Jenna has a stamp that she got on Halloween from a church festival we went to. It’s a cross with the letters “WWJD” on it. Today she had stamped her hand, and Jay was explaining to her what the letters were and what they meant. He said “W, W, J,” and was interrupted by Jenna saying “W, W, dot com.”

They learn so early…

Hard to believe my little angel face is 9 months old. We had her 9 month checkup yesterday and all is well. She is 19.6 lbs (65th %), 27 1/4 ” long (45th %) and her head is 45 cm (80th %). So she’s average, but much smaller than her sister was at this age. Those doctor appointments wear me out when I have both of them! Jenna likes to pick up EVERYTHING, turn off all light switches, and take stuff out of the doctor’s pocket. I feel like I’m always saying “Jenna, don’t!” “Jenna, no!” “Jenna, please stop.” I don’t want her to lose her curiosity, but give it a rest! When I am lugging Sarah around, along with the diaper bag, my purse, the papers that Sarah is trying to chew on, and the cans of formula I swiped from the shelf, disciplining Jenna while trying to pay for the appointment wears me out.

I digress. Sarah has personality bursting out of her little body. I don’t know why they say “bouncing baby boy,” because this girl loves to bounce. Put her in her ‘johnny jumper’ and she’s happy as a clam. Usually. She goes crazy in that thing. I have videos, but I’m too lazy to post now. She also loves to pull up on things.

I think she is going to follow in her sister’s footsteps (pun intended!) and skip the crawling and go straight to walking.She is sort of crawling. She has her unique way of getting from point A to point B, which is basically crawling a few inches, rolling into a sit, and repeating. She also loves to be outside.

She loves to eat, but she does NOT like bananas, and she does NOT like when I leave. Still very attached. She’s getting better, but I haven’t even attempted to take her to the gym again. Going through that effort for a 10 minute workout before they call me to come get her isn’t worth it. She is doing better at church because they work with her so much. Yay, Sarah! She does cry as soon as she sees me go to the door, but I think most babies do. The difference is that she usually doesn’t stop crying until I come back to get her. But lately she has done better so I’m seeing the light. She also does NOT like to be disciplined. Disciplining a 9-month-old? Yeah, I don’t really do that. But she has a habit of biting me, and when she does, I give her a firm “No,” which is usually followed by a massive lower lip protrusion and lots of crying with huge crocodile tears. So sad! The biting is a shoulder/arm thing. When I’m holding her, she buries her face in my shoulder, which is fine, but biting it with those razor-sharp teeth is not fine!

Today she had her first juice. It was only an ounce, mixed with 3 ounces of water. Her doctor said she needs to be getting more fluids. Since she prefers spitting water all over herself to swallowing it, I mixed a little juice in. Worked like a charm. She does love cheerios now, which is great because they keep her occupied. She can sit at the table with us and eat cheerios while we eat our dinner. So fun!

Jenna still LOVES her sister. It’s very sweet. She smothers her, pushes her down, and is always in her face. But her intentions are good! We’re always telling her to give her sister some space, but after 9 months, she still doesn’t quite get it. Well, at least Sarah is tougher now and can take it. Jenna rarely shows any jealousy about the attention Sarah gets. I make a real effort to spend as much time with her as I can though. I color with her, play games, read, and hug on her a lot, which doesn’t hurt. But when I pick her up from preschool or when we say goodnight or go anywhere, really, she is quick to hug and kiss Sarah, introduce her, or ask about her if she’s not there.

It’s funny–that’s one of the few pictures in which Jenna is not squeezing the life out of her sister, but it’s also one of the few with both of them smiling. Ahhh, sweet girls. I love ‘em!

I got a babysitter today. This is the first time I’ve ever had a babysitter come to the house. I love her. She is my hero.

Initially, I asked her to come today because I anticipated having a lot of work to do. It’s the proverbial carrot dangled in front of my face. Lots of work–oh, wait, maybe not. In this case, there were technial glitches that made it impossible for me to do what I needed to do, on a schedule that was already behind. So they gave it to someone else, but there will be more. I decided to have her come anyway, so we could try it out. I am astonished. Sarah is not crying. I have been in the office almost 3 hours, coming out only to put Sarah down for her nap and get her bottle ready, since I didn’t tell her (Jessica) where the stuff was. Sarah has not cried. At all. This is the first time Sarah has ever been left with someone else and has not cried. I have never had anyone HERE before. Usually I leave her at church or with Mimi & Beebaw. She does OK with Mimi & Beebaw here, but it’s been a while and I haven’t been here to observe how she actually does.

