The last couple of blog posts were the kind where I wrote them out for the most part, but I wanted to add some pictures and write a few more things, so I didn't publish them right away. Then the next day I came back to them, and I had just enough time to go through and change all the places where it said "today" to "yesterday" before I had to do something else. Then the next day I had enough time to change "yesterday" to "a couple of days ago," and I thought I would finally get around to adding the pictures, but then I had to do something else. And now "a couple of days ago" has become "last week." But today was the day they finally got published.

I think my biggest struggle with having two children has been figuring out how to juggle all my responsibilities with the amount of time I have. It seems like the postpartum guides always tell you not to do any work, to sleep when the baby sleeps, to get plenty of rest and not worry about whether the house is a mess, etc. But at some point you have to do some housework because there isn't a single clean spoon or bowl left and all of your pants and pajamas are unwearably dirty and there are no burp cloths left. And yet even at that point I find myself feeling bad because I'm not playing with Kevin or taking a nap, even though those housework things absolutely have to get taken care of if we want clean clothes and food. And on top of all this resting and playing and nursing and working, I also want to keep some kind of record of these weeks because it's such a special time and it goes by so quickly.

Kevin's second birthday

On Sunday Kevin turned two years old! And what a great two years it has been!

We didn't do a lot to celebrate. He didn't really realize that there was anything special about the day. We kept trying to get him to hold up two fingers, but he couldn't quite figure out how to do it.

Friday was my favorite consignment sale in Raleigh, so we went to find some toys for Kevin and also some pants for him to wear this winter. I was hoping to find a double stroller, but there were only a couple of really worn out ones and a front-to-back one, which isn't what I want. We found a couple of birthday presents for Kevin, though. He got one of those buckets of shapes where you put the shapes through the holes on top, and a magnadoodle. He loves them both and played with them for a couple of hours as soon as we got home, so I think we chose well! He has really enjoyed them. Kevin also got some books and a truck from my parents and a card with stickers and birthday money from Ryan's parents. He enjoyed talking to all of his grandparents in the evening (for some reason he wanted to show them his nose, which of course they couldn't see on the phone), and after we hung up he was signing "more" because he wanted us to call someone else.

Ryan made Kevin's cake. He frosted it with green frosting and then used chocolate frosting to make a track. Then he put gummy bears on the cake--some running the race and some standing as spectators.

We kept it out of Kevin's reach so we could get some pictures, and then we let him have it. He picked off all the gummy bears and ate them with delight. Then he poked some holes in the cake. I think he quite enjoyed it.



So here is what Kevin is up to:

• He loves reading books and has no problem reading the same book 5-10 times in a row.
• He enjoys playing with his blocks. He likes to dump them out and then put them back in the bucket again while singing "Nuh! Neeee. Nuh! Neeee . . ." (which, translated, means, "Clean up, clean up . . .") He also enjoys making towers with the blocks.
• He is learning lots of words and also still enjoys learning new signs. Some of his most recent words are helicopter, blanket, water, cereal, swing, stroller, toothpaste, lotion, draw, "dropped it," and fork.
• Speaking of forks, he's taken to stowing his forks and spoons under his booster seat. In fact, the other day I gave him some food and then commented that I had forgotten a spoon, and he said, "Oh!" and climbed down and pulled out a yogurt-covered one that he had hidden there who-knows-how-long ago. It was pretty gross, but also hilarious.
• He also enjoys making animal sounds like Uh uh! (for dogs), meow, moo, bok bok bok (for chickens), baa, and a clearing-your-throat sound (for birds--hey, that's what they usually sound like around here!). Sometimes it gets confusing because something as simple as ba-ba has about five different meanings (including paper and bubble), so we rely a lot on context and guessing.
• He loves to run and be active. It's a basic need for him.
• He loves balls and is especially interested in basketball.
• He's very social. If we take him out to the playground and there are no other kids there, he isn't especially interested in staying. On the other hand, he will squeal in delight if he sees somebody approaching the playground.
• Kevin still loves to suck his thumb, and for now I'm not worried about it. A few months ago a man who was in the elevator with us told me he is too old to suck his thumb and he needs to stop. I made a polite response and didn't pay much attention to it. He's only two years old, and I feel like at this point fighting the thumb-sucking would be about as effective as banging my head on a rock (and probably more painful). It's just not the right time to fight that battle. I also wonder if the man thought Kevin was older than he actually was, because Kevin is pretty tall for his age and often gets mistaken for a three-year-old.
• He loves to sing action songs with us. His favorites are The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Popcorn Popping, and Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.
• He enjoys drawing. We have several manifestations of that hobby on our doors and walls.

