100 days!

Today is the 100th day that I have been nursing Anna. She's 105 days old today. I suppose that technically I first nursed her on her 5th day of life, but that was more of a "Hey, let's see if you latch on" experiment than an actual feed.

She hasn't had formula since the 2nd can "expired" back around April 20th or 21st. She's thriving. I'm still a little shocked at that, although I had a friend tell me recently that with each subsequent child her body made more milk. If that's the case, my body is playing with extremes since I had next to none with Rachel and I have enough with Anna. I think I'm a little afraid of what could happen with a third child! (No, we are not "done". Don't look shocked. Despite the total chaos and craziness, we are still open to more kids.)

Anyway, I just thought that it was cool that today is Anna's 100th day of enjoying Mommy milk. Perhaps enjoying isn't quite the right word. Today she was punching me with her free arm while we enjoyed a nursing/nap session on the bed. I've heard that some babies pat, knead, or touch you gently. My child punches. Maybe she thinks she'll get the milk out faster that way. ;)

This is going to be fun!

Lately Rachel has been asking about playing the piano, but she is totally not ready for music lessons. She told me that she only wants to learn the tunes to certain songs and that she would leave the room if the teacher tried to teach her other music. Hmm. Something tells me that we're not going to be signing her up anytime soon!

This morning, Rachel asked to go play "Old MacDonald" on the piano. She took her storybook in, set it on the music stand and then got upset because she didn't know how to play it.

I decided to have a little fun with her. She now knows all the names of the keys on the piano:

Aardvark Bird Cat Dog Elephant Frog Gorilla

She can even play Dog-Flat and Elephant-Flat! Haha. She also knows their "real" names - ABCDEFG. I wasn't planning to teach her myself, but I might see where this goes. We could always have some fun and then sign her up for lessons when she's more developmentally ready to sit through them! (Mind you, as a private music teacher, it always drives me nuts when well-meaning Mom or Dad has "taught" their kid the basics because it inevitably needs to be re-taught.)

As she went out the door to go to preschool this morning, she was singing a lovely natural minor scale: "Aardvark, Bird, Cat, Dog, Elephant, Frog, Gorilla! And then Aardvark again! How come there's no H?"

Iowa evidence

The infamous mile marker just before the van died last year.


3:55 p.m. 1 year and 1 day after the van died at 3:55 p.m. on Wed. May 2/07.


3:56 p.m. and the van didn't blow up!


Look, it's Montezuma, final resting place of the Odyssey!


The truck stop where we negotiated a price for the van last year... it's amusing that it's now closed up and abandoned!

The face of a preschooler

More Anna cuteness

"I can hold my own bottle at 2.5 months old!"


"Check out my little sister - look what she can do!"


"What? You don't think 2.5 month old babies can stand?"


"I'm cute!"


"My bouncy chair is not supposed to be up on the kitchen table but I'm kinda comfy up here."

Anna is 3 months old!

On Wednesday, Anna turned 3 months old. She weighed 14 pounds and 12 ounces at the doctor's office in her clothes & diaper! At just over 2 months, she was 13 pounds in just her diaper so she has gained a fair bit of weight this month.

Flower Girl: A Dangerous Job

We went shopping today for Rachel's flower girl dress for Aunt Rebecca's upcoming wedding. Rachel loved trying on all of the pretty dresses, especially the "fluffy" one that made her look like a cake. Some of these dresses are seriously over the top. We found a really pretty one that will have a built-in sash to match the bridesmaids' dresses:



No, there are no wings on the dress that we are getting!

Anyhow, tonight we were discussing what the flower girl does at a wedding. Rachel somehow knew that a flower girl might have petals to throw.

As we were chatting, she made an offhanded comment about how she would have to be closer to the bridesmaids. Since we had been talking about who would walk in, how & when, I asked her why she thought she needed to be closer to them.

"So I can throw the petals on them!"

Um, no, Rachel. That is not exactly what the flower girl does.

Luckily we still have 3.5 months to work on it!

Rachel just fell in the toilet

And I am a bad, bad mother because I really wanted to run downstairs for the camera to take a picture before fishing her out!

She thought it was hysterically funny, and since she's fairly big, at least she didn't land in the toilet water.

Still, it's not been one of our better weeks.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR

This morning Rachel pooped in her pants. She claims that her body didn't tell her it was time to go. Whatever. I think it was more likely because Mommy was upstairs in the shower and Daddy was paying attention to Anna.

Anyhow, we had a good long talk about whose responsibility it is to get Rachel to the toilet in time. I told her that she has to go when she gets up, before we leave the house to go somewhere, and before bedtime. I was prepared to let her go any other time that she needed to, and she thought that was a good idea too.

