Catching Up - 2013 So Far

As promised, some pictures of Julianna's birthday, only 3+ months late...

Jules' second year is turning out to be so much fun! She is such a hammy little ham hock. She expresses her dissenting opinions freely and at maximum volume, and just when you think "GAR! What is this kid's problem!?" she leans in for a sweet kiss, a snuggle and a squinty, breathy chuckle. Kinda like this:

In short, she is irresistible.

Since time plays tricks with the mind, I want to document the words she is saying right now because soon she'll be speaking in complete sentences just like Jonathan. She has learned so many words recently!

Spoken:
Uh-oh (her first)
Ball
Dada
Papa
Hat
Foof (what a dog says)
AAUGGHHH (what all other animals say)
Hi
'Sdat? (what's that?)

Signed:
Milk
Banana
Bird

No "momma" in sight yet. :(

Meanwhile, in Jonathan news, he is so big and getting so grown up! At three-and-a-half, he is a full-fledged "kid," certainly no longer a toddler. We switched his school back in October and he has been flourishing there. He makes friends so easily and I hope that is something he carries with him his whole life.

One of my favorite things Jonathan has started doing these days is saying "Mommy, I love you" out of nowhere. He doesn't say it simply as a response to me saying it to him. He doesn't say it to get what he wants - for instance, 3 seconds before asking for a cookie. He just says it to be sweet. It is the most rewarding thing to hear from a tiny being who, as nature intends, has spent 99% of his life receiving, rather than giving love.

Here are a few recent pictures of our sweet and sensitive little guy.

Superheroes are BIG right now. Exhibit B, featuring cousin Will:

Finally, Jer and I always go in and check on Jonathan every night before we go to bed. Inevitably, he is passed out in some unnatural sleeping position which involves arms and/or legs sticking up at funny angles,  or him sleeping on top of the book he was "reading" to himself to fall asleep.

I couldn't resist taking this adorable shot of our sleeping monkey, involving the following critical items for a good night's sleep:
Turtle
Shark
Dolphin
Light-up Dog
"Mr. Marbles," his lovey
Elmo book
Thomas blanket

Our next big Team Duguid adventure is coming up soon. We're heading up to Chattanooga to see (and ride on!) the "real" Thomas the Train. We're going with Jer's parents and it should be a great weekend!

Julianna is One!

We hosted family for Julianna's birthday party on Saturday.  I cannot believe our (likely last) baby is one already.  It is certainly bittersweet.  On the one hand, we'll probably never have a tiny little squishy baby again and on the other, she is becoming more fun and filled with toddlery mischief every day.  I absolutely love the time between one and two!

The party was really awesome.  Our friend Jaime was in town and we had a lot of fun with her over the weekend.  Plus, she helped a ton with the party - couldn't have done it without her.  It being so soon after Christmas, and just having gotten back from vacation a few days before, I did not go crazy with a theme and hard core decorations.  We straightened up the house and hung up some pretty tissue pom poms and that's about it.

The kids alternated between playing in the basement and watching Cars 2 in the family room, and the adults mostly stayed upstairs, ate and chatted.  There may have been some fawning over Jules and her super cute birthday outfit.  She was in a fantasticly happy and silly mood all day.

It was a simple celebration in this time of crazy Pinterest-inspired overproduced events but it could not have been a more special way to celebrate our little beauty..

Photos to come shortly...

2013

I can't believe it but I haven't blogged in 7 months! It's a new year though, and although I do not make resolutions per se, I am using the dawning of 2013 as a reason to recommit myself to documenting our boring little lives. :) Our kids change too fast. Julianna is almost ONE! And I want to remember the silly things they say and do right now, before they are suddenly 25 and I wonder where the time has gone. So, I'm not making any aggressive goals like "I'll blog once a week" or "ever" but here I am, trying. We had a really lovely Christmas and New Year's with our families. The last week we were in Amelia Island and Jonathan was in heaven with cousins, grandparents, a heated-to-90-degrees swimming pool and trains galore. Julianna had good days and bad, but her high point was defnitely an early birthday celebration when she devoured a piece of cake in about 10 seconds flat, miraculously without getting any in her hair, clothes or ears. It was actually quite remarkable and a total opposite of Jonathan's experience which has caused him to have a strained relationship with cake to this day. We're having a party for Jules on her birthday, this Saturday. Let's hope for a good mood day. This little lady is such a cliche - total drama queen!

Bye bye diapers

We have potty training success! For months Jonathan has peed on the potty but has flat out refused to poop. That all changed abruptly this week when something clicked and he decided to give it a try. Today makes 6 days in a row that he's pooped on the potty. And he's loving every minute of the cookies, gummy rings and Thomas episodes he's gotten as rewards! In Julianna news, her little personality is really blooming. She is so sweet and happy. I just melt when she flashes me her crinkly nose smile. She is especially crazy about Jonathan and the feeling is mutual. Jonathan likes to share his trains with her and tries to calm her down in the car when she is fussy. "Shh, Julianna, we're almost home Julianna." So.darn.cute. At her 4 month appointment, Julianna was 25.25 inches and 13 lbs, 10 ounces. That translates to about 75th% for height and 50th% for weight (just like Jonathan always was). Things are pretty hectic but we're enjoying life with our two little ones!

2 Months with 2 Kids

And no time to blog!!

Jonathan has been so great with the baby. He loves to kiss her on the head and always asks about Julianna.
"Where's Julianna?"
"Julianna come too?" (when we are going out as a family on the weekends)
"Here Julianna, come sit here next to Jonathan."

