Ember is 2 weeks old though she seems so much older to me! I don’t know why, I really thought I’d be all “aahhhh, tiny newborn!” compared to my toddler, but instead I just keep staring at her and thinking how big and awake she seems for only 2 weeks old. Maybe it’s because she’s bigger than Kate was as a newborn, maybe it’s something about her personality, or maybe my memory is just not all that good. Not sure.

She’s certainly an easier baby than Kate was. I’m still stunned than I can put her down at all, it may take me a while to get used to that. No wonder people looked at me like I was crazy when talking about Kate’s personality as an infant, if they had a baby like Ember that they could put down for naps I certainly would have sounded off my nut. I do have to wait until she’s asleep before I put her down, but she’ll semi-rouse and then sigh and go back to sleep. I don’t even turn on the vibrate on the bouncer. Last night she slept 5 hours in the cosleeper after we finally got her to fall asleep (it was a long evening of fussing). Even awake I can put her down on the boppy or floor mat and she kicks her legs and grunts and looks around at everything.

Unfortunately she’s been having more tummy troubles, which I fully blame on my overactive letdown. She’s sucking in a lot of air while nursing, and by the end of a very short nursing session (they are usually max 5 minutes long) she’s kicking her feet and scrunching up her face and I have to hold her upright for a while and pat her back until she lets out some huge burps. The problem is that when she’s upset for some reason – diaper, woke up prematurely, sore belly – she wants to nurse. But if she continues to nurse she gets a sore belly, which makes her very unhappy. So I end up with a crying, rooting baby who wants to nurse to calm down, but that just makes it worse! Yesterday I got her to take a Tommy Tippee pacifier for a little while, which calmed her down, but she normally refuses any pacififers. This has us at a bit of a loss, especially when I had to go out for a couple hours without her. She had already nursed and didn’t want more milk, so she wasn’t too fond of the bottle Denis gave her, but she was cranky and cried almost the entire time until I got home with my boobs! Poor kiddo… and poor daddy.

Kate is still being pretty good but is acting out here and there. It’s still just an extension of what she’s been doing before, the throwing and hitting while laughing, looking for attention, looking for a reaction. It gets more difficult when there is a small baby in the house, however. Poor Ember is going to have to be a tough kid, she’s already gotten inadvertently shoved a few times by big sis, not to mention the times that Kate is trying to be nice giving kisses but doesn’t do it all too gently. Ember will just scrunch up her face and let out a squawk of indignation, and then just goes back to whatever she’s doing. I think watching Kate like a hawk and supervising every single interaction they have is the most tiring part of having two kids. The waking at night, getting up early, giving attention to two… those are all fine. It’s having to stay on guard the entire time I’m nursing Ember, constantly saying, “Kate, gentle!” and watching my toddler walk off with my nursing pad/water bottle/lunch for the tenth time while I can’t get up that is getting to me.

Mostly I think I’m just waiting for a routine to settle in. Ember has been getting very sleepy at around 8 or 9pm and though I do nothing different at that time than any other nap she tends to fall asleep and not want to rouse except to nurse and go back to sleep, so I think that’s going to end up being her bedtime. Which works out great for me because Kate goes to bed at 9, which means we then have the evening to ourselves! I did not expect that to happen, especially not this early! Of course yesterday did not happen like that, she was fussy and crying until midnight. The morning is just up for grabs… some mornings she’s up with the sun, but if we had a bad night then she’ll fall back asleep in my arms for hours. She is often taking a nap the same time as Kate does, which again is very nice! The downside of that however is that then both girls are awake at the same time, both wanting/needing me.

But more than that I think I just need a bit more time to get used to juggling them and figuring out how to handle it. I’m doing fine for a few hour stretches, but I still haven’t attempted to bring both girls out in public. Taking just the baby? Easy peasy! I either carry her, wear her, or put her in the stroller asleep. She’s been awesome – much easier than chasing a toddler down the aisles. (Which is precisely why I’m nervous to take them both out together, lol.)

When I run out of disposable diapers for Kate and decide that she’s already had 2 poops today so it’s safe to put her in a cloth diaper for a few hours, what are the chances she’ll have a third, increasingly massive poop? Pretty good in this house.

::

Kate still has a habit of taking her shoes off when she’s in the carseat or the stroller. The other day she removed them while hanging out in the stroller, so we just didn’t bother putting them back on. Halfway home in the car Kate just out of nowhere bursts out crying and says, “Shoes!!!”

::

Kate is putting words together a lot now, and repeats pretty much anything you say. She pointed at some weird stuffed animal in a book and said, “a-dog!” I looked at it and said, “It’s a cat… I think.” She repeated, “A-cat I-think!” And yes, she puts “a” at the front of just about every word.

A common phrase around here, when she slings her purse (or mine) over her shoulder, is “Bye-bye! See soon!” as she walks down the hall. It makes me laugh every time.

She’s also getting a better understanding of how things work. She asked for milk and I told her she had no more. She said to me, “Mo’ maak! [More milk!] Over dere! In da fridge!” And she pointed clearly at the kitchen as if to say Duh, mom, just go get more!

She’s also been acting things out, such as hopping around the living room saying, “Fwog! [Frog!] Wibbit! Hop! Hop!” She’s really loving fingerplays right now, asking for “Spider” (Itsy Bitsy Spider) and patty cake over and over again.

She is saying a lot less random toddler babble, I noticed. She talks just as much, but now it’s pretty much all attempted english. She talks slower now because she’s trying to get the words right, she purses her lips and frowns a little when she is trying to speak clearly to me. A lot of what I do is guessing based on context. Sometimes I get really stumped, like when we were watching Sesame Street today and she was saying what sounded like pumpkin but there was absolutely no pumpkin anywhere in the house or on TV… until 60 seconds later when Abby Cadabby made a pumpkin magically appear. That’s what of those “She watches too much TV” moments.

