Shortly before Maya’s second birthday, Sean took some photos of her in this wacky little giraffe-themed outfit that Lolli and Pop had given her. We needed a cute recent photo for her birthday party invitations. We’ve had several requests to post these online, and so, here they are. (Also, when Maya says “giraffe” it sounds like “jahwopp.”)

Maya – almost two years old

In real time, we’re settling in to our life as a family of four. Since we have an infant in the house, sleep is an often-discussed topic: how much we aren’t getting, how to get more of it, etc. Maya, as it happens, is also working through some sleep issues.

Maya belly!

Parents of toddlers will likely be nodding along as they read some of this. Maya often gets out of bed at night, takes all her stuff out of bed – pillow, blankets, stuffed animals – and sleeps on the floor by the door to her room. For Christmas, we gave her a clock that is yellow when she should stay in bed and turns green in the morning when she can get out of bed. For about a week, it worked! She’d stay in bed all night. Then it apparently occurred to her that the clock had no power over her, and she could get out of bed whenever she damn well pleased.

Who knows *what* she’s pointing at

Our pattern has been to ignore her till she falls asleep (because going into her room would only reinforce the behavior) and then one of us, usually Sean, sneaks in there and loads her back into bed where she then stays till morning. During nap time, we don’t bother at all. The house is warmer during the day and a 60-90 minute snooze on the hard floor isn’t quite as rough as an all night sleep.

Love those pigtails

More and more lately, nap time starts with a certain amount of Maya playing. Sometimes the entire time is filled with Maya playing. We could go in there and tell her to get back into bed, but it does very little good. We figure that even if she doesn’t sleep at all, she has some down time by herself while she plays with her books. All the furniture is anchored to the walls, so it’s a fairly safe place for her to be unsupervised.

Imagine my surprise when one day I heard a small crash. I was feeding Ian at the time, and there was no crying and plenty of shuffling noise after the fact, so I figured there were no injuries. By the time I went to check on her, she was asleep in front of the door, so it wasn’t till I woke her from her nap later that I saw what she had done.

I guess it could be worse

Every drawer she could reach had been emptied and the bottom drawer had then been used in an attempt to climb to the drawer she couldn’t reach. When I opened the door and saw the destruction, it took every ounce of my control to not laugh. I might have failed a bit, but I’m hoping Maya didn’t notice.

The dresser is a mid-grade Ikea model (mid-grade for Ikea, mind you), and of course, the drawer broke. The wood on the side panel is broken and the rail the drawer slides on is badly bend. We currently have that bottom drawer sitting in a different room while we figure out what to replace the drawers with.

I made Maya help me put the clothes away and we talked about how climbing the drawers breaks them. She hasn’t climbed again, but of course, she’s hasn’t had that bottom drawer to use, so that could be why. Do we replace it with the same cheap furniture, knowing it could get broken again? Or do we try to find something sturdier? Sturdier could still get broken. Plus, sturdier could allow her to scale the lofty peak of Mount Dresser, and that seems like a terrible idea.

If anyone has suggestions they’d like to offer, we’re happy to hear them. In the mean time, I think I’ll start keeping notes on whether Ian or Maya is ahead in the property damage race.

Today is Ian’s due date. Of course, my body doesn’t seem to like to hang on to babies for a full term, so he’s actually six weeks old today. Since he had time in the NICU, he’s only been home for two weeks, but they’ve been a good two weeks. Sure no one is sleeping especially well, and I can’t seem to remember *anything* for very long, but we’re all together now and figuring out how we’ll function as a family of four.

Ian – one day shy of 5 weeks old

Maya is a great big sister. When Ian cries, she makes sure he has a pacifier, and if she can’t get to him, she tells us about it till one of us gives it to him. She also shares Oddipuddy with him. Hopefully by now I don’t have to explain what a big deal this is (but I will, just in case). Oddipuddy is Maya’s stuffed octopus. That octopus has been Maya’s comfort object since she was maybe eight or nine months old. He still sleeps with her and rides in the car with her and is sought out any time she is distressed. And she shares him with Ian.

