I've had a lot of people ask if Lucy looks like Violet did as a baby. Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words right? I present to you exhibit A:
Do you know which one is which? If you follow me on Instagram and have a good memory, you may know, but otherwise I'd say it's a pretty tough call. But as much as they may look alike (and have the exact same facial expressions), they've had very different beginnings. I don't want to say personalities, because I think Violet's behavior as a baby had a lot less to do with personality or temperament and a lot more to do with her health issues. I often actually wonder what her babyhood may have been like if she had been healthy.
Here's a little bit (okay maybe more than a little bit) about Violet's start in life...
Here are a few of my favorite moments from our life lately according to my Instagram feed:
Life has been full of its ups and downs lately, but luckily mostly the former. My girls are completely in love with one another, there is literally no end to the kisses, snuggles, and hugs that Miss Lucy gets from her big sister each day. I'm so happy for both of them - having a sister myself I know how special that relationship is and will be for the rest of their lives. It's like having a best friend for life no matter what.
At the same time, Violet has been having a difficult time adjusting to the fact that I'm not available to her at every moment. I thought that being home from work would help her to be a little more independent of me, but she really seems to be feeling a lot of stress and I'm not sure how to help her. After a particularly challenging day, I was surfing the web and came across this post which talked about how we start expecting more of our older child when we have a new baby, but really they're still just a baby too and need us just as much if not more. Luckily Lucy is a champion sleeper and my mom has been helping out a lot, so I do get a lot of time with Violet throughout the day to play, although my house and this space have been feeling neglected for sure. (Any tips on keeping your house decently clean with two little ones? It feels somewhat impossible at the moment!)
The other evening Lucy had just eaten and was having a long snooze with her papa, so Violet and I snuck off to the park together. It was a gorgeous evening - the perfect temperature, the smell of wood burning in the air (always reminds me of camping!) and we had a wonderful time. It felt so good to get out with just her, and not with the baby in the carrier.
Speaking of baby carriers, we tried out our new Ergobaby carrier with the infant insert this week and Lucy loves it! We used it three times and each time she fell right to sleep. Lucy had another first as well - her first bottle of mama's milk! Violet has been itching to feed her ever since she was born, and her and Lucy both did a great job. It's hard to motivate myself to pump with everything else that is going on, but it is nice to have a small supply frozen in case of an emergency. It gives me peace of mind, so definitely worth the extra time it takes.
Although I'm planning to breastfeed again with this new baby, we do want to try to give him or her at least one bottle per day. We tried it the last time around, but Violet was a challenging infant and I eventually gave up on pumping daily. This time I'm hoping to power through so that Kevin can have some bonding time, and I can get away on my own every now and then without having to worry. Although I took about ten months off of work after I had Violet, there were a couple of workshops that I had to attend and I was so incredibly stressed the whole time worrying about if she would eat or not while I was gone!
Last time around we used Dr. Brown's, which worked just fine, but I've always been a little freaked out about heating and reusing plastic. (I won't even heat my own food in plastic containers). This time I'd love to give these glass bottles by Lifefactory a try. I've heard that they are fairly difficult to break due to their silicone sleeve. Not to mention they are so pretty! They're a little pricier - one bottle is almost as much as an entire set of Dr. Brown's, but we won't need many, at least at the beginning. Have any of you used glass bottles? What was your experience?
Happy weekend! xo, Lauren Baby Wish List posts are generously sponsored by the online baby registry, BabyList - put anything on your baby registry from any store. It's as easy to use as Pinterest, because making your baby registry should be fun!
What a year we've had baby! We've been through a lot and learned a lot and grown and lot and guess what? We made it! And 2012 is sure to be the best yet. Here are a few highlights from 2011:
January: After eight months of nursing we discovered that you were allergic to your mama's breast milk. We tried an elimination diet, which helped but unfortunately not enough. So we weaned. It was emotional (for me more than for you) and painful (Again for me - thankfully not for you.) but in the end you were such a happier healthier baby on your prescription formula.
February: We celebrated your first Valentine's Day! Complete with some funny outtakes, you were Mommy & Daddy's favorite Valentine.
March: You finally started to crawl! Walking was your real goal but you finally settled to get from point A to point B.
April: Crawling didn't satisfy you for long! You were up and about before we knew what hit us.
You also started to take to solid foods after we visited the feeding therapist. We shared some of the tips that we learned in the hopes that someone would find them helpful.
And last but not least, you attended your first baseball game on the fourth of July! The stairs and carousel were your favorite parts.
August: Mommy had a tough time with going back to work. It took a few months, but we finally all settled into a new 'normal'. (I think it was harder on me than on you.)
