Jacob's various birthday soirees and dedicated birthday update

Jacob's reaction to daylight savings time has been completely backwards and beyond brutal. Prior to DST, he woke up around 7. Since DST, he has been waking up at 5:30. Who does that???  On top of that, he is still waking up every 2-3 hours all night long.

If I had written this post on time it would have the sort of energy one has after being permitted to wake naturally for 3 nights in a row. I probably would have been bubbling over with enthusiasm, certain that those 3 miraculous nights were a harbinger of many more to come, and that this would be the year that we phased out sleep deprivation. He slept through the night 3 nights in a row!! It was a freaking miracle, and I was feeling better than badass as a result.

Alas, those stars have not aligned since then, and I am worse off as a result of them because those 3 nights in which I experienced full sleep cycles and woke naturally were enough to start to normalize my body, making it that much more painful when Jacob resumed every 1 to 3 hours. Fortunately, he's no longer awake and screaming for hours at a time during these wakings. Usually he's asleep again after a short snuggle, so I'm assuming it's some sort of separation anxiety which I read peaks around this age.

So, sleeping leaves a lot to desire, but he's otherwise a happy, healthy baby who still smiles constantly and has an infectious laugh. He's crazy curious and will bulldoze anything in his way to get to an object of interest. After nursing in the morning, he climbs over my face, dropping a knee into my neck if it happens to be in the way, and makes his way to my nightstand where he first picks up the monitor and, after inspecting it, drops it on the floor. The books are next, and then I pull him off my head and plop him on the floor just before he grabs the picture and lamp.

This tendency he has to bulldoze anything in his path when he sees something of interest makes picnics incredibly stressful. I spend the entire time shuffling the food around in an effort to keep him from crawling through it, but inevitably he crawls through something, smashing his knee down on someone's food and dragging it under him as he makes his way for someone else's plate.

On the bright side, he's eating less sand and sidewalk chalk these days, but it hasn't been that long since he shoveled dirt into his mouth. He also managed to pop a fistful of wet cat food into his mouth the other day before I yoked him up, and since he immediately locked his jaws, picking it out  was no easy task. 

In true family fashion, we celebrated his birthday on multiple occasions and managed to drag it out for most of the month. On the weekend before his first birthday, Hannah and I made Jacob blueberry muffins, and my mom and brother and his kids descended upon the house in a flurry of fun and chaos, the good kind that comes about when four kids under 5 end up in one row home. Zoey and Amy showed up in time for lunch and cupcakes and chaos too.

Jacob sat on dad's lap wearing the family birthday headdress and staring curiously at the fire while we sang to him.

 

Chip's present was (and still is) a HUGE hit. Jacob is totally obsessed with computers and constantly trying to bang on my keys the way I guess it looks like I do. This little LeapFrog computer is my go-to when I need him to just sit still.

Amy and Zoey got him That's Not My Dinosaur, a textured book that he reads daily, and this really neat plastic ball that changes back and forth from green to blue every time you throw it.

Grammy got him a Rody, a really soft stuffed tiger to snuggle, and a lift-the-flap book.

 

His present from Grannah and Granpah arrived in the mail a few days later, but since he opened it over video chat, I forgot to take pictures. They got a him some really fun cars, a stuffed dog, and a lift-the-flap book with farm animals.

Also, my aunts both sent cards stuffed with $20, which became the first two bills deposited into his piggy bank. Hannah has quite a stash of twenties at this point since that's where she always puts her birthday money too.

A couple weeks later, my dad and Sondra came down for an egg hunt and brought Jacob's birthday present: Elefun Busy Ball Poppper. It was a big hit.

Baby picture time!! From left to right, Eric, me, and Hannah after 1 year in this great world.  I think Jacob looks the most like his sister, except for his lighter coloring.

At his 12-month appointment he weighed 22 pounds and 6 ounces which dropped him down into the very average 66th percentile. The little giant who came into this world in the 99th percentile at 10 1/2 pounds is letting his peers catch up now. He is still in the 87th percentile for length (31 inches), which makes him a beanpole, just like his sister. I think she was usually 80th for length and something like 20th for weight. And his head, which seems like a totally arbitrary and pointless measurement to me, is 48 cm (92nd percentile).

We are all completely smitten with this baby brother and looking forward to more fun-filled days and (hopefully) more sleep-filled nights.

