I'm back (again)

Ok.  Now I have a few more seconds to type out something.

The girls.

Elizabeth is doing well.  She's 4 months old - crazy.  I like Elizabeth.  I like babies.  I even like newborns.  But?  I love it when they get a little older.  People say that these early days/weeks/months just fly by.  And, they're right.  They really do.  And I do my best to soak up the things that I'll miss about this age.  But I do look forward to her being able to sit up on her own and play and explore.  I don't mourn her getting older yet - I'm happy for it.  Now, when she gets to be about 6-8 months old - I'll probably wish for time to stop again.  But for now, Im happy to see her grow.

She's rolled over from back to tummy a few times.  She grabs things well.  She smiles all the time - she giggles and laughs and it's just infectious.  She's getting better about her head control and can sit in her bumbo for extended periods of time now. She only cries when she's tired/hungry.

We're working on her sleep.  About a week ago, we started letting her "cry it out" at night and I stopped nursing her overnight.  We started giving her a bottle instead of nursing before she goes to bed just so I KNOW she had enough.  The first night, she cried for a little over two hours. The next night, it was 40 mins.  The next 2-3 nights, it was about an hour off and on.  I don't really know because I got a cold and was kinda out of it.  Yesterday she slept from 8pm-6am.  Last night she woke up around midnight but then slept the rest of the night....so, we're getting there.

She's small, well skinny.  We took her for her 4 month check up on Monday.  At 2 months old, she weighed 11 lbs.  At 4 months old, she weight 11.14.  This puts her in the 3% for weight, but she's tall.  She's in the 94% for height.  Or, as Kyle put it - she's like the Heidi Klum of babies!

Abby had the same issue, being underweight - but otherwise happy and healthy. We'll take E back in a few weeks for a weight check to see how she's doing.  I *think* she's done better lately and I feel like she may be gaining more / getting more/ eating more the past couple of weeks.  But, we'll get her checked again and see what her progress is.  I'd like to keep nursing as long as I can, but of course, if I can't produce what E needs - then we'll deal with it.  With me going back to work next week...I'm not super optomistic about my supply improving.  I'm hoping to hold steady, but would not be surprised if it dropped....like it did with Abs.  My unspoken goal was to make it 6 months breastfeeding.  We'll see.

E spends her days sleeping, eating, smiling, and loving her big sister.  She's a really good baby.  Oh, and one more tidbit to document - she always has her skinny little ankles crossed.  It's the funniest thing.  Such a little lady.

As for Abby?  She's crazy.  She's so much fun.  She's constantly talking - and I know that's old news, but she's really upped her vocab and sentence structure and phrases again in the past few weeks.  Her imagination is awesome.  She makes up stories and songs and asks really good questions and makes really good observations about things all the time.  I'll write more later about specific stuff and phrases - nothing comes to mind at this exact second.

I can't believe she's almost 3.  And then again?  I can.

She's so smart.  I mean, I'm her mom - so yeah - she's a genius and all that.  But, really just objectively, she's done so well learning her numbers and letters and such.  Her newest skill is lowercase letters.  She gets nearly all of them right...sometimes she gets b and d mixed up as well as l and i  But for the most part, she does very well with them.  Our next goal will be counting past 20.  And, I'm not, like, pushing her with this stuff.  I don't really care if she can count to 30 or spell her name by kindergarten or whatever - but she loves learning, so I figure I might as well work on stuff here and there.  A few days ago she told me she made a K and an A and an L and an O on her magna-doodle.  And, she had.  I'm 90% sure they were happy accidents that she then recognized as letters - but still.  Well, except the O...circles are pretty easy.

Ok.  There's an update on the wee ones.  I'm off to go play with them now. :)