I'm continuing to see signs that Kevin is becoming more mentally and emotionally prepared for toilet training. I still don't feel that he's ready yet, but every day it's sinking in that soon we will reach that point, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to handle it. I blogged before about the book Toilet Training in Less Than a Day. When I read it I really liked it, and I was convinced that there was no reason why it should take months for a child to be toilet trained. But after thinking about Kevin's personality and how he responds to me in other aspects of his life like playing and eating, I'm starting to realize that it's not that simple. Kevin has his own agency, and I can't force him to learn to use the toilet because that's his decision and it depends on if he's ready for that. I still like a lot of the principles from the book and I plan to use them, but I think I'm going to check out several more books about it before deciding how to approach toilet training Kevin. At this point I can tell that Kevin is often aware of when he's going, and he frequently lets us know that he needs his diaper changed, so I think he's headed in the right direction. I'm considering getting him his own toddler potty and leaving it up to him to try it if he's interested for now. I think that would give us opportunities to discuss it and prepare, and then later on when I'm feeling up to it and when he is more mentally and emotionally developed, we can focus more on actually getting him potty trained. It's been interesting to be changing both his and Heidi's diapers, because now Kevin seems so big in comparison and it seems odd for a child so big to still be wearing diapers. I'm certainly looking forward to throwing away the diaper covers; they're getting very worn out.

Kevin is doing much better adjusting to being a big brother. He is mostly very nice to Heidi and wants to play with her and help take care of her. He likes to try to pick her up and hold her, which always scares me to death, but I try to help him hold her when he wants to so that he can learn how. I hope that they will be good friends and enjoy playing with each other as they grow up together. One of the things he likes to do while he's eating a snack or drinking something is to come and offer it to her, and then he's pulls away and says, "No?" He also likes to hold her hand and say "Hi" while waving it, or else give her high fives, and he often shares his beloved blankets with her.

the vomit comet strikes again (and again . . . )

Well, I started writing this post a week ago when Heidi was three weeks old. Every time I come to my blog I want something more cheerful than my rant to be the first blog post, but then I get tired and don't get around to publishing the posts I've been working on. Plus sometimes I only have one hand available, like right now, so it takes longer to type.

Heidi is already 4 weeks old. I can't believe how fast these weeks have gone. It seemed like weeks 40-42 of my pregnancy dragged on and on and on, and now the time is flying by. We love Heidi so much. She naturally fits into our family and I almost keep forgetting she hasn't always been here.

One of the first things we noticed about Heidi is that she has a lot of upper body strength. But what a surprise it was when Sunday night she rolled from her tummy to her back. We thought it might be a fluke because she was quite angry at the time, but Monday morning she did it again several times, quite calmly and deliberately.

3 weeks is when they suggest that you introduce a bottle if you're planning to, and since I'm going back to school part-time in the fall we will need her to be willing to take my milk in a bottle if I'm away, but I'm not feeling terribly eager to introduce a bottle yet. Nursing is going really well now, but I'm still trying to figure out what her "I'm hungry" cues are and I don't really want to introduce another variable. Plus I just don't want to pull out my Ameda Purely Yours and set it up.

For the first week and a half of Heidi's life, she basically slept and ate and rarely stayed awake for very long. I think she's starting to be more aware of the world around her now because she is awake a lot more during the day and it's harder to get her to stay asleep once I get her to sleep. She does cry a lot during the day, and it's hard to figure out if she's feeling overstimulated or tired or in pain or hungry. Sometimes I have to let her cry for a minute so I can finish changing Kevin's diaper or get him to bed or wipe up a mess or whatever else, and by the time I can get back to her she has calmed down and gone to sleep, which leads me to believe she was overstimulated and just wanted to be left alone to settle down. But sometimes it turns out that even though I had just fed her and thought she was full, she was actually famished. And sometimes it's a tummy ache and all I can do is comfort her until it's over--and in those cases if I assume she's hungry, she often ends up eating eagerly because it's comforting, but then she throws it all up all over me because she is already so full, which is why we sometimes call her the vomit comet. It seems like it happens at least once every couple of days. Anyway, it's mostly just the normal figuring-out-my-newborn-baby stuff. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it's not usually my fault if she's crying, and it's hard to accept that I can't always make her troubles go away easily. I think she'll be a little happier when she finds her thumb. She keeps trying to suck on it, but she can't quite find it, and that makes her very frustrated.

