The Little Ladies

The girls are literally growing up right before my eyes. I feel like if I blink, I'm bound to miss an entire day or week. Last week I went to NY for a team building trip to Long Island and when I returned Eden appeared to have gained a few pounds and Finley outgrew size 5T and the age of 3 years, 2 months. Both girls visited the doctor this month and are pushing the percentile richter scale into the 90+ range for both height & weight. Fin's head circumference falls within that range and Eden's rings in in more of the 75-80 bracket. Petite little thing, huh? :) The most amazing thing to me is some of the things that come out of Finley's mouth. She says the craziest, whackiest things at times. Last night, when she was in the bath tub, she started throwing a tantrum because she didn't want to get out. She exclaimed, "Mom, I hate you." I told her, "Well that's unfortunate because we don't talk like that so you'll have to lose your priveleges tonight and not get to watch a Dora show when you get out of the bath." She quickly reversed her statement and said, "Mom, I just don't love you anymore. Can I have my prilleges back now?" How could you say "NO" to that? Her biggest concern each day is, "Mom who is going to be downstairs in the morning." Reason being, is we have a nanny who comes in 3 days a week so that the girls can sleep in and go to school between 9-10 and that way I go to work with a little sanity on these days. She's always concerned on knowing if mom is going to be here or Kay, the nanny, will be. This morning, was a "Kay Day". This evening, I received the following email from her entitled, "Breakfast". Hi Tera! All was well this am. I wanted to share a Finley story and was afraid I would forget. I asked her if she would like an Easter Egg for breakfast like she had last week (aka hard boiled egg) and she said no. I told her about the other little girl I take care of and how she loved eggs and would eat two at a time and she loved the yolks. Finley's eyes lit up and said-I want an egg! I want two of them! Was she sure? Yes! So, I boiled up one egg and asked if she wanted to crack it. No, that part went in the sink and wasn't any good. Okay. Gobbled up the egg quick as can be! Asked for another one-maybe another day! Funny funny! She was so happy and sooooo helpful. She carried out the sweaters (hers and Eden's) and the tote with the bottles in it. She also informed me that she had put plenty of binkies in case Eden needed some. Wow!We went up and sang to Eden, she was ready to get up but wasn't making any noise. That was about 8:40 or so. Eden had her bottle and then I fed her some yogurt and I think she had a bit too much-spit up quite a bit in the car. Finley was very concerned. I hope she didn't get sick! She did not like the hair clip and kept taking it out so I gave up. I told Ms. Amy about the hair clip and the spit up. Eden is such an active little girl. I never remember Finley being this way. She is always getting into stuff, always on the go and hates when I put her down. I literally walk around the house with her on my hip from the time I get home at night until the time I put her to bed. She is waving good bye, saying Ma-Ma, and has a deep growling voice that she loves to use. She's been pulling herself up, crawling all around the house yet (although, somehow she has yet to discover the stairs!). I'm afraid she's going to start walking soon, which I am hoping is prolonged well past her first birthday.

Bath Time

The last two weeks have been amazing! Eden turned 7 months today and she is getting ready to crawl. She & her big sister have been taking baths together which has turned into my favorite time of the day every day. Eden LOVES to splash her big sister and is always so happy to be taking a bath. Fin likes her sister to stay for a few minutes and then askes me to take her out so she can "swim" by herself. We're starting to get Eden on a good bed time schedule and she pretty much goes into her crib at 7:30 - 8 and falls asleep. Now, we need to try and sleep train her big sis! Here is one of my favorite bathtime videos.

Welcome baby Eden!

Just twenty-eight days ago, Finley’s little sis, came into our lives and boy has it been a whirlwind. She was born at 5:30 am on Monday, August, 1st and labor & delivery was actually much quicker than with Finley. I was exactly 40 weeks when I went into labor and was scheduled to be induced if she didn’t come by Tuesday morning so I was pretty excited that she actually decided to make her debut when she did. I had been feeling contractions for a couple days but they really came on strong around 10:30-11pm on Sunday night. I laid in bed with Fin for a few hours until they started coming a little closer together. Then I went on the couch and watched a couple dvr’ed episodes of the Bachelorette (I know, I know) while I waited for them to come on stronger. Within an hour, I was getting a little nervous that perhaps I’d waited a little too long. Contractions were a couple minutes apart and very strong. I woke Jeff up, he packed Fin up in the car and we were on our way. Not without incident, however. First, Jeff set off the alarm when he opened the garage door to put Finley in the car. After entering his parents alarm code into our alarm key pad a few times, he finally realized and entered in our code just in the nick of time. On the way to the hospital, I had a few more contractions and asked myself, “why did I think going through this again was a good idea again?” We arrived at the hospital a little before 3pm, Fin in her pj’s, and a little freaked out and me in quite a bit of pain. When I was admitted the nurse asked me half a dozen of the most ridiculous questions like, “do you and your partner fight?”, “how do you resolve conflict when you’re in an argument?”, “how do you handle stress?”…when you’re dilated to an 8…the last thing you want to be doing is answering a ridiculous 50 question survey prior to being admitted to have your baby. WTF was that all about? I was admitted to my room, given an epidural, and waited for the doc to arrive. My parents got there around 3:30am and Fin was excited to meet her little sister. The doc arrived around 5:15am, asked me to push twice, and little Eden was here less than 15 minutes later. She was 8lbs 1oz and 20 inches long and had a full, dark head of hair. I was quickly reminded of why this was a good idea (the drugs helped a bit) and we are so blessed with a happy, healthy little girl.

