fun at Grandma's

This week Daddy is in California climbing a mountain.  The girls and I packed up and moved to Grandma's house for a week.  Rachel's having the time of her life and Rebecca is her usual "cute-but-not-a-good-napper" self.  And I'm getting some extra sleep because Grandma is getting up with her at 3:30 or 4 AM when she wakes up.  (Unfortunately Rachel has been waking up a lot, so I'm still not sleeping all night, but I'm appreciative of the extra sleep!!)

Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to here....

New Dress Up Clothes!

Swimming!!

Little Sister watching the little swimmer....

Little Sister taking a bath in the SINK!  (look at those ROLLS!!)

Science Museum! (She had a BLAST!--the firetruck was her favorite, can you tell?)

And my first attempt at a video....I've never had success inserting them before.

school

Rachel was playing school....here's her class.

Where else can you find a cowboy, princess, sheep, wonder pet, several bears, and a cricket all in the same class?

a Rachel update

So I haven't written much about Rachel lately.  Here's what she has been up to as of late....

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talkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalking

...and then talking some more.  Every so often she takes a breath.  She doesn't stop to eat (we have the same conversation at dinner every night:  "Rachel, you need to stop talking and eat your food!") or even to use the bathroom ("Rachel, you need to stop talking and go potty.").  Is this my child???  Anyone who knows me well knows I'm often about as quiet as they come.  I guess maybe she took it upon herself to fill in the silence.  There is no longer ANY silence in our house!

I guess she talked this much before Rebecca was born....I just didn't notice because she was the only one I had to pay attention to.  Now that my attention is divided, I find her talking to be just too much to take in sometimes. 

She's been obsessed lately with listening to stories on the CD player in her room.  It all started with this:

A friend of mine sent her one of these Tag Reading Systems.  She LOVES listening to the stories (she now has four of the Tag books and listens to them over and over).  Then another friend of mine sent her this:

She sent both the book and the CD.  So Rachel started listening and following along--over and over and over!  So the last time we were at the library, I looked for some books on CDs.  I found the Bearenstain Bear stories and she's spent countless hours up in her room this past week listening to those stories over and over again.  Since she's enjoying it so much, my next quest is to find a chapter book to read aloud to her--I'm thinking of starting with Stuart Little.  I looked up books to read aloud to preschoolers and that was one I found listed in a couple of places.  Anyone else have any other suggestions? 

Rachel is a character with an imagination that runs wild.  She pretends and pretends and pretends all day long.  Lately she's been playing a lot with her dolls and stuffed animals.  She's particularly taken with her Care Bear, Love-a-Lot Bear.  She goes almost everywhere with us (and then sits in the car while we're in the store or wherever it is we've gone).  She and Love-A-Lot Bear (and sometimes her other dolls and animals) play school, doctor, babies, princess, and all sorts of things together. 

I love my crazy girl.

(And her little sister!...who is the one who is REALLY supposed to be sitting in that chair!)

finally!

I told you she could smile....and now I finally have photographic evidence!  (Along with evidence of why the doctor said she should be eating less....look at those cheeks and double chin!)

Enjoy my smiley girl!!

almost

I almost got a smile on camera.  Well, I did....but it's a very bad, blurry picture.  Shoot.  Oh well, you can sort of get the idea.

And here's the rest of the (non-smiling) photo shoot.  Once I get the camera out, she stares at the camera and is too distracted to smile.  Here she is, now 9 weeks old.

Here's the update about her doctor's appointment last week.  We had to see a different doctor, not our regular doctor.  She was very concerned about how much Rebecca's eating, and told me I need to cut back to 25 ounces a day (she was eating 30-35 ounces!).  She weighed 12 pounds, 14 ounces, which is the 90th percentile.  She said ideally she should be in the 70-75% range, since her height and head circumference are there.  I felt terrible about putting my two month old on a "diet," and cutting back so drastically.  It just didn't feel right, though I did feel like she was eating too much.  But they always tell you you can't overfeed a baby, as long as they're not spitting up (which she rarely does).  I talked to our regular doctor the next day because I was so concerned about it.  She was much less concerned than this other doctor, which made me feel better, but did say it would be a good idea to cut back a bit.  We have cut back a little, and as a result, she's not sleeping as well at night (she was going all night, and now she's getting up again), so I don't know if it has to do with eating less or not.  I can't decide what to do--feed her what she wants or do what the doctor says.  Parenting is tough! (and this is the easy part!)

She also wants to have her evaluated by a physical therapist because of her severe 'pigeon toes.'  We can't get in until the beginning of September, so it'll be awhile before I know anything about that.  It sounds like it's something that shouldn't be too difficult to fix, though, so I'm glad we're starting early.  (You can see how her toes point in up in some of the pictures above.)

