Amelie is 5 months old!

Last week, Amelie turned 5 months old. As always, I'm amazed at the speed that the months pass...amazed at the physical growth that seems to happen before my eyes, and amazed to watch her little personality develop day to day.

This month, Amelie began rolling over from front to back. While she, like most babies, is a hater of all things related to tummy time, she now rolls over with great squawks and fuss. Amelie also began solids in earnest this past month. The first few weeks of her fourth month, we started rice cereal from time to time, but now she's eating 2-3 servings of rice per day since her 5 month birthday. Amelie is also now a proud little hip monkey....her little legs have finally given way to allow for comfortable positioning on Mommy's nice soft hip.

This month we've notice more hair growing in, although from across the room, it's hard to tell. Amelie sleeps through the night maybe 1 in 4 nights right now due to some ferocious teething issues. I'm not sure when or where those teeth are coming, but my poor baby has been complaining like there's now tomorrow for a couple of weeks now. I half expect her to pop out a dozen teeth at once given the misery they are causing her.

Amelie is a delicate girl. She is sweet. She is interested in her sister. She loves to be showered with attention, compliments, and kisses. She smiles and laughs and reaches for things...mainly faces and toys and her sister.

Right now I'm struggling with naptimes. As with Alia at the same age, Amelie hasn't really hit her stride with naps. She prefers to catnap 3-4 times per day, with one nap being an hour or 90 minutes on a good day, and the remaining naps varying between 30 and 45 minutes. Amelie normally naps in her swing in our master bathroom because it is the most remote room in the house and well-insulated from Alia's shouts and squeals. Given our poured concrete floors, our house carries noises like no other. And while it may sound like a sad place for a nap, it's quite a lovely room and very peaceful! :) Right now I'm still putting Amelie down asleep for naps...I bounce her on the ball or even feed her to sleep. I know I need to crack down on my sleep training in this regard, but I'm telling you, Amelie's cries are the saddest! And she does put herself to sleep at night every night....until she awakes in pain from teething, that is. In that case I give her 5 minutes, and then intervene with motrin or tyelenol and rock her back to sleep. I also give her a little water to wash down the medicine, and that seems to comfort her.

Amelie is not nearly as round as Alia was at this age. While she in no way is a timid eater, she is not quite so demanding of food as Alia was. As a result, I'm currently feeding her 6.5 ounces every 3 to 3.5 hours during the day and rice cereal at 11 and 4 with no night time feedings. However, if it's a particularly rough teething night, I will offer her 2 ounces of formula mixed with 2 ounces of water, but that is maybe one day per week.

Amelie has slotted into our family just as Maya predicted. She has her own personality, her on likes and dislikes, and has planted herself so deep in my heart that I cannot imagine life without her. She is sweet where Alia is sassy. She is oblivious to Alia's No-No-No finger waving in her face and answers her big sister with a huge toothless circle-smile. She is my little bald sweetie pie.

500

Happy Easter!

Today's blog marks my 500th...what do you call it...journal? blog? rantings? Well, anyway, when I started this blog a few years back, 500 entries might have seemed a little daunting. And now? I'm just glad that I've kept it going to record our lives, and to have proof that I'm trying really hard to be a good Mom when my girls are teenagers and know everything.

So. Alia now says "nope" in a very sassy way. She's 20 months old. I wonder what she'll say when she's actually 2. She also says purple, pocket, door, up....all of which were added to her ever-growing vocabulary this week. And Amelie? Gotta say...she is the sweetest of the sweetie pies. Truly.

Yesterday our friends Barry and Z came over to hang out...they brought their little guy who was born on New Years Eve. We were do honored that they asked us (and we accepted) to be the Godparents of their son. Just writing it down gives me chills up and down my arms and legs because now that I know the love that a parent feels for their child, it is without a doubt the highest compliment you can pay anyone...entrusting the upbringing of your child to them.

So that's all there's time for today...Alia has awakened from her nap so duty calls. I wish I had a sassier, quippier entry for such a special entry, but maybe it's enough to just keep writing.

Happy Easter!

Amelie is 4 Months Old!

Well, what a month this has been for Amelie. Gone is the newborn baby with misfiring neurons that cause her to burst into hours of crying. We now have a round little butterball that loves to smile. This month Amelie began smiling all the time, and even laughs now, too! She is ticklish under her arms, and loves to be kissed....especially on her toes.

