Elena Gets a Bad Case of the Chomps

WHAT?!?

Okay, so I did the math and recently Elena is nursing for about 40% of the day. And eating additional formula- often about 6 ounces. Super fun for everyone. The upside is that she is starting to eat less at night. I think... I hope? She has also started smiling which is super sweet and gummy. And I'm not talking food coma and gas related smiles, just nice smiles. She is also spitting up less but still gets some nasty vicious hiccups.

On an episode of Friends, Joey asks Susan how much milk she can make and Susan says as much as the baby needs. This is a big fat lie. Make a note of it if you are unaware.

A friend of mine recently asked how it is to have two little ones. I answered that it is straight up insanity. I simply do not understand how anyone has ever decided to have more than two children. Not only is Oskar super whiny as of late, but somehow he lost the ability to sleep through the night. Of course he wakes up as I'm putting Ellie back down after being up with her for about an hour and a half. They are already conspiring against me. They are winning.

Some of you may not have received our Christmas card. We just can't send it to everyone. Here is the feature picture from this year's card. It was very difficult to get. She really isn't that orange, but yes, her hair does look to be red.

For those who are wondering, it is pronounced Ellenah. Not Elayna. We chose the name because we could agree on the name. I wish I could say there was more meaning behind it, because I really like names to have meaning or a story, but it doesn't. Who knows what we would've come up with had she not been two weeks early. Probably the same thing. Elena had been in my mind since I was pregnant with Oskar, but early in this pregnancy I was not feeling it at all. I came around on it about 10 minutes after she was born when we still had no name for the poor thing. I would have loved to have found a family name to use but they were all either too common, too weird or would have brought down the wrath of some German Russians who didn't like their names in the first place and would've thought it ridiculous that anyone should consider using it again.

A look of extreme concentration (pooping).

For the middle name we were between Joy and Juliet. Juliet would have been nice because then all of our names in the family would have had six letters except for Oskar and Elena which have five. However, this was not enough of a reason to commit to saying Elena Juliet over the course of a lifetime. Seriously, it's a mouthful. So we went with Elena Joy. It suits her well and rolls off the tongue. She has picked up quite a few nicknames including Ellie, Elle, Baby Lady, El-tag (rhymes with dog, it's the German word for day), El Dorado, Ellosaurus Rex, Chompette, Chompita, Stop Eating and Go To Sleep. Okay so those last two are just commonly said phrases but they are said so often that they just kind of typed themselves.

This is Oskar singing along to Carmina Burana. He has done better,
but it's hard to get it on video because he gets distracted. I still find it
pretty cute though.

I'm not a fan of new year's resolutions. I think people make too big of a deal about them. I have the same resolution every year: to floss more. And until this moment I think Dan was the only person that knew that. I always fail, but regardless of the year turning over, this is a constant goal of mine. This year I will be joining the legions who are trying to lose weight, but this is mostly because I'm ready to start exercising and it happens to be almost January. By six weeks after having Oskar I was back down to my normal weight. This time I still have about 15 pounds to go. Apparently my BMI is still healthy, which is crazy because I feel just terrible. I'm a little worried because I have only been able to lose weight three times in my life. Two times I was pregnant and one time I was incredibly sick and unable to move for a week. Hopefully these things will not be occurring. I will have my gym membership turned on again and I plan to start making freezer crock-pot meals as well so we get some variety in our meals and start eating a little better without having to spend an hour cooking in the evening because that is just not possible right now. As organic as it may be, Oskar has far to much mac & cheese in his diet.

Seven weeks old and already an old soul. Either that or she's bored. She's
so good at using her arms to prop up her head. It's quite impressive.

