Five Months!

Tyler is five months old!! 

Weight:  18.4 lbs (82nd percentile)
Height:  27.5" (98th percentile)

(these were taken a week after his 5 month birthday so probably the % are a little high since he was actually a little older than 5 months.....)

Eating habits:  Just after my 4 month update, Tyler switched to 5 ounce bottles of breastmilk during the day at daycare.  Most days he takes 3 bottles at daycare, but it depends a lot on when I last fed him in the morning and what time I get home from work.  So it could be 4 bottles.  I nurse him in the mornings before work, between 5:3-6:30 in the evening and then I usually try to "sleep" feed Tyler around 9:30-10:00.  For most of the last month, Tyler has been waking up around 2-3 am wanting to eat so that hasn't been much fun. 

Sleeping habits:  Tyler's a pretty good sleeper for us at home.  I have recently started putting him to bed around the same time that we put Lily to bed.  He usually takes the a pacifier when he first goes to sleep but he gets rid of it pretty early on.  Until about a week and half ago, we would wrap Tyler up to sleep but we stopped when he started rolling over while wrapped up.  I was afraid he wouldn't sleep as well if he wasn't wrapped up but it's been a non issue.  He takes decent naps for us on the weekends.  Usually several naps throughout the day where a couple of them are usually at least 45-60 minutes long.  Sometimes, we'll get at 2+ hour nap in.  Unfortunately, rarely do we get Tyler and Lily napping at the same time.  Something to work on!

Activity:  Tyler's rolling over like crazy now.  For the last several weeks, if you put Tyler on his back he typically immediately rolls to his belly.  I have never seen him roll back to his back but the babysitters at daycare says that he does.  We started putting him in the jumper toy and he seems to enjoy that.  He loves to play with his feet including putting them in him mouth.  He really loves attention.  He lets us know if we're getting too busy with evening chores and messing with Lily.  If we just start talking to him and smiling at him, he starts hamming it up. 

Sometimes the Angel Comes Out

I find myself often telling Lily tantrum "horror" stories on the blog and I think I do that because I often feel better after writing down the mayhem AND usually when I go back a day or two later and read it, I laugh my @ss off. :)

But, it's not always the devil that rearing his ugly head out of my child.  Sometimes the angel comes out and today was one of those days. 

Lily was absolutely so precious and sweet and loving and GOOD tonight. 

First, I think this might have been the first night since we started potty training that she didn't have any accidents all day at school AND she didn't have any accidents at home either!  We didn't put her in a pull up until bed time!  And we didn't have to clean up pee!  Or have a fight about going potty!  It was amazing! 

She ate all her supper without us begging! 

She played and played and played.  She told each of us "Love you!" out of the blue - unprompted!

She was a sweatheart.

Two Year Milestones

I realized that I forgot to really post anything about Lily's current habits, behaviours etc for her two year birthday milestone.

Food:  still way picky.  Yogurt, applesauce, and any fruit are staples.  She will eat peas, carrots, green beans and corn but is known to go on a strike from any one of those on any given night.  She still doesn't eat meat except really crunchy bacon (sometimes).  She doesn't eat much bread (unless it has jelly, but even then mostly she just licks off the jelly).  She eats cereal.  Waffles (sometimes).  She loves granola bars (she calls them just "bars").  She drinks a ton of milk.

Sleeping:  most nights, putting her to bed isn't too bad.  She knows the routine well and doesn't usually throw any fits.  Pick up toys, read a story or do flashcards (her idea, not ours!), then we turn off the lights and leave the room and she usually stays up another 10 minutes or so in the pitch black "reading stories" she says.  Most weekday mornings, I have to wake her up to get ready for daycare.  She doesn't really like to be told to get out of bed so I've learned to turn on her light and leave her breakfast on the dresser and tell her to get up when she's ready.  Usually within 5-10 minutes she gets up and gets her breakfast and comes to find me.  On the weekends, she usually sleeps until at least 7:30 or 8:00 but will stay in bed playing quietly until 8:30 (it's AWESOME!).  At daycare, she takes anywhere from 1.25-2 hour nap.  On the weekends at home, she usually sleeps at least two hours - sometimes more if we let her.

Activity:  she loves to sing.  LOVES it.  She sings all the time.  Not a day goes by that she doesn't sing.  The other day, in the bath tub, she grabbed Tyler's hands and starting singing Row Row Row your boat.  So very precious.  She likes to dance and jump.  She's learning to do puzzles and starting to get better at them.  Joel has been trying to teach her to play "pretend" with her kitchen accessories. 

