Anna is 17 weeks old (yesterday)!

Anna is doing well… amazing that she is 17 weeks old already!  After my last post about her needing Mama Time, not much has changed, though we’ve developed a new routine that at least keeps us from being too stressed out in the evenings.

She’s much more alert, more smiley, laughs a lot, loves her feet, loves her hands (in her mouth), and it’s easy to make her laugh.  She drinks a lot more milk daily at daycare (5 – 6 oz each time) and is solidly in 9 months clothes.

This weekend she’ll be four months old… and next Thursday is her four month checkup!  Looking forward to sharing more pictures and reporting her stats.

erin

Corner. Turned.

Maybe.

Almost four weeks ago, we were presented with the scenario at daycare that if Raven was potty trained, she could move up to the next class.  Socially and mentally she was ready for it, but she would have to stay in the 2’s class until she had turned that corner of using the potty.

Entered: A night out with mom to pick out a Potty Present.

Raven had been randomly using the toilet for almost a year, but with no real results.  However she had been showing promise at daycare this summer, and was open to a Potty Present – which really, was a Pooping Present.  She had no issue peeing on the toilet, but she would randomly run off and poop in her pants.  Blech.

So, I took her to Target and let her pick out pretty much whatever she wanted (she didn’t know, but obviously I had a price limit).  After much trolling, she settled on this, The My Little Pony Crystal Empire Pony Rainbow Collection Pack.  Each pony is approximately 2” high.  And she feel IN LOVE with it.

We set up a chart that showed she had to poop on the toilet 10 times before she could have the ponies.  We figured that would instill in her the need to go on the toilet instead of in her underpants.  It took three weeks during which she simply didn’t poop at home that much and two accidents, but finally on Wednesday night, Raven had reached her 10th “X” on the chart and we celebrated with the opening of the pony package.  Raven was ecstatic!  So were mom and dad!  Julia was a bit jealous and now is trying to figure out a way to receive her own pony pack.  What a great night!  Raven even slept with her ponies – all seven of them, and of course, yellow was missing yesterday morning – and we thought that she had really, finally decided that she was going to be potty trained.

And then yesterday she pooped her pants at school.  Doh.

One thing about Raven is this – she is stubborn and will choose to do things when and how she wants to have them done.  She doesn’t threaten easily.  So, even though the teacher suggests that if she keeps it up, she’ll have to go back to the 2’s class, it doesn’t faze Raven one bit.  I really hope yesterday was a fluke because she really seemed to have gotten it.  We had finally backed off and tried hard to let her decide when and how things would happen.  And we thought this was finally it.  So, crossing fingers for “accident” and not “on purpose”… because Raven could care less which daycare class she is in… and I really don’t want her to go back to the 2’s class when she is a week away from being 3 and is doing so well in the 3’s class.  Sigh.

But yay!  PONIES!

Skeak

It’s a word that came out of my mouth, but I’m not sure what it means.

Stats

Yesterday Raven and Julia had their 3 and 5 year checkups, respectively.  Though Raven isn't quite 3 and Julia won't be 5 until November, due to daycare needs, we need to take them for their Well Child visits in late August.  So, here are the girls' stats.

Raven:
37" tall (45th percentile)
30.5 lb (51st percentile)

(For reference, Julia was 36.5" tall and 29.5 lb at the same age.)

Julia:
41.25" tall (40th percentile)
35 lb (24th percentile)

Anna's four month checkup is in a few weeks, so I'll report and compare then.  Considering that she's already wearing 9 month clothes, I'm curious and excited to see how she is growing compared to the two older girls.  Look for a chart!  :)  I'm excited to do some math and stuff now!  :)

erin

Anna and Mama

Forgive me if this post is written poorly today.  My ability to string words together this week outside of bullet points is a failure, and so I only hope that what is running through my head can be coherently relayed on "paper".

Anna is 15 weeks old today.  I doubt very much I'll have a picture to post later, but I wanted to say it no matter what.  I thought I'd be done with the weekly posts once she turned 3 months old and then switch to monthly posts, but the last two weeks have been hard and by posting that she's 15 weeks old, I have an opening to discuss it.

Anna is only 15 weeks old.  She doesn't roll over that much, she can't crawl, she can't talk... she's still a very small baby.  An infant.  Despite her size, she's no different than any other 3 month old baby.  So it shouldn't be a shock to me that she's having a hard time dealing with separation from mommy.  And, I'm not shocked, but maybe surprised a little that the reaction was a bit delayed.

I'm not talking about separation anxiety.  She does well at daycare, is a champ there with the bottle now, and generally has good days.  What I mean is that when we are in the same vicinity of each other, she needs me.  She craves me.  She cannot live without me.

This is good and bad, no?  I don't mind it.  It actually is a balm to my soul.  But, at the same time, it causes me a lot of heartache to experience her need for me so strongly in the evenings and in the middle of the night, and I don't know how to change life for her so that she needs me less.  And, this is where I have a hard time conveying what I'm thinking here.  It's not that I want her to need me less.  It's not that I mind.  However, at the same time...