Fast forward to after lunch today. We had just finished watching Jeopardy when Ben got home from teaching. He and I started chatting. A few minutes later we heard,
"Oops! I'm peeing!"

*loud sigh*

She isn't bothered by consequences either. At this point, I'm not really sure what to do with her. So I grr.

It's not all sunshine & roses...

Yesterday had to be one of the worst days we've had with Rachel in quite a long time. She decided that she didn't like the way Ben drew a number 4 (My math score was apparently 4. Don't ask me why!) so she screamed at him and got sent to her room.

I let Rachel know that screaming was not acceptable and that she would be in her room until she could apologize. She's rather stubborn, so we figured it might be awhile. She ended up missing Kindermusik because every time I went in to ask if she was ready, she'd say things like, "Well, I don't know about that. But I AM hungry!"

*Mommy grrs silently*

Finally, I suggested that she give Dad a hug & kiss, along with a picture to make him feel better. She liked that idea and soon all was well except that she refused to go potty for the next 6 hours. At one point, I let her know that if she ended up peeing in her pants, she would lose her computer privileges for 3 days. Since one of Rachel's current favourite activities is playing on the My Little Pony website, this was a pretty serious consequence even though it didn't seem to bother her when I told her what would happen.

We haven't been forcing Rachel to go to the bathroom, other than to have her go first thing in the morning, before bed, and generally before leaving the house or after meals if it's been awhile since she last went. She's been fairly compliant about this, so yesterday's absolute refusal was a change from the norm.

I finished teaching a lesson yesterday at 3:30 p.m. and came out to the news that Rachel had peed on one of our living room chairs because she wasn't able to get to the potty on time. Before you feel sorry for her, let's step back and remember that the last time she went was at 9:30 a.m. and she had been asked just before 3 p.m. if she needed to use the bathroom. Ben and I both told her that we were upset, and she was told that she had lost computer privileges for 3 days.

This morning she asked me about printing something out and I had to remind her that she was not allowed to use the computer right now. I just about cracked up when I picked her up at preschool though, because she had drawn a picture of me with a happy face and herself with a sad face. I guess that even though she's not acting sad, she is upset at the loss of computer time. I highly doubt that she's upset that her pants were wet. "Oh, I need new pants!" is a fairly common saying around here when she doesn't get to the potty in time. (although I should say that she had not had any accidents in quite some time before yesterday)

She has also told us several times today that she needed to go potty, and commented on the fact that she got there in time.

I really hope that Anna is easier to train than this.

Rachel gets an allowance

Today Rachel got an allowance for the very first time. We've been reading "A Birthday for Frances" - in this book, Frances spends two whole allowances on a birthday present for her baby sister!

Rachel has been pestering me lately to buy her new things all the time, so we figured it was time to teach her a bit more about money. She will be getting $4 each week since she is 4 years old.

We told her that she had to save some and put some in her tzedakah box but that she could spend the rest. She has a basic concept of money, but she doesn't have logic down yet. I gave her 4 loonies this morning. She decided to put one in her piggy bank to save, two in her tzedakah box, and one in her wallet to spend. She was pretty cheerful when we told her that there was no way that she had enough money to buy a new toy this week (she wants a Strawberry Shortcake doll) and that she would have to keep saving her money. Ben told her that it would take a few weeks to have enough and she accepted that pretty easily. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

We did tell her that while there are certain things that she is just expected to help out with, she will have some opportunities to earn extra money. She can't wait for it to stop raining so that she can go out and help Dad pick all the weeds out of the back lawn for 25 cents! ;) Depending on how much work she actually does, I might up that amount. We'll have to see!

A great Mother's Day!

Although I could have done without the 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. feedings, today has been a pretty good day overall. Minus breakfast in bed, I think I got everything that I could possibly have wanted!

Rachel made me a gift at preschool - it's a pen with fake flowers attached to it using green tape to look like a stem. She also drew me a picture last week at art class and made a "card" at preschool as well. Ben took my very direct hint and got me a gift certificate to a local spa type of place where I can have a pedicure/foot treatment done. He also got a card and signed it from both him and the girls.

Anna napped well today, and since I had a nice big 4oz bottle pumped, Ben took both girls to our friends' son's 2nd birthday party while I went shopping and hung out with Kate who was in town for the weekend! Prior to that, we (ok, the adults) shared a FREE pizza from Panago, a new pizza place in the neighbourhood. (We'd received a coupon in the mail just prior to Passover - how cruel is that!?)

Rachel also got me some flowers and dictated a note to Ben:

"I love you Mommy, from Rachel"

Rachel was in bed by about 7:10, and Anna nursed to sleep shortly thereafter. Ben is currently rocking her in our room since she's been drifting off and waking up off and on, but it looks like she'll be sound asleep soon!

How about an Anna update?

