Oh My Goodness!

We had a very nice Christmas this week.  We started out with a visit to Evansville last weekend and celebrated with my mom, brother, sisters, brothers-in-law and nephews!  As usual, Jason set the pace of the day because that boy can not stand to wait even ONE MORE SECOND to open presents.  : ) I have no idea what he got because, as is typical, he raced through opening his loot and then squirreled it all away to his room in approximately 97 seconds flat! 

 

The kiddos were fun to watch.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of all the babies together dressed up in their matching pjs.  I'll have to get that from one of my sisters.  But believe me when I say, they were SOO stinkin' CUTE!

 

Lily was helping to pass out presents before tearing in to her own. 

 

 

Tyler REALLY wanted to tear that present open!

 

 

 

We headed home on Christmas Eve night so that Lily would wake up to Santa's presents left under the tree.  Lily was a hoot to watch opening her presents.  Her favorite line was "oh my goodness!" which she said with almost each present she opened.  I think about 50% of what she got was Dora related!  And of course, all these toys and the thing she latched on to the most was a $4 set of Dora stickers.  That girl loves her some stickers!!  Instead of posting a bunch of the pictures, here's a video of her opening some of the gifts. 

 

(Sorry for the quality....the camera woman is not very good at this....)

 



 



After we opened gifts, Joel made us a big breakfast with bacon, eggs and biscuits.  YUM!  We just relaxed the rest of the day.

Then Christmas night "The Blizzard of 2012" rolled through.   I'm not sure the official tally of snow for Columbus but I'm guessing it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 inches.  Lily was scared of the snow at first.  I opened the back door and grabbed some snow to give to Lily to eat.  At first she wanted nothing to do with that but before all was said and done, she was sitting in the living eating a whole bowl full of the stuff!  Once the snow and wind died down, we took her outside to play in it and build her first snow man! 

Here you can see the snow is up to Lily's knees (she's standing...I'm kneeling)!

Lily got a little wore out of the snow though before it was all done so we didn't get a picture of her with the snowman right after it was done.

But we got one the next day (in spite of her protests)!

As if we didn't have enough excitement with all the snow, we ended up taking both of the kids to the doctor on Thursday.  On Wednesday night, I noticed this white spot on Lily's tongue.  It looked kind of like a callus and was about the size of a pea.  I'm not gonna lie, I freaked out.  I was thinking the worst and of course Joel and I both took to the Internet to try to diagnose it.  But, nothing we read looked anything like what was in her mouth.  She didn't seem bothered by it but was drooling like crazy and her breath was a little funky.  The doctor is treating her for thrush, but I have to say this doesn't look like any case of thrush I've ever seen.  This is now the second day of "mecidine" and it does look a little better but I won't rest easy until it's all the way gone.

Tyler, my one BM/day baby, has had diarrhea since Christmas day.  He's having a BM pretty much after every feeding and then some and it's completely watery.  He's a tad bit fussy and spitting up a little more than normal, but I wouldn't say he's vomitting.  He has no fever.  The doctor just said to keep an eye on him and if it's not better in a couple days, to bring him back in.   Well another 36 hours has gone by and it's still the same.  He's thankfully not dehydrated but I am constantly checking for signs of that.  So far, so good but I really think he's pooped more in the last four days than he normally does in a MONTH.  The diaper genie is crying UNCLE!  I guess if he's still doing this on Monday, I'll take him back to the doctor.  I won't be allowed to take him back to daycare until it's cleared up. 

Welp, that was another really long post.  I guess that's what happens when you don't post for over a week! 

Tyler can never find out....

....that his pile of presents was a lot smaller than Lily's for his first Christmas!

Joel wanted to pick out only one thing for Tyler but I broke down and bought him a second thing.  He's only 3.5 months old so he really won't know the difference (right now) plus we still have lots and lots of "baby" toys that were Lily's so he really doesn't need much. 

But I still felt pretty guilty today after wrapping presents and seeing these two piles next to each other.  I have a million errands to run tomorrow, so the main goal will be to NOT buy more presents for Tyler!

Funny's Ride Wagon Horse Hey!

Yesterday was Lily's Christmas program at the Church where she goes to daycare.  It was finally time to see her in action after the last month of her singing "Go Tell It On The Mountain" every day at home.

Lily did great, even though she barely sang!

