Jack and... Hannah

I went to pick up Hannah from daycare today and noticed that a little boy had her jacket, hat, and gloves. He brought them over to me. Then he went to get her backpack and also brought it over to me. I was so charmed. The teacher told me that his mom came in and asked who Hannah was. Apparently that's all he talks about at home, Hannah this... Hannah that. He had tried to give her a hug earlier, but Hannah was being her normal unwilling self. So I asked her to give the Jack a hug and he was super happy. The teacher said, "Hannah! You just made Jack's day!"

What Mommy And Daddy Do

Best Sister

"I want to be Hannah's best sister."

She said this on the car ride home last night.  Made my heart melt.

Hannah Fell Down

I saw my life flash before my eyes this afternoon. Hannah fell down the stairs. It was literally head over heels, rolling, worse few helpless seconds of my life. I picked her up as she was crying and cuddled her and checking for broken bones. 10 seconds later she's pushing at me and said "Hannah fall down". And that was all the crying. My tough girl. 

She's fine. Ran away as if she didn't scare 10 years off of my life.  

No One Hugs Mommy But Hannah

Ryan and I were hugging in the kitchen.  Hannah was sitting at the island. She saw us...
"NOooo!!!!"

We continued to hug to see what she was do.

"NoooNooooooOOooo!!!"  Red faced, straining, shaking.  Oh my goodness.  So I went to go give her a hug.  Ryan comes over to give her a hug. She turns away and holds on to me tighter.  LOL Too funny. 

The Name Game

This morning's commute was horrendous. Every road leading to work was blocked or stopped with multiple accident investigations. What normally would take 20 minutes was 1 1/2 hours. Thank goodness the girls were in a good mood. They alternated between singing along with Imagine Dragons and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star / ABC Song, and playing the name game. What's the name game you ask? It goes like this...

H: MOM-MEE!!!
Me: HAN-NAH!!
H: MOM-MEE!@!!!
Me: HAN-NAH!!!!!

Imagine that for 10 minutes straight. We didn't play with Alex though, because that went like this...

Me: AHH-LEX!!
A: *whine*
Me: AHH-LEX!!
A: *WHINE!!*

At one point I called Ryan and he asked if I called only to complain.

Well. DUH!

Sisters

This lasted a second.

Weekends vs Weekdays

Why do they get up 7 or earlier on the weekends and sleep in until 8 on the weekdays? I can barely get in an 8 hour day this way. 

First Day of Daycare

The girls had no idea it was coming, meanwhile I've been dreading it for months.  We wanted to get there by 8:30AM, which meant that we should all be up by 7:00AM.  With time to get ready, and feed the girls.  Of course, this is the day that Hannah decided to sleep late. She's our alarm clock. First of all, why is it that on weekends she manages to wake up at 0700 w/o fail, but on weekdays she sleeps in?? Anyhow, I already knew the day wasn't going to be good for Hannah. She ate 2 bites of her cereal and 1/4 of a banana. Alex is our eater now. She ate her whole banana and licked half of the cream cheese off of her bagels, that's good enough for me. We drop Hannah off first. The class is outside playing and one of her teachers just so happened to be in the classroom. Hannah happily ran off with her to go play outside. So we go and take Alex to her classroom. After sitting with her for a few minutes we sneak out. Of course she saw us and her face started to tear up and turn red. But we're good parents.  We keep going, and let the teachers deal with the aftermath. We're brilliant parents, so we thought we should go and check on Hannah. They're outside so we go out the door, but JUST missed them coming into their class room. But the door that we came through (in the hallway) locks behind us so we had to enter through the classroom. The INSTANT Hannah saw us, she put on her "I'm pitiful" face and comes running to us. I gave her a hug and put her down. And being wonderful parents, we leave... and let the teachers once again deal with the aftermath. I'm sure they were cursing us as we headed down the hallway with our baby girl's screams following us.  I managed to hold out for 2 hours before I called the daycare (and only really because I was in back to back meetings for those 2 hours). Alex's teacher said she was doing great, didn't fuss and jumped right into it. That's my girl. Hannah's class was outside again so I said I'd talk to them later. Eventually I did talk to her, and was told that she was doing ok. Not eating or sleeping, but she was cooperating and not really fussy.  Good enough for me.

