Friday, April 11, 2014

Year Update

So we are back to blogging after a year absence. And in case anyone was wondering where we've been:


Since we've last updated the blog, this adorable little boy came into our family. He is the sweetest, happiest, funniest little guy, much adored by his older siblings. At first I was waiting until the six month mark to update the blog. Then I was waiting until the sleep-through-the-night mark to update the block. Now that he is almost one year old, I figured its time--not sure who reads blogs anymore, but we wanted to document our children's growing up, and they have changed so much since last year. So its as much for us as for anyone else.
Now that he's in a cute baby stage,  its hard to imagine he was ever in the difficult, newborn baby stage. So, at least in the interest of helping me remember those months so as to not minimize on the next go-round, let's recap:
Sleep: before Benjamin, I thought the lowest common denominator of newborn-hood was (i) 30-minute naps during the day,(ii) waking-up-every two-hours at night and (iii) demanding to be held while sleeping. However, Benjamin lowered the bar for us in this department. Starting from when we got home from the hospital with him, Benjamin needed to be held at night to sleep (seems to be a pattern around here). Fortunately Andrew had me well-trained in this department. Then, at a few weeks old, around the same time his evening fussiness kicked in, he had to be held most of the day (about 60/40). In this aspect, he was a little better than Andrew. But at night he was actually worse: during the newborn phase, he consistently woke up every hour at night after about 2:00 a.m.. Sometimes more often. There were even quite a few nights where he literally woke himself up every ten minutes between 2:00 and 6:00. If I hadn't experienced it myself, I would think this was an exaggeration. During the day, he also didn't sleep much more than a half hour at a time (this went on until about six months old).
The sleep training was not as effective with Benjamin as it was with the others. At 3-4 months (sleep training time!), he screamed quite a while every night to get himself to sleep, and even once he learned the skill of falling asleep unassisted, the rest of the night didn't sort of fall into place like it had with the others. For instance Andrew, once sleep-trained, was down to the age-appropriate one or two feedings a night at 4 months old; one feeding a night at 6 months old, and no feedings at 8 months. Benjamin, however, even after "falling asleep unassisted" would proceed to wake up every hour and was unable to get himself back to sleep. So we had to ignore/cry out in two more installments. Again for the night time wake-ups at 5 months (would have been before that but he had a bad cold that prevented him from breathing through his nose and nursing, so we couldn't exactly let him cry endlessly in the middle of the night...) and then again to get the final wake-up eliminated at around 9 months with another round of crying out (would have been before that if he didn't wake up with a poopy diaper in the middle of the night every night and get bad diaper rash if we didn't change him). He currently sleeps through the night although wakes up most days at 6:00 or before. So, yes, I am still a believer in sleep training, but have found that some babies take to it a little better than others.
Fussiness: All our babies have had fussy time (which might best be described as screamy time); seems the best we can hope for is that its not all day long (Andrew) or too late at night (Rebekah). Fortunately Benjamin kept it at a few hours between 8 and midnight, which was actually quite nice. And yes, he screamed at the top of lungs (not the whole time, mind you, but he definitely exercised his lungs).

So there you have it--if I were to stereotype my newborns, I would say Rebekah was our night owl, Andrew was our fussy one and Benjamin was our lousy sleeper.
The newborn stage is a strange thing--when you're in it, it feels like its lasting forever, but once its over, its all a blur and hard to believe that such a sweet little baby could ever have been that much trouble.

Now for Andrew. Andrew does all the things boys do: fight the "bad guys", play cars, crash cars, etc., yet he also has this tender side that shows up not infrequently. For example:

