2 Months!

It's almost hard to believe that Miss Stella is already two month's old. But, she is!

A bit about this time for Stella:
- weighs 11 pounds 15 ounces
- 23 inches in length
- loves to smile and squeal with delight
- will cough or squeak to get your attention
- sleeps about 8 hours per night, usually from 11pm until 7am
- very chill and loves to be held and/or worn and cuddled
- doesn't really love tummy time so she'll push herself up and roll over to her back or plant her forehead into the floor and screech
- won't take any pacifier but will suck on our finger or her hand
- she adores her brother and sister and the feeling is mutual

Almost Wordless Wednesday...

Love this little girl and the personality that is starting to shine through!

It's Normal

I know what I went through yesterday was totally normal mommy stuff. I'm sure it won't be the last time that I feel like a parental failure. And it's not even so much that I feel like a failure but that I feel like I was being looked at as a failure or that I must be hiding some big bad secret about our home life. Nope. I'm a pretty open book and I think that my kids have it pretty good. I just wish that the thought that maybe the stress isn't coming from home, maybe it's coming from school would have been considered. Or maybe he's just a 4 year old little boy with a lot of little boy energy. I used to suck on my hair. I chew the skin on the sides of my fingers. I can't just sit and be still. I have to be reading or researching or working on something. Sometimes I can't find the words that I want. My mind is always going. Jim bounces his feet. He twirls hair. He bites his fingernails. We tend to be the type of people that need something to do. I guess our little apple just doesn't fall too far from the tree. Anyway, he's done with school on June 11th and doesn't start back until September 20th. Over three months of vacation that we can work on redirecting some of that energy and his speech. We'll probably let him chew a bunch of gum and play the copy cat game a lot. He enjoys both of those...

So, we're just normal.

Today it poured down rain. Again. I know we live in the lush, green Pacific Northwest but man we've really had a very cold, wet spring. When I was still pregnant with Stella, I had all these little day dreams about having her outside while I weeded, or put her in the shade while I soaked up some vitamin D... those days have been few and far between and instead they've been spent doing lots and lots of laundry and dishes and cleaning up toys over and over again because we're just not getting much outdoor time at all. I was doing dishes again this afternoon and just had to laugh. I had the washer and dryer going, Stella strapped on, was doing dishes, listening to the ipod and as much as there was going on, I felt oddly centered and calm. I thought "I bet I look like a total loon." Standing and bouncing the baby while singing (poorly I'm sure) her to sleep and attempting to scrub dried on oatmeal out of bowls... I decided to set my camera on the dining room table and set the timer. It's funny to me that I don't even want to forget the mundane things...

If this is the anxiety provoking stress and chaos, I don't think I want to "fix" it.

Suck

Tonight is a sucky mommy night.

The short version is: I had Rylan's IEP meeting today. Not "we" because, understandably, they didn't want Rylan to sit through it so Jim was at home waiting for the buses. It was just your basic, see what his improvements were this year and talk about the plan for next year. He's on an IEP for speech and his speech IS improving. This time last year, he had 36 phenome errors. This year he had 19 during the assessment. He's still having trouble with his blended sounds, he drops his s's quite often, etc. etc. none of it came as a surprise to me but it was nice to see the actual number improve. So, yay! Great job Rylan and good job Speech Language Pathologist!

He's very intelligent, gets along with others, has incredible fine motor skills...

But... "you know, he licks his lips, stutters, chews on his fingers and clothes, blinks his eyes a lot, has a tough time keeping his voice at a reasonable volume..." Um, yah. We've noticed that a. lot. and I guess I asked for it when I requested that we address ways to help him diminish those nervous activities. So instead they just repeated what they told me when I asked about how to help those things earlier... 1)respond to what he is saying NOT how he is saying it 2) give him your attention when he has something to say 3) get down on his level 4) reduce stress/discipline. Here's the thing... we do all of that all the time unless he's interrupting and that should be expected. Plus that's one of the areas he needs to work on when we discussed social skills, but I digress...

As the SLP elaborated, the solution that I heard: quit being so tough on him, don't send him to timeout so much (doesn't matter what he's doing, pick just one thing that is punishable - ok, right, so timeout for hitting but I guess we'll just allow the spitting, yelling, talking back, throwing toys, kicking the dog, ignoring us, being defiant - he's 4, trust me, the list goes on) stop stressing him out at home, make sure things around him are peaceful and organized and calm...

It's a good thing that calm, mellow Stella was sitting so quietly in her infant seat as usual.
Oh wait, that's right... she screamed.
the.
entire.
time.

She started crying as soon as I set her down. So I took her out and she started fussing and crying louder. The principal (who was the district representative for the meeting) took her and walked her around the classroom while the other two talked to me but she just got herself all worked up.
By the end of the meeting, I was sweating like a pig and just wanted to sob with her. Instead, we calmly walked back to the van and I let her suck ;)

Anyway, they're cutting him back to 3 days a week next year... speech days and library day. If the schedule is the same as this year, that means Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. After some thought, I'm actually OK with that. It'll give us some non-Karleigh time (which has proven to be very good for him since she's a "tad" bossy) plus, that'll be two week days that I'll be able to get Karleigh off to school in the morning and not have to worry about getting home until almost 4pm. It will be fine. Plus, things need to change around here. I don't know how, I feel like I've tried everything but you know... if timeouts are out...

*cough cough* perhaps IEP meetings should not be attended when you're six weeks postpartum... mom could be a little hormonal. But it's there in black and white, hormones or not.

I feel like such a sucky mom. He's smart as a whip because HE'S smart. He has speech problems because of things that I'M doing wrong.

Awesome.

Wordless Wednesday

Oh... it's not Wednesday huh? Yah. I was hoping no one would notice. :) Hopefully it's a great Thursday!

