Dear Vivienne,
It’s your half birthday, sweet baby! I can hardly believe it.
You are so cute I could eat you. Nibble those toes, those fingers, those cheeks, that nose. I just can’t get enough of you these days. I want to bottle up your infancy and keep it for the future, when you’re grown and I want to remember for just a moment how exactly it felt to hold you, kiss you, snuggle you, play with you.
I have no idea how big you are (doctor’s appointment is not until next week!), but you’re growing, that’s for sure. You’ve come a long way in just the last month.
For one, we officially ditched the swaddle. You were starting to roll over in it consistently, and after finding you sleeping on your stomach one too many times, we went cold turkey. I was so nervous about it, but as it turned out, I didn’t give you enough credit. You did great with the transition. You did, however, keep rolling over to your belly a lot in the night—and then you’d get angry when you couldn’t get back! There were several nights when we made multiple trips into your room in the middle of the night to turn you back over. Now, though? You’re usually content to sleep on your belly. And you’ve figured out how to get back onto your back pretty well, too. Good girl.
Speaking of rolling… this past weekend, I watched you roll across the family room to get to a toy you wanted. Our days of putting you down in a spot and coming back to find you in that same spot are undoubtedly over!
You grab EVERYTHING. You want to grab things, hold them, squeeze them, pull them, and otherwise manipulate them. You are fascinated with your toys, but also with everyday objects. If I try to use my phone while holding you, or even drink from a cup—your little hands are all up in my business, trying to grab it away.
You’re also putting a ton of stuff into your mouth. Toys, hands, anything you can find in your vicinity on the floor. You seem to be drooling a ton, so maybe teeth are on the horizon? It’s hard to say. I don’t necessarily feel anything on your gums, and your sister didn’t get a tooth until she was 10 months old, so… maybe not. I’m not in any hurry for teeth, so take your time, my love.
We’ve tried solid food a few times. Our first attempt was with avocado, and you made the funniest faces. You ate about 3-4 spoonfuls of it and then refused to part your lips anymore. Next, we tried bananas, and I was surprised when you gave it the same treatment as the avocado. I thought for sure you’d like fruit! Then, last night, I decided to try some baby oatmeal mixed with breast milk. You seemed like you MIGHT give up on it after 3-4 spoonfuls again, but I kept trying and ultimately you started opening your mouth again. You ate the whole (very small) bowl! I mean, a lot of it still ended up on your bib, but I was impressed. It seemed as though maybe you just needed to get used to it a little bit? We’ll see what happens when we try again.
You belly laugh now. It is too cute for words. You have to be in the right mood for it—usually in the evenings, shortly before bed—and your daddy is best at making you laugh. You think he is SO funny. You blow raspberries A LOT, and still “yell” at us often.
You are a social butterfly. You like smiling at anyone who looks at you. You are particularly taken by your big sister and Tessa (our dog). Nora loves to talk to you and try to make you smile. She also likes to make sure to remind you that she’s bigger/older than you are—something I’m sure you will have to put up with for the rest of your lives. Nora is obsessed with the movie “Frozen” right now, and just so you know—you’re Anna. Since Anna is the little sister and all. (And if you’ve seen it, I probably don’t have to tell you that this means Nora is Elsa.)
We’re still dealing with your reflux, which seems to be OK right now. You’re still on medication—the same dose you’ve been on since mid-November, when I gave up dairy—but we’re going to talk about that with your pediatrician at the appointment next week. My hope is that we will be able to get you off of the meds and then, MAYBE I can start eating some cheese again!
We are having so much fun with you. I love this age. Every age is a joy for its own reasons, but six months is such a sweet spot. Maybe slow down time a little so we can enjoy it for longer, mmkay?
I feel so blessed to have you. And I love you always.
XOXO
Mommy
It’s going to be hard to name these things—I can tell already. Because how do you accurately represent all of the yummy, healthy ingredients in the name of the smoothie without spelling them all out?
Anyway.
We’re still on a smoothie kick over here. With the exception of Tuesday (when I was afraid to eat anything good in fear that I was going to see it again on its way back up), we’ve had smoothies for breakfast every morning this week. I’m loving it.