This month I began playing our favorite game nearly every night...."Tickle Baby". As I change her for bed, and while on the changing table, while she's in between outfits and in only her diaper, I tickle her with the lightest touches from head to toe. Her body wiggles and tingles and little baby goose bumps pop up everywhere as she coos and giggles in response.  I could play Tickle Baby all day long!

This month, Amelie is now stable enough for toys. She sits upright in her Bumbo chair and spins the wheel so sweetly while making little guttural uh-uh-uh sounds. Amelie also is big enough for the ol' Jumperoo, which was brought out from storage in the garage. She loves to spin spin spin the little spinnies and smiles at the sight of the Jumperoo.

Finally, she interacts endlessly with her jungle activity mat....during the day she loves me to turn the music setting on, and at night she prefers the soft jungle sounds setting. Either way, she's happy under the dangling monkeys, elephants and other animals for quite awhile!

Amelie is currently a Mommy's girl...she tracks me constantly and smiles when we make eye contact. For the most part, she is immediately comforted when I pick her up. She is also sleeping better....she sleeps consistently from 7PM to 3AM, feeds, and goes right back to sleep.

Amelie is gentle, loves her sister, her panda bear, and holding things.

Something happened this month in my own heart...it's almost like my heart grew to accommodate a surge of love that I feel for Amelie. There's never been a lack of love for her, don't get me wrong. It's just that since she has come out of her cry-all-the-time infant time, I now have much more time to enjoy her and get closer to her. She is a sweetheart of a baby, and only seems to get sweeter.

Two babies, one Mommy

Life here at the Lalvanis is a little routine these days. Alia has hers. Amelie has hers, I have mine, Ajay has his. When the girls are asleep, we have ours. Some may find our routines dull and a lacking in excitement. And perhaps it's true. But when there's two of them and one of me, I manage the best way I can.

The girls are in bed at 7PM. We go to bed by 9PM. That allows Ajay and me 2 hours to cook, eat, catch up, clean up dinner, clean up ourselves, change for bed, and go to bed. And that's on a good day...a day that he's home from the hospital by 7PM.

There is an occasional date night. There have been two since Amelie was born....one for my 38th birthday (hmmmm, am I going to have to change the name of my blog when forty roles around...?) and then last week we decided to go out to eat just for the fun of it and met up with friends. Otherwise the weekends usually involve one night of take-out sushi from our favorite local spot and one night of cooking.

One thing that is constant is bedtime...for all of us. With Amelie now waking up again at least once per night, I have to get to bed early to offset the interruption of my sleep...and did I mention? Amelie gets up anywhere from 5:30 to 6:30am for the day with no predictability. And getting that non-sleeping outlier of a baby back to sleep? Ain't going to happen. She is still primarily a cat napper which makes things really tough....getting her to sleep is no fun task.

Speaking of Amelie and sleep...man. Am I frustrated. We have tried everything we know to try. According to the sleep gurus, there are many options, and we've tried them all. Dr. Weisbluth basically says sleeps begets sleep, and that getting enough sleep during the daytime and nighttime are imperative to raising a happy healthy child. Ferber condones sleep being totally routine and allows for no sleep crutches. Believe me, we try to implement everything we can, but what about the baby that can't sleep longer than 30 to 45 minutes per nap? What then? I've tried leaving her there to get back to sleep on her own (HA!). I've tried intervening and trying to rock her back to sleep. Hell, I've even broken every rule and tried feeding her back to sleep. But this girl? Not interested in sleep...she might miss something!

Alia, on the other hand, is a tornado, a comedian, a no-sayer, a penny-in-the-fountain-thrower. She is busy. All the time. She is a fantastic sleeper, although her nap times could use some tweaking. She spends so much energy growing and playing that she still needs a morning nap. By 11AM she is shattered. No way that girl is making it to noon...hell, 11 is a stretch. So that means if she naps for 90 minutes or two hours, she basically needs another lie-down for quiet time around 4 or 4:30. She never sleeps that late in the afternoon...she just needs to regroup, talk to her Froggy, roll around in her crib. And she does it with no fuss.

So that's where we are. I'm tired, happy, and yes, a little frustrated with the whole Amelie sleep-thing. Just thought I'd post and keep it real.

Alia is 20 months old!

Well, almost a week ago, Alia turned 20 months old. I've been thinking about this post for a few weeks, gathering mental notes about what was special about this month.

