Baptism and Birthdays!

So we had a big day this past Sunday.  Elli was baptized in the morning and then we celebrated Addi and Livi's 2nd birthday that afternoon.  There are so many pictures I want to share, but I just picked some of my favorites.

Addi opening her gifts.

And Livi opening hers.

Their beautiful birthday cake.

They were mesmerized by the candles!

And they had fun blowing them out...not once, but twice!

Elli with her Godparents, Jason and Chelsea.

And Elli with mom and dad.

Just me and my sweetie-pie.

Wearing one of her sisters' baptismal gowns.

Our first decent family pic.  We still need to work on this!

Patiently waiting for her bath to get the baptismal oil out of her hair!



2 month appt

Our little Elli had her 2 month appt two days ago (she's officially two months old today).  The doctor is very pleased with how she's developing.  One of the first comments Dr K had is that she is a very looong baby.  And she was right!  Elli measured in at 24 inches (97th percentile) and 11lbs 8oz (70th percentile).  What's funny is that before the appt, I said to Nate "I bet Elli is about 11 1/2 pounds. And I'm willing to guess she's sitting right at about 24 inches."  Hmmm.  I guess you get kind of good at these guesstimates when it's your third kid!!

So yeah, she's doing fantastic.  The only real concern we had was the outbreak she had on her face/forehead about a week ago.  A few days before Halloween, she developed some baby acne which wasn't a big deal.  Just a few dots on each cheek, nothing concerning.  Well this past Sunday she woke up and could barely open her left eye!  It was that swollen.  Her entire face, forehead, and eyes were red and blotchy with lots of bumps.  I wasn't sure if it was a really bad flare of baby acne, a rash, eczema, an allergic reaction, etc.  It was terrible!  And I've never experienced it before because both of the big girls always had flawless skin.  Not even one little baby pimple!

I took several pictures to show Dr K at her well baby visit.  Turns out that she had a REALLY bad flare of cradle cap!  Well technically, if it's not on the head/scalp, it's called seborrheic dermatitis.  I guess it's common to get it on the face as well.  I'm so thankful it wasn't an allergic reaction.  Because honestly, my first thought was that she was allergic to something I'm eating.  And if that's the case, the 200+ ounces of milk I have in the freezer for when I go back to work would have to be thrown out!!  Whew.  Just cradle cap.  We can deal with that.  In fact, she looks almost 100% better than she did less than a week ago.

Oh yeah, and shots.  She did just fine.  She cried for less than a minute.  She was quite sleepy the rest of the day, but it was kind of a restless sleep.  She woke every 15-30 minutes.  But really she just needed a little cuddle and went right back to sleep.

We have a big day planned tomorrow.  Elli is being baptized.  Yay!  And the big girls are having their official birthday party!  We had two unofficial birthday celebrations right around their birthday.  But since we knew a lot of our family would be coming to town for Elli's Baptism, we decided to put off the party until then.  So it should be a fun day!!

Baby Smiles

When you see a baby smile, you can't help but smile yourself.  Well, at least I can't.  Some are big and some are small.  Some are goofy and some are sweet.  Some are scary and some are smirky.  But all of them manage to bring a smile to my face...and usually a giggle as well.

Elli's first smile caught on camera...sooo big.  Makes me laugh.

Awww.

So stinking sweet.

How goofy is she?!  That's quite the smirk.

I love her.

Daycare and Potty Training

The big girls had their first day of daycare on Wednesday.  And it didn't go exactly like I had hoped.  The drop off was actually incredibly easy.  My mom was here to help me with their first day because I had to take not only the big girls, but Elli as well.  Plus I had their 2 sleeping bags for nap time, a package of diapers, wipes and clothing changes for both of them.

Anyway, Livi was immediately interested.  So I took her coat off and she willingly walked into the classroom and sat down at the table.  Addi was a bit more hesitant.  But with just a little bit of coaxing, she also walked right into the room and found a spot at the table.  So I was feeling pretty hopeful when I left, but apparently, that's about where it all ended.  I guess both of them took turns crying throughout the majority of the day.  Once one would stop, the other would kick in.  Broke my heart to know that they simply weren't happy.

