It's more than a fragrance by Justin Bieber

Right this moment, I would love an iced latte, leisurely sipped while lounging on the beach, watching Carter play on the sand, Avery sleeping on my chest, enjoying a nice chat with my husband.

But I'm avoiding caffeine (plus, if I drank it right now, I'd probably be staring at the ceiling for hours. not that I sleep much anyway). I don't have time to leisurely sip anything. Carter doesn't sit and play nicely, certainly not enough to watch him on a beach from a distance. Avery doesn't sleep much ever. And I very rarely get to "chat" with my husband lately.

Someday, it will happen. For now, not so much. But it's worth it.

Two Years

Dear Carter,

Today you are two years old.

Woah.

I had to take a moment after I wrote that to let it sink in. I should also apologize that this letter probably won’t be my finest. Life with a newborn and a toddler takes a toll on your brain cells, among other things.

You have turned from our precious baby into an amazing little boy this year. You are incredibly active and always on the go. You run just as much as you walk. You love to kick balls and throw, and let me tell you, you’ve got a wicked arm already.  You can kick on the run and might already be more coordinated than I am. Your mind moves as fast if not faster than you do. You love to dunk your basketball and request one more dunk most nights.

You are all boy. You LOVE trucks, especially fire trucks, buses, and trash trucks. You play with your trash truck, keep an eye out for our trash man, you even know that Wednesday is trash day. You also love trash cans. In fact, you point them out all the time in public. People probably think you’re a little odd when you excitedly announce the presence of another trash can. You also love spatulas. I don’t know why, but I even bought you your own spatula. Your favorite show is Sam the Cooking Guy and you love to help cook. You also make pretend soup all the time. It’s your favorite bath time activity. You add all the ingredients (“Need some chicken! And some rice! And some olives!”) and mix it all up and have us sample your masterpiece. You warn us about the temperature (“it’s hot! Need to blow on it!”) and proclaim your pleasure with a hearty exclamation of “mmm good.” You’ve recently discovered how to open the microwave and tell us frequently that you’re “makin’ pizza” which apparently means pulling out the metal circle thing under the tray and running around the house with it. You love music and dancing, aka shaking your booty, along with most noise and chaos. You love school and all of your friends there. You’re the first one to learn everyone’s name and tell us about the new kids. You experience new things there and have really grown a lot there. You love to do crafts and delight in showing them off.  You and Stella are buddies now. She tolerates your throwing things on her head because, although occasionally it’s a sippy cup or fork, usually it’s a piece of your dinner. Did I mention we’re working on not throwing food? Among many other things. You spend a lot of time in time outs and having chats about all the things we don’t do, such as climbing tables, playing with the stereo, blowing raspberries, demanding whatever you want, etc. I’m hoping those lessons sink in very, very soon.

Our life feels like mass chaos right now, and you fit right in. It’s quite busy around here, mostly because of you. I honestly can’t keep up with you sometimes. Last week, you were chasing the dog and you ended up going in circles around each other, you trying to catch her tail while she tried to lick you in the face. That pretty much sums it up.

Obviously the first year of your life was full of just that, firsts. First outings, first Christmas, first everything. This year was full of some of the same events, but they were totally different experiences. We watched you come alive at the zoo. The funny thing is you were most excited about the trash cans and the bus tours circling the park, but at least you had fun. You fully embraced Halloween and loved Trick or Treating. Your first Christmas was so special, but your second Christmas was full of joy as we watched you begin to understand and experience it. However, you did have pneumonia and ear infections (which we found out a few days later) which put a damper on the holiday. That’s also why we have about 2 pictures of you smiling and dozens of you looking upset. We battled a lot of sickness this year. You’re an excessively tough kid but this winter was brutal on all of us. We spent a lot of time at the doctor’s office. I’m pretty sure the staff at the urgent care was beginning to recognize us. Hopefully that means that by the time you start kindergarten you’ll be immune to everything.

You are talking so much. Your verbal skills are off the charts. You tell us all about your day, your likes and dislikes, what you saw on the way to school, even events that occurred months ago. Several months ago we were at church and some boys playing basketball hit a dumpster with the ball. You still tell us how “the basketball hit the trash can!” Sometimes you recreate the scene by throwing your ball at your toy box. You have an incredible memory. Sometimes too good. If we ever tell you something is going to happen, we might as well ink a contract. If we say you can have a specific snack after nap or tell you we’re going somewhere in the morning, that’s usually the first request out of your mouth the second you wake up. I am constantly amazed at the things that come out of your mouth. We tried to keep a list of the words you could say, but we lost track a long time ago. You are also the funniest two year old I have ever encountered. You understand comedy and nuance and make up silly jokes and stories. At some point you realized we were laughing at something you said and you ran with it from there.

You are a great sleeper. Thank you so much for that. After so much battling in the early months of your life, you’re making up for it now. You sleep from 7pm to 6ish, sometimes 6:30 and you need a solid nap in the afternoon. You love your schedule and if we miss the nap window by even 15 minutes, it’s trouble. You will sit in your crib for hours yelling, laughing, singing, anything but sleeping. Speaking of your crib, a few mere days before your sister was born, you learned to climb out. Your dad and I were out in the living room while you were supposed to be falling asleep and all of the sudden we heard a very loud thud on your door. Occasionally you will chuck a toy at the door, but this was different and I knew right away you’d escaped. I rushed in to make sure you were okay. Not only were you okay, you were DELIGHTED. You squealed with joy as you sprinted around your room, beyond thrilled with yourself. In the next few days, you’ll be getting a new bed. I wanted to minimize the changes we threw at you at once, so for now we’re watching you vigilantly on the baby monitor.

