5 months!

The girl is 5 months. Time both goes slowly and flies. The hall bathroom got repaired. Peanut had show and tell, he brought in a Canadian National, a book and a picture of his Enterprise cake. Almond is sitting up independently. We all got sick. The kids are sick again. Peanut very very sick. Fever, cold, stomach pains. Almond kept waking up 8-12 then I was up with Peanut 1230-630 or so. They're both asleep right now... at 9 in the morning.

But when they're healthy both kids play really well together. Peanut enjoys playing snow plow train outside, it's a crap week this week so hopefully we're all better next week. When the weather is much nicer.

But next week we'll be in the 30s. But no Grandparents, they've gone off to visit the rest of the family for the rest of the month. So jealous, I'd rather be in 70s then dreaming of just getting into the 30s.

Almond tried avocado and carrots. She reacted poorly to the both of them :( That's exactly what our little family needs. No tree nuts, meat, wheat and now latex foods? We don't eat much. Once we're a little bit more on our game we're going to see about getting her tested. I'm now eating even less, but actually now that I'm avoiding like the potatoes and grapes too, she actually had a normal BF diaper. I very rarely see those, maybe we're finally onto something. I can hope. And maybe after we get her tested we'll find out I CAN have dairy, and it was just coincidence that she improved upon taking them out.

Hey, I can hope.

It's January!

Peanut was sssssssssssuper excited this year about Christmas this year! The Santa stuff, the presents, the cookies, the everything :) It was so much fun to see.

Really he's just super excited about life, which makes it all doubly as great.

Almond is doing great at sitting and smiling, she's our little ham.

So far so good on the health front, I'm still waiting for the illnesses to start, but he's been back in school a few weeks and nothing. Maybe his immune system has advanced. She's been a terrible fuss pot the last few days. Hopefully it's just from her vaccinations on Thursday. Almond is 4 months 2 weeks today.

10 Weeks

It looks like the little lady is slipping into her brother's sleeping habits - fighting sleep till midnight. Hopefully we can break her of that before 4 months when Peanut finally would go to bed properly.

Please oh please oh please!

We've had a lot of excitement, heading down to M-Town to visit family, family coming up to visit us, family leaving us to go visit Peanut's new cousin N. Plus we all caught colds awhile ago. I'm not sure if it was worse to be sick... or now always trying to stifle my cough so I won't startle her awake while I'm getting her down. She's napping right now and he's playing trains. She could use a real good first nap after her many wake-ups last night, let's all cross her fingers.

She's developed a new thing though. She'll smile if you play peek-a-boo with her :) Which is great fun and gives us something to do. I glanced at Peanut's activities at this age, in the next two weeks he started grabbing toys and playing with his feet. Hopefully we see some of those soon!

She's getting so strong, she sits up quite well in the bumbo now. I've been distracted lately with the cold and getting the house cleaned up, I've been neglecting her tummy time. I'll have to make up for that today. Peanut wants to play Zumba too, I'll have to make time for that. My plan for tonight is to leave the lights off to see if we can't get her to sleep earlier. Peanut won't mind, he loves playing in the dark.  Lights on his trains and trucks, candles, playing hide and go moo. Lot's of fun.

--------------- Sudden realization after getting Peanut a snack -------------

I have gluten problems, I always read the labels on everything I eat. I'm used to eating dairy free - Peanut had a milk protein issue till 9 months. Doing it again for Almond shouldn't be a big issue.

So why in the world did I spend the last two days eating my son's zesty ranch veggie straws???

She went from sleeping sometimes 8 hours (after finally consenting to go to bed), to being up every couple hours, napping like crap, needing to poop is pissing her off again and her diapers are a slimey mess. Sighs - I'm not sure what I'm more upset about at this point, confirming the milk protein issue in my second child or the fact that I now have to wait for it to exit our systems again. Poor little girl.

I'm going to play a little game, where I only eat a few things, like I'm stranded on a deserted island. That'll make it a game! I'm stranded, I don't have much food, and I can't eat exotic things like... veggie straws.