I do appreciate that Heidi sleeps so well at night. She does wake up every 2-4 hours, but she only wakes up to nurse and then happily goes back to sleep without protest. So I'm feeling pretty well rested for the mother of a new baby. It's not quite as much sleep as I want, but I'm not complaining.

Heidi is so similar to Kevin in some ways, but she's so different. Kevin was rather overbearing as a newborn (still is), but at the same time he was very simple (still is). If he wasn't hungry or tired, he was happy in the swing or held against our chests where he could hear our heartbeats. Usually one of those things would keep him happy. Heidi has a milder personality, but I think she's much more complicated.

Heidi is so beautiful. I am so grateful to have a daughter. I love to watch her cute expressions and movements. In her quiet alert times she likes to look around and wave her arms. It's so cute when she stretches and makes little snuffling noises, looks intently into my eyes, waves her arms energetically, or goes cross-eyed. It's also very sweet when she falls into a deep sleep in my arms and snuggles close.

I keep forgetting to share this picture. Ryan's sister Mindy and her family visited us for the afternoon on the Sunday before Heidi was born, and we took them to see some of the sights on campus.So this is what I looked like at 41 1/2 weeks pregnant, and you can also see Kevin with two of his cousins, Dallin and Robbie. I think I actually got a little smaller as the week went on (because she was descending), so this is about as big as I got. It was so great to see them all. It really boosted my spirits.

My friend Teresa offered to come over and do a photo shoot of Heidi, and she got some wonderful pictures. I am so thrilled with them.

And here are some pictures that we have taken.

Here's a video of Heidi playing.

the swing

When Kevin was a baby, we borrowed a swing from a friend, and it was a wonderful help. So when I found a nice compact swing at a consignment sale last January I thought it would be nice to have one and I got it. I was fully aware that Kevin would want to play with it himself, but at least we could use it at night to help the baby sleep. When I got home, Kevin turned on the music, and what we heard was very creepy and disturbing. We figured it was just that the batteries were low, but it turns out that it actually does sound like that, even with new batteries. And what's even more disturbing is Kevin's zombie dance that goes along with the music, which you can see here:



Kevin loved the music that the swing played, so that if he was in the same room as the swing we basically had it going in the background all the time. It was annoying and didn't sound especially pleasant (why do baby product manufacturers think babies will be soothed by such sounds?), and Kevin always insisted on turning off the swing part whenever he turned on the music part. So one evening it became too much, and Ryan took the swing apart and removed the speaker.

If I were to ever sell this thing on Craigslist, I would add the disclaimer: "It doesn't play music anymore because we removed the speaker, but TRUST ME, that's a good thing."

Every once in a while I stumble across an article or blog post complaining about kids and how parents shouldn't bring them in public until they know how to behave. They're generally written by people who haven't had any children themselves or people who happen to have children that don't even want to run wild in the store. And these people rant about how nobody wants to hear a kid throwing a tantrum or see a kid doing some naughty thing in a grocery store or restaurant or airplane.

Every time I come across one of these I'm grumpy for the next 24 hours.

So here is my strong opinion on the subject. If your kids are always perfect angels in public and you can't understand why parents can't keep their kids under control and why some parents never discipline their children, don't give someone a dirty look. If your kids are like that because you happen to have kids who easily understand how to be good in public, consider yourself lucky and realize that not all kids are naturally like that. If your kids are good in public because you found a way to help them understand how to be good in public, congratulations on finding a method that works for your kids. And realize that just because it worked well for you, it doesn't mean you've discovered a universal method that will work on every single child. Your method may not have worked for that mom who's struggling with a screaming three-year-old in the cereal aisle. She's still trying to find a way that works for her child.

The same goes for most other aspects of parenting. If your child was sleeping through the night at six weeks old, or potty trained himself at 18 months, or always eats her vegetables, or puts his clothes away without being told, or sits quietly in Sacrament meeting without needing any toys or snacks, don't pass unkind judgment on other parents whose kids don't do the same. You are lucky that your child is like that, or that you have found something that works for that child. And most of the rest of us are still trying our hardest to teach our kids those lessons. You can't force a child to do the right thing.

