The Girls' Room

Alli had mentioned she wanted to share a room with Natalie a while ago.  I kept quizzing her on it, to make sure if we switched the rooms, she wouldn't change her mind.  

This vacation, we did it - switched the rooms.  We went a lot of items from the green room to the curb to donate to the Upward Foundation, who was kind enough to send a truck.  We got rid of the bed to Stacy (our hair stylist), and then it was a matter of tearing down the house and moving it, as well as go through both closets.  So, it took a couple of days (and I have to say, I still have some work to do with the stuff we have for the green room.)  But the switch has been made - toys in the green room, sleep stuff in the girls' room.  Here are some pics.  I guess we need to work on the wall stuff again...

By the way, we have the card table set up on our green room (game room) now so the family can play games together.  We are trying to use it quite often!

Christmas

This year's Christmas was different.  Not because of the newborn factor, but because of mommy being so sick!!  Yes, Christmas was the worst day of this sickness for me.  It was all I could do to stay awake and try to put a smile on my face while Alli was opening gifts.  We had many "pauses" in the Christmas morning gift opening.  And Alli was patient through all of them.

Natalie loved all her gifts (not that she can even tell that she loved them!)  Alli also loved all her gifts, and has now played with all of them!

Christmas dinner with the neighbors was just Alli and Daddy.  Natalie and I stayed home as she was still a bit sick too.  Never got the fever (knock on wood).  We are still watching and waiting, just to make sure.  This bug is just awful!


So, projects for the rest of vacation:  Switch the bedrooms around, get Alli to Gymnastics day camp, do some clothes shopping for mommy and daddy before going back to work.  I think we should be able to tackle it all...

The Clapper

I can't believe all us girls are sick, again!  (And I'm not sure how Daddy keeps bypassing it!)  Alli was sent home from school on Monday with a 102 degree fever.  It stayed at 102/103 until Tuesday night, when it broke around 10pm with lots of sweats and chills.  (Poor thing.)  I just got the nasal/chest congestion part - no fever.  Alli has all of the above.  So, her last week of school before Christmas vacation was spent at home sick.  Poor thing.

And now Natalie is congested.  I made a new rule that with every diaper change, we have to suction her nose as well.  And I check for fever regularly.  I'm hoping it goes through her system quickly - I hate sick babies - too scary!  But she still smiles like crazy, including when she is getting her nose suctioned!  Hilarious!!

So, about The Clapper...  Last weekend we went to a Christmas party with a White Elephant gift exchange.  I came home with "The Clapper".  You remember from the 80's commercials:  "Clap on. {clap clap}  Clap off. {clap clap}  Clap on, clap off....  The Clapper!"  So, I figured out a great place for this little device - attached to a lamp in Alli's room that she can't reach.  So I plugged it in, tried it out, and then showed it to her.  She was thrilled!

Ok.  Now fast forward to last night, and her coughing fit.  Can you see where this is going?  I went to check on her after she had been in bed for a little, since she had been coughing so much and she said "Mom.  I coughed 2 times and my light came on, so I had to clap it off!"  hahaha  I thought that was pretty funny.  And it was.  Until after she fell asleep and she was coughing in her sleep and her lamp kept turning on!  Ok, that's pretty funny too.  Kim turned the lamp off so it would keep turning on through the night.

Oh the joys of sick kids!

Our First Gingerbread House

Ok, I have a confession.  I've never actually made a gingerbread house before.  I know!  Right!?!?  Seems like everyone does on the holidays, but I've never.  And then I was asked to help out in Alli's class because one of the parents donated some gingerbread trains and they needed adult helpers for the building.  Oh boy.  So, I had my first shot of building this stuff at the school.  Not bad - got some tips of how to do it with little kids, had some good ideas, figured out some ways to keep it cleaner...

But Alli didn't get a turn to build one because she went to the other preschool in the afternoon.  So we decided to get her a gingerbread house for home and we would build it together.  (Of course, after we purchased it, we found that she really *was* going to get a turn with the gingerbread train, just later in the week.)

