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.

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"!

Daphne is 3 months!

...and change. On Thursday last week she weighed in at 15 lbs 12 oz. To compare, Eli hit the 16 lb mark at 4 months (14 lbs at the 3 month mark) so she's still bigger than her brother was at this point but the weight gain has slowed a bit, I think. Even so, her 15+ pounds lately have made for one heavy newborn. I think she's officially an "infant" now, right? Yeehaw!

Things have been pretty busy around here, hence the lack of blogging. As soon as I wrapped up my one lingering order I switched gears to work on Eli's preschool fundraiser and birthday party in June. I'm not sure how I blogged so frequently - about once a week or so - with Elias since he never slept! I guess I had less to do when he did nap. Now, when Daphne is not napping on me (while lovely, those extended cuddles are getting increasingly uncomfortable as she gets heavier and longer), there is a seemingly endless list of things to do just to keep the laundry, clutter, and cat fur from taking over the house (anyone want a couple of aging cats??). There was less of that with Elias and more of my co-parent to go around. As it is, I'm getting very little break from the baby. I end up bringing her into bed with me for the final stretch of sleep, which continues to be pretty restless. So I get up when she gets up and we hit the ground running from there, with little breaks from the couple of cat naps I try to get at home (with another couple of cat naps happening in the car seat, on the go). If I'm lucky, she conks out for the day about 13 to 14 hours later, shortly before or right around when big brother goes to bed (ideally) and I stay up a little later to take a quick shower, make Eli's lunch for the next day, throw in laundry, fold laundry (how did one tiny person double our laundry?), catch up on email, work on any extra stuff I have to work on, and try to get to bed before 10. Neal does his best to give me little breaks here and there but between having another kid to take care of (and one who, as Louis CK might describe him, is a total "bullshitter" - he can brush his own teeth but he won't) and his commute, most of the baby duty falls on me.

Daphne's reflux seems to have plateaued. I don't dare use the term peaked lest it get worse again before it gets better. To say we've hit a plateau seems safer. That said, I am living for the day she begins to outgrow it. I think we've got the general reflux symptoms and crankiness under control but the spit up has been epic and that makes the logistics of our day tricky. I spend a lot of time cleaning spit up off of myself, the floor, changing her outfit (and forget about a bib - that would only keep a small portion of her outfit dry) and all of this is annoying enough at home. I've lost count of the number of different public places where we've left our mark, so to speak (at the grocery store, for example: "Cleanup on aisle 4! Cleanup on aisle 5!" You get the idea.). So that's a drag. On a positive note, she doesn't seem to mind hanging out in the car seat as much as she did early on so she's a bit more portable. I just tend to keep her somewhat confined - in the car seat or in the carrier - when we're out and about. It keeps the spit up on us instead of projectile, over the shoulder, splat on the floor of wherever we are. People are really not accustomed to this level of spit up and look very alarmed when they witness it, which makes me think reflux babies are a lot like baby pigeons. They tend to stay close to the nest, so to speak, until they've outgrown the reflux.

With the reflux leveling out (knock on wood) we can focus our attention on sleep which has started to fall apart a bit. Just when our evenings were beginning to settle (and start a bit earlier, with Daphne conking out before or by the time Eli does), she's gotten really difficult to get down for the night yet again. She's also incredibly restless at night, only waking once or twice to eat, but waking (me, at least) a couple more times on top of that with, primarily, the incredibly noisy act of bringing both swaddled legs up and down at the same time. I think it's a combination of various GI issues, a little bit of the reflux, and being in that gray area between still sort of needing the swaddle and fighting it. Daytime naps, when I can get them at home, are no longer swaddled and while on the short side she seems to be doing pretty well with it (although I still have to get her to sleep - I can't just plop her down "drowsy but awake" as the sleep books encourage). Once she gets that down we'll work on un-swaddling for nighttime sleep. We're waiting until she hits the 16 week mark to begin the hardcore sleep training so I'm hoping some of these more gradual, "no cry" measures will help in the meantime. Less than 3 weeks and counting!

I've got a lot of pics of both kiddos to post from the past couple of months which, now that Neal has uploaded them, I'll try to add over the next week or so. Stay tuned!

a little less newborn

Daphne is 2 months as of Tuesday! 13 pounds, 14 ounces, 23 1/2 inches. In addition to getting her stats, Daphne also got her first round of shots yesterday at her 2 month check-up. I completely forgot about the trick of giving tylenol before the shots so she was pretty inconsolable after the epic shots-induced afternoon nap. Man, that stuff takes awhile to kick in, doesn't it?! She was a little fussier than usual yesterday evening, conked out a bit earlier than usual, which was surprising considering she was about 1/2 hour shy of being able to get a second dose of tylenol, and had a pretty decent night, all things considered.