On day 2, drop off was horrendously awful.  Livi was crying and Addi was screaming.  I can't even really describe how bad it was.  You simply have to witness it first hand.  Not a good way to start the day and I shed some tears once I got home.  But when I called to check in on them at about 11:30am, the director said that they were having a better day than the first day.  And then their teacher called me when everyone was down for nap about an hour later and told me that they were actually laughing and giggling at times.  And there was another little girl there who they were really enjoying playing with (on their first day, there were only 4 other little two year old boys).

When Nate went to pick them up, they were both in great moods which was such a turn around from when we picked them up on their first day...that was a nightmare.  They cried the entire way home.  They continued to cry even after we arrived home.  It's like they were so worked up that they didn't know what to do with themselves.  It was bad.  But the second day was almost like a 180!  They'll continue to go to daycare 2 days a week, so we'll see what this coming week brings!

We have unofficially started potty training the big girls but we're really not putting that much effort into it quite yet.  We just put their potty chairs in the bathroom to let the girls become familiar with them.  Sometime soon we'll really start working with them on it.  I don't mind changing diapers, so I'm not in that big of a hurry.  I just want to follow their lead.  Each day they become more and more aware of when they're wet or dirty.  So we'll keep building on that.  Our pediatrician actually said that the harder you try the longer it sometimes takes.  So we're just going to let things happen as they will for now.

Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween!  Here are some pictures from our day...

They got to pick out their pumpkins.

The look of complete awe tells us she found the right one!

Elli began her day as a pumpkin but finished as a ghost.

Adorable.



Livi the giraffe was ready to go.

But Addi the tiger thought tigers needed a snack first.

This is as good as it gets trying to photograph all three.

Elli thought the whole holiday was a hoot!

Too dang cute to be a scary ghost.

Rawr!!!

Do giraffes gallop?  Well, she thinks so.



Good night.

I better write now...

...because I think our computer is petering out on us.  So this may or may not be the last post for a while.  In fact, I just realized that I can't post pictures because of what's currently going on with the computer.  Hmmm.

But speaking of pictures, I finally transferred all of them from the last 2+ years to a flash drive as well as an external hard drive.  I've printed very few pictures dating all the way back to the big girls' birth.  And wouldn't that be devastating if the computer crashed and I lost all of those?!  Ugh, I can't even imagine!  So it's taken a computer scare to get my butt in gear and back up all of those pictures.

Anyway, Elli started smiling a little over a week ago.  She's been a little bugger though and wouldn't let me catch it with the camera!  Of course, until today...when I can't share it anyway!  There's nothing like a huge gummy baby smile!  I love it!!

She continues to be a very good baby.  She wakes up about 3-4 times a night, but she's strictly business most of the time.  She generally just wants to be fed and she goes right back to sleep.  Of course, she does have her nights where she decides she wants to play when she wakes up.  But thankfully, it doesn't happen very often.  I'm actually kind of surprised because if you can remember, she NEVER slept while in the womb.  She was on the go constantly.  I thought for sure she was going to be a lot like her biggest sister in that regard and I'm so thankful that she's not!!  Addi rarely slept.  And in fact, she's still not a great sleeper.  But Elli takes good naps and sleeps quite well at night.  So different than her antics in the middle of the night while I was pregnant with her!!

The only complaint I have about Elliana is that she doesn't reliably take a bottle.  It's been tough on me because I don't get much of a break.  Not that I need much of a break, but I would sometimes just like to run a few errands without worrying about whether or not she's screaming her little head off because she's hungry (but refusing the bottle).  We've tried 2 different nipples for the same bottle and we're now on a different bottle to see if she likes them better.

I have a dentist appointment on Friday and will have a sitter here to watch all three girls.  My anxiety has been sky high for over a week now even thinking about it!  At least if I'm running errands, I can quickly make it home if I receive a phone call.  But I can't just up and leave the dental office.  I mean, I could.  But I really shouldn't.  So please keep your fingers crossed that she either doesn't get hungry while I'm gone or she decides that she's okay with the bottle that day.  She doesn't refuse all the time, but she's definitely hit or miss.

