Story time

Jeremy and I both love to read and it is a habit that we really hope we pass on to both our kids. When we were pregnant with Phoebe we talked about the books we wanted to read as a family and imagined snuggling in bed every night reading the stories we had enjoyed as children. With Eleanor on the way we imagined family story time to be a loving, quiet end to every day. In reality it hasn't really worked out ... yet (we're still hopeful about the "chapter book" phase).

It turned out that Eleanor's super-fussy time aligns with Phoebe's story time, so there's at least one family member out.  And really, she's a little too young to be left unsupervised, so we have to divide and conquer with one parent handling baby fussies and the other doing stories (at least we think - knockonwoodknockonwood - that we are ending the period where the parent with Eleanor has to do laps around the block bouncing the baby until 9pm). Phoebe can sometimes be a little hard to settle down, so her story time itself is sometimes not quite as relaxing as the images you might conjure of "bedtime stories".  So all in all, family story time has been a pretty big bust up to this point. We know it will likely get better, so we'll just wait and see what happens.

In the meantime, we are happy that Phoebe really does seem to like books and is excited to "read" to her sister. It might be at ridiculous o'clock in the morning and in the middle of our trashed living room, but I think it is just as sweet as the family bedtime stories we had imagined. We will take what we can get.

10 Weeks!

I can't believe that Eleanor is already 10 weeks old!  I meant to post pictures for her 2 month "birthday" but ... well ... we're pretty busy ... and she's a second kid ... so really she should just be happy we're getting around to this at all!

My dad used to say that babies get cute just in time.  That just when you are thinking that you'd like to put your infant on an iceberg and set them out to sea (my dad's example) or wrap them in bacon and leave them for coyotes (Jeremy's suggestion) they get just cute enough that you're willing to put in a few more weeks of parenting.

Frankly, newborns just aren't that great. They are tiny with squishy heads so you are always worried about breaking them. Also, they need to eat - All. The. Time.  It is one thing to read about newborns needing to eat every 2 hours and to understand that fact intellectually.  It is a whole other ball of wax to live that reality. Especially when it can take 45 minutes to slog through one feeding.

This is Phoebe pretending to be me.  She is using her travel neck pillow as a boppy while she "feeds" her baby.  Note the exhausted look on her face and the defeated slump. That about sums up my past few months.  Tiring. You'll notice that Eleanor finds this all hilarious.

Add to that the fact that newborns aren't very grateful for all the sacrifices you make - they mostly scream at you (disclaimer: this behavior is kind of particular to our children, we hear of people who have sleepy, happy, loving newborns.  We are not those people). There aren't even any smiles until about 5 or 6 weeks.

After all that you're probably wondering why we decided to have a second kid.  We often find ourselves asking that same question :) I kid ,,, mostly ... anyway, the point of this is that Eleanor is starting to outgrow that newborn funk. She babbles, smiles and giggles. She LOVES both Jeremy and Phoebe and will turn and smile when she hears their voices enter a room. It is absolutely adorable to watch. This week Eleanor has started to kind of sort of flail her little hands in a somewhat meaningful fashion. Meaning she can sometimes aim one at her mouth (more or less).

Ellie definitely still has her quirks - she is not an awesome sleeper and she screams bloody murder in the car, but we are finally getting to the point where there are some rewarding moments in the day. We are still figuring her out and figuring out how to be a family of four but we're starting to at least occasionally feel like we can do this :)

Happy New Year!

We hope all our friends and family enjoyed ringing in 2014! It seems like 2013 went by really quickly.  In true new-parent style we rang in the new year by dragging ourselves to bed at 10:30pm.  Actually that is pretty late for us, but we tried to squeeze in a little work before bed.  A decision we almost immediately regretted when both kids were up by 4 AM.  Eleanor needed to be fed around 3:15 and just as Jeremy was getting her settled back to sleep, Phoebe woke up needing to use the bathroom... or so she said.  Phoebe has caught on that saying she has to poop is pretty much a get-out-of-bed-free card. I'm not brave enough to call that bluff.

After she didn't poop, she crawled into bed with me promising to go right to sleep. You'd think I was born yesterday. Needless to say, there was no more sleeping. Well, I did drift off once, but woke up with Phoebe's hand in my mouth (she said she was "feeling my teeth").

Not the best ever start to a new year, but things perked up later when Phoebe's friends the twins came over. Aunt Laura and Uncle Adam sent Phoebe a stomp rocket for Christmas and we thought it was such a great present, we bought the exact same thing for the twins.  All three kids had an awesome time playing with the rockets and I think they will be toys that get used a lot in the coming months (although we may have to buy some replacement rockets - Phoebe is a tad rough on toys).  We also had pizza and cake to celebrate Phoebe's birthday AGAIN! The kiddo has gotten lots of birthday celebrations.

The afternoon and evening were a little rough - perhaps due to our 4AM wake up call but we all survived our first day of 2014.  This year will be pretty busy for us and it is both exciting and terrifying to think about how much will be changing!

Eleanor in a happier moment, sporting her "Happy New Year" onesie. This was actually a present from Jeremy's friend Chelsy when Phoebe was born. It has made it through two New Years with Gottlieb babies - now it is looking for a new home :)

Phoebe was very suspicious of her sparkling grape juice. When we said "cheers" she said "no thank you"