clover at 17 months

if you're a parent you understand the whole saying their age by weeks or months and if you're not I know it can be weird or annoying but whatever. clover is 17 months on the 19th. I think. she is a treat and a half. so awesome. her hair is coming in more, especially in the back. it's so light! but I'm thinking it may have some curliest to it. she has these great brows that she furrows a lot she makes a hilarious skeptical or mad face. she does this out and about a lot or is completely passive so people often never suspect she has her chatty screechy dancy laughy moods too. she loves to dance! she started walking about a month ago and is doing well, is way more bold than saylor was at this age. by that I means she climbs and stands on chairs and climbs up playgrounds.she's still yet to hit 20 pounds. has her 9&10th teeth coming in on the bottom. still likes to be worn, I put her in the ergo and we both love it. she goes to bed at like 615 give or take and I get her up in the morning around 8ish. nurses once in the morning. down to one nap and it's only like hour to hour and a half but I will leave her in there for 2 sometimes, she has. books and toys in her crib and always wakes up happy and just rollin around. saylor tries to play with her and she often wld end up falling over or just screaming cuz he takes a toy or whatever but I feel like she's finally starting to interact better and roughhouse with him some more. she loves to rip off me or colins glasses, as do all kids, but then she smiles, waves and says hi. what the heck?! other words she says are 'byebye, nigh-night, all done, mama, dada, she signs please, bappul (apple), wawa (water), up,no, nods her head yes all the time, and lots of gibberish that I know are some real words in there somewhere. she knows all her body parts and knows what a sheep,lion,cat and dog say. and sometimes a few more. and she's left handed! I'm so stoked about that. she loves books, her blanky, raspberries/blueberries, feeding herself, taking baths, and jewelry! looooves accessories like I've never seen in a child before and likes shoes and clothes as well. all in all she's delicious and we are head over heels for her! this is such a fun age.

may

clover will be one on thursday! it went by.. so. so. fast. that was crazy. she's delicious. colin's mom just pulled out a bunch of baby pictures of colin and OH my gosh i didn't realize that she IS colin. saylor is me and i'm walking around holding a baby girl colin it's wild. she currently has 3 teeth and just started actually crawling in the last few days. girl's been taking her time. i think she pulled herself up to standing once, but i missed it and now i'm starting to doubt it and wonder if i'm the one who put her there standing.. but it's all good i like that she stays put, shoot i'm enjoying it while it lasts. she loves to wave, hug and kiss, so big, and can sign nurse, all done, play, and please although we are still prompting those [besides wave/hug/nurse], she is not really communicating her needs just yet. she makes a whistle type face a lot, likes to dance, has just learned to drink from a straw and is finally laughing at saylor's attacks more than crying.

heather had baby cohen on thursday which defined a wonderful weekend of excitement and love. i walked in their room to see him and just cried and cried and oh my gosh how i love pregnancy/birth/babies. that. may be my passion.[wanna bea doula!] oh the weight of his presence, sweet little burrito i love him so! heather is doing amazing too i'm so excited for her. and at this moment linzi is in labor as well!!! the adrenaline from it all is funny i'm so hyped up and exhausted at the same time. had some of my bffs over saturday night and it was one of those perfect nights of hilarious and deep convos that went on for hours. i love love love my girlfriends. i feel like i see them a lot but there was something sweet about that night it was just special for all of us i think.

i'm on this candida cleanse/diet thing.. for almost a month now and it's annoying but i think it's been helping with the health problems i've had for the past two years. it's nice to finally have a doctor that's diving in, very thorough and willing to find the root and bring me back to good health. i am sugar, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, dairy, corn, soy, and peanut free [and more..no mushrooms no peas no bananas no oranges it goes on and on]. it is SAD. fortunately we eat pretty healthy and i am already used to eating fresh produce and such.. so in that sense it's not difficult, i am creative and feel like i have plenty to eat.. but oh oh oh i miss coffee and ice cream and bread. and cheese. i am taking a high dose of nystatin for about a month and then i plan to switch to doterra's GX assist and hopefully start to be more flexible in my diet. i do suggest if you aren't feeling well in any way- do an elimination diet for a few weeks! we don't realize how things can affect us. and it's nice to kinda cleanse your body in a way. it's also a discipline that forces you to be more aware of what you are eating which is good because we feed ourselves crap a lot. food is to be celebrated and enjoyed and it's community and love and delicious..but it's also fuel. food keeps us healthy and vital and strong and the wrong foods can make us sickly, diseased, depressed, etc... all stuff we know but so hard to put into action. anyhow this is all common knowledge i'm just rambling...

things i'm loving:

1.new babies!!!

2.words with friends, always

3.terra chips and homemade hummus

4. my son's constant questions and his random accent he has lately

5. free haircuts from jayme

6.laughing at tina fey's new book

7.the last few episodes of oprah!

8. walking outside with friends. and target and easton. to 'return something' because we always seem to have things to return.

9.amazon. love. amazon.

