The Slow Life

Just a little photo journal of sorts on life as of late. Things have been pretty slow lately. Actually, very slow. We shed all our commitments (i.e., friends) with the move, and being that we live so out of the way now, it's been easy to keep our calendar free of volunteer and social commitments. We are a good 25 minutes from base and church is 25 minutes in the opposite direction. We live in a very small community and haven't met many of our neighbors yet. 

I don't hate it. Not one bit. We've grown to love and depend on our weekday routine of getting out of the house before it gets too hot—either running outside with the duallie or going to the gym where the kids get some socialization—coming home for lunch and long afternoon naps, and spending what's left of our little afternoons playing, reading, and watching movies. 

Our new house has a bay window in the dining area that looks out to a most panoramic view of . . . a privacy fence. Naturally, it was deemed the perfect "dancin' spot" for underwear-clad hip-hop routines. As one does.

If only the neighbors could see. Damn privacy fence.

Zelie watches on in amusement.

Or is that the face one makes when teasing a mother after another failed attempt at sweet potato puree?

I have complied an extensive list of solid foods Zelie will eat:

• Dog food
• Paper
• Chalk

Slowly, but surely, we are making progress with solids. 

Solid foods that is. Human foods. She will sit down and eat a couple ounces of pureed food now without total mess. She loves Puffs, too. I don't think she'll be an early weaner like her bro. I kind of think I'll be nursing her until she hits college at this point, but hopefully that's the irrational side of me . . . 

Z is SO CLOSE to walking. She stands up on her own in the middle of the room and the other day she took her first step before carefully lowering her bottom to the ground. She seems pretty motivated. Little Will was taking his first steps at 9 months and truly took off walking at 10 months, so I'm excited to see whether she'll beat him.

SIBLING RIVALRY Y'ALL. Girls rule, boys . . .

I don't even know what to call that.

But he's a fun, sanguine kid, who can be just as naughty as the sweetness those photographs exude. 

He's lacked blog attention as of late, so aside from his weeknight serenades from the bay window, here is a little more about our little guy: He always skips H through P when he sings the alphabet. He always skips the number 4 when counting to 6 (his current max). He still pronounces Zelie "WEH-EE!" even though he can pronounce Zs. "Say Zzzz-ELLIE…" "Zzzzz WEH-EE!" He can identify all his colors and knows the letters W, M (upside down W, naturally), O, B. And Z for Weh-ee, of course. He loves all things machines, and knows the difference between a fighter jet from a cargo plane, a tug boat from a ferry, a van from a race car, an excavator from a dump truck. 

He's been repeating things we adults say in the most hilarious ways. He calls me "babe" and "dear" - "Thanks for makin' dinner, babe!" He'll ask a question and upon hearing the answer, he'll exclaim "WHAT!" as adults do patronizingly to kids. He's started repeating me saying, "No, no, no, no, no!" in a gentle tone, something I've been using to admonish Zelie when she crawls to our hallway night light or the dog food bowls like a moth to a flame.

Ask him what he wants to be when he grows up and he'll say "a happy priest!" And yet he can NOT for the life of him keep his hands folded during grace or not flail his body around during nightly prayers. Skip a prayer though (sometimes Will forgets we added the St. Michael prayer, apparently) and you will quickly and forcefully be admonished.

Getting so big. And yet . . .

Every time I get out the baby food to sit down and try and force feed his sister, he immediately comes up begging, asking for some. "I'm a baby, too! Can I have a bite?"

No. 

Two Months with Zelie

Two months with Zelie outside of my belly. How ya like that?

I spent a half an hour Saturday buffing this girl's head in anticipation of these photos. Her cradle cap is on fleek. Her head looked great for these photos, but now it's Monday and it's already returning. 

