Holiday list part 2

We have continued to stay busy with holiday events since my first post.

CP found a non-religious advent calendar and Izzy has enjoyed opening the drawers every day. We also do Elf on the Shelf and have so far only forgotten to move "Sprinkles" once (CP ran downstairs just in time to do it).

Of course we had to go see Santa. When he asked Izzy what she wanted for Christmas she said, "May I please have a Elsa present?" (We had been prepping her that she had to say please and what she wanted to say to Santa beforehand.) He then asked, "Anything else?" and Izzy didn't have an answer for that because she had only thought of "Elsa present." LOL.

Santa- I know him!

While there you could write a letter to Santa so CP made some dotted letters so that Izzy could trace them for her letter. As you can see he was lazy in how many dotted letters he wanted to make... :-)

Tracing over CP's dotted letters

It says "Dear Santa, Elsa. (Heart) Izzy. LOL. The semi-straight lines halfway down the page are Izzy's "letters" if she isn't tracing real letters. :-)

There was also a booth where kids could get an Elsa or Anna braid in their hair. Izzy was patient but very excited. We are still finding glitter in her hair and it is almost two weeks later....

Finally, we made a gingerbread house with my mom. I was lazy and bought a kit at Michael's but it ended up being perfect because all Izzy needed to do was to decorate the house. I also bought Skittles and gummy bears to add to the supplies for the house (couldn't find any gumdrops).

I think that the only thing that we have missed this year is to go see lots of Christmas lights but we still have a few days left!

Five months!

Five months

Height- will find out next month

Weight- 19 pounds??

Rocking tummy time

Nicknames- Chunk, Baby Wes, Monkey

Diapers- Size 3

Viking hat twins!

Milestones- This month has also been all about blowing bubbles and bringing lots of toys, blankets, etc. to his mouth. He has at least rolled onto his side, but still not much interest in rolling over. Wes continues to be a big talker. This month we started to put him in the high chair with some toys so that he could be at the table with us during meals but not in our arms.

Happy in the high chair. No solid food yet, but Buster has parked himself underneath
Wes because he knows what is coming. :-)

Sleep- Once Wes got over his sickness he was sleeping through the night again (yay!). He is generally in his crib by 8:30 and sleeps until 7 on weekends...generally I have to wake him up at 6 during the week.

Clothes- Still in 6-9 mo clothes but some are getting tight!

Eating: Wes eats 3 5oz bottles every day at daycare. I do think that he drinks enough at daycare so that he isn't starving, but fairly soon after we get home he is hungry (even if he just ate a bottle at daycare 1.5 hours before) and wanting to nurse a lot. I don't mind it too much because it helps with my supply but it gets hard when he is crying because he wants to nurse while I am finishing bedtime with Izzy. He is very busy while he is nursing; constantly petting or moving his free hand over my chest. I did let him gnaw a little bit on my banana this month and he seemed to like it.

Teeth- Wes' bottom front gum is protruding a bit so we may see his first tooth/teeth soon. Crossing my fingers he doesn't bite my nipple too much.

Likes: snuggling in our arms, nursing, walks in the stroller, activity bar, vibrating chair, kicking your legs in the bath, cooing at us, hearing us talk to him, blowing bubbles, peek-a-boo, putting things in his mouth, looking at lights, grabbing CP's beard, watching Izzy do anything

Grumpy old man

Other firsts: I stayed away from the Nose Frieda with Izzy because I didn't realize that there was a filter so that you didn't suck up the snot. This thing is amazing! Wes is not a huge fan but it really does the job on stuffy noses.

This month was the first time Wes met Santa and was nonplussed about the visit.

Wes continues to be such a happy baby. It's easy to get him to smile and laugh (we agree he does it both more than Izzy).

The last thing that I want to document for this month- Wes' hair is HILARIOUS. The bald spot in the back, the somewhat darker hair on the bottom, the short hair on top (because it is new), and the tuft of long hair at the top which has been growing since birth. For reference here is what Izzy's hair looked like at 5 months:

Such a difference!