Oddipuddy kissing Ian

It remains to be seen how Maya handles it once 1 – Anna is more fully taking care of both kids and 2 – once Ian is more mobile and more interested in her toys and books. As it stands now though, Maya is handling things really well.

Maya kissing Ian

I don’t know how much I’ve gone into this before, but Maya and I didn’t cooperate well breast feeding. There were blisters and bleeding and a resistant baby. By the time she was six weeks old, since the current situation wasn’t making anyone happy, I made the decision to exclusively pump. She did really well on her diet of bottle-fed breast milk, and I powered through pumping for her entire first year (which is not fun).

Ian – One day shy of 5 weeks old

Ian and I, on the other hand, cooperate very well, and holy wow is it easier! He wants to eat at 2am, and no one has to placate him while one of us goes and gets a bottle heated and ready to go. Bonus: we don’t have to clean a bottle once we’re through. It’s fantastic. While I’m unbelievably happy it’s working out this time, it does underscore what I missed out on the first time around. Also, even though I’m a second-time mom, I’m still a newb when it comes to things like working a nursing bra with one hand and breast feeding in public without drawing too much attention to myself.

Ian’s take home outfit

The second kid is both easier and more difficult. We kind of know what to expect and what to worry about (or more importantly, not worry about). We also know that eventually, everyone will be sleeping and reasonably content. On the other hand, Ian is clearly getting less attention than Maya did. Also, just when Maya is hitting her stride on exerting her independence, it’s harder for her exhausted parents to handle discipline requirements consistently and with grace. It’s disheartening to feel like you’re kind of failing both kids to a certain degree.

Squishy face

Aunt Darci and cousin AP visited for a couple days last week and Darci took some photos. As usual, they are very cute. Ian’s take-home outfit was a little bow tie and cardigan affair. It would have swallowed him whole when he was first born, but he bulked up quite a bit in the weeks before these photos were taken. By now, it’s nearly too small.

After four long weeks in the NICU, Ian is finally home!

Ian, 4 weeks old

He was born on December 18th at 6:24 in the morning. He weighed 5 pounds 7 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. I was induced when he was 34 weeks gestational age because my water had broken a few days prior.

Ian, a few hours old.

Ian’s NICU stay was of the “feeder-grower” variety. He never needed any breathing assistance. His weight started out good and he consistently gained well while he was there. Where we ran into trouble was his “breath-suck-swallow” coordination. He wasn’t quite neurologically mature enough to manage eating without choking himself, and so he had an NG tube for a period of time. Even when taking a bottle, he had to be carefully paced. Interestingly, even from the very beginning, he did a good job breast feeding. The only issue there seemed to be stamina; he’d get tired before he got full.

Ian, 1 day old

The NICU was a hard place to be. There was a baby there who was so premature, he didn’t even weigh two pounds at birth. Another baby had to be on methadone. Still other babies had to be weaned from the various pain killers they had been given to deal with surgeries and whatnot. In relative terms, we really had no room to complain. And yet I think I speak for both of us when I say there is a sense of loss. While we were at that NICU multiple times a day every day he was there, we still feel like we’ve missed out on nearly a month of Ian’s life. Strangers took care of our baby. We had to pass a gatekeeper to visit him. There were hours each day when we weren’t allowed access at all.

Ian, 1 day old

Maya was able to visit Ian once a week, and only for 15 minutes. She thought the three-minute scrub-in was lots of fun. The first time she saw Ian, she very gently touched his hair and gave him a kiss, but I don’t think her new status as a big sister really sunk in. When we got home, she pointed at my pudgy postpartum belly and said, “baby?” Hopefully now that he’s home, she will start to understand that her brother is here.

Ian, 1 week old

It didn’t occur to us to time Maya’s visits such that she’d be able to see Ian on Christmas day, so our family holiday photo actually occurred on the 28th.

Family Xmas, 2014

At any rate, Ian is home now, and we couldn’t be happier. Our little family of four is finally all together under one roof. The jury’s out on whether Maya is okay with this arrangement.

For the week or two prior to Maya’s birthday, we’d been trying to teach her that she could show us that she was going to be two years old by holding up a finger on each hand. She’d grin, duck her head all bashful-like, and juuuust sneak her two fingers up for us to see. We tried to catch a photo of it for her birthday party invitations, but she just wouldn’t hold a pose for long enough.

