Saturday, February 21, 2009

Weeks Four & Five: 2 under 2

First of all, I'm not sure if some of the readers don't notice the links to pictures, so here they are, front and center:

The Girls

Well, as you can see, we've been busy. Things have been getting better in a lot of ways. We're really getting to figure Izzy out. She's going to be our cuddle bug, the one who loves to sit on someones lap, just to be close. She doesn't like to be left alone or left out flat on her back. She'll turn her head and watch us walk around and as soon as it's been to long for her to be alone, she'll start crying. If she is already changed and fed, but still crying, we've found the key. A sling. I got a sling a couple weeks ago and that does the trick everytime and still allows us to mulit-task a bit. She loves being put in the fetal position, close to us and bounced. In terms of sleeping at night, we've got that down. Like with Anna, we give her a bath, then feed her and put her to bed (which is still the carseat at this point). She usually goes down when we go to bed and up between 5-7. I can handle that (and soon we'll both be able to handle that as I have 2 weeks left on maternity leave). We've been introducing a bottle a day with formula so she gets used to it all when she starts up at daycare. She does well with it, but I don't think she knows when she's exactly full yet as sometimes it comes back up. During the day, she stays awake from a half hour to a couple hours at a time. I wish it was all without crying, but that's not always the case. When she is just chillin', she's very observant and watches all that's going on around her. Now that she's almost 6 weeks old, she really has more of the Tidd features than the Tiemens features. Anna and Isabella look like sisters, but still look so different from eachother. Not only that, but they have such different personalities. Crazy how we can tell that already! In the last few days, she's really started to smile a lot more - not just when she sleeps with her cute little half smirk. She has the cutest little dimples too - wasn't sure if it was on both sides b/c for so long she only smiled on her right side. Hehe. She's definitely a blessing to our family and we're so excited to see these 2 grow up together. I don't know what a sisterly bond is as I only grew up with my brother (not that it's bad, bud!), but I'm excited for them to have eachother.

Anna is doing well. It's truely been an experience and a joy to be home with her. There have been moments (ok, maybe days) where it's been very trying with her, but I've learned a lot about being a parent with her. She's a big help when Izzy's crying and gives her everything that would comfort her: her pipe, blankets, animals and even books. I know deep down Izzy appreciates it. :) She's learning gentle and getting better at it with her. She doesn't get as angry with me when I have to feed Izzy or pay more attention to her for awhile. Thanks to Aunt Sheila, we've been learning a few baby signs, like please (rubs her tummy), hot (blows 3 times) when we say hot and even when her food is hot, down (points down), dirty pants (pats her butt) - this works only if I say it, but she still knows how to do it and all done (puts her palm up). She knows and loves the Zoophonics book Aunt Sheila book together for her. It has animals, fun sounds and actions. She knows where most of her body parts are. She says "yuck", "da" for dance when we read our I Hope You Dance book and puts her hand up in the air like I do when we read/sing the book. What I've learned and she's enjoyed, is instead of trying to make her play with her toys or read books, is include her in what I'm doing. I commented on Facebook a few weeks ago about what to do with a crabby toddler and one mom commented back to have them help you do laundry, cook/bake and I really thought about that after I about had it. What a difference that makes! Not only did she enjoy being apart of doing big people stuff, I really enjoyed that time I could spend with her and was able to get a few things done around the house. It's so simple and instead of fighting with her to let me finish cleaning, I let her help me sort laundry on our bed, she helped me dust, clean out the pantry and we even baked cookies together yesterday! It's been so much easier being at home with the both of them since then.

Now that I've figured this out (for now anyway), she heads back to daycare full time on Monday as they only allow 6 weeks maternity. I'm looking forward to only have Izzy around only b/c I have some things I'd like to catch up on before I head back to work and she enjoys the attention and socialization daycare brings.

Gary and I are doing well. As you can see from the above, these 2 keep us on our toes. We don't have a ton of free time right now, but we try to make it count when we do. We get out the house b/c it's still winter here in Michigan, even if it's to window shop at the mall. We're very very ready for spring, so we can take walks and let Anna run off some energy! I'm trying to be more proactive on having dinner plans ready so when I go back to work, we don't have to wait so long to make something and eat each night. We'd rather play with Anna for a couple hours than cook and clean before she goes to bed each night. I've been doing a little baking, some much needed cleaning and for the next 2 weeks, some much needed computer work personally and for our side work. Gary's been keeping busy at work with various projects that don't really have an end. Job security is all we care about anyway. :) I head back to work in a couple weeks. Should be another interesting adjustment.

Well the toddler is crying to get up from the nap she didn't take. Oye. :)

Love to you all,
Gary, Christie, Anna and Izzy

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