In other news, Adalyn recently cut three of her two year molars!  It absolutely shocked me for a couple reasons.  1) The bottom molars are "supposed" to come in first.  But leave it to Addi...her first two were the top ones!  And 2) Livi has *always* held the tooth count lead.  So I was watching her more carefully than Addi, especially because her fingers are constantly in her mouth and have been for a couple months now.  However, it was Addi who cut the first molar (and second, and third).  Just when you think you have them figured out - you don't.

We've been sick

We've had a sick household over the past week.  Elli seems to be the only one who has managed to avoid the sick bug (knock on wood).  So here are just a few pictures for now.  Hopefully I'll feel up to writing sometime very soon.

Bad day revisited...

So back to the big girls' 2 year appointment.  It was downright awful.  Miserable.  Terrible.  Sad.  Once we were called back to the room, we made the journey down the long hallways.  We didn't even get halfway to the room and Adalyn started saying "no, no, no" and ran the other way.  Then we get in the room, both of them are crying already.  We stripped Addi down first for her temperature, weight, height and head circumference.  You would've thought that we were breaking her arm!  She cried SO hard.  When they put the thermometer under her arm, she started yelling "owie, owie!!"  When they put her on the scale, she dang near jumped from it back into Nate's arms.  So they had to weigh Nate on a traditional scale while holding her and then weigh him alone.

Meanwhile, Alivia took off down the hallway, navigating her twists and turns almost all the way out to the waiting room.  How she remembered the maze of halls to get back to Point A is amazing.  I get her back to where we need to be and strip her down.  The chaos continues.  She cries, but not quite as hard.  But she's definitely ticked off and/or scared as well.

Did I mention that Elli is joining in on the fun and screaming her little head off?  So while Nate is trying to control Addi and I'm trying to control Livi, a poor nurse had to try to console the wee one.  I'm glad we had late appointments (on Tuesdays, the peds clinic does after hours appts) so that we weren't entirely disruptive to the entire clinic!

Okay.  So we're back in the room.  All 3 calmed down and the big girls were playing.  Dr K comes in and they're both still doing great.  We talked about our questions/concerns, etc.  The doc took a look at Livi first.  She did pretty well - she just didn't want her ears looked at!  Then the doc looked at Addi.  Yeah, she wasn't happy.  Dr K knew right off the bat that she wouldn't be sitting Addi on the end of the exam table to test her reflexes!!  The child was NOT going to sit still.

So both girls got a clean bill of health.  BUT, they still had to have their shots.  Three of them a piece.  Horrible, horrible, horrible.  I thought the shots were bad when they were little.  I was wrong.  When they actually know what pain is and somewhat understand what's going on...then it's bad!  It took forever to calm them down.  To rip my heart out even more, little Addi is screaming "all done, all done, buh-bye? buh-bye? buh-bye, please?!"  Heart-wrenching.  Anyway, so they calmed down.  But you know what?  We weren't done yet.  They still had to have a finger poke to check their hemoglobin levels (I guess it's somewhat common for kids this age to be anemic?).  So in walks the lab tech and we start the screaming, crying, pleading all over again.

Whew.  Done.  We took the girls through Hardee's on our way home and bribed them with some french fries.  They deserved it.  It was a rough hour for all of us!

Anyway.  Both of the girls are 35 inches tall putting them right at about the 85th percentile.  Adalyn weighed 26 pounds even (45%) and Alivia was 27lbs 4oz (60%).  And while we were there, we had Elli weighed simply because I'm concerned about how frequently she vomits.  I swear that I am constantly feeding and refeeding her.  I feed her, burp her, she throws up, so I refeed her (because she acts super hungry), burp her, she throws up...rinse and repeat.  Luckily, my refeeding efforts are paying off.  At one month old she weighed in at 9lbs 12oz.  What's kinda weird to me is that my little Adalyn only weighed 9lbs 10oz at TWO months old!  Of course, Elli got a nice little jump start with her birth weight!

So yeah.  It was a long, tiring, painful day.  I've decided that from here on out, Elli will NOT be going with us to the big girls' appts.  And I'm actually going to schedule the girls at different times and only take one at a time.  I'll take one before nap and then one after.  I think they played into each other too much and therefore, cried even harder, louder, and longer.  Granted, the shots hurt, but there wasn't a huge need to be crying while getting weighed or even getting undressed for that matter!