See, I’m two.

Fast forward to her well check yesterday where she adamantly held those two fingers up to the nurse and the doctor both as if to proclaim that she was two now and would not be putting up with any of this doctor business any more. After many tears and much stubbornness, we were all really glad when the well check was completed and we could go home.

Maya’s party was this past weekend. Her grandparents all made the long journey to see her, and her Aunt Darci and cousin AP came by as well. Nanny Anna and a few of our friends rounded out the guest list. We again had barbecue – this time from La Barbecue. Barbecue seems to be a crowd favorite and leftovers are really easy to use. All the meats (brisket, sausage, and pulled pork) were incredible, and the bacon potato salad and pinto beans were solid. The jalapeño coleslaw was very good, but the heat overpowered the otherwise complex flavor of the slaw, which was a little disappointing.

Two years old!

I made a giant cookie for Maya’s birthday cake. Sean pointed out that he often had giant cookies for his birthday cakes and really liked them, so I went with it. On a whim one afternoon, I asked her if she wanted a cookie for her birthday. She shook her head no. Startled at her declining any form of dessert, I paused momentarily to regroup before asking her if she’d like chocolate cake. She grinned and shook her head yes. We settled on having a great big cookie with mini cupcakes arranged on top to make the number 2. I even took a crack at decorating it. I’m thinking I really need to decorate more than one cake a year for my skill to improve at all.

We were hopeful that Maya would be a little more into opening presents this year, and she was … for a little while. Parents who’ve already gone through the small child phase probably know what’s coming. She would diligently tear off the wrapping paper piece by piece, slowly uncovering her toy. The slightly older and more practiced kids in the room would be fairly vibrating at this point, itching for her to hurry and open another. But no, Maya wanted to take the neat new toy she had just opened and play with it. Or take the new book she had just opened and read it. Or wander off to play with some other toys. We actually opened most of her gifts from us the next day because she had just worn out on the enterprise.

Possibly her favorite gift.

All in all, we had a really nice weekend. Thanks to everyone’s generosity, Maya received some great gifts that she’s had all kinds of fun playing with. She was able to spend a bit of quality time with her grandparents. Plus, we spent all weekend eating barbecue and dessert. So far, I think she’s found that being two is pretty okay.

Our October was weirdly busy, especially for us. We spent the first few days of the month vacationing in Miami. I came back to jury duty (luckily, I wasn’t selected). We went to Dallas the next weekend to celebrate cousin AP’s 5th birthday. Then Maya was sick for a little while. And finally, we were to the point where we needed to get her around some pumpkins and into a Halloween costume.

Maya at the pumpkin patch – 23 months old

Last weekend we went to the same pumpkin patch we went to last year. Possibly my mood was a little soured by the fact that it was 90 degrees outside, but it just wasn’t as pleasant as last year. There weren’t many pumpkins (possibly due to how late in October we were going) and the placement and arrangements just weren’t as photogenic. Also, Maya has gotten downright ornery about having her photo taken. She really just has no interest at this point.

Daddy is a trooper

What Maya did love was taking beanbags out of the wooden beanbag game and dropping them back in again, over and over again, possibly forever. She also had fun feeding the goats, though she didn’t understand why she couldn’t climb the fence and get in the pen with them. There was also a giant tubular slide that she and Sean slid down several times. Apparently it was very fast and he was worried that Maya would be scared, but the moment they landed at the bottom she was grinning and asking for more.  And as if all that wasn’t enough, they had blow-up bouncy horse things that Maya rode with Sean, which of course she enjoyed.

In the end, we did manage to wrangle Maya in and amongst the pumpkins and trick her into looking happy for a few quick frames while Sean snapped photos.

I never claimed to be Martha Stewart

We haven’t really done too many crafty type things with Maya yet. She’s finger painted plenty. She colors a little bit with crayons and has an undying love of sticking stickers. For Halloween, I did a little looking into crafts that a not-quite-2-year-old could manage and happened upon some little pumpkins that were made by sticking tissue paper to contact paper. Maya tired after maybe four or five minutes so I wound up doing most of it, but regardless, they were cute and she seemed to enjoy the bit that she did. Anna of course was responsible for the remainder of the decorations on our door.

