Siblings

We had a tough transition with Emmett at first bringing our sweet girl home.  To be honest, people would always ask me what I was doing to prepare Emmett for the baby and my response would always be “nothing”.  He just didn’t seem interested in the slightest and he’s never shown any jealousy when we visit friends babies and I hold them so I figured it would really be no big deal to him.  He’s a fairly independent kid and while he does prefer me over anyone else I really didn’t foresee this as a problem.  I could not have been more wrong…

Let’s start from the beginning.  I really wanted Emmett to meet his sister the day she was born so I had him come after his nap that day.  I’ll never forget what he did when he entered the hospital room.  He came in and saw me and then saw me holding a baby and said “MOMMY, no hold baby”.  I think my mouth dropped open because I was completely shocked.  He did want to say hi to me but he didn’t want to be anywhere near that baby thing in my arms.  I eventually passed her off so that I could spend some time with my boy.  We tried multiple times to get him to kiss her head or even touch her with one finger and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with her.  It actually made me a little sad but I figured he’d come around eventually…or not.  Either way, she was coming home with us and he’d have to learn to just deal.

The day I brought her home from the hospital was another weird day.  We left the hospital and went straight to my parents house where Emmett was staying.  My mom had told me that he’d been asking for “mommy” a lot so I was eager to see him and to run up to him and kiss and hug him.  Let’s just say he wasn’t nearly as eager to see me.  Chad had taken him outside to swing and so I came up to him to say hello.  He whacked me hard in the face and just stared right through me.  It hurt my feelings a lot so I just turned and walked away and told my mom who was inside that he wasn’t ready to see me and that I’d wait for him to come around.  We basically just ignored each other for the next few hours.  He was clearly mad at me and that was ok.  Thank goodness Chad was there and could spend some time with him.

We came home and put him down for a nap asap.  When he woke up I tried my hand at having him warm up to the baby again.  He actually was a little more interested in her and really really wanted to clean her nose out with her suction.  I let him try it and he was actually pretty excited about it.  That was the start of a lasting friendship and a common theme shared between the two, getting their noses suctioned.  Emmett loves getting his nose suctioned so I think he just assumed the baby would love it as much as him.  It was so cute watching him try to hard to be helpful.  I let him do whatever he wanted to her.  The rest of the day he just did his own thing.  The next morning I went in and got him up myself with the baby.  It was a huge breakthrough.  I asked if the baby could sit on his bed and he actually didn’t mind.  For the next week and a half it was hit or miss.  Sometimes he was super interested in her and other times he really could have cared less about her.  But then something changed.  He started to take a real interest in all things Campbell.  He wanted to know where she was if I didn’t have her, he wanted to kiss and hug her all the time, he wanted to hold hands with her and hold her.  He’s just such a sweet natured little boy that I knew he would come around eventually.  And he did 🙂

Now if I leave her alone on the play mat Emmett runs over to her and lays with her and hugs and kisses her.  He wants to be the one changing her diaper or he tries shoving a pacifier in her mouth when she’s crying.  It really upsets him to see her cry.  He’s even started crying on a few occasions because it bothers him so much.  He seems to have an extremely empathetic side to him.  He has also made her smile several times.  I don’t know what it is about siblings but they can make each other laugh like no one else can.  It’s really sweet and special.  I remember when my brother was in the hospital for a seizure that he had when he was about 3 or 4 years old and after he’d had it, he hadn’t talked for almost 3 hours.  No one could get him to say anything.  I came in the room and had a stuffed bear with me.  I told him that the bear had farted and he burst out into laughter.  It was the first real sign of emotion from him since having the seizure and a huge relief.

I’m so blessed and happy to have two kids, one of each gender.  I came from a family of a boy and a girl and I really didn’t like it for most of my childhood.  Maybe it was because there’s such a huge age gap between my brother and me (four years) but I had always wanted a sister.  I never got that sister so I made my brother do all things girly with me.  It actually turned out just fine and he ended up being my “best maid of honor” if that’s even a thing.  Siblings are so important to have.  I would have never wanted to be an only child nor would I have wanted that for Emmett.  Your sibling(s) are the only people that are related to everyone you’re related to so get to know them.  They are also the only people that get it when you vent about your parents 🙂

Friends forever 🙂

Campbell Beth 2 months

It’s so different with your second child.  The time just seems to evaporate into thin air.  Campbell turned 2 months on May 29th.