Learning:  she knows her ABCs (can sing them).  She's starting to learn some letters by sight.  She has an alphabet puzzle and she picked up the L and said "L for Lily!" and she also identified the "J" before she lost interest with telling me the names of the letters.  She's pretty good with colors.  She's gets all the standard ones right almost all the time.  Counting is questionable.  When counting objects, she only gets it right about 1/10 times.  Mostly she just like to keep going (if there's two things, she still like to count to 5). 

Talking:  She can say anything.  ANY.  THING.  She talks in full sentences almost all the time.  As I said in a post the other day, she's starting to ask thoughtful questions.  She's really getting good at reasoning and context. 

Dressing:  She can put her own shoes on, but rarely will actually do it.  She can pull her pants up and down at the potty but doesn't do real well with putting them on when they are totally off.  She's getting close to being able to put a shirt on but not quite and she doesn't yet understand the front vs back concept.

Potty training:  She does great with going potty at school.  We usually have maybe 2 accidents a week at school.  However, home is a different story.  We have an accident nearly every day if we don't put a pull up on her after we get home.  We try not to.  Christina works so hard with her at school, it doesn't seem right to undo it all by immediately putting Lily in a pull up at home.  However, 1) Lily doesn't fight Christina to potty like she does us and 2) Lily saves almost all her BMs for between 5-6pm.  So we still have some work to do here.

Holy Hella Tantrum

The terrible twos seem to be having a bit of a reprieve in our house.  Which I guess is acceptable given that Lily JUST turned two.  I guess I had hoped we were through the worst since she seemed to have her major fits and meltdowns right around when we started her at daycare last August and things had been a lot better, but just this week, we've had some DOOZIES!

Yesterday, I had to work a little late and I didn't get home until about 5:45.  I had told Joel that he should go ahead and feed Tyler a bottle because he was going to be ready to eat long before I got home.  Well on my way home, while trying to pump in the car on the drive, I called Joel.  Tyler was SCREAMING his head off.  Joel said he was refusing the bottle.  Didn't want to have anything to do with it.  So I immediately stopped pumping and stepped on the gas to try to get home fast.  Mostly to rescue Joel, but also because I hate the thought of Tyler being hungry.

When I walk in the door, Tyler is laying on the floor, screaming his head off and Joel and Lily are in the back of the house and Lily is screaming her head off.  I mean TOP of her LUNGS screaming like her life was in imminent danger.  The reason?  She couldn't decide if she wanted to go potty or not.

Joel said he was trying to console Tyler and then Lily said she had to go potty.  So Joel puts Tyler down on the play mat and took Lily back to the bathroom and she pulled her pants down but then decided she didn't want to go potty.  So Joel tried to pull her pants back up.  But no, she wanted to go potty.  So he tried to put her on the toilet.  But no, she didn't want to go potty and was arching her back and refusing to sit on the potty.  So Joel told her he was going back to living room.  She screams "NO don't GO! Want POTTY!"  Poor Joel's about to lose his mind.   This is when I walk in and immediately pick up Tyler and try to feed him.  He's madder than a hornet and doesn't want to nurse.  Lily's running down the hall with her pants around her ankles.  Joel's trying to pull her pants up.  She pulls them back down.  Joel puts Lily in timeout.  She won't stay in time out.  She keeps saying she has to potty.  Then she stops crying for a second and says "I peed on myself" and then starts crying again.  If she did pee on herself, it must have been a really small amount because she didn't make a mess (her pants were still down around her ankles).

At this point, I can see Joel's head starting to spin around like the Exorcist. 

So I get up off the couch, Tyler hooked to the boob, and tell Lily I will take her to the potty.  So we go back to the backroom and the whole fight starts all over again.  Want to potty, no I don't, yes I do, no I don't.

So sit down on the bathroom floor (still nursing Tyler who is getting upset by all the screaming) and lock the bathroom door and tell Lily we aren't leaving until she goes potty and/or pulls her pants up.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.  I'm pretty sure we were in the bathroom for 20 minutes or more and 19 of those minutes she was screaming.

She does finally calm down (never went pee, by the way).  At this point it's getting pretty late, we haven't started dinner, haven't washed all the bottles and pump stuff, it's bath night, I have about 2 hours worth of work I still need to do and both Joel and I are EXHAUSTED.  I promptly put forth the motion to skip the bath (surely the kids aren't THAT dirty) and Joel quickly seconds it. 

What a day!

Also, sorry this is another post with no pictures.  I just looked through the camera.....we didn't take ANY PICTURES IN JANUARY except for some at Lily's birthday party.  CRAP.  We suck.  Next year's Snapfish calendar is going to be seriously lacking in January photos.

Where Should We Go Mommy?

My baby girl is TWO!  Going on four, at LEAST!

