Population: Lily

From Lily April 25 2009 - Emily B's 1st bday

Wow! I don’t even know what to say here. Lily is still completely adorable, and an absolute sponge right now, but MAN, she has started throwing these tantrums that just leave me dumbfounded. It seems like anytime she doesn’t feel in control of a situation, it results in a meltdown. Like, throw herself on the floor kicking and screaming type meltdown. Even for things like if I take something away from her because she shouldn’t have it - meltdown. If her teeth hurt and she can’t do anything about it - meltdown. If she wants to read a book or do something that requires someone else’s help and nobody is available the second she wants it - MELTDOWN! I don’t know if this is teething related (she is getting her molars, and having a hard time with them), or if this is just the beginning of the terrible twos ALREADY. Anybody else here with me?!?

Another issue we’re having is slapping and pinching. Jason and I (and her daycare woman) have all been working with her on this, teaching her “gentle” and that it hurts people when you pick or slap, but it’s been a SLOW process. Sometimes she will slap me, then kiss me and say “gentle”, but then she does it all again. And she REALLY has a problem with the slapping and pinching when she’s really frustrated for any reason.

From Lily April 25 2009 - Emily B's 1st bday

Other than those things, everything has been going quite well! Totally randomly, Lily has started calling me “Mommy” instead of “Mama” over the last week. No idea where she picked it up, but I’m not complaining because it totally melts my heart! She is also talking up a storm and learning new words every day, I swear! This weekend she blew me away by pointing out letters and naming them. Seriously, I didn’t even know that was possible at this age?!? We have a package of Bounty paper towels sitting near our linen closet and she pointed to them and said “B!” and I didn’t think much of it. Then she said “O!”. I thought “hmm, what a coincidence”… but then she said those two letters together at least 2 more times during the day, while pointing to the paper towels. So, I put her down and said “Lily, can you show me the B?” and sure enough, she ran right up to the package and pointed to the “B” in Bounty. I was completely astonished!

We also went to a 1st Birthday Party this weekend for one of our friends daughters (Lily goes to daycare with her, too). It was a lot of fun! Lily was pretty hilarious playing with all the kids. She kept going in and out of this tent and squealing and giggling and making her hair stand up on end, which made the others kids laugh, too. She also got to have a cupcake and made a HUGE mess with it, but she was so excited to be sitting with the big kids that she just had a blast. They were all laughing at how messy she was, and she was laughing because they were. I think we may have a future class clown on our hands!

From Lily April 25 2009 - Emily B's 1st bday

Finally, something completely unrelated. Some of you may know that I chat online with a bunch of women who all also have babies that were born (or due in) December 2007. One of these women I’ve gotten to know had another child before the one that is Lily’s age, but that child passed away at just over 3 months old due to a heart defect as a part of CHARGE syndrome. This past weekend would have been her 3rd Birthday, so I organized some of the women on our board to make a little tribute for this poor little girl, and try to make her Mom feel less alone in her grief. I think it was a huge success! Lily helped me out, and these were the pictures we sent to her -

From April 2009 - for Zoey

From Lily Zoo March 29, 2009

I am seriously fired from blogging - it’s been almost a month since my last update! Is anybody still reading this, or have you all given up on me? We’ve had so much going on, and so many playdates since our last update. Finally, we’re getting out of winter’s hibernation mode! I’ll try to do a quick recap of the highlights, but don’t want to bore you with all the details.

From Lily Zoo March 29, 2009

On Saturday, March 29th, Lily and her cousins (with parents, of course) went to the MN zoo and saw farm babies! It was a lot of fun, and the girls seemed to have a good time. They really loved the various aquariums, and the farm babies section where they got to run around with some of the baby animals (mostly pygmy goats). Lily said “hi” and “bye” to all the animals (very polite), and often reminded them of the noises they were supposed to make. She was especially fond of reminding the sheep, by walking up to the side of their pen and screaming ‘BAAAAAAAAAAAAA’ at them as loud as possible. It was pretty cute! She got so excited and squealed so loud, a bunch of people turned to look at her. Luckily, we were surrounded by other parents so they mostly thought it was cute and smiled at her, instead of wondering whose kid was making that LOUD NOISE?!? heh

From Lily Zoo March 29, 2009

The next couple of days were full of excitement for Lily’s cousins, Claire and Abby (and their parents!). Claire started running a pretty high fever, and ended up having a seizure from it. They all spent most of the night in the ER to find out that she had an ear infection, and they put her on amoxicillan. Finally, a day or two later her fever broke and she broke out in a head to toe rash. Turns out the fever wasn’t from the ear infection - it was Roseola! Finally, she started to feel better from that, then a few days later she broke out in a worse rash. Another Doctor trip later, they discover she’s allergic to amoxicillan and that caused the second rash. Poor Claire! She is finally starting to feel much better. In the midst of all that excitement, Abby got jealous of the “attention” her sister was getting, so she took her first steps and started learning to walk! Not to be left behind, Claire took her first steps a few days later as well.