Speaking of sleep, it seems like our evenings/nights are settling down a bit. Between weeks 5 and 8, roughly, she was pretty fussy in the evening but difficult to get to bed "for the night" until between 8 and 9, despite being seemingly done with the day much, much earlier. Most nights she does a relatively long stretch then wakes up a couple of times after that but she continued to be a bit difficult to lull back to sleep after those night feedings and each stretch of sleep would be increasingly restless. This week she's conked out a little earlier and a little easier than previous weeks and for several nights she's only woken up once to eat, around 3:30 am. Getting her back to sleep hasn't been too difficult but she is incredibly restless until I usually either feed her again and/or bring her into bed with me, at which point she usually falls into a deep sleep. What's up with that? If only sleeping flat on your back was as soothing as snuggled up next to mama, with mama breathing on your little head. Anyway, on the one hand I hope I don't jinx the good sleep I've been getting but on the other hand I can't say I don't hope for even more improvement and a little more sleep from 3:30 on. I honestly wouldn't mind waking up more frequently if she went right back to sleep and slept a little more soundly/quietly. As it is I'm still going to bed as soon as I get her down for the night so that I maximize the sleep I get during that first stretch (and of course the few nights I've stayed up a bit she's woken up much earlier for that first middle of the night feeding). I miss my evenings, I have to admit, but hopefully I'll have a little evening time back to myself before my favorite show begins next month. I also have one order to wrap up this month and a fundraiser to work on for Eli's preschool next month and it's been nearly impossible to do so during the day. As it is I'm lucky to tidy up the house, get a load of laundry done, and feed and shower myself. If I could get a little of that extra stuff done each evening, I think I'd enjoy my unproductive baby days a little more.

As far as daytime sleep goes, Daphne is currently working on one of a handful of naps this week in the co-sleeper, unswaddled in a sleep sack. Very exciting. She's an incredibly restless sleeper but maybe all babies are at this stage? We have a video monitor this time around so I try to keep that in mind when I'm seeing a lot of restless movement but hearing nothing. I'm trying to embrace what I think is an at least slightly better sleeper than big brother while not making the mistakes we made with him. We'll see if it works. I don't dare throw out the swaddle for night sleep just yet. Of course my dream, some point during the 4 to 7 month window, is to have her taking a couple of naps and sleeping through the night (with a dream feed or maybe just waking once?) in her crib, in her own room. But, like with everything else, I'm trying to be patient with this newborn stuff, which I have to admit I'm finding harder to do this time around.

Otherwise, Daphne has been smiling and cooing up a storm. She seems to be a bit more expressive than Elias was. While he was either fussy or wide-eyed and taking it all in, she tends to be a little more serious at times and gets this inquisitive, almost frowning look on her face before she breaks out into a big smile. She's incredibly vocal and her favorite place for small talk seems to be on her changing table. I keep trying to get it on video but every time I turn on the camera she seems distracted by the phone. This is one of several things I miss about having Neal work from home, as he did during Eli's first year. If something new was unfolding I could usually holler at him to grab the camera. We captured so many firsts that way. It's a lot harder when you're home alone!

In the spit-up department, Daphne definitely has reflux although it still, knock on wood, seems to be milder than Eli's various digestive woes. I've been avoiding dairy as well but I'm really hoping the handful of possible indicators (baby acne/rash, green poop, and of course the reflux) were all coincidental as the only thing that's cleared up since going off dairy has been her baby acne which very well may have cleared up by now anyway. She still has green poop from time to time which I've been told is not a big deal. I've tried reintroducing hidden and obvious dairy a couple of times but the timing always seems to be bad, coinciding with something else that makes her extra cranky or extra spitty. She's yet to have any blood in her stool, as Eli did. So we'll see but I just don't think I have it in me to stay on some crazy elimination diet much longer. Hopefully she's just one of those babies who's sensitive to mama's diet and will react less to what I eat and drink as she gets bigger and older. Nursing is going well - so much better this time around, even nursing in public - so I'd hate for anything to compromise that. On the other hand, especially with another kid to take care of and a house to maintain this time around, I can only take on so many extra challenges. This two kids things is hard enough!

sleep and the 7 week old

I know I shouldn't compare kids but every step of the way with Daphne, in large part thanks to this blog which triggers my memory of Elias at the same stages, I can't help but look/think back to what baby #1 was doing at the same time (and occasionally looking ahead to see what baby #2 might be doing in the weeks to come). I don't remember Elias having quite the textbook 6 to 8 week peak in typical newborn fussiness (his was perhaps more spread out, thanks to the reflux), but Daphne definitely has been experiencing it (well, let's hope it's the peak and she'll turn a corner any day now!). Similar to Elias, however, she gave us a great night of sleep on the 6 week mark, in bed by the time Elias was, around 8 p.m., and waking only twice to eat, after first a five- and then another four-hour stretch, with a final, very restless two hours of sleep before she was "up for the day."

