Remember Ian in the NICU? Tiny Ian inside an isolette with leads attached to monitoring points, an IV in his arm, and a tube down his throat? Yeah, dude got over it. At his 9-month appointment last week, premie Ian weighed 22 pounds (85th percentile) and was 29 inches long (80th percentile). Yikes.

Ian – 8 months old

Given his size (and mine), breastfeeding him at this point is a pretty hilarious affair. I lay the top half of the baby more or less in my lap and the legs just dangle off to one side or the other, kicking and squirming away. Also he’s so much more alert now. If I try to feed him while we’re out, he has to stop often to look around, grin at me or random strangers, maybe yammer a baby word or two. I support and encourage public breastfeeding, and I do it routinely. However, I’m more than a little shy and self-conscious and prefer to limit the amount of time my nipple is exposed. Ian, naturally, is indifferent to my plight.

Ian – 8 months, Maya 2 3/4 years

We discovered that if you buy summer clothes at the end of summer, they can be had for a song. I had found the hat and linen shirt for Ian a while back but just couldn’t justify the cash outlay. In August, it turns out, everyone thinks summer is over (not in Texas, of course – I bet we still get a couple more weeks of summer even this late), so I was able to not only acquire the cute outfit, but get two different sized hats so I’d be sure to have one that fit him.

Maya with sticks, of course

I probably sound like a broken record, but any photos that were captured are a testament to Sean’s patience. Maya continues to shun the camera, and Ian’s moods shift with the breeze, so getting children that are both happy and in focus is something of a chore. Here they are in all their fedora-ed glory.

We’ve looked forward to feeding Ian as much as we had to feeding Maya two years ago, though this time there are fewer photos. Around four months old, we started. He had already been sitting at the table with us for a while and watched us intently as we ate. We were told we could wait till six months, but like Maya before him, Ian seemed interested enough that we started earlier.

Eating is FUN!

Again, I am making his food. My approach to his purees is not complex. I make a big batch of some pureed fruit or vegetable, and then freeze it in one-ounce servings. I store these one-ounce chunks in labeled zip-top bags and load up our freezer with them. I pull out whatever chunks I want for a given meal and microwave them. If they’re runnier than I want, I thicken them a bit with store-bought (iron-fortified) oatmeal cereal.

I tried giving him plain oatmeal cereal in breast milk exactly once before feeding him pureed apples. The cereal was a non-starter. The apples he loved. Ian is thus far not a big fan of green vegetables. He’s happy to eat sweet potatoes and butternut squash, but he’s ambivalent about green beans and zucchini and downright disgusted by peas.
One of Maya’s favorite things is to help get Ian’s meals together. She chooses whatever bowl he’s going to use and often selects which foods he will eat. Then she pulls the frozen servings out of the zip top bags and loads them into the bowl. I lift her up so she can push the buttons on the microwave to thaw the food. While it’s running, she fetches me the oatmeal cereal in case anything needs thickening. Once I get the heated food from the microwave and thicken as needed, she puts the oatmeal cereal back in the cabinet and takes the food in to Ian. She would really *like* to feed him. The compromise we’ve settled on is to let her feed him one bite with our help. Then she climbs into her chair and has her own dinner. So far, this arrangement is making everyone happy. This includes Ian; he is really fascinated by his big sister.

Thanks to the demands of two children, Ian’s food offerings have rolled out a little more slowly than Maya’s. Right now, in the freezer, we have apples, strawberries, peaches, blueberries, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, peas, zucchini, butternut squash, and green beans. I have some corn to puree for him. We tried him on some canned refried beans and he was unimpressed. Today I cooked him some lentils and mixed them with butternut squash and apricots to sweeten them (they were a hit).
Since Maya was a baby, the new advice is to introduce babies to allergens more quickly. We can already knock berries off the list. We’re about to take care of corn as well. On my to-do list for the next few months is wheat, citrus, dairy, egg, peanut, and fish.

