up another 2 oz.   In the first two weeks though she was not a very aggressive eater, would just eat for  little bit and then stop.  I believe we are at least at a 50/50 ratio for formula to breastmilk but I can't say for sure since I have no idea how much she gets when she nurses.  Also before we give her formula we will supplement with any milk I got while pumping which I do after nursing her.  I generally get .5-1 oz total after each time I pump which is about 2-4 times a day.  

Evie is getting so strong.  She can hold her head up for a decent amount of time (as you can see in the picture above).  We try to do tummy time which she actually seems to enjoy.  She goes for walks in the Ergo carrier and really seems to like that.  I think we have used the stroller only once for her. We have been hearing sounds our of her that is not crying which is wonderful and the best day yet is when she first smiled!  (4/30)  Just shy of her one month birthday!  She hates getting dressed but doesn't mind getting her diaper changed.  In fact she is VERY quick to let you know she has a wet diaper and wants it changed immediately.  

This just made my day :)

I love looking at these pictures I took of her-not because they are such wonderful pictures-in fact, she looks a bit scared and wondering what they heck is going on! :) 

Elsie is still in love with her sister!  by the time we got to taking these pictures though Evie was over it.

And here is a quick comparison of Evie and Elsie at one month.  Not the best comparison pictures but it will have to do :) 

 

The End of the Baby Era

We talked about how we were going to get rid of Elsie's pacifier for months now.  In fact, back in September I bought her two gifts for her for the day she chose to give up her paci and be a big girl.  It never happened.  I was told to just take it away, have the paci fairy come get it, send it away to a "new baby", etc but we just never could do it.  Like most stages in Elsie's life things just kind of happened.  We never really forced much on her, she just kind of moved on to the next step at her own pace.  I guess the best example of this that I can think of was potty training.  It just kind of happened.  We never fought with her about it and we never rewarded her.  She just showed interest and we hopped on board (there of course were some challenges along the way for sure but it was more like a change in routine).  So I was kind of hoping that giving up the paci would happen the same way-she would just decide she didn't want it-ha!  such wishful thinking.  I just dreaded upsetting her and taking away something that gave her so much comfort.

But it did just kind of happen on its own. It was a wednesday night (10/29).  About 30 minutes after putting Elsie to bed I heard the worst cry and screaming that I ever have.  I sprinted up the stairs, into her room to her crying "I broke my paci".  I'm not going to lie...I panicked!  haha Elsie and I had a really rough day and really needed a peaceful night and was not prepared to deal with her no longer having a paci.  I got her calmed down, she had a little drink, we read a couple of stories and sang a couple songs and she ended up falling back to sleep.  I am so happy that this was her doing, not ours :).  She really seemed to accept that she was the one to break it which means she can't have one anymore.

She actually bit her paci and tore it.  This actually scares me-how easily could she have bit it off completely and choked!  

We had a few struggles over the next few nights/mornings.  She did okay going to bed.  She would ask for it but then once we reminded her she broke it she would accept it and lay down.  The most challenging part was in the mornings.  She would wake up early (6:00 AM) and struggle to fall back to sleep without the comfort of her paci.  The first morning we made sure the "paci fairy" still came and took away the broken paci and she received her Seashell Palace Pet.

The first morning-so excited for her palace pet-she sleeps with this now every night for the past two weeks.  

I also want to add this happened just a few days before daylight savings which totally messed things up.  She wanted to get up at 5AM vs 6AM.  Oh well...we made it work.  

Now that her paci was gone we decided it was time to get rid of the crib.  Up until this point Elsie had no desire to leave the comfort and safety of her crib.  She has yet to even try climbing out.  When asked if she wanted a big girl bed the answer was always no.  Which was okay because until she gave up the paci I didn't want to deal with that when she could climb out of bed on her own will.  Once she had no paci we made a huge deal of how this meant she was a big girl now and she ended up being so excited about getting a bed.  That Saturday Elsie and I were at target and she picked out some bedding.  She was really excited about it.  A couple of months ago we bought a daybed frame off of a Facebook swap page but we yet to get a mattress so on Sunday we set out to buy one.  That night she was snuggled into her big girl bed.  Oh another thing I want to note is that up until we put the sheets and blankets on her bed she wanted nothing to do with climbing under the sheets/blankets.  In our bed she always wanted to lay on top with just her small fleece baby blanket on top.  John and I were actually curious to see how this would play out when we made up her bed with sheets and blankets.  We were shocked when she climbed right under the covers with no hesitation.  