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

Last weekend, Lily and her cousins had their very first sleepover. Lily and I went over to their house where the girls played for a few hours, and showed off their new playroom. Then we fed them dinner and put them to bed (Lily upstairs in their guest room), and Auntie Lisa and I got to hang out! We got to sit and chat, drink some wine, and watched Gilmore Girls episodes and “Marley and Me”. It was so nice to get to spend that amount of time hanging out with my sister - I’ve missed her! Even though we see each other often, we don’t actually get to spend much quality “sister” time together, so this was nice and long overdue. The next morning, we fed the girls breakfast and let them play for a few hours again until nap time when Lily and I headed back home. I’m sure this is only the first of many sleepovers to come, and I hope Lily and her cousins are best friends as they grow up together.

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

The beginning of last week, we got a call at work that Lily had hurt herself at daycare. Nothing too serious, as it turns out (thank goodness!), but still a scary call to get! She had climbed up on the couch, then walked right off the edge and banged her face into the coffee table. She split her top lip open pretty good (the underneath/inside part) and it was bleeding for a good 15 minutes. She handled it pretty well, and earned the title of “tough cookie” from her daycare woman! I know it was still bothering her for a day or two because she was very careful with it, especially when eating. Just when her fat lip started to look normal again (Friday), she fell off our bed and re-opened the split, and also bumped her head and got a nice goose egg. It’s looking pretty good at this point, but she still is being pretty careful with it when she eats. I hate to see her get hurt, but I’m thankful this was relatively minor!

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

Finally, Easter weekend. We left on Friday morning to go visit Jason’s brother and his family in Rochester. We hung out with them during the afternoon, then drove down to Lanesboro to stay at The Guest Hus Motel, which Jason’s Mom owns. Last time we stayed there, everything went great - but this time, Lily did NOT want to sleep! I think it’s hard for her to sleep in a pack and play with us in the room, because she sees us and wants to be with us. Whatever, the reason, it was a rough night and I think we all got maybe 4-5 hours sleep total.

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

On Saturday, we headed to Grandma Gayle’s horse farm for an Easter celebration with Jason’s family. It was a really nice day, and it was nice to be able to see everyone again and show them how much Lily has grown! I was also amazed at how big Tali and Eanna are getting - Tali turns 4 later this month, and Eanna will be 2 in July. It was crazy to see Lily and Eanna together, because they are seriously almost exactly the same size!

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

Lily also got to ride a pony again, and this time she’s old enough to really get into it! She LOVED it. I don’t think I emphasized that enough. She. LOVED. It. LOVED! Seriously. Everytime we went back into the house, she kept going up to the door and looking outside where the horses were, pointing outside, and even investigating the doggy door as a means of escape. Even this morning when she woke up, she ran to our front door, pointed outside, and said “me, neigh! me, neigh!”. The hardest part of the trip (other than the lack of sleeping), was the ride home. I think it was somewhat related to the lack of sleeping, and just being sick of being in the car. I had hoped that Lily would sleep most of the way home because I know she was tired (and somewhat cranky), and she did pass out immediately in the car, but woke up after about 20-30 minutes and would NOT go back to sleep. For most of the remaining 2.5 hours of the trip, Lily was fussing and/or out-and-out screaming. We pulled over twice, and finally I drove while Jason rode in the back with her, and that seemed to help. Needless to say, we were all very happy to be home again! We all went to bed early and slept very well last night.

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

Finally, Easter day! We woke up and Lily found the 6 plastic easter eggs the Easter Bunny hid around the living room (containing such things as “bunny graham crackers” and dried cranberries, etc). Then she got the stuffed duck the Easter Bunny brought her, and gave him a nice, big hug (so cute!). I made her special breakfast, gave her a bath, and put her down for an earlier nap. She didn’t nap much, but woke up in time to get ready for my family’s Easter celebration. I got her dressed in her pretty Easter dress, and we headed to my Aunt and Uncles house. Lily spent a lot of time there with Claire and Abby, and her 2nd cousins Blake and Rachel, who were very interested in helping with the babies. I think all 3 babies did pretty well, especially since none of them had much sleep and there was a lot of people, and a lot of attention on them.

From Lily April 3 - Easter 2009

I think that pretty much catches us up! I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter, and spring break for those of you lucky enough to get one (=p~). I promise I won’t let a whole month pass before our next update.