2 months. And other updates

Jake is 2 months old next week. I seriously cannot believe it. Where did the time go? I haven’t even finished blogging about him at 1 month and now he’s almost 2 months. I have some serious catching up to do.  

I am going to try to start catching up from the beginning – all the stuff I didn’t cover since May :( This will be another one of those terribly long posts that only 3 of you will read and I totally know which 3 and the rest of you will just look at the pictures. I don’t blame you.

At the beginning of May Cheryl threw me a beautiful amazing baby shower to welcome Jake. It was shower themed with rain clouds and umbrellas and super adorable and creative. I was so blessed by my friends and family that were able to make it.

 

 

A few weeks later, at the end of May, when I was 36 weeks pregnant, I had the privilege of throwing my friend Nadia a baby shower for her sweet little Charlotte. I went with a natural bird theme and lavender and brown. I had lots of fun with it. Parties are so fun!

Nadia was due 1 month after me and she welcomed her little girl about 2 weeks ago. So precious. My friend Jessica also had her little girl. What’s funny about Jessica is that she was due 2 weeks after me, but with me being early and her being late, Jake and Samara are 5 weeks apart. And her son, Nikolai, and Aurora are 5 weeks apart. Crazy!

So I think that is my “events” updates. I mostly wanted to post the pictures since they were cute :) On to my babies updates.

So one question that everyone asks is “how is Aurora handling being a big sister?” Well, some times she handles it, sometimes she doesn’t. I will say for the most part she has been VERY good. There were some issues with his screaming, but she seems to be dealing with that better. He’s stopped screaming every time we take a car ride so that has helped. She has thrown a few super obvious I-want-attention tantrums, but that was more in the first few weeks. Now those are very rare. From the beginning she was super funny about some things. Like she would tell me which blankets he liked and didn’t like. She is always trying to share toys with him. Usually itty bitty legos, candy, or something else small and hazardous. He of course doesn’t usually care, but he does really like her Hewy, Dewy, and Louie beanie babies – he actually puts his arm around them and snuggles. And chews on their hats.

The first week Jake was born we would play in Aurora’s room and I would lay him down on her bed and let him play and out of nowhere Aurora would tell me to go away. So I would leave the room and watch to see what she did. Every time she would get up and go talk to Jake. Usually just say hi. She talked in such a sweet voice. One time she was mad at me so she told him she was sad. It was so precious. I felt like they were bonding already.

Now Aurora seems very used to Jake. She calls him “bud” all the time. I think because I call him that. It’s hilarious. And she tells him it’s OK when he fusses and always talks to him in such a sweet voice. The only thing she is a butthead about is when he is moving and accidentally touches her. She always yells “ouch.” But she does that with all her friends too, so it’s not a Jake thing. It’s just and Aurora thing. She doesn’t like to be touched. Unless she initiates it.

Jake seems to adore Aurora. He will listen to everything she says and a lot of times he will stop fussing to listen to her. He watches her and he’s even smiled at her a few times. (First official smile this past week – 8/3!) He seems to mostly be getting less fussy? I don’t know – it depends on the day. I would say we are starting to have more good days than bad. He has started sticking his tongue out when I stick mine out at him and he seems to be trying to imitate facial expressions. He is a little wiggler and is finally having fun playing some. He rolled over a few times the first couple of weeks, but hasn’t since.

Jake seems to be gaining weight very quickly. I am very convinced that he is going to pass up his cousin Isaac (3 months older) pretty soon here. I may pop ‘em out small, but they really pack on the pounds fast. Aurora was a chunky monkey too. She is now in the lower percentages for weights (still super tall) but for a while she was in the 90-th percentiles for weight. I am guessing Jake will be the same. He is definitely not little anymore. His dr. appointment next week will give us the numbers.

Jake was mostly a really good sleeper. The first few weeks were hard of course because he was getting up so often to eat. He was usually pretty good about going back to sleep until 3:00am hit and then he wanted to stay up and play. We were up for about 2 hours around that time most nights. By the time I got him back to sleep it was time for him to eat again. He seemed to pretty naturally shift to a better sleep schedule – sleeping longer at the beginning of the night. He has been a lot easier that Aurora in that regard so far. He USUALLY goes to sleep between 6:30-8pm and then sleeps 5-7 hours and then every 2/3 after that, but the last few nights he has decided to be challenging. He went to bed at 11:30pm last night and 10pm the night before. Tonight it was 6:45pm, so I am praying he doesn’t wake up and want to play anytime soon. I actually have a new theory on why he’s doing that though… Nick has been out of town and Jake really loves to scream for Nick. I think he wears himself out and then goes to bed but the last 2 nights he hasn’t done that. Tonight he did some pretty decent screaming so I think that’s why he went to bed on time… We will see how the next few nights are. It’s just a theory though :)

I think that pretty much covers my Jake updates. The only other thing is that he had to have an ultrasound a few weeks ago. When I was pregnant I had an ultrasound where Jake’s kidneys were slightly enlarged. Within normal ranges, but still enlarged. I had a million ultrasounds while I was pregnant, and all the following ones looked normal, but we still did a follow-up once he was out to make sure. Those results came back “inconclusive” just meaning that they are still slightly enlarged, they don’t know why, we are going to do another follow-up, it’s nothing to worry about (yet), and they are hoping it will just resolve itself on its own. It is not supposed to be causing him any discomfort and his terribly cheery disposition isn’t due to that. So we are just going to wait and see.