Boston trip

Today I flew to Boston for a quick work trip to give a presentation tomorrow. It was so nice to be the one traveling instead of CP. I dropped the kids off and ran to the airport...realizing only when I got in the security line that my drivers license expired on my birthday- whoops! The security guard either didn't notice (scary) or TSA allows an ID to be expired for a few days. Fingers crossed I won't have a problem getting home tomorrow!!

I got into my hotel and had a relaxing afternoon watching tv, doing some work, and pumping. In a few minutes I get to meet up with a friend from college. Is it wrong of me to hope that CP doesn't have the easiest time with the kids tonight and tomorrow so that he finds out how difficult it is when he travels (he will be gone again next week and possibly over New Years)?

Microblog Mondays: A sign?

I think that I am giving out a vibe of either being totally rundown or needing to relax a bit as for my birthday I received a massage/spa gift card from my husband, my MIL, my best friend, and my parents. I laughed every time I received another one, but am a little worried that I look like I don't have my sh*t together these days. 

Now I just have to find the time to get away and actually use them....


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Annual Pretty Princess Day

Tomorrow is my annual pretty princess day* but I don't really feel like celebrating. I have been sick for a few weeks now, finally heading into the doctor last Friday. I had a horrible cough that would be so forceful that I would turn red, couldn't stop coughing, and would be close to throwing up. The cough hasn't really gone away, I have tons of pressure in my head, my ears are plugged up, and I can't taste or smell anything. I have bronchitis and a sinus infection.

I don't have any sick time or much vacation time because I had to use it for maternity leave so I don't have the luxury of taking time off work to try to get better...not to mention that my boss and his boss are out of the office this week on a work trip so I am the only supervisor for our division. I did take one day off last week to try to rest but with CP traveling to Puerto Rico last week and then North Carolina this week I can't get enough sleep to kick what I have. The antibiotics that I finally started on Monday are so far not helping and I'm assuming it will be a waste of time taking them. In addition, I have to add a probiotic to one of Wes' daycare bottles each day because the antibiotic can pass to him through my breastmilk and can cause diarrhea and/or a rash. So far he seems okay other than a cough and possibly starting to teethe (he "threw up" his bottle at daycare yesterday but I wonder if it was really throw up or simply spit up as he seemed fine last night). Meanwhile, Izzy is totally stuffed up and has an ear infection.

I did have a girls night planned with friends last Friday that I didn't end up attending because I felt so terrible and tomorrow night we have a neighbor's party where I probably will go but won't be much fun because I am so rundown. After getting in sort of a groove with running (as much as you can get in one when you only have time to run twice a week), I haven't gone on a run since the day before Thanksgiving. I hate feeling this way, but I'm not sure what I can do about it. I just have to push through like usual. I know that this is a first world problem as I will end up getting better but I just hope that it is soon. I'm not totally with it at work, my milk production is down (I assume from trying to fight the virus and from the small amount of Halls I have eaten?), I am so so tired, and I'm just not myself.

I've already told CP that I don't want to eat out, have him cook anything special, or get a cake until I can freaking taste my food again so hopefully we can celebrate next weekend? Friends are having a big party and I would like to drink at it- especially because last year I was secretly pregnant for the party and couldn't join in the fun!

So what's on tap for tomorrow? Taking Izzy to soccer practice, probably doing some holiday errands, then our neighbor's party. What I wouldn't give for a nice, long nap....

It's on to age 38 tomorrow. What is in store for me this coming year?

*Curious as to why I call my birthday my annual pretty princess day? Basically it is because CP hates it and now years later, it has stuck. LOL.

Microblog Mondays: Holiday list

We still have a while to go before Christmas, but I can already tell that it is going to be a special year with Izzy. This weekend we knocked some fun holiday things off our list.

We made and decorated Christmas cookies at a friend's house:

We took the easy route and had CP buy a tree at a nearby tree lot (in future years we hope to make it more of a production but I am sick and it would be hard with a stroller). Izzy was excited to help decorate and after we got all of the ornaments on the tree, Izzy started jumping up and down. I think that she may be a teensy bit excited about Christmas?