I whipped up this one yesterday morning, when we decided we could no longer live in fear—we needed vitamins and nutrients, and things with flavor! It’s delightfully fruity, but not too sweet. Instead, the grapefruit juice makes it a little tart. Yum.
Pineapple-Peach-Berry Green Smoothie
Makes 2 large smoothies
Ingredients:
– 1-2 cups grapefruit juice
– 2 cups baby spinach
– 2 servings protein powder (for us, that’s 6 Tbsp)
– 1 cup fresh pineapple
– 1 cup frozen peaches
– 1 cup frozen strawberries
– 1 frozen banana
– 1 tsp. agave syrup (optional)
Directions:
Pour 1 cup of grapefruit juice into the blender. Add spinach and protein powder. Blend well. Add pineapple chunks and frozen peaches and blend again to make sure everything is liquefied. Add strawberries and banana and blend again. Along the way, if the smoothie is not “moving” in the blender—and therefore not circulating the ingredients effectively to blend them—add up to 1 cup additional grapefruit juice. At the end, add agave syrup (if desired) and blend again. Serve.
It seems as though everyone is getting the stomach bug this year. For weeks now, my Facebook feed has been filled with people complaining about the bug.
Because it methodically hit everyone in their families.
Or because they were begging for someone to put them out of their misery.
So I’ve been bracing myself for a while, waiting to see if this thing was going to hit even closer to home. One of my nephews had it a week or two ago, and unfortunately, it lingered for quite a while for him. And my mom also got it from being around him. But we hadn’t seen them in that timeframe, so we were in the clear.
But then, as I took the girls into daycare on Friday morning, Mary told me that on Thursday night, TWO of the other kids who go to her house both came down with the stomach bug. Uh oh. I crossed my fingers that we’d get lucky.
And then we somehow made it through the weekend unscathed. On Monday morning, I dropped my girls off at Mary’s to find NO OTHER KIDS there. Apparently every other child—and many of their parents—had been afflicted with the bug between Friday and Sunday. This made me nervous, but given that no one had been at Mary’s since Friday, and no one else was there on Monday, I thought we may have, somehow, dodged that bullet.
Come the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday, however… I learned I was very wrong. At 1:30 a.m., we heard Nora calling for us and crying over the monitor, and we were pretty sure we knew what was happening. Sure enough, when Michael went in to get her, she had thrown up all over herself and in her bed.
We got her into the bathroom, cleaned her up, got her changed into fresh pajamas, and brought her into our bed with us, armed with the iPad, a puke bucket, and a box of tissues. Nora was too uncomfortable to sleep, so she didn’t. I dosed in and out of consciousness, but was mostly awake the remainder of the night because every 30-40 minutes, Nora was throwing up again. She threw up eight times between 1:30-7 a.m., the poor thing. She kept complaining about being thirsty, so we gave her a few sips of water, but within 30 minutes, she’d throw it right back up again.
And as soon as she was FINALLY exhausted enough to pass out for a while? Vivienne was awake for the day. Of course.
After I fed Vivienne, Michael took her and went to Wegmans to pick up some Pedialyte. Nora and I got about an hour of sleep before she woke up and was tossing and turning again.
She spent the rest of the morning watching movies on the couch. A little before noon, we decided to get her ready for a nap. Michael went upstairs to put fresh sheets on her bed, and I snuggled her on the couch. Within minutes, this was the scene:
As you can imagine, this NEVER happens. Definitely a clear sign she was sick!
When she got up from the nap (only about two hours later, I had expected longer!), she also had a 103-degree fever. FUN TIMES! If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
(This was AFTER the nap. So not normal!)
I dosed her with some ibuprofen because she was clearly miserable. An hour or so later, she perked up and was acting almost completely normal. “Mommy, I feel better!” she was saying. “I’m not sick anymore!”
That lasted like an hour, and then she was collapsed on the floor in the family room, covered with her blanket, telling us she was going to sleep. We asked her if she wanted us to hold her, if she wanted to get up on the couch. All she would say is, “No, thank you. I’m fine.” Within 10 minutes, she was legitimately passed out on the floor. It was about 5:30. The poor kid! I took her temperature while she slept and it was back up to 103.6.
At this point, I was a little worried, so I called the pediatrician. I couldn’t give her more ibuprofen since it had only been about three hours from the last dose. The doctor said to just let.her.sleep, and to give her some acetaminophen and alternate the two if we had to, in order to keep her comfortable. She also told me to load her up with as many fluids as possible before bedtime.
