Lana - 8 weeks

Little Lana is eight weeks tomorrow! Wow - that went by fast. Even though it didn't really feel like it during all those nights that we walked in circles in our driveway (and girlfriend doesn't just want strolling, she wants you walking fast), the last two months have gone by quickly. She's definitely getting less fussy, which is a huge help for Robert and I. We're able to put her down earlier at night, with less exhausting fussiness, and we're starting to feel less like zombies. 

But, in writing that paragraph above, it's clear that I'm still not all here. I need more sleep and a little more down time before life starts to feel totally normal again. But, we're close.  :)

Lana is nursing well - about 7 or 8 times a day. She's a really fast eater; totally different from Julia, who would take 45 minutes or more to finish a meal. I timed Lana a few times because I was curious, and it was between 4 and 10 minutes a feeding. Not per side, but total feeding time. She's thriving so it's not an issue, but just makes it clear how different babies can be!

(And yes, I'm tandem nursing Lana and Julia. A separate post on that to come down the road (but don't hold your breath). It's going fine. There are pros and cons but bottom line is I'm not sure I want to nurse Julia much longer.... but honestly, I'm not sure how to get her to stop at this point. I'm going to revisit in a few months when Julia's a little more emotionally even and Lana's in a routine. I don't want to rock the boat right now and it's overall going just fine.)

She's just started sleeping a bit better too. She goes down around 8 or 8:30, sleeps her long stretch (usually waking to eat around 4, but varying as much as two hours in either direction, and sometimes again in the early morning hours if her first feeding was on the early side), and is up for the day around 8:00 in the morning. She's not on any sort of nap schedule yet, but she's doing well with them. I'm working on getting her to take as many of them as possible in her crib, but barring that, I try to have her flat on her back, motionless, and in a quiet place. Of course there are the naps in her carseat but I'm just doing the best I can.

She's social-smiling a lot with me, and even trying out her voice. I can tell that she's trying to gain control of her arms but I don't think she's yet made the connection that those are her hands. 

She's pretty cute. Here are some photos from a very impromptu photo shoot today. (I want to edit them but if I waited for that to post them, it'd never happen, so it's on my list of things to do some year.)

Half smile.

Looking "pleasant" is about the best I can hope to capture on camera. 

The whole shebang.

Staring at the fan.

I may or may not have decided to do this shoot because she had a cute cloth diaper on.

Just like Julia, I whip out the camera and she immediately stares at it instead of smiling at me. Doesn't bode well for future years of Christmas card photos...

But with eyes like those, who's looking at the smile?

And yes, we have a bit of an acne problem...

"This is my good side."

Itty fingers.

Itty toes.

Lots of sweetness and love.

May Photos

So we're still all alive, and doing well to boot! Blogging (and photo-taking) has gone the way of most things lately - if it's not sleeping, eating, feeding, or changing diapers, I'm probably not doing a whole lot of it.

That's not to say life isn't good. It's been a nice time, cocooning up with my little family and taking a break from the outside world for awhile. Robert took a few days off before the holiday weekend and we enjoyed the heck out of being a family of four for a few days.

I've been taking a ton of iPhone photos (follow me on Instagram! (jesglunt)) so maybe I'll post some of those up here. (By the way - Shutterfly has a great app for uploading iPhone photos and they say I can put them in a photobook when I'm done. Looking into it for the 1600+ pics I have on my phone, since apparently I'm running out of memory... Not to mention I don't have them backed up elsewhere and I'd be really upset to lose my phone and lose all those snapshots of daily life.)

Anyways, the big girl camera hasn't come out very often lately. The few times it has has resulted in these pics (yes this is for the entire month of May.... where did it go?!):

First bath!

Looks like we have a shower-singer here.

Julia, post-sprinkler, enjoying her sand and water table.

Life is good.

I could eat this up.

Piggies!

Yes, eventually I realized that a pink baby on a pink blanket is a little much.

Daddy's eyes, just like her sister.

This one is a fan of her tongue. It's pretty much always out of her mouth.

Daddy's ears too.

Little baby arm rolls - I take full credit for those!

Quick update on us all:

Lana is five weeks tomorrow. She's definitely waking up, which is cool to see, but challenging as a parent because she's in such a transitional stage right now - wanting to experience more of the world, but not quite mature enough to process it without becoming overwhelmed. She's nursing like she was born to do it, and sleep is going pretty well. Daytime sleep is all over the place but she does generally sleep at night, averaging two feeds a night.

