Two Months Later...

It's been nearly two months since I posted.  Sorry for those of you who have been waiting for an update.  Life with two little girls fifteen months apart is quite a challenge and blogging has taken a back burner.  But seeing as how I'm currently laid up sick in bed with the stomach flu (which has been coming and going from our house for about a month now) and Kit has taken the girls to run some errands (to get out of the house since he's been playing mom since last night and was needing some fresh air), I figured now is as good of a time as any to do a quick update.

Elise

Elise is fully a little girl now and no longer a baby.  She's a chatter box and also loves to sing, especially in the dark in her room in the middle of the night.  She's still a little under 23 pounds but is growing taller and taller every day.  And she eats a ton, including spicy foods and anything with "sauce" (ketchup, yogurt, BBQ, soup - she's not picky if there's "sauce" involved) so it's actually surprising she doesn't weigh more.

She enjoys reading books and every time she wakes up from sleeping she immediately gets out of bed, grabs books from her shelf and then gets back in bed to read to herself.  It's pretty adorable.  Her attention span when we read to her is getting longer, but she's definitely a mover so she often gets up and moves around while listening to us read.  Lately she's been doing that cute little run that toddlers do, and we love to giggle as she wiggles her little shoulders and shakes her little hips when she runs.

She's becoming more of a little helper with Evie and around the house.  Earlier this week, she opened the laundry room door, opened the washing machine, loaded it (as much as she could since our dirty laundry basket is deep - I helped her with the rest), closed the washing machine door, played with the buttons while I added the soap and then carried the laundry basket back to our room while I started the wash.  Then I heard her crying from our room and found her stuck behind the laundry basket in the corner where we keep it because she had backed herself in.  I find it so precious that she was big enough to do all of the other grown up tasks but then got stuck and didn't know how to get out.

Evelyn

Evelyn is almost crawling.  She gets up on her hands and knees and then propels herself forward to get to wherever she wants to go.  She's a pro at going from sitting (which she is almost proficient at but still flops backward on occasion) to a crawling position and also at wiggling and scooting around to reach whatever she's trying to reach.  She's a big squealer and loves to blow raspberries but without the bubbles.  She hasn't been super into making word-like sounds until today when she pulled out "da" and "ba" a bunch when I got up for a little while and was holding her.  The football game was on so we took it as her first words and interpreted them as "DA BEARS"!!!!  She's clearly her daddy's little girl.  :)  Speaking of Da Bears, she loves watching football with Kit on his laptop as well as pretty much any other form of television or movies.  At this age, Elise could have cared less about shows and actually got overwhelmed by them within minutes but Evie gets fixated.

We started Evie on solids at around 6 months (she's 7 months now) but have just really started giving her consistent meals, mainly so that she's distracted so that I can eat.  We mix up pureed veggies with rice cereal to make it of a consistency that she can grasp and she has a blast eating.  As I mentioned, I was having her feed herself simply so that I could eat; however, I heard recently that babies actually eat more when they feed themselves than when they are spoon-fed so apparently it's good for her as well.  I have noticed that she eats more per solid meal than Elise did at this age.

Oh, and treat of all treats, Evie's still nursing!!  I can't even begin to explain how amazing it is to be able to nurse her and to have that extra special bond.  Although I pumped for Elise and almost exclusively bottle-fed her myself, there's something extra special about actually nursing.  For the first three months or so of nursing, I knew that I enjoyed it but didn't understand the statements I heard so frequently from moms about how they missed feedings when they dropped and how much they missed nursing in general.  Now I get it.  It's wonderful.  I feel so blessed to have experienced both sides, the not being able to nurse and then being able to nurse.

[Edited to add: Evie weighed in at 13 pounds, 13 ounces at her latest pediatrician appointment (for her second flu shot at 7 months).  My mom says Evie's figure she reminds her of me when I was this age.]

The End
For now.  Depending on how much longer I'm laid up in bed, I may actually get to posting some pictures.  No promises though.