We’ve tried to give Ian a few finger foods to mess with, but he doesn’t really care too much. He’s pretty happy to gum celery sticks. We bought some little rice cracker things that are designed to give them some practice eating something that doesn’t really demand any chewing of them. He’s happy to gnaw on it till a piece of it breaks off in his mouth. Then he makes faces and gags.
From some of the past photos we’ve posted, you can see that Ian has plumped up. Our six-weeks premature baby who weighed 5 lb 7 oz at birth weighed a whopping 19 lb at his six-month well check. The resources we’ve read warn not to progress to solids too quickly because babies should be getting most of their calories from breast milk or formula. In Ian’s case, I think we have some wiggle room on that.

Like most 2.5 year olds, Maya has developed an ornery streak. She’s defiant and stubborn and likes pointing it out when we deviate even one iota from what she knows to be the one correct way. She often doesn’t listen well and can try the patience of even the calmest person (which I’m not).

Maya – ~2.5 years old

Except often she does listen well. One day, she’ll just randomly pick up her toys when asked. Or before she wants a new toy, she’ll put the old one away without being asked. It’s amazing. Also, she balances her defiance with sweetness (and there’s part of me admires her defiance even as it’s driving me crazy). She’s so smart and has a silly sense of humor. I think having a little brother in the house is already paying dividends for her. At least with other babies, she’s very nice about bringing them toys and playing with them.

Maya – ~2.5 years old

Maya is really blossoming at her music class. She’s definitely a shy kid. If the crowd is too big, she folds in on herself. Her eyes sort of glaze over and while she allows you to shuffle her from one activity to the next, she shows very little self-motivation. In her music class lately, she’s been playing the instruments by herself, following along with some of the movements and gestures that accompany the songs, and has been more assertive about what she wants to do.

At home, the change is even more profound. She has a box of musical instruments – little drums and shakers and xylophones and whistles – that she’s becoming more proficient at using. But beyond that, for the past couple weeks she’s been singing most of her songs. We no longer get to sing to her at bedtime. Now we sit there and urge her along while she sings the songs.

One of the parents in the music class had really cute pants on her kid. We found out where they got them and in looking around that particular Etsy shop, we found some of the cutest kimono dresses. Maya has two of them now: the one in these photos and a red one with skulls on it that will show up in this year’s mother’s day photos once we get around to posting them.

Maya is still on her anti-photo streak. She doesn’t stand still for Sean at all anymore and even actively runs away from him when he has a camera in hand. It’s too bad really; she’s a lovely little subject to photograph.

I think the adjustment from one kid to two kids has been easier on us than the adjustment from zero to one. That said, because there are two, it’s clear that Ian is not getting quite the same degree of single-minded attention that Maya received. This is all too evident in the amount and types of photos we take of him. Maya had special outfits, nicely lit photo shoots, and a variety of ideas and themes. Poor Ian has, “Shit, he’s a week past five months old; we should really take five-month photos.”

Ian – 5 months old

At any rate, we’ve been attempting to at least get a few quick photos once a month so we can (theoretically) see how he develops throughout his first year. Below are some photos of Ian at 2, 4, and 5 months (we figured 3 months was covered by the bluebonnet photos).

In case it isn’t clear from these, Ian has filled out nicely. He goes to the doctor in a couple weeks for his 6-month appointment, and we’re very curious to see what his weight is.

Ian – 4 months old

Ian is generally a happy little guy. He can putter around on the floor and play on his activity mat for sometimes an hour at a time with very little interaction from us. If he’s feeling attention-starved though, he makes it known. His yelling is immense enough to fill the house with baby noise. He can easily out-holler Maya, no question. The kid is loud. A friend of ours kindly commented on his bright, clear voice, but we knew what she meant :-)

Ian – 2 months old

Like his sister as a baby, Ian is kind of lazy. He’s rolled over from his back to his belly a few times, but most of the time he seems to decide he’s just content wherever he is. Even now, he’s really not crazy about being on his stomach. The innocuously named “tummy time” is still not something he really enjoys. I’m all for letting him do what he wants for now, but the time may soon come for us to push him a little more. For that, we might need ear plugs.

