32 Months.

Naomi turned 32 months on Feb 19th. I haven't updated on a lot of her developments in so long. At 32 months, with her new role as big sister, she has been forced to grow up a lot in the last 6 weeks. Some of this growing up she embraces whole heartedly, she loves to rock Mikaela in the bouncer to try and soothe her, she loves to help with simple chores around the house...but some of the changes she's fought tooth and nail. She gets upset when she can't be carried all the time, especially because she sees Mikaela being carried. Even though she knows how to use the potty, she's reverted to wearing diapers all the time because, "she's still a baby". All in all she's adjusted to life with Mikaela quite well. She doesn't get upset when Mikaela is wailing away, causing Mommy or Daddy to stop playing with her to check on the baby. She loves to "check" on Mikaela when she hears her crying. She gets that certain toys and blankets are for the baby rather than her.
At 32 months, Naomi has fully embraced being a girly girl. She is obsessed with nail polish, jewelry, shoes and clothes. She'll notice what everyone is wearing, and will comment on my outfit every day. On the RARE occasion that I wear an outfit more than one day in a row, she'll loudly say, "Mommy, you're wearing that AGAIN!!?"
She loves wearing dresses. She begs everyday to wear a "pretty dress".

She loves Hello Kitty, we had a couple of weeks last month where she had to wear a Hello Kitty shirt or dress every day.
She is also obsessed with wearing pockets and refuses to wear her winter coat that I bought for her this year because it doesn't have any. Instead she wears her coat from last year..which is for 6-12mth olds. Oh well.
She loves music and dancing and is always singing or dancing.

Her mouth is always running...if she's not talking she's singing. Usually songs she's made up or silly songs she's learned at daycare.
She can spell her name, and can type it out on a keyboard.
She loves arts and crafts, especially coloring, painting, anything to do with scissors and glue sticks. In fact she's painting with water colors right now as I type. Austin is asleep with Mikaela on his chest.
She's becoming such a big kid now. I look at her and MIkaela and marvel at how quickly they grow up.

The girliest pirate --- complete with her bouncy ball, pink purse and tiara

6 Weeks

Mikalea is 6 weeks old. Her first 6 weeks have been quite the whirlwind. She's completely different than Naomi was when she was this little. She loves, in fact, insists on being held most of the day. She doesn't like sleeping in the fancy new bassinet we bought for her (Naomi slept in her own crib in her own room from day 1 of being at home). She's only slept in the crib in her own room for maybe 3 nights....which means the rest of the nights she's slept in bed with me. Of course, not just in bed. She isn't content with that. She has to be cuddled up tight in my arms in order to sleep. High maintenance much?
When she is being held she's completely happy and usually won't cry unless she's hungry, gassy or has a wet diaper. Thankfully she's content to be carried around in a baby wrap/sling so we can have give our arms a rest every once in awhile. I'm already starting to notice muscle fatigue in my left wrist from carrying her as much as we do.
Despite having really bad reflux, she's gaining weight nicely. At her doctor's appointment last week when she was sick, she weighed in at 9lbs 1 oz.
She's coo'ing quite a bit now, particularly at night. She is definitely a night owl.
She started smiling at 5wks, just like her sister did.
At 6 wks Mikaela has managed to completely wear both Austin and I out. Good thing she's so cute =)

Sick

I've been sick since Thursday night. Anyone want to send a nanny fairy over to baby sit the kids tomorrow?

An unwanted first...

Yesterday, Mikaela had her first fever. At just 5 weeks, it is definitely an unwanted milestone. The day before I noticed that she wasn't really eating as well as she normally does. That night, she was up all night extremely congested and vomiting due to all the congestion. The next morning when I took her temperature, she was at 100.4. After dropping Naomi off at daycare, we went to the pediatricians where they drew blood to check her white blood count. Thankfully everything was normal and Mikaela most likely just had the same cold that Naomi has, except since she was so little it was causing her to have a fever.
Throughout the day, her fever varied between 100-101.8. We gave her infants tylenol every 4 hours and used a ton of sinus drops to clear out her congestion. Finally this morning at around 6am I noticed her head was nice and cool to the touch even though we were coming up on the end of a 4hr cycle for her medicine. Now, at 9am she is totally calm and content, with no fever. She's still super congested, but that's just a minor concern vs the fever.