On the ultrasound topic, I had my follow-up ultrasound for the cyst/growth/tumor/whatever the heck they want to call it that was on my ovary. Turns out it’s not on my ovary. It’s just on the wall of my uterus and since having Jake it has gotten smaller. So good news all around. Since it’s not on my ovary they aren’t in a hurry to take it out since my ovary is not at risk and they are saying that it was being fueled by my pregnancy hormones, but now that he’s out it will most likely continue to shrink. Yay for no surgery!

Aurora is officially 2 and a half now. My little baby is not so little :( I can’t believe how quickly she grows up. She talks a million miles an hour. Seriously - she never shuts up. And she has taken the volume to a whole new level. Nick and I really can’t have a conversation when she’s around – especially because she tells us not to talk to each other. We are working on manners :) She is a full-blown princess. Her current favorite is Ariel, which I am none too pleased by. Ariel was my favorite when I was younger too, but my favorite now is Belle (weren’t you dying to know that?) But I’m a huge fan of Rapunzel and Tiana too. I just don’t like Ariel because she is a selfish, hardheaded, disobedient brat that thinks she knows everything at 16. Seriously Dinsey – this is a princess? She has no redeeming qualities (from the original movie) and even though they have since tried to improve her character the movie that Aurora wants to watch is the original. And Ariel is a brat. So that is my rant on Ariel.

Aurora has an Ariel, Aurora, Snow White, Rapunzel and Cinderella dress and 6 out of 7 days a week she wears one of them. I think she wore the Ariel dress 5 days in a row this week. She has started yelling at me when I tell people her name is Aurora and she says, “No! It’s Ariel.” Seriously?!?!? I already gave you a princess name!!!!! But it’s pretty entertaining. She is convinced she is only a princess when she is wearing a dress. She insists that her hair must be “straight and beautiful.” There have been a few rare occasions that I have been able to put it up. She wears her “blue bow shoes” every day (glitter jellies that are actually teal. More green really.) Her favorite color is blue. And everything has to match. If she's wearing a blue dress she has to wear blue underwear. She’s just a little bit opinionated.

She has decided that she never wants to sleep. Naps and bedtime are a fight. She has come up with every stalling technique in the book and most times it ends with her screaming at me as I leave. It’s sad because I used to love putting her to bed and snuggling and singing to her. But I guess the not wanting to sleep is no surprise. I thought maybe she would be getting close to giving up naps, but for all the protesting she does she still usually takes a 2 hour nap. Some days she tries to go longer, but I have started waking her up by 3:30pm now. Otherwise she won’t go to sleep at bedtime. Her stalling techniques include, “One more book,” “One more song,” “I have to pee,” “I have to poop,” “I want to talk about Disney World,” and “I want to say goo goo ga ga.” The first few are pretty self explanatory. And they are responded to with NO. We always talk about Disney World some but she doesn’t actually want to talk – she wants me to tell her about it. So I always tell her one thing. And then the goo goo ga ga? Yeah, she just says goo goo ga ga over and over. I don’t really get it, but I think it may have to do with one of her Clown-Around books. She sleeps with 4 pillows, Mr. Pickles, and a puppy dog and always falls asleep buried under them. Fully buried. Like I can’t even see her. But last night was the first night in a while she put her head on the pillow instead of under, so maybe we are making progress…

Aurora’s favorite pastimes are running around the island in our kitchen, screaming (I should call it squealing – it’s a happy, ear piercing sound), singing, dancing, and anything that involves physical exertion from mommy and daddy. Like bouncing on the exercise ball. Or spinning. Or hanging upside-down. We have been swimming a lot this summer and she loves that too. She loves asking questions and I’m fairly certain she never listens to the answer because she asks the same question 4-5 times.

Aurora is still a terrible, picky eater. She likes chicken nuggets, chicken noodle soup, mac n cheese, peanut butter toast, waffles, pancakes, and chili. She likes frozen blueberries always and then other fruits sometimes. Sometimes watermelon, strawberries, mango, grapes, apples and pears. She loves coffee. My bad. And always drinks her milk. She likes juice too, but I don’t let her drink much of it.  

Nick and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary this week. Well, we actually haven’t celebrated it seeing that he is out of town, but it came and went and now we’ve been married 8 years. We will celebrate this weekend – looking forward to a date night! It will be our first since Jake was born. I can’t believe how fast 8 years has flown by. Still in love. Still think he’s my prince charming. So lucky to have married my best friend :)