3 months!

I can't believe my smiley little Ellie Belly is 3 months old! It seems like forever ago that she was born and yet like it was yesterday. Here are a few things she is doing.

Sleeping in her own crib all night long! Bedtime is around 6:30-7pm and she sleeps till somewhere between 2am and 5am before waking up to feed and then again till around 7:30 am. She loves to rock in the rocking chair to fall asleep. She naps about 3 times a day unless we are out doing something where she usually sneaks in another short nap. She HATES being in her car seat. She is starting to grab at things and put things in her mouth. Her favorite things to put in her mouth are her fingers. We just borrowed an exersaucer from a friend and she already loves it. She likes to stand and look out. She is not too fond of just hanging out by herself, which allows me to get nothing done at times when she is awake. I am hoping the exersaucer changes that a little. She does great at tummy time and has excellent strength, which makes me think she will be an early mover. She LOVES to watch Corbin and thinks he is so cool! Corbin likes her and will give her kisses but also says things like "not nurse Ellie now" to me. He likes to try to climb in the crib with her... ugh. She loves being outside and taking walks in the Ergo. And now she is awake...so enjoy these pictures!

October

Fall is here! I was excited to go to NH in October to see some good fall colors of New England but unfortunately the colors weren't in full swing yet and were not as good this year. But it's still fall her in the PNW! Corbin and Adam made cider last weekend on Bainbridge with Adam's family. I was bummed to miss out but there will be plenty more times. We were going to go to the pumpkin patch last week but it started raining right before we were going to leave, so our friends came over for a play date instead. Uma and Ellie got a cute little photo shoot but we missed our chances with the boys.

We also finally planted Eliza's peach tree today. We bought it almost a month ago at Cloud Mt. Nursery. Corbin's cherry tree is at the entrance to the garden and now Eliza's is near the entrance to our front yard. Her placenta is buried underneath, just like Corbin's and my apple tree in NH. Corbin seemed a little confused by what it was and kept saying "where Ellie's centa go?"

Watching some soccer highlights on the computer.

Saying goodbye

I have been meaning to write this post for a while. My grandpa Red passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was 91. He was my dad's father. He lived in VT when we were growing up. I remember going to his big house in Manchester and helping make maple syrup in his sugar house, playing on "machine gun" hill, sledding, visiting his pigs and cows, and pancakes and homemade sausage on Sunday mornings. I remember a lot more too of course but those are some of my earliest memories of him. When I graduated from college, he came out to see me in Bellingham. He loved the big tree outside of our apartment and he would talk about it every time I saw him again. Seven years ago he had a stroke that should have killed him but it didn't. He lived through it even though most thought he would not. He lost a lot of speech and movement and he continued to get "better" after the stroke. He was not happy that he could not do the same things. He called himself a grumpy old man. But at Christmas a few years ago when passed some apple pie he said "pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze"! He lived a good long life. I will miss him dearly but I hope he is in a better place now where he can move around and be who he wants to be.

Last summer Corbin got to meet his Great Grandpa Red. Grandpa loved it!

Eliza and I flew to NH for the funeral and to see family. Even though we were there for a sad reason, it was also a happy one. We were also celebrating family and the new life of this little girl named Eliza :-) She got to meet my brother and his fiance Kara, my aunt Joan, my cousin Sarah, my uncle Don, and Aunt Marilyn and a few good friends. Although our trip was short it was good to be with family.

My dad, his sister Joan, and brother Don under the Butternut Tree where we spread some of Grandpa's ashes.

Eliza liked to have a scowl in almost all of her pictures even though she was a stellar traveler.

My great Aunt Marilyn was my grandma's sister and my grandpa's long time companion after my grandma died and my grandpa had his stroke.

Good bye Grandpa Red. We love you.

My thoughts are also with a good friend who lost her mother last week.