Anna is 12 weeks old today. 84 days old. It's hard to believe that she will be 3 months old already next week. In some ways, she is just like Rachel, and in many others she is just the opposite.

Anna is a total "sucky" (pacifier) addict. She also enjoys spitting them out in order to make us pop it right back in. She smiles (and has done so since about 4 or 5 weeks, maybe sooner? Yes, I'm a bad 2nd-time mom who has yet to write down anything about Anna.), laughs & can stick out her tongue. I wonder who taught her that, haha. (It was Rachel. Not me. I only suggested it to Rachel.)

Lately she kicks her legs a lot and has started babbling to us. Up until about a week ago, her adorable little coos generally signified an impending spit-up incident of great magnitude. Now she is actually trying to communicate, and it's very cute to watch. One day I will get my act together and post some of the videos we have.

Anna did very well on our long road trip to and from Kansas. I actually think she napped better when we were away than she does at home.

She hasn't had formula in 19 days. I'm still amused at how that is turning out. As a side note, we have about $125 in store credit from Zellers and Toys'R'Us for returning all our Avent products since Canada has now banned the sale of products with the evil BPA chemical or whatever it's called. I'm not that alarmist about this kind of thing (and thankfully, neither is my doctor!), but I jumped at the chance to return the Avent hand pump that I bought from a former neighbour and hardly ever used. We also returned the steam sterilizer and most of our bottles. We kept a couple to use while we wait for the bottle parts to come in for the bottles that came with the pump my amazing friend K sent me when Anna was born.

Although we have been cloth diapering Anna, I will admit that I am very tempted to stop. Doing disposables while travelling was so much easier, and I have to say that I really do not like washing cloth diapers in a front loading washing machine. I find that I have to run a lot of extra rinse cycles to really get them clean, so how environmentally friendly am I really being!? We'll see what we end up doing.

Anna still likes to be held a lot, but she has started to really enjoy being on her playmat and in her swing. We bought her a Bumbo seat while in the US, and she's almost ready to use it! We will probably put the Exersaucer together soon since she is holding her head up quite well most of the time. It's hard to believe that she's already getting so big.

She was 23 inches long and about 13 pounds at 2 months. We actually have an appointment next Wednesday so I will get to post her 3 month stats then.

That's my girl!

"Mom, Polly Pockets is almost wearing enough clothes!"

Rachel knows that I'm not a fan of Barbie, Bratz & any other doll with skimpy clothing. When we're in the toy section of any store, she will announce which dolls have enough clothes and which ones need more. So it cracked me up tonight when she informed me that her Polly Pockets doll was almost wearing enough.

It was going to come up sooner or later...

The other day Ben took Rachel to the bathroom and he had to go too. Rachel has never really paid much attention or asked about the difference between boys and girls if she has noticed anything. They were in the family washroom and Ben told me later that he was very thankful to be there and NOT in the main one.

After Ben used the facilities, Rachel observed that "Dad, you let out a LOT of pee! Did all that pee come out of your vagina?"

Ben deflected the question. Grr. So I explained to Rachel that we have different parts and she accepted that quite cheerfully.

I'm sorry I wasn't there to hear this one in person. ;)

A potty update

Remember back when Rachel was first potty training and that awful toilet flushed on her at Barnes & Noble? These days she sometimes asks if a toilet will flush or not, but she hasn't seemed too concerned. The other day we were in a mall in Kansas and Rachel needed to use the bathroom. The toilet flushed on her just as she finished but before she got down. I told her that it wasn't a very smart toilet since it didn't know to wait for her to wipe first & she thought this was absolutely hilarious! She has been discussing smart and silly toilets ever since. She's also highly amused that Daddy likes to use toilet paper to cover the toilet's "eye" so that it can't flush too early.

Of course, she also thought it was hilarious to keep running in front of the automatic doors at a rest area in Iowa yesterday to make them open over and over.

Out of Iowa & all is well!

In case anyone is wondering, we drove across the state of Iowa yesterday unscathed. I took lots of pictures out the window right around mile marker 188, and we jokingly discussed stopping off in Montezuma to see if the van was still there. Hahaha.

She can read!

Rachel can actually read books all by herself! On the way down to Kansas she was reading all of the road signs and asking lots of questions about them. She has also been reading the signs in the hotel.

Yesterday we went to Borders and I told her that since she could read so well, we would pick out a new book. Here's what she picked:



I'm not saying that I'm thrilled with the "literature" but she was able to read all of the words in the book! There are a few "picture words" where a picture is inserted in the middle of the sentence, but it's mostly just words!

I shouldn't be surprised. During Pesach she was reading all of the instructions and ingredients on the sides of boxes.

She just finished reading descriptions of about a dozen Dora and My Little Pony books on Amazon.com.

Grade 1 might be a little boring by the time we get there in 2 years! ;)