I do feel like March 29th, the day she was born, feels like forever ago though.  But, the weeks just go so much more quickly with the second kid and I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that you’re trying to take care of a much busier child and you already have your groove down with that one so the second one just has to tag along and go with it.  So as I mentioned, the first month of Campbell’s life was really no big deal.  It was fairly simple and not a lot happened but things definitely picked up during month 2.  At around week 3 or 4, so going from one month to two months, she woke up and cried…a lot.  I’m not kidding, literally from about the time Chad would get home at night until we all decided to call it a night around 10pm, she cried.

Far and few between were the nights that she actually was quiet and asleep.  Rarely did she let us put her down if she fell asleep in one of our arms.  I can’t remember when I let Chad go out to a movie but I do think it was actually in her first month.  I thought that as long as E was asleep I could most definitely handle Campbell however, she cried the entire time he was out and I ended up texting him to hurry and rush home because I was about to go crazy.  All I wanted was a shower.  Seriously, just to put her down for FIVE minutes.  I was just so sick of holding and rocking her.  This went on for about 3 weeks straight.  It was constant.  Finally at around week 7 she eased up a bit and started becoming a bit happier at night.

Weeks 4-6 were probably the hardest with our sweet baby girl.  She was high maintenance and rarely seemed happy.  I think the only thing that saved us those weeks were that she slept so well at night.  I wore her almost every waking hour during these weeks.  I’d put her on from the time she got out of bed (around 7 or 8am) until the time Chad got home around 5 or 6pm.  It really took a toll on my back but it was the only way she was even remotely happy.  Those were probably the longest weeks for us.  Those weeks were also about the time I took the plunge and really started exercising again.  I sort of had a bit of a break down about my weight and decided I needed to take charge and do something about my weight loss.  I lost almost all my baby weight by the time C was 1 week old and then my weight started creeping up!  I knew exactly what had happened.  Turns out food is amazing and sweets are the most amazing thing on the face of the planet so I decided that I’d go on a modified version of the South Beach Diet around 6.5 weeks postpartum.  I lost a few pounds but not as quickly as I would have liked.  I also had to stop exercising around the time I started the diet due to extreme knee pain and pelvic issues.  By quitting exercise I mean I had to stop running.  I was still doing some Jillian Michael’s DVDs and walking but my back was also starting to hurt and I realized I was just pushing it too hard.  Just shy of 7 weeks old, I received my first bout of mastitis with Campbell.  I actually had thought I was starting to get mastitis a few weeks prior so I already had the antibiotics in hand.  I initially thought that my symptoms were due to the fact that I was off sugar and only eating low sugar foods.  I thought my body was rebelling and, like a drug addict, having withdrawal symptoms from not eating sugar.  No.  I was actually coming down with mastitis and by 3pm I was running a fever and felt like I had the flu.  Chad had to come home and relieve me of my duties as childcare taker because I had lost my ability to take care of our children.  That is what mastitis does to you.  All weekend I was down and out and Chad had to take over because I was just spent.  My fever finally broke around Saturday afternoon after my meds started kicking in.  Needless to say it was a very long weekend for everyone.

 

Campbell also started smiling in her second month and graduated from NB diapers to size 1!  I felt like Emmett was in NB diapers for like 3 months.  She’s still in NB outfits, even though she’s 11 weeks now but those NB diapers are a thing of the past.

In this second month she also started sleeping through the night.  She still isn’t on any type of a nap schedule during the day but who cares if she’s sleeping through the night!  At exactly 7 weeks 2 days she started sleeping from about 7-8:30pm (we would put her to sleep at that point) until at least 6am then 7am and sometimes 8am!  At around week 5-6 I was getting up with her around 4:30 or so to feed her and if it was after 4am I would just get up for the day.  This meant that as soon as I would put her down for the evening, I also went down.  Those few weeks were crazy.  It felt like Chad and I never saw each other but sleep trumped staying awake and being with him at night.