We had her birthday celebration on Saturday and had a great time with friends and family.  Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures because I was too caught up in being master of ceremony.  I'll have to get pictures from Jenny and Marie who took lots.

We had a Dora themed birthday - shocker! - complete with a Dora adventure to the big birthday pinata.  I'll have to blog more about it when I get the pictures.

Today I took Lily for her 2 year wellness check up.  The short of it is, she's perfect!  :)

When I picked her up from daycare to take her to the doctor she was so confused (I had just dropped her off an hour earlier).  It took her staring at me for a full 90 seconds before got up and came over to me.  I told her we had to go get her coat on to go bye bye and she got very concerned about leaving Tyler behind. I said "It's just me and you right now.  Just me and you.  We'll come back in a little while to get Tyler."  All the way to the car she kept repeating "just me n you, Mommy, just me n you."  Then, as we were driving, she said, "Where should we go Mommy?"

WHAAAT?

She is not only talking in full sentences but she's learning to ask thoughtful questions!  Unbelievable.  She's one smart cookie and I'm one proud Mama.  Also, I'm thinking this means it's time for Mama/Daughter outings!

We walked in the door and as I approached the receptionist, Lily says, "Got to go potty Mommy!" She's sans pull up so I holler to the receptionist, "Liliana Basham to see Dr. Mernitz and she's gotta pee right now!" The receptionist laughs at me as I take off for the bathroom.  And, of course, once there, it was a false alarm. 

We get back to the office and had one more false potty alarm and then the real deal.  It was a bit comical because we tried 3 separate bathrooms before we found an empty one and she held it the whole time and then went on the potty!  I was so happy that I did not get peed on!

Her checkup itself was pretty uneventful.  She got her blood pressure checked for the first time (I forgot to ask what it was) and she handled that really well.  She weighs 31.8 lbs (92nd percentile) and is 36 inches tall (95th percentile)!  Dr Mernitz said, two more years and she'll be taller than her Mama!  She's probably right!

Tyler is 4 Months Old!!

Yep, that's right.  He was four months on Saturday.  FOUR.  He is sooooo stinkin' cute!  See:

His stats from the doctor this morning:

Weight: 16 lbs 5 oz (75%)     [Lily was 15lbs 10 oz - 80%]
Length: 26 inches (85%)        [Lily was 27 inches - 95+%]

I was so surprised by his stats.  I really thought he was still going to be 95+% especially when new people see him they think he's 6 months old.

Sleeping Habits:  this month has been a little bit up and down with sleep.  When I first went back to work Tyler was going down to sleep at night between 10pm and 11pm and then sleeping until at least 5:30am but sometimes until 6:30 or even 7:00!  But since he got diarrhea, he's been all out of whack and waking up at least once a night usually around 3-3:30am.  Sigh.  During the day, he takes several short naps 30-40 minutes each.

Eating Habits:  Tyler's still on breastmilk only.  I'm nursing him about 3-4 times a day (depends on if he wakes up in the middle of the night) and taking 3-4 bottles at daycare for a total of 6-8 times a day.  At daycare, he's taking 4 ounce bottles.  The doctor told me we could start him on solids but I'm going to hold off on that for a bit longer yet. 

Awake Time:  Tyler is getting more and more active all the time.  He's rolled over several more times although doesn't really do it on a regular basis.  He's giggles and smiles and really hams it up when you talk to him.  He's also SUPER ticklish along his sides.  He doesn't seem to like sitting in the Bumbo seat which is unfortunate because that's one less method for getting him off his back and gaining neck and back strength. 

Now this wouldn't be a good blog post if I didn't have a story to tell about bathroom related incident.  How about I let a picture tell the story?

Yep.  That's right.  Joel peed his pants.  At least that's Lily's story and she's stickin to it!  Joel was holding Lily after work today and was talking to his mom while Lily watched Dora.  All of a sudden, in mid conversation with his mom, Joel's says:  What the?! is going on here!?  Lily just peed on me!  Lily!  You peed on me!!

Me: Lily, did you pee on Daddy?

Lily:  No

So I guess it's his word against hers. 

Lily has taken to getting in the fridge to get milk herself if we don't move fast enough when she wants some.  Tonight she brought me the entire gallon of chocolate milk - it was almost full!  When I went in the kitchen, the fridge was wide open and her whole milk was setting on the floor.  She knows we mix both white milk and chocolate milk.  She is something else!

Joel's Near Meltdown...

Toward the end of the Christmas break, I thought Joel might have a meltdown.  A real, honest to goodness MELTdown over the crazy amount of toys, puzzles, books, stickers, Dora stuff, etc that was constantly strewn across the living room floor. 

