2 months

THings are so busy around here that I forgot to make a 2 month post--I can't believe that. The Doctor told us at the time of Josie's discharge that by 2 months, we should be able to expect a 5 hour chunk of sleep out of Josie.

And almost like clockwork, she started sleeping in one 5-hour chunk each night. Now we just have to get ourselves to go to bed by 10 to take full advantage of that 5 hour chunk. Most nights we are so tired this isn't a problem.

The second picture is Ed with his basketball on his baseball tee. He LOVES that basketball. Unfortunately it either needs air or something as it's difficult to do anything but roll (or hit off the end of the tee).

The third picture was Den's effort at re-creating a photo of Ed that we both find hilarious from when I left them home alone the first time (that would be the first photo of the post in which Ed is about 6 weeks old).

Josie seems to be doing normal 2 month old stuff. I seem to remember that I was a lot more neurotic about providing 'educational' stimulation to him and with Josie, if she is being held, or at least looked at, I figure I'm providing stimulus. Also, I must say, I am slowly beginning to realize how first children get so many more pictures taken of them--it is not only the first time they are experiencing something, but it is also the first time the parents are experiencing something.

Don't get me wrong, the shutter still flies, but remembering to get my camera out (or being able to while juggling 2 kids), is a little more of an effort.

week bef Memorial Day

Can't believe Josie is 7 weeks old. Agh!! She has started to smile a little more now, but as Den says, she makes you work for them.

She is also starting to show expression in her face. She seems to like baths--I usually wash her and Den is in charge of picking her slippery body up out of the tub to get the harder to reach places.

I need all these pictures to remind me of what happens--the time seems to go in a blur.
G'parents Ohio bought Eddie a new water toy--which he absolutely loves--I'll get pictures of that later. This is the box it came in. He wasn't interested at first, but Den got into the box and it started looking a bit more enticing. Here they are passing balls back and forth.
This is a sampling of Ed's collection of balls--just the big ones anyway. Today we gave him his first basketball--his eyes lit up in a way that made me know it was a gift he was excited to receive. We had wrapped it up in case he starting getting upset about gifts being brought for Josie and not him, but that hasn't been a problem and so now I have a bunch of little presents I'm trying to filter out over time. He had barely peeled back an inch worth of paper when he exclaimed, "a basketball!" Now I'm trying to teach him to dribble...

G'parents Ohio

G'parents Ohio came out to visit on the ocassion of G'pa Ohio's high school reunion. They agreed to come a day early so Den could take another work trip. As we got closer to the time he was leaving, I grew more nervous about how I could do in the middle of the night, nursing, then burping (which is not my strong suit) and then staying awake long enough to remember to change a diaper. It went fine, but I sure was tired each morning.
It's funny that now with 2 kids, g'parent visits don't seem nearly long enough. When Den's parents were here, we actually asked them to extend (for medical reasons--my recovery was still in progress) and this time, I almost begged my parents not to leave. Short of throwing a tantrum on my front lawn, it wasn't enough to keep them.
For one thing, it's fun to watch Eddie with all the g'parents. He interacts differently with each one, but has fun with them all the same. And, it's nice to have other people around to give Josie attention and remind us of how to care for a newborn.
As Josie is getting older, her hairline is giving her away in photos. It used to be she looked identical to what Ed looked like at her age, but she has less hair and a smaller forehead now.
Sacked out! Josephine was so comfotable. We actually made g'pa wake her up though--I can't remember why, but it was criminal and she had been out cold--it was actually a bit difficult to rouse her.


Every now and then we can get Ed to cooperate for a group photo...

j's sleep

Both Ed and JJ make/made the most adorable faces when waking or going to sleep. We've had better sucess at capturing Josie's expressions...

random photos

Thought I'd add some text. Ed was creating this super narrow tower of mega blocks. I keep trying to teach him that he can build higher towers if he will build a wider base. We were letting daddy sleep in and having a good time with these.

We're trying to savor this time with Josie--as Ed doesn't just lay around like this anymore...

Nice spring day

Eddie's last day of preschool was this past Tues (when all these photos were taken). I'm shaking in my boots about how having both of them on Tues. and Fridays will be--especially when Den is out of town. People do it every day--how do you nurse one child while you feed a meal to the other? Today was my first experience--not too bad, especially when Den stayed home through b-fast and came home at lunch. That sweetheart of a deal is coming to an end--but at least I've been able to ease into this.