Easter was early this year (and nearly two months ago at this point), but we still got it together enough to celebrate a bit with Maya. This year we even tried something new: dyeing hard boiled eggs.

Daddy showing Maya how it’s done.

We didn’t try anything fancy this year, just straight Paas dye on white boiled eggs. Maya seemed interested in the process of dyeing the eggs. She liked dropping the tablets in the cups and liked the different colored eggs that came out. She doesn’t always understand about doing things gently yet and cracked a few shells tossing the eggs in the dye cups instead of slowly lowering them. With Daddy’s help though, things went more smoothly.

Maya – ~28 months old

I may have made a tactical error. Because I didn’t want to waste the boiled eggs, I insisted on keeping them refrigerated. I should probably have allowed them to come to room temperature before taking them outside and hiding them though. The day was hot and the condensation that developed on the cold eggs helped transfer the dye to Maya’s basket, her dress, and her hands.

Hunting eggs

That very cute dress she’s wearing came from Lolli and Pop a while ago, and it only recently started to fit well. It took some pretty intense negotiating to get her to wear the dress on this particular day. Now that there are no easter photos on the line, she wants to wear her “beeg dwess” all the time.

Hunting eggs

Ian was too little to participate (he napped through the easter egg hunt), and once we got everything finished up, we didn’t really have the gumption to dress him up and take his photo. Second kid is getting the shaft already, poor guy.

What?

Maya, we discovered, can take down a Cadbury egg on her own and in very little time. As an easter treat, we let her have a whole one all to herself. She had it unwrapped and half eaten before we really knew what had happened.

Wow, it’s been a while since we’ve posted. It turns out that life with two kids is busier than with just one. Also, we had an illness sweep through the house leaving us all congested and miserable for several weeks. And then we had some sort of stomach virus sneak in and render half of us weak and barfy.

Maya in the bluebonnets – 28 months old

At any rate, a while back we managed to get both kids dressed up and out to a bluebonnet patch for the annual photos. Maya is still resistant to having her photo taken, and she’s downright appalled by the notion of holding her brother up while we take pictures of both of them, so regardless of how mind-blowingly adorable it would be to have them looking like they like each other for a photo, we’ll all have to settle for mild and fleeting tolerance instead.

I swear they actually like each other

It was a lightly windy day when we took these photos, and let me just tell you, Ian is not impressed with the wind. A breeze blows through and he waggles and gasps like it’s taking his breath away. Suffice it to say, we only managed to get a few photos of the boy where he’s not flailing or looking angry.

Ian in the bluebonnets – 3 1/2 months old

These photos were taken at the end of last month. Ian would have been around 3-3.5 months old. In real time, he’s about four and a half months old. At his last well check, he was in the 50th percentile for weight and the 25th percentile for height and hitting all his developmental milestones. His doctor commented that we were going to have a hard time convincing anyone that he had been born six weeks early. He’s still not sleeping through the night, though we have transitioned him to his own room. It’s probably a good idea, though we won’t be totally sold till we’re no longer trudging across the house to take care of him a couple times a night.

Maya’s doing really well. For a girl who probably didn’t say but maybe eight or ten words at her second birthday, you’d never know it. Her vocabulary is growing at an insane rate and her pronunciation is getting better all the time. Pronouns are still a little tricky (That’s bothering Maya. Maya running away! Maya **needs** a cookie.), but plurals and past tense are used correctly.