We went to a holiday train exhibit at the Botanic Gardens with friends (third year in a row). Sadly I didn't see any of it because Wes got hungry as soon as we got there so fed him the whole time!

No pictures of trains, but we did get a picture of a blue W for the Cubs World Series win!

We had a snowball fight with the kids:

Wes wasn't too sure about his first real snow, despite being warm enough:

Izzy made her first snowman:

Finally, Izzy enjoyed a sled ride around the backyard while Buster ran around like a crazy man in the snow (it's his favorite):

All of this excitement and no nap for Izzy made for an epic meltdown at the end of a dinner she refused to eat and then when trying to put her to bed, but it was a great weekend nonetheless!

What are some must-dos on your holiday list?

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Izzy at THREE

Izzy at school on Tuesday

Height: unofficial 38"

Weight: unofficial 36 lbs

Language: She is getting really good at her letters. She has known for a while that her name starts with an "I" and can point it out but also gets most other letters correct when we ask. She does get a few confused- like uppercase g and c and lowercase h and n. But still....I am super impressed that she knows her letters as it is! More recently she has started to recognize numbers as well- she is good up until the number 8.

Personality: She loves to bark out directions (especially at me and CP). I think that she is mimicking her teachers a bit. Izzy was super excited to move up to the big kid room (i.e. Preschool) earlier this month but she misses her last teacher. She is still shy when she meets new people.

She is hilarious and super sweet. One day last month I was telling Chris that I was terrible (at fantasy football). Izzy looked at me and said "Mommy you are not terrible" and gave me a huge hug. She also has been pretending that her small penguin is her "baby" and that she has to nurse it (on her belly button). LOL.

She is quite the negotiator as well. For a little bit after Wes was born she was pooping in her pullup during nap at school so we brought back giving her an M&M if she pooped on the potty. She would look down and count the number of poops in the toilet and then try to negotiate for the same number of M&Ms. Nice try kiddo.

Twins!

For Thanksgiving this year her teachers asked all of the kids what they were thankful for- Izzy's response was "my mom, my dad, my baby and food." LOL. Girlfriend does like to eat!

My fearless girl riding her balance bike down the hill in front of our house

Teeth: All in. Now we just wait for them to fall out in a few years!

Favorite Toy: Recently she has been excited to play matching games and it turns out that she is pretty good at the game! She is still obsessed with stickers- especially handing them out to people.

Cheeky girl

She doesn't have a specific stuffed animal that she has to have with her so her favorites change all of the time. She loves that I have painted her nails a few times and requests that I put an "Elsa" or "Anna" braid in her hair, then walking around and telling me "i'm Elsa mommy."

Favorite Book: If we could read her 10 books before bed she would be a happy camper. Her tastes range from Sesame Street to Thomas to baby board books to books like Dragon Love Tacos. She is often sad when we turn out the light at night because she wants to continue "reading" after we turn the light off.

Other Favorites: Stamps. Practicing writing her letters (every letter is just a line- LOL). Dance parties. Daniel Tiger. Frozen.

Sleeping Habits: These days she goes to bed around 8-8:30 and wakes up around 6:30-7. She sometimes takes a nap these days and hates to wake up in the morning (taking after her mother).

Go Cubbies!

Eating: Izzy loves fruits and vegetables and has even started asking for salad. That being said, she is a total kid and loves things like mac n cheese, grilled cheese, cheeseburgers, etc. She recently decided that she suddenly likes chicken again which makes our life easier. Izzy also loves to eat a lot of CP's soups.


Potty: We hit a snag with nap times recently. At school she will go potty during nap time but at home she won't let us know that she needs to go to the bathroom. I was tired of washing the sheets every weekend nap so she went back into a pullup. Nighttime is a different ballgame and I suspect she will have pullups on for a while at night.

Clothes: 4T clothing and size 10 shoes.

We might need to bring a dryer sheet to the park....

Media: Izzy watches an hour or two of tv after waking up in the morning on the weekends but no tv during the week. On Sunday if the Eagles or the Pats are on the tv is on football, but Izzy doesn't pay much attention.

