The Eighth Month

Friday marked the close of Hadassah's eighth month of outside-the-womb life. This girl is so amazing, and our family is a much more full of life, love, and joy because she's in it. ;-)

Hadassah...

• Pulls up on anything that is taller than she is. Literally anything. This has caused disaster more than once, and funny experiences a few times as well.
• Can crawl seemingly faster than the speed of light!
• Cruises on furniture and the wall
• Has demonstrated the ability to get up at least 2 steps in our new house (I haven't let her try more than that)
• Is not afraid to crawl off high surfaces (this is unfortunate, but has not resulted in injury yet as a parent has always been there to help her down)
• Idolizes Ben and follows him everywhere he goes-she still thinks he is hilarious!
• Likes food in small doses, especially fruit
• LOVES to nurse, especially when she's tired, hurt, and of course hungry!
• Smiles a lot! Sweet girl also sings.
• Has a single tooth in her mouth which is VERY sharp and also large (ask me how I know! Haha!).
• Unlike Ben at this age, she puts everything in her mouth...which combined with her freedom of mobility is quite interesting!
• She's about 50/50 with pooping on the potty. While I would prefer a higher "catch" rate, I'll take what I can get!
• Sweet girl LOVES to snuggle. We should be getting our finalized furniture setup this week, and at that point we will probably start trying to put her down for bedtime on her own (she has been just sleeping on my tummy until we go to bed, which I LOVE...but makes it hard for me to do work, and I have work that really needs to be done after bedtime now). 
• She is growing up so fast! I realized this week that she is no longer dwarfed by the potty. Part of that is that our potties are smaller in this house, but wow...it feels like she was just born, but we are really closing in on a year now!
• Her hair is long enough now that if we don't put it up in little pigtails or a whale spout it falls in her eyes. It doesn't stick up anymore, which is bittersweet!

I can't believe that when this month ends, she will have been out of my body the same amount of time she was in. Wow. This roller coaster that is life with kids just doesn't slow down. I love it, but wish I could feel like I was savoring more of it!!

Month 7

Can you tell I'm brain dead? At least too much so to think of a clever title...which is kind of okay since the only reason I really even blog anymore is because I want to give Hadassah a book of photos and monthly blog posts through her first year like the one I did for Ben, and the title gets cut out of those anyway!
Hadassah Grace is 7 months old. More this month than ever before, we have gotten to see her personality unfolding. She is the sweetest little squishy bundle of love!
This month she...
...went from not really being mobile to rolling over, and then quickly to crawling properly. Since Ben didn't really crawl OR walk (or really self-locomote much to speak of) until he was over a year old, this has been a new and interesting experience for us!
...started pulling to a stand...and then letting go. Oh boy...I think this girly is going to be walking soon!
...has found her sense of humor! She laughs most at Ben, as she always has (those 2 continue to absolutely love each other and be soooo incredibly sweet together), but Daddy and I can get some good giggles going too!
...has gotten more consistent with EC, or we have gotten better at reading/responding, or something. Which is good because she also...
...has started eating some solids. We are doing something called "baby led weaning" with her (we also did it with Ben)-we haven't given her rice cereal and we aren't buying jars of baby food for her either. Instead, she gets small bits of smooshy foods (avocado, banana, sweet potato) or pre-smooshed bits of less smooshy foods (broccoli, cauliflower). So far, she is having fun but isn't very aggressively interested in foods-it seems to be more of a game we play for fun at this point. Which is fine.
...has developed a more stable sleep schedule. She has started to want to go down for the night when Ben does (around 7:30-8) and wakes (I think) about 3-5 times on an average night. This is SO incredibly better than what Ben did at this age (8-10 times at night or more)-plus, she is a gentle enough nurser that I can sleep while she is latched which has never been the case before! She would wake on her own around 7-8 on most days I think, though sometimes my early morning departure disturbs her earlier than that.
...has continued to refuse mama milk from any source other than mama. Sigh. She is chunky enough for me to not worry about whether she is getting enough, thankfully!
...has continued to show us who she is: strong, determined, charming, smile that can light up the room (literally), loving, playful, adventurous. I look forward to continuing to get to know this little girl as she grows! She is such a precious treasure!

Ohhh, we're halfway there....

