The boy and his chalk

3 month-date

We have arrived! Officially 3 months old and out of the newborn phase. It is bitter sweet, but oh man, you really can tell when you've turned a corner. And these brief periods of respite before challenges of the new age arrive are so restoring.

I recently packed away the kids winter clothing and Nora's layette. It is really difficult to say goodbye to this phase, everything certainly is moving too fast the second time around.

Baby girl is a mover and shaker. She kicks, squirms, wiggles and is even trying to sit up - that or do baby crunches. I believe she has discovered her feet, or at least that she can move then and reach toys with them. She is constantly in motion. She also is entirely vocal. She adores being talked to and enjoys coo-ing back. She makes the best faces and sounds.


She has recently begun to love her toys and takes her time at the baby gym seriously. The sun in one hand, elephant shaker in the other. She's getting a real work out these days. She is also even more into following Elijah around. She's seeing pretty well these days and can follow his darting movements a little better than when she was a younger gal. She has also developed an affinity for TV. It doesn't matter what's on- though she prefers Cat in the Hat.

She's still an awesome sleeper. And I credit a reprieve in gray hairs to my getting more sleep than I ever dreamed possible with two little ones. It also seems that she is settling herself into a bit of a daily rhythm which is also cool. She's pretty flexible and easy-going; she's my "take along baby".

We had a short battle with thrush and a momentary stall in weight gain that spurred worries in me of my pediatrician wanting to supplement. He, however, was not at all concerned with the stall. He said she looked perfectly healthy and let's just wait and see. "But she's supposed to gain an ounce a day" I shouted. Turns out babies do grow in fits and spurts - she gained a whole pound last week alone and all worries of a skinny baby are over.

She remains a completely different nurser than Elijah. She does not linger over her meals and often does not want to nurse to sleep. When she's done - she's done and if I try to coax her to eat a little bit more, she screams. She wants to eat and then go about her business.

How I love toothless baby faces!

Me and My Little Valentine

Nora's two month update

The little girl turned two months yesterday. She is a smiling, coo-ing body of wonderfulness.

Seriously, I don't know if she's just that different of a baby than Eli, or if Rob and I were just clueless with him. Nora is a super easy baby. She is sleeping about 6-7 hours at night, which honestly makes anything and everything during daytime hours with 2 little ones much much easier to handle.

Nora began coo-ing and smiling about 2 weeks ago - and it is as wonderful as I was anticipating. She loves watching big brother. I like to think it's because she loves him already and is interested in what he's doing. Though, it is probably equal amounts of self-preservation as it is adoration. She's been hit with footballs (foam - but still I know it stung) and had matchbox cars driven over her face. She's going to be one tough preschooler one day.

I can tell very easily now that she recognizes her immediate family and is more than happy to see Ma's face when she's hungry.


She is an absolute dream.


Some things that have made this time around easier. A pacifier. I swore Elijah would not have one - and he didn't. By the time I realized there may be something to baby's having pacifiers he would not take one. This time, it was the first postpartum baby product we bought. She doesn't take it often and she doesn't sleep with it at night, but it comes in handy when she does want to take it.

Second thing, A book called, "The Happiest Baby on the Block." I so wish I had this book when Eli was a newborn. The doc's 5's work magic on Nora and our lives are all the more peaceful for it. His whole premiss is that baby's need a 4th trimester - I've read about this idea before by other authors - and the 5's mimic the environment of the womb. Swaddling, Shushing, Swinging, Side and the icing on the cake suckling. She's no match withstanding all 5 at once, she'll calmly fall asleep in minutes. It's like a party trick going from screaming baby to ... silence. Third thing, her cradle swing. If grandma lived next door, we may not need this baby item. But it was a consignment store steal and provides hours of contentment when there aren't extra arms to rock in the rocking chair. Some days she's in it a lot, other days not at all. But the days that she does need the extra attention it is very helpful.

4th thing, my electric steamer I got for Christmas. I love clean floors. 2 year olds hate clean floors. It has been an epic battle which I lost. hard. I considered getting a dog, just to keep my floors slightly less than gross. But now, I can save myself the vet bill and the hassle of a 4th living creature to care for with this contraption. It is amazing and makes my floors sparkle in about 10 minutes. It's has perhaps surpassed my love for my dust buster with it's ease of use and quickness.

modified tummy time - the only way my little ones will do it. Also they apparently need to be wearing chic french hats.

*Update- Nora Cate weighed 12lbs9oz at her appointment on Feb20

Elijah is 2!

Oh man, life is good. I think I understand bible verses now that talk about how children are a reward and gifts from God. 2 year olds - aside from temper tantrums - are wonderful creatures.

