Baby Lincoln Halftime Report

My Littlest, Tiny Face, Goober Pea, Little One, last baby ever Lincoln is six months old! I can hardly believe how quickly it's gone by so far. I'm excited to leave the first six months behind and enjoy another half a year of my deliciously chubby, constantly jovial, easy going little man.

Physical: Our Peanut is "only" around 19.5-20 pounds right now, which is pretty big for a six-month old but about a pound smaller than his big brother was at the same age. I'm not sure how tall he is, as his doctor's appointment isn't for another week, but we're going to be buying him a new car seat within the next couple weeks because I think he's close to the height limit. Bye bye infant car seat! He recently moved into 12mo size clothes.

Developmental: Lincoln can roll both ways, and is working on sitting up on his own although I think it will be a few weeks until he's mastered it. He can push up on his arms but shows no interest in moving himself anywhere (rolling across the floor or army crawling). Fine by me -- take your time, little one! Mommy is not in a hurry to have two mobile children any time soon. He started rice cereal in the middle of last month, and has since tried sweet potatoes and peas. The peas were not a hit, and he also threw them up all over his crib later that evening. Can't say I blame him.

Sleep: Lincoln learned how to fall asleep in his crib last month! I was losing my mind getting up to rock him back to sleep 5-6 times every night, so we tried putting him down "drowsy and awake" to see what would happen. It was a miracle! Barely any crying and he quickly realized that he prefers falling asleep on his own as opposed to in someone's arms. It's almost a little insulting. Teaching him how to self-soothe a little has also brought the nighttime wake ups from 5-6 down to 2-3, which is not ideal but perfectly fine with me! He goes to bed at 6:30pm and wants to be asleep until around 6:30 the next morning. He also takes three naps daily. The first two are generally short, 30-60 minutes, because he often takes them in the car or the chest carrier while we're out and about. Then he takes a longer one at the same time as Lucas in the afternoon, usually 2-3 hours but with a wakeup in the middle.

Personality: What an impossibly sweet, smiley, adorable little guy he is! He rolls with the punches quite easily, as any good second baby must, and adores his big brother. He doesn't let you ignore him, and doesn't want to be left alone in a room while he's awake, but with regular activity changes he's incredibly easy to please. He's not particularly giggly, although our perspective is skewed by Lucas who basically hasn't stopped laughing in three years. He's very snuggly but needs regular wiggle breaks too. In all, Lincoln is a joy to have in our family.

Here are a million photos of my adorable boys.

Reasons Why My Almost Three Year Old Throws Tantrums

His banana broke in half before he could eat it.

I told him not to suffocate his baby brother.

I wouldn't let him suck on the kitchen sponge.

I asked him not to eat the mom's group craft supplies.

I opened his car door for him, even though he can't reach it himself.

I pulled him out of a flower bed at the zoo.

I put him in the bathtub instead of letting him climb in himself.

I asked him if he wanted a drink of water before his nap.

I left him in a room without me in it.

I put a blanket on him at nap time.

I tried to change his diaper after he pooped.

I went in to get him after nap time approximately two minutes after he called for me.

I took away a screwdriver that he was using to "brush baby's teeth."

I pulled his hands out of the cat's litter box.

I asked him if he was ready to go play with his friends at gym daycare.

I pulled him away from rolling on top of his baby brother.

I handed him his toothbrush instead of letting him pick it up.

I wouldn't carry him to the car when I had Lincoln strapped in the chest carrier.

Who needs a reason? Because he's almost three.

The above is basically my life right now. I haven't updated in a while because there are not a lot of fun blog posts in recounting the number of outings he's ruined the ends of, the number of times he's hit us smack across the face when our reflexes weren't fast enough, or the amount of tiny bruises covering my shins from his kicks. The Tank is certainly giving us a run for our money in 2015. Good thing he's cute!

Phases

As a second time mom, I take great comfort in the certainty that with children, nothing is certain. Everything, both good and bad, is a phase. This makes a lot of my experiences both easier to savor or endure, depending on which end of the spectrum they fall.

With Lincoln, our current phase includes the refusal to nap anywhere during the day for more than ten minutes unless he is laying in our arms or strapped to my chest in the Beco Soleil (highly recommended and saves my sanity on a daily basis!). Since I lack the mental and emotional fortitude for cry it out, I simply acknowledge the phase and the snuggles, and we wait.

Luckily, his transition into his crib and out of his Rock and Play bassinet (another highly recommended sanity saver) is going much better. If he weren't struggling to get over a leftover cough, I think he'd be ready to stay in there all night. As it is, we've had two nights where he's stayed in from 9pm until nearly 5am! In the back of my mind are Lucas's sleep patterns at the same age - twelve hours straight in the crib until he hit four months, at which point it all went to hell for the next year. So we wait to see if these good sleep habits are a longer phase or shorter one, and keep our fingers crossed for the former.