We finished out the month by switching from a bottle to a sippy cup. It took a few tries but we finally found the right fit and have been going strong ever since!
September: Your mama still struggled with being back at work. I wanted nothing more than to be home with my little girl. Luckily you were in good hands and having a ton of fun with your friends.
You had your first trip to the fair. It was a short one due to the weather, but you loved the lights, people, and animals. You even said, 'cow' and 'moo!'
I wrote a post to all of the mothers out there - Mothers Know Best. You were so so sick and I felt compelled to share what I'd learned from months of caring for a sick child.
October: Corn mazes, farm animals, and hay rides - October was a month for fall fun.
Your Aunt Kari and Uncle Alex tied the knot and you attended your first wedding in style:
Your favorite face to make was your 'stink face' - dubbed so by your father. And a cuter face I never did see!
And, of course, there was your very first trick-or-treat. Last year you dressed up and went to trunk-or-treat, but this year you went door to door for the first time and loved putting 'candies' in your bag!
Not as expected was a freak snow! You had your first sled ride and were fascinated by the fluffy white stuff.
You settled into some amazing sleeping routines and attended your second annual cookie exchange. And of course, there was Christmas! You had a thrilling holiday week filled with family from near and far, birthday parties, and presents galore.
You've come so far! From a baby to a toddler, you've grown into such a beautiful, smart, and sweet little girl. Mommy and Daddy love you to the moon and back. We can't wait to spend 2012 with you!
xoxo,
Mommy & Daddy
A happy new year to you and yours! We hope that your year was as wonderful as ours and that your 2012 is filled with love and laughter.
I can't believe how quickly time flies by. Christmas is almost here, my sister and her husband are arriving from Australia today for the holidays, and Violet is 19 months old! She can peel her own clementines and climb up into her booster seat - where has my little baby gone?! We've been hard at work on her big girl room so that it's ready whenever she is, along with improvements here and there on other parts of the H-Haus. Here are a few snapshots from our life lately:
1. Violet is in an amazing bedtime routine (knock on wood) and loves to sleep with her frog and blankies. She rarely cries or fusses anymore, but just babbles to herself in her sweet way until she drifts off to sleep. Without a paci I might add!
2. We've been hard at work creating our own personal gift wrap for the holidays. We got to try out a little sample on one of Violet's friends' birthday gifts - she was so proud of her creations!
3. It's nearly Christmas and that means cookie exchanges! I made simple sugar cookies, but you should've seen some of the crazy cookies I received in return.
4. Reusable gift tags from Etsy - they're almost too pretty to give away!
5. Working on a little corner of the back room - I've been itching for a place to display more of the art that I've collected over the years so another (miniature) frame wall it is.
6. Yeah, I buy cookbooks for the pretty pictures :)
7. Violet's dotty bedding has arrived! It compliments the pillows perfectly. Now we just need a bed...
8. A clean desk + a new home computer = a happy blogger.
9. One of my favorite things in Violet's big girl room - a flower garland from Lori Marie.
This week's Supermom is Joni Lay of Lay Baby Lay! Joni is mom to the adorable Vivien (Vivi) Charles, authors a blog filled with beautiful nursery idea boards and inspiring photos, and runs her own business - Chocolate Butterbean where she designs and paints custom wedding signs. Any time I need nursery inspiration, I'm sure to visit Joni's site. Read on to learn more about this week's supermom...
Although we didn't plan to let Violet keep her paci until she was old enough to tie her shoes, we also hadn't planned to wean her from it entirely until she was a little closer to two. She's still going through a lot of teething and it helped to soothe her to sleep, which I was totally okay with. Our biggest issue was that our once ample supply of paci's had been slowly whittled down to one. The lone survivor, we treated that thing like gold. It didn't leave her nursery unless we were going on a long trip and we thought we were doing pretty great. But while we were busy patting ourselves on the back for going so long without losing the thing, we didn't know that a small crack was slowly forming at the core of our daughter's most prized possession. That's right - the binky broke.
Oh the horror!
You may be thinking to yourself, So why the heck don't you just buy a new one? Why all the drama? Well I blame that on Dr. Weil. We discovered his line of paci's long ago via Melissa and I was sold - it was a single piece of molded silicone, was BPA free, and was large enough for Violet to keep the darn thing in her mouth. At one point I think we owned four or five of them. Each one slowly succumbed to the will of our toddler. She'd chuck them out of her stroller on walks into piles of leaves, leave them laying at restaurants, and once I even dug one out from under a box of pie at the bakery.