At exactly 7 weeks and 1 day I threw out my back.  I was changing Emmett’s diaper and was leaning down to get some wipes and my back spasm-ed and I fell to my knees and couldn’t move.  It was debilitating.  Chad came home very quickly after it happened but it was frustrating because I was just starting to get back into running and was running 3-4 miles at a time and then my back goes out and sidelines me.   It was also frustrating for Chad because the Friday before he had to leave work early to take care of the kids because of my mastitis and then again that next Monday he had to come home early because I was crawling all over the house unable to walk due to my back pain.  That week Chad’s parents came out to help us through my back problems while I went to doctor’s appointments and only dealt with one child at a time.  They were extremely helpful because without them I’m not sure how my back would have ever gotten better.  I was wearing C so much in the Ergo that I think it just over strained my back and it never would have healed had I not had help that week.

I didn’t have to wear her for over a week and my back was 90% better by the time they left.  That week was great because I got to spend quality time with both babies separately.  Campbell and Emmett also experienced their first tornadoes that week.  For two days in a row we had terrible weather in the afternoon and naps were interrupted twice because of tornado warnings during that time.  One of those days I was at the doctor getting my back checked out.  Being away from your babies while a natural disaster is happening is kind of scary but knowing they are safe and with their grandparents who have experience first hand a tornado ripping through their house is also comforting.

Campbell also met her cousins and aunt and uncle that week.  Cara and Jared along with Beckett and Chloe got here that Thursday and spent the weekend with us.

It was a crazy weekend but it was very entertaining and again, really nice to have all the extra help with both kids.  We went to the zoo Friday, the Children’s Museum on Saturday, a festival of sorts on Saturday night and lots of downtime interspersed.  It was a great weekend and a great end to Campbell’s two months.  That next week Campbell turned 2 months and went to her doctor’s appointment.  Little lady is growing like a week and was already up to 10 lbs 11 ounces.  This is up 4 pounds since birth!

 

Yes, I’m a cow and produce more milk than I know what to do with.  People call breast milk “liquid gold” but Chad and I joke that my milk is purely just liquid.  I sometimes pump and dump just to relieve the full feeling.  Girlfriend is incredibly efficient when she eats so her eating sessions are only about 5 minutes at a time and she usually only empties one breast at a time so in the mornings I end up pumping and throwing the milk out from the other side because our freezer is already full of breast milk!

 

This kid is much much chunkier than Emmett ever was and it shows.  She loves to eat and we make fun of her ferocious appetite daily.  The child just chews on her hand day and night and when swaddled, almost always breaks free to get her hands to her mouth so that she can chew on them.  She also still won’t take a pacifier.  She acts like you’re gagging her every time you try and stick one in her mouth.  It’s actually quite comical to watch and we’ve just given up on giving her one.  Campbell has also been to every kid place in Denver since I have to keep Emmett entertained all morning.  Parks, museums, the orchestra, Boulder, trails, beer gardens, music classes, birthday parties, photo sessions, swimming pools, grocery stores, libraries, the zoo, Target and Trader Joe’s, book stores, church, Monkey Business, Junior League headquarters for meetings with me, lunch dates, the aquarium, and of course the outlets.  This girl has done more in these past two months than Emmett did in his first year of life.  We’re busy and we like it that way.  I wouldn’t change a thing.

Did I mention Emmett LOVES having a sister?  Maybe in the 2 year Emmett post, I can’t remember but he does.  He asks to “see baby” every single morning and when he gets up from his naps.  He can’t get enough of her and every day gets better and better.  My heart could just explode watching this kid around his sister.  I think I mentioned this but I’ll do a separate post on how things are going with siblings.