Like her brother, she has a ridiculous amount of boogers. But she surpasses him in talent by sneezing them out all the time. I think her record is a good foot away of propulsion. Sometimes they just stick straight out so that I can snap a pic and send it to my mom who has a ghastly fear of snot. If I could just not have to suck anymore boogers out of anyone else's nose, that would be appreciated. The air is just so dry here this time of year. I'm hoping that there are in general less runny noses at our next duty station. It's plausible. 

Cheeks here sits at 12 lbs, 12 oz (81st percentile) and 22.5 inches (45th percentile). I was surprised to see that at this point, Little Will weighed more, being that she had almost a pound on him at birth. Same height though! She's just less of a blob. She likes to push up with her legs and she hates resting her head on anything. Unless she's laying flat. She has a total cone-head with a perfectly flat back thanks to it and the ultimate bald spot/mullet on the back of her head. 

She is more aware, making eye contact, giggling, and cooing. She really enjoys FaceTiming. She seems to be very observant and focused (as opposed to her brother who needed to be everywhere all at once all the time). Her tongue is sticking out a majority of the time, like in the pic above. 

Anddddd now for the Sleeps, Eats, Poops… shall we?

EATS. 

Still nursing on demand and it seems like she's able to go longer stretches between meals during the day, but I don't really know. I'm not keeping track! Her naps are getting longer and her nighttime sleep is fine, so I'm not hyperfocused on getting her into a routine like I was with Little Will. She is a quick nurser like her bro was and only takes one side per session right now. My supply seems to have regulated a lot quicker with her, so I'm not lopsided (!), but I still have pretty forceful letdown that causes her to cough and sputter a bit. Breastfeeding is still messy, plenty of leakage and spit-up, and boob diapers are life. 

We've offered her the bottle about four times in her life and she's never really taken to it. I'm not really worried about it because I have no plans to leave her. We'll keep trying though. 

SLEEPS. 

With her newfound awareness of her surroundings, she is less and less able to sleep in arms, the car seat, or the rock n play downstairs. She can get a good nap in the Moby and her naps her crib have gotten better and better. In a typical day at home, she'll take at least one long (1 hr or more) nap in her crib, swaddled with the sound machine on. This morning she went two hours and it was awesome. She typically takes a pacifier to fall asleep during the day, but not always. She usually falls asleep pretty quickly, but sometimes I have to go back in a couple times for pacifier reinsertion. 

Night sleep hasn't changed much. She'll go a five or six hour stretch in the beginning of the night if I leave her be, and then usually up every three hours after that. She'll either go down for the night at 8-ish in her crib OR she'll refuse to fall asleep altogether and stay up with the adults until 10 or so. This girl can fight sleep pretty dang hard. If she's in her crib, I like to go in and get her around 10:30 for a dream feed and then keep her in our room the rest of the night. The couple times I've done this have worked out well for only one waking at about 3:30, then up for the day at 6:30. The past few nights though, I'm telling you, she wakes up a second time at 5:30 just to fart on me. I try to nurse her, but she's not all that interested. She just has gas. Then goes back to sleep until 6:30 when she'll nurse again. 

She generally falls back asleep pretty easily at night. If I've been up longer than thirty minutes, though, I very maturely and not whiney at all make Will get up and rock her back to sleep.

POOPS. 

Z has the best pooper! She goes days without pooping. Usually she has a big diaper every three days or so. The trade-off is that her farts are THE WORST, seriously. And she farts on me all through the day (and night - see above), but I'd much rather change less poops. We go through a lot less diapers and obviously no rashes as a result. It took us FOREVER to get through a big box of Size 1 Huggies and just when we ran out (and she outgrew them), she had her two month shots in the thighs and screamed her head off when I put her in a cloth diaper. So I made Will go out and buy another big box of Size 2 Huggies and I'm guessing these will last a while, too. I'll try cloth again when those get low. But yeah, we might just stick with disposables since it's not really costing us much more. 

Time will tell, friends. Time will tell. 

LINKY DINKS.

Will at two months. 

Zelie at one month. 

And all about her birthday.