BUT I am thrilled to know that we can have a babysitter here when I need her! I am not thrilled to pay, but I think I will hang on to this one as long as I can. Jenna loves her already and is not going to want her to leave. She told me when I came out before that she does not love me. Oh, well, the first of many of those!

I think if I posted as regularly as I should, I would start every post the same way. We are in trouble. Sarah’s personality is shining through, and she’s full of it! Last night at dinner, she was sitting in her booster seat (we decided against the big high chair) and was playing with a bracelet of Jenna’s. There was a pipe cleaner sticking out, so Jay took it away from her to bend it around so it wasn’t sharp. She FREAKED.OUT. Screaming, read face, the whole works. Well, as soon as he gave it back to her, it was like a switch. No screaming, face returned to normal color, and she happily babbled and stuck the thing in her mouth. I would call that her first tantrum. We are in trouble.

It makes me sad how much times goes by between these posts. 2 months with no documentation. Everyone knows the first year flies by, and how much change happens every day. And Jenna will be 4 next time I blink.

I am resolving to be better about this because facebook can’t be archived. I want the girls to read this one day and know how their young childhood was. And how I was.

Sarah is so awesome. She cracks me up and she is so sweet and cuddly. She’s into a shrieking phase. She has found her voice in a different way than Jenna ever did. She still loves bouncing from the doorway in her bouncy, and playing on the floor. She rolls around, but isn’t crawling yet. She wants to so bad. She will pull herself up on the coffee table though, so I think she’ll follow in her sister’s footsteps and go straight from sitting and rolling to walking. Not for a while though. I am not encouraging this mobility thing the second time around. She loves to eat. As of last week, and I am officially done nursing. She doesn’t drink nearly as much formula as the books say she should, but somehow she is still growing strong. She eats a lot of fruits and veggies. More then she should, according to “them,” but I’m fine with that. I make all her baby food and she inhales it. I feel like I can hardly keep up with her! That’s OK though.

Sarah is still way attached to me, and we’re constantly working on that. She’s getting a little better in some ways, but I still feel so sorry for those people at church and at MOPS who have to deal with her screaming every Friday & Sunday.

Jenna is her father’s daughter. That kid has energy like nobody’s business. Sometimes I don’t think she is capable of walking. I always thought all kids had as much energy, spunk, and will as she does, but a lot of people comment to me about it. Friends with kids her age, her teachers, and acquaintances without kids her age.  To say she is little miss independent would be a severe understatement. Not only does she have to do EVERYTHING herself, but she throw a fit if we try to help her. She can do a lot of things I wouldn’t think she could do at her age though, so it’s not a bad thing. She cracks us up all the time. The things that come out of her mouth are so random sometimes. I am keeping a log of the ones I think to write down, so I’m not that bad. Although she prefers to always be playing, jumping, dancing, running, singing, or climbing, she has definitely moved past her dislike of TV. I’m thrilled about it. I may not lose my sanity (what’s left of it, anyway) afterall. She is currently obsessed with Mickey Mouse. It started out with Dora, then moved to the Backyardigans, and now Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. One thing at a time. I feel very confident that within the next month, she will move on to something else, which makes Christmas shopping difficult at this point.

I am so proud of Jenna. She is so very sweet and has shown a big inprovement in listening. It’s still not her best skill, but she understands now that there are consequences if she ignores me. She is learning things all the time, and enjoying things like coloring, puzzles, and games. She only likes to do those things when one of us does them with her, but it won’t be long before her sister can participate in those things.

