Meet The Gang

Once upon a time, I said that I'd love to introduce The Gang to everyone. Abby has her favorite group of stuffed animals. This group must, and I do mean must, sleep in her pillow. Not on or near or around her pillow. In. Whenever she gets a new stuffed animal, I believe she has interviews with them and an ongoing evaluation to see if they will be deemed worthy of the pillow position in bed. The last recruit was a mouse she got for Christmas. Mice are very important to her. No mouse stuffed animal has ever been denied pillow access as of yet. Cheesy (Her best friend by far) was the first pillow dweller. The Black (her favorite horse) is too big for the pillow but has been stationed in the same exact place on her bed since the beginning. If he gets moved, oh say...by me in the middle of the night during a stomach bug so it doesn't get puked on...then she will know. She wakes up and comes crying to me about how The Black is missing. It's devastating, I know. I probably shouldn't sneak in there and move him. But it would be more devastating to have him puked on. I don't think he'd survive a trip through the washing machine. One day, when Abby grows up, I will pull this picture up to show her how cute she was with her gang. The gang consists of The Black, Cheesy, Tippy, Rainbow, Cookiecrumb, Pinky, Strawberry, Eggbert, Panda, Dimey, Dotty, and let's not forget Crazy Psycho Squirrel. Yep. You read that right. Crazy Psycho Squirrel.

Abby and The Gang

And one without the labels...because it's cuter.

3 Months Old

3 Months old.

  I promise. I will be starting to blog more again. I think about blogging all the time, but never manage to actually do it. It's quite annoying, actually. Oh well. On we go now...

She's a doll. Just adorable!

Evie is already three months old! She's really gaining quite the personality now. Smiles, smiles, and more smiles pretty much sums up her days. She's on a great sleep schedule and still eating like a pro. She's trying very hard to laugh but still is (as of yet) unsuccessful in her attempts. But it's sure cute to watch her try. For some reason, she gave up rolling. She's done it a few times since her first grand adventure into mobility, but has decided that tummy time is for the birds. Oh, I make her do tummy time no matter how annoyed she gets, but she doesn't always agree with my mommy methods. She gets on her tummy and scoots with all her wee little might forward and when she's on her back, she spins in semi-circles. Evie has also discovered her hands and has been attempting to shove them down the back of her throat. Mostly she just wants to grab what she sees and eat it but suddenly becomes aware that she missed getting the item into her mouth. She then gets angry and practically swallows her fists whole. And just today, she started getting her toes close enough to her fingers to grab. There hasn't been full grabbing contact, but I suspect that within in the next couple of weeks, her toes will be introduced to her mouth. She's weighing in at a whopping 14 pounds now and has the double chin and chubby pumpers (legs) to show for it. But fat is cute on babies, right? Now if only I could convince myself that fat is cute on post-partum women...

Tea Party

 

These are the main gang. Her favorites. They sleep in her pillow every night. Yes. I said IN her pillow. They are watching the snow we had come down.

Next year Abby goes to kindergarten and you know what? I'm gonna miss having her around all day. She's a hoot to watch. If ever there was a book titled "Personality", then it was most certainly written about Abby. She can go from shy little angel to crazy spitfire to contentedly playful in the span of an hour. That being said, I can sit on the couch and watch her play for a long time before getting bored of her antics. She runs around the house all day on all four appendages. Why? She pretends to be a dog/horse/cat/random animal. When she's done doing this, she pulls out a hundred (literally) of her stuffed animals and has parties. Tea parties, birthday parties, food parties, going away parties...the list is too long to delve into actually. She will gather up every single pretend food item and dish she can find and give each and every animal something to eat. They get presents, party favors, and drinks. Those stuffed animals can be happy, sad, mean as a hornet, or just down right crazy. But I kid you not, those stuffed animals are out of her room and being played with all the time. Every. Single. Day. They each have a name, favorite food, and (believe it or not) punishable offenses. She has her favorites of course. And just for records sake, I will post a picture soon of the main gang. Black, Cheezy, Tippy, Rainbow, Cookiecrumb, Dotty, Strawberry, Pinky, Dimey, Eggbert, Panda, and Crazy Psycho Squirrel. Yep. That's right. I know all their names (plus about thirty more). It's fascinating to watch her play and though I will not miss the messy house, I will miss seeing her creativity when she plays 'tea party' all day long.