This month, Alia has begun to show fears...of the janitor at the mall that pushes the big trash can, the vacuum cleaner, and above all, the foot measuring device at any given shoe store. While some of these fears are cute, I have to say that the foot measuring device fear is downright sad. I have never seen a more scared baby-child. And baby-child she is. Alia is straddling the definition of both. She still looks babyish. She has chubby cheeks and legs and dimpled hands. But her chubby thighs are stretching out, and the fat fold that I have always loved is slowly vanishing. Alia's hair is no longer a short little fountain of a pigtail, but a true ponytail. Alia runs. Alia jokes. She is becoming a child in front of our eyes. And did I mention tall? Note the comical display of Baby Alia in Amelie's bouncer....wrong. Just wrong.

Alia is warming up to Amelie, and understands that she is a part of our family. In fact, when Alia is distressed, she will call for Amelie in between her sobs....Ahhhhhh-muh-neeeeeee! that's right....AmeNie. We're still working on L's.

This month, Alia has learned to say Purple, Yellow, Buddy (the neighbor's dog's name) as well as working on learning to say "Take Care"...right now she believes she's saying it right, but it comes out "Goe-dthee!". Here, Alia models her favorite shirt while reading with her pal Froggy...who has his own chair just like hers.

Alia has become a Starbucks addict like the rest of the world and cries for us to go in every time we pass....see, they have only chocolate or vanilla milk, so in a pinch at times, I've allowed chocolate milk to enter her world. And now she is a full blown chocolate milkaholic. Like Mommy like baby, I suppose...chocolate that is, not chocolate milk.

Alia enjoys going to the Irvine Spectrum, South Coast Plaza, and anywhere that has a carousel. She is a connoisseur, and currently prefers the one at the Spectrum above all. See, the one at South Coast? Switched the horses out for Easter Bunnies and that just ruined the authenticity for Alia.

Alia's favorite clothes are her two Snoopy t-shirts and her Hello Kitty shirt with matching leggings. If she has her way, we'd get rid of all the other clothes. I do allow her to pick out her clothes, and she is really good about understanding when something isn't currently available/clean.

Alia is still going through a picky phase when it comes to food. She may or may not eat what I give her, and the old stand bys are no longer reliable. One thing the girl loves? Cheese. Started out with string cheese, moved to cheddar, and then swiss, which she calls peek-a-boo cheese because she can look threw the holes and play peek-a-boo. She has now ventured into aged parmesano riggiano and french mimolette. The girl is a foodie waiting to happen...no big surprise considering her lineage, but right now, picky wins over adventurous. So I have to be patient and realize that she will eat, when she's hungry enough. And just when I'm ready to begin the force-feeding? She eats enough to sustain an NBA player.

Alia is still a Daddy's girl. She now tells me no no no, and points to Daddy. When I ask her  "do you want Mommy to leave?" she replies with "Yeah! Daddy!" and points to him, just in case I'm not clear on who she prefers. But you know what? Although it pains me, it's okay. I want her to feel that she can choose him. I will still love her all the same regardless. Plus, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve...I can always get her to run to me by picking up Amelie and fawning over her!

The ol' Rice Cereal in the Bottle trick

Just taking a moment to record my secret concoction. You've al heard putting rice cereal in their night time bottle helps in getting them to sleep through the night, and if you're like me and research everything to death before doing something, you've probably read that most doctors dispute this trick as the reason that babies begin sleeping through the night. I guess they believe that with or without the addition of rice cereal to the bottle, the baby would have slept through regardless...

Well, here's my experience...two weeks ago, Amelie woke up once in the night for a feed, either at midnight or 3AM. But the point is, she awoke every night, and required a feed to get her back down. Then a week ago, I began experimenting with adding rice cereal to her night time. On the first night I added a teaspoon of rice cereal to her normal 5 ounce bottle, and then added a tablespoon of water to make sure it wasn't too thick. It was a lot of work for her to drink the bottle regardless of the water added, because I still was using the Level 1 nipple. That night she woke up as usual. The next night I doubled the concoction, changed to a number 2 nipple, and low and behold she slept through the night for the first time ever...awaking at 5AM after a 7PM bedtime. Not bad.

But I figured, why night try a little more and see if we can get to 7AM? So the next night, I added three teaspoons of rice cereal (one tablespoon) and three tablespoons of water. On that night? She awoke again at 3AM, only this time not hungry, but seemingly gassy and uncomfortable. So we went back to 2 teaspoons of rice cereal per bottle with 2 tablespoons of water to dilute...and she has slept through the night 5 nights out of the last 7. I think it's working!