That’s the girls in a nutshell. I have been praying for a better appreciation and attitude about staying home with them because I know I am blessed to be able to do it, but sometimes I really would like my life back. I am doing a little part-time work again, and if I can work out babysitting, that should be a big addition to life. But this week has been an eye-opener and has led to a newfound appreciation for staying home with my babies. I have one good example and one bad example of that:

First, the good. I took the girls to the zoo Monday. Just the 3 of us. We had the best time. Jenna cooperated, listened, and enjoyed looking at the animals. I genuinely loved spending that time with her. Sarah rode around in the jogging stroller and never even cried. She liked looking at everything and didn’t demand to be carried. It was super hot, but other than that it could not have been more perfect.

Now, the bad. And it’s bad. Maybe the worst moment of my life. I’m sure there will be more though. I took the girls to Academy yesterday afternoon to try shoes on Jenna. I had Sarah in the cart, in her cloth cart cover thing. We do this in all stores now, and she has never so much as pulled both legs out of the leg holes. Yesterday when I was on the floor trying shoes on Jenna, I looked up at Sarah and she was hanging halfway over the side, about to fall on her head. I jumped up and tried to grab her, but I was one second too late. I watched her fall onto her head on the tile floor. I immediately grabbed her and tried to console her. She let out one cry, but hesitated a long time before taking that breath back in, and then went pale and limp. I panicked and was just trying to get her to respond to me, when an onlooker asked if she should call 911. I said yes, so she did and it was probably 5 minutes that she was talking to them and I was trying to get Sarah to open her eyes or cry. She was trying to open her eyes, but they were kind of rolling back and she wouldn’t cry. It was the scariest thing I can think of because at that moment I really didn’t know if she would be OK. In those minutes that the lady was on the call, Sarah did start crying, though kind of quietly at first. Then she started crying harder, and I was very happy about that. By the time the paramedics got there, her eyes were open enough that I could see her pupils looked normal. She stopped crying and just got quiet and clingy. They checked her out and said she seemed fine, and gave me several signs to look for. When we got home, she seemed very lethargic and just not herself. She had long blinks and wasn’t very responsive to smiling like she normally is. She is normally a very happy baby (as long as I’m around!). Jay was home at that time, and agreed that she was not normal and we decided we should probably take her to the ER. My mom was going to come stay with Jenna while we went, but by the time she got there, Sarah started to act pretty normal. I fed her and she ate  normally. She was smiling again, playing on the floor, and didn’t seem so tired. A pediatrician friend of ours recommended that we take her to get scanned anyway, since it was such a long fall onto such a hard floor. We called Dell Children’s and after an hour, finally got to talk to a nurse. She asked me tons of questions and seemed really surprised there were no bumps or anything. In spite of that, she recommended we take her in. So we did, and we were among hundreds of flu patients. We though this is great–she may be fine, but she may end up getting the flu after this!  After a couple of hours of waiting, we decided to leave. It was still going to be hours before we were seen, and she was not showing any signs that they told us were dangerous. Both the paramedics and the nurse confirmed that it is not dangerous for her to sleep–that’s an old wives’ tale. So we talked to a very helpful nurse at the ER who said chances are that if we did get seen, they would not do anything except tell us what to watch for. We jostled her a couple of times during the night to make sure she was conscious, and then this morning she woke up as her usual, happy, hungry self. Ever since then, she’s been fine. The nurse on the phone told me that sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for symptoms to appear if there is bleeding on the brain, and that still has me freaked out. But since she is so normal, I really think God is just looking out for her and she is fine. That’s what most of my brain says…the other part can’t stop playing that horrible falling moment over & over, and thinking she can’t possibly come away from that without so much as a scratch on her head. BTW, the helpful nurse did tell us that sometimes kids will go into shock when something like that happens, and they’ll get pale & quiet. He said that before we even told him about her initial reaction, so that helps settle my mind tremendously.

Long, LOOOONG story, but both of those things make me appreciate my girls so much. I love getting to spend so much time with them and these things make me not take it for granted.

Seriously, she’s 6 months old today. How did that happen? I’ve given up trying to post regularly, but I’ll try to make up for lost time. I’m trying to cut down on facebook anyway, and I am still under the delusion that I really will archive this for the girls’ later viewing.

Sarah has hit a magic age. Ahh, 6 months. She is much happier. But so big! I look back at those early pictures of her first few weeks and I want to cry. One one hand, life is much better now than it was then. But she is getting too big!!!

