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.
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 :)
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"
[This post will be written in chunks over the next few days as we find time - we'll add photos too!]
Dear Phoebe,
Today was your third birthday. On one hand we can't believe it has been three years already. On the other hand, neither one of us can really remember what our lives were like before we had you. We are sure we probably had lots more free time, disposable income and hours of sleep, but we wouldn't trade the last three years for anything (except maybe we'd be willing to negotiate a swap for your first three months, but there have been lots of posts about that already).
This is the first year you have really understood birthdays (and parties and presents) and you have been looking forward to your birthday for quite a while now. You spent all morning walking around the apartment singing "happy birthday to Phoebe". You actually spend a lot of your time singing: songs we've taught you, songs you learn at school, and songs you make up yourself. The joyful energy in your singing always makes us smile and music is a big part of our lives - one of us sings you bedtime songs every night (usually it is three songs, but tonight you demanded an extra "because it's my birthday!"). Your current favorites are: Blowin' in the Wind, The Train Song (Morningtown), The Rainbow Song (Rainbow Connection), and Good Night Sleep Tight. You love learning new songs and sometimes request a song you've never heard before - your tired parents don't always think that through and we definitely had to explain a few things after Mom accidentally chose The Gambler as a lullaby one night.
We spend a lot of our time explaining things. You are very inquisitive and curious. We have to remind ourselves that these are traits we want to encourage because sometimes we don't always feel like answering your constant questions. We promise to try harder to encourage and honor your curiosity - even when that means it takes us 30 minutes to read a single bedtime story.
Three year old Phoebe is fiercely independent. You want to do everything yourself and I don't think it ever crosses your mind that there might be something you can't do. You are adventurous and fearless in a way that regularly frightens all the adults around you but is also pretty admirable. Your shins are constantly full of bruises and scrapes but you always get right back up and jump back into whatever you were doing. We hope this confidence and persistence follows you into adulthood and can't wait to see where it takes you (besides the ER).
Your world was turned upside down this year with the arrival of your baby sister. You try very hard to be a good big sister and always want to help change, dress and comfort the baby. You call Eleanor "my little one" or "my Ellie" and always want to know where she is and how she is doing. There are definitely jealous moments when you want a parent's attention but overall you have been very good about welcoming your sister into our family. You love to wear matching clothes and get very excited when Eleanor smiles at you or grabs your finger. We are so excited to see the two of you grow up together.
This year you've also made some good friends. Your best friends are two little boys (twins) from your class at school. The three of you cause a lot of trouble and are really more like three siblings than friends. It is fun (and a little scary) to watch you interact and scheme.
You've also started to really voice your preferences. You are very particular about what you will wear (a post on this soon), and are starting to get a bit more particular than we'd like about what you will eat. You're also starting to learn the art of negotiation although you still need a little practice - sometimes you negotiate down to six or seven minutes of extra playtime when offered 10. When negotiation fails, you try to convince us that what you want to do was our idea all along. I think we are going to be in serious trouble when you get a little older.
We were trying to think about what to write in this post but it is just so hard to capture three year old Phoebe in words. You are enthusiastic, helpful, independent, and just down-right amazing. Parenting you is THE MOST challenging but most rewarding thing either one of us has ever done. We feel so lucky that you are ours. We hear that three is a pretty challenging year, and we're already starting to see (big) hints of that. While your behavior sometimes drives us batty, we always love the person you are. We have learned so much parenting you and are looking forward to trying to keep up with you in the coming year. We love you more than we could ever say. Happy birthday Doodle Bug!!
All of my friends post these lovely artsy photos of their families. You know, the ones of the family running through a sunlit field or posing atop a mountain at sunset. The ones where the whole family is in coordinating outfits and everyone looks happy and relaxed - like they could be in a commercial for orange juice or cookies or something really wholesome. Those same friends post super cute newborn photos of their babies stuffed into buckets wearing adorable hand-crochet hats and what-not.
In a pregnancy-hormone fueled fit of insanity I decided to book a photo shoot for us to get some family shots and some of the new baby (preferably with said baby in a bucket). I have a really nice friend at work whose equally nice wife is a great photographer. They gave us a very good deal on pictures and all we had to do was show up and smile. I sat back and anticipated my glamorous family snapshots (oh, and the arrival of my baby).
It turns out I have no idea how anyone with an infant gets anything resembling a decent family photo. Ever. Our pictures were taken when Eleanor was 11 days old. She was just ridiculously unhappy about the entire experience. Phoebe was ... an almost 3 year old. Jeremy and I were exhausted.
I realized the night before that I had completely neglected to purchase adorable matching outfits so I dug through our closets to find anything that even looked remotely like it went together. This meant that we all ended up wearing sweaters even though the photographer had warned me that for newborn shoots she makes it super-hot in her house so the baby doesn't get cold. Eleanor was still on her newborn eat-every-hour schedule so Jeremy and I got almost no sleep. The plus side of that is we were so tired, we didn't really care that there was no time to shower. Not only did we neglect our own appearance, neither one of us realized Phoebe's hair hadn't been brushed pretty much since the arrival of her sister.
When we got to the photographer's house, Eleanor immediately melted down. While she screamed and I tried to nurse her, Phoebe helped herself to a tour of the house and busied herself digging through the photographer's living room. This meant that by the time we finally got Eleanor somewhat settled down, Phoebe was far too engrossed in Mr. Potato Head to even consider posing for pictures. We finally dragged her over to the backdrop but she pretty much refused to follow any instructions involving where to sit, when to smile, or to please act like a human being for EVEN ONE STINKING SECOND.
We were there forever. Seriously, a very long time. I stopped trying to soothe Eleanor and just stuck a pacifier in her mouth figuring the pacifier would be the least of the problems with the resulting pictures. At the end I was not confident that there would be a single shot worth salvaging. Certainly no cute naked-baby-sleeping shots or even anything that could be used in a Craigslist ad offering a free toddler to anyone willing to take her off our hands. In the end, the photographer did what she could with Photoshop and we ended up with some cute shots. They aren't family-frolicking-in-the-sunset pictures, but they more accurately capture the reality of our lives. In fact, I think they make us look better than we did in reality (80 degree, sweater wearing, unshowered reality).
Brief moment of baby sleep - captured! Not naked, but she is in a basket.
Phoebe is smiling (probably by accident) Eleanor seems worried (she probably should be)
This one is actually cute! Baby isn't crying! Success!
Attempted family shot. Guess who's not cooperating. You can lead Phoebe to the photography studio but you can't make her smile when she gets there.
Phoebe rearranges the set. With her baby sister in it.
No idea what is going on here, but it doesn't look good for Eleanor.
I actually really like this one. Pacifier and all.
I think this one looks cute. Jeremy says it makes Eleanor look like Tarzan. We have agreed to disagree.
Long time, no post. Actually, we just barely squeaked in a second post this year. If I'd waited a few more days we would have only had one post in 2013. Yikes! We'll just go with the story that we were having too much fun to stop and write about all the fun we were having :)
Now that we have two little munchkins (oh, yeah, that happened in 2013) we will try to update with pictures when we can. Rather than clean up my online photo storage I just decided to pay the fee for more storage space. That is remarkably similar to the strategy I use around the house for dealing with clutter - I just buy more bins for stuff.
In all seriousness, we have a lot of big changes coming up in 2014. We'll post here to keep everyone updated. In the meantime, we finally got around to ordering birth announcements and holiday cards, so if I don't have your real-life address, please message me.
No promises, but I might even try for a THIRD 2013 blog post in the coming weeks ...
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