In other news, Josie took a bottle last night! Yipee! This not only means more freedom for me, but date nights and all sorts of stuff. Lets hope she continues to take the ocassional bottle.

Here I am in my size 8 pants--which I don't think I fit into until the end of summer last pregnancy. In spite of all the chocolate and sugar I've been eating, I've slimmed down so much faster this time.
We were trying to get Ed to pose with Josie again, but no luck. He sure likes kissing her head. Lately he has really been testing his boundaries and pushing my buttons--especially when I'm holding Josie. I try so hard not to lose my temper, but that is the knee-jerk reaction. It's like every action with him I have to think like him to figure out the right way to respond, but when one needs to provide an immediate response, it's difficult to think like a 2-year old.

Thought this shot with the ball in mid-air was cool.

6 weeks--the milestone

6 weeks is one of those big milestones in my book. I had my follow-up apt, during which the doctor said all that overdoing it wasn't going to kill me and everything looked great. Josie is going through her 6 week growth spurt and is eating like she's not sure when her next meal will come. She can hold her head up for 10-15 seconds. She isn't smiling quite to the degree that her brother did, but she does reward her parents with the ocassional grin.

This picture above was not staged in the least. Cookie happened to be holding her and she was doing all this stuff, trying to hold her head up and moving around when I walked in the room and so I grabbed the camera. All these photos are from yesterday.

We were trying to get Eddie to hold Josie, which wasn't hard, but holding her so we could see her face and get him looking at the camera was a little difficult. He cooperated for a long time and then got more interested in his beach ball and base balls.


I'm sure you've heard of green eggs and ham. When I was in kindergarden, the teacher made us green eggs and ham and I thought it was the greatest thing. We made Eddie blue applesauce, because he asked us. We told him it was special and that he couldn't get it all the time. Well, of course he then asked for it in another color. It looked a little green in this photo.

Eddie's last day of preschool is today. I'm shaking in my boots for Tues. and Fri. And I'm definitely asking myself why we didn't sign up for the summer session that ends in June. Oh, that's right, we thought we'd be traveling....ha ha ha.

Engaging Eddie

I snapped these photos late in the day and the light was just so wonderful. I think I blew through 100 pictures and these are my favorites.

Everyone asks how he is doing with his new role as big brother. I tell everyone that he is doing really well. I was concerned that he'd freak out when I nursed, but he's completely fine with it. I worried that he'd regress in some annoying way, but thus far is (knock on wood), doing really well.

He likes green lollipops, which he gets during his haircut. He seems to play well with others, although there are a couple kids that are kind of rough with him, and I worry he'll pick up on those behaviors. Plus, I hate seeing him mistreated. I'm trying to teach him to let the kids know he doesn't want to be hit or whatever unwelcome behavior. I don't (yet) want to teach him to fight back :)

He is still really into balls. They seem like they are his security blanket of sorts. He has a couple of favorites, but just about any ball will do, which is nice.

He's generally a good eater, both in quanity and variety. He'll generally eat most adult food (versus needing special kid food)--loves pineapple at the moment and anything that is on his mama's plate.

His favorite color is still blue. He likes picking out his own clothes and does a pretty good job of putting outfits together.

Ed loves to sing--all the traditional kid songs. He loves bubbles. He takes on average 3 hour naps each day--maybe to make up for those first 18 months of not sleeping. He really is a lot of fun and happy most all the time.

5 weeks old

I'm writing this a week late (even though its posting on time), but to document Josie at 5 weeks with pictures...

I've been on the dairy-free diet for about 1.5 weeks and it seems to be doing the trick, although there are still some things that seem to aggravate Ms. Josie. We're not positive of what those are, but Den is basically trying to make bland meals and we read a lot of labels now. I've found that thin mints (girl scout cookies), while they have cocca, have soy products. Not sure what 2 servings of those will do to her, but we'll find out...

She has been bordering on developing a routine. While there is still some variation, she basically has some time of 2-3 hours of wakefulness sometime between 8am and 1pm. It depends on if she wakes up with her brother at 6:30/7 (in which case she sleeps some more), or sleeps in til 8 or 9am, which I guess is when she wakes normally (most of the time). She then usually wakes around 7pm for several hours. Her night routine, which lets face it is what we care about the most, is actually taking on a bit of a rhythm.