We have her 6 month appointment this week, so I’ll get her stats. But I know she weighs about 18 pounds because when we took Jenna to the doctor last week, we stuck her on the scale. We took Jenna on a Sunday because she had swollen tonsils, but it turns out it wasn’t the strep she’d had a few weeks before that. It took a $12 triage phone call and a $35 “urgent care” co-pay to figure out there was nothing wrong with her. Anyway.

It took a good 5 months for Sarah to quit crying every.single.evening for no apparent reason. So exhausting. But now the colic is done and she is like a new baby. She did find her thumb, and routinely uses it to soothe herself. It’s good because she can soothe herself, but I don’t know how we’ll break that. Jenna never sucked her thumb, but she had a paci till she was 3.

Sarah is not drooling quite as much as she was in the few previous months, but she now has a tooth! Her very own bottom tooth poking through the gum. I am still breastfeeding, but when those top teeth come in, I may need to rethink that. We started giving her rice cereal about a month ago, and now I have started mixing baby food fruit in it. I am making most of her baby food, but now comes the fun part when I actually get to start feeding it to her.

Sarah rolled over for the first time July 2. She now loves to roll from back to front, but can’t seem to get back over. She loves to bounce in her johnny jumper thing, and also she loves to hang out in the bumbo. I love it, too! Her thighs are getting too chunky for it though. She won’t last too much longer in it, I think, but she’ll be sitting up on her own and we can sit her in a booster seat. She sits pretty well now, but falls over. She probably has another month or so before she’ll be able to sit unassisted. I am loving this pre-mobile time right now! Bath time is another fun time of day. She really likes her bath. She got a little too big for the infant tub though, so now she gets her bath in the kitchen sink.

I don’t remember this baby time flying by so fast with Jenna. I also don’t remember loving it so much. I just don’t get tired of holding Sarah. Ever. And I am with her all day long. I guess I just know it goes by fast and she’s our last one. I do get tired of her waking us up in her middle-of-the night I’m-not-happy-and-I-need-you-to-feed-me-so-I-can-go-back-to-sleep fits, but hey, you take the good with the bad. It’s easier for me to nurse her back to sleep than to deal with her crying and waking up Jenna. It’s a recipe for disaster later, I’m sure, but I’ll deal with that when I need to. It doesn’t happen every night.

On to Jenna. What to say about Jenna? She has got to be the most stubborn kid on the planet. People always told me 3 was worse than 2. When Jenna was 2, I remember thinking no, that can’t be. But now I know that it really is worse. People with 2-year-olds ask me how is it worse? I can’t really explain it. I guess she is just smarter about her defiance now. She makes me crazy. Sometimes, in a matter of 30 seconds, I can go from wanting to lock myself in a room in the fetal position with my fingers in my ears to hugging her and telling her how much I love her.

She is non-stop all day. One of our friends (incidentally, the father of a 3-year-old), recently told her “Jenna, your energy level is through the roof.” She just smiled and said “Oh, thank you.” She does crack me up. Sometimes Jay & I have to keep from laughing. Like the other day when I asked if she was done eating. She looked at her plate and said “Does it LOOK like I’m done eating?” The girl does love to eat, but only if it’s something good. Veggies, not so much. Chocolate? She goes ape for chocolate. She has a certain way of saying “chocolate.” She smiles, scrunches her nose, and drags it out. I wish I could get it on video…I’ll have to make that a goal.

Jenna has to do everything herself. EVERYTHING. She insists, and if she can’t do whatever it is that she insists on doing herself, she gets frustrated and cries. But she won’t ask for help, and if I try to help her, she throws a fit. Ahhhh, 3. The upside of that is that by now, she has learned how to open the car door, get in, close the door, and buckle herself in the car seat. She can also unbuckle herself, but I won’t go into that. She loves to do new things. She loves her gymnastics class, her Mother’s Day out (so do I!), her playdates, parks, going for walks, picking flowers, running aimlessly anywhere and everywhere, climbing, and swimming.