Crazy

Mikaela hasn't been sleeping well at night. Last night I probably got around 2hours of sleep, with 1.5 of those hours being from 6:30-8 when Austin woke up and held her. Nights like that have me feeling exhausted and just a little crazy. =)

We survived

Today was my first full day with both girls on my own. Austin took a week off of work last week since my parents had just left and we were still adjusting to life with two kids. Being valentines day, Austin and I planned out an itinerary of activities involving valentine's to keep Naomi occupied so that I wouldn't have to try and wing it when it came to keeping her entertained.
Of course things never really go the way you want them to, and our morning was filled with mini-meltdowns, tons of tears, a toddler who claimed her legs no longer worked and needed to be carried, who couldn't wear socks to go outside because the socks would cover up the winnie the pooh bandaid that was on her foot, who couldn't eat lunch because the Mac N Cheese was white (white cheddar) instead of orange, who couldn't take a nap because despite her crankiness and tired looking eyes, just wasn't sleepy. That was just Naomi. Mikaela decided today she needed to nurse every 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs instead of every 3, and when she did nurse, would only eat a bit, and then refuse more. Of course when I tried to hold her out a bit to see if she would feed better if I stretched out the timing, she screamed bloody murder. Oh and if I didn't carry her the whole morning, she decided it was time to exercise her lungs. So I strapped in into my baby sling, and dealt with Naomi. Finally everyone was fed, and we all took a long nap in the afternoon. We even managed to get outside to enjoy the beautiful weather and ride Naomi's trike.

At 4 when Naomi woke up, it was like I had two different kids. Mikaela was fussy until she nursed, but Naomi was a gem. While I warmed her afternoon milk up, MIkaela was screaming in the bouncer, and Naomi went over to the bouncer to try and soothe Mikaela. She shh'ed her, tried to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, spoke to her in a reassuring voice telling her mei-mei that she was right there. She even turned on the music on the bouncer and tried to bounce her gently. When nothing worked, she quietly sat next to her and held her hand, and said, "mommy I think Mikaela is really crying".
After I nursed Mikaela and Naomi finished her milk, both her content to just relax. Naomi played in her toy kitchen, Mikaela relaxed in the bouncer, and I managed to get all the morning's mess cleaned up in the kitchen. And even now, Mikaela is happily coo'ing in her bouncer, while Naomi is having a snack and watching Mickey Mouse Club-House leaving me time to blog mid-day.
Yes, we were supposed to work on arts crafts this afternoon and take a quick trip to the Library...but after this morning, I'm content to let Naomi watch a bit of TV and relax this afternoon.
So while not as smoothly as planned, and despite relying on TV in the afternoon, we survived day 1!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone

COLORS

For a few months now, Naomi has noticed whenever someone has their nails painted. She'll notice the color, and then immediately check out the person's toes (if available for viewing) to see if they have their toes painted as well. Then she would sadly look at her own fingers and toes and say, "I don't have colors" and shake her head looking completely devastated.
Over the weekend, our friends the Eng's brought lunch over after church. Their middle daughter Sophia, had her nails painted pink. Naomi immediately noticed, and couldn't stop looking at them. She also couldn't stop talking about Sophia's pink nails all week long. Yesterday, I finally caved and bought her some kiddy polish at Target. When she got home from daycare, we set up a mini manicure session and painted her nails pink with a second coating of glitter sparkly polish. She was incredible. She sat still the entire time, and when I was done, she kept her hands in front of her on her lap and didn't try to touch anything until I told her they were all dry. Totally a beauty pro on our hands. All night, and all day today she has been looking at her nails and commenting on how pretty they are. She keeps asking her daddy and I if we think it's pretty too. Then she'll compare her nails which she says are "sparkly pink" to my nails which are "black pearl". Then she'll ask Austin if he wants colors too.
Naomi is totally a girly girl.

The problem with nail polish, we've come to realize, is that Naomi wants to constantly be able to look at her nails. In the bath she freaks out cause she's scared the water is going to wash the polish off. At bedtime she gets upset when we have to turn out the lights cause she won't be able to see the colors, and yesterday morning, she woke up at 6am, nearly 2 hours early, because it was still dark in her room and she "couldn't see her colors". Last night Austin had to finally lay down the law by saying if she was going to get so upset about not being able to see her nails at night time, that we would have to take the colors off...that calmed her down pretty quickly...I'm afraid I've created a nail polish fiend.