Gliding away

good and bad days

Yesterday Adam came in the door and we were all crying; Eliza, Corbin, and I. Friday's have been really rough for us. It's the end of the week and we have been together all week and it's tough for him and it's tough for me. He wants my attention and my hands are tied at times with Eliza. He gets whiny, he demands, he gets devious, he tries my patience. Ugh. It was one of those days where he woke up whining, I was tired. He was grumpy. We had a lot to do at home. He took every toy out of the toy box. Eliza went down for a nap. She woke up as Corbin was being put down. I was tired. She went down. He woke up after only an hour. She woke up. The house was a mess. The dishes were piling up. We were leaving for the night and then the weekend. He had multiple tantrums. Ugh. I feel like I was a bad mom yesterday. I found myself responding in ways that were not helping the situation but probably making them worse. He watched a lot of Sesame Street yesterday. When Adam walked in the door I had just burst into tears because they were both crying. Corbin had just fallen down from climbing on the bathtub. Why was he in the bathroom with the bathtub? Because I was nursing and he was off doing his own thing. Until he fell. Ugh. He was ok. But he was crying and whining, she was crying and over tired. So I just burst into tears as Adam was walking in the door. But I did bake a pie yesterday.

Eliza doesn't have many warm jammies in this size, so she was in some of Corbin's old ones...

Here is Eliza on the top and Corbin on the bottom. Corbin was also about 2 months at this time...

Corbin helped me bake the pie. It was still the morning, we still had only a few melt-downs at this point and Eliza was napping. He loved rolling out the dough. He got flour everywhere. I came down after putting Ellie down and he was just playing in the flour we had put on the counter for the dough.

Sorry it's the wrong way, I always forget to turn it and can't figure out how to do it once it's on the computer.

We have some good days and some bad. The beginning of the week was pretty good. Eliza is getting into a bit more of a routine. She is sleeping in her crib for all her naps and starts out the night in it. Last night she slept from 10:00 pm to 6:30! Granted she had not slept for almost 6 hours with a mini 20 minute nap. But another night she slept from 8pm to 2am and then again at 4:30 and 7 am. But we are moving in a positive direction.

Baby Wearing

Baby wearing in a new form, an old diaper pail lid. Gotta give him some credit for having a good imagination!

9,993 since July 2008...

That is how many people have visited our blog since July of 2008. Almost 10,000! That sounds like a lot! We started this blog in March of 2006, more than 2 years before we got a counter....so who really knows how many people have visited us...but what I really want to know is WHO are all you people???? Who is lurking out there? There are all kinds of cities I don't know people in or wonder who they might be... WHO are you??? You know me. Let's see how many comments we get on this post:-)

2 months old

Little Eliza J is 2 months old! We have her doctor's appointment tomorrow so I will have to add the stats later. We love her more and more each day. Although some of these photos didn't catch her amazing smile, she has been smiling like crazy lately. Her little face just lights up and her dimples make you feel all warm and giddy inside. Corbin is doing great with her lately. He still gets a little jealous and wants attention during nursing time but he has been pretty good lately. She takes about 3 solid naps each day and then some cat naps in the evening before setting down for the night. She gives me about a 5-7 hour stretch of sleep to begin with but then wakes up every 1.5-3 hours after that. I find that nursing her and doing the final swaddle around 10pm gives me the most sleep, even though she is often ready for bed before that, then she wakes up too much in the early morning. She is still sleeping in the co-sleeper next to our bed. I am hoping to wean her from the swing, where she does most of her daytime naps, to her actual crib here in the next couple of weeks. The swing has been my life saver with her. I can just set her in it and she is usually asleep within 5 minutes with little or no fuss. This allows me to get Corbin down for a nap or get him lunch or gives me a break of longer than 40 minutes which is her lying down sleep cycle. She is also so very strong. She loves to lie on her tummy and look around. She wants to move so badly! She has also been enjoying laying under her gym and looking at the freaky clowns. She has got total control of getting her fist into her mouth and sucking it as hard as she can! Any day now I think she will get the connection between swinging her hand and hitting an object in front of her. Those are her tricks for now. We are so glad you are here Eliza J!