We were happily surprised that Lily stood up there the whole time and didn't try to run over to us.  But she did a lot of standing there with her hands in her mouth.  She did a bunch of the hand gestures and I think at one point she might have sang one line in one of the songs.  She was great!  We are so proud of her!

Here's some videos of the songs:

Go Tell It On The Mountain

The Reindeer Pokey

 

Little Star of Bethlehem



 

Wasn't That A Mighty Day



We may not have gotten much singing in while at the Christmas program, but Lily sang her heart out on the way home! 

And tonight on the way home from daycare she wanted to sing Jingle Bells.  So I sang the chorus once and then she started singing it.  Her version went a little like this:

Jingle Bell
Jingle Bell
Jingle allll waaaay
Oh what funny's ride wagon horse, hey! (translation:  Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey)

I'm pretty sure that's the cutest version of Jingle Bells I've ever heard and even though I'm normally a bit of a scrooge when it comes to Christmas music, I could listen to Lily sing it all day long. 

I wish I could video record and drive at the same time.  I'd have the BEST videos ever if I could figure that out.

Dora's gotta eat too, ya know!

Today Lily said that Dora and Boots needed to eat so she pulled up her shirt and fed them!

 

 

Wow!  I guess breastfeeding Tyler is leaving an impression on Lily!  We got her a baby doll for Christmas that comes with a bottle to feed the baby.  How confusing is THAT going to be for her?!?

 

An update in cell phone saga....I got in to work yesterday and had an email sent me at 1:55am from a Cummins security guard that they had my cell phone at main security (which is right by my desk).  So this story just gets stranger all the time.  It makes no sense to me how my phone turned up there 3.5 days AFTER I lost it!  I had scoured the parking lot the day I lost it and didn't find it.  I can't believe it would have survived in the parking lot all that time without getting run over.  Plus there's still the all too coincidental Craigslist posting with a phone matching mine, including the damage on it.  I suppose I will never know what adventures my phone was on for those 3.5 days.  Of course, I had already filed the insurance claim, received my replacement phone and gotten it all set up with my email and apps and such.  Sigh.  I don't know if I owe some random Craigslist seller an apology for accusing him of stealing my phone or whether I owe some Johnny Carinos diner a thank you for figuring out it was a Cummins' employee's phone and turning it in to security??  But if someone found it at Carinos, why wouldn't they just turn it in there?  The possibilities are endless!

 

Grateful for Google+ and this Blog!

After getting through the fury of having my phone stolen and seeing it on Craigslist, I had a secondary meltdown over losing all the photos and videos I had on my phone.  I mean, I literally started wailing while standing at the sink washing Tyler's bottles!

But then last night, I had a revelation!  I had Google+ on my cell phone and any time I took a picture or a video, it would automatically "Instant Upload" to my Google+ online account.  I would never have bothered to set up that feature on my phone had it not been for this blog.  So, anyway, I started to get cautiously excited that I might still have a way to access all those precious moments.

So I logged in and tada!!  My videos and photos are there!  I'm so happy.  I found there's a way to download my stuff to my computer so I should be golden! 

So here's a video I took of Tyler earlier this week.  He was cooing and jabbering like crazy so I busted out my phone to try to capture it.  Of course when I got my phone out, he got camera shy and quit talking.  But he's still pretty cute. 

Thank you Google!  Enjoy!

And to the creepy jerk-face thief who stole my phone, in the words of My Two Broke Girls, you can SUCK IT!

The long arm of the law was in my HOUSE!

Today was not a good day in the life of Kelly Basham.  It started off badly with some work related baloney which I will not go in to but left me pretty upset none-the-less.  Then I went to lunch to escape the prison workplace for an hour and had a very nice lunch with my friend Stephani.

As I'm walking out the door of the restaurant, I pull my phone out of my coat pocket to check the time and get in the car and head back to work.  Upon getting back to work, I go to pull my phone out my pocket and it's not there.  I rummage my purse.  Nope, no phone.  I run back to the car tear it up looking.  No phone.  Go back in to work and call Johnny Carinos.  They check the parking lot and they don't have it.  I rummage my purse some more and check my coat pockets again and for some reason, it hasn't miraculously appeared (my boss asked me if I thought if I checked my coat one more time, it would show up....smartass!).  So then I decide to drive back to Johnny Carinos and check again for myself - you know, just in case the hostess was lazy or blind or something and didn't really look for my phone.  Nope, not there.  So then I drive over to Joel's work and make him come out and search the car in case I'm just overlooking it.  Nope.  Not.  There.