As of today at 8:16 AM, Miss Hadassah Grace has been on this earth (well, outside of me anyway!) for 6 whole months. Whew. That seems so impossibly old-and yet again I am left to wonder-how did it happen so quickly? It seems like we don't really have a small baby anymore already! She sure does bring a lot of joy to our family-and I am so thankful for just about everything about her (including the smaller than popular age difference between her and Ben) and so incredibly happy that she is part of our family!
She can sit up pretty well now. She's still a little wobbly-I would definitely not put her down on the hardwood and then walk away yet, but she does pretty well on a somewhat-firm surface as long as she doesn't get too distracted. She is also soooo close to being able to sit back up on her own as well once she does topple.
She scoots around and is able to make pretty good leeway on the floor (between rolling and scooting she pretty much gets where she wants to go). She tends to go backward or in a circle, although she is capable of going forward. We can't leave her on the bed while we go to the bathroom quite as easily as before (the pillow barricade needs to be in place!)-she has not fallen off yet, but has gotten too close for comfort at least once for each of us, so we aren't taking chances!
She is acting more and more interested in our food, and 6 months means she's almost old enough to start experimenting! I let her suck on a banana with me earlier today and she still has a pretty strong tongue thrust reflex, so we'll keep playing with it but I think she's a few weeks away from "really" starting solids. We have really just given up on the bottle thing. It makes her so angry, and since she is a very healthy 18 pounds (maybe more, we'll find out next week!) we stopped pushing it. She's clearly making up for it at night. She occasionally will eat a "milk pop" (milk frozen in a popsicle tray) but for the most part, she's just reverse cycled and that's the way it is.
She has reached what Josh calls "octopus stage"-she is able to reach things that you would swear were way too far away, and (as she has been since she was born!) she is strong! If she gets a hold of something, it's a bit difficult to pry it from her fingers!
She knows her name and she knows she is cute!
She has a special "daddy smile"-he has her heart for sure! She literally lights up whenever she sees him! She likes to play a game with him where she lunges at his face and chews on his nose. He makes some kind of teasingly dismayed sound and she giggles and smiles and her eyes sparkle!
The other man who has her heart is her brother. Ben can get her to laugh and laugh (the rest of us have yet to elicit more than a sweet little chuckle-but for him, she will belly laugh long and loud and hard!).
She is much more talented in the sleep department than her brother was-we can transfer her (as long as we are careful of course) and she will stay asleep (unlike mister "Unbuckle my seatbelt and I am wide awake"). She also sleeps much better at night than he did-we are probably up anywhere from 3-5 times per night most nights (at this age, he was 8 or more). For this, mommy is most thankful! Another nice thing about this is that she will still sleep well while held, which means I get some snuggle time I might not otherwise get!
She is not nearly as close to EC poop trained as Ben was at this age-kinda sad about this since we are, as previously mentioned, going to be starting solids soon. Honestly, we just haven't been consistent enough. Things have been so crazy since she was born (first Josh's crazy schedule, then I had surgery literally the weekend he graduated, which means not only can I not potty her, but he spends half his day driving me to and from work). Who knows if we will get to the point where she poops just in the potty. I'm not going to stress about it either way. Just like with Ben, I figure every poop caught in the potty is one less to wash, and am happy with whatever we can get! She definitely knows what to do on the potty and will wait to poop in the morning until we take her (that's one time we ALWAYS take her).
Oh, sweet daughter, love of my heart....your beautiful bright blue eyes that sparkle with such joy captivate me! I am so happy that you live with us, and I hope that you feel loved even though Mommy isn't around as much as I would like to be and life for Daddy and Mommy has been pretty crazy the last few months! We look forward to the next 6 and beyond!