She eats around 9pm, while we catch up on TiVo, then goes till sometime between 12:30 and 1:30am, then goes again till between 3:30 and 4:30am. Then she will make it till 6:30 or 7. Not too bad. I'll have to look at my notes, but I'm pretty darn sure we didn't see this pattern with Ed until he was much older, closer to three months?

This picture is of Josephine at exactly 5 weeks old, to the day.

Given that Ed had been experimenting with walloping his sister, Den puts out a protective hand as Ed walks by with his booster chair for the table on the porch. Ed really does have an interest in her. She and I are one unit--mommy and baby Josephine. I guess sometimes we are referred to individually, but it's often a package deal.
About 2 weeks before Josie was born, I went shopping with a friend of mine at a mix of consignment sales and retail stores. She didn't have much luck, but I landed this Graco swing for $5 and it's been wonderful. With Eddie, we could set him pretty much anywhere and had little stations where we could put him down. With Josie, we have to be more selective, as there is the big brother factor, so table tops and countertops are more appropriate (even though the guidelines on the equipment say not to).

I figure I'm making a call between being injured by her brother exploring her eyes as he pokes at them, her foot as he tugs on it, or being injured because she moves the equipment so much it falls off the 48 inch round table.--or she squirms out of the bouncy chair and falls to the floor.

Over the weekend (last weekend), we took a drive to visit a store that carried a line of furniture that billed itself as using low VOC finishes for its kids furniture. This was also a good opportunity to learn how Eddie and Josie would do for longer periods in the car. You could smell the dresser several feet away. Sure glad I didn't order online. Josie started screaming for lunch, right as we finished ours. Perfect timing.

I bought Ed these letters from 'One Step Ahead'. While you have to be careful with the store, as they have an exceptional amount of completely useless junk, they do have some real finds and these letters are one such find. He has played with them ALL weekend. He basically knows all his letters, which is fun. The W/M still confuses him a bit.

Helping with Josie

If you plan to, you are supposed to introduce a bottle btwn 4 and 6 weeks. Ed wanted to feed baby Josephine, and here he is. He liked pulling it out right away, but was very proud of himself. Being a little out of practice, I was trying to remember how to do this myself.

Offically on the dairy-free diet. Soy milk doesn't taste as bad as I feared. Den is finding it a bit of a challenge to cook, but we're learning to think creatively.

Both kids have colds. Den and I pulled shift duty last night with Josie, who for Den would only sleep when he held her on his chest upright and for me I was able to get her to sleep a couple times in the bouncy chair. I think between the two of us, we got 7, maybe 8 hours of sleep. Ed had a cold at this age, so at least we're prepared in that regard.

Hate seeing either kid sick, but sure is rough seeing a newborn sick. She had so much gunk in her throat that she didn't know what to do with that she puked--all over me. But then at least I didn't have a heavy metal, magnet-laden Thomas train dropped on my foot, only to step on it a few minutes later like Den did. I'd prefer the puke.

Wack a Mole

When I was about 16 weeks pregnant with Josie, Eddie head butted my stomach. He wasn't trying to hurt me, but we were rough housing and he came at me. I was in pain for 2 or 3 days after. A friend joked that Eddie was starting to beat up on his sibling early. Well, we had about a month of good behavior, but now the gloves are off. This morning, Eddie walloped his sister in the head with a board book from about 3 inches away--hard.

I knew it was coming, I knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. I'd been guarding against it and averted a couple near misses. I had been reading to Ed and then in the middle, needed to feed Josie. As I sat back down to read to him while I nursed, he had the book in both hands and like he was trying to kill a bug, slammed it flat against her head. Now the Doctor had told me that short of Eddie dropping her head first onto a tile floor, there was little he could do to hurt her. Does this qualify as bringing the tile floor to her?

She screamed and cried for about a minute, and Cookie and I scolded Eddie for at least another minute. I've got to figure out how to balance making sure he feels he can interact with her, with guarding against such a sneak attack. I know he was probably angry that she'd interferred in his time with me and I told him so, but yeesh!

New Experiences

G'parents Wisc. with Ed and Josie. Ed brought out all the oven mitts for g'ma to put on him. At least when they were done, they were in a neat stack instead of strewn about the kitchen floor like usual.

