Stop blinking!

I can't believe it's been eighteen months since I pushed this kid out of me. All those people who warned us not to blink were right...time goes by way too fast with kids in the picture.

Some stats on our now 18-month-old little girl:

• She's a climber. To a fault. Anything that can be ascended, will be. (This explains why she has a prosthetic tooth already...) Stairs, chairs, slides, benches, shelves, toys, boxes, her brother...you name it, she's tried to get over it.
• She's a talker. We've lost track of the number of words she says and understands, but we're blown away by how much she's learned in such a short amount of time. We read to her and talk to her all the time, and she daily surprises us with new words that seem to come out of nowhere. Like the day she brought me a book of sea creatures and said "octopus" or when her dad was reading to her and she told him they were looking at a butterfly ("bubbafly").
• She's a dog lover. Puppies, to be exact, with the exception of one Big Red Dog that she just can't get enough of. When the dogs from the house behind us bark in the mornings, we often hear her chanting "puppy" from her crib and woofing right back at them. She has a few favorite stuffed puppies, and when one of them is missing or out of reach, her little world starts to crumble. In the absence of a television, we've recently started letting her watch short episodes of Clifford the Big Red Dog online while she sits in our laps. She now thinks that the computer is simply for viewing Clifford and seems confused when we're doing anything else in the office. When the mood for watching an episode hits her, she'll tug on us and tell us "go!" while pointing to the office. If we don't get the hint right away, she sits at our feet chanting "Clickered!" (Clifford) until we get the message.
• She's a singer. Her rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is surprisingly on key and easily recognizable to most anyone who hears her humming it. She also likes to make up her own songs about whatever's on her mind at the moment. This happens most often when she's strapped into the buggy at the grocery store. She hums while I shop, and every once in a while she throws in a word or two to let me know what she's singing about (puppies, mommy, daddy, baby, and crackers are the current hits).
• She's a dancer. I like to think she gets her complete lack of coordination and love of dancing anyway from me. Her wild dance moves just might confirm this. So far, under the tutelage of Christina's School of Dance(tm) she's learned to spin, jump, "do your hips" (some booty shaking Elvis would be proud of), "do your shoulders" (think Tina Turner performing 'What's Love Got to Do With It'), and we're currently working on "do your knees" (some skinny legged knee knocking, complete with hand motions). This kid's got style...
• She's a cuddler. This, I'm certain, she did not get from me, since the running joke in my family is that the most they can hope for is that I let myself be hugged without squirming too much. (I suspect that my mom may have coaxed Abby into hugging with some sugary treats while I was in the hospital having Caleb, but I can't get her to fess up to it.) Whatever the cause, we're loving Abby's new habits of sneaking up behind us and hugging the back of our knees, running to her room in nothing but her birthday suit after bathtime and jumping into our arms, and leaning in for a smooch with a resounding "muah!"
• She's a klutz. I have watched her fall over from a stationary standing position. I have witnessed her walking into walls as if she didn't see them. I've seen her round a corner too sharply and slam directly into it. I've rescued her from being trapped under her rocking horse, arms and legs splayed in four different directions, when just moments before she was safely seated on top of it. I've seen her do a front flip off the couch because she got stuck inside her collapsible fabric tunnel. This explains the presence of the words "stuck" and "uh-oh" in her vocabulary.
• She's got a mind of her own. The terrible 2's are on us with a vengeance, with six months to go still before we see a pair of candles on her cake. Abby is fiercely independent, very certain of what she wants (and when she wants it) and determined to figure things out and do for herself things that are still just out of reach for her skill level. To this end, she spends a great portion of her day in a state of frustration because what she wants to do is far ahead of what she is physically able to do. It's frustrating for us as well to want so badly for her to succeed when she tries to do things--like feed herself oatmeal with a spoon, or put together complicated puzzles. Cognitavely, we can see that she can handle these skills, but she's still trapped in an 18-month-old body that hasn't quite learned how to do them yet. And as for trying to help her...well, little Miss Independent will have none of that. Like her stubborn old mom and dad, she will do it herself, figure it out herself, and she'll do it on her terms. Just what we needed...one more type A personality in this family.
• She's adorable. Every day brings new challenges and rewards, and every day we love her more. It's so fun to watch her little personality beginning to emerge, but daunting as we think of all the responsibilities involved with raising this strong-willed little girl. She brings us our shoes when she wants to leave the house to go somewhere. She blows kisses. She won't eat meat unless you hide it inside a piece of bread. She thinks belly buttons are hilarious, and thinks nothing of asking every adult in the room to show her theirs. She can fit 12 goldfish crackers in her mouth at one time, and will if you let her. She'll stomp like a dinosaur walking through the mall, if you'll stomp with her. She loves to ride the carousel. She thinks Dora the Explorer is her dark-haired neighbor Maddie. She loves to read and surrounds herself with books whenever she has the chance. Her favorite toy is a giant cardboard box we turned into a fort. She thinks she can make her baby brother stop crying by laying his pacifier in his lap. She tries to share the contents of her sippy cup with her stuffed animals, and with the bulldog on my (now orange-juice-stained) UGA sweatshirt. She runs to the back door yelling "Daddy" each evening when she hears the garage door go up. She thinks sharing means she hands you something and you hand it right back to her. She runs everywhere she goes. I can't remember the last time she just walked to get somewhere. She recognizes her friend Abby Mae in the church nursery and usually greets her with a toy to ease any potential separation anxiety. She gets a little panicky before mealtime when she sees food sitting on the table but no one sitting down yet. She waits when we sit down and reaches for our hands to say a blessing with us before eating. She responds to inquiries about her poopy diapers by running up to us and spinning around with her backside facing our way for a sniff test. She looks for the moon anytime we're in the car and is quick to point out stars that she sees in the sky. She loves my fuzzy pink socks and will lay down on the floor with her head on my feet whenever I'm wearing them.
  