Oh, and a side note....why didn't I just add the cereal and skip the water? Two reasons...when doing this with Alia, I added the rice cereal without adding water the first time, and she got constipated. I also noticed it was too thick to fit through a number 1 or 2 nipple.

So that's all...just recording a trick that seems to be working so that when my friends with babies younger than mine ask, I'll be able to remember what I did. Because otherwise? I don't remember what I had for breakfast!

Extra! Extra!

Big news!

Amelie Iman? Slept through the night last night! I mean, really slept through the night! Not the "if a baby sleeps 5 hours straight, that's sleeping through the night" bullsh*t! I mean, we're talking 7PM to 5:30AM, at which time I fed her, put her back down, and she went back down all by herself. No swaddle. No rocking. No patting her back just the way she likes...just plan ol' put herself back down.

Is it even possible that I love her more?????

The jokester

Alia's favorite thing in the world? Froggy.

Alia's second favorite thing in the world? Yogurt. Yogurt, in fact, was one of Alia's first words...or maybe I should call it a verbal expression, because her word for Yogurt doesn't really sound like Yogurt at all...she calls it GOLKA.

Anyway, many mornings, Alia and I have a morning jaunt somewhere before her nap....to the park, to the beach, to the grocery store. And on the way up the hill returning home, I always begin preparing her for the nap to come. I tell her, "when we get home, it's time for a nap".

This conversation has evolved over time. Alia wants to know who will be taking a nap, so the conversation has evolved to "When we get home, Alia's going to take a nap"...and she replies "Mama?" and I reply, "Yes, Mommy is going to take a nap". She rebutts, "Dada?" and I say "Daddy's working, you silly girl" and she laughs. And then the kicker...the punchline...which is delivered as such....she asks, "GOLKA!!!?" To which we both laugh and I say "Yogurt does not need a nap you silly girl!!!"

Love, just pure love

Today I just have to jot down a note. Ajay worked overnight last night, meaning 7PM to 7AM. As he left for work, I was stressed about having both grumpy tired girls all to myself for the next 13 hours. And beyond that, I knew he'd come home exhausted from hustling all night and need as much sleep as possible, and the sooner the better.

Ajay arrived home somewhere after 8AM, and played with Alia until her late morning nap...when she went down, so did he.  I was tired, having manned both girls all night...Amelie was up at 12:30 and again for good at 5AM, and Alia had a surprise wake-up at 3:45....so if you look at it, I actually didn't make a single 4 hour stretch of sleep, meaning I didn't make it to REM sleep, the most important kind.  And the day sadly began at 5AM with Amelie.

And when Alia napped? Amelie was awake....and vice versa (so not a single break for Mom) until Ajay awoke at 2:30 PM. I was busy with one girl or the other all morning/early afternoon. But you know what? I handled it. I enjoyed it. I not only endured it, but I was actually good at it.

And Alia? She actually understood....and when I told her "Daddy's sleeping....remember? He had to go to work last night?", she replied, "Yeeeeeah!" in her sweetest most enthusiastic voice. And when Amelie woke up and needed me to tend to her, she didn't care too much for that fact, but she dealt with it.

Amelie? Today, she was pure joy...pure sweetness....pure Mommy's girl. When I was around, she smiled her biggest smile. When I tickled her, she giggled her best Amelie giggle. When I bathed her, she splashed and coed and kicked like the happiest baby on the block. And that's when I realized what I was feeling....just plain, pure love.

All day today, I was beat. I was pooped. But I didn't think about it once. I just filled the gap that my poor sleeping husband had left and for the first time, enjoyed it. I felt confident that I can do this. I felt 100% bonded with Amelie. I felt like Alia liked me almost as much as Daddy, which is saying a lot. I felt pure love.

Blah

Lately, I've been feeling blah. Not depressed, nothing concerning, just blah. Maybe it's long term sleep deprivation. Maybe it's the fact that I've caught my second cold in 5 weeks thanks to going to story time at the library. Maybe it's that I feel unappreciated when it comes to all the effort I put into raising Alia...She  treats Daddy like the king and me like I have the plague when he's around when all the while I'm dedicating my life to making sure she thrives in every capacity.

I'd lie if I said I haven't second guessed my choice for my life's work. I was a career girl before, and happily made the choice to stay home and raise babies. I read in a chat room that we can't look to our kids for validation, and while my knee jerk reaction is that I'm certain I'm not doing that, then why do I have the blues after a weekend filled with King Daddy and Plague Mommy?