Happy 1st birthday, Jacob!

Unfortunately, Jacob is not going to get the detailed first birthday blog post I had hoped to give him because I spent the bulk of his birthday (today) either in the bathroom or in bed, and I am incredibly weak as a result of this stomach bug.  Here's a link to Hannah's first birthday blog post, and it includes photos of Eric and me at our first birthdays as well. I would re-upload them here, but....I can't easily find them and have already expended more energy than I have. How far we've come since his birth day!!

Happy (belated) half year!

Jacob crawled into his 7-month birthday! It was just a few little knee nudges, but I'm counting it! Since he's 7 months today, I should probably finish his 6-month birthday post, right...this blog is still stuck in September, and Jacob is definitely getting the short end of the stick when it comes to documenting his milestones. I don't even have pictures of him eating for the first time! Of course, that's partly because it wasn't planned. It was summer, and he was a few days shy of 5 months, and he definitely didn't need to start eating regular food that soon, but we were all chowing down on some juicy cantaloupe that we'd picked up at the farmer's market that morning and he was reaching for it, so I let him suck on it, which he did with a frantic-ness that was absolutely hysterical. It was love at first taste!

We didn't start feeding him with any regularity until he was closer to 6 months. I'm not concerned with food allergies this time around, so I don't bother with that whole business of introducing a food and feeding it to them once a day every day for 4-7 days before introducing a new one. He eats butternut squash, sweet potato, avocado, prunes (the only baby food I'll buy, and a necessity because he is not a good pooper), peas, carrots, green beans, apples, pears, rice, and oats. I have freezer bags full of cubes of all those foods in the freezer so I can easily mix and match his meals. When his days without pooping start nearing a week, I cut the solid foods, and the increased nursing usually moves the clog along. This kid has a weaker digestive system than Hannah, and although his gas pains have been far fewer since I eased up on the raw leafy greens, he is still throwing up pretty frequently.

It won't be long before we're giving him little chunks of food to break down with the teeth that are now filling up his mouth. His first teeth (front bottom two) broke gum the day before he turned 6 months. In the last week and a half, four more have broken through across the top. There were a lot of sleepless nights as a result of that, but since he has yet to stop constantly waking up at night, it wasn't anything I'm not already used to.

Because of Hannah's refusal to sleep, I have been hyper aware of Jacob's sleep and have tried to instill good patterns from the very beginning, including laying him down drowsy but awake, watching for his sleepy cues, making sure not to over exhaust him, sticking to a schedule, etc. Somehow, we still got off track...

When it comes to napping, he's usually a breeze. I can lay him down awake and he'll pop his fingers in his mouth and pass out. Hannah hated being left alone in her room, hated sleeping, hated missing out on whatever was going on....She still does. Bedtime with Hannah is still a lengthy process; she'd stay up all night if we let her and still be going long into the next day. She's so active that she's always masked her sleepy signs, so if it weren't for the Sleep Lady, I'd have never known how much sleep she needed. With her, I had to watch the clock and lay her down when I knew she should be tired. Sometimes she passed out, sometimes she stripped herself of clothes and diaper and threw them out of the crib along with everything else in the crib and the crib sheet.

Jacob's eyes get all red when he's tired and he gets crazy cranky. He's an easy read.

So he's easy to get to sleep, but once asleep, he doesn't stay that way long. Hannah might have screamed for 2 hours each night, but once she finally passed out, she was usually out for the count, and she was sleeping through the night by about 6 or 7 months. As soon as I read that babies should be able to go 12 hours without eating, I stopped feeding her at night, and I don't remember it being a painful experience. Jacob still wants to eat every 2 hours. I realize now that I should have started curbing the night time nursing a while ago. I kept thinking he'd stop himself, but since he refuses to nurse anywhere other than laying down in bed with me, and since we aren't home all day to accommodate that kind of picky eating, he's adjusted by starving himself during the day and then eating all night.

Then last week he pulled a page from his sister's playbook and stayed up until after 10 for three nights in a row. The first night, I brought him back downstairs and plopped him on the floor while I got on my computer to work so he wouldn't wake up Hannah. The second night I alternated between laying in my bed with him and rocking him. The third night I told Eric he was up to bat; he brought him downstairs and watched TV with Jacob beside him on the couch. By the fourth night, I'd had enough and knew that the developing pattern needed to be broken immediately.