So how are things going two weeks later-WONDERFUL!  She has yet to get out of her bed for any reason without us coming to get her.  The first five nights sleeping in her bed were the best five nights of uninterrupted sleep we have gotten since she was born!  We had a few rough nights last weekend but that was because she was sick and she is back to sleeping from 8:00PM - 6:00PM.  She doesn't even really wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night anymore.  I even was able to crawl into her bed last night and just lay with her for awhile and she didn't even wake up.  And now that we picked out bedding we can start transforming her room into her "Big Girl Room".  We hadn't really done anything in her room since we moved in because we were waiting for this to happen.  

Another side note, we got rid of the glider in her room.  Now that we can snuggle together on her bed and read we dont' need it in her room anymore and moved it to our room to use when the new baby comes.  By getting rid of the glider it made room for this: 

Her own little 3ft Christmas tree.  This sits in one of the dormers.  Once Christmas is over and things are settled down John plans to create a little reading nook here with a built in bench.  I can't wait!

So yes, it is a bit bittersweet.  This really truly is the end of all things that are baby related with Elsie.  But I suppose that is just part of it all.  It is exciting to me to see her grow, mature, and move on to new things and to see her excitement in doing so.  She is so proud of how she is a big girl now and this brings me so much joy.  

And we had one more surprise for her as a reward for sleeping so well in her big bed for a week straight-Pumpkin Cinderella's pet puppy :). She also sleeps with this now and just treasures her.  

Elsie Lately

Now that I am not doing monthly posts anymore for Elsie, I want to still post about what she is up to and how much she is growing up (It is happening way too fast!)!  
** I apologize this is a very text heavy post

So lately, 
Elsie is going to bed around 7:30 PM and waking up between 5:30-6:00-way too early so this is something we are working on. Actually just on Sunday she slept past 7:00!  I was up for a whole hour before anyone else-what a treat :)

Elsie's favorite little phrase right now is "I love _____ so much!" (This can be anything from mommy, daddy, flowers, pretzel goldfish, or her new shoes).

Elsie is counting so much better than she was two months ago.  Back in December she would count "1, 3, 9" and then one day we were in her room and she started counting at 1 and went straight through to 13! I was shocked! 

Elsie is getting better with colors.  She knows brown, pink, red, purple, and mostly blue all the time.  She sometimes mixes up yellow and orange and green is a wildcard.  

Elsie is getting more and more into playing with her baby dolls and her stuffed animals.  She puts them to sleep, and likes to read to them.  Her imagination is really starting to bloom!  It is fun to just sit and listen to her.  

Elsie likes to hold them books when we read to her at nap and bedtime.  Sometimes she just wants to "read" the book.  Some books she knows so well she gets the story line right on.  It is fun to listen to her make up stories.  

Elsie likes to play pretend.  One day she wanted to have a tea party and the only thing we had was a stool for a table.  Everything else was imaginary.  She would go upstairs to the "Store" to get more treats and bring that back down.  When we "finished" our treats she would say "More Mommy?" and then go upstairs for more.  Another time she laid out all the DVD's and was pretending it was a store and she would go shopping and buy them and bring them home.  

Elsie will wake up in the morning and the first thing she says is "Snuggle Mommy" or "Snuggle Daddy" depending on who goes in to get her.  We have started a bad habit of bringing her back into our bed to snuggle. Some mornings she will wake up way too early and say "Mommy and Daddy's Room".  It takes a bit of convincing but we normally can get her to lay back down.

Elsie is outgrowing her 2T clothes!  And she wears size 7 shoes! She is getting so big!  

Elsie is excited about the "new house".  We drove by it the other day to test out the garage remotes and she was pretty upset that we couldn't go it.  I told her we didn't have keys for the house.  So now if you ask about the house she puts her arms up and says "we don't have keys".  If you ask her when she will tell you "Friday".  She is still excited about her three windows and two closets in her room and will be happy to tell you that one is for clothes and one is for toys.  She also is really into helping up pack up for the "new house".

