Gymnastic Stretches

Alli has been given homework for gymnastics, and it's lots of stretching to improve flexibility.  If they stretch every day, they get a little prize.  To help Alli stretch, Mommy does the stretches with her.  We start by running around the house for 1 minute to get our muscles warmed up.  This is Alli's favorite part.  :)  Then we do our stretches.  One of the stretches is the bridge.  Mommy had to help Alli with this stretch the first day because she couldn't get her head off the floor.  Alli, then had to help Mommy with her bridge because she also couldn't get her head off the floor.  Daddy found this funny and snapped this picture:

Yes, I got my head off the floor with her help, thank you very much!  :)

After a couple of days though, both of us are able to get our head off the floor by ourselves.  The bridge is now Alli's favorite thing to do (besides the running).

Notice her Barbie dress-up outfit she was wearing when we stretched.  It seems like most of the time we do our stretches, she is in that dress-up outfit!  And yes, that is Natalie is in her bouncy chair watching.  She's always a part of whatever we do!

4 Month Big Sister Checkup

Everyone says that the older sibling regresses a bit when a baby is born.  I've been waiting for Alli to regress, but instead it seems like she has matured.  Alli wants to take care of Natalie, make her laugh, stop her from crying, etc.  She is not regressing to get our attention (although she will do other things like say "leave her alone and play with *me*").

One of Alli's recent milestones has been to wear underwear to bed.  She had been wearing her pull-ups all this time, but for the last month or so they were almost always dry.  Even so, she never wanted to wear underwear at night.  Then she had an allergic breakout Alli-style, and she decided it was caused by her pull-ups.  And that was it.  No more pull-ups at night.  And she hasn't had one accident yet!  We are very proud of her!

Alli is helpful in so many ways, especially when it comes to entertaining her sister.  Here is a fun picture of Alli "helping" Molly (our nanny) give Natalie a bath.  The full alphabet and numbers are in that little tub!

And here is the result of Alli picking out both of their clothes.  We called it "Jeggings Day!"

Natalie's 4 Month Checkup

Well, besides being congested with a cold, Natalie is doing great!  She grew 2-1/2 inches in the last two months!!  Holy cow!!!

She is a very happy baby and developing right on track.  She can grab things now, and often has long conversations with her elephant.  She loves looking in the mirrors, but really the "fun house" mirrors that come with the baby activity mats.  She's not as interested in the real mirrors where everything looks normal!  She also tends to put *everything* in her mouth.  This is going to get interesting once she is mobile, cause Alli tends to leave everything on the floor.

Here are Natalie's current stats:

Height:  26" (85th percentile)
Weight:  15 lbs 8 oz (96th percentile)
Head Cir:  40cm (23rd percentile)

I'm still baffled at these numbers!


My prediction:  Alli will grow to be 5'2", and Natalie will tower over her younger sister at 5'7".  :)

That's Not Funny Nat!

The other day, the girls and I were playing.  Well, it was more like I was holding Natalie so she could watch as Alli and I played together.  The way Alli plays is she tells you what you should say or do.  "Mom, pretend Francesco is going to race Lightening and Lightening is going to win."  (I have the Francesco car, Alli has the Lightening car.)  So what do I do?  Make Francesco win, which makes her mad!  Well, she started yelling at me and going on about how that wasn't right, and Natalie just watched her sister and started laughing.  Alli usually loves when Nat smiles and laughs at her, but in this case, she turned to Nat, got in her face, and yelled "That's not funny Nat!!"  That made me laugh.  Let the fights begin!!

Does the Laundry Ever End?

Yes, I'm griping about laundry.  Probably because Natalie has once again out-grown a size, and that always makes more laundry.  It's washing the new clothes (in this case, the 6 month sized clothes), and washing the old clothes that were worn that week (in this case all her 3 month sized clothes).  Her drawers are packed!  Between hand-me-downs from Alli and all the clothes people gave us as gifts, I'm hoping we get through all of the clothes before she grows into the next size!!  :)

For an update on Natalie and the probiotic, after a week of taking them, everything started moving along just fine.  But what we have noticed is if she skips a day of taking them, she skips a day of a BM.  So, every day, I make sure she takes 1 bottle at least, and I put the probiotic in it.  It's usually her 9am/10am feeding.  Then we have all day to let it do its magic and that typically is working.  She seems much happier, and I know I am much more relieved.