Kitty cat jack-o-lantern

The jack-o-lantern was a full house affair. Anna and Maya drew the design, I gutted and carved the pumpkin, and Sean installed and lit the candle while I corralled the grabby toddler.

Maya the Octopus

Choosing Maya’s halloween costume was a little difficult for us. We wanted it to be something she’d be interested in, but most of her interests are so fleeting it’s tough to really choose. She’s still enamored with tigers and roars frequently, but we did that last year. Finally, we settled on dressing her as an octopus.

See, I’m Oddipuddy

For those that don’t know, Maya’s security toy is a little stuffed octopus. Around eight or nine months old, when separation anxiety was making bedtime particularly heart-wrenching, we noticed that Maya the crawler was dragging her toy octopus around with her. Once we saw the attachment and started letting her sleep with it, she went back to calmly working herself to sleep. Her cousin AP named him Oddipuddy a while back and the name has stuck.

I did toy with the idea of making her an octopus costume, but I didn’t like what I’d have to give up to have time to do that, so we hunted one up on Amazon. Believe it or not, we had several to choose from, so we were able to select a costume whose colors roughly matched her little Oddipuddy.

On our way to the block party

We were lucky that it cooled off enough for her to wear her warm costume. We didn’t trick or treat yet this year, but that didn’t mean there were no festivities. The morning of Halloween, nanny Anna took Maya to a little kid party, which by all accounts she thoroughly enjoyed. That evening we walked our little octopus down the street to a block party where she nibbled on all kinds of goodies and got to play in a bouncy house. Much to her delight, she even got to wear her costume to her music class on Saturday morning.

All-in-all we had an eventful but relatively successful October. Now we’re on to manage Maya’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and the Christmas season all (hopefully) before kid 2 shows up in January!

Maya had her first haircut on July 6th. Nearly four months later, here are some pictures of it! In real time, I’m about 27 weeks pregnant, Maya is nearly 2 years old, Sean is busy contending with both of us, and we all seem to run out of energy before photos get edited and blog posts get written.

First Haircut!

Part of the trouble is that we now have a fairly unwilling subject. In July, Maya was just too busy to hold still. Now she actively runs the other way when she sees Sean coming with the camera.

First haircut!

At any rate, Maya’s wispy little hair was starting to pester her eyes, so we decided a trim was in order. We weren’t sure how the busy, stranger-averse toddler would do, so for her first haircut, we asked our friend Darla to cut it. The mood was relaxed and Darla was very quick with the scissors and before long, Maya could see past her bangs.

 

Poor Sean. He really got the shaft this year. We basically didn’t celebrate Fathers Day. I was in the early stages of pregnancy (read: nauseated and stupid tired), Maya had been sick, and we were planning a big summer trip to visit family in Missouri and Tennessee. As wrong as it is, Dad wound up getting lost in the shuffle.

Watching fish from the pier

Sean and I were somehow both completely convinced that Fathers Day was on June 22nd. I couldn’t tell you where either of us got this idea, but it was there nonetheless. From June 13th through June 21st, we were traveling to Missouri and Tennessee to see our families. I had half-planned, half-daydreamed that on that following Sunday, Maya and I would make Sean some dessert and we’d have a nice dinner together somewhere, and it would all work out fine. We still owe him that dessert.

Daddy’s not letting Maya fall in the pond

It dawned on us that something was off when we traveled that first day. I was wrangling Maya and Sean was hauling the car seat through various escalators at the airport and a very nice man stepped aside to let us stay together. In doing so, he also wished Sean a happy Fathers Day. We didn’t think a great deal of it till we got to Missouri and there was again mention of the holiday. It seemed strange that everyone was so early, so one of us (probably Sean) looked it up. Yup, sure enough, we were a week off.

Something’s funny over there

Luckily, Dad and Carol have a nice pond on their property and there’s a little pier built out into it. We tried to use that as the backdrop for Fathers Day photos. Maya was a little out of sorts from all the traveling and our scheduling was a off. The sun was at an unfriendly angle, and I am not the most adept photographer. I think we still managed a few good photos of Maya and Daddy.