Part of the reason that I'm not down to my normal weight is that we have more money right now than we did when I had Oskar, so my food choices are not always great. Now I'm working on getting rid of all my crappy food, but I'm not someone who just throws out food that isn't good for you. That would be wasteful and generally, food that is bad for you is delicious. So I eat it. I love peanut butter M&Ms. I have a party bag quantity of peanut butter M&Ms to consume and I am enjoying every bit of it. I've also decided to drink less V8 fruit juice. It does have servings of fruit and vegetables, but it is expensive and single serving cans aren't great when you consume the quantity that I do. This is also in an effort to get me to drink more water. Nursing seems to go better when one is well hydrated so maybe if I'm not drinking so much juice I will drink more water, which is less caloric and free! In addition to the M&Ms Dan got me a box of wine for Christmas. This box of wine is equal to four bottles of wine. Hehehe. So here's to 2016- the year of water and wine, people!

Elena Arrives in the World

Our kids are much more patriotic than we are. Oskar was born on the Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and Ellie was born on Veteran's Day. I mostly appreciate that Ellie knows I'm weird and appreciate fun number things. Oskar is 12-7-12 and Ellie is 11-11-15. That was considerate. Even more considerate was the fact that she cut 2 weeks off my pregnancy. Downside is that I don't have a 9 month pregnancy picture with her. I think I'll survive.

This labor and delivery was not at all like I had with Oskar. This one started with my water breaking at about 2:00 AM. I'm not going to go into details here, but I will say it was every bit as terrible and awkward as I thought it would be. We got Oskar up and we all went to the hospital. Because it was after hours we had to enter through Emergency. I am so glad we live in a community where the Emergency room is boring had only one dude waiting in it. It was so nice and quiet and no one cared that I had a beach towel wrapped around my waist.

She gave us the cute little cry when she was born that we didn't get from Oskar (he came out screaming louder than most adults). She has since found her voice and has quite a set of lungs.

I think it was the strain of lifting Oskar into a cart at Target that instigated all this. He was being extremely uncooperative and there was quite a bit of unusual pain that I noticed after I finally got him where he wanted to be. On that note- anyone want a 3 year old who doesn't listen to anyone ever? No takers? Strange.

He's got life all figured out.

Labor and delivery went fine. MUCH less pain than last time- they had my epidural on full blast apparently. This made it extremely difficult to walk and stand afterward though and I didn't regain feeling in my right leg for probably a good four hours. Last time I was able to stand and shower right after delivery. This time there were multiple almost falls due to my stubbornness in accepting that I was not able to stand at the time. Another highlight is that there was no pre-delivery vomiting! Just one post delivery episode that subsided quickly. Dan now understands that when I tell him to get me the garbage I am not joking around. The hospital stay was pretty good. Had just the right amount of visitors and overall the nurses and doctors were delightful. I especially liked my anesthesiologist.

Absolutely crushing tummy time.

The beginning days of having a child always trick you into thinking you have it all under control. No one tells you that the first few days home are the easy part. New born babies sleep A LOT and even Elena, who ate a ton, didn't eat that much then. It's a couple weeks in  that you find yourself wanting to punch walls. Our walls are plaster so I'm trying to avoid this.

Sometimes she's awake.

Sometimes sh'es very awake.

Ellie has decided that she needs to eat the most food. I usually nurse her for about an hour and then give her 2 ounces of formula. This cycle occurs about every 4 hours. Sometimes we have a very special night (of course) and we do nursing, formula, diaper change, nursing, formula. This fun experience takes about 3 or 4 hours. Not my favorite.

I made her hold her own bottle. I'm sick of feeding her.
(Don't yell at me- I know she is not old enough to hold her own bottle, I hold it for her to be sure she's eating properly)

Oskar is excelling at potty training. This makes us all very happy.

3 years old! Can you believe it?

Oskar had a wonderful birthday party a couple weekends ago. After the straight up neglect and laziness that resulted in having leftover funeral cupcakes for his 2nd birthday (they were delicious by the way) we went all out and got him a Paw Patrol cake for his 3rd. He loved it. We also got him a present this year too, even though he has a billion toys. We got him a violin. He was pretty pleased.

Some day we are going to convince him that you don't need to take off your pants when you get home.

Best day ever.

