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| Lily loves food! And such a variety of it! |
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| Lily @ 8 months! |
As Lily rapidly flies from 7 to 8 months, she is more and more joyful. So quick to smile nowadays and her dimpled smile is so rewarding! While we are still in the separation anxiety phase, it has peaked ever so slightly and I can now get coffee while she plays with a toy in the living room if she can still see me...well, sometimes. My best trick to be able to run to the restroom or get a glass of water is to get her playing with something with her back to me and run away, often able to sneak back before she notices.
She's become quite the crawler, although military crawling is still her specialty, but she is very quick and can also push herself up into the sitting position so gracefully and easily I almost didn't notice the new ability. She flaps her arms when she is excited and loves to flash a big toothy grin whenever she catches you making eye contact and her face completely lights up every time she sees Hannah. Particularly if Hannah is dancing or jumping up and down.
This month has finally been the break in the clouds we have been waiting for for quite some time. After the first week Lily was born, for seven full months we have been running from one thing to the next. When we've had visitors it has been for whirlwind weekends that we spend trying to make the most of their presence. This month, Daniel's mom came to visit for a nice 5-6 day stretch and we got to have breaks in the daily grind. Then, two days later, I had six full days off for Thanksgiving and it was glorious! I still haven't caught up on everything at all...in fact, I'm not even close! But, it's been really helpful to break the grinding daily cycle.
What is the grinding daily cycle? I wrote it down when Hannah was a baby and when I looked back later on I was surprised and thought "no wonder I was so tired."... so with Lily and Hannah -
Daniel wakes at 4:30 and walks the dogs on a fairly long walk through the neighborhood/woods. Then he has a few minutes to himself, works out and then runs 5 miles, making sure to get back to the house by 6:30 am. I wake up at 5:30 (unless Lily woke up when she heard Daniel and the dogs at 4:30) and feed Lily and put her back in her crib or try to slip out of our bed with her still sleeping. Occasionally she's *up for the morning* which complicates things significantly, especially since we have spent the last 3-4 months in the uber clingy phase. I hop in the shower, get dressed, make coffee, dry my hair, throw stuff in my lunch bag, and try to make it out of the door by 6:30. Sounds simple...but some days I make it out without Lily waking at all and pump in the car. Other days Lily is awake the whole time and I've changed dirty diapers and gotten her dressed. Other days Lily has showered with me. The craziest are the ones in which I am right on schedule to get ready for work by 6:30 and then in the last fifteen minutes Lily wakes up and needs to be fed. Lily crying at 6:21 is perilous and spells doom for an on time arrival.
At 6:30 am, Daniel showers, wakes up Hannah and gives her breakfast, gets himself breakfast, gets himself dressed, gets Hannah dressed, gets Lily dressed and somehow makes it out of the door with his lunchbox, Hannah, Lily in the infant carrier carseat, Lily's bottle and food bag, any diapers or wipes we are sending, and whatever menagerie of objects Hannah is favoring this week and *has* to have in the car for their three minute drive. He drives them to daycare/preschool (same location) drops them both off and heads to work.
If I leave at 6:30, ideally I am at work at 7:30...but fog, rain, drizzle, mist, or fender benders often dictate otherwise. My morning commute into DC is stop and go traffic for 19 miles and takes anywhere between 50-90 minutes. I put my makeup on at stop lights, drink coffee and water, and sometimes pump while I'm driving in. Once at work I have a full day - it's been a particularly busy year and I spend my day working on long range projects, helping emergent issues as teachers and administration may stop by, call or email, managing Canvas, helping teachers learn new tools as they drop by and want to find out about something new, and prepping for and teaching my AP World class (and ugh, grading). All summer long and through first quarter it was a struggle to find enough time to pump and to eat lunch, which has gotten a little better, but it can still be challenging.
Daniel is juggling three different programs and his responsibility level on each of them have steadily been increasing (in awesome ways!, but it means more meetings and increasing time required to respond to emergent texts, phone calls and emails (he has a work phone)). He leaves work and walks the dogs through the woods and along the river and usually has anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes at home before I arrive with the girls. Meanwhile, I leave work at 4, arrive at the girls school around 5-5:15 and am usually leaving daycare with them around 5:30ish. Then it's time to nurse Lily, while Daniel gets Hannah food and pulls together our dinner. Sometimes Daniel and I can get the girls happy enough to chat a little about our day while our side dishes cook/steam/roast. Then Lily eats solid food while we sit at the dining room table to attempt to eat a family meal. Inevitably, we often are up and down 3-10 times each through a meal. Afterwards we clean up and try to get everyone to hang out downstairs to watch TV/play on the basement playground/hang out and then it's before we know it, it's bedtime for the girls. I usually get Lily changed into pajamas around 7:15 and then nurse her to sleep - she usually is asleep in the 7:30-8:00 range. Daniel has often gone to bed during this time and I get Hannah ready for bed and in her room to read a book during this time. Sometimes Daniel handles Hannah while I handle Lily, sometimes I am crazy and declare it double bath time at 6:45 or 7. It just depends, but the routines and patterns are there too.