Elsie has the sweetest little voice!  Well, except when she is whining for something.  We are working on getting her to talk not whine when she wants something.  Oh and her fits have intensified over the past two months too!  We have learned if we just ignore her and don't give in they end rather quickly.  One day at naptime she threw the biggest fit I have seen her throw all because I wouldn't let her nap in her baby doll cradle.  Really?!?

Elsie loves pretty much all fruits and most vegetables and pasta.  Although that all depends on the day.  It seems her food choices change from one day to the next.  For example, we haven't been able to get Elsie to eat rice ever and then last night that was just about the only thing on her plate that she ate.  They do say that it can take 7-10 times of being offered a particular food before they will start to like it-maybe that is what happened.  We don't make special food for Elsie but I do make sure to offer a fruit and a vegetable because I know I can always count on her eating that.  

Elsie is still rear facing in her carseat, although I think the day will be coming where we turn her forward facing.  I just want to get through the winter/snow driving.  She enjoys car rides and likes to listen to "music" which is not the radio but one of her CD's.  She likes to wear her sunglasses in the car and snuggle with a blanket.  

Elsie started taking a tumbling class with parks and recreation.  She enjoys the bar and beam the most.  

Elsie loves to listen to music and dance.  She will ask for it almost immediately when we get into the kitchen and in the car.  She also likes to turn on her radio in her room.  Our favorite CD's are Raffi and Sharon, Lois, and Bram Greatest Hits.  She LOVES to sing too!  She is catching on with a lot of songs, especially ones where I make up actions.  The other day I looked over at her when she was eating lunch and she was doing the actions I made up for "home on the range". 

Elsie has started to say prayers.  We started with a mealtime prayer and then moved on to a bedtime prayer.  When we started with the bedtime prayer she kept saying "food" because this was part of our mealtime prayer.  I had to explain to her that our bedtime prayer was not about food but about sleeping and so now whenever we start our prayer she says "not food" ;).  I am impressed with how fast she is catching on with her bedtime prayer trying so hard to get the words down.  She also is getting down "Jesus Loves Me".  I tried to record it the other day but of course, she started being silly when the camera came out.  We have started getting these little books mailed to us by our church and without even telling her what the books were about she knew it was about Jesus.  I asked her how she knew it was about Jesus and she opened to a page of Jesus being baptized.  It amazes me what kids pick up on.  

Elsie's favorite books right now are:  Mickey Mouse Look and Find, The Way I Love You by David Bedford and Ann James, The Night Before Summer Vacation, and Llama Llama Bully Goat.  WE have started to go to the library and I let her pick out her own books.  These are the books she tends to want to read when she choose her books before bedtime.  

Elsie went through a hitting stage this past month.  There was a week we noticed her hitting us at home and she actually had a couple of time outs.  Then at the end of the week, JoJo mentioned to me she had been hitting her friends at daycare too!  Ugh!  So over the weekend we talked a lot about hitting and so far, we haven't had anymore issues.  

Elsie loves to get her nails painted!  I do her nails way more than I do my own :)  We use Piggy Paint which is a non-toxic nail polish and it works pretty well for her.  

Elsie is just growing up so fast!  I can't believe she is tall enough to ride the rides by herself, to walk down steps without hold on (although we tell her she needs to hold the railing), pick out her clothes, jump, hop, do somersaults, and have so many opinions about everything.  Her vocabulary and ability to form sentences amaze me just for the fact that I think she should still be a little baby snuggled up in my arms.  I just love her to pieces!  

Elsie Marie - 17 Months

It is hard to believe that in one month, Elsie is going to be 18 months old!  These past few months have just flown by!!! This past month has been so much fun and I just love watching her personality shine through. She has been so sweet despite the rough nights and has been so happy.  It must be the change in weather.  It was also fun to get back outside to take her monthly pictures.  She just loves being outside so there were lots of smiles, excitement, and different expressions.

