I think my girls are both in a transition.
Katherine – its obvious. She just turned 1. She is walking a few steps, standing a lot… at school she is now a young toddler, with only one nap a day (she sleeps great on a cot – who knew?), and drinking from sippies (she says no thank you except for a few sips of water). At school, they say she is doing great. At home… it comes out at night. When its time to sleep. She drinks her bottle, goes to sleep like an angel. And then 9pm hits and its very hit & miss from then on out. Sometimes she cries herself back to sleep. Sometimes she cries until we feed her or try motrin (she has also gotten 4 teeth in the past 6 days.) Sometimes daddy has to just hold her, though that is rare. She prefers to be in her crib with her pacis. It got to a point where I brought her to the pediatrician – are you sure there isn’t an ear infection in there? Nope. Healthy – which is great. But man, this is rough. We do have a plan to get her not so picky about sippies (she does fine, she can use them fine, she just shakes her head no after a sip or two and hands it back.) We have a plan to disassociate sleep & bottles. So we’ll get there.
Amelia – this one is harder. I think she is having a bit of a rough transition into little girl from toddler. She is a sensitive loving girl, and I think some things just take a toll on her. She’s in a new room at school which she LOVES. But she is learning a lot more, at a faster pace. She has a lot going on in that head of hers. So sometimes going to sleep is hard and she needs a back rub. She gets scared easily so that’s a challenge – just the other night the TV made a noise and now she is scared of TVs when they are off (not on of course – Mickey is still the favorite around here.) She doesn’t always understand why we say ‘no’ – that there is logic – and she gets all teary and sad. Especially if she is tired. She used to be in the independent I can do it phase, really before she could do it. Now she has entered an ‘I can’t’ phase – which makes mommy mad. I don’t ever want to hear her say that, I just want her to try. SHe is allowed to ask for help if its not going well – but to not try, not acceptable. So that’s the battle we have a lot around here. Besides, most of the stuff? She could do (and has done before.)
These rough times are really a small part of the day to day life around here. Most of the time the girls are doing great – but we are in a transition, and there are a few bumps along the way.
Speaking of turning one – we did Katherine’s one year photo shoot with the fabulous Elizabeth of Libbie Wicket. I really didn’t know what we would get – I knew in the beginning there would be good ones – because the first 10 minutes were a good smiley 10 minutes. But what followed felt like a hot mess of cranky teething 1 year old and slightly non-cooperative 3 year old…. so to see these photos? The first time I watched them was with awe. The second time made my grumpy wake up mood go away. Another time today made me tear up. Thank you Elizabeth.
http://libbiewicket.com/slideshows/Dyar0810/
Me. I need sleep. I am not one of those people who survives off little amounts of sleep. Everytime I came home from college after finals or some other time period when my sleep was particuarly limited, I’d come home sick. I really like 8 – 9 hours a night, and go to bed fairly early to get this.
While I was prepared for the sleepless nights in the beginning of having a child – our first slept pretty well after that. She got up to eat in the night once until six months of age, but otherwise was a sound sleeper from 8 pm until sometime after 6 in the morning. I barely remember having to get up with her. As she got older and got teeth, or got sick – there was some bad sleep but it always comes back to her being a good sleeper.
Our second baby – K – was a great sleeper almost from the beginning. We were spoiled. By 6 weeks of age she was sleeping 7:30 pm until 7 am with only the one feeding in the night – that didn’t happen with A til 14 – 15 weeks old. The week of Thanksgiving she even went until 5 am for her feeding – we thought, this is perfect. Just in time for me to go back to work she’s going to drop her feeding. Ahem.
K is now a bad sleeper. I don’t know what happened. Logically I know – I mean she started daycare, we’ve all had colds, she’s congested, she isn’t swaddled anymore or on an incline, its gotten colder… I can name 1000 reasons why this has happened, but it doesn’t make it easier. We are tired. We are two weeks into daycare/work and we’ve gotten about 3 decent nights of sleep in that two weeks – and decent isn’t even what it was a few weeks ago but its better than most.
She is still going to sleep fine, even without her paci most nights. But then the fussing will start – sometimes as early as 11:30 – she doesn’t want to be awake. Put a paci and usually she falls back asleep (unless she drops it – then repeat, try again). If that doesn’t work, some patting and maybe music on her rainforest perhaps. She usually goes back to sleep. But that means we are up 2 -3 times a night each in addition to feeding her. We are getting tired.
I know this will pass. I know people deal with much worse on a regular basis. But for now? Its a good thing she’s cute!
Today at school A was going to learn about Thanksgiving and they were supposed to come dressed as a Pilgrim or a Native American. Well… those aren’t exactly easy things to have around. So I found my inner artist (haha), and here is how A went to school. She picked out the dress – she’s really into dresses and skirts right now.
I keep trying to find myself in my kids…I think its human nature to want to see yourself in your kids. I think K might actually look a bit more like me than A does… but we’ll have to see as they get older. There is no doubt who A looks like.
Here she is pictured with her dad, her aunt and her cousin. Yeah um… she looks just like her aunt. And when I was a toddler – I wasn’t anywhere near what A is with hair… I had a lot of it but no curls, no dark hair – it was actually light.
And yet another picture to show A fits right in with her dad’s family – here is her dad & his siblings when they were young.
Now as babies… well still didn’t look like me. But they do look like each other – the funny thing is – this is K at only 2 months and A at almost 6 months… but as I just posted it, they look really similar in these two photos. Much more so than if you compare both of them at 2 months. Interesting… I do think K’s hair is lighter and she has the potential for more of my coloring… we’ll see.
Baby K at two months
Baby A at 6 months.
Me at… I don’t know! There are some similarities… 
Couple more of me. My face was longer than theirs… I think that is a big part of the difference. That and I appeared cross eyed. Sigh.
I love my girls, and just wanted to take a fun trip down memory lane today.
BabyMomma
Just thought I needed to have a post to acknowledge that while I’m somewhat sleep deprived, and really wish we’d have more sunny days like today (need a break from rain!), I feel truly blessed to have these two beautiful girls in my life as well as my wonderful husband.