Lucas's current phase is a lot less fun. We already deal with pretty spectacular tantrums on the regular from our spirited Biggest, and he's finally hit the point where he decided that being mad is not enough, he needs to also hit and kick Mama and Dada (and baby brother too, when he can get to him fast enough!) to get his displeasure across. It is insanely frustrating and hopefully a phase that will pass quickly, as Brandon and I have a hard time keeping our tempers in check when we're being pursued across the house and abused, and even more so when he goes after the baby.

But there are always good things. Having conquered all the gross motor skills he can think of, Lucas is finally turning his attentions toward developing his fine motor skills and verbal skills. Lots of building blocks and chatter around here. The chatter can be hard to decipher but it's kind of a fun game also. Today I finally figured out that when Lucas was asking for "Star Wars," he actually meant "Dinosaurs," or the PBS cartoon Dinosaur Train.

As for myself, I am moving into a phase where hopefully I can be a runner again! Belonging to the YMCA and having access to free childcare for two hours every day has been an amazing gift for my life as a stay at home mom, and is allowing me to regain one of my favorite hobbies: running! I'm up to running 3.5 miles without a walk break, and hope to complete a 10K in the spring, and possibly a half marathon in the fall if I can fit in the training schedule. Hooray for new phases of life!

And a few photos of the boys:

Lucas vs. Lincoln at two months

Merry Christmas!

Tiggers are the cutest

Christmas Eve with my boys

No idea what's going, but still a sweetheart

Watching Toy Story with our new friends from Santa

Circus tent from the grandparents was a big hit!

Quiet New Year's Eve in

We love this sweet easygoing guy!

Three months old and delightfully chunky

Two Months!

Lincoln is already two months old, I can hardly believe it! He's getting to be quite the chunk, nearing 15 pounds currently, although he's still trailing behind his big brother The Tank at the sam age by about a pound. Since he started out nearly two pounds smaller, though, I think that's quite impressive.

Now that Lincoln is past the initial 6-8 weeks of normal newborn fussiness, he's starting to have a pretty mellow and sweet personality. He's generally pretty content to sit around and check things out, and loves snuggles and smiling. He's not a fan of tummy time or the playmat, and he absolutely hates his car seat unless we're on the freeway going very fast. Since he can't sit in our regular stroller yet, only in the infant car seat attachment, that means I'm wearing him about 90% of the time we're out and about. Thank goodness for my Beco Soleil, I absolutely love it! Luckily, he does too.

He's so far a much better sleeper than Lucas was. He's down for the night between 7pm and 8pm. I do one more dream feed around 10pm before I go to bed, and he wakes up usually twice nightly (2am and 5am) to eat, before being up around 7am. The main difference is that after he eats, he goes right back to sleep for another 3-4 hours, which is amazing. He's still sleeping in our room next to my bed, but I'm hoping to transition him into the crib around the new year. His napping habits during the day are not that great, he rarely lets me set him down for naps so he's usually napping in my Beco carrier while we're out or in my arms during Lucas's naps.

Lucas is very sweet to his brother but acts out to us a lot when he's feeling ignored. Hard to tell how much of that is adjusting to his sibling and how much is just because he's a two year old. Our spirited child is always a challenge, but he cracks us up on a daily basis with the funny things he says and does. He's got personality to spare, that one! His current obsessions are the Toy Story movies, Mack trucks, fire engines, and digging in the dirt. He also loves playing with friends, although his sense of appropriate affection is still underdeveloped -- we're working on asking permission before hugging friends and saving kisses for Mama, Dada, and brother. He recently graduated to the preschool room at church and is nowhere near being potty trained yet. All in good time!

Photo overload!

Two months!

How we feel when both kids are asleep at the same time

Me and Nugget at the zoo

Saw a real fire engine at the grocery store and met a firefighter!

Fun with bubbles at the Children's Museum

More museum fun

The artist at work.

Sigh, I love having a baby to snuggle again.

Starting to be more alert!

Lots of sweet smiles from this guy.

What I look like all the time now with Lincoln in the carrier!

Bathtime shark attack!

Love being home with my boys!

Paternity Leave Roundup

We're down to the last few days of Brandon's paternity leave, so I thought I should write up a quick blog post before next week when I'm home full time with two small children and will probably not get a chance to blog again until Lincoln's first birthday.

We've had a fine time together these past weeks, minus the first two when we were dealing with birth recovery, illness, and hospitalizations. I like the routine we've had and it's going to hard to lose that as we find a new normal.


The Things I'm going to miss most about Paternity Leave:

1. Sleep. Since I am nursing, I get up with the baby at night and then Brandon has been getting up with Lucas in the morning and at naptime, allowing me to snag a couple extra hours of sleep during the day. The boys occasionally nap at the same time but it's by no means a sure thing, so it's likely that most days I won't be able to sleep at all other than whatever I get between the hours of 8pm and 6am.

2. Meal preparation: Brandon has been handling the majority of cooking and meal prep while he'e been home. It's going to be a lot of "handful of trail mix for lunch, frozen Trader Joe's meal for dinner" over the next few weeks, I think.

3. Help with housework: Neither of us are amazing housekeepers, but I suspect the cleanliness around here is going to take a nose dive as well.