So that about wraps up month two with my sweet baby girl.  I love recapping these moments as they are very fleeting.  I’m doing a very poor job of keeping up with it all since C will be 3 months this coming weekend but I can’t wait to update on her 3 month developments. She’s already changed so much and I can’t wait to talk about what she’s been up to.  I can’t even get over how much fun we’ve had these past 12 weeks.  I’m loving every single second of having a baby around.  It’s just so much easier the second time around and every day has felt fairly easy for me.  I definitely look forward to getting up in the mornings so I can see my babies but I also love going to bed at night because we take advantage of every day and we are all worn out.

My sweet sweet baby girl, I’m so in love with you and you already have me wrapped around your little finger. I can’t get over how quickly our bond has formed already.  You mean so so so much to me and I can’t even remember life without you.  Happy two months!

 

 

Emmett 2 Years

I could be like every other parent out there and ask “How did this happen!? How is my BABY 2!?”  But I’m going to get politically incorrect here and say that’s retarded to say because I know exactly how it happened.  Two years has passed and yes, it’s felt like the blink of an eye in some regards but really it’s gone by like every other year in my life.  Life goes by quickly and it only gets faster and faster as the years come.  Someone once told me that life is like a toilet paper roll, the more you use it the faster it goes.  So there you have it, that’s how my baby turned two.  I haven’t posted anything about him since what, 18 or 19 months old?  I grew tired, I was in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy, we had a TON of changes and I just couldn’t keep up.  I was just trying to survive those last 3 months of my pregnancy really.  I was miserable and so updating E’s deveopment was not at the top of my priority list.  I had to just give myself permission and let the months tick by.  So here goes nothing…Emmett at TWO years old!

I don’t even know where to start with this guy.  This past year has been full of developmental milestones and this little guy definitely has kept us on our toes.  Obviously everything up until he was a year and a half was pretty well documented but in the past 8 months this kid has just amazed us in the best of ways.  He’s incredible and while we’ve had some rocky weeks, I have to say he’s been nothing but a pure joy to be around.  I know that we are going to have one hell of a time once he hits that grumpy selfish period where he throws tantrums non stop and is out of control, but I’m really enjoying this calm before the storm.  I think I left off sometime in December or even November with his monthly posts.  January was a very trying month for us.  E was 20 months old and decided that he no longer wanted to be in a crib.  I certainly wasn’t prepared for this to happen.  One night he was crying uncontrollably.  Something worth mentioning is that I can no longer go in to sooth him in the middle of the night or all of us are up all night long.  The problem is that once he sees me it’s over.  I can’t leave his sight.  He needs and wants me so badly.  This is cute and fine and all but after being up for several hours in the middle of the night it’s not so cute and I just want to go to bed.  We found this out the hard way when he’d scream for me and I’d go in and then couldn’t leave his room without him going absolutely ballistic.  So anyways, on this particular night Emmett had woken up crying.  I had attempted to go in several times to soothe him and more more I went in, the worse it got.  So finally I handed to monitor over to Chad and told him I was going to take a shower because I just couldn’t do it anymore.  Chad decided to turn the monitor off so that he didn’t have to listen to the screaming either.  Sometimes we just let him cry himself back to sleep but on this particular night he just wasn’t calming down.  Then all of a sudden we heard a thump.  I jumped out of bed and ran to his room only I didn’t quite make it in time and as I walked closer to the door I heard the screams getting louder and louder, almost like the screams were AT the door.  Um?  The door then proceeded to open and there was a screaming child standing there.  I couldn’t believe it.  Just one week before I was bragging to all my friends that Emmett just loved his crib and could basically live in that thing!  He had decided he was apparently done with being in that thing and was so strung out that he was going to do anything to get to us.  After trying everything to calm him down we put him back into his crib to see if he’d do it again but this time we’d have the monitor on to see how he was doing it.  Sure enough he used his dresser as leverage to pull himself up and hoist himself out of his crib.  We watched as he lifted one leg over his crib and dropped himself to the floor.  He landed on his side and we ran in to make sure he was ok.  After that fall he just wouldn’t calm down.  He wouldn’t even take his pacifier which ALWAYS works.  I didn’t know what to do and was kind of freaking out that maybe he had hurt himself while falling out of his crib.  Because he is always so easy to soothe and we always know exactly what he wants it was a bit scary for us.  He had also had a severe asthmatic episode the week before where he couldn’t breathe and I had to rush him to the doc.  He had also run a fever and had a cough so I couldn’t help but think that maybe he was still suffering from that.  Chad and I made the call to take him into the ER.  Of course as soon as we got there he made liars out of us and totally went back to his normal happy self.  He really enjoyed the new atmosphere and was running around showing off like nothing ever happened.  It was kind of an amazing sight to watch.  We were there for about 3 hours, 1-4 am, he checked out fine and when we got home he wouldn’t stay in his crib so it was a family sleep night and not a restful one at that.