So we planned to build today!  And, we had an unexpected friend over, so we had 2 helpers with the gingerbread house.

Here's Gage and Alli showing off their work:

And a better view of the finished house.  (Gage decorated the left side and back.  Alli decorated the right side and front.  Mommy built the house and added the "snow".)

Natalie's 2 Month Checkup

We finally did it.  We decided to try a different doctor's office for our pediatrician.  We just couldn't handle the disorganization of the Fountain Hills pediatrician anymore.  It's probably because the practice is concentrating too much on the "beauty treatments".

Anyway, we went to North Scottsdale Pediatrics and were put in to our patient room within 5 minutes, and got seen by the doctor about 5 minutes later.  In fact, the whole appointment took about 40 minutes - which was typically just our wait time in the lobby in Fountain Hills!!

Natalie is doing great.  She's growing just right.  Her measurements our SOOO different than Alli:

Weight:  12.6 lbs (84th percentile)
Height:  23-1/2 inches (87th percentile)
Head Circumference:  42nd percentile (the chart says 38-1/2, but I'm not sure what units.  cm?)


The doctor was very nice, and we talked about the vaccines a lot, which is a hot topic for me.  Poor Natalie was just born the wrong time of year, so she's getting more vaccines than Alli at a younger age. It's just that it's cold and flu season, so everything has a chance of carrying a strain of meningitis   Ugh. The doctor actually agreed with the choices of vaccines I opted to postpone, except the pneumoncoccol, which can sometimes cause bacterial meningitis.  Granted, when I looked it up after we left the office (and after Natalie was vaccinated), 70% of the cases come from developing countries, which means very small risk of Natalie getting anything.  Oh well.  She will get the same vaccines for the 4 month and 6 month visits, and then we will revisit the vaccine schedule and see what others we will delay...

Preschool!

Last night, we put Alli to bed.  About 10 minutes later, she came out to "check on us".  We told her to go back to bed, so she did.  Before we went to bed ourselves, we went in to kiss her.  We found out what she was doing within that 10 minutes of her coming to "check on us".  Here's the pick of what we found:

And today was Natalie's official 2 month birthday.  She spent the morning in Alli's preschool class.  Here's a pick from preschool, where Alli got to share her little sister with the class by telling them about her.  You can't really tell by this picture, but they are wearing matching shirts.  Alli's says "big sister alli" and Natalie's says "little sister Natalie".  :)

(Sorry the picture is blurry.)

Family Thanksgiving Week

This year we hosted the "Cousins Thanksgiving", which included our family, my brother's family, and my cousin Stephanie's family.  (It typically includes my cousin Daniel's family as well, but they were unable to make it this year.)  The fun started the Sunday before Thanksgiving when Stephanie, Grant, and their daughter Addison came to town.  Addison and Alli are about 10 months apart, so they had a lot of fun together.  They painted, played games, got every toy imaginable out on Alli's floor (daily), and even went "jeeping" with the dads.  On Wednesday they checked into a hotel and we had a quick family switch as my brother and his family arrived to stay at our house.

The cousins had a great time playing with each other, the adults had a great time watching the kids and catching up.

We watched a lot of things in our house break:  the refrigerator (had the repair guy out twice!), the toilet (that was quite a mess cleaning up an inch of water!), and the hot tub heater.  Glad we don't host for another 4 years!


Thanksgiving day was a full day, starting with Alli and I walking in the Thanksgiving Day parade with her dance class.

We then rushed home to get the turkey started.  The little girls helped me prepare the pumpkin pie!  And the men were ordered out of the kitchen, but eventually were let into the kitchen to help prepare the feast, but were given girl names while in the kitchen area.  :)  Andy=Angelina.  Grant=Grace.  Kim=Kim.  hmmm...