I couldn't wait to pick them up. We found Alex outside and true to herself, she didn't want to leave. We then found Hannah in her playground. She squealed when she saw us and ran right over. I couldn't put her down the whole time we were gathering their stuffs, she was holding for dear life, afraid we'd abandon her once again. Poor child didn't nap or barely ate during the day. She fell asleep on the way home. Now, a super tired and super hungry child who wants ice cream isn't someone you want in the house. She was a monster. The worse tantrum we've seen come out of her. Noises that I didn't think little kids could make were coming out of her. Now, Hannah has thrown some bad ones, but this was another level. Unfortunately Daddy said no ice cream until after dinner. Truthfully, if daddy wasn't around, Hannah would have gotten her ice cream and then I'd deal with dinner later. After a splatter of dinner plate on the floor, a spank on the butt, a timeout, and finally just plain ignoring her while I scarfed down my food, she calmed down enough to eat a few bites of oatmeal. She got her ice cream and it was all good after that.

Lesson of the day, go to pick up with snacks in hand.

What A Crappity Crap Crap Day... Literally

I was on schedule to leave the house 15 minutes after I woke up... grooming, brushing, makeup, dressed. The last thing on my list before I snuck out of the house was to get my coffee. Daisy decided to leave us a number of free gifts in the middle of the night... in the form of diarrhea piles. Great. 7:30AM.  I'm barely functioning and the house smells horrible. So I did the only thing I was capable of doing. I grabbed my coffee, let Daisy out, and left the house. I'm not cleaning up that shit.... literally. Instead, I sent Ryan a text to let him know that Daisy was sick and she was outside. He was going to be pissed... rightly so.

Fast forward to after work. Ryan said Daisy was in our bathroom. I'm hoping and praying that everything was ok. The house didn't smelled bad when I got home, so I go upstairs to let Daisy out. The stench that greeted me when I opened the bathroom door gagged me. Sigh... Not only that, she tracked "wet" prints out of the bathroom on her way down the stairs and out the door. It wasn't pleasant. I cleaned it up w/o throwing up.  Close call, but I did it. What's worse? The mop was nowhere to be found, so I had to play Cinderella and get on my hands and knees to mop the whole damn bathroom with a rag.

The bathroom got cleaned, Daisy got a trip to the vet (we're a couple hundred poorer), Ryan has a thoroughly washed and shampooed dog while he was out riding, and I'm tired.

My in-laws are coming back up in a couple of weeks.  Maybe they'll take Daisy home with them.    

Someone's Walking!!! FINALLY!

After months of crawling and walking on her knees, she finally decided to just get up and start walking this afternoon.  This was right after hanging onto my finger and walking around the stairs for 10 minutes.  I actually think she was trying to get away from me after we changed her diapers cuz she didn't want to put her pants on.  She just got up and walked away. 18 months old. This child is stubborn! I was seriously thinking that she wasn't going to ever walk.  After all, she's amazingly fast on her knees. Months.  On her knees. So long and so fast that there are calluses on her knees. Yay Hannah!  :)  That's my girl!

5 Weeks Away

I left my babies for 5 weeks.  In those 5 weeks...

Hannah -
Learned to crawl.
Says "bao bao" when she wants to be picked up.  Or rather... "bo bo" like how Ryan says it.  :) 
Says "ze ge ze ge ze ge..." repeatedly.
Can pull herself up.
Learned to eat complete solids.  Apparently she loves peas. 
Shakes her head when she doesn't want something.


Alex -
Got to spend 3 weeks with her grandparents down in Georgia. 
Learned how to jump off the side of the pool and blow bubbles in the water. 
Talking so much in English now, although I think she lost some of her Chinese. 
Learned to "try it" when given something new to eat.  

Thanks to Ryan for taking such good care of our girls.  I couldn't have gone away w/o your support.  I love you!

Oh.  And since being back, I've noticed that Hannah has a mischievous streak.  We'll have to watch out for this one. 

Turtle Power?

Current project. It needs to be bigger. Maybe make the green part wider. But I have the concept down and it looks cute!!

10 Month Checkup

Height 27" - 25%
Weight 18lb 12oz - <50%
Head 17" - 75%

Potty Training... It's Bound To Get Messy!