Elijah is way cool to hang out with. He feels like a little family member and is great company for me. I enjoy being around him.

He has about 30ish words - though he uses them quite sparingly. In fact, it took Rob and me a few days to compile the list and we stretch what we counted as a word. For instance, err is car. Sometimes it does feel like we live with a foreign exchange student who is trying to learn our language, but mostly just points and uses the same words for pretty much everything. Some of his favorite words are -

naa - horse
baa - sheep
nink - drink
noyunk - "oink" pig
Mee - Mickey Mouse
bye - in a sweet southern 2 syllable accent
grrr - bear, lion, tiger, etc. or play with me
i stuck - Eli's only phrase and his most useful one at that.

He loves Mickey Mouse, as you'll see from his birthday party pictures and has learned or perfected some things from watching the show. He can "tip toe tip toe tip toe" like Mickey and at the end of the show he gets up and does his own version of "The Hotdog Dance." His interpretation is skipping in a circle. Mickey also gets him to jump up and down a lot somehow.

Eli loves music of any kind, especially live music. He immediately starts dancing around and even has different types of dances to fit different music styles. He really enjoys our nightly jumping on the bed time. This ritual began when Nora was born as a special sister free zone for Elijah. Now he often gets on our bed when he wants to play with us or get extra loving. We'll wrestle him on the bed, let him bounce around, and rough house as much as he wants. Usually we do this before bedtime, but often we'll be in another room of the house and hear, "GRRR" coming from our room as an enticement to come and play! He also really enjoyed all the outdoor lights at Christmas and now gives a play by play during drives. He'll point out other cars (or errs) and say, "wheee" or "bump."

He still enjoys baby sister and doesn't seem to remember a time when we weren't carting her around with us as well. Now, he really likes to put his face in the way of her flailing arms and hands. Once contact is made he'll exclaim, "Oww!" and laugh. Yeah, right brother - no way that hurt! He kind of accidentally jumped on her a week or so ago. He was jumping and tried to Evil Knievel his way over lil sis. Luckily, he angled his jump and all but cleared her feet. I was right beside her and have no idea how he moved so fast. It startled her and I learned to stay between them, being right next to her is not enough to protect newborn Nora. Besides that instance, he's doing really well with gentle touches and learning to touch little sis with an open hand. Previously, he liked to knock knock on her head or torso. (it's a bad idea to play the pretend sleep/wake up game with a toddler if you're expecting a baby) He liked to knock knock on little sister to try to wake her up. He also loves to kiss Nora, though I also have to watch that. He seems to come in a little forcefully. yikes. little sister's going to be tough.

His favorite game is probably the book pointing game. He loves to look at points and either I'll point to an animal and he'll say what the animal says. Or, he'll point to a picture and I'll say what it is. He could (and does!) play this game for hours..... He also has started to interact with other kids even more. He still largely plays independently during play dates, but we see him starting to play with other kids. That is really neat. Last Sunday, Rob heard Eli laughing in his room from down the hall. When he got to the door, they told Rob that Eli and a little girl had been engrossed in a game of chase for the entire morning. Elijah loves his Sunday school class and skips down the hall on Sunday mornings to class. He loves that they go out to the playground pretty much every Sunday and tries to talk us into taking him back after church. A playground, by the way, is known as Wee. We found this out after walking to our car after church one morning. As we approached the play ground Elijah's cries of "Weee!" got louder and louder. As we passed the playground, his cries got sadder and softer and quieter, "weee..."

Below are some pictures from Elijah's birthday party last Saturday!

Our attempt to recreate a picture of Rob and his mom and Rob's 2nd Birthday which was also Mickey Mouse themed

Even though it's blurry, this is one of my favorite pictures!

A close up of my first (great) attempt at a birthday cake. I impressed myself.

our only picture with Nora - she slept through the party with my mom watching her

Nora Cate is 1 month old!

This past month with Nora has been wonderful. We love our sweet baby girl.

One of the best parts of having a newborn again is remembering Elijah at that age through Nora's expressions and sounds. Some of her same cry faces I remember vividly as Eli cry faces. It was hard in some ways to go back to newborn days though. I looked at Rob one night and held Nora up and told him, "She doesn't know anything!" "She can't do anything cool, yet!" Her kind daddy took up for her and said she knew a lot... and she'll do fun stuff with us one day. Rob also says her cuteness is a survival instinct. I tend to agree. I think I actually heard that in a college sociology class.

I am shamelessly waiting so impatiently for her first real smiles. Oh, toothless grins send my heart over the edge and make all the work of a newborn more than worthwhile. Her little flutter smiles help me bide the time until then.