I've been writing about Josie being gasey (which apparently I can't spell). What I should be saying is that it causes her to scream in pain. I called the doctor, and they wanted to see us. I knew she had been gaining weight, but she was 8 pounds 15 ounces point-something (they measure to the nearest gram), so basically 9 pounds. Definitely not the pattern her big brother followed. While there discussed colic, acid reflux, gas, etc. I told him the baby mylex (gas-x) was working well. Dr. said studies show it is ineffective, in part because babies don't get gas like adults do so despite what I thought was empircal verification over a 24-hour period that it worked (I conducted a test). So, I was told to try eliminating dairy from my diet and that we'd know in a week if that was the culprit (many babies get a diary allergy that disapates by around 4 months). We were also given a script for Zantex, which would take 2 weeks to notice if it worked, and I was to try if dairy free wasn't sucessful.

Me eliminating diary is like asking an alcoholic to give up alcohol--I love dairy products, but as I got to thinking, I hadn't had much in the way of dairy in the last 48 hours and she had seemed to improve quite a bit---but I thought it was the baby gas-x. So like any good idiot-sleep deprived parent, I decide to have a glass of milk before bed (while Den is away) to test the theory. Low and behold, she had a rough night of screaming fits. She is doing better and I don't know if my system and hers work to process quite that quickly, but it was enough to convince me make the switch to soy milk. This in addition to Josie deciding that staying awake from 8pm to 12:40am was a good thing, even tho she was so tired she had red rings around her eyes. I was trying everything short of getting in the car to put her to sleep that g'pa Ohio had taught me and even some stuff I was inventing on the spot. G'pa Ohio can put even the most reluctant babies to sleep, sure wanted to channel him last night.

Den is in Orlando right now. I was sure glad Cookie was around to help out, although I think she is getting tired of Eddie--she's had him since 9am yesterday. She is staying to help put him to bed and then Den's flight is supposed to get in around 11pm. It didn't dawn on me until he almost had trouble getting out yesterday, that he could have trouble getting back and I'd be in a world of hurt---literately--Cookie doesn't come on Fridays. Won't need to worry, as Den will be home--or rather that's what he is saying as he reads this.

G'pa Wisc. is holding Josie is the most adorable jogger. Her shirt says, 'i 'heart' daddy'. The cuffs have rainbow trim, but are rolled up, as she is not yet a 0-3 baby.
With Eddie I used a pillow called a boppy (http://www.boppy.com/ ) to nurse. I thought it worked pretty well. I had heard about this other pillow called, my brest friend (not a typo). Users rave about the pillow http://www.mybrestfriend.com/, and not having much luck with the boppy this go around, I decided to give it a whirl--heck they even have pictures of men using it.
Well, I love it. After watching me use it so much, Eddie wanted to give it a whirl.

While they were here, g'pa Wisc. put Eddie to bed one night for us. He must have been up there 45 min. and we could hear Eddie asking for one more book after one more book. I gave him a hard time for having fallen vitctim to the stall tactics that I'd taught Eddie. The next night g'ma Wisc. put Eddie to bed. She was pretty slick. She read him Goodnight Moon and proceeded to say goodnight to things that weren't in the book and pretty soon she was saying goodnight to Eddie as she backed out the door. We wonder how long that trick will work for us.

One Month Old!

With Eddie it seemed like a longer month. This one flew by. Here she is one month after she was born. This first shot is almost exactly one month.

I can't figure out his scheme, but every now and then, Eddie will want to hold Josie. He also has ideas about who should hold her at other times. He is a good big brother, he holds on super tight so she doesn't fall. It's really cute and makes for some funny pictures.

It's the shorts that make this an unflattering photo for me, but everyone else looks good and we're all looking at the camera.

Josie seems to be able to see farther away and we've gotten the ocassional smile out of her. She bats at the animals on her activity mat (has been for a couple weeks). She is still a happy, but gasey baby. She is also starting to hold her head for 15 seconds or so and in the bath, her head doesn't wobble around like a bobblehead, but pretty much stays up.

Eddie is changing at lightening speed. He has memorized so many books and picks out the same 5 books for me to read him each night. Cookie says he is playing with the other kids that they visit with during the day and not just parallel play. He knows a lot of his letters and can easily count to 14.

Den is leaving on his first work trip on Wed. --he'll be gone just one night--barely over 24 hours and Cookie is going to stay overnight with me as stairs are still an obstacle for me and Ed is a little heavy for me to pick up. She is great.