Maya hamming it up

Her mis-pronunciations are fantastic, and I’m really sad that they’re rapidly disappearing. Here are a few of our favorites:
oddenon = elephant
jawopp = giraffe
oddodaddo = caterpillar (she still says this one, but it too is fading fast)
hangenbangen = hamburger
stwawbee = strawberry
yeddo = yellow

Most of her Rs and Ls still come out as Ws. She misses the Ses at the beginning of words a lot of the time leading to some great phrasing. Recently she had a “cab on her cwape” (a scab on her scrape). She had been asking if she could have drinks of “Daddy’s hoda” but even that comes out sounding more like “Daddy’s soda” now.

Her hair is great in these photos, right? Totally not my doing. Inept mom confession number 46: I can’t do little girl hair. I can get a serviceable pony-tail in there and with a few barrettes to catch the stray hair, but that’s about it. We actually stopped by nanny Anna’s place and got her to put Maya’s hair up before we went out for photos. Thanks Anna!!

We’re getting ready to take our first long car trip with both the kids (driving to Dallas). That should be interesting. Maya’s pretty good at entertaining herself, and at least right now, the car generally puts Ian to sleep, so maybe it won’t be too bad. I bet our hotel neighbors are going to **love** us and our screaming baby at 3am.

We have a ton of photos we’d still like to post that are older than these. We have several sets from when I was still pregnant with Ian that would be fun to post. Hopefully, we’ll be able to work those in over the coming months.

Shortly before Maya’s second birthday, Sean took some photos of her in this wacky little giraffe-themed outfit that Lolli and Pop had given her. We needed a cute recent photo for her birthday party invitations. We’ve had several requests to post these online, and so, here they are. (Also, when Maya says “giraffe” it sounds like “jahwopp.”)

Maya – almost two years old

In real time, we’re settling in to our life as a family of four. Since we have an infant in the house, sleep is an often-discussed topic: how much we aren’t getting, how to get more of it, etc. Maya, as it happens, is also working through some sleep issues.

Maya belly!

Parents of toddlers will likely be nodding along as they read some of this. Maya often gets out of bed at night, takes all her stuff out of bed – pillow, blankets, stuffed animals – and sleeps on the floor by the door to her room. For Christmas, we gave her a clock that is yellow when she should stay in bed and turns green in the morning when she can get out of bed. For about a week, it worked! She’d stay in bed all night. Then it apparently occurred to her that the clock had no power over her, and she could get out of bed whenever she damn well pleased.

Who knows *what* she’s pointing at

Our pattern has been to ignore her till she falls asleep (because going into her room would only reinforce the behavior) and then one of us, usually Sean, sneaks in there and loads her back into bed where she then stays till morning. During nap time, we don’t bother at all. The house is warmer during the day and a 60-90 minute snooze on the hard floor isn’t quite as rough as an all night sleep.

Love those pigtails

More and more lately, nap time starts with a certain amount of Maya playing. Sometimes the entire time is filled with Maya playing. We could go in there and tell her to get back into bed, but it does very little good. We figure that even if she doesn’t sleep at all, she has some down time by herself while she plays with her books. All the furniture is anchored to the walls, so it’s a fairly safe place for her to be unsupervised.

Imagine my surprise when one day I heard a small crash. I was feeding Ian at the time, and there was no crying and plenty of shuffling noise after the fact, so I figured there were no injuries. By the time I went to check on her, she was asleep in front of the door, so it wasn’t till I woke her from her nap later that I saw what she had done.

I guess it could be worse

Every drawer she could reach had been emptied and the bottom drawer had then been used in an attempt to climb to the drawer she couldn’t reach. When I opened the door and saw the destruction, it took every ounce of my control to not laugh. I might have failed a bit, but I’m hoping Maya didn’t notice.

The dresser is a mid-grade Ikea model (mid-grade for Ikea, mind you), and of course, the drawer broke. The wood on the side panel is broken and the rail the drawer slides on is badly bend. We currently have that bottom drawer sitting in a different room while we figure out what to replace the drawers with.