Nora ended up stirring awake shortly after I got off the phone. She wanted nothing to do with medicine or fluids—which was tough, because she had been taking them easily earlier in the day. All she said was, “Mommy, I want to go to bed.” It was 6:30! :(
I carried her upstairs, had her go to the bathroom, and gave her medicine and forced a few sips of Pedialyte. She went to sleep, and other than crying out for us a few times during the night for a drink, she slept through. 13+ hours.
Today, she’s still out of sorts. She still has a fever, though not as high as it was yesterday. She’s still spent the majority of the day on the couch. And she once again ASKED me to go up for a nap… at 10:40 a.m.! So crazy.
(Morning, Day 2)
She napped for three hours, and although she still has a fever, she seems to be in better spirits than this morning. We’ll see what tonight brings. But in any case, this is a NASTY bug! I hope she’s better soon!
In the meantime, we’ve been doing everything we can to ensure no one else in our family gets it. So far, so good, but we’re certainly not in the clear. Vivienne has been her happy self:
Let’s hope it stays that way! And given that we’ve already been out of work for a few days (and I don’t know that Nora will even be ready to go back to daycare tomorrow, either), it will suck if it hits the whole family.
So stay healthy, my friends! Wash hands, wash hands, wash hands!
I’ve always been a cereal girl. I eat cereal all of the time, for any meal—breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. Whatever. I love it, and it’s easy.
But then it turned out Vivienne has a cow’s milk protein intolerance, and I had to give up milk products. And try as I might, I can’t handle the non-dairy milk alternatives. At least not in cereal, and certainly not for drinking. So in effect, I lost the ability to eat cereal, even if the cereals themselves are dairy free. This development was particularly difficult on me for breakfast, because well, I pretty much never ventured into other breakfast foods.
For the past few months, I’ve been surviving by eating gluten-free waffles most days. Vivienne and I don’t have any problems with gluten (that I’m aware of), but it just so happens that the gluten-free waffles are the only dairy free ones, so… there ya go. But the problem with eating a couple of waffles in the morning? I eat them at 7:30 and I’m starving by 9:30. No joke. I’ve gotten by with adding a mid-morning snack to my routine at work.
A few weeks ago, Michael and I were browsing Netflix for something to watch, and we came across the documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.” It’s interesting stuff, and inspiring to see how people turned their lives around by taking up juicing. They obviously made other lifestyle changes, too, but juicing was a huge part of it. Now, I’m not really interested in juice fasts or anything extreme, but watching the documentary made me crave a smoothie. And I started wondering, Why don’t we make smoothies more often? I bet I could add protein to smoothies and they would make great breakfasts. DAIRY-FREE breakfasts.
Last weekend, during the weekly grocery trip, we picked up a ton of extra produce—some fresh, some frozen since so much is out of season right now. Strawberries, blueberries, peaches, raspberries, pineapple, apples, pears, bananas. Baby SPINACH. We also picked up coconut milk, almond milk, and orange juice. And a canister of organic vegan protein powder that’s made from brown rice (it was a little challenging to find a protein powder that is dairy free). With all of these ingredients, there are SO many possibilities.
This past week, we made smoothies for breakfast four out of the seven days. Not bad, huh? And surprisingly… I stayed full longer with the smoothies than I do with the waffles. And it’s so much healthier!
I drink my smoothies while nursing Vivienne in the mornings, and it’s been great. The process of making them in the mornings is a little more work than throwing a couple of waffles into the toaster, but it’s worth it to know that we are getting all of these extra nutrients at the start of our day. Nora has been having samples of all of them, too. She usually has a lot of fruit with breakfast anyway, but this is getting a little spinach and extra protein into her, too. :)
We picked up a few more ingredients on our grocery trip this morning so that we can vary things even more—grapefruit juice, some creamy natural peanut butter (we usually only have crunchy on hand), some agave syrup to use with the smoothies that could use just a teeny bit of sweetening. I’m interested in trying a different kind of protein powder, too, but I’m still looking into that some more. The one we’re using now is pretty affordable and available at our grocery store… others are more expensive and have to be ordered through Amazon. We shall see.