We got an above-ground pool in our back yard and it has been wonderful. We have great family time in there, and with the temps above 100 almost every day, it’s so refreshing. It’s so cold, in fact, that Jenna hasn’t wanted to get in lately. That’s kind of surprising, but the girl is full of surprises. She still likes bath time, and I look forward to the day she & Sarah can take baths together.

Jenna continues to be clumsy, just like her mama. Poor kid is always falling down. Sometimes it’s like she doesn’t even notice that she has just fallen on her face. It happens several times a day. Several times an hour. She can fall down when she’s just standing there. That takes talent, doesn’t it? I hate to laugh, but sometimes I can’t help it. She does make me laugh a lot. It’s fun to have conversations with her because she has quite the imagination. And I can see her mind working when I ask her questions. She does talk a lot. A LOT. Like, all the time. Jay & I can’t have a conversation because she’s always interrupting. We’ve been working on that. So instead of interrupting, she’ll just sing really loud or something. One thing that makes me really happy is that she has taken an interest in TV. Is that supposed to make a mom happy? She has gone through her phases, but overall she just hasn’t been interested. Even on road trips, she wants nothing to do with the DVD player in the car. In fact, last trip, we had it positioned so Sarah could watch Baby Einstein on it. Anyway, lately Jenna is really into the Backyardigans. She would watch 6 episodes in a row if I would let her. I haven’t gone that far, but I have let her watch 3. Then the guilt sets in. As much as I love having some time without her attached to my heels, I’m still her mom.

Nobody reads this anymore, but I’ll jot these stats down anyway. I really DO plan to archive this someday for the girls to read. We had Sarah’s 4-month checkup yesterday and it went well. She didn’t even cry when she got her vaccinations! Tough girl. Her weight is 16 lbs, 8 ounces, which is exactly double her birth weight. That puts her in the 95-97th percentile. Jenna was always at (or above) the 97th, so Sarah’s following in her footsteps. She is 24″ long, which is the 50th percentile, adn her head circumference is 42″. 75th %. Big, healthy girl. With her appetite, I’m not really surprised. She’s been eating about every hour & a half. I guess she’s very efficient because she doesn’t eat for long, though. Still–it’s not too convenient for me to have to nurse her everywhere we go.

Speaking of nursing, I’m seeing definite advantages to bottle feeding. Jay & I tried to go out to dinner last Friday, but we had to cut it short b/c little chunky monkey wouldn’t take a bottle. My mom called (with screaming in the background) and said she absolutely won’t take the bottle, so we headed home. Once I fed her, she was fine. Actually, once I took her, she was fine. I guess she’s got a little attachment thing going on. So we’re trying to mix in a bottle more often, but it seems like so much work. There’s the whole milk supply issue then. I said from the beginning that I wanted to nurse her for 6 months. Now we’re into the 5th, but I went through such hell to get started that I don’t know if I want to stop that soon. We’ll see.

Hmmm. She is not sitting up yet, but she rocks the bumbo like nobody’s business. Whoever invented that thing is a genius. She also likes the bouncy thing (johnny jumper?), and she likes to lay on her back under the arch thing with the mobile to look at. Today, she even fell asleep like that. No crying or anything! I think it’s safe to say we’re FINALLY past the colic. EVERY NIGHT she would scream off & on for hours for the first 3 months and well into the fourth. But now, she usually gets fussy due to being over tired, but she’ll go to sleep around 9. Sometimes she even goes to sleep after we put her in her crib awake! That’s new for us because Jenna never, ever did that. Not until she was almost a year old! She also sleeps on her back–something Jenna never did. We are really lucky because she also sleeps through the night. Ever since she was about 2 months old,she started sleeping 7, 8, 9, sometimes even 10 hours at a stretch! She has been regressing a bit lately, but she’ll still sleep 7 hours at a time. I don’t mind getting up to feed her at 4 or 5 am, as long as she goes back to sleep. That’s not always the case, but usually it is.

Sarah is a drooling machine. She has been into blowing spit bubbles lately and making cute “motor” sounds. I love it. I need to get that on video. But she constantly has a bib on, otherwise her clothes will be soaked. I love “talking” to her. If I say hi or make sounds, she’ll coo back at me. So cute. I love having her around. I never get sick of her. I don’t remember that from before and I’m not sure why. Maybe because we know she’s our last? Even when she’s frustratingly fussy, she’s not as frustrating as Jenna on a good day. Am I allowed to say that? I love Jenna but I can’t handle her 24/7! Still–I miss her when she’s not around. But this post is about Sarah.