So that brings me to the next huge change in Emmett’s life, transferring into a big boy bed.  Thank goodness we already had a twin bed in his room but I was dreading the transition just thinking about my future of no naps and losing the mornings because I was thinking as soon as E would wake up he’d instantly run to the door and want out of his room.  Well, wouldn’t you know, the transition went better than I could have ever imagined.  He actually won’t get out of his bed until someone comes into his room to get him.  I mean he refuses to get out of his bed! It’s kind of crazy really.  My nephew does the same thing and I found it hard to believe that a kid would just sit in his bed waiting for someone to retrieve him but that’s exactly what he did and he hasn’t looked back.  The first day in his big kid bed was a little odd.  I put him down for his nap in there and he definitely got out of his bed and freaked out for a second.  He also fell out of it after falling asleep on it.  He napped in his bed for about and hour and then the other hour was spent on the floor napping.  We also baby proofed his room by nailing the dresser into the wall, moving the crib out and putting the bed where the crib used to be.  We also got those door knob things that prevent the kid from opening the door from the inside and took out the changing table so he couldn’t clib on it.  We also later had to take off all the pictures on the walls because he was standing on the bed and spinning the pics around the nails.  We also went out and bought one of those bed railings to put on the side of his bed so that he woudln’t fall out.  Of course he still fell of the end of the bed a few times but we put a heavy comforter at the end of the bed as padding for that.  So all in all it really wasn’t a bad transition.  I was even expecting a regression of sorts but no such thing has happened and I’d have to say that the transition couldn’t have gone better.  He loves his big boy bed so much that sometimes he asks to go “nigh nigh” after I’ve just gone in to go get him!  You want to know the craziest part?  He doesn’t EVER get out of his bed unless one of us is in his room!  This makes for much less of a head trip for me.  I really stressed about him getting up and being in his room all alone and getting into some crazy trouble.  My two main worries were that he’d get the monitor down from his window (the monitor and cord are at his level and easy to pull down) and wrap the cord around his neck or try to get the window open and jump out OR wrap the cord from the blinds around his neck somehow.  Luckily neither of those two scenarios have even come close to happening.  He’s terrified of the monitor, especially when we talk to him through the speaker and because he doesn’t get out of bed, he can’t reach the windows.  The only time that something even remotely dangerous happened was when he started standing up on his bed and touching the art that is framed and hanging on his wall.  He noticed that if he pushed the frame it would move and one day when he didn’t want to nap, he was bored and started pushing the frames so fast and furious that they started spinning around the nail.  I finally talked to him through the monitor and he stopped but the pictures were literally just hanging there crooked about to fall at any moment and those things aren’t light!  So I worried throughout the entire nap that one would fall on his head and seriously injure him but of course, sleep trumps injury so alas, they stayed put and he took a nap.