We're so thankful to have this precious daughter in our lives. I can't remember what life was like without her!

Target practice

Abby's beginning to see some positive aspects to this whole new baby thing--a built-in playmate, for one. Although I must admit that Caleb didn't seem to love his time in the ball pit as much as his big sister. (This probably has something to do with the fact that throwing the balls is a lot more fun than having them thrown at you.) Maybe we'll wait a little while before we try this again.

Hair today, gone...today

We've joked of Caleb's need for a haircut since we first laid eyes on him in the delivery room. Today, we finally did something about it. No more eighties punk rockstar hair for our little boy. Now he's nice and clean cut around the ears. We'll tackle the mullet in the back another day...

All spiffed up

I'm sure when he's older he'll be able to put up a fight, so if I want to have any fun with Caleb's awesome head of hair, I might as well do it now while he's tiny, helpless, and can't talk back.

I think the faux hawk made him pretty much the coolest 3-week-old at church this morning.

100 hours

One sure-fire way to tell you're the mother of a new baby is to ask yourself how much sleep you're getting. If your answer comes in the form of cumulative instead of consecutive hours of sleep, you've probably got a newborn. While talking to friend this week about how she and her six-week-old were doing, I celebrated with her as she talked of the four hours of sleep she got the night her husband offered to get up to feed the baby in the middle of the night. At no other time in our lives than this period of new motherhood will four hours of sleep ever sound so rewarding.

I really can't complain too much though. Caleb continues to be a pretty laid back baby (with the exception of our weekly photo session...but then again, who really likes being stripped down to a diaper when it's snowing outside?). His good sleep habits are continuing, and although by my best guess I figure I've still only gotten about 100 hours of sleep since he was born, I feel surprisingly well rested. I'm guessing this is due mostly to the fact that my nighttime sleep comes in two medium-sized chunks on either end of a 3 a.m. feeding. It's hard to complain about a baby who only wakes up once a night. Let's hope this trend continues! He's still growing like a weed, and hit two milestones this weekend when he outgrew his newborn-sized diapers and finally lost his umbilical cord (which resulted in the appearance of a very cute belly button).

I'm finally back to feeling almost completely normal (though I must admit, having two under two makes you redefine normal on an hourly basis). I've enjoyed getting out of the house with the two kids, and am loving the Cadillac of strollers that makes this so much easier. Special thanks to the grandparents who made this pricey piece of baby equipment possible. It is proving to be worth its weight in gold!

As we kick off week four with our little guy, it's hard to believe he's been in our lives for 21 days! Depending on when you ask, and depending on the decibel level of combined toddler/infant screaming in the background, I alternate between feeling like he just arrived and like he's been around for months. Time flies when you're having fun, but when you're trying to make lunch with a hungry toddler circling your ankles and a newborn trying to communicate that he has a poopy diaper through a series of high-pitched wails, time tends to slow to a crawl. Those moments are few and far between, though, and the ones I treasure are the times when Abby gives her new brother kisses goodnight, or when she wants to crawl up next to him in my lap and read a book together. Oh, and that time from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. when the house is quiet and all the kids are asleep...I think I probably treasure that time the most.

Happy Birthday Justin!

Getting sawdust in your eye can really put a damper on your birthday. So after a visit to quick care and a decision to forgo the cake until Justin had removed the patch from his eye, we decided on a birthday do-over the day after Justin's birthday. The good news? Chocolate birthday cake is delicious no matter when you eat it. Happy belated birthday to my handsome hubby!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day from Abby and her new tooth...

CHEESE!

Click here for the full scoop on our fun Valentine's Day/birthday surprise for Justin

Sleep. Eat. Repeat.

What I took to be a lazy eating habit turns out to be a very efficient eating habit, according to our pediatrician. I was concerned that Caleb wasn't eating enough, and that when he did eat, he took forever. But at his two week check-up he boasted 12 ounces in weight gain over the past week, coming in at a healthy 8 pounds, 14 ounces. The doctor is pleased, and so am I. His excellent weight gain means that the relatively few minutes he spends eating at each feeding are highly productive minutes. That means no more stressing out at 3 a.m. when he'll only eat for 10 minutes. And that means no more spending an hour trying to wake him up to get him to eat more. I feel like a good night's sleep is almost within reach!