5 month update

I really need to write this entry before my sweet girl is 6 months instead of 5!! Life has been crazy this last month-I had surgery, we are trying to move, and work has been insane. I feel like I'm just (barely) surviving the day to day, let alone documenting anything! But I love the photo album I made for Ben where I have blog posts and photos chronicling his first year, and I want to do the same for Hadassah, so here goes!
This month, Hadassah Grace has really been starting to act like an older baby. She has so much to say (VERY loudly!) and she is so strong and active! :-) This little girl has an opinion about just about everything, and she will let you know about it! Her smile is so sweet and precious and her joy is just as passionate and complete as any other emotion she displays, though!
She laughs and smiles pretty readily now. It's so interesting to see what things she thinks are funny! Ben often is in that category, and raspberries or tickling will get her laughing too.
She is head over heels in love with her daddy (and a pretty major flirt with guys in general!). She smiles and bats her eyes at him. Aww!
She REALLY wants to be mobile. She can scoot herself around pretty well on the floor, and I don't think we are too far from crawling. This kid has some crazy strong arms and legs!
She can almost sit up unassisted.
She is such a sweet snuggly baby when she wants to be, but sometimes she is too busy or interested in everything going on around her to snuggle!
She still has crazy hair! It's getting long enough that it can lay down sometimes (and I can pull it into teeny tiny pigtails!) but mostly it still sticks up everywhere.
I am so thankful to say that she sleeps MUCH better at night than her brother did. A normal night is about 3 wakings. We have a few rough ones that are more (5-6) but so far, we have not had any nights where she was up 8-10 times. I am so thankful to be just tired instead of desperately exhausted!
She is starting to show some interest in food that we are eating, so I think trying solids is coming up in the next month or 2! It's crazy to think she is already old enough to be ready for that!
Speaking of eating, she has started being very distractable while nursing (especially at lunch-the one time I need her to eat on a timeline!). Even though she and her brother have been tandem nursing since she was born, any time we try to tandem now, she pulls off to pat/pull his hair and touch his face. Which leads him to pull off and admonish her to use nice touches. LOL!
I feel like I don't have a tiny baby anymore, and it's so strange! I am enjoying watching this sweet girl grow, but as always it is a little bittersweet!

A Tale of Two (Potty) Poopers

This post probably won't interest a lot of my friends, and that is completely fine! Feel free to skip it. :-) But I know that at least some of my friends have asked me how EC is going with Hadassah and how potty training is going with Ben, so I thought I'd update about that.
For anyone who doesn't know, EC is elimination communication-it is not potty training the baby, but rather the parent learning to recognize when the baby needs to eliminate and then taking them to the potty. You can start it from birth if you want (I am too lazy to start it quite that young) and can be as fully into it or not as you choose.
The way we have done EC so far is that I have a goal of catching all of the poops in the potty by the time my baby is eating solid food. To be completely honest, my motivation was simple: I don't want to wash solid poop diapers! We started with Ben when he was around 2-3 months old, and it worked beautifully! I can count on one hand the number of poops he has done in a diaper since he was about 5 months old. One thing I think is important about EC is that you don't scold or shame the child if they go in their diaper-the responsibility to know soon enough and get to the potty is on the parent, not the child (and a few times I have actually apologized to Ben for not being able to get him to the potty when he asked to go-when we were in the middle of nowhere on roadtrips etc.).
We didn't start nearly that young with Hadassah, mostly because during that period of her life, we were completely overwhelmed and just trying to survive life until Josh graduated. She was with a lot of different caregivers, and it just seemed too difficult to try to work on EC if we weren't going to be able to be consistent. However, in the last week or so, we have been able to start! Thankfully, she had gotten into the habit of pooping not long after waking up, so we had at least 1 time of day when we knew she would probably go if we took her. We started with that-Josh would take her (I can't physically take her to the potty right now) early in the morning, tell her it was okay to go, and then cheer and get super excited for her when she did. We are now 3 days diaper-poop free! I'm sure it will take us a while to get to where we are completely trained, especially as I am returning to full time working soon. But it's exciting to see her catch on so quickly! She is starting to let us know, either by grunting or by doing lots of gas, but giving us enough time to take her potty. Given that (literally from birth) she HATES the feeling of being in a wet or dirty diaper, I think she is all about this pooping in the potty stuff!
Ben, in turn, has been working on potty training. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I would have tried to potty train him this young left to my own devices (he's been working on it since he was about 21 months old). However, he was really acting ready so we are just going with it. He has regularly pooped on the potty for a very long time, as mentioned earlier, so it wasn't a huge shift necessarily. The biggest thing is that his communication has gotten so much better! He started REALLY wanting to wear his Daddy's boxers all the time (which I would let him do-we tied the waist band with a sock to make them stay up) and I noticed that he never peed in Daddy's boxers, but if I offered to take him, he would go and pee in the potty. He also was frequently waking up dry from naps and would pee on the potty if I took him. So I figured, hey, we might as well try! I ordered tiny boxers (side note: 2T boxers are ridiculously cute!) with various animals on them (he LOVES animals right now). He was so excited to have boxers of his own! He had started calling potty "booboo" (poop or pee) so we told him that he was a big boy and got to wear boxers now, and we try not to booboo on the lions  (or monkeys etc.). We started out by letting him pick each day whether he wanted to wear a diaper or boxers. Recently, we've just been starting out in boxers, though he does still wear a diaper at night and nap time. Some days, he requests a diaper and seems to need a break from having to pay attention to whether he needs to pee or not (today is one of those days) and I am fine with that. I am incredibly thankful that we have wood laminate flooring in most of our house instead of carpet, because that frees me up to really not care if he pees on the floor by accident. I would definitely not call him potty trained yet-sometimes he goes a little bit before realizing (though I am incredibly impressed that he can stop himself and make his way to the bathroom to finish) and if he is busy, he forgets to pay attention (so I don't trust him in boxers yet when we go out of the house) but he is well on his way. I feel like he has made it ridiculously easy on me-not sure how much of it is the EC and how much of it is just who he is, but I am definitely spoiled in this area!
So that is our potty update! Happy to answer questions if anyone has any! The summary is: EC isn't for everyone, but it has worked incredibly well for our family so far and it's one of the parenting choices I am super happy we made!