Heidi seems like a very good baby so far. I think she knows she's a second child and that I'll never survive if she doesn't let me sleep at night. At night she wakes up every 2-3 hours and goes right back to sleep (or at least doesn't cry) after she eats, which I really appreciate. Kevin was so hard to get to sleep when he was a newborn, although after a few months he became a good sleeper. The unconsolidated sleep is starting to catch up with me, though. For the first week and a half or so I felt like I had plenty of energy and getting up to feed the baby wasn't too hard, but now it's getting harder. Fortunately Kevin still takes good naps and I can usually get a nap when he does, and we've had lots of people bringing us meals, which has been great since by the end of the day I'm pretty tired.

I had forgotten how tough the first couple of weeks of breastfeeding are. For some reason all of the books and classes seem to play down that part. Even though I've read a couple of books about breastfeeding and knew all of the important things about how to get the baby on right, it doesn't mean the baby knows how to do it right. It took a while for Heidi to figure out how to suck the right way. And I also had some pain from adjusting to nursing again, and then the engorgement phase. What got me through it was remembering that it was the same with Kevin and it was over after a couple of weeks. I don't understand why the books don't give a better idea of what to expect. They mostly keep emphasizing that it doesn't hurt if you do it right, but the problem is that for a lot of women, it does hurt for those first couple of weeks, not because we're doing it wrong, but because our bodies are making a lot of adjustments. Don't worry--Heidi is figuring it out and nursing well now. She weighs 9 lb. 3 oz. as of Friday, so she's growing well.

Kevin is doing pretty well. I think the hardest time for him is when I'm nursing Heidi. That's when he tends to come over and shove her head or hit her. I've heard a lot of people say you should read books or do other things with the older child while you're nursing the baby, but honestly I don't think that helps much with Kevin. I tend to steer clear of Kevin while Heidi is eating, and then I give Kevin some good attention right after Heidi is done eating, and I think that helps. He can also be very gentle and sweet with her, though. He likes to give her kisses, hold her in his lap, pat her back, and point at the different parts of her face. He tries to copy the things that we do to take care of her, which means sometimes I have to prevent him from picking her up or shoving a finger down her mouth--but I do appreciate that he's trying to be nice. A couple of mornings ago he was lying on the bed and Heidi was lying on her tummy on top of his tummy, and he really enjoyed that. He's always excited to come say good morning to the baby and is very good at letting us know if she is sad. I feel bad that I can't give Kevin as much attention as he is used to and that I still don't have a lot of energy to play with him the way he likes, but eventually I will recover, and it will also be really good for Kevin to have a baby sister. It's been fun to be able to get down on the floor with Kevin and play with him again, though. When I was pregnant I felt so heavy and sore that if I sat on the floor it was hard to haul myself back up again.

Recovery has been a lot smoother this time. Mostly I think it's because this is my second baby and it was a shorter labor. Even right after Heidi was born I was amazed at how great I felt. I definitely felt like I had just had a baby, but I felt much better than after Kevin was born. Maybe it's because it didn't take three hours to push her out. I was pretty happy that my entire body didn't get swollen this time. They had me pumped pretty full of fluids by the time Kevin was born, which I think had a lot to do with me getting so swollen, but this time I didn't have an IV at all.

It's funny how ambitious I feel some mornings, and how quickly I change my mind. Some mornings I wake up and think, "You know, I want to straighten my hair today," and then a couple of hours later I'm thinking, "I'll just be happy if I can get some breakfast and finish changing my clothes."

By the way, has anyone else noticed how there always seem to be burp cloths everywhere except where you're currently nursing the baby?

When Kevin was a newborn, I couldn't understand why anyone would rely on nursing their babies to get them to sleep. I never could get Kevin into a deep enough sleep for that to work. But now that I have Heidi, I understand why--because for her, it works amazingly well. Heidi has a very strong urge to suck and is trying very hard to find her thumb, so in that respect she is like her brother. Maybe that's why they were both born with their hands by their faces.

more pictures

Ryan's mom came to help us for a few days (thank you!) and got some cute pictures. Most of these are hers.

This is what I missed out on with Kevin--dressing up my baby!

Here is what Heidi looks like in her cloth diapers--and she's lying on top of one of Kevin's diapers, which now look huge in comparison.

So, should we be concerned that our son is putting headbands on himself?