  • Whenever he sees flowers (in a store, on the side of the road, in a picture in a book), he excitedly announces "Flowers! Flowers! Mommy, those flowers are for you!"  And, if possible, he picks some for me. All flowers are for me apparently,which I am not sure I totally understand as I have never shown any indication of appreciating flowers. Until now, of course. (Although I still don't appreciate flowers that someone paid money for. Think I got that from my mom.)
  • He knows the types of things Rebekah likes and loves to find them for her. For instance, Andrew in the library, upon finding a particularly girly-looking book: "Look! This book is for Rebekah! Pink! Rebekah loves pink! Rebekah look! Pink! And Princesses!" (this is an out-of-breath stumbling-over-his-own words type of excitement, folks).
  • Before bed when daddy plays songs on his smartphone for them, they get to take turn picking a song. When its Rebekah's turn and she picks a Frozen song, its hard to tell who's more excited--Rebekah over the song, or Andrew in anticipation of Rebekah watching a Frozen song.
  • As we go about our day, he is very conscious of who is or is going to be "all alone". If all but one person is going upstairs, for instance, Andrew will point this out and say "But Daddy will be all alone". Or sometimes he looks around and realizes Rebekah isn't in the room, "Uh oh, Rebekah is all alone"
And, as of a few weeks after his 3rd birthday, he was potty-trained. He had been occasionally trying to sit on the potty for months prior but never could quite get much of anything in the potty (even after waking up with a dry diaper over night), so we didn't bother to do too much on that front, figuring it was a waste of time until that skill was acquired. Then one day he told us he had to go, we took him, he went, and then asked for underwear. So we put him in underwear, gave him some space and let him have some accidents (which went on for about a week). And that was that. He's even dry for naps and at night. If we had Andrew first, we would have been in for a rude awakening with Rebekah. As much of a challenge Andrew can be on a daily basis (he currently consumes about 85% of the parenting around here, despite only comprising 33.3% of the children), there are these types of tender mercies.  Another example: once he transitioned from a crib to a bed at about 2 and a half, he never once woke us up in the middle of the night, even when he was sick.
Speaking of which, we got the stomach flu go around the family six times between Thanksgiving and the end of January. That was the reason I didn't update the blog over the holidays. And each time was a good 3 days of the kids throwing up. Supposedly it was a really bad season this year. 





And Rebekah? Let's see...
  • Rebekah is reading Step 1 level books almost independently. 
  • She stopped sucking her thumb. 
  • She has every word to every song in Frozen memorized. She sometimes combines them for a singing-dancing medley, complete with "sunset arms". 
  • She is better than Mommy at coloring and staying in the lines. 
  • She can entertain herself for hours with her pretend friends, pretend stories, and acting out various movie scenes and songs. 
  • In acting out her stories, she even occasionally freezes in a standstill, then proceeds as if nothing happened . We asked her about this once--apparently she is doing what movies do when they "freeze then go back" (i.e., the DVD skipping, which often happens as a lot of her shows are rented from the library). 
  • And no, she doesn't watch too much more than a half an hour of TV or movies a day. She mostly uses shows and movies as a springboard for her own imagination. She was playing Frozen characters and made-up scenes months before she ever saw the movie. 
  • She is quite the little extrovert: She asks everyone she meets (and by "meet" I include "makes eye contact with") in public or private, the following key questions: "How old are you?" "Do you have any kids" (anyone over 12 years old gets this question) and "Can I come to your house?" The last question applies to everyone--the 50-ish plumber with no kids? Yep. The 15-year old teenage boy with skinny pants who doesn't seem terribly interested in the conversation? Undaunted. 
  • We are in the habit of telling stories to the kids individually as we put them to bed at night. Mine tend to be pretty lame, lack basic story structure such as conflict/climax/resolution, but it doesn't really matter because half the time is spent answering Rebekah's questions about the characters. If there is a human girl in the story: What color is her hair? Blonde. How old is she? Nine years old. What color are her eyes? Blue. What color is her shirt? Pink. What does her face look like?" Ummm...a face. Does she have any sisters? No (this question is a trap, don't fall for it) 
  • She currently loves unicorns. But don't even think about introducing a unicorn to the bedtime story. See above item.
  • She would love nothing more than a sister. She has several imaginary sisters and is so consistent and convincing with her imaginary sisters that I have actually had several people ask me if I'm expecting. Ummmm, no.
 Rebekah and Andrew play quite well together--Andrew can adapt to playing with ponies and princesses and Rebekah can play cars and trains. And they are both quite the extroverts and soak up any social activity. Andrew, upon waking up from his nap, always asks "Can we go to anyone's house?" or "I want to go anywhere". 
As for what we are up to--we have found the Arizona weather (even with the summers) to be a good fit for us. I don't think I could ever go back to real winters again and Scott appreciates the sunshine. Scott likes his job, I am still working part time and mothering the rest of the time, although with baby number 3 I have given up most of my few remaining hobbies, no longer facebook or keep up with politics or current affairs even. (I do still run every morning, my last holdout) But I would not have it any other way. Its amazing how much these little people can fill up your life so completely.