The Fourth Month of Grace

My sweet daughter turned four months old earlier this week. It is so amazing how quickly the time flies. I think how long the last few weeks leading up to her birth felt (with the contractions and misery and exhaustion) and yet these 4 months since have passed so quickly!
This month was very hard for all of us as a family because I was back at work full time and Josh was in the middle of the most intense semester ever. Through a LOT of help from family and friends, the grace of God, and the fact that we have 2 extremely sweet children, we made it through and he is now officially done with school.
One of my favorite things this month has been watching Hadassah's relationship with Ben blossom. He really takes his role as older brother/caretaker/protector very seriously. He is always bringing her a  blanket or her "passy", offering hugs, asking to "hold her", and checking on her when she cries. She loves him like crazy-flirts with him all the time. He will often lean over her and in the sweetest voice say, "Heyyyy!" They still tandem nurse pretty often (at least 2 times per day usually) and almost always hold hands while they do (or sometimes he will rub her back or pat her bottom). I know that there will be spats-that's just how it goes with siblings, especially when they are close in age-but I am so enjoying watching their relationship blossom and I hope that love is always underneath those spats!
New things Hadassah is doing/personality emergences:
Blowing raspberries-this is new and extremely cute!
Laughing-the easiest way to get her to do this is to play "kissy games" where she gets lots of kisses under her chin or on the side of her neck. She also thinks it's funny when I sneeze. She does not, however, like yelling (not that I yell much, but if I raise my voice to call for Daddy, she gets very upset).
I think we have officially admitted that she is reverse cycling like her brother did. Sometimes Daddy can get her to drink an ounce or so through the course of the day, but that's it. She waits til I get home and does most of her eating overnight. I was very stressed about this when I first went back to work (because she was so young and I hated the thought of her going that long without eating) but she has continued to gain weight steadily and has stayed in the 90th percentile, so I believe she is making up for her nutrition. I'm still not necessarily thrilled, but thankful that I don't have to worry about her nutrition levels or weight gain.
She can roll from back to front, but I haven't seen her do the other way.
She continues to be extremely opinionated. If she gets mad, you have to calm her down before you can fix the problem.
She loves her pacifier (so she has no issue with fake nipples, it's the milk that upsets her). She just demonstrated a love for frozen milk (????) so when I go back to work (off now due to foot surgery) we will try that to get some calories into her during the day.
She talks a LOT. It's adorable. Sometimes Ben has conversations with her in the back seat where she babbles and he says "Uh huh, yeah..." Makes me realize we do the same for him (want to know what your verbal habits or tendencies are? Get a toddler).
She doesn't love water. She's okay with it, but doesn't love it.
She hates the booger sucker. Don't blame her there!
Her smile can light up the room and bring joy to the most sorrowful heart!
I am so thankful every day for these two precious little ones we have been gifted with. I look forward to the continued journey as their mama!