Fin's Photo Shoot

Let's just say that I learned a VERY valuable lesson this past Sunday. "Do not have high expectations for a photo shoot with a 2 year old" Seriously. We showed up 6 deep + a dog at the photographers house on Sunday morning at 10 am. In tow we had Fin, Brett, Ashley, Grandma, Papa, Mom (that's me!), and Simon. Simon was actually the most well behaved of all of us! With us, I brought 4 changes of clothes, cupcakes, a cupcake stand, a tea set, balloons, sprinkles, confetti, a birthday hat, an Ipad, and I'm sure much more. Fin wanted NO part of any of it. She was on her own agenda. Only wanted her Papa and her and Brett decided to torment each other the entire time. We got a few good shots and I still haven't seen all of them but on one occassion we had to get Papa into the shoot so that Fin would sit down and 'behave'. Check out this photo, while definitely not planned, I can't get over how perfect it is. Fin runs her 'Papa' and definitely has him on a tight rope. I think this will be such an amazing photo and mean so much to her as she grows up.



More photos to come in the next couple weeks!

Mawkers

Fin loves to color, but she really only likes to color when she's got markers "mawkers" to draw with. Every once in awhile I'll let her sit in her high chair and go to town. Her activity usually ends up with mawker all over her hands, arms, and clothes. Tonight, we got an extra special treat, she colored all over her legs and then turned to me and exclaimed, "mama, look "wook" at me!" Boy was I excited.

Here's a couple photos of Fin with artwork all over her body.

It's a....

GIRL! We found out a week ago today that we're going to have another girl! I am pretty excited because I have sooo many items that I just wasn't ready to get rid of. Our due date is still July 28 and time is flying by. Finley likes to tell me that I have a bebe in my budha....

One Life Event After Another

It’s been a crazy month! Between raising an almost 2-year old, planning a wedding, being pregnant, and working full time; I’m not sure that I can take on anymore.

Fin turns two! In 20 days, our little one will turn two. She is the busiest girl around. She loves to mother her babies, color with markers, and torture Simon. Taking care of her babies consists of singing ‘wock a bye baby’ to them, then wrapping them up in a ‘bwankie’ and laying them face down on the carpet. This makes navigating thru the living room difficult when you’re trying to dodge 5-7 face down piles of babies throughout the house. Next, she loves to color, however, she’s decided she doesn’t like color crayons and prefers her ‘mawkers’. A coloring session usually ends in her drawing all over her hands, her belly and her clothes…but it does keep her occupied for about 15-20 minutes at a time. She is also OBSESSED with the iPad and frequently lets us know “ITS MINE!”. She knows how to swipe it on, pick her show, and watch upteen episodes of Caillou on YouTube. The best is when someone uploaded a dirty version of Caillou on there and Fin found it. All the sudden Caillou was shouting obscenities and I had to pull ‘her iPad’ away, this was followed by a complete and utter meltdown. No longer is she able to watch YouTube Caillou so we had to download actual shows from iTunes.

The Wedding The wedding turned out to be such an incredible weekend w/friends & family. On Friday, I stayed @ the Four Seasons in downtown with a few friends and we enjoyed a spa day with mom, Grandma, and Teresa and then had a fabulous dinner at Luc in Madison Park. The next day, we had a little brunch, got our hair done and took pictures in the balmy 30 degree (snowy) weather. We ended up at Terry Park in QA, walked through Pike Place, took a few shots at the Four Seasons and the Edgewater. The event itself was pretty memorable and I was so happy once we were finally married!

The pregnancy. I’m officially 19 weeks pregnant and have been feeling the little bugger kicking like crazy. I’ve been feeling much better than I did with Finley and the nausea has subsided for the most part @ about 16 weeks which I’m very thankful for. We find out this Friday (3/4) whether we are having a boy or girl and I couldn’t be more anxious for the news! I really wish I was one of those people who could have a little more patience.

WORK. Following the wedding, I headed to NY for 4 days for work. It wasn’t quite the way I imagined spending our honeymoon, but we decided to wait awhile before planning a more exotic trip. Most likely we’ll plan a little getaway after the baby is born. I stayed downtown at the Hilton and on Monday night, we enjoyed some Cuban food at this restaurant called Victor’s Café. We then headed to a rooftop bar called 230 Fifth street. We wanted to hang out on the rooftop for a bit but it was way too windy to enjoy the view. The bar was directly across the street from the Empire State Building and offered some fluffy red robes to wear outside. I’m not sure how I felt about wearing the robes. The following night, I met my cousin Nicole out and we headed to Little Italy to a small Italian restaurant for dinner. Overall it was a good trip but I was so ready to get back home.