4. Help getting out of the house: Getting both boys dressed and ready to leave the house in the morning is ridiculously more complicated than doing it with one. Hope Lucas enjoys playing in our backyard for a while! Don't even get me started on how much I am dreading dragging both boys with me on errands to the grocery store, post office, etc.


Here are a few photos of the fun things we've been up to in the past month or so!

Love this little face.

Fun with trucks at the pumpkin patch!

Just riding in my tractor.

I choose this pumpkin!

Lots of this happening, for him at least if not the rest of us.

Lots of this happening too.

My one month old, chunking up nicely.

Aww, brothers!

The First Two Weeks

We expected that the first two weeks at home with both the boys would be difficult, but it turned out to be even worse than we anticipated, and for a totally unexpected reason. Hand foot and mouth disease finally found its way into our house.

On the Tuesday after we came home from the hospital, Lucas started acting out much worse than we're used to. Lots of tantrums and general irritability, but since it coincided with Lincoln's arrival into our house, we all chalked it up to sibling adjustment and tried to ignore it. I felt like such a jerk of a mother when after two days of cranky Lucas, I finally made the connection with HFM that he was sick on Wednesday night when he spit out a bite of banana (his favorite food) while crying and saying "ow."

Anyone who tries to tell me that HFM is just a mild childhood illness is liable to get kicked in the teeth, because this was the worst sickness we've ever had to deal with from Lucas in his lifetime, and that includes RSV and croup. The problem was that his mouth sores caused him a lot of pain when eating or drinking, so he simply refused to eat or drink much of anything for the next four days. If you know Lucas, you know that he is King of the Hanger Tantrum, which is why I take such care to keep him fed with plenty of protein and nutrient-dense foods throughout the day. Since he wasn't eating anything, we basically had to deal with a hangry, irritable Lucas for 12 hours a day until he finally started feeling well enough to eat again. Combine this with me still in recovery from giving birth, and the constant needs of newborn care, and it was basically the worst week of all time.

We tried our best to keep the boys separated, and wash our hands whenever we switched between them, but I began to notice a marked increase in lethargy in Lincoln around Monday, just as Lucas started getting better. On Tuesday afternoon, I took his temperature - 100.4. Very low-grade fever, but with infants as young as Lincoln, you really can't take any chances so his doctor advised that we take him into the emergency room to get checked out. I was 95% certain that he had simply caught HFM from his brother (he had one visible sore inside his lip), but dutifully brought him in anyway.

Upon arrival at the Rady Children's Hospital ER, I was promptly informed that for a baby under one month, any fever meant that he needed to have a full septic work up to rule out any serious infections. This meant 48 hours of testing and hospital admission for my tiny sweet boy, including a urine catheter, blood draw, spinal tap, and two days of precautionary IV antibiotics. He was so sweet and brave during the tests, the nurses and doctors were very impressed by how calmly he took everything. I had to handle the majority of the ER and hospital stay on my own, since Brandon was stuck at home caring for Lucas. I think I held it together pretty well for someone only 10 days postpartum!

We spent the first evening in the ER, which was the worst of it because this was the only time he actually seemed sick and I had to watch him get stuck all over with needles while surrounded by screaming children in pain. Once we transferred to the pediatrics unit at a hospital nearer to home (Lincoln via ambulance, with me following close behind in the car) and were admitted to a private room for the remainder of our stay, things were a lot calmer and easier to handle. Lincoln's fever was gone by the next morning, but we were asked to stay for the full 48 hours until the tests could confirm that there was no bacterial infection and we were just dealing with a run of the mill virus.

Not feeling too good in the ER.

I started calling him Little Lionheart for being so brave during all his tests, mostly inspired by this hat.

The doctor also noted that his illness had exacerbated his mild jaundice, and prescribed him some time under the bilirubin lights to "de-yellow-fy" him a bit since we were stuck in the hospital anyway. The lights convert the bilirubin in his system into something that can come out in his poop, which I found pretty fascinating although also gross. It was amazing to see how quickly he turned pink after spending a day or so under the lights.

Spa treatment under the bilirubin lights.

His spinal tap confirmed the presence of enterovirus toward the end of our first full day in the hospital, which was actually very comforting because it meant it was almost certainly not a more serious bacterial infection. By that time he was much more alert and feeding better and for longer periods of time, so the hospital stay was more boring than anything else. I think Brandon had a much harder time caring for Lucas for two straight days alone than I had lounging in our private room on my bed, having meals brought to me and reading my book in peace for hours on end.

Chilling in our room, getting better every minute.

Still, I was ecstatic when Lincoln was discharged in the late afternoon on our second day in the hospital, and it was amazing to be back home with the whole family again. Lucas in particular was very glad to have me back, and Brandon, best husband in the world, greeted me at the door with an open bottle of red wine.

Ready to go home!

Little smirk - happy to be home again.

Brandon and I have remarked to each other in the days since Lincoln got home from the hospital that taking care of two healthy kids frankly seems like a breeze in comparison to taking care of sick ones. Hopefully we'll all remain that way for a good long time!