Dads!

Happy Father's Day to all of the amazing Father's in our lives.  

From day one with this little Lillian Colin has been a loving, compassionate, giving and gracious father.   His patience, kindness and humor continue to guide our day to day affairs.  His girls light up when he enters the room.  Over the last 3-4 years I have watched this man grow into a beautiful father. 

As parents now we understand the true sacrifice and labor of love of parenting.  Thank you Charlie for raising such a beautiful man and being the role model he needed, thank you for continuing to care for us and even take care of us as adults. Your beautiful love continues as a grandfather or as Poppie.

Dad you continue to give and give.  Your strength, love and  wisdom astound me.  Thank you for all you do for us and the girls.  

This picture says it all.  Generosity, love, laughter and family.  

I love you Colin.  I am so lucky to have you as the father of my girls.  I  never imagined how wonderful this parenting journey would be.  I could not do it with anyone else.

7 months of squishy, adorable, ooey, gooey love!

This girl continues to take my heart every day.  I cannot go very long without holding her, wearing her or having her very near.  Officially, somehow she is now closer to 1 year old than she is closer to a newborn.  The days continue to race by and everyday I say I need more time.

Rowan continues to be happy most of the time.  I still think she is going to be a little more of an introvert as she is not quick to warm up to everyone - as her sister is - she needs more time huddled in close with mom or dad, she talks only when she is focused by herself or you are 100% engaged and she giggles only if something is really funny as opposed to at just about everything!

She takes everything in, watching it all, wanting to be close to the action and glaring at the action with a judgmental "huh?"  Her fine motor skills are superb.  I made all of this wonderful food for her and she will not eat a bite of it so I decided to start cutting it up for her.....finally she is eating some things.  She will work on putting food in her mouth and just hum to herself.  All she wants to do it pick things up and put them in her mouth, she wants to play with tags and strings, and she has an obsession with ears.  She is sitting all of the time and cannot be bothered with being on her stomach or back, quite honestly there is too much to see and the stomach is a terrible vantage point.  Her friends are all crawling and she is NO WHERE close. She will prop on her arms and that is about it. She loved watching Colin play guitar.  She has recently learned to "dance" while saying 'ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh' over and over and over again.  She sits and  alternates between arching her back and flexing and making these noises simultaneously.  She just learned ba and da.  She is sleeping terribly.  She yells once an hour, yelling is not an exaggeration.  She does not cry, well it takes a lot for her to cry, instead she yells!  I think she is growing right now on top of just getting over a bad cough that lasted a month (this round).  But we are at the point after holding her for over an hour at 2 am last night where I finally said that I cannot do this 24 hours a day.  Mommy needs to sleep.

She still melts my heart as every time she sees me she lights up as if I am the only one that makes the world go round.  The day will come when she realizes I am not and so for now I am soaking these days up.....'yes Rowan, the sun is a close second but number 1, whelp, that is me, yours truly, your mom.'

The things that are big and funny enough to make this one laugh you ask.....well obviously swinging! and her dad (another obvious) and her sister- who does not love a whirling derby of sparkles, giggles, squealing and fun?

Overall we have had a wonderful two weeks with me home more often.  The girls have transitioned beautifully.  Lillian was having such a hard time with many melt downs, poor language and with me home she is the little girl she always has been, sweet, well spoken, kind and full of great positive energy.  My milk supply is finally where is should be- that was  a challenge in and of itself but right now we are on the other side of it.  I have enjoyed watching them, holding them, laughing with them and just being.  I start back to work in June but I am hoping this will be a good place for right now in our lives.

So far these 7 months have been full, lovely, hilarious and just about perfect.  We love you Rowan, thank you for completing this journey.

Happy 3rd Birthday Lillian

May 10th 2010.  A feeling I could never imagine, a feeling so large and so full that I felt like my heart was going to explode when I first heard her squeal.  Our lives changed forever.

May 10th 2011. 1 year old.  A year of growth, learning what a  truly special and selfless act motherhood is.  Learning what it meant to be a family.  Learning that this little girl had a personality that could not be contained.  A year of learning what love really is.

May 10th 2012.  2 years old. So much awe, inspiration, excitement, joy and laugher.