So I go back to work totally defeated because I'm sure that some a-hole has stolen my phone.  So I suspended the service on it so at least it couldn't be used.  Then I check my phone insurance to see if it covers lost/stolen phones (and it does, thank goodness) and try to figure out what I need to do to replace it.  Meanwhile, after Joel gets off work, HE goes to Johnny Carinos and looks for it too. 

So when I got home tonight, I tell Joel that I'm pretty convinced someone stole it so he gets the bright idea to check Craigslist. 

BOOYAH.

http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/mob/3471395570.html

At 2:08pm today (less than 40 minutes after I last looked at it at the restaurant) my phone was on Craigslist.  Complete with the description of the damaged case.  My blood starts boiling. 

But Joel's blood boiled faster.  While I'm cooking dinner, trying to decide what my next move should be, Joel responds to the Craigslist posting and offers to buy it!

I freaked out.  I watch the news, you know, so I'm all "What do you think you're going to do?  Meet this guy and try to TAKE it from him?  I don't think that story has a happy ending!!  You could be murdered!  Over a cell phone!  Forget it!!" 

So I mull it over some more and decide that my phone is long gone.  I'm never getting it back.  This a-hole's out to make a quick buck and that's all there is to it. 

My only recourse now, I believe, is at least to try to make the guy feel like a real douche for stealing my phone.  So I emailed him (with a newly created email address) with a plea to return the phone to it's rightful owner.  I don't expect him to answer me (and as of now, he hasn't answered Joel either) but I feel a little better about at least reminding this guy that the phone belonged to a REAL PERSON and it's NOT NICE to steal people's things. 

Now that's a fun story, right?  Well there's more.

Joel's still super p*ssed, even after I say it's over and there's not much we can do.  He's all, "I think we should report it stolen.  You know, on those TV shows the cops always ask if the gun was reported stolen."

Hahahahahahahahaha!  Report a stolen cell phone!  That's just silly.  But, my husband, he's on a mission and I'm still so mad that someone wouldn't just turn over the phone to the people at Johnny Carinos so I don't stop him.  He calls the police department, just expecting to make a report and see if anything can be done.

They dispatched a POLICE MAN to our HOUSE!  Within 20 minutes, we had an officer at our house to take down my report of the stolen phone so it could be entered in their "database." You know, in case my stolen phone is somehow recovered - even in California - I can get it back.  The officer was talking to us like our CAR was stolen or something.  I swear, I must have apologized 47 times for him having to be at our house, making a report over a CELL PHONE, just in case all his serious talk was really him making fun of me for reporting a stolen cell phone in the first place.

But it gets even better.

The officer asks me if I have the box with the serial number.  So I dig up the box but there's like 3 different numbers on the box and it's not obvious which one is the serial number.  So the officer says:

"I've got a buddy who works for Verizon.  I'm going to go out to my car give him a call and see if he can tell me which number is right so I can get this report in the system right away since we have a lead on the suspect."

Then he walks out to his car.  I nearly lose it.  Did he really just say "a lead on the suspect"?????  Over a cell phone?!?!?!? 

I wish the police officer could answer the Craigslist ad and retrieve my phone. 

Anyway, the moral of this story:

1) What is wrong with me? Am I seriously so unlucky or careless or klutzy or something such that these things happen to me (remember the ran over milk bag from a few days ago??)?

2) People suck.  It's not nice to steal. 

3) I'm grateful that I live in a town small enough that the police will come to your house over things like this --> implying that the town is pretty safe and there aren't more pressing places for them to be

4) We watch WAY too many cop shows on TV!  Haha!

And finally,

5) My husband is my hero.  He did everything he could to help me.  God love him.

3 months old!

Tyler is 3 months old today!!

Stats:
Weight - 15lbs 14 oz (he was clothed though so probably subtract a couple ounces) (~90th percentile)
Length - 25.5 inches (~90th percentile)

Eating Habits:  Now that I'm back to work, I know that Tyler is eating about 7-8 times a day depending on if he goes all night or not.  He takes four 4 ounce bottles of breastmilk at daycare.  I nurse him in the morning and then twice after work in the evenings (and sometimes at 3 or 4 in the morning).  The breastfeeding is going really well except that I'm have to pump 4 times a day at work to keep up with his 4 times a day feeding at daycare.  I hope that it spaces out over time but something tells me that we're going to be staying at this frequency for probably a long time.  We'll see.....I hope I can keep up.