Pictures to come.  And more about little Elliana...oh, and teeth, too!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Adalyn and Alivia!

I don't even have the words. Where have the last two years gone?! Just like last year, I sang Happy Birthday to the girls at 7:05 and 7:33 this morning. Oh, and I threw in a Happy 1 month Birthday song to Elli at 7:25 while I was at it!! The big girls actually weren't even awake yet, so I essentially sang it to myself. Elli was laying next to me, but she was still sleeping too. Yeah, I'm crazy. But I remember singing to the big girls last year at the time that they were born...so I figured I'd keep the very short tradition going!!

And of course, I cried. I really would've hated to see how much I would've cried if I was just one or two weeks post partum. I generally don't cry a lot. Never really have. But wow, the couple weeks after having a baby are rough! The simplest little things had me melting into a puddle of tears. So let's just be thankful that Elli was a month old today and most of those hormones have exited my body. Otherwise I'd probably still be crying!!

Because Elli is being baptized next month, we decided to do a joint Baptism and birthday party all at once so that our out of town family (which is everyone!) doesn't have to make the trip twice. Turns out that most of them made the trip anyway! Nate's mom, sister, and our niece came over the weekend. So we had a little party in honor of their birthday...complete with gift opening and yummy cupcakes. Then today my mom, dad, and both of my grandmas came to visit. We had another mini celebration with ice cream cups.  Enjoy the pictures.

Hmmm.  Interesting.

Would somebody PUH-LEASE help me get this thing started?!

Modeling their cheerleading outfits and pom-poms.

Adalyn had the right idea.

And did quite well!

Alivia HAD the right idea.

And then decided to say screw it...I'm drinking it!

They had their 2 year appointment yesterday.  It was far too traumatic to write about in their birthday blog.  So that's a different post for a different day.  Happy Birthday my sweet little "babies" - mommy loves you so much!!  Good night.

My little monkeys

The big girls go through phases where they hate bananas and want absolutely nothing to do with them.  And then they have their days where they simply can't get enough!  We recently found out that if we leave the peels on the bananas, they suddenly become more interesting!  They each downed about a banana and a half when we left the peels on for them.  So...out of a desperate desire to get the big girls to eat better, I kept this tactic in mind.  I went to the store and tried buying some Go-Gurt yogurt thinking that it would be more "fun" for them to eat it out of a tube than with a bowl and spoon.  Yeah, epic fail.  Still can't get them to touch yogurt with a 10 foot pole.  Ugh.  So the food battle continues.

Elli is fantastic.  She's pretty much a complete 180 from what the girls were.  Knock on wood, but she continues to sleep pretty well.  Last night she had an almost 5 hour stretch of sleep!  To put that into perspective, I have an almost two year old who still struggles to sleep for 5 hours straight!  As with any baby, she does have some fussy moments during the day, but overall, she's such a great baby.

However, because she doesn't cry that often, little Adalyn tends to get freaked out by it.  If the big girls are taking a nap or are in bed for the night and Elli has "a moment," Addi tends to wake up absolutely screaming.  So we usually have to get her in order to calm her down.  We have a white noise machine running in their room, but she's hearing Elli over that.  On the other hand, Livi sleeps right through it (thank God).  The odd thing is that Adalyn will sleep through Alivia's little whimpers and random musings in the middle of the night (the girl sometimes likes to carry on conversations at 2am), but she can't sleep through Elliana's cries.  I think it's simply because she's used to Livi's voice and cries, but she hasn't heard Elli cry enough quite yet...which I guess is kind of a good thing?!

In a complete change of subject, I'm stressing over 2 year pictures.  The girls are turning two in just a few days and I want to get our usual pictures taken of them together as well as them individually.  But I also want to get pictures taken of all three together and a nice family picture.  Trying to coordinate outfits is NOT easy!!  Ugh.  I was hoping to get all three girls into matching outfits, but I don't think it's going to happen.  So I'm still trying to throw something together in the next couple of weeks for them to wear...then comes the challenge of dressing Nate and myself as well!

Snoozin' in her swing.

Getting ready for a bath.