GROWTH:  This month Elsie is weighing right around 23 pounds and is 32 inches tall.  She is growing out of 12-18 months clothes but 24M clothes are a little big, especially the pants.  She wears 5 and 5.5 size shoes.  Size 6 is still a little too big which is a bummer because she received so many cute Size 6 sandals as a gift.  

EATING: Elsie is still a great eater!  The main thing she won't eat is beans...not in chili, not plain, not baked, no beans.  Otherwise she will eat just about anything we give to her.  She is getting really good with the spoon/fork and can feed herself a whole container of yogurt and get only about 25% of it on her bib  ;).  We did have to take away soft spouted sippy cups because she would tip them upside down, push down and milk would pour out.  Her favorite way to drink is out of Mommy's water glass which has a lid and straw.  Every time she see it she says "wa-wa" and points to it.  In the mornings when she comes and snuggles in bed with us she will look for it on the top of our headboard where I keep it at night.

SLEEP: Well she started out the month with her typical sleeping habits-bed by 7:00 wake up between 5:00-6:00.  Unfortunately things changed by the end of the this month.  She would wake up in the middle of the night and cry and cry despite all of our efforts of comfort for like two hours!  She did this probably 60% of the time over the course of 12 days!  It was exhausting.  Both John and I agreed with was worse than when she was a newborn.  We were starting to believe that she had an ear infection until we started to see the beginnings of her two upper eye teeth (canines, bicuspids, whatever you want to call them).  This has been the worst teething experience to date for her.  Poor girl. On top of the teething she was dealing with a cough/stuffy nose.   I hope it ends soon! Our routine is pretty much the same except we have started to do bath almost every night because this crazy girl gets so dirty playing outside.  So it goes like this:  bath, brush teeth (we do it first, then she gets her chance), diaper/jammies, pick out friends, snuggle in chair, read a few books, songs, then bedtime.  She still goes to bed without a fuss just about every night.  We are struglling a little bit on what to put her in to sleep at night because we don't want her to get so hot or too cold.  In the winter it was pretty standard and we kept the temp of her room pretty consistent but with the hot days and cool nights we have to change it up.  We learned our lesson though after the first hot night that our  typical night time wardrobe of onesie, zip up sleeper, and sleepsack was just too hot when she woke up super sweaty and unhappy.  The minute we changed her jammies she had a sigh of relief and practically fell right back to sleep in our arms.  So now we mix it up between shorts vs pants and long sleeves vs. short sleeves with a lightweight cotton sleepsack.

TEETH: 
Like I mentioned above, she will soon be up to 14 teeth once those babies pop through!

DEVELOPMENT:
The biggest change I have seen this month is how much focus she has when she is trying to do something.  Her biggest thing right now is trying to put on/take off clothes and shoes and she has been trying to buckle the buckles on her high chair and booster seats.  Oh also on her stroller.  She is so determined and she will keep working at it until she gets it done.  She has also been that way with buttons and gets so mad when she can't do it herself. She is definitely developing a sense of independence. She is really getting into dancing and will imitate a lot of our fancy dance moves ;).  She is beginning to sing along to songs with us like our "Time to Go to JoJo's" song, ABC's., Row Row Row your boat, and will do the actions to "Wheels on the Bus".   When we read books she can point to so many objects when we ask her to and she is so particular on the books she wants to read.  It is the object recognition that has really started to amaze me.

I told her to go sit in her chair and say "cheese"

PLAY:  She absolutely loves being outside.  She has discovered the sandbox at Jo Jo's and love scooping up the sand into the bucket.  At homes she loves to play with the rocks around our house, play in her Cozy Coupe, and just run around.   Inside she enjoys her Megablocks, pushing stuff around in her doll stroller, playing with the fruit cups from the pantry (unopened of course).  She has also really gotten in to playing with her baby dolls.  She likes to put it to sleep in the cradle, try to change a diaper and wipe its bottom with one of her wipes and she likes to give it a bottle.  She absolutely adores Barney.  The whole TV thing started when she would wake up at 5:30 and we weren't ready to crawl out of bed yet but wanted to keep her entertained.  Nothing that was on at 5:30 am were doing the trick so one day I decided to record Barney.  That afternoon as I was trying to get stuff packed up to leave for MN I turned it on and she sat in her chair and watched the whole thing.  So every weekday and episode of Barney gets recorded to the DVR.  Some days we will watch it and snuggle together in the chair after nap and some days we watch it at 5:30 AM snuggled in our bed.  It definitely doesn't happen everyday but I love having a show I know she is interested in.  A couple other things she enjoys doing is playing with her bath crayons (in the bath of course) and playing with play-doh.  She has also been VERY generous with her kisses which I absolutely love.  We are working on "I Love You" with the pointing to your eye, chest, and then the person.  She has the first and last one down but still has to get the "Love" :).

