Suddenly, Toddlerhood

So. Last week was a rough one. There were a lot of things going on, including my special monthly visitor, that really didn't help the situation, which ultimately was this: my baby is not so much a baby anymore and it kind of hit me all at once and really hard.

Last week was her first full week in the toddler room at daycare. She loves it there and is truly thriving, trying to catch up with the bigger kids. What this also meant, though, is that she went from taking two to three bottles per day to zero, pretty much overnight. So I went from nursing/pumping from six to eight times a day (usually eight) to three or four overnight and the resulting hormone mess was a nightmare. I had zero patience with anyone and I couldn't stop crying over every single thing.

And then there was Thursday morning, when I realized I was out of bottles to pump into because I was still pumping but Sophie wasn't eating any of it. That's when I went back to bed, and stayed there most of the day.

Sophie is so great. Much more challenging in many ways than her quiet, compliant older sister, but really great. She is a cuddly, smily, fun girl. It just seems like she went from being a baby to a toddler within a month. No gradual transition at all, just BAM! Toddler. A walking, getting into things, eating real people food, signing and using words, responding to questions, toddler.

I knew this day would come, I just didn't know I would have such a hard time with it.

Overheard in my house this morning

We were running very late this morning, and so we were rushing around trying to get out the door. While I was wrestling with Sophie trying to put on her shoes (she hates her shoes because they thwart her efforts to remove her socks from her feet as quickly as humanly possible - down with socks!), I hear Gabbie in the other room say in a slightly confused tone of voice, "You punched me in the face."

Aaron replied, "You ran your face into my fist. For once, that is actually true."

(Not meaning for once, as if he regularly punches her in the face, but for once, in all the times in the world that excuse is used, it was actually true.)

Then we all laughed. I'm still laughing. My family makes me happy in so many, varied ways.

P.S. She's fine, was not hurt, just a little confused as to why she got punched in the face, ever so lightly.

This is why I have a category called "Random Randomness"

I'm pretty sure I just burned my butt when I got into my car, simply by sitting down on the seat. It has been (as with pretty  much everywhere else) ridiculously hot lately, and I am looking forward to the cool-down promised for tomorrow. Highs in the mid-70s? Yes, please! That sounds like perfection.

I have been sick for about a week now, and my biggest issue right now is that it feels like my ears need to pop and I can't get them to do it. Thankfully I feel approximately 95% better than I did just a few days ago. Stupid allergies plus a sinus infection. Summer colds are the worst!

I hesitate posting this next part, because I'm not completely, 100% sold on the idea that it's purposeful, but Sophie has been saying "mama" for a while now, and on Sunday, when the girls and I got home from visiting my parents over the weekend, she looked at Aaron and said "dada." Several times, in fact, and she has been saying both regularly ever since, and sometimes it really seems like she's using it correctly. If she is, in fact, using the sounds as words, she has Gabbie beat on a first word by about six months. Craziness.

Sophie has never been quite as good at keeping herself entertained as Gabbie was, so we have had to be creative in ways to keep her occupied so we can get something (anything) done around the house. One surefire thing that buys us a good ten minutes? Ice cubes. We put them in either the mesh feeder or a sippy cup. One day last week I needed about twenty minutes to get dinner together, so I gave her two ice cubes, one in the mesh feeder (which she will then eat) and one in the sippy cup (which she can't quite figure out, so she shakes it to make noise and then pours out the water as it melts, and then splashes in the water (I taught her how to splash and so now if she sees liquid, it's splash city!)), and you would have thought I gave her a diamond-encrusted puppy for how excited she was. So, of course, I had to take a picture (see the cuteness above).

Over the long weekend two weekens ago now, we decided to go out to dinner one night. While waiting for our food to arrive, we were looking for ways to keep Sophie entertained (this is what takes up the majority of my time and energy when I'm not at work lately; I'm totally blaming her for the fact that it has been nearly a month since my last blog post. I'm brain-dead because of my adorable (time consuming) baby!), and Aaron thought he would try to see what she could do with a straw. So he put his water near her, and she grasped the straw, put it in her mouth, and started drinking his water. She's a straw savant!

While she will drink pretty much anything, this girl will not eat food (hey! There's a thing she has in common with her sister (grumble, grumble)). We've tried rice cereal (she will eat it for the daycare ladies, but not me), sweet potatoes (gag city) and pears (four bites then gag city), and she's not much of a fan of any of them. I'm going to keep on keeping on, though. Tonight? Bananas! (I'm guessing it will be Banana Gag City!) She remains a huge fan of nursing and would nurse 24-7 if I let her (I don't let her (don't worry, I'm not starving her, but I'm also not letting her use me as a human pacifier)).