Well, I'll have to think about that later because go figure, she's awake.

5 Weeks Old

I was reading through the blog on Peanut from 1-6 weeks. It was worse than I remembered. I really can't complain, though I feel bad about him now, with her taking so much of our time. I often only would get 1-2 hour stretches of sleep out of him at night and he napped poorly too.

Thank goodness for our knowing about probiotics this time! Knock on wood, but Almond has improved since we started 2 days ago. She's still fussy and hates napping, but the angry sleep thrashing and sounds have decreased a ton. She's smiling and cooing (which is supposed to happen now anyways). Of course right now she's squawking up a storm, but she's been trying to poop all morning without success, so I can't really blame her. Swing is keeping her out for now.

I also could start getting him into cloth during the day at this point, she may have a harder time being a bit smaller, but it's worth a try. Plus he could sit in the bumbo. Both of their neck prowess seems the same, so she should be able to too, I'll give it a try.

I'm excited to have things to try tonight! I want to keep her moving, keep her head up. The stronger she gets, the more she moves, the easier time she'll have with the gas. And keep that head round and any future bald spots minimal too, as a nice bonus. She's got such pretty dark hair :D

Almond and Peanut

2 kids! One that just sleeps, eats and poops (and already is protesting sleep) and the other that doesn't understand that Mommy is a lot more fun when the little one is sleeping and always wants to wake her up so she'll be "looking at me!!!" I love you little man but you have to stop trying to wake up your sister!

He loves her though, oh so much. He's still a little confused about why my belly is so squishy and small though, pretty sure he thinks there's another baby in there again? Well, over time that will fade.

They like tag teaming me on sleep. In general our rule is - Peanut wakes up and the hubby deals with him, Almond wakes up and I do. But regardless, even when I get to stay in bed while Peanut is tended, it still wakes me up. We got an awesome 4 hour stretch of sleep out of Almond two nights ago, and instead of enjoying it, Peanut was up almost the whole stretch. Then last night he slept like a champ, and she fussed all night. Luckily tonight Peanut is spending the night at Gma's and Gpa's... so hopefully she sleeps like a champ tonight!

There's something about that 1 o'clock nap... AM and PM that she just fights. Fortunately just tried her in the swing and it worked like a champ. We might make this our standard way to put her to sleep at 1PM :D She's starting to go through her clothes, I'll have to check to see if she's grown any more as some of the smaller 0-3 pjs are snug on her now. Peanut grew, he clocked in at 40.5" if my measurements are correct. So that'll mean purging even more clothes out of his closet, I'll bet he likes that game, hehe.

He's enjoying the movies Totoro and Ponyo lately, liking anime and going after his parents hearts <3 Atta boy! I suppose... I ought to nap right now, but if she's napping down here and he's watching Ponyo... seems like a good oppurtunity to clean the kitchen. I never was a good napper anyways. Sigh.

Almond Joy is here!

She's here she's here she's here!!! Our Almond is here! Our sweet little dark haired, dark eyed little girl decided to come out and play!

After 2 weeks of craptastic prodromal labor, and 11 hours of active labor, she arrived at 5:41AM on 9/3/15. 7.0lbs and 18.5" of pure hand sucking joy. I got my VBAC, no cesarean required. The hubby hung on all night in his work shirt, as I summoned him from there... and I guess I kept complaining about being warm so the room was cool. Or something. I definitely remember the temp of the room never seemed right.

I was at my mom's when my belly started to feel funny. Felt like I was having a 20 minute contraction - not painful but so so so very tight. After that the "real" contractions started, the ones that sent me to the hospital, the ones that got me admitted.

(Watching her on the monitor and listening to Peanut play trains while typing this, good fun!)