Overall: Izzy is a sweet, amazing, beautiful, smart girl and I'm so lucky that I get to be her parent (I'm not biased at all). She is a rule follower unless she is testing the waters. She easily made the transition to big sister and has done a great job helping with Wes. Izzy continues to amaze me with her fearlessness and athleticism.

Love you my pumpkin!

Third birthday party

Yesterday we celebrated Izzy's third birthday (two days early). We originally thought about having a big party for her but decided to go with a small party and have it at our house to save money. Maybe we will do a big party for her next year when she might remember it. 

CP had ordered Madagascar-themed party supplies a few weeks ago...basically a week before Izzy watched Frozen for the first time and girlfriend became obsessed. Oh well.

I remembered to order the cake in time from a local grocery store but almost forgot to get balloons to put in Izzy's room before she woke up. She wanted blue balloons and I went to four different stores, ultimately finding nothing. So at 9:30pm Saturday night I went to a nearby grocery store and found a pack that had two blue balloons in it that also said Happy Birthday. It would have to be good enough.

Sunday morning I shoved the balloons in Izzy's room before she woke up. She was so surprised and excited when she woke up to see the balloons on her floor!

The house was clean in anticipation for the guests coming over in a few hours so we decided to go out to breakfast. Izzy got a free birthday pancake but mostly focused on eating the whip cream.

We ended up having four kids total (including Izzy). Her best friend at school couldn't make it but the manageable number of kids in the house was nice. The kids played pin the tail on the donkey before going into the sunroom to play with all of Izzy's toys. We ended up catering the lunch from a local Armenian restaurant, then eating cake, then heading outside to do a pinata. 

Izzy had a good time but never got a nap so by the end she was pretty tired. She bounced back later though wanting to play with a lot of her gifts. Wes was a trooper for most of the party but didn't really nap much so he was pretty exhausted by the time everyone left. He really enjoyed watching all of the kids play though.

Reuseable stickers from Grandma and Grandpa are a hit!

Tomorrow is Izzy's actual birthday and unfortunately CP is in Puerto Rico for work (he left early this morning). I don't think that we will do anything special other than bring popsicles into school so that she can enjoy them with her friends. I can't believe she is already THREE!

What a month

*November has been a doozy of a month, huh? Between my Cubbies winning the World Series after 108 years (AMAZING! YAY!) to the ridiculous election results (it's going to be really hard to put the words "President" and "Trump" together for the next few years), the beginning of the month was nuts and the craziness has yet to let up. Being a member of Pantsuit Nation on Facebook has been super helpful for my mental state to see all of the great posts from people across the country. I am definitely worried about what is to come in the next four years- to my job, to me as a woman, to friends that are minorities, etc. We'll see...but in the meantime I am heartened that people are standing up and hopefully continuing to take action against hate.

*I went to the Cubs world series parade (yes I was part of the 5 million people that went) and I wish that I had been closer to the street as it was hard to see much. However, I had to get back to work so I went to the closest spot that I could find and didn't realize that other spots along the parade route weren't going to be as crowded. Oh well.

The red circle in the middle? That's where I was standing. If I just could have gotten to the other side of the street....

*In other news, the house remodel is totally stressing me out. The company that we started to work with is telling us that after months of working with them on plans, picking out finishes, etc. that our remodel is going to cost about $50K more than we wanted to spend. We are totally frustrated because if this company thought that we would be way over budget then they should have told us months ago that the scope was looking a little too large. 

Since then we have expended more time and effort to reach out to a couple other companies to see what they would price for the remodel. One of them was a guy that I reached out to when we were thinking about redoing our basement before we realized it would be too expensive for what we would get in the end. He came back with a price that is just a few thousand over our max budget and pledged to look to find possibly more savings by getting creative with the drawings/what we have done so far. So I am feeling slightly better.