For an update on my hair, well, it's still shedding.  From what I've ready, when you are pregnant, you get huge amounts of Estrogen in your body.  The Estrogen interrupts your hair cycle's normal pattern (grow for 1 month, then fall out).  They way it interrupts it is grow forever, never fall out.  The problem is, after you have a child and your Estrogen levels go back to normal, your hair goes back to it's normal pattern, but there's a lot of hair that didn't fall out over the last year, so it all goes at once.  This is a horrible trick to play on mothers, and I think evolution should change that somehow!  ;)  So, I'm just waiting to see what I'm left with.  I'm not allowed to take Estrogen (not even in a birth control pill) because it has a tendency to reduce milk production.  So, it is what it is.  Maybe next year, when I'm done being Natalie's cow, I will look into some ways to help my hair.  But until then, I'm not going to mess with anything that might affect her via the milk.

For an update on Alli, I can only say she is an amazing big sister.  Natalie just *loves* her.  I can't stress that enough.  Alli will pull and squeeze and lay on Natalie, and all she does is just give a big smile and a laugh.  It's really amazing.  Alli has been doing great in school.  She reads like crazy and is starting to feel comfortable enough to try to read books she hasn't seen before.  (This is big for her - she wants to know she can do something before trying, so it means she is feeling more comfortable with her abilities.)  We are also amazed at how much she talks.  And talks.  And talks.  Kim and I spent last night at dinner looking at each other and just laughing because we couldn't get a word in edge-wise.  Alli just kept going.  "Mama - pretend you think this red stuff on my pizza is hot lava and try to stop me from eating it."  Now imaging hearing that repeated about every 20 seconds, for 20 minutes of dinner.  Holy crap!!!  We are dying!!!  We clearly do NOT know how to play with a 4-1/2 year old!!!

But we love her to pieces!

We feel very fortunate to have our happy, healthy family.

p.s.  I have no updates on Kim.  He is basically the same through all of this, just a little grumpy because I make him get up at 6:30am every day with me and the girls.  :)

NO!!! There Goes My Hair...

I thought I was just imagining it, but no, my beautiful pregnancy hair is falling out.  :(  I had amazing hair for almost a year, and I'm going to really miss it.  Even though I'm losing it, I'm fighting as hard as I can.  I'm still taking my prenatal vitamins, and I've been using coconut oil on my hair before washing it, to try to keep it as strong as possible.  (Yes, Kim is loving seeing me walk around in a bright pink shower cap for 30 minutes before taking my shower!  That's part of the coconut oil hair treatment...)

I find it interesting though that my hair loss coincides with me going back to work.  Stress already??

What Color?!?

I've been watching Natalie's eyes as of late.  They are changing color, but I can't tell what they are changing into.  They are still blue, but they are definitely not the same blue as they have been.  I'm guessing they are going to turn into Kim's hazel eye color, but again, not sure.  We are watching and waiting.  I sorta home she gets some of my green/hazel, but I'm sure she will be beautiful no matter what color her eyes turn!

Back To Work

Yesterday was my first day back to work.  It was hectic in the morning, trying to get everything ready.  Don't forget to put together milk bottles for Molly/Natalie.  Make Alli's lunch (like normal).  Put together a lunch for me (since I'm on such a particular diet now), and don't forget everything you need for pumping!

So I get to work and it's the usual "nothing is ready".  The day is spent with men in my office trying to configure my computer.  I pumped 2x, but missed my 3rd.  :(  I under-estimated the traffic going home, and was 10 minutes late.  (Not that big of a deal, but I'd like to be as close to on-time or early as possible.)  And then I had to pump cause I missed one.  So I pumped while Alli colored and Natalie watched.  Then I had to make dinner, so I asked Alli to take a bath while I cooked.  I had to wear Natalie in the MobyWrap while cooking cause she wanted to be held.  Dinner was nice with the family, and then it was bed time.