Despite the fact that neither of my daughters will give me the satisfaction of eating one damn bite of real food (okay, Gabbie will take "a couple more bites", but that's it), both have been doing some major growing lately. One weekend a few weeks ago, Gabbie's shoes fit on Friday, but not on Monday. Needless to say, Gabbie has new shoes. We went for her 3-year appointment the following week and she had grown an inch and a pound in a little less than a month. Craziness. She's been complaining of growing pains lately, and I swear she wakes up noticibly taller than she goes to sleep some days. Sophie's 6 months size clothes are starting to get tight - Gabbie never got into a size until she was at least that age, and Sophie is growing out of things at approximately the age listed on the label. Despite all of Gabbie's growing, it has, as usual, gone to getting taller, not wider, and she can still comfortably wear size 24 month shorts (and does - I'm not spending money if I don't need to). I'm not looking forward to winter, when I have to make sure her pants are long enough, and will probably be shoping for tiny, pink belts.

Speaking of my girls getting bigger, we are almost completely done getting Sophie's room together. We just have to remove the blue tape from the trim and arrange the furniture, and she'll be sleeping in her own room. We painted the walls a pale green ("Celery"), and painted the trim a cream color (creatively titled, "Creamy" (Aaron says he hopes I like the trim in the rest of the house, because never again! (I say I hope he forgets soon because he is SO painting the trim in the family room))). I'm hoping to get some Beatrix Potter wall stickers or posters for decorations and then her room will be complete (and I'll post pictures!).

He also painted the family room over the past weekend. We chose "Afternoon," which is gorgeous in person, but looks really bright in pictures. I will try to take some good pictures soon, when we have everything more assembled. Aaron had been complaining that because we still had the same furniture and hadn't really done any decorating, he still felt like we were living in an apartment. Decorate away, I told him, and he is. We've actually let Gabbie pick out every paint color we've used so far, except the color we used in our bedroom, and she has done a great job! (We have not, and need to repaint the bedroom, because it's not great.)

All Kinds of Updates

Life marches on, busy as always. I feel, and I know Aaron agrees, that we barely have time to remember to breathe these days. It's crazy, but crazy good too.

Sophie will be 6 months old next week! Don't ask me how that happened, because I don't have any idea either. She is a rolling fool these days, and basically doesn't stop moving, ever. Since she started rolling over we stopped swaddling her at night. I was scared of this day (mostly because it was not an easy process when we did it with her big sister), but it didn't phase her one bit. She just rolled on to her side and fell asleep. Maybe it's because she's older than Gabbie was when we attempted it, but maybe more because she's just (and I realize I'm blessed and possibly jinxing myself here) an easy baby. A happy, easy baby that is so cute I could just die.

We tried rice cereal with Sophie this past weekend, and, well, it wasn't a hit (yet another way in which she's different from her big sister). We expected her to love it because she watches everyone else eat so intently, but instead she gagged a little and pushed it back out of her mouth. She's just not ready yet, and that's fine with me. It's easier to just nurse anyway. We'll try again in a week or two.

Also, and I may be crazy here, but I swear she has started to say "mama." It doesn't happen all the time, but when I don't pick her up as fast as she'd like, she says, "ma ma ma ma ma MA MA MA." Gabbie didn't make consonant sounds until she was much older (I remember being very worried about this; now she never, ever, ever shuts up, so I didn't need to be so worried), but Sophie is all about them. That and blowing raspberries. It's so super adorable.

Gabbie wants nothing more in life than to be big. (She is so like me it is not even funny.) Not too long ago we were playing around after bath, but before bed, and I asked her if she wanted me to make her hair curly for school tomorrow. She jumped right on that idea, and so we braided her hair. The next day at school she preened every time anyone mentioned her hair (which was often). It was adorable and also made me very aware of how aware she is of her looks already. Raising girls is hard, yo!

The other day we were driving home just as the church in our neighborhood was letting out from their Saturday evening service. Some guy looked like he wasn't going to stop at the stop sign (and therefore looked like he was going to hit us), and Aaron called him a douche bag. From the back seat we hear, "douche bag?" Lesson learned yet again - we need to watch our mouths around this one. She doesn't miss a beat.