*Thanksgiving was good, but a long day. Here is my favorite picture of the day:

The only person who didn't eat anything on Thanksgiving is stuffed

*This Sunday is Izzy's third birthday party (her actual birthday is Tuesday). We thought about doing a big party somewhere but then realized that we didn't want to spend tons of money on a big party when she likely wouldn't remember it. So it will be a small party- my parents, my sister/her husband, family friends, and a family from daycare (her best friend from daycare sadly can't make it). Fingers crossed she has fun. She has been looking forward to this birthday for a while now.

*This week we signed Izzy up for winter activities to make sure she gets some running around time while it's cold out. We plan on getting her outside a lot on the weekends but it will be a bit harder with Wes as one of us will have to stay inside with him. On Saturdays she will be doing soccer with me and on Sundays she will be taking swimming lessons with CP. I think that it will be nice for her to have the one-on-one time with both of us on the weekend anyway.

I hope to write actual posts sometime soon, but frankly between work and home life has been crazy so these bullet posts are easier....

Microblog Mondays: snoring

I seriously need to get CP into a sleep study or maybe into a doctor that can prescribe a treatment for snoring. He just laughs and says that I should be able to sleep through his snoring, but most of the time he falls asleep first and his snoring is so loud that I can't fall asleep. A perfect example was last night- we both went to bed at the same time. He fell right asleep (how can men do that?) and started heavily snoring. Sometimes my go-to trick to stop him from snoring is to have him roll on his side but he was already there. I lay in bed getting angrier and angrier because I was so tired (which of course doesn't help me fall asleep)....so after a few minutes I headed downstairs to sleep on the couch. Wes woke me up at 1am (grrr) and I tried to go back into bed at 1:30 but once again, CP was snoring so I went back downstairs. It certainly didn't help that Wes woke me up AGAIN at 4am to eat (grrrr); I was able to get into bed around 4:20 and juuuuust fall asleep before my alarm woke me up at 5am.

This is not ideal. We have a comfortable couch but it is certainly not as comfortable as a bed. Not to mention that it would be nice to, you know, sleep next to my husband when he is actually here. Anyone know how you get your partner into a sleep study? Or have you worked with a doctor on a treatment such as a mouthguard that made a difference? I know that his snoring would lessen if he lost some weight but trying to figure out how to broach that subject without hurting any feelings would be tough.

Signed,

Someone who is seriously cranky from lack of sleep

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Four months old

Four months

Height- 26.5" (95%)

Weight- 18 lbs (91%)

Nicknames- Chunk, Baby Wes, Monkey

Diapers- Size 3

Milestones- Wes has become quite the talker and giggler! He loves to babble and smile and seems to do it on a dime (Izzy was a bit more reserved). He is not interested at all in rolling over but enjoys grabbing toys and putting them in his mouth. His hands are another favorite thing to stuff in his mouth.

Rockin' tummy time

Sleep- For the most part, Wes isn't sleeping through the night. He is sick though so I can't be upset if he wakes up with all kinds of snot in his nose or because he is coughing. This month he has been waking up once during the night to eat for about 10-15 minutes and then head back to sleep. If this is the worst of the four month regression I'll take it.

Clothes- Still in 6-9 mo clothes but some are getting tight!

Eating- Wes eats 3 5oz bottles every day at daycare. On the weekends and at night he is feeding on demand. He is definitely going through longer stretches of time without eating. I think because he is used to other people feeding him bottles he will now take a bottle from me if we are out and about. I have already dropped down to two pumps at work and so far I'm staying ahead of Wes' needs (this week I have also been sick and have been trying not to eat too many Halls because they mess with my supply).

Likes- Snuggling in our arms, nursing, walks in the stroller, activity bar, vibrating chair, baths, cooing at us and hearing us talk to him, watching his sister, when we make faces at him, watching sports on tv (when we watched the Cubs or football this past month he was dialed into the tv)

Dislikes- When we use the bulb syringe to suck snot out of his nose, not feeding him fast enough. He really is a happy, chill baby these days.

Illness- First daycare cold caught soon after starting school. His clogged tear duct thankfully went away earlier in the month.

Other firsts- First day at daycare and first daycare picture photo shoot. Watching the World Series and the Cubs win for the first time in 108 years!!

Watching the Cubs!

Wes' first Halloween!