... it's hard to watch her with Adam, where she screams and writhes in his arms because she really just wants me...

... it's hard to tell my older children that they need to leave mommy and Anna alone so that mommy can soothe Anna.  They don't understand.  They both want their mommy too, and they want to spend time with Anna.  But their noise and their flurry is too much for Anna when she's trying to drink in the one person she's been craving all day...

... it's hard to make dinner.  That sounds silly, but it is.  I have plans for dinners for each day, but even if I prep it the night before, I am having a hard time cooking because Anna doesn't want to be set down.  And I can't do everything one handed and I don't want to risk her getting burnt.

... it's hard to tell Julia that I can't read a book right now because I can't even think over Anna's screaming when trying to settle her down.

There's more.... but those are the immediate things I think of.

Here's the sticky part in all of this.  She's only 15 weeks old.  These are expected reactions in a lot of ways.  I don't want her to "get used to" being set down and ignored, and of course she wants alone time with me where she's not being hovered over.  And in time she'll grow to enjoy being with her daddy - he's a fun guy.  It's just that right now we're in this stage... a stage that I was expecting right when she started daycare, only to have about three weeks where she didn't enter it, and then to be hit with it about a week ago.

So we're adjusting to a new normal.  That is all.  But it's probably one of the more difficult normals I've had to adjust to since Julia was born.  And that's okay, but it's there.  And it affects me in more ways than I thought it would.

erin

Tutu Too

Around 3 pm today I wondered if it was the best idea to have signed up for a ballet class.

At 5:30 pm, running late with the kids, no dinner prepared, and a crying baby… I was certain it was a bad idea.

But.  I have a husband who is wonderful and made dinner for the family.  And, we have blessed babysitters from our church group.  And, when I told the girls that Cameron and his mom were coming to stay with them, I got a lot of “YAY!” and “Bye, mommy!” and “Aren’t you leaving, mommy?”  and “Mommy, they are here, you can go now!”

So I knew that I should go.  Maybe I didn’t want to, but I had paid.  And I had babysitters.  And I really needed to do something for myself.

One word describes how I feel about the class.  Love.

I am so glad I went.  And I am really looking forward to next Thursday.

Little Dancer

Julia started ballet / tap this Monday (the 20th).  Even though we had discussed waiting until she was in school before starting an extracurricular activity, since she is in the same class (pre-K) this year and learning the same material again, we thought it would be fun and good for her to have something outside of daycare / pre-K (though, according to her teacher, she is a BIG help to all of the new kids in her class and it makes Julia feel very special to be her teacher’s helper). 

So, a few weeks ago, I signed Julia up for a ballet / tap combo class at a new dance studio near us that is being run by a woman who has taught dance for 30 years, Ms. Diane.  She is a peach!  Julia had her first class Monday, and if you can’t tell, she was VERY excited to go!




So far there are only two little girls (Julia and Isabella) in her class, so it’s almost as if Julia is getting one-on-one attention with her teacher, which is pretty neat.  I’m excited for her and what she learns this year.

And, I decided to also sign up for a beginning adult ballet class.  I am stoked!  It’s always something I’ve wanted to do (again – because I took ballet for all of a few months as a little girl) – either that, or ice skating – so I signed myself up and even got a discount because I had a child in another class.  I start tonight (Thursday!).  Woohoo!

Anna is 14 weeks old!

Anna was 14 weeks old yesterday.  I can’t believe how quickly she is growing!  She is mostly in 9 month clothes now… at least the long sleeved / long panted ones… summer clothes that don’t need to fit her whole body is still 6 months… she’s so long!

She’s back to sleeping completely well again and only waking once in the night, which has been a Godsend considering that I’m in my fourth week back to work.

Girlfriend loves her mama – each night when we reconnect she pretty much needs to be connected to me (not necessarily nursing so much as just being with me) until she goes to sleep.  I love it – so far it is more enjoyable than overwhelming, but it does make it hard to get a good dinner on the table at night. *grin*

Necklace

I received a really beautiful necklace from a dear friend for my birthday… thank you so much!  (You know who you are!)  I love it!  It’s not the greatest picture, but you get the idea.  Awesomeness!

Update: Swaddling

After my last post on swaddling, I have to let you know that Anna has been sleeping soundly in her swaddle ever since and has stopped breaking free. 

How? 

I started adding a sleep sack into the mix.  While it might *seem* too hot at night, and some nights it was, these last few weeks it's been getting down into the 60s at night and Anna has a window right over her bed.  Remembering that the older girls slept in three layers (jammies, sleep sack, swaddle) and realizing that we kept the house in the mid-to-high-60s in the winter during the evening made me think that maybe Anna was just too cold at night, and not being warm enough caused her to wake up more and thus, break out of her swaddle.

So, I added in the sleep sack, and since, she's been back to her once-a-night nursing right around 3 am... ah, much better, and we are both sleeping SO much better!  So, we'll keep the swaddle for a bit longer, since she really seems to like being swaddle and we haven't had any Houdini acts since the sleep sack was introduced to add an extra layer of warmth.