When we were down to two paci's, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and order another pack (yeah, I'm cheap). And that's when it happened...the dreaded words, "Out of Stock". I couldn't find them anywhere - Amazon, Kmart, Dr. Weil's own website - I couldn't purchase them an-y-where. I called the Weilbaby company, I sent them impassioned emails pleaing for pacifiers. I would have seriously purchased a whole case at one point if they had offered it to me. But they wouldn't return my calls or emails. Even the subject line, "Desperate Mom, please help!" apparently didn't capture their attention. Let me tell you - that Dr. Weil is cold as ice. I mean, you should've read this email people. It would've even melted the Grinch's heart. Anyway, I digress...
Shortly after that Violet lost one of the remaining two and we were down to the. last. one. That is until about a week and a half ago when Violet bit it in half it finally bit the dust.
Yes, the binky was broken and I was completely terrified when bed time came. I decided to just go through our usual routine and pretend like everything was hunky dory. Sippy cup, brush teeth (with toothpaste mind you! Aquafresh Apple Banana to be exact. But that's another post for another day), read a few books, sing a few songs, and put her in bed with her blankey and her frog.
And guess what people? She DIDN'T EVEN CRY. Not once. Just a few 'Mommy's' and she was off to dream land. Who knew??!! I mean I won't say we haven't had a few melt down's since then at nap time or bed time, but mostly it's been pretty miraculously quiet and drama-free around the H-Haus. (well at nap and bedtime at least. There are definitely day time tantrums. I mean TANTRUMS! Why do there have to be tantrums??? But again...another story...nothing to do with paci's or sleep. Just my strong-willed stubborn child giving her opinion on, "but yes mommy you SHOULD let me play in the freezer. I mean, don't you know there are PEAS in there?!")
One bad habit that she's developed since the demise of the paci is sucking her fingers or sometimes even (the horror!) her thumb, so I think a few more months may have done her some good, but over all it hasn't been the Armageddon that I had imagined. I will say that I will NEVER purchase anything made by Weilbaby again and will be sure with my next child to use well-established easily accessible pacifier brands like Nuk that will NEVER go out of stock.
I'll file that one away under 'the lessons of motherhood' Does this stuff get easier with the second one? Please tell me that it does! This flying blind stuff is the pits.
Has anyone else had any experience with pacifier weaning? How old was your little one? How did it go for you? I'd love to hear about it!
...
With Violet returning to the babysitter on Monday, we started a last-minute push to transition Violet from the bottle to the sippy cup this weekend. It's only her and three of her babysitter's kids, but one is a three-month-old and we thought that her sitter would appreciate it if she was a little bit more independent with her feedings, plus at this point she is 'supposed' to be exclusively drinking from a sippy cup anyway.
[Our little lounge lizard]
She's done great with drinking water from a sippy cup, but whenever I would put her formula in it she'd look at me like I had two heads. Absolutely NO interest. We decided that a more firm approach was needed, so we withheld the bottle completely and only offered the sippy cup. She still wasn't interested so at the suggestion of a friend we went out and bought a different kind of cup.
It's called the three-stage sippy cup by Nuby and it worked like a charm. It's shaped like a sippy cup but has two different spouts - one shaped more like the nipple of a bottle and one more like the spout of a traditional sippy cup. We tried the nipple-shaped spout and she took right to it. The third stage is removal of the handles, but we're not too worried about that part as she does fine with or without them. I just thought I'd pass along the recommendation for anyone who is having difficulty transitioning their toddler from the bottle to a sippy cup. Now I may have to buy a few more so that I'm not constantly cleaning this one!
Because her allergies can't be tested, we have to feel our way along by trial and error. We trial a food for three weeks slowly building up from a teaspoonful of food on the first day to a jar (or as much as she'll let us feed her) by the end of the trial period. If she's not allergic to a food, everything will be normal and hunky dory. If she IS allergic, she'll begin projectile vomiting for hours to the point of dehydration. She's already been hospitalized once after a reaction, so let's just say that trying new foods (and being in social situations with food) can be a little bit scary to say the least.
We weren't able to really start solids with Violet until she was ten months old, as her body needed time to heal from the reactions she had when we first tried to introduce them. Because of the delayed start and bad history, Violet had difficulty swallowing and strong aversions to tastes and textures. And although you can often coax a six-month-old into eating a spoonful of baby food, at ten months Violet was old enough to clamp that little mouth shut and run some serious interference by waving her hands in front of her mouth whenever we'd try to feed her. It's been a difficult road, but we're finally making some headway and I wanted to share with you what we've learned.