Other cute things he's been saying lately -
When I told him I'd put a little cheese on his peas - "No, I want some BIG cheese."
After correctly identifying a parrot in one of his books, and upon seeing a picture of an eagle on another page - "Dat a scary parrot??"
While observing me pumping - "I wanna pump too."
When he falls down (which he usually does on purpose) - shaking his head, "Oh, MEEEEE-AAAAAAN!"

In other Jonathan news, daycare is going full steam ahead with potty training, although I suspect he isn't really ready. He is very excited about wearing his Thomas the Train underwear, but mommy is not terribly excited about cleaning pee and poop out of it. We'll see if things change soon, but my inclination is to back off for a while and try again in a month or two. Daycare just isn't flexible about that stuff though so I hope he doesn't get confused.

Meanwhile, Julianna has been a joy (for the most part). We've had some issues with her fussiness - which it seems is due to gas. Things are getting a little better so I'm hopeful that we've turned a corner with her moods (and her discomfort, poor thing).

She is a good nighttime sleeper, regularly giving me 5 hour stretches of sleep and occasionally 6 and even 7 hour stretches. She is such a gorgeous little baby and when she smiles, she smiles big. She has just started really beaming and cooing which makes it all worth it!

I want to do a baby book for her eventually, so here are her one-month and two-month stats before I forget:

One Month - 2/5
9 lbs, 12 oz (75th%)
20.5 in (60th%)

Two Months - 3/5
11 lbs, 4 oz (60th%)
22.5 in (55th%)

Finally, I got a job! I will be working at Manheim, which is a Cox company. I'm excited about the role (in product strategy for their online products) and also about staying at Cox. It's a great situation. I start in April. Now I can relax and really enjoy the next month that I'm home with the baby! :)

Baby sister is here!

On 1/4 I had my 38 week appointment and the midwife said I was 4cm and 80% effaced. Say WHAT?!? And I wasn't in labor...how?

That night I felt crampy and went to bed thinking I would maybe just wake up in full labor.

At 4:53am on 1/5/12, I woke up to a really intense contraction. Since I'd been having contractions on and off for a couple of weeks, I wasn't sure that this was the real thing. But 20 minutes later, I had another big contraction that caused me to double over in pain. Then, 13 minutes later, then suddenly 7 minutes after that, they kept coming. At 6am I woke Jeremy up and told him I was prety sure this was the day!

Jeremy's parents were on their way to our house, but I was in so much pain and scared to death of giving birth in the car, so I called our fantastic neighbor Jennie to come sit at our house until they got there. She was so understanding (thanks again Jennie!).

We got to the hospital around 7 and I signed in and basically demanded my epidural - the front desk lady was like, "umm, ok." But when they checked me and saw that I was 8cm dilated, I felt vindicated - and not a little freaked out that it might be too late to get my epidural.

"No worries," my nurse and midwife assured me in calm voices, "you'll get your epidural. All we have to do is get this entire IV bag into you and run some labs and then you can get the epidural." Ahh, how reassuring. Did I mention I was EIGHT CENTIMETERS and moving KINDA FAST???

I have never felt pain like that in my life. And I hope I never will again. We're talking "clutching the rails of the bed, groaning, moaning and screeching pain." Not cute.

The good news is I did get my epidural, and by then I was already at a 9 or 10. So basically, I did labor unmedicated. Woot. Here's some advice - DON'T.

Luckily I did not have to push unmedicated, because it took an hour and 15 minutes. You see, as we learned moments before the doc yanked her out with the vacuum, she was sunny side up - the little stinker!! I am going to milk this for all kinds of guilt trips down the road.

Our beautiful Julianna Mae was born at 10:06am, 7lbs, 9oz and 19.5 in long. She is just perfect! Luckily, she was a great nurser right off the bat, and we haven't faced the challenges that we did trying to get Jonathan to eat those first few weeks.

Jonathan is a sweet big brother. He loves to run into the room after school and peer at baby sister. He knows that we have to be soft with the baby ("no hit it?") and likes to give her kisses on the top of her head. Otherwise he pretty much ignores her. That's about as much as we could expect from a 2 year old.

Now, how to change the URL of this blog to babydmakesfour.blogspot.com?

Fun December

We've had a lot of fun with Jonathan lately - so the photo chronicle of December follows. I have never been able to properly format captions in my blog, so I'll narrate the photos up here, then you'll have to use your imagination and powers of deductive reasoning to match the pics to the descriptions. You can do it. You're smart like that.

We took Jonathan to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens Holiday Lights Display. His favorite part were the cool trains, including Thomas(!). He enjoyed the lights too, and was especially fascinated by some green and purple lights strung in the shape of a Christmas tree over a reflecting pool. "Lights go down deah in da wawer!"

A couple of times over the last month we've taken him to a nearby place along the Chattahoochee where you can almost be guaranteed to spot some ducks and/or geese. It's the poor man's zoo, minus the drive, expense and crowds. Plus, there's a playground right there for play afterwards.

Jonathan absolutely loves feeding the geese, although he was quite obsessed with the concept that we had apparently drilled into his head that the geese might bite him if he didn't stay close to mommy and daddy. Poor kid. Randomly we'll be sitting at home and he'll inform us that "Geese BITE you."

Christmas was a blast. He didn't really "get" the concept of Santa, but he enjoyed the Christmas tree, talking about Santa and the reindeer and singing Rudolph and Jingle Bells. Next year he will totally get it.

We celebrated the morning of at our house with just the 3 of us (3.5 of us??) then went over to Grandma and Papa's house. Jonathan had fun playing with cousins and opening presents. But he and Will were absolutely giddy rolling around in the discarded wrapping and tissue paper.

Happy New Year!! Will the next blog post include a birth story? Considering my current once-monthly blogging frequency, it is a safe bet that it will. :)