Where did all my time with the girls go?  I was sad.  But what did I have to do?  Spend the next hour+ getting everything ready for the next day of work.

NOW I have the baby blues, cause I miss my girls...

Beer

Even though Natalie is such an easy going baby, we are having quite a journey together.  When we were both sick, my milk supply dwindled.  I wasn't eating, she wasn't eating, and therefore I wasn't producing.  So, after getting better, I started trying to pump more and drink dark beer.  Not a bad combination, but the beer was much more enjoyable than the pumping!!  Anyway, after about 4 days of beer, it seemed like my milk supply was at least back to where it had been.  But I also started noticing Natalie would spit up a bit more, but this was completely clear spit-up.  So, another food test - no more alcohol, and see if the spit up goes away.  And guess what...  Yes, it got much better.  Ugh.  And after Kim went out and stocked the fridge with 3 different assortments of dark beer - it's going to take years to go through it if I can't drink it anymore!  :)

The other thing that happened to Natalie (just recently) is that she skipped a day for a bowel movement.  Now, doctors will tell you that breast fed babies can go a whole week without a bowel movement and as long as it's soft when it eventually comes out, all is okay.  Me?  Not a fan of that idea.  So this week, we had our Nanny (Molly) start working and she was giving Natalie bottles while I pumped.  And Natalie went 2 days without a bowel movement.  And of course, she started getting a bit out of sorts.  So I went to the health food store and walked away with a probiotic (that both she and I could take), and some gripe water, just in case things were painful.  Well, I can only give the probiotic to Natalie by putting it in the bottle, and wouldn't you know it, we did it and she was so out of sorts she would not stop crying to even try the bottle.  So that didn't work too well.  But I started taking it so it would at least get into my milk supply.  I'm hoping this will keep her bowels moving daily, but we'll see.  Oh, and the end of this episode?  She finally had the blowout we were expecting, and of course it was at the most inconvenient time/place.  We were at gymnastics watching Alli and I heard the noise.  I picked her up out of the car seat and it was all over her back and all over the car seat.  So much for watching Alli!  I had HUGE cleanup to do!!  (I guess putting her into the size 3 diaper didn't quite cut it.  But based on what I saw, it wasn't a quantity problem, it was a force problem, cause it just shot straight up her back and barely soaked the diaper.)  Oh well.  Poop happens.

New Years

We spent New Years Eve with some friends that live about 45 minutes away.  We call them "Big Allison" and Greg.  Yes, Alli's name for her of course!  They have a 6 month old, Karena.  And we were joined by 2 other families, all with small kids.  The girls had a blast, especially wearing the tiarras and blowing the horns.  We had to actually put them away until our count-down, which co-incided with Brazil's new year since they are 4 hours ahead of us.  Yea for an 8pm new years countdown!  Go Brazil!

I don't have any good pictures of the girls, but we have this one of our party animal husbands:

New years day started slowly, because, even though we were in bed by 10pm, we were exhausted!  (Gotta love how parenthood drains you!)  But new years day has also been a time for hiking for us.  In fact, I was hoping to hike a new trail, but  when lunch time came and we hadn't dressed yet, we went to our old stand-by, the Dixie Mine trail, because parking for the trail head is about 2 miles from our house.  Our family of 4 hiked almost 1.5 miles in before we turned around to head back to the car.  Alli was pretty tired, but quite the trooper.  Not only did she hike the whole way, she talked the whole way. Seriously, I'm not sure there was a moment of silence for the whole hike!  It was hilarious!  The blob in front of Kim is Natalie!  It was cold, so we had her pretty bundled up.  And if you can see Alli's New Years tiarra, everyone that walked by and said "happy new year", she claimed must have read her hat.  Of course nobody would have known if it hadn't been for her hat!!  :)

After hiking, we enjoyed a little relaxation.  Here's a cute pic of daddy and the girls watching Spiderman and his Amazing Friends (Alli's favorite right now).

By the way, both girls are in their Christmas PJs, or 'jamas', as Alli calls them.  We had a great New Years and I'm glad everyone is finally healthy!