Gabbie is very, very three, and I agree with everyone that three is so much harder to take than two. However, she's still very smart and funny, and just a really great kid. However, again, she's having issues pop up, especially at school, that are a little trying. Her morning teacher seems to relish telling me about how Gabbie misbehaved the day before, and I think that this needs to stop. We don't need to talk about Gabbie being bad right in front of her. She needs to hear how great she is, too. I need to figure out how to make her teacher knock it off; it hurts even me to hear the "misbehaving report" every day, when I know that it's just a small part of her day.

On Sunday, Aaron totally made Gabbie's day by taking her fishing, then to the big kids park, and then out for "coffee" (steamed milk with flavored syrup for Gabbs). She even caught a fish! It's so nice seeing the two of them have their own relationship. I absolutely love it, and seeing Aaron be such a good dad makes me fall even more in love with him every time.

When I was growing up I knew I wanted to be a mom. Before I became a mom, I know I'd love it. I just didn't know how happy getting exactly what I wanted would make me. I'm happier than I ever thought possible; this family of mine is pretty awesome.

Yelling was a definite theme of the evening

Yesterday nearly killed me, for so many, various reasons that its ridiculous. So, let's start the list here: after an intense day I was at work almost two hours past my normal quitting time. When we got home, Aaron and I had a huge fight which resulted in me yelling so hard that I hurt my back (not my proudest moment, that's for sure). We had both had rough days, and are still in that post-partum, sensitive, everything is tense, constantly talking to each other in capital letters phase. I know it passes, and I'm trying to be kind, but some days it's just hard.

After I was done yelling, Gabbie started yelling. She wanted a cookie. She didn't want her dinner. She did want her dinner because she had to eat it to get a cookie, but she didn't want to eat her dinner. After letting her yell at her dinner for approximately half an hour, we took it away from her. We were done. Dinner time is hard, and the day had been long, and we were just done. So, of course she started screaming and jumping up and down and screaming some more and falling dramatically to the ground, tears streaming down her face. So I picked her up, made her go potty, and then put her in bed (early at about 7:15). We cuddled for a while because we both needed it, and then she fell asleep.

Shortly after, I went and got Sophie ready for bed, and she fell asleep nursing. I put her in bed and went to accomplish some things from my to do list. Finally getting those things done, I played a couple of games online and then laid down to fall asleep at about ten. At about 10:05, Sophie woke up SCREAMING like someone was torturing her. Long story short, she screamed for two hours straight. I finally got her calmed down, but only if I was holding her in a very specific position which required me to be sitting up straight in a chair. I finally nodded off at about 1:30, and she woke me up so she could eat at 4:30, and then was wiggly until 6:30 when she wanted to eat again.

To recap: everyone screamed and then I got three hours of sleep sitting up.

I'm not my best self today, that's for sure. Sophie has never screamed like that before (we are very lucky in the calm/sleeping department with her and I've never written about it because I don't want that to change, so that's all I'll say here), so we made the executive decision in the middle of the night that she'd be headed to the doctor's office today to get checked out. We got in at 8:30 (I called on the way to daycare to get what I expected to be an afternoon appointment, so I didn't have any diapers with me, so of course she filled her pants on the way there - my life is filled with awesomeness), and the verdict: she's gassy. See? Lots and lots of awesomeness.

Now, to follow all that whining, I need to express some good things. I'll go with five things that really are not sarcastically awesome right now.

1. Summer is finally here!
2. I went shopping this past weekend and bought a bunch of clothes that I love, so I have a new summer wardrobe.
3. We are taking a family walk the second we're all home tonight, and I can't wait to go out and enjoy this gloriously beautiful day.
4. My sister is coming for a visit again this weekend!
5. We're all going to my great grandmother's 97th birthday party on Saturday. How amazing is that?

(So, it's amazing what listing out those good things does for my mood. To pass on that good feeling: what's good with you these days?)

Two

This is not a novel idea, or even news, but I have to say that having two kids is not double the work of one; it's exponential. I love these two girls as much as is humanly possible, but, damn am I struggling to stay afloat. The levels of busy, noise, attention needed, lack of sleep, etc. are threatening to swallow us whole. I keep thinking it will be better when... when it's warm, when Sophie is a little older, when we get more sleep, when whatever. And it will be. And I'm fine, really. I just want a nap, a little time to myself, some quiet time with my husband.

It's a good thing they're cute, is what I'm saying.