The End of the Beginning

Well I'm nearing the end of my maternity leave. I have this week plus two weeks left. We have decided to get our carpet replaced before I start again. With two little ones crawling around, we realize how nasty and dirty the current carpet is - we probably should have gotten new carpet after Guinness was potty trained, but once you have furniture in, its such a hassle! And we will be getting a bunk bed system for the girls soon, and it will be much easier to do the carpet before we start ADDING furniture to their room. So in preparation we have started a late summer cleaning of the whole house, but concentrating on the upstairs, where the carpet is. Man does it feel good! I didn't realize how much of my cabin fever was related to how much stuff we had accumulated and what a mess our house has become. It feels so good to go through things, organize it all and purge what we don't need. Rule of thumb; if you haven't used it or needed it in the last 2 years, GET RID OF IT. It's so liberating! And it looks soooo much better too. Let me tell you how much I'm looking forward to being done with the infant stage for good so that we can get rid of all the baby stuff!

Abby is doing great. She gained 7 oz last week and tomorrow is her 2 month appointment so we will see if she did as good this week. She has been starving all the time and feeding really well so I have a feeling she gained well. I looked at Rory's chart for comparison and at 10 weeks she was 8 lbs, 12 oz - so about the same. Even being aware of how fast they grow its crazy; she's done being super tiny... my little 6 lb baby is going to be 9 lbs soon! We have introduced the bottle too in prep for me going back. At first I thought she didn't like it but I realized A. I didn't have the right bottle (I was using the standard Medela one instead of the Playtex drop ins which Rory liked), B. We weren't trying it when she was hungry, but after a feeding as a "top off", and C. Didn't realize she just takes for freaking ever to eat! Three days in a row now she has had her breakfast in a bottle and taken 1-3 oz each time, and takes up to 20 min to drink it! Rory would down a 4 oz bottle in 10 min so I just was not used to that at all. But she's still not where she should be so we will see if they give me a hard time. I've been saving all my excess milk from the morning and evening pumpings and getting 16-20 oz a day stored. So every day I pump is a day's worth of milk for later. I got really worried when the crazy So Cal blackout happened last Thursday that I would have to throw out the milk I already had frozen but during the 12 hour shortage it didn't appear that any of the milk started to thaw out so I think it should be fine.

Abby's eyes are still a deep dark sapphire - at least for now. Ryan's baby book reports that his eyes turned brown at 3 months so we should find out soon enough! Her skin is definitely darkening up, that's for sure. And the hair is just as thick and dark. My little Ryan baby!

She is still on the same sleep schedule. We are putting her to bed earlier (like 7) because she gets really cranky if you don't put her down early. Then she wakes up about 1am, 3am and 6am for feedings. She is wide awake after the 6am feeding and really happy, until the 9am feeding, then likes to go down for a morning nap until the next feeding. We have figured out too (after MANY fussy nights) that she likes sleeping in her carseat best! Go figure. She didn't like the bassinet that we used for Rory, and while she likes the cradle swing we got her recently during the day and for awake time, she doesn't really like to sleep in it. But she always sleeps really well day or night in her carseat. So carseat it is!

Rory is such a good girl and I'm enjoying her so much. She's just a beautiful person, inside and out already. I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful person in my family. :0) She's sweet, helpful, thoughtful and intuitive. I swear she is going to go into some kind of care taking profession (nurse, doctor, vet, teacher...) She is talking so much too! Her words are adorable - no one can understand them but us but it's still so stinking cute. Yogurt is "oh-grit". Thanks is "sanks". She tells daddy and I to "calm down" and holds out her hand to exemplify. She tells Guinness "no barking, Guinness!". The other day I finished my bottle of prenatals, and asked her to throw the empty one in the recycling bin. She did so, but then went and got a new bottle of vitamins and gave it to me. I was stunned! Then today she was playing in the sand at the Cross's and she found a bottle cap and showed it to me. I showed her where the bottle cap bucket was, and told her if she found any more to put them there too. I opened a water bottle and set down the cap. I turned around a minute later and the cap was gone - Rory had taken it and put it in the bucket! lol. She takes initiative for sure.

I haven't been able to find too much time to do more than take the girls on walks, and so some planking here and there. It is helping a little though; my stomach muscles are less than a finger width apart now, and my weight is slowly creeping back down to that 140 norm range. I'm hovering around 146 right now. I'm dreading trying on all my work clothes to see which ones fit and which don't.

Ryan's birthday is this week; 31, old man. And my big 30 is next month. Holey cow! When did I get so old? Oh yeah, since I went to college, married Ryan, and had kids. I guess when you think back a lot HAS happened in the last decade for me.