Sleep training is a bit trickier when your kids share a room. I carried Hannah into our bed to sleep, dragged one of her chairs up to the crib, laid Jacob down, and braced myself for day 1 of the Sleep Lady's shuffle. He cried and fussed, but only for about 12 minutes, which is not bad considering his sister could go for hours. He then slept until 2ish (AWESOME). I nursed him and laid him back down, and he cried. I sat by his bed from 2:30 a.m. until 4 a.m. that night when he finally passed back out. That was excruciating, but the nights since then have been easier. He is consistently waking up between 12-2 to nurse and then not again until around 6 and then he goes back to sleep until 7:30. Next step is to remove one of those night time feedings....

In spite of keeping me up all night, Jacob gives babies a good name. Hannah, not so much. I have a lot of fond memories of snuggling baby Hannah, but I also remember a lot of screaming. Baby Hannah made me earn my mama badge. She kept me on my toes, always reading and researching, desperately trying to figure out what she needed and how I could provide it. When Jacob was in utero, I frequently (and only half jokingly) retorted that babies are for the birds and that I'd love to skip it all and move straight to the toddler phase.

Well, I'm singing a different song now. I get it, I get why people love babies. This baby is why.

This is not a knock against Hannah. She is so spirited and kind and compassionate and has such a big, fun personality. Everything that can be challenging about her is also something that I admire. It's amazing to me how different they are though and how different this parenting experience is.

When Hannah was a baby my mom once said, "She's so serious; not at all like you when you were a baby. You were always smiling." I had no idea what she was talking about, and at the time I was a bit offended. My interpretation was "your child is not happy. You fail." Us mamas can be so sensitive!! Now that I have Jacob, I understand what she meant. Hannah was definitely a more serious baby. She was happy, but serious happy. Jacob is always smiling. Always. He hands out smiles like candy on Halloween.

He is so happy that he almost makes us want another baby someday. ALMOST. But no. I've read that each baby you have is usually bigger than the one that came before, and I assure you that I will not risk having a baby any bigger than this little giant. Also, although a big family sounds really fun, especially when the kids are grown, I would rather focus all of our resources and love on the two that we have. I'm finding it hard enough to give them both the quality time they deserve now that there are two; I don't want to have to spread my time even more thinly.

Also, the bad sleeper DNA is too prevalent in our gene pool, and I'm too tired to have another non-sleeper.

Now for the statistics! Last month, at his 6 month checkup, Jacob weighed 20 lbs, 3 oz (90th percentile), was 27 1/2 in. long (85th percentile), and had a head circumference of 45.4 cm (95th percentile). Hannah was only 15 pounds at her half-year birthday. She was 18 lbs at 12 months...I don't have records of anything after that, so I have no clue when she hit 20 pounds, but she was more than twice as old as Jacob when it happened.

Time now for a family montage of baby pictures.  Here we all are at 6-7 months of age, starting with Hannah.

Hannah at 6 months

I'm not sure of Eric's age in this picture, but he looks about 6 months. Hopefully Grannah will correct me if I'm wrong!

And here's baby me

We definitely look related, especially Hannah and Jacob, but there are no spitting images in this family: the kids took their gene pool and made it their own!

 

5-months-old photo shoot

I'm not feeling terribly prolific today so words will be sparse in this one. I'm saving my energy for the big vacation blog post. In the meantime, we had a mini photo shoot this morning in honor of Jacob being 5 months today.

I think I only commemorated the even months with Hannah, but it occurred to me that I haven't been posting baby pics of me and Eric for comparison. I missed the 4 month comparison shot so I'm doing that now. Both me and Eric are 3-4 months in the pictures below, so we're a little younger than Jacob is now, but it's close.

Baby Terri and daddy

 

Baby Eric

And here's one of Hannah at 5 months for good measure.

I like it that there are no spitting images in this family. It always freaks me out when siblings look identical!

