Sunday, June 23, 2013

5 years!

Despite referring to him as a "5yo" for a few weeks now, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that Elias is now officially five years old and headed to Kindergarten in the fall, to boot! We celebrated with a party at home last weekend so his actual birthday Friday was a little bit anti-climactic, spreading the additional celebrations out between then and this weekend.

The party was a great success. Initially Elias wanted a Star Wars themed party at Pump It Up. There seems to be something abut turning 5 that makes these kids want a Pump It Up party because of all the PIU parties we've been to, I think all but one were for kids turning 5. But after a few weeks of discussing that idea, suddenly he changed his mind and wanted a beach party. There was no way I was planning a party at the beach with a 4 month old in tow, so I first tried to dissuade him to which he replied, "I know - how about a beach themed party at home!" My first reaction was, well, that's not much better. His third birthday party was held at home and it was so much work cleaning and decorating and getting ready before the party and then cleaning up all over again once the party guests left! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the party could take place mostly outside and actually, maybe that would work better for the youngest member of the family who still likes to take three or four cat naps each day and is getting harder and harder to get to nap on the go!


And since we recently bit the bullet and hired a yard guy to maintain the areas outside of our house, I knew it would look relatively tidy around here.



I ordered invites from another Etsy seller this time around since I knew I wouldn't have time to design and make my own. For the actual party, in order to keep the party-goers outside, we rented a bouncy house and had water guns (getting water from the water table; the boys and a couple of the girls decided they'd better take their shirts off, so we had an interesting mix of shirtless kids and girls decked out in princess dresses), sidewalk chalk, and sand art bracelets to keep the kids busy.


Since we don't have many chairs I bought a bunch of beach mats and laid them out on the grass for kids and parents to sit and eat picnic style. For food we had a spread of pizza, sandwiches, mac 'n' cheese, fruit, veggies, chips, and crackers. For beverages we offered adults Corona beers and wine coolers in addition to soda and juice for the under-21 set. I think the alcohol was a big hit since a few parents have come up to me at preschool over the past week telling me what a fun party it was. I think we may have started a new tradition.



I've been sort of obsessing over Costco cakes for a couple of birthdays now, and this year seemed the perfect year to try one, with Daphne making DIY projects difficult and having more guests than at previous parties. The vanilla cake and filling itself were a little on the bland side - it would be nice if they offered a fruit filling instead - but the frosting was very satisfying in that store-made birthday cake way. Not bad for 18 bucks!



Fortunately, Elias was into all aspects of the party this year and did not melt down when it was time for party guests to sing him Happy Birthday like he did last year! Before the party he kept talking about how he was going to smash the cake in his face, wedding style.


Done! At this point we sort of rushed from cake to pinata as I sensed guests were ready to leave.



In future years I'll take out an activity or two (I always worry about having enough to do and then feel like I'm rushing through what I do have planned) and set an end-time for the party, something I didn't do this year. For the most part it worked out fine, with most guests leaving in that 2-3 hour window. But there was one guest whose parent didn't RSVP until the day before, requested to drop the kid off due to siblings' conflicting events, and then showed up an hour and a half later than planned to pick the kid back up! Never. Again.



For goody "bags", we handed out mini beach pails with seashells, flip flop keychains, and water guns tucked inside - something Elias helped out with the afternoon before - plus beach balls and balloons. Again, it was a little much, especially trying to get each kid the color balloon they desired before leaving. I finally got helium-filled balloons from a party store this time around and to be honest, I think they're a little overrated. Something else to file away for future parties...



That evening Elias enjoyed his very first "movie night," post-little-sister's-bedtime (and actually slept in the next morning until almost 8!), with Grandma Joanne.


It was a day that's been tough to top between his actual birthday and this weekend, but we've enjoyed a few additional birthday shenanigans, beginning with shark cupcakes (birthday boy's very specific request) at preschool on Friday. Here's video of his fellow preschoolers singing him happy birthday (I didn't realize until I watched the video back how focused he is on the candle during the entire song!), and two of the teachers granting his request of five chair lifts...


...plus a picture that one of the teachers took of the three of us (Neal was, obviously, working):


He opened a few small gifts from us that evening, including this Webkinz hedgehog - I can't remember how it started but it's become a bit of an inside/family joke. I think you can see that on his face even though the picture's not great.


And keeping with tradition, we're off to Fenton's in a bit. Normally we'd go on his actual birthday, but with it being on a Friday this year, by the time Neal gets home from work Daphne is about 30 minutes away from the final meltdown of the day. Hopefully an early dinner on a Sunday afternoon will work out a little better. I'll post an update from that adventure later this week!

Happy 5th Birthday, sweet boy! I think we've finally hit an age that, when people proclaim, "oh, that's a fun age," I can totally agree.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

rollin' rollin' rollin'

After a couple of weeks of rolling over from back to tummy on one side pretty easily with a little nudge from one of us - but showing absolutely no interest in initiating this maneuver herself - Daphne suddenly started doing it all on her own last week. Here's a video of her practicing her latest trick at Eli's preschool soccer practice:


And again, I know I should really not do this (at least not openly, in front of them), but Daphne has performed this trick a full month earlier than Elias did! I wonder if she'll crawl and walk earlier, too - a thought that is simultaneously thrilling and frightening.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

thighs!