May 10th 2013.  We have a 3 year old.
This big, little girl is  so many things, it is hard to sum her up in even a paragraph.  It has been amazing to watch her grow this year. Lillian has a personality that fills up the room.  She is either laughing, joking, dancing, singing or talking and it is hard not to appreciate her love of life. She needs to lead, needs to be the center of attention.  She is on her best behavior when she is learning or being challenged.  Colin and I have had to learn some creative parenting.  She has so much drive, determination and emotion that we have had to learn to direct it but not smother it.  We do not claim to be good at this by any means.
This year at her party all of her 4 year old friends ( there were 3 there) wrote their names in the cards they brought her.  It is truly amazing the growth that happens in a year.  This year compared to last and next year compared to this.  How is it that she will be going to preschool soon and learning to write her name.  A change I both welcome and shy from. Our little girl is not so little.  And so I write to both share her with those all around the world now that cannot see her from week to week and to reflect on the changes of a year or a month or a season.
All things Lillian:
1.  She loves to jump, hop, gallop, dance and climb ALL of the time.
2.  She loves to read.  She will memorize a story within the first few times of reading it and then tell it back to us, page by page and frequently sentence by sentence.
3.  She sings.  Just like books she will ask you to sing a song repeatedly until she memorizes it.
4.  She plays the uke with Colin.  She used to sing along to many different songs but now she plays and dances and just plan looks cute.  Lets face it every band needs a figure head, right?
5. She can count to 20 but fourteen is the new thirteen......twelve, fourteen, fourteen, fifteen......
6.  She knows many of her letters.  She frequently asks us.  "Can you find a S in this area?"  She loves finding the letters, figuring out what words start with the letters and the sounds.  So far she knows L, I, Y, Q, S, M, W, R, T, O and many more 70% of the time.
7.  She can write the letter L.
8.  She is the best big sister.  She loves on Rowan all of the time.  Snuggles her, asks for her and helps take care of her when there is a problem.
9.  She has amazing vocabulary. "The stars twinkled loudly." "That is not an option." "
10.  She still needs to be loved and snuggled and held more often than one would think.  She has always wanted to be cuddled and that has not changed and I suspect never will.

New birthday bike and helmet.  Thanks Mimi and Poppy and Aunt Bri and Uncle Dermot.

"I don't know where the candy on the top of the cake went."

The already wrestle all of the time.  They both just laugh.

Thank you Lilybean for 3 wonderful years of laughter.  You have taught me more than you will even know.  I am sure I  needed you in my life more than you me.  You are stunning in every way.  My prayer is that you will continue to show not only me but also the world a thing or two about love and laughter.

Where did the time go? (AKA We had a 5 month old and now a 6 month old)

(Rowan and Ellis 5 months)
I do not even know where to begin.  The last two months have been crazy:  more time than we would like spent at work, TERRIBLE winter weather and it is supposed to be spring, very full weekends and two baby girls whom are growing faster and faster.  The weekdays seem to spin by.  We can typically have dinner together 2 nights a week.  Otherwise Colin is at work late, I am at work late or Colin is at band practice.  Something that has been determined that he needs to keep his sanity.  I support sanity FULLY. The nights we are home we are passing ships; one playing with the girls, one making dinner, one doing the bedtime routine, one walking the dog, one doing dishes, one getting ready for the next day (I know you moms know it- stuffing the diapers, adding food to bags, changes of clothes, readying bottles, washing diapers, cleaning lunch boxes).  Most nights I have late night work to do and when we do sit down to relax it is typically close to 9:30 or 10.  At that point we laugh about something Lillian said, a new skill Rowan learned, a funny thing someone said or we just sit quietly enjoying just that....silence.  Ahh the days of our lives.  I cannot help but to reflect daily on it all.  I know we will look back on these days and miss them dearly and think how amazing they really were.  But Colin said to me very sadly the other day that he hates "this" right now (ie no time to himself, no time for us, constant chaos).  That broke my heart.  He is right, this, this right now is hard.  A hard that no one can describe.  A hard that you really can only laugh about.  It is not the hard that we have seen in the news in the last few weeks, not war hard, not starvation hard, but self being hard. So with that and the complete unhappiness at work over the last few months I have given notice at work.
I have absolutely struggled with postpartum depression with Rowan.  This time things were different.  Everyday my heart ached for her, tears would flow multiple times a week.  I could not stand the fact that I was working a job that was squashing me, my drive, my potential while my two little girls were being raised by someone else.  This decision to quit, or not to quit makes you question EVERYTHING.  Will I be a PT again, am I giving up, am I searching for the impossible, am I naive to what is really out there and what it really takes, will I lose my house, will I lose my other house (haha- well sorta), will I lose me?  So many self-doubt questions.  But instead I have decided to look forward and not back.  To take this time to grow in so many ways.  Be there to raise my girls.  To look for another job, if available.  To possibly create a business plan.  To create the reality we want. To change the words out of my husbands mouth to "wow this right here, right now is beautiful, us working together as a family, growing each in our own."