Being Thursday, Stella's now 5 weeks or 35 days old... that sounds younger right? What's she up to? She's becoming more animated and starting to chunk up. I do think she's just about the cutest 10 pound bundle out there. Her eyes are getting lighter, her hair is filling in, her days are spent more awake though she's got a great schedule going on already (all her doing, I would have no idea how to put a kiddo on a schedule and probably wouldn't even try). She's sleeping anywhere between 6 1/2 and 7 1/2 hours straight at night. I certainly don't take the fact that I've been blessed with 3 really great sleepers for granted. She thoroughly enjoys the outdoors but at this point is much more content walking/hiking than she is to just lie out on a blanket. Could be that there's some slight fear for her own life between the the two bigguns and the dog bouncing all around her... but who's to say? ;-) She gets the hiccups every day and isn't a fan of them. She enjoys her swing when she just wants to chill but would prefer to snuggle. She loves listening to stories and hates pacifiers - if you know how the big kids were you're probably thinking "wha? wha? WHAT?!?" Yes it's true. Detests them. Spits them out and glares at the offender. She however loves to suck on an index finger or mommy... and I'm a pretty slow one handed typer but this blog post is proof that it can be done. She's awesome.

The big kids have 20 days of school left - not that they're counting... and then the summer fun can start. It's been hard to get out much this year with a bus coming at around 11, one at 12, one returning close to 3 and the other at 4. The kids sat down yesterday and wrote a "summer ideas" list of things both big and small from jumping rope to go to the beach. I really don't want to hear a lot of "I'm bored!" this summer. So, we'll check out some new parks in the county and hopefully get out a lot more than we have during the school year. But that's the point of summer vacation isn't it?

Also, if we get out more... perhaps these blog posts won't be so dang boring!

Catching Up

Snuggling... sure doesn't leave a whole lot of time for blogging! Although I always seem to find just enough time for Facebook...

Life with Stella is still a wonderful blessing. (of course it is!) We have slipped into a routine that works for us and feels totally natural and like it's the way it always should have been. That part leaves me feeling a bit strangely conflicted at times. I'm SO glad to have her here. She fits wonderfully into our family. That doesn't mean that I'm "glad" for all the losses that we went through but at the same time I know that without them, she wouldn't be here. That's where the conflict lies. I also feel like (and I really shouldn't let this next part bother me at. all.) but I do feel like people may look at this and think "gee, you've totally forgotten the boys and the others. Well, no I haven't, but I really don't want to miss one single moment of "what IS" pining over "what COULD have been".

I think because of what we've gone through, we are a bit more thankful, joyful, and bonded to Stella than if we hadn't gone through it all. Sure, she's (living) baby number three but far from the 'oops!' that someone at the grocery store might assume and we're far from the 'baby making machines' that someone at the park might scoff at. We fought long and hard for her. Because of that fight I find that I'm much more patient with her. I don't grumble when she needs to eat in the middle of the night (although she's also treating me quite kindly and sleeping really well. She went from 11pm - 5:30am this morning... until I prodded her to make sure she was still breathing) so I'm sure that not being exhausted helps my coping skills. Anyway, I am really enjoying every little thing about her. Being a more experienced momma and really working so hard to get her here has been a good (mental) combination for me. But a bad combination for blogging! ;-)

As you might imagine, Mother's Day this year was so nice... a sigh of relief really. The weather was beautiful, Stella started passing out little grins first thing in the morning which was an incredible gift. Jim gave me some flowers, Karleigh made a card and a bookmark, Rylan made a card and a couple of magnets (love the handmade gifts!) and my momma got me a darling Coach purse perfect for spring and summer. I know, right!?! It was so much better than last year when I ended up crying myself to sleep.

I've just been spending a whole lot of time doing... nothing. We cuddle. A. Lot! I'm trying to stay on top of the house work though I will confess that laundry is tough for me to keep up with so I haven't been using our cloth diapers as much as I had hoped but now that she's getting a bit bigger we'll be able to use them more. (fingers crossed!)

It's really strange to be moving on from such a long chapter of our lives. We've basically been thinking "kids" since we were married almost 11 years ago. It is strange knowing that we (probably) won't have another pregnancy and each day we move one day further away from labor and delivery and all things newborn. Granted, she IS still a newborn but she changes and grows every day. I'm just going to continue working on doing my best to embrace every single moment and appreciate the excitement of moving forward and watching her grow and change.

I'm hoping to share some more pics asap, Stella's getting a set of cheeks on her, Karleigh's finally growing in that other front tooth and Rylan is just cute as usual!

Changes

It's really incredible how much can happen in one little week, the changes that take place, the growth...

This last week Stella had her 2 week appointment. She weighed 8 pounds 5 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long. That's a gain of 8 ounces and 1/4 inch. Not too shabby for 14 days of growth! The day before her 2 week appointment she had a photo shoot which was an absolute blast. A gal who I've known for 4 years now offered to bring her props out and we both got some really cute shots along with me getting to have some grown up chit-chat. It was much appreciated. This is one where we used the doll cradle, from the girls' room, that my great grandpa made and our family has passed down.

The big kids are doing really well with Stella. Rylan's going through a bit of an acting out, crazy boy phase but that started before Stella arrived. Karleigh's been a bit more emotional but really, they're doing quite well all things considered. Having a new baby in the house is a big adjustment for them, it could be going so much worse.

Stella changes every. single. day. This week... she stayed awake for longer periods during the day, met her Uncle David and her great aunt and uncle, started giving us one good 5 hour stretch of sleep at night, successfully took her first pumped bottle, went to her first Daisy Scout meeting, she grew teeny tiny eyelashes...

...and gained her new belly button...