Also, they really weren’t kidding – once they start stringing words together they just never stop.

I realized I haven’t posted any new pictures since Ember came home from the hospital. So here you go! It’s amazing how much they change in the first few weeks.

It’s not that I haven’t had time to write, it’s more than I choose to spend my free time watching TV (since if Kate is awake we rarely even bother trying to watch our shows, can’t hear anything over her constant babble!), am usually holding a baby, and sometimes take a nap.

Ember is nearly 4 weeks old now and is still such a funny, weird personality, but at least I’m figuring her out a little bit. She grunts and growls and fusses a lot, and the reason for it can be any number of things. She is not nearly as black and white as Kate was, and is harder to figure out what she actually wants at any given time. I’ve realized that sometimes she just wants to be put down – it’s such a bizarre thing to me! But she likes her floor time, kicking and waving her arms around and staring at the ceiling fan and windows. Unfortunately with a 25lb toddler running around I can’t just put her down whenever she wants it. The past couple days she’s been fussier than usual, nursing constantly – a growth spurt, perhaps. She also is less content being put down to sleep, she keeps waking up and crying. Often she doesn’t even want to eat, she just wants a boob pillow to sleep on. But at least she has something that helps her feel calm! She still stubbornly feels that pacis are an insult and insists on gagging on them and screaming. I watched her use my breast as a pacifier and realized that she doesn’t like to suck nearly as much as Kate did (and still does!). Ember takes in very little of my nipple while comfort-nursing, and just kind of “kisses” me more than sucking. So I’m thinking the paci shape is just totally not her deal.

Normally she likes to sleep in the bouncer seat for naps and after trying several other options I realized she prefers it for night time, too. I tried swaddling and while I could convince her to tolerate it she didn’t sleep any better or longer than without it. She clearly does prefer to sleep with her arms free and her hands up by her face and she’d wake up by struggling to get her arms up just as often as she wakes from her startle reflex when not swaddled. I do bring her into bed with me in the middle of the night when I’m too tired to wait for her to nurse and fall asleep so I can move her back to her bed, but it’s more from my laziness than what she needs. Her sleeping next to me definitely helps her sleep longer in the mornings, though, which I highly, highly appreciate! She had a week or so of waking at 5am every morning and I have to say I will NEVER like early mornings. Now she’s sleeping in until we get up with Kate.

Kate continues to be so great! She’s still 2 years old and being frustrating in some ways, but when it comes to the baby she’s a fantastic big sister. She often climbs up on the couch next to me and holds out her arms and says, “Hold baby?” I still hold on to Ember, but lay her across Kate’s lap so Kate can put her arms around the baby. She’ll sit like that for some time watching TV but of course, 2 year old attention spans being what they are, it doesn’t take long before she’s pushing Ember away and climbing down to do something else. I’ve been talking a lot to Kate about what other people are doing and if they are happy/sad… I’m trying to instill some awareness of other peoples’ feelings. So now when she hears Ember crying she says, “Baby crying? Baby sad?” I don’t think she gets the concept yet, but it’s a start. I also underscore how people feel when Kate is acting up… if she hits me I tell her that it hurts mama, we don’t hit. Unfortunately she only partially understands because when she sees any hitting on TV she shouts “No hit!!” and then runs over and hits me. So still some work to do there.

One of the more annoying things Kate is doing is the eating thing. Feeding a 2 year old is such a challenge. She’s decided she no longer likes any fruit at all. Will pick them up and say “Yucky” and put it down. She doesn’t like the texture. Trying to convince her to try it only starts a fit. So she now gets all her fruit in smoothie form, which totally works. But other foods are just plain annoying. Sandwiches, for example. She likes them. She likes ham, she likes cheese, she likes chicken. But off her a bit of your sandwich and she first says, “No!” But after a while she’ll take fake bites and kind of lick it. (Yeah… I love it when she does that to my sandwich. Awesome.) And my gut reaction was to take the sandwich away, if she’s just going to fool around with it and not eat it. However if I don’t really say anything and let her keep the sandwich (or whatever it is) I’ve noticed she will sometimes progress to taking a bite or two. And then she realizes that she actually does like it and will eat a bunch of it. Just getting her to take that first bite and actually swallow is so drawn out and annoying!

I’ve gone out a couple times with both girls and while it’s a bit of juggling it can be done as long as I have a safe place to nurse and change Ember without Kate running off somewhere. But Den is still off work so mostly if we’re going somewhere with both girls there’s both of us going which works just fine. Ember has been great in my ring sling, she sleeps pretty good in it and it’s the quickest carrier I have in terms of getting the kiddo in and out. I have a k’tan I bought recently and it’s okay but it still doesn’t feel as secure and easy as the ringsling… plus it’s not adjustable. I like being able to tighten my carriers if I need to, and apparently I like to carry very high up, so even with the size small I feel like the k’tan is too loose, though Ember is okay with it.

Complicating matters, however, is the fact that my SUV needs some major repairs. It has a gas leak, a bunch of other leaks, and who knows what else but I know it’s not driving right at all. It’s 10 years old and almost 100k miles so now we’re waiting for Friday to find out how much it’s going to cost and if it’s worth putting that much into it. But we can’t really afford a second vehicle payment right now, we really need the SUV to last another 4-ish years until I get done with my degree and get a job. So fingers crossed it won’t be a ridiculous repair bill… but I’m bracing myself for the worst.