Sleeping Habits:  He's doing pretty good on sleep although not as good as his sister did at this age!  He's had several nights of sleeping until 5:30 and even a couple nights sleeping until 6:30 in the morning but the last several nights we've been up at 3 or 4.  So he's all over the place on this.  His naps at daycare are also not super consistent.  Most days he does get a 40 minute nap in some time during the day.  The rest of his naps are 15-30 minutes tops. 

Awake Time:  Tyler's getting so full of expressions and it's so fun to talk to him and smile at him because he smiles and coos back.  It's soo adorable.  This month he also seems to have found his hands.  He clasps them together and puts them in his mouth.  So far he doesn't seem to know his feet are down there yet. 

Lily and Tyler 3 month side by side

I remember by this time, Lily had started drooling like CRAZY.  We kept thinking she was sure to get teeth but that didn't come til 5 months old or so.  No drooling with Tyler.

Sibling love!

And a pic of Lily cause she's so cute....

Working Mother of Two....

....is hard.  It's so hard.  It's so unbelievably hard and I'm so p*ssed that none of my so called friends warned me about this!!!  Haha....sort of....

It's only my 5th day back to work and already I'm day dreaming of hitting the lottery, hiring a full time nanny, cook and housekeeper and spending my days going to Target and knitting. 

Ok so maybe I'm overreacting a little but my morning was a tough one.

Every night, I spend about an hour (sometimes more) preparing for the next day.  I have to put away the milk pumped from the day/prepare what I'm taking the following morning, wash all the pump bottles and accessories, wash the bottles Tyler drank from at daycare, remove all the peepee, poopie and spit up clothes that two children generate in a day from the diaper bag, replace those clothes with clean clothes to take back to the daycare the next day, and fetch other items such as diapers, wipes, etc that the kids ran out of at daycare.  On Sunday nights, I have to also remember to grab the kids' blankies which were sent home on Fridays to be washed, write out the check to pay the daycare and grab Lily's communication folder.  This is all in addition to cooking dinner, doing dishes, giving baths, etc.  To be fair, Joel helps with those things. 

Then in the mornings, it's another crazy scramble.  In addition to getting myself ready, breastfeeding, diapering and clothing Tyler and dressing and feeding Lily, I have to get all our crap ready to load in the car.  First I have to repack all my pump stuff which has been drying over night.  Then pack my lunch box (the lunch was prepared the night before). Then I pile up all the crap by the door.  The pump, lunchbox, diaper bag, milk cooler & bottles, purse, laptop (which I try to leave at work as much as possible to reduce the number of things I have to carry) plus diapers and wipes when necessary (like this morning).

So this morning, when I then took all that crap the car, disaster struck.  I carried all that stuff at one time to the driveway.  I set it all down on the driveway to open the car door and load everything in.  I get that done and I'm feeling pretty good - it's been a smooth morning so far (except for the part where I had gotten up at 3:30am to feed Tyler and wasn't able to go back to sleep).  Back off to the house to wake up the kids.  So I get them up, fed, dressed and we're ready to head back out to the car to head to daycare....At this point, I'm only running 30 minutes late. 

I back out of the driveway and look up and what do I see? 

The cooler bag of milk sitting in the driveway.

SHIT.

I pull back in the driveway and get out, the whole time praying that I didn't run over it.  I pick it up....no milk leaking.  I open it up and pick up two of the four bottles inside....they are in tact.  We're good to go.  I'm feeling lucky and relieved.  Throw it in the backseat and off to daycare.

Get to daycare and start to unload my 47 bags of crap and find there is milk EVERYWHERE.  All over the back seat.  All over the diaper bag.  All over my lap top bag. 

One of the bottles was smashed to smithereens. 

I cried.  In the middle of the daycare parking lot.  With milk dripping all over the place.

So I pull it together, thankful that it was only one bottle that smashed and not four.  Could have been much worse. So I take the kids inside and tell the daycare that I will stop back by during my lunch and bring some pumped milk to make up for the missing bottle.