8.5 weeks

8 1/2 weeks and so smiley and strong!

Where did August go?

Where did August go? Can it really already be September? Here are a few pictures from our last days of August. Meghan also took some really nice ones from last weekend. My camera stayed "lost" in the stroller after the visit to the zoo, so check hers out from the weekend on BI.

Corbin decided that the sprinkler was too cold and therefore wanted to put on his rain coat to run through the sprinkler :-)

Then he needed his boots to water the garden. Swim diaper, rain coat, boots, and his hat that is too small...what an outfit!

We wanted to take Corbin to the zoo before summer was over. We went last year for his birthday but this year we thought he would love it even more. And he did. We saw all kinds of fun animals. It was great to be there in the morning when they are all awake and active. When I went in to wake him up to go to the zoo, we had to leave really early to get there before nap, I asked him if he was ready to go to the zoo?
He was still lying really still and still asleep. I moved around a little, got his clothes out, and he still didn't seem to wake up. I then said "Good morning Corbin. Are you ready to go the zoo?"
He stayed really still and then all of a sudden said "might see BATS!" It was so funny!

When we asked him what his favorite animal was at the zoo he says "the monkey that peed on the ground." We saw a gorilla that peed while swinging in the trees. All the kids watching were quite amazed. Yes, all animals pee. He was also very excited by the bats, the bears, and the kangaroos. The kangaroo's were my favorite.

My little monkey and his daddy in front of the monkey.

That is the same monkey in the tree from the other side of the field.

We had a great weekend celebrating Susan and Mark's Birthday's with family and friends. Then we came home to Adam starting school. My time with Adam at home has come to an end. My mom came up to help delay the inevitable. We are starting to get into somewhat of a routine and trying to figure out others. It was nice to have her here to help me get some things like grocery shopping and errands done. Then the morning she left Eliza decided to go and short nursing strike. She has been a pretty consistent nurser, nursing between 2-3 hours max during the day and when she does not want to nurse she just plays around and smiles or lets me know in a quiet way. Well the other day she hadn't nursed for over 4 1/2 hours and every time I would try she would just scream. And not a kind of little cry but a blood curdling scream. She has had a cold these last couple of weeks so wondered if she had a ear infection or something. So I decided to take her into the doctor. Of course this was my first real time by myself and Adam couldn't come home fast because he was on his bike at school. I probably jumped the gun but I think I was feeling over nervous being all on my own, her cold, and then screaming while not nursing seemed extreme. I of course had just put Corbin down for a nap and Adam couldn't get home before I had to leave. I called my friend Aki whose daughter takes earlier naps. She luckily could come over so I could take Eliza to the doctor and not have to wake Corbin. Thank goodness for awesome friends! Of course the doctor said nothing was wrong. He thought maybe she was experiencing stomach cramping or something since she had not had any poops in the last 2 days. She finally ended up nursing a little when Adam got home and was able to rub her head while I tried to latch her on. I think she was protesting Adam going back to work :-) She then wouldn't nurse again for another 5 hours but then nursed fine before bed and slept for almost 8 hours. The next morning she did a similar pattern, nursed in the morning and then not again during the middle of the day. I am not sure what was going on. It was stressing me out though. The next day was normal and then again yesterday she did it while we were out and about. Who knows. I guess since we don't eat while we don't feel good, the same thing is true for babies. She was still having wet diapers and seemed happy while not screaming. I guess I just have to relax and see how it goes. She is proving to be a big girl though. When weighed at the doctor, she is already 12 pounds and not even 2 months old!

Now I sit here watching Corbin and Brody play in the sand box. They are so funny. I wish I could just record all their conversations. Our next adventure of being at home with two kids is on its way...school starts for Adam on Tuesday. Here we go!