We've got a great kid on our hands with little Caleb. Over the past week he's started to have more awake time during the day which is resulting in really great sleep at night. Last night I only had to wake up one time to feed him, resulting in a cumulative 8 hours of sleep for this tired mom! Abby was five weeks old when she finally started sleeping through the night (10 p.m. to 8 a.m.), and if Caleb holds to his current pattern, I'm hoping he'll be doing the same very soon.

When he is awake, Caleb's a pretty laid back kid. He kind of has to be with his big sister running around like a mad woman throwing toys and books at him. Hopefully all this good eating will pay off and he'll be able to defend himself when he's a little older. For now, I guess it's our job as parents to keep Abby from whacking him on the head with her hard back copy of The Cat in the Hat. Again.

I wanna be sedated

In what was, quite possibly, the hardest thing we've had to do as parents, we took Abby to the dentist this week to be sedated in order to have her broken front tooth fixed. The drugs took about 3 minutes to kick in, during which time we watched our daughter go from screaming bloody murder at the doctor who gave her the shot to an essentially comatose state in which her eyes glazed over and stared straight ahead and her face was absolutely expressionless. I cried like a baby, and Justin somehow managed to hold it together for the sake of his girls. Neither of us was able to concentrate on much during the hour and a half she was asleep for the procedure, which included filing and capping of her chipped front tooth, a frenectomy, and her first dental cleaning. I hope we never have to do anything like this again, but something tells me our overactive, frighteningly fearless daughter is going to keep us (and our medical insurance) on our toes for the next few years.

Abby was a trooper, and bounced back surprisingly quickly. If she'll ever let me get near her mouth, I'll share pictures of her repaired toothy grin. For now, you can enjoy this video of her waking up after the procedure.

What a week...

I seriously love this kid. Let's forget for a second that he's super adorable, that he sleeps like a rock, and that he's only peed on me twice (Justin's winning, in case you wondered...he's been hit five times). All that aside, he's just awesome.

It's been quite a week as we've tried to adjust to having a new little one and a toddler to deal with. Seventeen months, one day, 23 hours and 40 minutes is a long time...unless you're Abby and that's the amount of time you've had all to yourself with your parents. Going from only child to big sister is a process, not an event. She's great with her new little brother, and very attuned to all his little coos and cries. Every time she hears Caleb make a noise she has to go check on him, and her preferred method of trying to settle him down is to pile as many stuffed animals as possible on top of him in an effort to muffle the sound. It's not until she starts piling legos and refrigerator magnets on him that we really have to watch her. The lack of one-on-one attention, combined with an early onset of the Terrible Twos, is definitely making her more difficult to deal with now, but I'm confident we'll get into our groove soon. Thankfully she's young enough that she really won't remember a time when she was an only child.

Caleb is suffering from Fourth Trimester Syndrome, which our pediatrician laughingly explained is a problem some babies have when they think they're still in the womb and all they want to do is sleep and be cuddled. (Although I'm having a little bit of trouble with seeing "your baby sleeps too much" as a problem...) This is most noticeable when it comes to feeding time. Caleb simply will not wake up to eat. Period. Under the supervision of our doctor, we have a few approved baby torture methods that we've employed to try to get him awake enough to eat for more than 2 minutes, including dipping his legs in cold water, flicking the bottom of his feet, tucking cold wipes under his armpits and stripping him down to his diaper to keep him from getting too warm and cozy. Cruel, I know, but not nearly as cruel as letting him starve. Feedings take, on average, no less than an hour, and usually result in about 15-20 minutes of actual eating. This is mildly tolerable during the day, but infuriating at night when I would love to be back in bed instead of coaxing a sleeping baby awake to feed him. Thankfully, he's only eating every four hours at night, so I'm getting a good three hour nap in between feedings during the twilight hours. However frustrating it may be, whatever we're doing seems to be working. He was back up past his birth weight at 5 days old, weighing in at a hefty 8 pounds, 2 ounces.

We are overwhelmed with Caleb's cuteness and already plotting ways to style this mop of thick dark hair he surprised us with. Stay tuned for a faux hawk or some cool spikes to make their debut soon. When he is awake, he's very alert and we can really appreciate the gorgeous deep blue eyes he has. He's started tracking things (like his crib mobile) with his eyes and is proving to be a very strong little boy with an astounding amount of neck control for such a little baby. He's already got some very boyish traits, including the world's stinkiest newborn farts and poos (I thought breastfed babies weren't supposed to stink?), sweaty underarms and rumbling little belches.

Every time I look at (or get a whiff of...) this precious little one I'm reminded of God's faithfulness to us in bringing us our son. What started off as a pregnancy with a lot of uncertainties has turned into a great testimony of God's grace and healing. To those who prayed with and for us and for little Caleb, we cannot say thank you enough.

Did I mention he's awesome?

Family tradition

We Fishers love our barbeque. And we take seriously our parental responsibility to instill in our children an appreciation for the goodness of well-cooked brisket and pulled pork at an early age. That's why it is our custom to take our newborns out to some hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint as early as possible to allow them to experience the sights, sounds and smells associated with good barbeque.

Four-day-old Caleb's first BBQ experience at Carolina Brothers

Seven-day-old Abby's first BBQ experience at Beetle's BBQ