This is the main gang meeting Evie. Yes. Abby set them up like they were looking at her curiously.

This is one of the many tea parties they have. This picture was taken before she brought out the other hundred animals.

They were all dressed up and listening to Abby tell a story.

Abby got to bring a stuffed gorilla named Cody home from school as a school project. Each kid gets a turn and I will say that Cody was never more loved than he was with Abby. This is his birthday party. Everyone was invited and he even got a birthday crown.

Catching Up

I can't seem to find those tiny spare moments to blog these days. But, good news! I looked around  really hard and finally found one of those sneaky little moments. Turns out, it was hiding under my pillow. Who knew? That should tell you how much time I spend with my pillow. I actually have a nifty dry erase board in my kitchen and there is quite the lengthy list of posts I'd like to blog about. It's filling up my board. *sigh* Maybe I should just condense them into one giant post. Ugh.

Evie is growing and changing at super speed it seems. She had her two month appointment...finally. Annoyingly enough, it had to be delayed due to the never ending colds that she seems to be getting. The doc says that her catching RSV and all the other nasties has just been what he'd call "rotten luck" and that she should be catching a break any day now. Here's hoping. Her stats for two months are as follows:

Weight 12lb 4oz - 75%
Height 22 1/2" - 42%
Head Circ. 38cm - 20%

So she's not the tiniest thing ever, but she's not ashamed to eat well. :) I will say I'm fairly certain that she wasn't measured right on her height because she's not even three months old. She's been wearing 3-6 month clothes already for about a month so I think she's taller than they said. She got her first round of shots, which I must say was quite the relief in a way. The doc told me how many cases of whooping cough are in our area and I am glad to know she's at least partially protected from it now. On the other hand, seeing those massive shots put into those teeny tiny legs breaks my heart way more than I remember from the last two kids. Poor thing. Not to mention our normal nurse was gone who is so much more awesome at giving shots. This nurse had the "suck it up, ya big baby" kind of thing going on I think. Not cool.

Evie checked out healthy and strong. We did find out, however, that she has one ear further forward than the other ear because she's been not turning her head left very much. So the doc said if she doesn't start to correct this by the time her next appointment comes, then it's off helmet shopping we go. Problem #1: I don't like that idea. I don't want helmet baby. Those things do not look fun at all. Problem #2: They cost (according to the doc) $2,500! Feel free to drop your jaw. I did. My new mission in life is to push tummy time and get that skull shaping up.

So for now, I'll bask in the glory of my own ability to finally put up a new post. I'm going to try to stop my brain from spinning in circles and get some more posts up. So much to say...so little brain power to say it. Until we meet again Mr. Blog...

2 Months old

2 months old

Little Miss Evie turned two months old on Friday. She's a completely different baby than she was a month ago. It's absolutely fascinating how much change can happen in a mere month's span of time. This month was pretty crazy for the most part. Alex brought home the dreaded chest cold from H-E-double hockey stick. Naturally, much to my breast-feeding mama disappointment, Evie caught the blasted thing. This chest cold...possibly muted flu (not really sure at this point)...was bad. And I mean Bad (with a capital B). Alex developed a horrific sinus infection that led to really scary atypical migraines, Abby developed pneumonia, and Evie? Well Evie had RSV and brochiolitis. The poor thing was in pretty bad shape. The retractions in her breathing and her O2 levels were not good to say the least. We had to go to the ER four times total and it was not a pleasant experience. She had to have deep suctioning three times and it was pretty awful to watch as a mother. Anyhow, after she was about 90% healed from that, this week she went and caught another cold on top of it and is as snotty as ever. *sigh* The other kids aren't even sick so I have no idea how she got sick again. So much for breastfeeding antibodies. Oh well. Marching on. Here is what Miss Evie's second month has consisted of.

Sleep- This girl can get her sleep on! She is now sleeping five to six hours at a time at night and never wakes up screaming or crying horribly. It probably helps that the crib is a few mere feet from me and I wake up at the slightest sound. It's wonderful to have a great sleeper for a change but still a bit odd as I adjust to it. Now, that being said...it's been so non-stop on the sick homefront that I am up way too much at night and was only getting roughly three to four hours of sleep each night.