The shaking, puking, constant back labor... I soon decided to get some pain meds. Epidural worked this time, more so in my left side, which we all agreed was great considering it didn't take at all in my left side with Peanut. Alas the medicine works by gravity and Almond wasn't liking me laying on my right side, so by the time it was time to push, which was just an hour or so after my water broke? I had been on my left side for quite a while and I couldn't move that leg at all. So that was fun! Took hours for it to wear off too on that side, later on I made a little white lie and said I was fiiiiiiiine so I could get my shower, hehe.

When I summoned the nurse to let her know I suspected I was ready to push, at the same time the doctor on call (nice old man) was getting the other patient in active labor ready for a c-section after her body reacted poorly to the pitocin. We weren't sure who was going to get to go first, but I guess she ended up being fairly comfortable after they took her off the drugs, so they decided to take care of me first, or at least to let me give pushing a shot? I kind of got my hopes up that it'd be like 3 pushes when they immediately decided that I got to go first after giving it a go, it still took 40 minutes of pushing to get her out. But we did it!

(She's whimpering a bit in the crib, but A) she's got to learn to like it sometime and B) if she doesn't take the best nap ever that's fine, she likes to be up at night)

She came and I got her on my chest and I got to coo at her and stroke her face. Pretty emotional stuff, especially reflecting at the time how I didn't get anything like that with Peanut, they pretty much took him away after a brief look.

I guessed like 6lbs 13oz for her weight, Hubby guessed the same as me so I decided his guess was 7lbs.... which ended up being right. So I decided I got credit for the right guess ;) She hung out in our room for most of the day without getting a bath. The nurses kept smiling and saying how nice it was to see how much we just wanted to hold her and didn't care that she wasn't squeaky clean.

She had jaundice in the intermediate to high range, making her very very sleepy but we didn't need to keep her for bili lights or anything. Today she's 12 days old, and she's at 7lbs and 5oz, so above birth weight. Aside from the middle of the night party sessions things are going well. Peanut loves her, I'm healing, Hubby is surviving her and work and helping out tons. Though I suppose I should go give Peanut a little more attention while she's napping. I wanted to jot down the memories before I forget though, and my usual computer time is after he goes to bed... and I've been crashing about the same time lately. Heh... heh... *yawn*

Eventful Days!!!

Lot's have been going on this last month. The boys went to a baseball game, and we all headed down to visit with Peanut's new cousin two days later. We all had a blast, but required a number of recovery days. I had my birthday, and hubby is going to have his soon. We had a really enjoyable quiet day on mine, weather was cool and I could bundle up happily under blankets. We've got a few days here where we're warmed up and then back to cool weather! Sucks for getting in some last of the summer pool runs but let's face it, I'm just getting slower and crabbier at the end here ;)

Peanut went to a nearby zoo and train with Gpa the other day too, it was a good day out with just him and Gpa I think. But then that night I started getting contractions. We were watching Wheel and I was feeling super uncomfortable at first and then I realized that they were somewhat timeable, which was a first for me. I've had plenty here with Almond, but never that 'third' to make a pattern. They were  around ~15 minutes apart for the first few hours, then after Peanut went to bed they were closer to 10. I was able to nap on and off for a bit of the night in-between contractions, but then I was up early and couldn't rest any more.

They were more intense, but still not ... consistently consistent? I'd go good for awhile, then they'd slip up for a bit and jump up back to that 10-15 range. But then speed up and get consistent again. At one point, I was trying to rest while Peanut was watching a Curious George movie that morning and they were bopping around between 3-5 minutes. I figured at that point at the very least I needed to get our stuff in the car and get Peanut to Gma's and decide if the inconsistencies were no longer a big enough deal to stay out of L&D. But alas by the time the car was packed it had slowed back down. And by the time we were at Gma's they had basically stopped (1 or 2 an hour).

15ish hours of labor... hopefully not completely for naught. Time will tell though. Hopefully it means she'll actually come sooner than later, but we were in the mindset that she was coming and it's been a little bit of a difficult transition back into the real world. And so far not a single one today. As my brother says, in a year we'll look back on this and laaaaaaaaugh (well, maybe on the outside, pretty sure I'm still not laughing about Peanut's ;) )