By the time the girls are both asleep (let's say 8:30 on a good day, 9:30 on a chaotic one), the dogs are usually pacing in circles on the upstairs landing...I call it "sharking" because I feel like they are swimming around me ready to "attack" with kisses and enthusiasm when I acknowledge their impending walk. We head out for a walk around the neighborhood. Once that is over, then I have to prep bottles and baby food and any other things the girls need for school (more wipes/diapers/spare clothes for our potty training child, etc); make sure I have clean and sterilized pump and bottle parts for the next day; and clean and sterilize the bottles and pump parts from that current day. If there's lunches to pack I tackle that too, but the past month we hit a wall and we've been eating at work a lot to make things easier on ourselves. I also caved and bought some baby food - I made all of Hannah's, but as Lily transitioned to solids and I started making food again, I just couldn't quite keep up and something had to give. I decided I cared more about still nursing than about not pureeing things I steamed myself. She'll be into table food soon enough as it is and shows more interest in it daily.
Sometimes there's dishes to do, I always check the living room and tidy up and do roomba damage control (aka make sure there aren’t things in his path/on the floor that could hurt him). Lately, I usually open the packages that arrived with Christmas presents, consolidate them and move them down to the basement, turn over laundry, etc. It's usually 9:30 -10:30 before I am maybe nearing an end, but a few months ago Lily was on a later schedule and it was more like 11! So at 10 or 10:30, some nights 11, if I wanted any time to myself or computer time to shop online and make sure we stay amazon stocked and bills stay paid, or if I need to take the time to solidify weekend plans, all of it is after 10 or 10:30. I'm trying to get to bed earlier, but the past few months it's been 11:30ish when I crawl in...and when I'm getting up at 5:30...with broken sleep (Lily usually wakes one solid time between 1 and 3:30 am) at that, it's adding up. Our days are very full, I have very very minimal time for myself or anything I would like to do, and if we are behind on things I can only really catch up at the rate of 15-45 minutes per night (and at that point I’m exhaustedly trying to focus).
It’s been a very tough pace to maintain and we are definitely struggling and taking things one day at a time. But each time I feel really overwhelmed, I have to remind myself to stop and think about which major time gobblers are temporary and many of them are. (Pumping, bottles, etc) - everything surrounding nursing is temporary. And even if I continue nursing morning, late afternoon and evening, come April I’m 100% done with daytime and pumping at work.
And that is a day.
Some random musings this month -
Hannah's been very cute lately - whenever we ask her what she would like for Christmas she says "PINK!...Pink toys!"
Lily is so quick to burst into huge, two-bottom-teethy grins. She loves to laugh with Hannah, but also lights up whenever she sees her Dad. She's also very specific while eating - water, then food, then water, then cereal, then water...but she's the only one who knows the sequence and she screams and shrieks if we don't include water...the other day the secret desire (that was causing much shrieking) was her will to hold the pouch I was trying to feed her, so she could feed herself...at 7 months. Independent much?!
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| She *INSISTS* on holding her own food |
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| Hannah excited to go check out Christmas decorations at the Gaylord National Harbor Ice Show |
Hannah Talk -
Hannah tonight on the way home: No dinosaurs in the car
Me - nope no dinosaurs in this car
H- dinosaurs in the other cars
Me - oh okay
H - T-Rex is mean he's very not nice
Me- you're right Hannah, of the dinosaurs here's not nice
H - no dinosaurs in the house
Me- nope no dinosaurs in our house. We have dinosaur repellent.
Hannah (quickly switching subjects) - no bears in the car! Bears in the woods! (Only bears is "bay-yahs") 😂❤️
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| Hannah @ 2.75 years |
There is a selfish, silly part of me that half wishes she never learns out to say "r's" because it's so ridiculously endearing.
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| We applied for Lily's passport today and then bravely went out to lunch! |
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| Natasha visited us at the Gaylord National Harbor Ice Show! |
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| Heading into the sub-zero ice room |
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| Roaring like the ice sculpture tiger |
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| Christmas pictures we took of Lily and Hannah |
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| Hannah playing with our advent ornament tree |
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| Snoozing in her stroller - how Grandma handles nap time |
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| Hannah & Savannah went to a Christmas show...we made it halfway through - that's good, right? |
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| How we got the Christmas tree home on our car |
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| Gearing up to hike with Lily and the puppies |
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| Having fun at Logan's first birthday party |
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| enjoying the Christmas tree and decorations! |
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| Hannah really enjoyed rearranging some of the ornaments |
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| Hannah had requested pink ornaments - before I even unpacked ornaments, I had pick up the pink doll ornament for her. When I got our ornaments out I discovered that there was an ornament that was a gift from Aunt Mary-Michele last January, the green outfit, red-haired doll one - the second Hannah saw them she exclaimed 'Hannah & Lily!!!" |
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| :) Admiring their tree |
Christmas Time:
As we’ve decorated for Christmas, Hannah has loved all the lights and ornaments and decorations and has been so excited! The first night we had the tree up and decorated, as I was ushering her up the stairs, she stopped on the stairs, pointed to the tree and wistfully said “look mommy, Christmas!!” *my heart*
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| Our family of four @ 8 months! :) |
It's been a busy month of holiday festivities and fun - month 8 is in the books and we are excited for the rapidly approaching Christmas holiday in which we will all cozy up as a family and enjoy the long weekend together.