Dorisa Plods Through the Home Stretch

Ellie modeling her beautiful knit hat made with love by a wonderful friend.

Often when I write a blog entry it does not happen all in one setting. I'll have an idea, open blogger and save it as a draft and work on it over a couple weeks. I'm sure sometimes this is quite obvious with how scattered some of my thoughts may seem. This time however, I had written some stuff about being pregnant while still expecting to be pregnant for a couple weeks. I however was only pregnant for two more days after writing it. Yay. I am still posting what I wrote because it is important to consider if you plan on having a child some day. Also, it has been pointed out that my misery is humorous. My next post will be about our new misadventures as a family of four.

I love my musical boy. We got him a toy violin for his birthday. He is going to freak out.

And it's mini-Dan. So cute.

Do you know what I hate about pregnancy? You're right. So many things. One thing that I have found especially frustrating as of late is my lack of mobility/belly rigidity. I, like so many others, have experienced fluctuation in my weight over the years and while I don't appreciate the extra pounds when there are some, one nice thing about fat is that it is generally squishy. Just like my legs, according to my son who is absolutely full of complimentary comments these days. So, while pregnant, not only do I look like I have a basketball under my shirt, but that is about how well I can move as well. If I could remember that fact it would be extremely helpful.

Some things I need to tell myself:

Sucking in your stomach won't help you fit through that space. You will get stuck. It will be embarrassing. Or you could just ricochet off of that wall/chair/door. All very real possibilities.

No, you can not take your compression socks off by yourself. You will be in pain, and then you will have to pee.

Don't sit on the floor and twist in that position, no matter how far away your screwdriver is and the fact that your standard flexibility should allow you to reach it. You have a head in your hip and while it is somewhat malleable, it is a head, and it will win and you will cry. And then you will be worried until the pain ends. And then you will feel stupid because you should know not to do that.

You want to tie your shoes? You set aside 3 extra minutes and hope that the flexibility you acquired as a dancer in your hips and legs OVER 10 YEARS ago shows up with the assist. You will be short of breath after this task, but if you are successful you can add it to your list of small victories for the day. And they are all small victories.

Dude finally learns how to sit in church. On a Tuesday night.

My doctor said Nightmare Sister Brother could arrive any day now, or I could have a month left. I'm so glad I have an appointment every week to tell me this ground-breaking information. I had to make a quick trip to Fargo last weekend. She cautioned me not to go, but I felt fine and the Braxton Hicks contractions had subsided so I went and everything was fine, if not comfortable. But who needs comfort?

We still don't really have a name for this chompette, but she has a place to sleep, so that's good I guess. I was happy to FINALLY have the opportunity to decorate a nursery only to realize that all the fun and cute stuff is unneeded and really expensive. So although it may not be an excitingly cute nursery, it is serene and has everything we need in it. There is some history in it too, which I like. The rocking chair was bought by my parents and I believe it is the only comfortable wooden rocking chair in existence and the crib has successfully kept me, my brother, 2 cousins and 2 nephews alive despite it's antiquated and "dangerous" design that has apparently been outlawed. I'm not worried. It IS a new mattress. That would have been gross.

Our kitchen is mostly done! New paint, art, cabinet hardware, towels, backsplash, and it's CLEAN. Honestly just cleaning it would have probably been a significant improvement by itself. It has become a pretty pleasant little room. I still would like to put some shelves and a microwave with a proper vent above the stove, but that is a bit more of an undertaking than I am capable of right now. I also want to get the table out of there and replace it with a sideboard type situation with extra counter space. This can wait. Pictures will arrive with the next post.

Stud. Muffin.

This conversation happened after I had been gone for 32 hours.
Me: "Ugh, I left for a day and nothing is in the right spot! I can't go anywhere- everything is different!"
Dan "So I probably shouldn't tell you that that was poop on the wall- not a moth."
Me: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
I walked away while Dan giggled. Seriously, how did poop get on the wall? So disturbing. Apparently I can't go anywhere.