We started potty training yesterday.  After breakfast, Ryan took Alex to the playground and run some errands.  So we didn't start until the afternoon.  Off came the diaper and on went the undies.  I don't like this... at all.  I've been dreading this for months.  Alex loved it.  She got to run around in a shirt and undies all day.  She even went in the potty each time.  It was more fun for her than for me.  She got to unroll tons of toilet paper and "wipe" herself.  "Wipe" in quotes because this really only involves her shoving wads of TP down into the bowl.  She has to lift the seat herself and lift the bowl to dump into the toilet.  No help from Mommy allowed.  Mommy lets her do it while cringing each and every time.  She even got the tapping the bowl on the toilet to dislodge the wet TP at the bottom down.  Of course this just sprinkles pee everywhere on the big toilet.  At least she lets me rinse the bowl out before putting it back into the seat.  We only had 1 accident yesterday and that was poop.  She completely dropped the ball on that one, didn't even let me know that she went in her undies. 

Today... well...  We had a few accidents.  None while she was outside playing with the neighbors.  She even came home with  me half way through to go to the bathroom before returning outside.  First accident involved her just going on the couch.  No warning, just watching TV and the next thing I noticed is the puddle on the couch cushions.  I quickly picked her up and ran to the bathroom... meanwhile leaving a trail of pee on the hardwood and myself.  Damage was done.  We deliberately bought couches where the cushion covers comes off for kids and animals... unfortunately, the back cushion was just completely filled with uncontained batting.  WTH.  I hate that.  I took me 3 garbage bags to hold all the stuffing.  A couple incidents involving poop.  She's getting better at letting me know about poop, but she's letting me know AS IT IS HAPPENING.  And another incident involving pee, but that wasn't too bad. 

We're still using diapers at night.  I'm not even going to tackle that front right now.  Especially since she's still drinking milk before going to bed.  That potty training in 3 days booklet thing suggested that you should wake the kid up an hour after they fall asleep to make them go to the bathroom and again an hour before their usual wake up time.  First of all... WHAT PARENT OF A LITTLE KID WANTS TO WAKE THEIR CHILD UP AFTER THEY GO TO BED AND BEFORE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO GET UP?!?!  That's complete BS.  I was all excited about the method until I got to that part.  So until I wean her night time milk, I'm using diapers. 

Alex loves this whole potty training thing a lot more than I do.  I try keeping her in a shirt and undies, but whenever I leave her to her own device for a few minutes, she's running around butt naked.  She loves it.  Oh well. 

And oh.  Potty training one kid, giving a bath to another kid, and having stomach issues myself does not make for a good experience... lol  That was poop incident #2 today. 

Where are mommy and daddy?

Dawn: Where is daddy?
Alex: Daddy is at work.
Dawn: Where is mommy?
Alex: Mommy is sleeping.

>.<

Sleep Regression

We are having a sleep regression in the house. Ever since daylight savings day, we haven't had a normal night. Each night has been a battle getting Alex to sleep. She's crying, screaming, singing, talking, whatever, everything but sleeping. Before that fateful Sunday, Ryan would do the night time routine and she would turn over, hug Pooh and fall asleep. There may be a couple minutes of fussing, but only a couple minutes. Now we're going on hours... 2 usually. It's 10:33PM right now... Once she's asleep, then it's all good. Hannah hasn't been sleeping through the night either. She wakes up about once somewhere between 4:30-5:30AM for a feeding, but we were going 12-13 hours straight for a long time! I think the change in her is due to eating habit during the day. The child does not like the bottle! My kids need to go back to their good sleeping selves. Mommy is tired.

Hannah vs. Alex

Every baby is different. Hannah is definitely different than her big sister. She's smaller than Alex was at this stage. At almost 7 months, she's in the 25% for height, 25-50% in weight, and 75% for head. Alex was consistently in the 50-75% for both weight and height and 95% for head. Ryan said Hannah will be fat, squat, and smart. :) Alex will also drink milk, but didn't like baby food very much. It is always a battle getting Hannah to drink her milk... and it has to be fresh, never frozen. (I have hundreds of ounces of frozen milk in the freezer. Now what?) She loves her baby food and will down that like no other. She's also a great sleeper and has been since 2 or so months. She's now doing 12+ hours straight. With Alex, putting her down to bed was a nightmare. It usually involves lots of screaming, crying, sometimes puking, and a few trips from Mommy or Daddy. It still happens once in a while now. With Hannah, we have yet to have a crying episode... not one. It has nothing to do with me as a mother, it is all her. She's so easy going. The only thing she doesn't like is crowds. Lots of people freaks her out. Alex was also the happiest baby, always smiling and laughing. I think I can count on one hand the number of times that Hannah has laughed. But her smiles are the sweetest thing... they're so shy and sweet.

Cutie

Beary cute