It was a bit comical to watch Joel picking stuff up almost as fast as Lily was getting it out.  He kept taking things back to Lily's room....she'd follow him back there and just grab something else and bring it back to the living room.  He'd say, "Lily, you need to put the Dora house stuff away, if you want to play with the blocks."  I had to remind him a couple times that she's not even TWO!!  She's not wired to "clean up as she goes" (something, by the way, that I've been trying to train Joel to do in the kitchen when he cooks for a couple YEARS now and he still doesn't quite get it....haha!).  I suppose in the long run, it's a good thing because maybe our house won't always be a total disaster area all the time, but there were times I felt sorry for poor Lily!  : )  Just let the girl PLAY!!

Now I say that it's funny and a bit over the top, but Joel has trained Lily that every day when she comes home from daycare, she has to take her coat/hat off and shoes off and put them in their place.  And she does it.  And it's awesome.  She knows where those things go and she puts them away.  If she takes her socks off (more of a summer time issue), she knows she has to go put them in her laundry basket.  That's all Joel.  And I will freely admit that it's a very nice habit he's developed in her. 

Anyway back to the toys - I hope to have found a good compromise.  See, we had all Lily's toys piled up in a corner of the living room which was blocked partially by the couch and the fireplace accessories and a chair of hers and anyway, the point is that it was difficult for her to get to her stuff and it was all in one big container so she couldn't get to the toys on the bottom easily. If I were any good at this blogging thing, I'd have a "before" picture.

So my sister clued me in to a really nice organizer she purchased from Sam's Club for Jackson's toys and with the help of a friend with a Sam's Club card, we got the same organizer and put it together last night!  Love it!  This will make the toys more accessible and creates a specific place to put things.  So, like the coat and shoes, Lily can learn to put things away where they go yet it's in a convenient place to actually play with the stuff. 

This morning when Lily saw it, she said, "What's all these boxes Mommy?"  A full sentence.  She blows my mind with her talking sometimes.  Almost everything she says is in complete sentences these days.  When I told her it was for her toys, she wanted to get all the boxes out and play and had a total fit when I said we had to go to daycare.  "NO Miss Stina today Mama!!"

I love it when she calls me "Mama" instead of "Mommy" - she's about 50/50.  She called me "Mom" once and I told her that was not my name!  haha!  Over Christmas, Jackson called Josh "Dad" and I almost cried because Jackson, 3, shouldn't be old enough to use terms like "Mom" and "Dad!!"  Those should be reserved for at LEAST school aged kiddos to use!! 

Speaking of Jackson, he taught Lily something over Christmas - the "five more minutes" stall tactic.  It was hilarious when Jackson was doing it to my sister.  Now, with my own kid, not so hilarious. 

An update on the kids' health:  Lily's thrush seems to be about 90+% better.  The white patch is nearly gone and her funky breath is gone.  She's obsessed with taking the "mecidine" and doesn't seem to understand that she only needs it once per day.  Every time I ask to see her tongue, she wants medicine. 

Tyler's diarrhea is much improved but not totally better.  The daycare accepted him yesterday with some hesitation but I was grateful.  He didn't have a single BM at daycare yesterday, but went 3-4 times for me at home.  He was also up in the middle of the night with a dirty diaper which is very unusual for him.  This morning, Ms Nancy told me that Tyler refused one of his bottles yesterday which he's never done at daycare before.  He took the first one, refused the second one and then took the 3rd one.  Not sure what's up with that but hopefully was a one time thing. 

Speaking of poop, I've got a great story! Yesterday afternoon, I called Joel after work while on my way to Walmart and upon asking him if he had a good day, this is what he said:

"Well I've had better.  I'm in the bathroom, trying to go number two (yes, he said #2) and Lily came running in here screaming that she had to poopie, right NOW and she kept pulling on my hand and saying 'Get up Daddy!  Get!  UP! And then she pulled her pants down and squatted down and I was trying to hurry up and wipe but I wasn't done and I really thought one of us was going to sh*t on the floor!  I really did.  I didn't know which one of us but I was sure it was going to happen.  I had put Dora on the TV and I was just sitting there getting all relaxed and ready to go number two and I heard her feet running down the hallway and you're calling me and I can't have NUTHIN'!!!"

Now some of you are saying "T! M! I!" but I say, "HI-larious!"

Edited to add:  Just in case you were curious about the outcome, Lily did not poop on the bathroom floor (nor did Joel, thank goodness). She chose to hold her poop and after I came home from Walmart, in the hullabaloo of grocery unpacking where Joel and I were distracted, she squatted down in the living room and filled her Dora underwears with a special surprise!  I love potty training!!