I made Maya help me put the clothes away and we talked about how climbing the drawers breaks them. She hasn’t climbed again, but of course, she’s hasn’t had that bottom drawer to use, so that could be why. Do we replace it with the same cheap furniture, knowing it could get broken again? Or do we try to find something sturdier? Sturdier could still get broken. Plus, sturdier could allow her to scale the lofty peak of Mount Dresser, and that seems like a terrible idea.

If anyone has suggestions they’d like to offer, we’re happy to hear them. In the mean time, I think I’ll start keeping notes on whether Ian or Maya is ahead in the property damage race.

Today is Ian’s due date. Of course, my body doesn’t seem to like to hang on to babies for a full term, so he’s actually six weeks old today. Since he had time in the NICU, he’s only been home for two weeks, but they’ve been a good two weeks. Sure no one is sleeping especially well, and I can’t seem to remember *anything* for very long, but we’re all together now and figuring out how we’ll function as a family of four.

Ian – one day shy of 5 weeks old

Maya is a great big sister. When Ian cries, she makes sure he has a pacifier, and if she can’t get to him, she tells us about it till one of us gives it to him. She also shares Oddipuddy with him. Hopefully by now I don’t have to explain what a big deal this is (but I will, just in case). Oddipuddy is Maya’s stuffed octopus. That octopus has been Maya’s comfort object since she was maybe eight or nine months old. He still sleeps with her and rides in the car with her and is sought out any time she is distressed. And she shares him with Ian.

Oddipuddy kissing Ian

It remains to be seen how Maya handles it once 1 – Anna is more fully taking care of both kids and 2 – once Ian is more mobile and more interested in her toys and books. As it stands now though, Maya is handling things really well.

Maya kissing Ian

I don’t know how much I’ve gone into this before, but Maya and I didn’t cooperate well breast feeding. There were blisters and bleeding and a resistant baby. By the time she was six weeks old, since the current situation wasn’t making anyone happy, I made the decision to exclusively pump. She did really well on her diet of bottle-fed breast milk, and I powered through pumping for her entire first year (which is not fun).

Ian – One day shy of 5 weeks old

Ian and I, on the other hand, cooperate very well, and holy wow is it easier! He wants to eat at 2am, and no one has to placate him while one of us goes and gets a bottle heated and ready to go. Bonus: we don’t have to clean a bottle once we’re through. It’s fantastic. While I’m unbelievably happy it’s working out this time, it does underscore what I missed out on the first time around. Also, even though I’m a second-time mom, I’m still a newb when it comes to things like working a nursing bra with one hand and breast feeding in public without drawing too much attention to myself.

Ian’s take home outfit

The second kid is both easier and more difficult. We kind of know what to expect and what to worry about (or more importantly, not worry about). We also know that eventually, everyone will be sleeping and reasonably content. On the other hand, Ian is clearly getting less attention than Maya did. Also, just when Maya is hitting her stride on exerting her independence, it’s harder for her exhausted parents to handle discipline requirements consistently and with grace. It’s disheartening to feel like you’re kind of failing both kids to a certain degree.

Squishy face

Aunt Darci and cousin AP visited for a couple days last week and Darci took some photos. As usual, they are very cute. Ian’s take-home outfit was a little bow tie and cardigan affair. It would have swallowed him whole when he was first born, but he bulked up quite a bit in the weeks before these photos were taken. By now, it’s nearly too small.

After four long weeks in the NICU, Ian is finally home!

Ian, 4 weeks old

He was born on December 18th at 6:24 in the morning. He weighed 5 pounds 7 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. I was induced when he was 34 weeks gestational age because my water had broken a few days prior.

Ian, a few hours old.

Ian’s NICU stay was of the “feeder-grower” variety. He never needed any breathing assistance. His weight started out good and he consistently gained well while he was there. Where we ran into trouble was his “breath-suck-swallow” coordination. He wasn’t quite neurologically mature enough to manage eating without choking himself, and so he had an NG tube for a period of time. Even when taking a bottle, he had to be carefully paced. Interestingly, even from the very beginning, he did a good job breast feeding. The only issue there seemed to be stamina; he’d get tired before he got full.