Gentle giant has his 2-month weigh in

Jacob had his 2-month checkup on Monday and weighed in just half an ounce shy of 15 pounds (Hannah was 2 ounces shy of 12 pounds at her 2-month checkup; she didn't hit 15 pounds until she was 7 months old). He is in the 95th percentile for weight and is putting some serious strain on his mama's arms and back as a result. The other numbers don't mean as much to me, but if you're into them, he is 24 3/4 inches long and his head is 44.5 centimeters (Hannah was just an inch shorter at her 2-month checkup, but her head was MUCH smaller at 39.7 centimeters; like her weight, her head wasn't 44 centimeters until she was 7 months). He's in the 99th percentile for both length and height. Numbers tend to just float around my head in an attempt to lodge themselves someplace where they will be understood, but sadly, that place does not exist. More important to me is his growing social awareness and the fact that I have been able to get little laughs out of him in the last few days. Just teeny ones, a little "heh" here and there, but they're so awesome that I spend the following 15 minutes trying to get him to do it again. He smiles huge, flashing that one little dimple he has on his left cheek, and he coos and talks, but at this point, the laughs are still rare and therefore highly coveted.

I'm wishing I would have saved those head shots I took of him on Sunday for this post, but since I didn't, I'm re-posting one of them with a twist: it's baby face comparison time again! I don't have 2-month baby pics of either me or Eric, but here's a pic of Hannah at about 2 1/2 months to compare to Jacob at exactly 2 months:

Smiley little babies with their tongues out!




Back to real time, here they are last week posing in the shirts that Hannah made with Grammy on the morning that Jacob was born. It was pretty tight on him when I put it on that morning so I made sure to get a picture, and when we stripped him for bath, that one got set aside. I want to keep it but need to figure out how...I don't have a keepsake box and don't want to start another. Maybe a quilt?

Happy Birthday Hannah!!!!!

Today's the day that Hannah officially entered what I, so far, consider to be the terribly awesome 2's.  Aside from that power struggle phase she hit around 19 months, I think this age is awesome.  You can keep the whole baby phase--I'll take a talking, walking toddler any day!

She's really growing up too.  She leaves the house more and more often in underwear with few accidents.  I've even started leaving her in the kids room at the gym without a diaper--just one day a week until she gets used to having Miss Hope put her on the potty, but still, that's good progress!  As for boobies, she's letting go of those too.  Two days ago she made it through an entire day with no boobies at all! Most days she still nurses first thing in the morning, but that's it.  It's happening!

She's also learning her colors which I guess is part of learning to talk and wanting to label everything.  We had Mouse Paint out of the library in our last batch of books, and she loved that one so I think that jump started the color thing.

Alright, enough blabbing, on with the pictures!  We have a big birthday weekend, and today was just the start! My dad and Sondra came early today bearing balloons and a present.  Hannah was watching out the window as they walked up the sidewalk so she was excited before they even got in the door.

And right about here is where the battery on my camera died, and I had to switch to cell phone.  And right about here in the post, is where my computer died, and then Eric's died, but then I got his to start working again. It's almost 11 which is WAAAAAAY past my bed time, but I'm going to persevere a bit longer. Unfortunately, Eric's computer doesn't have photo editing software so the cell phone pics are not edited since I didn't email them to myself until after the internet killed my computer.

Anyway, it's a bed tent!!  Woohooo!

They played in the bed tent for a very long time while Eric and I got to work in the kitchen making cupcakes (found a recipe with no sugar, just a tablespoon of honey in a cooking for babies and toddlers cookbook) and then prepping all the food for tomorrow.

After a while I coaxed them out of the bed tent and outside to get some fresh air and take advantage of the temperature not being 100 degrees.

My little climber! She's after my heart with all this climbing she's doing.

Pappy and Grandma Sondra brought her Easter basket up that we left behind along with a few empty eggs. She carried that thing everywhere we went this morning, taking the eggs in and out of the basket and separating them and then putting them back together again.

An egg half makes a great clown nose.

Don't worry, I didn't forget about the 2-year comparison pics!  Let's use this one of Hannah since it's a great face shot...

And here's 2-year old Eric,on the right (with Uncle Justin on the left).

And here's 2-year-old Terri holding my new baby brother!

To be honest, I haven't even looked at these pics closely to compare them because getting this post up has been a 3-hour affair involving a number of computers and phones and hard drives and insanity and frankly, I'm tired. This is way past my bedtime and we have a BIG day tomorrow with lots of my family coming up to celebrate Hannah's birthday.  Lots more pics to come....

Also, there's no way in H-E-double hockey sticks that I'm taking the time tonight to edit this thing so I'm sorry in advance about the plethora of typos.