D’awwww

Now’s a good time to mention that “Dada” was Maya’s first word and to this day continues to be one of her favorites. We let her put herself to sleep at night and often that means she’ll lay in her crib for several minutes talking to herself. Nearly always at some point we’ll hear something like, “Da? Da? Dada? Dadadadadada … Da-deeeeee …” It’s hilarious. I try not to take it personally.

We’re interrupting the catch-up posts because we’re too excited to wait. Sean and I are very happy to announce that we are having another kid! My due date is the 29th of January, but of course Maya was born a month early, so we’ll see.

Maya’s checking off her list

Because of our age, we had some extra testing done. From some of those test results, we already know the baby’s gender. Maya’s going to have a little brother.

So far, this pregnancy feels a lot like the last one. I’m mostly past the first trimester nausea and intense fatigue. My body is obviously no longer my own. It neither looks nor behaves as I expect. At least this time, I have the comfort of knowing that it all goes back to normal eventually.

Excited to be a big sister!

Since Maya was born so early, we’re handling things a little differently this time around. Here in a few weeks, we’ll start weekly progesterone shots to try and stave off preterm labor. Odds are good that I’ll have to put up with gestational diabetes again (the increased progesterone will increase my risk). There’s some other testing later on that we’ll deal with when the time comes. In short, we’ll do what we can and see what happens.

Mothers Day came and went a couple months ago. At this point, the details of the day are little hazy. I’m sure Sean tried to let me sleep in, and I’m guessing I wasn’t able to. I’d bet he tried to do a few extra things around the house so I wouldn’t feel like I had to.

Mothers Day 2014

We did get cleaned up and headed out to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden to take photos amongst the greenery and art. It was a hot day, so Maya’s cheeks turned rosy pretty quickly, and we all had a bit of a “dewy” look to us.

Mothers Day 2014

Anyone who has spent time playing with her will not be surprised by this, but Maya’s sole interest at Umlauf was the rocks along the outdoor paths. There were people there with dogs, a variety of accessible sculptures, and lots of other kids running around, but she had eyes only for gravel. One little boy even tried to show her the tiny turtle he had found. No interest.

How much longer do I have to do this?

She also had no interest in standing still for photos. Any shots that Sean managed to capture were a testament to *his* patience, not Maya’s.

2014 Stepping Stone

Sean and Maya also made me another stepping stone. They went to the craft store together and shopped for beads. These were all apparently of Maya’s choosing. I think they did well. We all agree though that next year we’re going to need a larger mold for the concrete. Maya’s feet barely fit as it is.

We’ve been really terrible about keeping up this site lately. We have too many great photos to share to skip to the present date though, so there will be a few catch-up posts over the next little bit to get us back to semi-realtime.

Maya Hunting for Eggs

Last Easter, Maya really couldn’t do much but be propped up and posed with some of the goodies her grandparents sent her. This year since she’s mobile and likes to be outside, we set up a very small egg hunt for her in our front yard.

Three things, two hands

If any of you have watched her play in the yard the past few months, you know that Maya often suffers from the “three things, two hands” problem. She’ll have a rock in one hand and a stick in the other and come across a very tempting acorn (or a leaf or a dead bug or another rock). You can clearly see the indecision on her face. The solution is to put one thing down and pick the new thing up and decide if it’s better. If not, she swaps back. If so, she moves on to the next decision point.

So went the Easter egg hunt.

Chocolate!

Maya was very excited about all the brightly colored eggs in the yard and went barreling after them right away. After getting one in each hand, she just kept finding new eggs and exchanging them for the ones she already had. She could have hunted the eggs indefinitely. I tried to convince her to put them in her basket, but that wasn’t something she was really interested in doing.

Inspecting the haul

The game got even more complex once we showed her there were things inside the eggs. Soon we had candy and opened eggs scattered all over the yard. Luckily, once she realized that what was inside the wrapper was chocolate, the hunting slowed down and she settled in to see how much candy we were going to let her get by with eating.