So I have to say the silver lining in this day is that instead of taking pumped milk, I just went in a nursed Tyler during my lunch.  So I got to see my baby in the middle of the day and that made me feel somewhat better about running over gold in my driveway this morning!

I love my kids (they are SOOO cute....see evidence below) but this is HARD WORK!!

 

 

On another note, I spent the day at work today filling in my performance self evaluation.  This is what I wanted to put:

Back to Work Blues

Today I went back to work and I survived!  Mostly in tact.  I only broke down once....every hour....just kidding.  Sort of.  :)

When I got in to work my computer password had expired so I couldn't log in and my voicemail was broken so the first thing I got to do was call the help desk!  Great fun.

Then off to Seymour to a meeting.  Got there, had to pump.  Then two hour meeting.  Then back to Columbus and had to pump.  Then lunch.  Then did a few emails.  Then pump.  Then another meeting and a few more emails.  Then pump.  Then it was the end of the day.

Every time I turned around it was time to pump!  There is no way I can keep up with that schedule.  Although I do have to say that each pumping session only took 15 minutes from the time I left my desk until the time I returned to my desk.  Last go round, each session would take 20-25 minutes from start to finish.  So weird how different the babies are....

Hopefully I can develop a better routine with Tyler's daycare so that I don't have to pump that 4th time.  Since I did that pumping at 4:15 and then left work shortly after.  If I can shift things around a little, I can try to work it out so that the fourth feeding of the day I can nurse him instead of pumping cause it's just silly to pump and then go pick up my kid.  Hopefully, we'll fall in to a good routine in the next week or two and in the mean time, I will pump like crazy just in case.

What little work I tried to do today was a bit of a failure.  My brain is still in hibernation.  I couldn't remember anything I was working on before I left much less the status of it or what the next steps should be.  So, when all else fails, schedule a meeting!  Or three or four.  Surely I'll figure out what I am supposed to be doing if I call a few meetings.  Right?

Also, I got TONS of compliments on my new hairdo!  Thanks Mom!  Nothing like a good hair day to make you feel better even if you are down otherwise. (If I didn't already scrub my face and have my hair in a ponytail, I'd take a picture!)

Sorry boring post, with no pictures.  I gotta get back into the habit of taking some shots of the kiddos every once in a while.

Playing Catching Up

It's been way too long since my last post! Whoopsie!

Family Photo from Thanksgiving on the Plateau:

Meme and Papaw with the babes:


Papaw had the hard job of holding Lily who was SICK and TIRED of taking pictures. Poor Papaw!

I got no pictures with my side of the family.  Crap!

What's been going on with Tyler?

Well he started sleeping much better a couple weeks ago. Starting on Saturday11/10 he had a 7+ hour stretch of sleep at night. Since then he's been doing pretty good at night with usually at least 6 hours in a row. I try to feed him around 9:30-10:00 and then go to bed. He's usually back up between 4 & 5 and then goes right back down.  (Except during our Thanksgiving travels, he got a little messed up and was getting up every 3.5 hours - hopefully that gets straightened back out!)

Also right around 2 months old his bowel movements got more regular (once a day) so he got much happier!  Yay!

During our Thanksgiving travels, I forgot to bring Tyler's bouncy seat and I thought we were in for a major problem.  But Tyler seems to like laying on the floor where he previously did not.  Now that we're back home he doesn't really like the bouncy seat at much and practically bucks himself out of it.

We did have a milestone this past Saturday.  Tyler ROLLER OVER!  Yes.  He rolled over at 11.5 weeks old.  Seriously?  Joel, Mom, Katie, Brandon and I were all in the room when he did it and not a one of us saw him do it.  Seriously?  I just looked down and he was on his belly when he had been on his back!  He hasn't done it again, but at daycare yesterday they said he was going halfway.

So that brings me to daycare.  Yesterday was his first day at Kidz First which also meant my first trial day of taking two kids to daycare while getting myself ready for "work."  I got up at 6 and did not drop the kids off until 8!!  Yikes.  Took me longer than I thought to get everthing ready.  Three people dressed, my hair/make-up done, Tyler breastfed, Lily breakfast, three trips to the car with all my junk, the kids' junk, and the kids.  I was tired before I even dropped them off!  Then I got there and was a bit disorganized with dropping two kids off.  Lily followed me around crying.  Today I did better.  I got up at 6 and dropped the kids off at 7:30 and managed no tears from Lily! A pretty big improvement for day 2.  We'll see how good I get at this! It's like a complicated puzzle or game to figure out the best, most efficient way!