Thumb- It's on to round two for us with thumb-sucking. The last week or so, Evie has been getting more and more efficient at sneaking her thumb into her mouth. She will wake up at night and I'll hear the cute little snorts and snuffs as she is trying to find a way to get that little thumb in her mouth. Then you hear the soft sucking sound as she's soothing herself back into dreamland. It's pretty cute and reminds me of Abby.

Smiles & Coos- One thing is for sure. Despite being sick for the better part of this month, this girl is happy. She smiles more than I remember the other two kiddos smiling. She just gets to grinning and pretty soon is cooing and smiling as big as she can. She "talks" to me all day long in that adorable, too cute for words baby kind of way. She gets those feet pumping while she's smiling too and looks about excited as a bear finding a honey comb! Pretty darn cute!

So cute and holds her head like a pro!

Rollin'- She rolled for the first time as I've already mentioned previously on the blog (in one of those rare moments when I had time to sit down and write for a change). I don't know how she does it, but she somehow is shimmying her way down the crib at night. I put her on one end of the crib and by the time she wakes up she is all the way down on the other end of the crib. I have a feeling she'll be an early crawler. I'm so excited to think she'll be crawling all over the germ-ridden floors of every place we go. (sarcasm noted?)  It's not that I'm anti-germ or over-protective. It's just that she is so young and been sick so often. I'm ready for her to catch a break from it all.

Battle of Wills

Of all the bull-headed, stubborn creatures I've ever come across, Abby has to be one of the worst I've ever seen. That girl can take my patience and push it to it's furthest limits...and then some. I know, from what I've been told at least, that she probably gets it from me. I can be a bit hot-headed and stubborn. I admit it. But it must get worst as each generation goes on. That's my best guess.

Right now the greatest battle of wills has begun. Dinner. That's my greatest struggle with miss Abigail. She eats breakfast. She eats lunch. She eats lots of things. But dinner? Not a chance. Up until now, I've done the "catering" act. I did it with Alex and I'll do it with Evie later down the road. That being said, I stopped catering to Alex's food finickiness around the age of four and a half and now that kid can out eat me any day of the week. He's got a hollow leg. So, by catering, I mean that when they don't eat what I make for everyone, I give them healthy alternatives like fruit, turkey or carrot sticks. Abby will be turning five in April and I am so done with making separate food for her. This is how it goes every dinner: I put food in front of her. She pushes it away and eats nothing and tells me she's not hungry. She then gets down from the table and within 20 minutes she asks for food because she's (and I quote) "Starving!" She eats an apple and then talks about how hungry she is all night long. Ugh.

This week we began the game. I explained to her that she is old enough now to eat what I make or don't eat at all. She sits there with her arms folded and stares off into space with the ho-hum look of boredom. One night, she ate a tiny biscuit. The next night, it was a single fish stick. (What the heck?!? She loves fishsticks!) The next night? One handful of plain spaghetti noodles and a green bean. Tonight I told her she wouldn't get down from the table until she ate the designated piles of food that I made her. She sat there for one hour. One hour! Holy cow! That girl about made steam come out of my ears. But guess what? I won. Yup. Nothing is so satisfying as winning a fight like this against your four year old child. How sad is that? But she finally caved and ate it. She asked for dessert and I laughed. Not a chance baby girl. Not a chance. Let the long days of the battle of wills begin. Bring. It. On.

Evie Rolls!

Well, I don't have time to sit here and right a long blog about the insanity that has become my life over the past two weeks, but I do want to make a special note for my newest addition. Evie, much to my surprise, rolled for her first time today! Why so surprised, you ask? Because she hasn't gotten half the tummy time that Alex and Abby got. Why not? Because the last two weeks have been horrible for her. All three of the kids caught this terrible, nasty cold that did bad, bad things to all of them. More on that later, but let's just say that sleep for me has been...well...what is sleep again? I forget. Anyhow, miss Evie rolled tonight and it was so cute to watch it. It's kinda sad. It's the last time I'll get to witness the first roll. *sniff* Way to go Evie! Way to keep up with your siblings!