The feast:

The Amstutz/Guerrette cousins:

The Perkins:

The adults:

Smiles and Coos

Natalie is starting to smile (without being gas induced).  She has the cutest little look when she smiles at you.  :)  I'm all warm and fuzzy seeing it.  She also started playing with different sounds and now has some very cute coos coming out of her.  What's funny, is every now and then she'll be making some noises and I'll say "let mommy hear one of your cute little coos", and then she does!  Good girl!  ;)

Just last night we had a record sleep - with 6 hours between feedings.  To bad the feeding was at 8pm and I didn't get to bed til 9:30, but whatever.  It still gave me til 2am to sleep!

We continue logging food to see what makes Natalie tick.  I have cut out dairy, nuts, and most of the wheat.  That pretty much is a minimal diet!  I am experimenting with the nuts though, cause they are one of my staples for snack food.  So soon I will try a coconut / pecan bar and see if we both do okay on it.  It's got all natural ingredients (and names that I can read/recognize), so hopefully this will be a great snack for us if there are no puking issues.

One Month Checkup

Natalie's one month well-child checkup was yesterday.  She passed with flying colors.  Here are her stats:

Height:  22 inches (about 75th percentile from what I can tell on the CDC charts)
Weight:  9.88 lbs (again about 75th percentile)


Yes, she is quite a big baby!  Must take after Kim and not me!!  :D


He skin is beautiful, eyes are focusing farther away than they were expecting, and doctor was impressed that we put her on the activity mat and she could actually hit some of the animals (although it might be just a fluke as she swings her arms around!)

I also mentioned that I am keeping a food log to try to figure out what I'm eating that makes her projectile puke, or gives her such cramps when bowel movements move.  I hate when she wakes up from a dead sleep just because she has to poop!  So far, I've eliminated the coffee theory - THANK GOD!  So, coffee is still in my diet.  But it does look like nut-butters are out.  Potentially nuts, but she doesn't seem to react as much from a handful of nuts as she does from a sandwich with peanut butter or almond butter.  Figure *that* one out!

There are other foods as well that are bothering her, but I haven't figured them out.  Dairy for sure, and while I tend not to eat much dairy, it does seem that the little I do might affect her.  And maybe beans, but I'm still exploring that theory.


Natalie is a really good baby.  She doesn't really cry much.  I'm getting to know her squeaks and grunts and can usually give her what she wants before she resorts to the all-out cry.   Yay!  And she's getting used to me as well.  She also knows that when I'm holding her, she does *not* prefer the pacifier - she would rather have the good stuff!!!!  (But sometimes she relents and takes the pacifier from me.)

Cluster Feeding

Ah cluster feeding.  I had totally forgotten about cluster feeding until I went back and looked at some of my blog posts from Alli.  Cluster feeding is going less then three hours, usually right before the long night time sleep (or early in the morning right after to catch up).  Natalie is a sleeper!  In fact, it seems like she would rather sleep than eat, but I knew that going down to 7 feedings a day wasn't what I was supposed to do.  And then I read my post from Alli about how she was sleeping longer and cluster feeding in the morning.  Ah ha!

So last night, Natalie stayed awake after her feeding at 6:30pm.  By 8:00, she was beside herself - crying because she couldn't quite get to sleep, but was exhausted.  So, I fed her.  And guess what!!  She slept from about 8pm to 1am!!  Yes, 5 hours!  Woo hoo!  And then after a 4am feeding, she woke up 2 hours later, and then 2 hours after that - more cluster feeding.  So after her 8am feeding, we are back to every 3 hours through the day.  Magic!  We are finally developing a system that keeps her from crying for food and me from running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to make 2 girls happy!

We now feed right before drop-off of school, and right before pick-up of school (if I can help it), and it makes the car travel less, well, stressful.  No newborn crying hysterically anymore!


But yes, she still will cry trying to fall asleep in her carseat.  But Alli has taken on her big sister responsibilities to heart.  If Natalie cries, Alli will say "quick Mom - ABCs!"  I put on the song in the car and Alli sings (only Alli - I get in trouble if I sing) and Natalie quickly calms down.  It's pretty cute. And Alli will sing while buckling herself in her carseat, arranging her animals...  Whatever it takes.  She's on it!  But I must say, Natalie calms down much quicker with a full belly.  :)