Hadassah Grace-the third month

Well, my sweet little daughter is 3 months old, 15 lbs 5 oz (checked her on Monday because we need to monitor her weight since we are having a hard time getting her to drink milk while Mommy is gone at work), and such a sweet smiley bundle of preciousness. Yeah, parenthood is pretty amazing the second time around too. Here is what has been going on in our family this month....
I went back to work 2 weeks ago, and it has been a very difficult and challenging transition for all of us. Hadassah is much more vocal than Ben, gets angry much more quickly, and is just kind of an "all or nothing" type girl...so where Ben waited until he was 5 months old to decide bottles were overrated, she pitched a fit right away, and continues to do so each time a caregiver tries to feed her when I am gone. Prayers on this count would be much appreciated-I so hate to think of her being sad and hungry, she is awfully young to go for 2 5-6 hour stretches per day without eating or drinking, and I am sure it is wearing on Josh to have her spend as much time crying as she does. We are trying everything we can think of-cup feeding, spoon feeding, syringe feeding, various bottles/nipples, etc. and have had only limited success so far. A dear friend got her to eat 1.5 oz today from one of our new bottles (which is by FAR the most she has accepted not from me) so maybe we can still convince her to at least have something!!
Josh is so close to being done with school we can taste it...and yet the insanity of his final semester means he is literally always doing school and still not totally caught up (at least, he doesn't feel he is). We are just trying to survive and hang in there as a family until he is done...he and I haven't had a decent conversation in the last 2 weeks, we aren't often both home at the same time, and we are both so intensely exhausted (him because he regularly stays up far past midnight to complete work, me because of Hadassah reverse cycling and foot pain that is bad enough to prevent sleep many nights). We are so incredibly thankful for friends who have stepped in and offered to help us with childcare, meals, etc.-we would be drowning without this help, I am sure!
 Just quickly, since I know some people will be curious...my foot started acting up when I was pregnant and has gotten markedly worse over the weeks since Hadassah was born (I am sure that spending much of my 17 hour labor standing and squatting while barefoot did not do me any favors-not the smartest move I have ever made in my life, but I was not thinking about my feet at the time). It has not been this bad since I was a teenager. It's the one that I have had 5 surgeries on (3 on the other). An MRI has shown there is an exostosis (new bone growth) underneath my fibula (basically just below my ankle) which is causing some tendons to be compressed/pinched and now I have something called tenosynovitis (means inflammation of the tendon and tendon sheath surrounding the tendon). I almost certainly need surgery to prevent worsening of the growth and potentially eventual tendon rupture, but we really can't afford (physically or monetarily) for me to be off work and off my feet right now, so we are trying an injection on Friday to see if we can buy some time. Meantime, I wear a brace at work and am supposed to be nonweightbearing at home. I do my best, but with 2 under 2...it's not the easiest. If you come to my house, be warned...it looks like a toddler lives in it with a Daddy who is too busy and stressed to clean and a Mommy who is too exhausted/lazy and is usually not able to manage standing for more than a few minutes at a time by the end of the day.
Okay, on to fun stuff!
Hadassah can roll from her back to her tummy. She doesn't do it regularly yet, but I have seen her do it enough times to be pretty sure it isn't an accident when it happens.
She has the most gorgeous, sweet smile that transforms her face from adorably chubby to simply angelic. How hard you have to work to get her to smile is a pretty good indication of how close your relationship is with her. She smiles pretty readily at me and at Daddy, extended family and friends have to work at it a little harder, and there is exactly 1 person in the world that she smiles at without him smiling first...big brother Ben. Thankfully, those 2 adore each other. He often asks to hold her, he loves to kiss her and hug her (and "hold" her), and he loves to rub her back or pat her sweetly while they both nurse. I so hope they keep on loving each other as they get older! (anyone have suggestions on fostering a sweet loving relationship between siblings? I'm all ears!)
Her head control is greatly improved, though she is still fairly wobbly.
She likes nursing quite a bit, but is not quite as in love with it as Ben was. She doesn't always comfort nurse to the same degree that he did, and there are times when she actually prefers another means of comfort over nursing.
She LOVES being worn, especially in "her" wrap (we were borrowing it from a friend, and she fell so madly in love with it that I ended up buying it from my friend).
She loves being rocked, which makes me very happy. Ben never liked rocking, so now the glider is actually getting some use! And with the foot pain, it is SO nice that she actually prefers rocking over walking/bouncing most of the time!
We have done a little bit of EC with her, but I think we are going to wait to really start that until Josh is done with school. She is just with too many different caregivers and so often out of the house.
She has gotten a bit better about wet diapers-she still doesn't like them, but she usually only makes me change her 1-2 times per night, which is much nicer than 6 or more!
She loves to "talk"-she will coo and bob her head and make such sweet faces.
Just think, by this time next month, Josh will be within days of graduating! That will be awesome, and maybe bring some big changes for our family. We'll see. Until then, if you don't see or hear from us or I forget to respond to you, I am very sorry...feel free to pester me at will. As I said, in some ways we are just trying to survive the next few weeks.