Yep, she's still got 'em! At 4 months and two days, Daphne weighed in at 17 lbs., 10.4 oz., and about 26 inches long at her check-up yesterday. Here she is sleeping off her four-month shots:


She's a "healthy" girl, to be sure. Fortunately for my back, those 17+ pounds are now napping in her crib, falling asleep on her own! It's a miracle, I tell you. The highlight of her fourth month has got to be sleep training. At around 13 weeks we began some gradual, no cry measures, first to get her out of her swaddle, then in her crib in her room. Getting her out of the swaddle was fairly successful for nighttime sleep, with just a couple of particularly rough nights. We didn't go about it too gradually, although there were a couple of nights of swaddling her around her torso, arms free, and a very non-SIDS approved fluffing up of her co-sleeper bedding, putting a folded quilt over the wedge we were still using. But she's not really rolling over on her own and between the video monitor and the fact that she was sleeping right next to my side of the bed, I wasn't too worried. So the problem was not that she was rolling over while swaddled, she was fighting it and/or eventually working her way out of it and then waking herself up with her arms, startling or rubbing her face. She was in a gray zone between fighting the swaddle and still sort of needing her arms confined...or needing to learn to sleep with more freedom, I'm not sure which.

At any rate, I was hesitant to do anything more than that until the 16 week/4 month mark. We put it off for about a week after she returned to conking out after a long nursing session following her bedtime routine. If I could transfer her to her co-sleeper we were all set. But when she again remained awake post-nursing and fought sleep (not to mention the almost total disappearance of daytime naps), I felt it was time to take action. So on Saturday night we let her cry. She cried pretty intensely for about 20 minutes and that has, knock on wood, been the worst of it so far. The last couple of nights she's conked out nursing again so I don't know if that's sort of cheating. I do know I'm certainly not going to wake her up before I put her in her crib, so I guess we'll see what happens if and when we can get her through her bedtime routine before she's exhausted. She generally only wakes once or twice to eat, so middle-of-the-night feedings are not bad at all. That second wake-up tends to happen pretty early, though, so she's either up for the day with a crazy early morning nap, complicating preschool drop-off, or falls back asleep and sort of sleeps in, complicating the morning in other ways. Naps so far this week have been a total 180 from this time last week, with a little bit of whiny protest fussing but never more than a few minutes and a few naps that were shockingly effortless, falling asleep before I could even get to and turn on the monitor. Naps are short but that seems normal at this stage. I don't want to jinx it but it's pretty incredible, so far at least.



Other than that, the next thing I look forward to turning a corner on is the spit-up which continues to be pretty impressive most days. She's usually completely unphased by it and obviously growing well so her doctor is completely unconcerned.


Me, on the other hand, I'm getting pretty tired of the several episodes between each feeding, changing her and me (tricky since I have exactly one pair of jeans that fits at the moment) multiple times a day, and feeling a little limited in where I can go and what I can do during her 90 minutes to 2 hours of wakeful time between needing a nap. I'm really hoping she peaks this month as big brother did and we start to notice a decrease in spit up over the next couple of months. I'm also still avoiding obvious dairy (relaxing the diet a bit lately as she seems a little less sensitive to what I eat in terms of gassy or spicy foods) but a pretty wretched day following consumption of the smallest piece of cheese pizza a couple of weeks ago has prompted me to stick with it, for now at least. It's not bad, especially when you get used to it (and indeed I'm pretty paranoid about the idea of a true dairy challenge), but I don't really want to do it for eight more months, either. So we'll see...

Otherwise, Daphne is developing a very sweet, silly personality and continues to adore Elias. I'm pretty sure he's her favorite person.


She started blowing raspberries a couple of weeks ago, which gets a big response from all of us, especially big brother. Here's a little video we took when she first started doing it:





Just like I remember Elias, she has vocal days and less vocal days when she's more interested in gross motor skills. During floor time she's pretty content to stay flat on her back (we reserve tummy time for as long after her feeding but before she gets fussy to avoid puddles of spit up); if I give her a little head start she'll quickly roll from back to tummy on one side, but she has yet to initiate it.


She does this little crunch move, though, and generally seems really intent on sitting up as quickly as possible (which works for me since that's usually when spit up decreases!).


She also loves putting weight on her legs when supported. I don't remember Elias doing that until much later and while he didn't roll on his own until after the five-month mark, he was definitely rolling side to side a bit more at this point. It's fascinating to watch a second baby develop according to an entirely different internal schedule (although at some point I suppose I should stop constantly comparing my kids).



Elias continues to push a few extra buttons, mostly at home, but in general I'd say things have been a little better over the past month. We've been keeping him pretty busy, between preschool, after school activities, and weekend shenanigans. As we've emerged from the newborn fog I feel like our world very much revolves around him again, with the rest of us along for the ride. I suspect that will change a bit as Daphne settles into a nap routine and won't necessarily nap on the go (and of course when she gets older and expresses an opinion about what we do on the weekends!), but for now it's nice to feel like things have leveled out a little bit in that respect. That kid continues to have an insane amount of energy that is a challenge to direct every morning, evening, and all weekend long. Here he is after riding his scooter around the lake, 3 miles, at least:


Right now he's doing martial arts on Monday afternoons, gymnastics on Wednesdays, and a very informal preschool soccer practice on Thursdays! Fortunately that overlap is temporary. This summer we're going to again tackle swimming, resume gymnastics on the weekends, and likely stick with the one afternoon of martial arts through August. He'll stay at his preschool for about a month after "graduation" and then we plan to give a couple of week-long summer camps a try in August before Kindergarten starts. I'm still wrapping my brain around the fact that my first baby is ready for "real school"!