Julia has pretty much adjusted to her sister and seems totally accepting of the baby (or the "waa waa") in our house. She's also challenging us because she's become quite the screamer and the climber lately, making it a little tough to keep everyone well-rested, well-adjusted, and injury-free. But, she's also trying to talk up a storm and really enjoying the summer - the pool, the sprinkler, the playground, the sand table.... It's fun to watch her grow into this little person.

Robert has been great. :) I couldn't ask for a better partner through all this.

My mom was also great. :) She helped us out the first three weeks of Lana's life, and that was so nice. Another set of (adult) hands around the house was SO helpful, and I know it wasn't exactly thrilling for her to give up her life for three weeks to sit around and cook and hold a baby. 

I'm doing okay too. So far, I have indeed managed to shower every day. And despite my promise to never pump again, I'm pumping at night so Robert can take one of Lana's middle-of-the-night feedings, and that's been absolutely vital to my well-being. So I'm actually doing pretty well. About a week ago, I even thought, "Hey, I've got this." Life with two under two is hard, but hard in the way that anything worth doing is hard.

I'll return to blogging when things settle down a bit here and I feel more like it. Hopefully I'll have some photos to post now and then too. :)

Lana Claribel is here

I have been alive these last two months - just busy and haven't been able to dedicate any time to keeping up online. Not sure that's going to change now that Ms. Lana is here!

Lana Claribel
April 27, 2012 (18 months a day after her big sister) 5:19 pm
8 lbs, 10 oz
21 inches

We're all doing great. Julia is quite taken with the baby in the house, although she clearly views her as a new toy. Scrappy is not taking it well at all and we need a new living room rug. Mom is a little overwhelmed with all the neediness in the house but happy to be feeling as well as she does to deal with it all. And I think Dad is just tired.

Tiny tiny new baby update

Between technical difficulties and general uncooperativeness on New Baby's part, we ended up at the 3D ultrasound place three times and still haven't been able to get a clear photo of her face. She just loves to keep her fists up by her mouth - we might have a serious thumb-sucker here! As far as I can tell, she looks a lot like Julia but might have a little more me in her. That's a pretty safe guess though, so we'll just have to see the old-fashioned way -  when she gets here.

She's more active than Julia was, and she hiccups rarely. She's finally head-down and positioned much how Julia was for the end of my first pregnancy (that's good - even though I still get the occasional bladder-punch, generally she's just kicking the outside and not my kidneys!). 

I'm getting Braxton-Hicks a lot by now, brought on by everything from Julia nursing to me standing up quickly. No need to be worried until/unless they become consistent and time-able, says my OB, and they haven't been close. Not to mention that, at almost 33 weeks, she's plenty viable - not that I want her to come out underdone, but it's a relief mentally that she'd be fine if an emergency were to arise. 

Her nursery has the essentials - furniture and diapers - with quite a ways to go on the details still. Fortunately I still have everything from Julia so I've had to buy very little. Getting ready has been so laid-back compared to the first time around that it feels like I'm forgetting a whole bunch of things. Thank goodness for Amazon and online ordering.

I also *finally* got a photographer lined up for an upcoming photo session. Whew. That was surprisingly tough - I've gotten a LOT pickier since I've taken more photos of my own. Although I'm nowhere near professional, I know just enough to be really critical of other peoples' portfolios.

16 Month Update!

So here is my long overdue Julia update. (Mostly, I just want to share the non-outtakes from our photo sessions yesterday.)

Basics: She's sleeping from about 8:00-7:00, and napping from around 12:30-2:00. Those are rough estimates because she goes through weeks where she seems to think 11 hours of sleep a day are plenty for a little baby, and other weeks where she sleeps great and it's 7:45 in the morning and I've showered and eaten breakfast and read the internet and I'm wondering if she's still alive in her bedroom. But, I've noticed she's MUCH better at rolling with slight changes in schedule; it's nice to not have to be so rigid any more.