Ian, 1 day old

The NICU was a hard place to be. There was a baby there who was so premature, he didn’t even weigh two pounds at birth. Another baby had to be on methadone. Still other babies had to be weaned from the various pain killers they had been given to deal with surgeries and whatnot. In relative terms, we really had no room to complain. And yet I think I speak for both of us when I say there is a sense of loss. While we were at that NICU multiple times a day every day he was there, we still feel like we’ve missed out on nearly a month of Ian’s life. Strangers took care of our baby. We had to pass a gatekeeper to visit him. There were hours each day when we weren’t allowed access at all.

Ian, 1 day old

Maya was able to visit Ian once a week, and only for 15 minutes. She thought the three-minute scrub-in was lots of fun. The first time she saw Ian, she very gently touched his hair and gave him a kiss, but I don’t think her new status as a big sister really sunk in. When we got home, she pointed at my pudgy postpartum belly and said, “baby?” Hopefully now that he’s home, she will start to understand that her brother is here.

Ian, 1 week old

It didn’t occur to us to time Maya’s visits such that she’d be able to see Ian on Christmas day, so our family holiday photo actually occurred on the 28th.

Family Xmas, 2014

At any rate, Ian is home now, and we couldn’t be happier. Our little family of four is finally all together under one roof. The jury’s out on whether Maya is okay with this arrangement.

For the week or two prior to Maya’s birthday, we’d been trying to teach her that she could show us that she was going to be two years old by holding up a finger on each hand. She’d grin, duck her head all bashful-like, and juuuust sneak her two fingers up for us to see. We tried to catch a photo of it for her birthday party invitations, but she just wouldn’t hold a pose for long enough.

See, I’m two.

Fast forward to her well check yesterday where she adamantly held those two fingers up to the nurse and the doctor both as if to proclaim that she was two now and would not be putting up with any of this doctor business any more. After many tears and much stubbornness, we were all really glad when the well check was completed and we could go home.

Maya’s party was this past weekend. Her grandparents all made the long journey to see her, and her Aunt Darci and cousin AP came by as well. Nanny Anna and a few of our friends rounded out the guest list. We again had barbecue – this time from La Barbecue. Barbecue seems to be a crowd favorite and leftovers are really easy to use. All the meats (brisket, sausage, and pulled pork) were incredible, and the bacon potato salad and pinto beans were solid. The jalapeño coleslaw was very good, but the heat overpowered the otherwise complex flavor of the slaw, which was a little disappointing.

Two years old!

I made a giant cookie for Maya’s birthday cake. Sean pointed out that he often had giant cookies for his birthday cakes and really liked them, so I went with it. On a whim one afternoon, I asked her if she wanted a cookie for her birthday. She shook her head no. Startled at her declining any form of dessert, I paused momentarily to regroup before asking her if she’d like chocolate cake. She grinned and shook her head yes. We settled on having a great big cookie with mini cupcakes arranged on top to make the number 2. I even took a crack at decorating it. I’m thinking I really need to decorate more than one cake a year for my skill to improve at all.

We were hopeful that Maya would be a little more into opening presents this year, and she was … for a little while. Parents who’ve already gone through the small child phase probably know what’s coming. She would diligently tear off the wrapping paper piece by piece, slowly uncovering her toy. The slightly older and more practiced kids in the room would be fairly vibrating at this point, itching for her to hurry and open another. But no, Maya wanted to take the neat new toy she had just opened and play with it. Or take the new book she had just opened and read it. Or wander off to play with some other toys. We actually opened most of her gifts from us the next day because she had just worn out on the enterprise.

Possibly her favorite gift.

All in all, we had a really nice weekend. Thanks to everyone’s generosity, Maya received some great gifts that she’s had all kinds of fun playing with. She was able to spend a bit of quality time with her grandparents. Plus, we spent all weekend eating barbecue and dessert. So far, I think she’s found that being two is pretty okay.