I don’t want to take the time to upload pictures now, and in fact there’s never really a good time to do that. But I will. I promise.

People have told me that 3 is worse than 2. I hope what I am seeing is not an indicator that these people are right.

Good gracious, I often wonder why I bother even keeping this blog. I am supposed to be working right now, but Sarah is screaming like someone is pulling out her toenails, and I really can’t concentrate through that. Poor Jay. I’ll blog till the screaming stops.

Anyway, I have been busy with work. Not busy compared to when I was working full-time of course, but busy when I’m cramming it on top of the 2 kids and everything that comes with that. But those girls change a lot and I have been bad about recording the details of their lives. BAD mama.

Jenna cracks me up lately, while simultaneously making me want to run from the house screaming. That girl never stops. I honestly don’t think she is capable of sitting still, being quiet, or listening unless she’s really tired or really motivated. How can such a little person make so much noise? She is constantly talking or singing. Constantly. No, I mean constantly. She doesn’t even know what she’s saying half the time.
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
” What?”
“Um, I um, my fingernail polish is coming off.”

Whatever she can think of to say, that’s what she’ll say. But someday she won’t want to talk to me at all, so I should be enjoying this. But ALL.DAY.LONG. Uggh. Sometimes she does say really funny things. The other day we were at a friend’s house and she had her finger in her nose.
Me: Do you need a tissue?
Jenna: No, I just pushing the boogers back in.

Her latest phrase is “Are you kidding me?” She says that anytime she thinks something is wrong. It’s really hard not to laugh at it when we come home and see something Maggie the dog has destroyed and Jenna says “Are you kidding me? Look at this mess.”Ahhh, toddlers. She will be 3 in 2 weeks and she is very excited about her little birthday party. I wish I was as excited about it.

Jenna loves to do everything by herself. EVERYTHING. Unless, of course, she wants attention. A week or 2 after she got potty trained, she started having accidents all the time. Only they weren’t accidents. They were an attempt to get our attention, and get our attention they did. But I started to not give her attention at all. She would say “Mommy, I went pee pee in my pants.” And I would say “Well, you better clean it up” without any inflection. I guess eventually she decided she wasn’t going to get the attention she wanted, so she doesn’t do that anymore. Well, at least not for the past week or so. She has had a couple of genuine accidents where she didn’t quite make it to the potty in time, but I don’t think she’s doing the on purpose thing anymore. As far as everything else–I can’t do anything in front of her without her saying “I WANT TO DO IT!” Good for her independence…bad for my sanity. Even opening a door. If I open it before she insists she wants to do it, a tantrum usually follows. Good times.

Sarah is growing, growing, growing. I thought she had gotten better about the evening crying until this evening. I guess she’s just having more good nights than she used to. She is rocking the nighttime sleeping, though! She sleeps 8-9 hours most nights. Amazing. We lucked out with that. If she doesn’t sleep enough during the day, she is especially fussy at night. Overtired, I guess. She smiles a lot now. It’s getting to the point where I feel like I should be getting her on a schedule or doing something with her other than what I’m doing. I don’t remember what we did with Jenna. Should have been more detailed in the blog! Maybe I was–I haven’t even looked at it. But we just started laying her on her back more and putting her in the jumperoo. Up until about a week ago, she was either being held, or in her swing. She is not such a fan of being put down. Probably my fault. I know she’s our last, so I hold her as much as I can. Hard to do when I have a toddler to take care of, so that’s where the swing comes in. Soon she’ll start taking an interest in toys, and even sitting up!

Jenna loves Sarah. I am blessed in that way also. She is jealous of the attention I give Sarah, but she doesn’t try to stop me from doing it. When Sarah cries, Jenna says “Mommy, Sarah is hungry. You need to feed her.” It’s very sweet.

I haven’t been taking enough pictures, but I’ve been taking some. It just takes too long to upload them and post them!

The crying seems to have stopped…hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go.