Although I doubt that many of you have the same issues that we've experienced with Violet, a lot of this can pertain to any kid who is picky with food, dislikes certain tastes, or has issues in general with eating solids, so I hope some of you find it helpful! Here's what has worked for us:
Tips for Little Eaters:
1. Start with something bland. Violet's prescription formula is very VERY bland, and we made the mistake of trying to start solids with apples. Let's just say it was a LOT more flavor that she was used to and it didn't go well. We went back to the drawing board and tried potatoes instead. Although she still wasn't thrilled, it went much more smoothly than apples. We then slowly built up to carrots, apples, and so on up the taste ladder.
(Violet is currently eating plums, broccoli*, carrots, blueberries**, potatoes, avocado, prunes, and freeze-dried apples. Why no meat, grains, or dairy? No, we're not vegans. FPIES kids react least often to fruits and veggies, although we may be trying a meat next.)
*Okay so she just bites it and then spits it out, but it's progress! **She eats the insides and spits out the skin. I'll take it.
2. Stick with what works. Once you've found a food that gets good reviews (Violet eventually decided she really loved freeze-dried apples and pureed carrots) stick with that for a little while in order to build basic eating skills (chewing, swallowing, and the like) That way they're not focusing on the taste or texture as much and are really able to just get the basics down.
3. Patience is key. For a long time Violet would put freeze-dried apples in her mouth, but didn't seem to realize that she was supposed to swallow them. We'd always find little apple bits all over the place, which was frustrating, but we knew we were making progress based on the fact that she wanted to put them in her mouth at all. After a LOT of patience, one day it eventually clicked and she realized that those apples were FOOD and that she was supposed to eat it. That was such a huge milestone - it was the first truly solid thing that she swallowed and that opened up whole new doors for us.
4. Discover your inner model No matter how much you DON'T want to eat prunes or broccoli or freeze-dried apples (which are actually surprisingly good), this one is really important. If you won't eat it, most likely neither will they. Over exaggerate chewing and swallowing so that your child can observe eating skills and hopefully imitate them.
5. Use peer pressure to your advantage One of our huge breakthroughs came on a day when we went to visit Violet's babysitter and her kids They were gobbling down Violet's freeze-dried apples like they were candy, and Violet realized that not only were those things a hot commodity, but also that the other kids WEREN'T SPITTING THEM OUT. It was after that day that we really noticed that she started to chew and swallow. I also will play YouTube videos of other babies and toddlers eating. She really watches and imitates what she sees in the video. This is how we got her to start taking bites of larger bits of food and she also tries to use utensils now as well. Seriously, what did parents do before the internet?! Here are her current favorite videos:
We alsorecently started to take Violet to feeding therapy. We would have started sooner, but it took THREE MONTHS to get in! Here are a few tips that the therapists shared with us:
Provide your child with at least two preferred and one non-preferred food at each meal
Limit distractions
Eat as a family at the table and serve family style at all meals
Allow your child to help with food preparation and setting of the table (Violet seems to eat more when she sees me chopping up her food for whatever reason)
Set mealtime routine with breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner
Allow child to 'play' with food and get messy. (This one surprised me as parents are notorious for telling children NOT to play with their food, but apparently studies have shown that children who are allowed to play with their food become better eaters in the long run. Playing with foods has allowed Violet to get used to new textures and to learn that eating is fun and not just a chore. It's definitely a LOT more work, but it's working and that's what matters.)
Do not hide foods in other foods, 'trick' you child into eating a food, or force feed your child. (The idea is to gain your child's trust. Mostly I place the foods in front of Violet and allow her to decide what she wants to eat and doesn't want to eat. I model and encourage certain things, but don't force the issue. Usually she will eventually try everything on her tray.)
Don't strap your child into the high chair. (Obviously if you have a very squirmy child and feel that it's a safety issue, by all means use the straps, but this kind of goes along with the trust thing and making eating fun and not a chore.)
And although this post has gotten (quite) long already, I have one more thing I really want to add. The next time you see a mom feeding her child formula, please don't judge. I nursed Violet for nine months and would probably have gone longer if it hadn't been for her GI issues. After months of her reacting to my breast milk and an elimination diet that caused me to lose too much weight, we finally ended up with a prescription formula that has done wonders for my baby girl. She's like a totally different, much happier and healthier girl now that she is on something that doesn't irritate her little body. She sleeps better, feels better, and I can't thank formula companies enough for making these products for kids who need them. You never know for what reasons a mom is scooping powder and shaking up bottles, but know that they are most likely good reasons and that she is doing what is best for her and her family.
Thanks for letting me get up on my soapbox for a minute there. I really, truly hope that this post is helpful to some of you - whether your child is just a picky eater or something more serious.
And if you have any tips for getting your kids to eat solids, I'd love to hear them!
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