She is a strong girl - holding her head up for small bits of time since she came home from the hospital. I'm guessing she'll be close to 10lbs by her 1 month appointment. (Update! Turns out Nora was 10 lbs 12 oz at 5 1/2 weeks!) Sadly, she's already grown out of her teeny tiny newborn clothes and is into the 0-3 month ones. She is a WAY WAY easier baby than Elijah. And, I think a good bit of that is Rob and I are at least somewhat smarter...

For instance, little girl has to cry longer than Elijah ever dreamed of. After 2 secs of merely a "wha" with him, he was in my arms and I was feeding him, changing him, or soothing him. This girl is told many times a day as I attend to the needs of both babies, "hold on, little sis", "reign it in sister", or "get in line baby girl - mama's moving as fast as she can." I also allow my self the opportunity to go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, or pour a glass of water, whether baby girl is crying or not. I don't think I went to the bathroom until Eli was 5 months old. I'd hold it all day until Rob got home just in case Eli started to cry. I was sure he'd suffer from some awful disorder if he cried longer than 1 minute - With Nora, I've relaxed a lot. It is for sure, little sister's growing up in a different world. Often times by the time I do get to her, (which let's face it may be an eternity in newborn time - but in the real world it's only a couple minutes while I change Eli's diaper or get him a snack) Nora will many times have worked it out.

This girl can also sleep through the biggest of Eli noises and patiently suffers his good-natured smoother kisses, wake-up pokes, and hand holds. Can't fault a brother for loving his sis. Poor girl can't keep a hat on her head. Hats draw in Eli like moths to a flame. He gets a crazy look in his eye and darts over to her and yanks off the hat like it was offending him. I'd love to know if it's some sort of capture the flag game in his head.


She sleeps like a champ and I am following my mother's advice to, "Never wake a sleeping baby." When I told her I was waking Nora Cate up every 3 hours to eat, she said, "Girl, you're grandma would tell you to leave that baby alone and let her sleep." After the first 2 weeks, I've stopped waking her up at night and Nora's gone for a good 5 hour stretch for a couple nights. This is vastly different from our experience with Eli.


We did have a rough week, week and a half of sleepless nights. Nora Cate seemed to be having some gas, reflux, colic tummy troubles. I thought, oh dear, here we go again. But, we discovered a homeopathic remedy called Colic Calm. It changed our life.

It's seriously the best product in the world as far as I can tell.

It was so much fun to have a Holiday Baby. We really enjoyed Christmas festivities in a different way. We put a low priority on cooking and baking, i.e. we did none. We ordered a honey baked ham picked up sides from Kroger and called it a day. Done and Done. We focused on taking care of babies and having fun. We went to the train exhibit at UT gardens Christmas Eve, church Christmas morning, and to see lights one evening. We bucked current tradition and opened presents Christmas Eve so we wouldn't be so rushed Christmas morning. We also played a rousing game of find the belly button stump Christmas Eve, eww.

Baby girl may dislike having her birthday so close to Christmas in the future, but for us this first year it was a blast. We were able to have so many family and friends come and see us over the holiday weeks. There was a relaxed, cheerful, holiday spirit all around: at the mall, on tv, and the people around us. We really enjoyed our new tiny baby during the Holiday Season

StomachBug 2012

Our family is just getting over being ravaged by StomachBug 2012.

Elijah got sick Thursday of last week. It took me down Saturday morning. And Rob fell victim Saturday night. Nora Cate, thankfully, made it through unaffected. This was the first time Elijah was aware of his sickness. Poor guy didn't like having a bucket shoved in his face at the first sign of a gag. At one point Rob carried him from the bedroom into the living room holding the trashcan. Elijah started gagging and Rob held the bucket in front of him. Eli said, "no no no" turned his head away from the bucket and into Rob's arms. The end result wasn't pretty. It was nice that Eli had a clear tell of when sickness was about to strike, though. Right before getting sick, he'd come over to me and say, "Ma?" in a sad little sweet voice.

This virus also marked my first real time of having to significantly split my attention between 2 very needy little people. It was really difficult and at times heartwrenching to see Eli feeling awful and wanting my comfort so much and also have little girl crying with her many needs as well. Ugh, I'm glad this past weekend is over.

Monday I spent clorox-ing, lysol-ing, airing out, and washing. I'm determined we won't pass this nasty bug back and forth. So far - so good.

If I wasn't before, I'm now completely exhausted. There should be some marker for over the door which keeps viruses out of homes which contain newborns.

Things I've now learned :

-2 year olds don't like to throw up in buckets.
-Gloves are a must for cleaning up after 2 year olds who don't like to throw up in buckets.
-Sprite, gatorade, and pedialyte should live in our basement for easy access.
-It's not pretty when we all drop like flies.