I’m going to try to remember to snap pics of our smoothies in the mornings and share our favorite recipes as we continue to discover them. We finally picked up cups/mugs with smoothie straws today, so now our smoothies can be taken on the go, too. We’re legit now. :)
It seems sort of backwards to start on a smoothie kick in the middle of the dead of winter, but it’s been good! Even if our wallets have been taking a bigger hit than usual.
Cheers!
I’ve been struggling lately with balance.
I feel like I am juggling a bunch of different jobs, and not really doing any one of them particularly well. If I was in a position where I could focus solely on any one of them, I could do better. I could be better. Right?
It’s hard to be a full-time working mom. I know, without a doubt, that it’s also tremendously hard to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, too. In fact, staying home full time sounds so hard that it’s not something I’ve ever even wanted to do. Flame away. Seriously, though, I give stay-at-home moms major, major props. Kudos to all of you. I’m jealous at times, of course, but I also know my limitations and don’t think that I, personally, am cut out for it.
But the full-time working mom thing? Sometimes, I feel crippled by it.
Nora is going through a stage. She says she’s scared by a lot of things, even though she doesn’t seem to have a complete grasp on what it means to be scared.
“I’m scared to go to bed,” she says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because,” she answers. “I don’t like bed.”
No real reason to be scared of going to bed. No tales of monsters under her bed or bad dreams in her head. But she insists she wants someone to sleep with her. She tells me irrational things like, “I want Vivienne to talk! It’s too long to wait for her to grow up!” She asks for drinks of water. She cries within minutes of us leaving the room, not settling down for the night until we go in and tuck her in for a second time.
At the end of the day, it’s all just a stalling tactic, right?
This past week, she’s been pulling the same type of thing at daycare drop-off. But in this case, she’s playing into my existing mom guilt, and I’m like putty in her hands.
It’s hard to leave your kids at daycare. (Sometimes. Sometimes, on mornings when irrational tantrums abound, when the whining is incessant, when being a good listener is JUST.NOT.HAPPENING? Goodbye, my darling, and I will see you at 5:00!) I feel guilty about working, even if I know that they are growing and thriving when they’re away from me. Even when I know how much fun Nora has with her friends there, and how much she idolizes the older girls. I know I’m not scarring them for life by being a working mom. But it’s still hard.
So when Nora cries huge tears and looks at me with sadness in her eyes and says, “Mommy, I don’t want you to go to work” in the sweetest, most pathetic voice ever? That shakes me to my core. And when I try to reassure her that I love her and I’ll be back for her soon, and attempt to back quietly out the door… she comes running, crying, pleading, “One more kiss, Mommy! I want lots of kisses! Please, Mommy, give me another kiss!” It’s crushing. It’s more than I can bear.
And I give her more kisses. I give her a hundred kisses. Because I have to.
Yesterday, it was the fourth or fifth day of this new “routine,” and I found myself driving to work after another horrible drop-off, beating myself up over it.
Why am I doing this?
Why is this so hard?
What can I do to change this?
Is it possible to go part time? No, it’s not really possible.
Should I just quit my job and stay home? Don’t be stupid. That’s not even what you want.
But it’s true that I miss them. I miss them when I’m away from them. Nora is one story, but Vivienne is another. With Vivienne, even when we are together, the quality time isn’t as easy to achieve. While Nora will talk my ear off and make me laugh while we’re getting ready, during the rides to and from daycare, during dinner, etc., quality time with Vivienne requires cuddling. Pausing to lie on the floor with her. To play peek-a-boo. To nuzzle my nose into her neck. And after work? Vivienne is cranky and generally begging to go to bed by about 6:30—a mere hour (or less) after we get home. And if she is my last baby—as I suspect she is—I just want to eat her up. I just want to savor every moment I can. And I do. But there are still a lot of “moments” happening while I’m at work.
Have I mentioned it’s hard?
I don’t even have any real answers. There’s no magic equation that would make everything better. I think that, to some extent, we all suffer from mom guilt. And for me, the full-time job thing is my Achilles heel. I already feel badly about it, so when we go through stages like this with Nora? Those feelings are multiplied.
I know that it’s about balance. Lately, I feel like I’ve been knocked off the beam.
I just have to get back on.
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