Ms Nancy said Tyler did great!

However, I cried.  I can't believe he's already 12 weeks old.  I cried for lots of reasons.  1) He's growing so fast!!  2) I have to go back to work tomorrow and 3) I just hate hate hated how I was dropping him off to be 1 of 7 babies in the room.  There are 2 "teachers" in the room and they seem to be really great and love the kids but still almost a 4:1 ratio.  All I know is I can barely keep up with two and they are keeping up with SEVEN!  I texted Ana and told her I missed her.  She did so good with Lily when she was a little bitty baby and I really miss that super personal care she got.  They are doing a good job with Tyler but it's just not the same.....

Last night he was a little cranky but I think he was sleepy.  He took several 20 minute naps at the daycare but didn't really get any good stretches of sleep.  Today he did the same thing so we'll see how he is tonight.

Pumping went ok yesterday and today.  I have been really worried because I've been having trouble pumping.  My milk wouldn't let down very good when I pumped so I wasn't getting that much.  However, if I would pump one side at the same time that I nursed on the other, I would get plenty of milk - telling me that nothing is wrong with the pump.  Tyler's eating 4 ounces every 2.5 hours at daycare.  And they've told me that they've really had to stretch it to get to 2.5 hours - apparently he wants to eat every 2 hours!  At this rate, I'm going to have to pump FOUR times a day at work.  I don't know if I can keep up with that.  We'll have to see.  Frankly, I think that he's probably actually tired and needs to sleep when they think he's fussy and ready to eat. 

Lily has been doing great.  She's got a bit of a cold right now and is obsessed with getting "mecidine."  "Want mecidine Mommy!"

She's been singing a LOT.  She does this montage of a bunch of songs she's knows:

"GO tell it on the mountain.
Jesus Christ is born.
E - I - E - I - O.
Farmer had a dog and Bingo was his NAME-O!
B
I
ngo (the N G O is sang really fast)
B
I
ngo
B
I
ngo.
Twinkle star itsy spider."

The other day she sang:  "Christmas morning had a dog and Bingo was his name-o!"  If she thinks she's getting a dog for Christmas, she can think again!!  Haha!

She loves to do "If you're happy and you know it."  She sings:  "Happy know it clap his hands!"  During the part where you sing "and you're face'll surely show it" she puts her fingers to her dimples and smiles really big.  It's so stinkin' cute!!

She's watching me type right now and she's keeps telling me:  "ABCs on it Mommy!  ABCs on it!"  And then she tells me she wants to "watcha Dora movie on there, Mommy?"

I'll try not to wait so long between posts!  I was making the most of the last few weeks of my maternity leave!  More on that later....

Two Months Old!

Yesterday was Tyler's two month birthday!!

He's growing like a weed.  He had his 2 month check up today and here are his stats:

Height:  25 inches (93rd percentile)
Weight:  14.35 lbs (85th percentile)

So still a big baby!!  We've moved up to size 2 diapers already.  We only went through one box of size 1 (and we never had newborn except what the hospital supplied).  Take note that the shirt sleeves in the above picture are too short.  Likely the first of MANY MANY MANY times where his clothes will not fit right because he's too tall (just like his Daddy).

Eating habits:  8 times per day.  I introduced a bottle about a week ago because I had heard that putting Karo syrup in with his milk might help his move his bowels along a little better. The good news is that he took to the bottle with no problem.  The bad news is that the Karo syrup didn't really help (unless there's a 4 day delayed response time).  However, Tyler's on some kind of streak right now and has had a poopy diaper for 5 days in a row!!  Now, I mention this because the days that Tyler doesn't poop, he is crabby and fussy and no fun. But the past several days, he's been so much happier.  I haven't been giving him the Karo and I haven't changed my eating habits so who knows why he's doing better but I hope it keeps up.

Sleeping habits:  Oy.  This kid is all over the map.  Last night, he ate every 3 hours.  Boo.  But a couple nights ago, he went 6 hours between one set of feedings.  I never know at night how long he's going to go.  Lily slept through the night on her two month birthday.  Tyler - up every 3 hours.  It must be that trick where people say if they had their second kid first, there wouldn't have been a second kid!  But the good news is that at night, he's doing much, much better at going down on the first or second try at the ~9 or 10pm feeding.  As far as naps, he's still a light napper when we're at home.   But if I've taken him somewhere in the car seat, he'll sleep forever. 

