Little Construction Man

Our patio construction is under way. Xander immediately found the cedar board remnants, and started playing with them like blocks. This is a rocket that he made, and he pointed out to me the "flames" coming out of the end.

He's also been quite helpful. We've been spraying water on the concrete twice a day to help it cure more slowly in the 104 degree weather. No, it's not exactly an ideal temperature for pouring concrete. Xander is quite up to the task. He got a little made at me when I turned off the water and there were a few spots that were still dry. What a perfectionist, geez!

Splish splash

Dolphin found THE perfect sprinkler for Xander. It's perfect in that Xander loves it. I think he really likes it because the water doesn't get to high so it is easy to avoid getting it in his eyes. We used it to create our own splash pad with his pool. He spent an hour just playing with this cup and splashing.

You can see some construction going on behind him. We're building a new patio and pergola. The crew demo'd, by hand, the old patio. The new one will be a little bigger, and more importantly, it will have a shade pergola. We need all the shade we can get. We're a family of fair skins who burn easily. With both of my kids having eczema flared by sunscreen, we have to resort to other means of skin cancer prevention.

Poor little Aria

She has her very first ear infection. Her symptoms kind of all hit together over this weekend. Although I never could catch a fever with the thermometer, she has a terrible cough. She is very congested with runny nose and gunky eyes. Worst of all though, she has been just crying in pain non-stop. Yesterday, I gave her some Tylenol drops and that helped a little, and I got a few smiles out of her.

Today, I took her to the doctor as I suspected an ear infection. Sure enough, she has one so we have a prescription for "pink stuff". Filling the prescription cost a whopping $0.80. If only all medications costs so little!

Let's hope my little girl is back to her normally content self tomorrow.

Strong

Aria is getting so strong. Here she is keeping an eye on the lawn sprinkler. She's starting to push up with her arms when laying on her tummy. She's also almost sitting up (tripod) on her own.

She's also getting quite good with her hands. She grabs all sorts of things and jams them in her mouth. She's figured out how to suck on her thumb or put a pacifier into her mouth. She seems to like grabbing on to her toes when she is laying on her back.

Heading to pre-school

Oh boy, my big boy is headed to preschool, which at Xander's is the 3 year old class. I hope the transition goes well. New teacher, new friends, new rules will all be interesting. Xander had really outgrown his current class of 2 year olds so it's perfecting timing to move on. We'll find out more this week at our parent teacher conference.

The WHOLE family

A bunch of babies.

What does it tase like?

Xander's expert opinion:
Q: What does brown taste like?
A: Chocolate

Q: What do monkeys taste like?
A: Cinnamon

Q: What does purple taste like?
A: Blackberries

Q: What does white taste like?
A: Vanilla (pronounced Na-nilla)

We might have a Wonka in the making!

Big Brother Blues

These are the lyrics to a song that Xander made up and sang while riding in the car:

Mommy is always busy
Always busy
Cannot get a drink
Cannot get a book
Mommy is always busy
No drink
No reading book

He sang this while beating on a drum (his orange juice cup). I asked him why is mommy busy. He said "Mommy is busy when baby is crying. I'm singing this song for my baby so she can go to sleep."

4th month wellness checkup

Aria had her 4 month doctor's check up today. As usual, they measured her to make sure she was growing ok. She's 25 inches long (75th percentile), 17lbs 11 oz (95th percentile) with a head circumference of 42cm (75th percentile). You can see how she compares to Xander at the same age by looking back at his 4 month blog post. Boys and girls are slightly different, usually bigger.

I also confirmed today that Aria, like Xander, is prone to some eczema. She has it on her ankles and behind her knees. It's been there since was born but its bad enough now to treat it. She also has dry skin all over which I have to treat with aquaphor. Fortunately, the same miracle steroid cream that works on eczema outbreaks for Xander can be used on Aria. I didn't even need to go to the pharmacy.

The doctor wasn't thrilled that Aria still wakes up a lot at night (every 3 to 4 hours), but she also wasn't too worried about it. I looked back and old 4-6 months blog posts about Xander sleep (started this blog when he was 3 months old). He was such a terrible sleeper in comparison. This is probably because he was sick a lot at that age...starting day care during flu season is a SUPER BAD IDEA!

Everything else with Aria was great. She made smiles at everyone, nurses, doctors. She got three immunizations and cried a little, but was generally brave.

The only bad thing about the visit? Well, as soon as I got home, Xander broke out with a 102.7 fever, throwing up, and lethargy. Had he presented some symptoms an hour earlier at Aria's appointment, we would have had an expert pediatric opinion. Oh well, it's probably some random childhood virus that she couldn't do anything about anyway.