By the way, that is a 3-6 month onesie she's wearing!  She's only two months old!  Rachel was always behind in the sizing....Rebecca is now ahead.  Uh oh, I hope that doesn't mean the seasons of Rachel's clothes will be wrong for Rebecca!! (She's still wearing some 0-3 month stuff...but she's outgrown some of it, and some of the 3-6 month things fit.)

two months old

She still won't smile for the camera, though I'm getting more and more out of her every day!

(this is ALMOST a smile on camera!)

(another almost smile)

I remember I couldn't get Rachel to smile for the camera until about 4 months, so if Rebecca follows suit, I guess we have a couple months to go until we get a good picture!

Rebecca is sleeping well at night--we even had two nights last week when she slept from 11 pm until 7 am.  We were thrilled!  She's gotten up the last few nights at 4:00 am, so she's still not consistently sleeping all night, but she's doing much better than her sister was at this age. 

In fact, her sister is STILL causing me sleepless nights!

Rachel has bad dreams quite a bit, plus she's finally started waking up at night to go potty (I think we may finally be almost done with pull ups! Yay!), but she gets up and is only half awake and out of it, and sits in the bathroom and cries for no reason.  The bathroom is right outside our door, and I'm a light sleeper anyway, so I hear it all.  It's frustrating that the infant in the house is sleeping well and the four year old is the one having problems!  Hopefully they'll both be sleeping well soon, and so will I!!!

Anyway, Rebecca is becoming more social, as she's smiling and cooing at me more and more each day.  It's much more rewarding when she responds!  She's found her fists in the last week and works really hard over and over to get one in her mouth--usually her right fist or at least a couple of fingers.  When we sit her upright on our laps she looks down at her feet, too, as she starts to notice them.  She's still a cuddler and would like nothing better than to sleep in our arms all the time.  Sometimes it's hard not to indulge her.  She sleeps really well in the baby bjorn if we're out and about, and I finally had a successful shopping trip over the weekend with her sleeping the entire time in it.  Sure beats her crying in her carseat the whole time! 

And here's a horrible picture of me with my sweet baby....I had my mom take one because I'm always the one taking the pictures and there are never any of me with her...but this one is terrible because I was blinking.  Oh well.  At least it's evidence that I was here!

Tomorrow we go to the doctor for her two month check up and her first set of shots.  :(  I'm not looking forward to that, but I am anxious to find out what the doctor has to say about her chunkiness and how much she eats.  The girl is constantly hungry, as her rolls and multi-layered chin prove! 

fountains

On Saturday I told my husband I wanted to spend a little time with Rachel, so he stayed home with Rebecca while Rachel and I went out on the town.  Okay, just to the water fountains, but it sounded better to say it that way.  It was super hot and humid, so it was the perfect weather for it, as evidenced by the tons of other kids there!

Rachel was most taken with the person dressed up like a frog that they had there playing with the kids.  She went up to him over and over again looking for a hug or a high five. 

Unfortunately, he could only see when he would bend over, so he usually didn't know that she was even in front of him!  Seems like a silly design for a costume to me, but she loved him.

She was a bit timid by the water most of the time, and would only get to the edge, then run back to me, but she got a little more brave as the time went on.

Afterward we got ice cream.  It was a wonderful afternoon with my oldest girl.  Hopefully we'll have more times alone together like these.  I feel I'm always putting her off these days, since Rebecca requires so much attention when she's awake.  When Rebecca's sleeping I need to wash bottles or do laundry or make dinner or....it's always something.  I'm trying to be intentional about playing with her some of the times that she asks me to, since she's more important than those chores, but I often feel like I'm telling her, "Not right now, Rachel.  Mommy's busy."  I don't want that to be my mantra.  So I'm glad we had this time together and look forward to more like them.

family

Last week we had some more visitors--my brother and his family.  They came to visit the day we came home from the hospital, but I was in such a daze  that we didn't take any pictures of the visitors who came in and out those first couple of days.  So here are some pictures of Rebecca last week with her Uncle Ted, Aunt Leslie, and cousin Emma (her other cousins, Ethan and Alex, couldn't be troubled with stopping playing with the legos to come look at the baby!  I guess that's a boy for you....).

Yesterday Rachel decided to play with Rebecca...including a tea party!

And here are some pictures of Rebecca, just because.  She's 7 weeks old now.  Holding her head up really well,

smiling (though I can't get it to turn up on camera),

cooing a little, sleeping well at night (she's been going from 10 or 11 pm until 4:15 or 5:15 every night!), and super fussy in the evenings (I guess I'll put up with the fussy evenings if it means I get to sleep at night!).