Awake time:  as I mentioned, the last 5 days have been pretty good, even in the evenings, with his awake time because he hasn't been as fussy (but still somewhat fussy).  He's smiling and cooing and oohing and ahhing a lot more now.  The smiling will about melt your heart - he's so stinkin' precious!

Here's a side by side comparison of Lily and Tyler at 2 months.  I think you can tell they are siblings but they definitely have some distint differences.  I think Lily has more Basham/Freels in her face and Tyler has more Fonner.

Happy Halloween!

We had so much fun with Lily on Halloween this year!!  At daycare, they celebrated "Fall Harvest Day" and were supposed to wear their clothes inside out and have crazy hair.   I thought she looked just like a "Who" from Dr Seuss and when I dropped her off at daycare Ms Christina thought the same thing!

I was hoping all day long that she would be in a good mood when we picked her up from daycare so that things wouldn't be a battle for trick or treating.  She was a perfect angel!

We brought Lily home around 4:30 and started getting ready.  She had been given candy at daycare and was bound and determined to eat every single piece.  She was afraid we were going to eat it!  MINES CANDY!!

I was nervous that all that candy would make her crabby and she wouldn't want to put on the wig (a.k.a. Dora Hat) I made.  But as long as we let her hold all her candy and played Dora on TV, she was willing to do what we asked. : )

We bought the costume online and that consisted of the pants/shirt combo, backpack and shoe covers.  I made the wig (out of yarn and a pair of tights), the bracelet and the map.  A girl needs the right accessories!

Once we got her all dressed up, we subjected poor Tyler to his first Halloween costume.  Cause how can you have Dora and not have Boots?!  The costume was a bit ridiculous in it's sizing.  It was supposed to be for 0-6 months.  I put it on Tyler and it barely fits him from the neck to the crotch and then the legs went like 10 inches past his feet.  Whoever this costume was modeled after must have freakishly long legs!  But since Tyler can't walk yet, it didn't matter!  Haha!  The best part of Tyler's costume was that it was WARM so I didn't feel too bad about taking an 8 week old baby out in to the chilly air.  Between the "Boots head" hat and the full body fleece costume, he was nice and toasty.

Dora and Boots together at last!!

Boots was getting p*ssed off!

Then we take the kiddos outside and Lily has a minor meltdown because she wants to ride in the stroller.  "Lily stroller!  Not Tyler!"  So we had to carry her for the first little bit.

All while getting ready and walking to the first house with lights on, we kept encouraging Lily to say "Trick or Treat" and she would say it a bunch of times.  But when she actually got up to the houses, she always got cold feet and wouldn't say it.  After the first couple houses, she did at least get up the courage to say "Thank you" after she was given candy.  What a polite little girl we are raising!

I carried Lily up to the first house.  She wouldn't say a word.  Not trick or treat.  Not thank you.  Not nothin'!  They gave her two pieces of candy and she didn't want to put it in her bucket.  She wanted to "hold it!"

At the second house, Joel walked her up there and stood right next to her.

But then after the first two houses, Lily saw that if she walked up there, she was going to get candy and she got pretty brave to walk up to the houses on her own (Daddy and/or Mama were always right behind). 

At this point she started getting really good at saying thank you!!  I'm so proud of her!

Here's a few shots of walking to the houses.  By this time, her wig started getting a little cattywompus.  It was pretty windy so it was getting out of control.  One lady thought it was dreadlocks.  Her daughter promptly corrected and said, "Mom!  That's Dora!"

We were out for about an hour and poor Lily's hands were ice cold and her little nose was bright red.  Time to call it quits. 

We got home and Lily immediately started digging through her candy and checking out her loot!

Mama, open it?



I thought ahead a little and bought this little $1 Dora Halloween activity coloring book with stickers.  So I told Lily she was getting a present and gave that to her.  While she was distracted, I hid all the candy!  : )

8 Weeks Old!

Today is Tyler's 8 week birthday!

Eating Habits:  no changes here to report.  Still eating 8 times per day.  The early part of the day, he typically goes up to 4 hours between feedings and then in the afternoons/evenings he often goes every 2-2.5 hours between feedings.  Night time feedings are all over the map.