So more on sleep, sleeping through the night has really been hit or miss.  Since C has been born the kid has been sleeping like a champ!  BUT, all through my pregnancy (which was most of his second year of life) E would probably wake up and cry out in the middle of the night at least once almost every night.  This didn’t mean that we’d rush in there to see what was wrong with him but it did mean waking up ourselves every. single. night. for the past year.  Anyways, all of a sudden, we bring C home and Emmett starts sleeping through the night with no wake up calls what so ever.  This finally, just one month before turning 2!  He’s sleeping great during naps as well.  His naps have been about 2-3 hours in the afternoon.  He goes down around 1-2ish and then sleeps until 4 or 5.  Most of the time I keep him in his room for at least 30 min. after waking because I still need more time to myself.  Of course, it was nice while I only had E because during that time I usually napped or cleaned.  Now that I have C it’s a completely different story and I usually use that time to play with Campbell and I rarely get anything done.  From January to the end of April he has been taking naps very regularly.  E has always been a great napper and we’ve had several friends who have kids who are trying to give up their naps.  Not my E man.  He loves his sleep and for this I feel very grateful.

A few more random thoughts about my two year old…My heart basically bursts for this kid.  I can’t wait to talk about how Emmett is with his sister.  I won’t put that in this post as that deserves an entirely different post but he’s such an amazing big brother and has not once showed an ounce of jealousy towards his sister.  He is just such a loving and caring little guy and is so happy all the time.  He is such a joy to be around and I can’t say enough good things about this little person.  His smile is infectious and you just can’t stay mad at him for anything.  He shares so well and is such a well mannered little guy.  When someone takes his toys from him he shrugs it off and walks away.  Most kids his age throw a tantrum and scream and cry and try to grab their toys back.  Not Emmett.  He lets kids take his toys away which really kills me to watch but he’s just so good natured about it.  He follows directions like a champ and communicates so well.  He started talking in sentences the weekend I had Campbell which has been life changing.  He is a good eater.  He eats well and often but never asks for food.  He could play for hours without ever eating and sometimes we have to force him to sit and eat.  He is a complete lover of all things water.  If I can’t find him, he’s usually in the bathroom turning on the sink.  When I ask him what he’s doing he says “wash a hands” which means that he’s washing his hands.  He’s obsessed.  I don’t get it either but it’s not a terribly bad habit so I let him make a complete mess.  He isn’t afraid of anything either.  He holds his breath under water and seems to feel immune to the dangers of water in a pool which is both exciting and terrifying.  He LOVES stairs.  All things stairs.  He even has “Emmett’s stairs” which is a step later that he drags all over the first floor of our house.  The kid is also obsessed with smoothies, not drinking them but the act of making them.  He’s already broken two blenders because I’m an idiot and let him play with glass but I don’t know how else to get him off my back when he’s begging me to “make a foothie”.  He makes me laugh daily to the point where I could cry I’m laughing to hard.  He is curious about everything and gets into everything.  He has learned how to open all doors and get through child locks.  But, he also is very good about listening when told to not do something.  He works best when he’s told that he has X amount of time left and once that time is up, he stops what he’s doing and ends whatever needs to be ended.  He loves Elmo and Daniel Tiger.  He runs like a runner which makes mama very proud.  He’ll be a true athlete.  He LOVES hairdryers and every time we go to Meme and Pepe’s house he finds their “hair-dry-its” and wants to play with them.  He loves playing with my hair.  He loves his paci’s still and I can get him to do just about anything if I bribe him with those things.  He hates being in a stroller but if I have a paci, he stays put for hours and will even fall asleep on occasion.  We had grand plans of taking his paci away from him when he turned two but now I see no point in it and he may be going to kindergarten with the thing.  He loves cuddling, saying “I wuv you” and hugs and kisses.  He’s affectionate and emotional.  He’s a total mama’s boy and I couldn’t be happier about it.  He is crazy about his mama and prefers me above all else.  This has proven to be a bit challenging with Campbell but nothing I can handle.  I love him to pieces and could care less that I’m all he wants.  I could go on and on and on but I think I’ll end it with some pictures to show just how amazing this little person is.  I actually get excited to go get him up from his naps now because I can’t wait to hang out with him.  We are kind of besties and I’m not going to lie, I kind of love it.  I hope it stays that way forever.

 

And that about wraps up a post about my two year old.  Oh and most importantly, we did go to his two year check up.

Little dude is TALL coming in at the 90th% in height and weighing in at 28lbs which puts him at the 50th% for weight.  Tall and thin.  Wonder where he gets that from 😉