Zoom

Aria is just growing up so fast. She is constant wiggles right now especially when you put her in the bath tub. I've heard that baths are supposed to be relaxing but they just make Aria go crazy. She kicks her legs like crazy to get the biggest splashes. She also likes to grab for the water with her hands as I slowly pour a stream.

She's getting better and better eye hand coordination every day. Once she grabs something, it goes straight to the mouth. So, this is the fun age, where I expect to her to pick up a lot of germs and illnesses.

She's also started to talk in more recognizable, experimenting with lots of syllables. Quite a few nights, she's woken up making this "mmmmmm, maaaaa, maaaaa" noise. The first time, I was like "did she just say mama?" It's interesting that she makes these talky noises instead of just crying in the middle of the night.

Playing sick

While driving by Walgreens -
Xander: What's that place, Mommy?
Me: That's a Walgreens. That is where people buy medicine.
Xander: Why?
Me: They buy medicine to make them feel better when they are sick.
Xander: Oh...my tummy hurts.


Outside of Aria's classroom after Xander grabbed a handful of used baby spoons -
Me: Xander don't touch those
Xander: Why?
Me: Because they have baby germs.
Xander: Why do they have germs?
Me: Because the babys have germs in their mouths and then they put the spoons in their mouths.
Xander [holding up his hands looking at them]: Where are the germs?
Me: They are invisible but they are there on your hands. You'll need to wash your hands.
Xander: Oh...my tummy hurts.

He was NOT sick in either case. He ate and played just fine. What a goof! I think we need to have that "boy who cried wolf" conversation.

As a side note, his new use of the exclamation "Oh" has been rather cute.

3Q Haircut

This one went really well. The promise of a sucker for not crying during the haircut REALLY worked. He was also a good by while we were waiting for Daddy to get his haircut. No, Daddy did not sit in the fire engine or airplane.

What do girls have?

SHOES! Apparently, the whole girl shoe thing starts at a very young age. I remembered that Aria received these pink shoes as a gift. There is pretty much no reason for any baby in Austin to wear shoes now given its triple digit weather. However, I put them on for a couple of hours just to get some use of them before she outgrows them. I'm surprised they stayed on very well.

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

What is that saying again? It's something about Snips and SNAILS and puppy dog tails. Xander found these in our back yard. I had no idea we had so many snails back there.

Night One: No Swaddle

Aria's been sleeping in a velcro-ed swaddler or swaddled in a blanket at night. She wasn't the hugest fan of swaddling, but it was the easiest way to keep her warm. She REALLY likes to be warm. These days though, she often wiggles out of her swaddle. It just seemed like a lot of extra work to keep her bundled up. Not mention, she's a really big baby, and the extra large swaddlers were just barely big enough.

So, last night we switched to a sleep sack. It was pretty uneventful. She fell asleep and slept just like any other night. I laid her in her bed, she was staring at one hand, opening and closing her fist. "Whoah, my hand is free. This is different." I checked on her after a few minutes, and she was snoring away.

She is a pretty decent sleeper now. I figure I have about a month at the most before some teeth come in and all heck breaks loose.

Speaking of sleeping, in hindsight, I feel really sorry for Xander being our FIRST kid. Both Aria and Xander had a little bit of cradle cap. While some people claim it is not bothersome, Xander used to claw his head up. His school teacher's were always telling us various creams to put on his head. It kept coming back and he would just claw his head so much at night. He would draw blood sometimes if we let his nails get too long. I can't imagine this helped him sleep very well...no wonder! Anyway, sometime after 6 or 9 months, we finally tried dandruff shampoo and it took care of things. Aria was able to benefit from this good advice and we took care of hers at 2 months of age. So, far, no clawing and good sleep.

Kindle, iPad?

Is a Digital Book going to replace all of this?

Happy Independence Day

Unfortunately, this year, all the fireworks shows nearby were canceled due to fire risk. It's been entirely too dry.

We tried to survive the heat. We did drop of few poppers/noise makers on the driveway. Then, played with a waster hose a bit. Noting beats a Popsicle a triple digit weather day.


Xander asked me to pull out some of our holiday supplies. He dressed up in his Halloween costume and put on Easter Bunny ears. Goofy!

Routine

Aria is turning 4 months old this week. Time flies!! she seems to have a really good routine going right now. It's really self established, but its like clockwork. She wakes up at eats. Then, she plays for an hour and half. She will get bored at least once, maybe twice during that time. At the end of play time, she fusses. I stick in a pacifier and she conks out. She takes a 30-45min nap and then the cycle repeats. She does this cycle 3 times during the day, ten she skips a nap in the evening. She's ready for bed around 7pm. She sleeps (get up only to eat) all the way to 6am.

