Time to Get Caught Up

One of my goals in the next week of so is to try and get caught up with my blog posts. There has been so much going on, and it is difficult to get online when I am at home given the demands of Jillian, Hayden and even Jeramy. When I am lucky enough to get a little down time I either clean, take a nap or do something relaxing like knitting. I don't want to neglect my blog though. Besides connecting with people, it is how I keep track of important memories.

First of all, Hayden passed her sweat test for cystic fibrosis, so we can set that worry aside. Most likely she failed the initial screen because she is a healthy carrier like Jeramy. She may need to take that into consideration should she decide to have children (when she is much much older thankyouverymuch!), but otherwise everything is just fine.

Overall, I'd say that things are going very well. The postpartum blues and anxiety have passed, and life has resumed its usual busy pace. We've been getting out to see friends, I've been taking both girls to a toddler play time at the local community center, I have tried to keep up on my hobbies like knitting and reading even if it is just a few minutes during the day, and between getting a little more sleep and adjusting to my ever-interrupted sleep pattern I am feel a little more alert during the day. I even managed to back-up all of our photos on CDs...yes, I do lead an exciting life. 95% of the time things go perfectly smoothly. Of course it is the other 5% of the time that stand out in my mind and usually those times involve Jillian's temper tantrums, Jillian's night terrors, diaper blow-outs, teething, endless whining, and projectile vomiting. Good times really.

Jillian just turned 20 months. It is simultaneously a completely adorable and entirely frustrating age. Her language skills have simply taken off, and yet we cannot understand everything that she is trying to tell us. Until last week she had gone through a phase of saying "yeah" and "thank you" to everything which was quite wonderful. But then she learned the word "no" which she says with both head shaking and attitude just to make sure you know that she means it. Daily events which used to go smoothly such as bedtime and diaper changes are now accompanied by screaming and flailing. And if either Jeramy or I For the most part my approach is to ignore the tantrums and recognize the good behaviors (and there is still plenty of good as she is pretty much the cutest and funniest kid on the planet). We have also been adhering to a more stringent sleep schedule than we have in the past mostly due to night terrors which almost always strike when she is the least bit sleep deprived. I find all of this exhausting, and I find it difficult to keep my temper at times more often than I care to admit. I try to keep reminding myself that I am the adult in this relationship and this phase is necessary as she learns independence and will pass.

Luckily all of this is offset by the fun times. She has become quite the little helper from unloading the dishes (gotta pull those knives out quick before she gets to them) to putting diapers in the diaper pail (as long as they aren't new ones) to putting her books away. She can follow simple instructions like when I hand her a clean diaper and tell her to take it to daddy. She also loves Hayden. She loves to hold her (with help of course), push her swing, lay under the activity gum with her, and give her hugs and kisses. She is surprisingly gentle, and given that she loves Cujo but spends much time biting and pinching him that is a little astonishing. We can only hope that continues.

Hayden is growing by leaps and bounds at 6 weeks. She continues to be a relatively content baby and her fussing is more like restlessness and very minor compared to my experience with Jillian. She sleeps the majority of the day with one or two awake periods of a few hours sprinkled in. At night she has slowly been going from waking every three hours to giving me one longer stretch of sleep at the beginning of the night. Last night she slept from 10pm - 4am and then from 4:30am - 7:30am. If this trend continues that would be wonderful, but I've experienced baby sleep regression enough to know not to count on that and simply enjoy it while it lasts. At about three weeks I moved her from the pack and play in our room to her crib. Sleeping newborns are just too noisy for me, and I sleep better when she is at a distance. Of course a newborn who sleeps unswaddled in her crib is a foreign concept to me as Jillian slept in her swing with it swinging all night long, swaddled, with a pacifier and with white noise playing. Quite frankly this is too easy, and thank God for that because with a toddler I think I would go insane if I had another colicky baby.

I'll post more soon about our trip to Mt. Rainier, the impending arrival of a new cousin and fun outdoors. For now I'll leave you with a couple of pictures to show how the girls have grown.