That was followed by a fairly hellish week of incredibly fussy, almost inconsolable evenings, later bedtimes, and an increase in nighttime feedings. Initially I thought it might be the relatively mild reflux (relative to big brother) getting worse (as it very well might until the typical 4 month peak), but after the weekend it's clear she was at least in part reacting to her very first cold. It's tough being second-born with a preschooler for a big brother. All of us have been sick in the last few weeks so I guess it was inevitable that she'd get some form of the bug. Fortunately it only lasted about 3 days. A pink, watery eye prompted a visit to the pediatrician on Saturday (gotta love weekend hours!) but the doc was unconcerned as her lungs were clear and she had no fever. She got over it pretty quickly and has been much mellower the last couple of days. Evenings are still tough, though - at least, last night was. Every day I have (perhaps false) hope that that night will be different. She's teased us with a few nights like the one at the 6 week mark but for the most part our evenings involve tag teaming dinner, clean-up, bath(s) for one or both kids, occasional cluster feeding, a typically bedtime-resistant almost 5 year old finally getting in bed sometime between 7:30 and 8 and then an hour or two after that of finally getting Daphne to conk out. The late bedtime wouldn't bother me so much if she just wanted to be awake. She's clearly done for the day by about 7 p.m. lately but she just can't seem to settle down until much later. Once she's out her nights are not bad. She typically only wakes twice to eat with each stretch increasingly restless, but the first stretch of 4 to 5 hours is usually pretty solid. For that reason, even if she does conk out by or shortly after Eli's 8 p.m. bedtime, I don't dare stay up much after. In an 8 to 10 hour stretch I'm lucky to get 6 or 7 cobbled together hours of sleep. I don't mind the sleep deprivation so much but I do miss my evenings. As it is there's no break between daytime and nighttime shenanigans but I guess that goes with the territory, right?

once more, with guitar

In Daphne's one month update, I forgot to include a picture of her with the Guitar Hero guitar, as per the tradition we started with Elias. Here 'tis:

1 month

Being born in the unique month of February, Daphne hit both the 4 week and 1 month mark on Saturday. It's true what parents of 2+ say - not only is the transition from one to two pretty intense but it also goes by a lot faster than the first time. Her stats on Saturday were 11 pounds, 2 1/2 ounces, thanks to a baby scale I'm borrowing from a friend of a friend (easing my anxiety following our thankfully brief time in the "slow weight gain" category earlier in her first month). She's undeniably smiling now, with a fair amount of effort on our part. While Elias smiled at the "kissing fishes" in the bouncy seat, Daphne gives some of her best smiles to the elephant attached to the play mat. That, and big brother Elias. She immediately lights up whenever she sees him. He continues to be pretty darn adorable with her but has to be consistently reminded to be gentle, not get right in her face, not dangle things dangerously above her, etc. But so far, so good.

Otherwise, Daphne is nursing much better now than she was a couple of weeks ago, hence the steady weight gain. It's still a bit awkward to nurse in public but I'm told this gets better as the baby gets bigger (it never really did with Elias but then we weaned shortly after the 4 month mark, when I'm told it gets easier!). She's pretty floppy still so there's a lot of maneuvering that has to happen underneath a cover that doesn't want to stay in place! I started going to a free "baby & me" support group at the hospital where I delivered last week and there were a lot of bared breasts there. It dawned on me that at times in the Bay Area, a nursing cover will actually attract more attention than a little bare boob!

She continues to show some symptoms of reflux but still not to the point of Elias at this age. Because she seems particularly sensitive to my diet and after a few incidences of seeming to react to milk products in particular (cheesy lasagne, a milkshake shared with Eli, etc.), I first cut out obvious dairy but this past weekend cut out hidden dairy as well. I actually have a hunch it's totally coincidental but now that I've started I figure I might as well stick with it for the 3-4 weeks it can take for the milk protein to completely clear both my system and Daphne's. On the one hand, it might be nice to have an obvious cause to the fussiness and digestive discomfort which comes mostly at night (oh, the grunting!), but on the other hand, this diet is a drag. Nursing and otherwise caring for a newborn is hard enough; it would be nice to be able to eat whatever I want. Daytime meals and snacks are fine, if a bit boring after awhile since my options are somewhat limited, but dinners are tough. I'll stick it out until closer to the 2 month mark but so far, at least, we don't have a drastically different baby on our hands.

And she's certainly not fussy to the point of being "colicky", at least not yet, knock on wood. This may be more common baby fussiness with the mild reflux being a separate issue. At any rate, it should all clear within a few months. It's hard to be patient but I know, at the end of the day, that's really the only remedy to my stress and anxiety - to just be patient and ride out the newborn storm!