This little girl is so different from Lillian.  It has been so amazing to watch her come into the little being she is and will be.  She started sitting around Easter- about 5 months old.  Now the only thing she wants to do is sit.  Normal progression is rolling from back to tummy (which she has done a little but by no means does she know how to do it) and then tummy to back (she does not do this) and then sit.  She skipped all of the rolling (including rolling to her side and went straight to sitting.  She loves toys.  She wants to handle everything, her fine motor skills are amazing for her age.  She is working her pincer grip (picking something up between her thumb and her finger) like an old pro.  She is able to place the binky in her mouth -that started around 5 months as well.  She will talk a little but really she just wants to grunt.  She laughs at her sister all of the time.  And instead of only having eyes for mommy she only has eyes for her sister. 

She is a very happy baby.  But she is not quick to be overly happy.  She takes everything in with a very straight face and wide eyes.  She watches everything, so much to the point that if you lie her on her back she will yell.  She just wants to be sitting.  She is not emotional.  When she is hurt or upset or when she wants us, she yells.  She rarely cries.  When she is hurt she does not want to be consoled she wants to yell, get it over with and then move on.  It has been so interesting to watch this all develop.

Lillian is such a good big sister.  She brings her toys, brushes her hair, wipes her face, sits and talks and giggles with her when Rowan is board.  The interaction is just heart melting and the days I get to catch these interactions are good days in my opinion.  

Colin celebrated his 35th birthday Monday.  So many crazy feelings about turning 35.  He was super dad all weekend because I had class he he had the girls.

6 months old!  She is starting to grow out of her 3-6 month clothes.  Recently she went through a growth spurt and her head shape changed again.

This is the look I was talking about.

Lillian plays with her daddy all of the time.  Instead of singing, as she used to do, she has now perfected the rocker head tilt, with slightly closed eyes looking at you with a very proud and smug smirk all the while dancing with her head and body.  We ask her to sing and she would rather not.

With all the stress, getting sick and a few other things I will spare you the details on my milk supply dropped significantly.  Last weekend there were a few times I did not produce any milk for little Row at all.  I had known it was a problem for a while and I kept telling myself that it would get better, more food, more rest, more water, supplements......everyday I pumped 1 ounce less.  It was heart breaking.  Then finally last weekend I could not feed Row on more than 1 account.  It was heart breaking.  As I said, I had class most of the weekend and I am sure my teacher thought me crazy as my eyes were filled with tears or I was crying most of the day.  It is so hard to explain why this is so heartbreaking.  Why breastfeeding is so important to me.  Something that really requires so much work on the mother's part.  So much selfless love.  Waking multiple times a night to get the milk supply up, pumping every 1.5 -2 hours, the raw changes a mother's body goes through, keeping track of what you eat in drink, making sure you do not get too much of this or that, pumping at every "break" at work, the isolation pumping at work accompanies.....it is always something.  And through it all, I would not have it any other way.  So needless to say with Rowan hitting her 6 month milestone we started food and she loves some things.  Other things she does not love but instead of spitting them out she yells and when you try again she yells louder.  Honestly, I have to laugh when this happens.  So far all she really likes is cereal and avocado. And trying to pincer grip little pieces of food on her tray.   Little girl, you have to like more, for mommy's sake. 

5 months, who does not love  some baby feet?

5 months, before she could sit independently.  Yes, Lily is on her phone in this picture.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all!  I hope Easter brought joy and thoughts of spring, new beginnings and love to all.  Here are some Easter photos to keep you all inspired.  More soon.