Sleeping Habits:  we don't seem to be settling in to a consistent sleeping pattern yet at night.  Tyler will have a few nights were he goes four hours between feedings and I can time it so that I only have to get up once with him in the night.  And then he'll switch back to wanting to eat every 3 hours at night.  We occasionally get a 5 hour stretch but that's really rare.  As for naps, Tyler sleeps great if I take him somewhere and he's in the car seat.  He's out like a light and I end up waking him up if it's been 4 hours since his last feeding, just so I can prevent him from sleepting all day and staying up all night!  However, if I don't go anywhere such that he's not lulled to sleep by the car, he mostly just cat naps 15 - 20 minutes here and there.  Not really having any luck getting him to sleep for any real length of time.

Awake Time:  Tyler is starting to babble and coo more during his awake time - when he's not fussing, that is.  We still have a lot of fussing during awake time.  Could be tied to his bowels or could be that he just wants to fuss. 

He's also getting a little more head control but still not quite ready for the Bumbo seat. 

Hard not to love this face!!!

Put on my big girl panties....

This morning was an interesting morning with miss Liliana!  She woke up a little whiny this morning and throwing a mild tantrum.  She didn't want to take off her jammies and didn't want her pull up changed. 

During this fit, her brud-her woke up so I abandoned trying to convince Lily that she really didn't want to keep wearing 4 pounds of pee-pee to attend to him.  I got him up and changed and starting feeding him and then Lily decided her new fit would be that she wanted me to "hold you."  Now, it's a pretty interesting game of Twister to try to sit in the rocking chair to breastfeed Tyler while he's on the boppy pillow on my lap AND to try to hold Lily.  I have a big lap but it ain't THAT big.  But we managed a sort of "hold"which was enough to keep her settled down for a few minutes.

After feeding Tyler, I tried again to get Lily to change her clothes.  She took her jammies off but then decided she DID NOT want to wear a pull up today.  She wants to wear "underwears."  NO WAY, NO HOW was she going to wear that pull up.  I'm practically sitting on her trying to get it on.  She wants UNDERWEARS!!!!  I'd get one leg in a hole and then before I'd get the second leg in, she'd have the first leg pulled out.  All the while, she's screaming her head off.  It was so fun.

NOT.

I can't let her go sans pull up just yet because I still needed to shower and such before taking her to daycare and I didn't want her to go that long "unsupervised" with no pull up on.  She's never worn just underwear before.

So I decided to abandon her again because I thought if I stayed, I was going to pull out all my hair and/or give her a whoopin'.  I went off to the kitchen to get her some cereal and milk thinking I could calm her down with breakfast.  When I get back to her room, she has taken her clothes for the day and her pull up and her underwears to Tyler's room and is lying on his floor crying into her clothes. 

I show her I have cereal and milk and she calms down and lets me put on the pull up with the underwears over the top.

So while I'm showering, I decide that today is going to be the day that we try underwear at school.  Since she was SO determined to wear them, she must be ready.  So I pack up a bunch of underwear and extra pants to take to daycare.

Ms Christina is very excited to try the underwear thing with Lily and says they'd try the morning with no pull up on.  Well apparently she did great all morning and didn't wet her underwear!  Of course for nap they put her back in a pull up and were going to leave her in that for the afternoon (the kids rotate teachers in the afternoons every 20 minutes so it's too hard for the afternoon teachers to deal with the newly underweared kid).  But whoever got Lily after her nap and did her pottying ended up putting her back in underwear and she did great all afternoon. 

That baby came HOME in the SAME clothes she went to daycare in on her first day of UNDERWEAR!!

YES!  My little pee-pee prodigy.

So as soon as she gets home, I take her to the potty and she goes.  EXCELLENT!  We are on a roll!

I kept her in her underwear.  Bet you can guess where this story is going......

About 20 minutes later, Joel and I are in the kitchen and Lily comes in. 

Mama!  I poopy!

DOH!

That baby girl had peed down her leg and had a huge ol' mess o'turds in her underwears.  Watching her walk to the bathroom was HILARIOUS (but I was a good Mama and only laughed on the inside).  She was not a fan of that poop in her drawers.  Hopefully, she'll remember that and choose to go in the potty next time.  Right?

Anyway, I'm still super proud of her first day in underwear, but I hope that the number of times that I have to clean up turds out of underwears is limited.  Like, once is totally enough.