She's not "sleeping through the night" yet. The longest she sleeps is 4 consecutive ours, usually 2 or 3. However, the awake time is really minimal (assuming she's not sick). She dream feeds (eyes closed) for 10-15 min and ten falls right back asleep. I suspect that solid food will help increase the time between night feeds. I can only produce so much milk at one time. However, Dolphin gave her a 5oz bottle of breastmilk this week (it was going to go to waste), and she slept longer tan normal. 5oz is just not possible for me to do, but balanced with solid food, I think we'll get there.

I going to give it another month likely before introducing some kind of cereal. The pediatrician recommends between 4-6 months of age. We started Xander at 5.5 months. I'm in no hurry at the moment.

One of those days

This past Wednesday, I had one of "those" days. It was a day where not a lot of things went right. I found myself oddly reflecting that I should have been more upset about it that I actually was. So, I guess that's good. At least, I was in good spirits.

It began when my children both decided that they didn't want to sleep Tuesday night. Xander fought going to bed and just would not fall asleep for at least an hour and half past bedtime. Aria wen to bed, but them woke up in the middle of the night completely bright-eyed and refused to go back to sleep. So, Dolphin and I were both very tired.

The next day, work was rough. I was sick with a cold. It hurt to talk and talking is my job. I got escalated to my boss (basically someone complained about something I was doing). I came home with the kids. Xander made a huge mess. He spilled a whole glass of milk all over Aria's bouncer toy rendering it temporarily unusable. He had a potty accident that spanned 2 rooms. Aria spit up all over me twice. Our dog was have a skin condition attack again and leaving wet licked spots all over the floor. It was my long day where I have to meet with people in China so might night work wasn't over until 9:30pm.

I survived though. Frnankly, there's a lot of people who have it pretty bad and I've got plenty to be grateful for. My cold is slowly getting better. I have a job. I have two healthy kids. I have a husband who offered to get up with Aria (even though I didn't take him up on his offer) while I was sick. I have a working washing machine and dryer (inside joke) to clean up the bouncer. I have two dogs that like to snuggle me. There is no zombie, alien, asteroid, economic, political or biblical apocalypse going on right now. My air conditioner works and spares me triple digit weather....and well, starbucks still makes good lattes. I really, really, really am grateful for those lattes.

Sianara friend

So, one of Xander's "friends" at school moved away this week. The teachers let us know that it was the little boy's last day. At the end of the day,I asked Xander if he was going to miss his friend. He told me "No, that makes me happy."

Of course, I was surprised by his response. I asked Xander why this was because missing a friend makes me sad. He told me "Because...because...he's leaving and we get cupcakes." Apparently, the boy's mom had brought in cupcakes for his last day. Well, at least we know what's really important.

I explained to Xander that he wouldn't get to play with the boy at school anymore. I told him again that if I missed a friend I would be sad. I wasn't trying to upset Xander, but was just trying to see if he understood. He told me "I'm not sad. Allison[another friend] is coming back tomorrow."

I guess I should be relieved that he isn't upset, but I'm worried it just hasn't hit him yet. Fortunately, his friend Allison and Celeste are still around. I got a report from his teacher that he and Celeste were playing very nicely and considerately with each other today. Maybe Xander is just happy to have his lady friends all to himself...haha.

Less is more

Feeding Aria has been an interesting ordeal over the last month. I mean it's probably only interesting to me, but I feel week have made finally some good progress.

Around the beginning of June, Aria's teacher's said that she was able to eat 4oz in each bottle, 4 times a day. It seemed like a lot, but I pushed hard to try to pump that much. Then, she got two viruses. She lost her appetite a few days for each but was back to nursing every 2 hours. When returning to pumping though, I noticed that I just couldn't keep up with the 16oz per day.

Over the last two weeks, I have been using up ever bit of frozen milk that I had to keep up with the 4oz/4 times per day. I'd also been using every trick in the book to boost milk supply. Extra pumping sessions, compression, etc.

At the same time as I struggled to keep up, Aria's teacher's were telling me that she was spitting up a lot. A lot means 3 out of 4 oz would come back out. What a waste. Here I am struggling and its all on her clothes! My first thought was that it was something I ate, which actually the least likely cause, but...I digress. In hind sight, I should have recognized it sooner, but basically her teachers were overfeeding here. The 4oz/4 times per day was just a temporary growth spurt and not a new level to maintain.

So, we told her teacher's to dial back each bottle to 3 oz and we went back to the newborn nipples (one size down). The result? Success! Not only was she completely satisfied with 10-12oz (something I can manage to produce in a normal day), she didn't spit up all over herself.

I think the teachers assumed that a kid is going to eat until full. However, I think Aria is a such an efficient feeder. She can quickly finish a few ounces but still needs to be held and have some sucking time. So, she sucks for non-hunger reasons.

The one positive side effect is that my milk supply is boosted a few ounces now. So, perhaps, I can restock a few packets in the freezer.