The big news around here lately is the Taking Away of the Bottles. I just did this about a week ago. She drinks milk from a cup just fine so the change had to do with her bedtime ritual and her need for closeness and sucking as part of relaxing for bed. The first two days went great, then it was like she realized we were being serious, and she was pretty upset about the process for days 3-6 or so. She's mellowed out by now, and we seem to be over the hump. She's drinking a decent amount of dairy now, although I'd like to see her drinking a little more overall. And she's asking to nurse during the day, which was not rare, but unheard of, before. I'm letting her for the moment although I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to tolerate it. Crossing my fingers that she drops it on her own if I just don't make a big deal of it.

No attempts at potty training but she does sit on her toilet before her bath, and she's been on quite a streak lately - peeing in the toilet almost every time these past few weeks. We're not making a big deal about it but I'm happy she's at least aware of what the toilet is for and what it feels like to use it.

She's also gotten her bottom two eye teeth. I'm sure the top two are close behind but I'm happy to check another set off our list! Bring on those two-year molars so we can be done with this process!

Talking: She's slowly (slowwwly) adding words to her vocabulary. She'll say: Mum, Dada, Mama (her doll, Emma, not me), ham, alala (umbrella), duh-duh (duck), ba-ba (school bus or cookbook (??)), and buh-buh (bye bye). She's starting to imitate sounds better, and she'll make an attempt to repeat a word back to us now, even if she's usually pretty far off. ("Can you say 'apple,' Julia?" "Uh." "Good job! Apple!") But: She signs like a maniac and knows pretty much every animal sound ever. I totaled it up and she can use a combo of signs and sounds to tell us over 70 different words. It's not like I don't have the moments when I have NO IDEA what she's trying to tell me, but she can actually communicate pretty effectively with me now. 

Other development: She does all sorts of stuff now. She still can't run around a playground without me right next to her but she's getting much more adept at steps, slides, and other things like that. (I'm just waiting for the day when I can take her to the playground and sit on a bench and watch her play!)

Right now she likes:

• books and reading (LOVES this. it makes my heart so happy.)
• the doggie
• actually, all doggies
• actually, all animals
• pushing her dolls around in her stroller (but her blanket MUST be draped JUST SO over the handle)
• riding things and going for rides in the stroller
• being outside
• throwing things in the trash can
• snapping buckles

And dislikes:

• diaper changes
• strangers
• getting her teeth brushed
• when she doesn't get her way

And here are my favorite photos of her for the moment:

I know the color's off. Get over it and look at those eyes.

Conducting. Or doing the sign for "bunny."

I think we already saw this pic but I think it's just adorable.
Wish I had framed it better but she caught me off guard.

Baby, bunny, and blanket. What more could you ask for?

Want to just squish her.
(I need to find a better backdrop for these indoor photos. Or maybe I need a studio. Robert?)

Photo class outtakes

Because I've been keeping up so well with life lately, I decided to take another photography class. This one is focused on photographing children, and not offered all the time, so I decided to jump on it. I made Julia sit through two photoshoots today, and got a few outtakes I thought my family might enjoy.

First photoshoot - you can see how excited she was to model for me:

I got smart and gave her makeup brushes and jewelry to keep her happy for the second one, and ended up with some cutie photos:

Well how can you expect her to know how makeup brushes work when I never use them?

She does know they can be used to highlight your lips.

She also gets that you make funny faces while using them.

"Julia please put that down AND look at me for one second so I can get a decent shot of you."

  (And then I moved her to the bed, where I had actually calibrated the white balance for...)

Always happy giggles when the blanket makes an appearance.

Again with the makeup brush fails.

Awww.

We've got to do something about that hair.

There we go. Perfect solution. And versatile.

Pearl city over here.

It's SO HARD being a baby with pearls!

Of course I have eight thousand more but that should be enough to make my mom happy for a little while. :) When it rains, it pours around here.

Alive

Yep, my child is still alive. I needed a break from blogging and photo-taking, then my computer completely died (pats on the back for having everything backed up!), then we got the whole interior of our house painted, then I got really pregnant and the thought of doing anything other than collapsing at the end of the day got overwhelming.

But I don't intend to give up blogging altogether. Posts will be light from here on out probably. I'm blaming pregnancy exhaustion and hormones (which gets blamed a lot these days).

The weather is starting to get a little nicer on a consistent basis so we've been trying to get outside a little bit. Here is J at the park today. (And yes, she does have other shirts. The butterfly one is just a favorite because it's so darn cute to ask her what's on her shirt and she gives her little "butterfly" sign.)

I owe Julia a 15-month 16-month update ASAP. Send some energy my way, k?