SPEECH: Oh goodness I can't believe how her vocabulary has changed.  She says so many words on her own but is also repeating just about everything we say.  New words include, wa-wa (water), blankie, Barney, apple, "cow says moo", and monkey.  I feel like there is more but I just can't remember right now.

Smelling our backyard Lilacs.

We have a little robin family in our backyard with a nest.  Elsie was fascinated with this bird while we were taking pictures.  

Picking Dandelions

Elsie Marie - 16 Months

GROWTH:  She is about 21 pounds according to our scale at home.  We never took a height measurement but we have been putting away more and more 12 month shirts and pants.

EATING:  She is still a super eater!  She eats most of what we offer but still goes straight for the meat.  She doesn't really like pork roast or chops though.  No real new foods this month.    We have played around with different kinds of yogurt because when we switch for YoBaby to other options she didn't like it so much.  I think we have found she likes the YoToddler and also Chobani Champions yogurt tube things.  She likes to eat with a spoon or fork the most and at times will eat things better if it comes off my fork ;). She still isn't proficient with eating utensils but she is definitely getting better at using them.   We have taken away soft spouted sippy cups because she learned to push them against her tray so that milk would come out on the tray and she could play with it.

SLEEP:  There was big change in the sleep department this month and that is the elimination of the morning nap.  She started it a little bit before she turned 15 months and took a few weeks to get the transition worked out but she is now down to one nap a day and it ends up being a longer nap in the afternoon.  It is hard because sometimes she is still tired in the morning so we take it day by day.  Every now and then she will lay down for a short nap in the morning but that happens so rarely.  As for afternoon naps go she lays down around one and is sleeping between 1.5-2.5 hours.  She is still going to bed right around 7:00PM and waking between 5:15-6:30 AM with most of the mornings waking up before 6:00.  Most mornings she wakes up at 5:15ish and we go in, give her a paci, sometimes pick her up and lay her back down and she will fall back asleep for another 30-60 minutes so that is nice...I just wish she wouldn't wake up at 5:15 to begin with.  We had one REALLY rough morning where she woke up at 4:30 and we could not get her to go back to sleep no matter what we tried. Let's just say it was a long morning.

TEETH:  No new teeth this month so she is still at 12.

DEVELOPMENT:  Each day it is something new with her and I love to watch her grow!  I am still amazed at the things she sees us do and then copies the action.  She definitely follows two step directions pretty well.  As far as self care, she loves to brush her teeth and she even learned how to spit in the sink.  She also does a pretty good with washing her hands.  For large motor development she is really picking up speed with her running and is starting to walk backwards.  She is also starting to want to walk up the stairs hold on to my hands vs crawling up the stairs.  Another thing that is developing is the frequency of her throwing a fit.  We are really working on getting her to use gestures, words, and signs and instead of throwing a fit and whining to get what she wants.

PLAY: Like every other month she still loves her books.  She also like to push things around her in doll stroller.  With the weather getting nice we are spending more and more time outside and at the park.  Unfortunately, we have to time our walks to the park just right because you have a thrown a fit or two on our way home from the park.   She is starting to play more with her puzzles and can even put the pieces into place.  This month she also discovered the set of mega blocks she has loves to get them to stack together.  Other favorites are her baby dolls, her little plush barn and animals, and her singing bunny.

SPEECH:  There are a few words Elsie has started saying this month that surprised me this month one of them being "cracker".  She repeated it after I said it once and then the next time she saw a cracker she pointed to it and said it again.  She is says banana when she sees a banana, baby, names of the kids at daycare, I know there is more but I can't really remember now.  Oh she said no quite a bit when my parents were watching her.