You are a wildly independent, strong willed little being. You are definitely a handful, perhaps two, right now. Some days you wear us out and we just about collapse by the time you go to bed. Your school has written on a few daily reports that you had too many timeouts to count. This challenges us as your parents (especially once you hit the “Terrible Twos” around 18 months) but we try to embrace that side of you.  Most of your mischief is driven by curiosity and your independence. I pray that you harness that side of your personality and become a confident, independent person, someone who won’t be swayed by something you don’t completely believe.

A few weeks ago, you became a big brother. When we first found out I was pregnant (you were in your dad’s arms when I told him, so it was a bit of a family moment), your exact words were “uh oh!” You had a sense that the baby was a girl from the beginning and always said it was a baby sister. I worried how a sibling would affect you, how you would react to less one-on-one time, having to share your parents. I’m happy to say it’s been a very natural transition and you seem to be handling it just fine. It has given me so much joy to see you in your new role of big brother.  Avery already watches you and listens to your voice. She’s probably thinking “oh, that’s the crazy noise I heard all the time.” As I mentioned, you are wild and energetic and loud, but when you hold Avery, it’s almost like a transformation occurs. You whisper to her, gently hold her hands, and rub her head so sweetly. I’m still not leaving you alone with her or moving out of arm’s length, but it’s actually quite amazing to see a different side of you.  

We love you so much Carter. You bring a deeper joy and love to our lives that we never knew possible. We laugh more than we ever could without you. I can’t wait to experience another year of life with you and see you continue to grow. Happy birthday my sweet boy.

Love,

Mama

One Month of Avery

Dear Avery,

Today you are one month old! To be honest, this has been one of the most demanding and challenging months of my life. It has also been one of the most joyous.

From the moment you came in to the world, we knew we were in for a wild ride with you. You were six days past your due date and showing absolutely NO signs of ever coming out. So, we opted for the induction to start the process. Everything happened so fast and when you were ready, it only took four pushes before you were in my arms.

You are a fighter and firecracker. Several people have commented on your personality already. One particular lactation consultant told us repeatedly how strong willed and feisty you are. I have to say that you come by that honestly. After a few days, we were having a really tough time with breastfeeding and that’s been the saga of our month. From what we can gather, we’re pretty sure you were latching wrong and when we encouraged you to latch correctly, you more or less told us “forget you people. I don’t need you!” and just stopped eating. We’re hoping this rebellious spirit ends before your teenage years. I was so committed to trying to give you the best start in life and we spent a lot of time and energy trying to make it work. Breastfeeding has many benefits, including protection against infection and illnesses, lower instances of allergies and asthma, enhanced development and intelligence, and more. Well, after the month we’ve been through, you better be the healthiest and smartest child ever.

It is probably a really good thing that you are a strong little lady because you were born into a strong family. Your brother is a wild man and there’s always a whole lot of chaos going on around here. You don’t seem to be bothered by that.

You keep us on our toes. There’s no magic wand with you, something might work one day and not the next. Your dad keeps pointing out that comes with the territory, you are female after all. You love the blinds and sleeping on your dad’s chest (when, of course, you WILL sleep, which you won’t do very often). You yell like a drill sergeant. It’s not a normal baby cry, it really is like you’re barking orders at us. “Hey! I want food! Hey! Pick me up!” You escalate from mildly unamused to full blown furious in about 4-6 seconds. But there’s also a soft sweetness to you. You like to be held and cuddled. You snuggle in our arms. You smiled at me for the first time yesterday and it was absolutely beautiful. That smile could break a lot of hearts, so use it wisely little girl.

You are surrounded by people who just love you to pieces. Your brother adores you. As crazy and wild as he is, he likes to sit still and hold you. He wants to talk to you, hold your tiny little hands in his (which now seem massive), rub your head ever so softly. As soon as he walks in the door from school, he asks about you and wants to see you. He even picked your middle name. It’s really very sweet to see you look at him and listen to his voice. I’m glad you have each other and I pray that over time you two are the best of friends, even though I know that means partners in crime.

We’ve loved the crazy adventure of the last month and we look forward to many, many more. However, we’d like to ask that you please be kind. A little more sleep, perhaps? We’re so glad you’re here.

Love,

Mama

The weeks following (you might want to skip this too)

Without going into massive amounts of boring detail, we've had a rough couple of weeks with Avery learning how to breastfeed. Since we left the hospital, we've had 4 appointments with lactation consultants,  have an appointment with an ENT specialist, and are trying all kinds of things to try to get this baby to get this whole thing down.

The first sign that something was wrong was INTENSE pain, worse than labor and delivery, and resulting trauma  to me. We think what's going on is Avery is tongue tied and can't suck right so she's more or less cheating and ends up chomping more than sucking. Plus, I'm overproducing and it's too much for her. We're trying lots of things to correct both of these, including possibly clipping the frenulum under her tongue, but she'll still have to learn to suck correctly. For now, we're mostly giving her bottles that force her to eat correctly and I'm pumping. That means lots and lots of washing bottles and parts and me spending about 50% of my time directly devoted to feeding this kid. We haven't had to give her formula and we're praying that sometime soon everything falls into place.

Of course, on top of that, I also had a UTI a few days after we got home that wasn't responding to antibiotics, so resulted in a trip to urgent care and maddening pharmacy experience. Carter also had a trip to urgent care this morning for a rash that will keep him out of daycare. His school is also closed next week, which makes it tough to do everything we're trying to do with miss Avery and Seth went back to work this week.

We're really thankful for friends and family. We really couldn't have made it this far without them. My mom came over and spent the night to get up with Carter last Monday so we could just sleep for a few hours between Avery's feedings. I'm also personally thankful that no one is here to judge the state of my kitchen floor or evaluate the choice of meals Carter is getting. Sometimes dinner standards just have to be lowered.