10.fascinated/warm fuzzies watching clover's sweet little calculated crawls

11.the warm weather and my husband's garden and his cuteness with his shorts and tan

clover at 12 weeks

clover at 12 weeks:
**wakes up twice a night. for awhile she just woke once, but now she's waking twice again- she goes to bed between 730-830, wakes up around 1-3 and then around 4-6 and up for the day between 730-830. she has NOT ONCE CRIED at night. and she has not once been wide awake in the middle of the night! too incredible. she wakes cuz she's moving around [breaking an arm out of the miracle blanket] she grunts and roots, i feed her for a good 10 minutes and she's back to sleep.
**she's still in the packnplay next to us and i can't even picture how it's going to work when she shares a room with saylor. i will wait until she's waking up only once or not at all and probably until she's not swaddled anymore... bedtime will be easier than naps. mainly because this girl does not nap! she just takes many 10-40 minute naps throughout the day.. part of me feels like i need to start 'training' her to sleep, but most of me isn't worried about it for now. i didn't take notice of saylor's sleep patterns until he was 5 months or so- i don't think there really was a pattern until then.
**her favorite place in the world is the swing. loves loves loves it. sleeps in there, hangs out awake and watches us.. happy as a clam for hours. i keep putting her in there at the start of her bedtime but i don't want her dependent on the swing for sleep so i've been decreasing the setting so it moves slower and slower. ha! baby steps...
**she is 12 pounds, looking chunky yet petite at the same time. still not fitting in most of her 3mo outfits! she eats like a bird, polite and passive, as compared to saylors horse eating crazy chomping. rarely spits up but has still managed to spit up on like 3 people and i go 'oh my gosh she never spits up!' and they say 'you keep saying that but...'
**last week at 11 weeks and one day she laughed for the first time while we were viisiting our friend meredith [who just had baby marlo!] so of course all we've been doing since is trying to get the girl to laugh. she is very quick with a smile now and will give a huge dimply smile to anyone who says hi to her.
**so laid back, will let anyone hold her [of course at this age]. we can keep her in church and she'll just sit on our laps lookin' around though i don't expect that to last much longer, she's been cooing/talking more and more.
**our friend erin made us these little lovey blankets with tags on them, i put one in her lap all the time and she loves them. grabs them, clings to them, holds them to her faces and sucks all over them. she works so hard to get ahold of it and put it in her mouth! so cute.
**yesterday we really noticed she was trying really hard to reach out to touch a toy. their whole body moves around when they are working on something [smiling, talking, etc] it's so cute! her left arm seems to have more control than her right and that's the one she's trying to touch things with so i'm saying she's gonna be left handed :)
we got iphones! long overdue but it was hard to leave verizon.. my one concern is the reception at&t has, especially if colin starts traveling again. we know lots of guys who have had issues with that... argh. but we got the new ones so we have face2face so that will be fun to use. and i'm so in love with it it's crazy. i feel like i'm carrying around my mac! it's too cool.... i mean, i'm playing games of scrabble right now with friends on my phone. SOLD! haha. i'm very excited about having better quality pictures and storage of pictures and video.. still figuring it out but it's fun. not sure why this video is showing such a small screen... but yah, that's a little bit of her honky laugh.

on another note our community of friends and church have been hit with some intense pain and sadness as of late. it's been surreal.. brokenness and spiritual attack, cancer and sickness, parents sick and dying, marriages hurting and the like. everyone is working hard to love and give and help in what ways we can, but many things aren't fixable or controllable. we have to walk it out and it hurts. prayers are appreciated for my friends. thank you.



i swear saylor gets more attractive every day


she loves to lift those legs up! working on rolling over soon

rocking clover

i'm holding my little peanut with one arm and leg and typing with one hand. clover is 4 weeks old as of yesterday and doing amazing. she still is quite chill and easygoing.
milestones- well not really milestones but a description of clover at 4 weeks-
she's around 9 and a half pounds, i think [from weighing myself and then weighing again holding her]
20 inches [my mom and i measured her because she looks so much longer!]
besides her 5 hr stretch of night sleep when she was still jaundiced, her longest stretch has been 4 and a half hours. she's had two 4 hour stretches... but it's usually 2-3 hours still with occasional 3 and a half.. or 1 hour stretches! first thing i do when i hear her grunting and rooting around is look at the time. sometimes she grunts for awhile and falls back asleep for a few minutes so yes... i'm awake a lot. but thankfully she hasn't cried at night yet so that's cool. i am very tired but it's manageable. my back hurts so bad though! just from rocking her and nursing her in awkward positions. argh.
didn't starting spitting up until 2 days ago, i thought i was home free! and then it started. not too much though..so far.
she really is so great at just laying around and looking about during her awake periods. she of course sometimes gets restless like she can't get comfortable and starts fussing a little- she often does this from around 8-10 before falling asleep for the night. and THIS is when i bust out my skills that we learned from the happiest baby on the block. this book is a MUST READ for anyone with a newborn! we have the book of course, and today i just watched the dvd of it... so good! love harvey karp.
is grunting and hooting and hiccuping still, but less often.i love the hoots.
ok i started using two hands but she started fussing so back to one hand i go.
my sweet girl. i love having a daughter. having a second baby has felt SO different to me, i'm constantly reflecting on how it feels. i didn't feel like i instantly bonded to her, but i still felt crazy love for her. hard to explain. i think it's partly because i've gotten to know saylor for 3 years..i don't know, it wasn't as emotional or overwhelming so it felt more nonchalant? like when saylor was 2 weeks old i could barely stand to be in a different room with him, but when clover was only a few days old i easily left her to go get ice cream with saylor.. but i'm loving how easy it feels.. anyway i've talked to some other mom friends who can relate. one friend said for awhile whenever there would be something sad about children on tv or something she would only think of her first child and not her second and it worried her that she loved her first child more- but of course this changed, particularly as her second child grew and his personality emerged. regardless, i haven't been concerned about my feelings, it was just interesting. and it's been fun falling in love with her. at first it was like i kept trying to figure out what she looked like.. and now she is so beautiful and lovely to me, like i'm getting to know her...mmmm and it's good.
aaand she's asleep now, down for the night.

she has had two baths so far and she loves them!
oh and some saylor quotes..
'mommy, did god make my nipples?'
'amber loves our tire swing and you know what else she loves? our red couch. let's talk about mailboxes'

making a pb&j all by himself he said 'am i a grownup now?