Road Trip

Well, we survived our first major road trip with 2 kids. We drove the 13 hours to Dallas to visit my family. It went about as well as can be expected with a potty-training toddler and a baby who doesn't really sleep in the car. I think Piper slept only 30 minutes the entire 6 hour drive the first day.

But really, it wasn't so bad. The weather was beautiful the entire way down. We drove right through Moore, Oklahoma, thankfully beating the tornado by about 12 hours. (We also drove through Moore on the way home and witnessed some of the destruction. Check out the sandwiched billboard below.)

Libby colored, played with her leap pad, and requested over and over to "play a puzzle on Mommy's Nexus." Piper chewed on a pen, ate Puffs, and sucked on an apple. Jared and I took turns sitting in the backseat entertaining the kids (it was actually more comfortable back there anyway) and driving.

Favorite picture from the drive, somewhere on the side of the road in Kansas:

Piper - 7 months

Is this not one of the most gorgeous babies you have ever seen? I just love her adorable face.

Piper can sit up for short periods of time, but honestly, she is nearly always in my arms or on my back (riding in the Boba) so she hasn't had much practice. When she is on the floor, she immediately rolls around and is able to scoot a little bit.

We quit swaddling her to sleep - cold turkey. She rolled over onto her face one night (while her arms were still tucked inside), so I decided for her own safety, she had to give it up. And now she's actually sleeping better, so that's a win. She still wakes up once or twice at night to nurse. Most days, I can put her down to sleep while she's still awake and she falls asleep in her crib after just a few minutes of fussing. She still ends up in our bed most nights, but I'm trying to limit that now, because she did roll off the bed once. (Fortunately, our room was a mess and she landed on a pile of laundry, so no harm done.)

She likes sweet potatoes and mashed bananas. And Puffs. Oh boy, does she enjoy Puffs. We said hello and goodbye to rice cereal and oatmeal. Those don't interest her.

She squawks and squeals quite a bit, but she is a very happy baby. We are so lucky to have her.

Changes

I only have a few minutes to write, so I'll recap the past month with just a few pictures.

1. I cut 11 inches off my hair. When I look at these pictures, I miss my long hair. But in real, every day life, I am glad to be rid of it. I put it in a pony tail or braid every day, so what was the point? Plus, it's nice to have phrases to say to my children other than "stop pulling my hair!"

 2. Libby got a balance bike and it's already becoming one of our best purchases of all time. FYI, the others are her swing that we hung in our tree in Illinois (we don't have a tree with a good horizontal branch at our house in Iowa) and her baby stroller (which was a gift from her aunt Rachel).

I ordered the bike from Amazon, so I told Libby on the scheduled arrival date to be on the lookout for a big truck that would be bringing her bike. There was squealing involved when it finally came. She "helped" Jared put it together and when she got on, the first thing she said was "where mine pedals?" I explained that this bike does not come with pedals - you just use your feet. Her response? "When the truck bring me pedals, then I can ride mine bike."

3. Libby woke up one day, took off her clothes and diaper and announced that she did not want to put a diaper back on. I said, "ok, how about underwear?' And thus began potty training.

Piper - 6 months

Today is Piper's half birthday. We celebrated with a checkup and shots.

I thought Piper had been feeling particularly heavy lately, especially when she falls asleep in the car and I have to lug in her carseat. Turns out she weighs 17 pounds, which happens to be what Libby weighed at ONE YEAR. [Truth be told, Libby actually reached 17 pounds at 9 months, gained a pound by 10 months, and then lost it when she started walking.]

Piper is rolling over in both directions, scooting infinitesimally small distances, grabbing absolutely everything, eating paper, sitting with just a little help, interacting and imitating, blowing spit bubbles, and other cute baby things.

Sleep is still all over the place, but it's not troublesome to me at the moment, so I'm not stressing about it. She generally goes to bed for the night about 9 and wakes up at 6:30, with several wakings each night to nurse. She starts in her crib most nights, but always ends up in our bed, which I rather like, actually. She takes 2 naps a day (that third nap flew out the window at about 4 months if I remember right), for varying durations (1-3 hours).

She had her first taste of rice cereal last week and seemed to like it, though most of it spilled back out. She's also had a couple bites of avocado and she spent some time sucking on a carrot the other day. But for the most part, we are not feeding her solids yet. She is obviously bulking up just fine without them.

Stats
Birth: 7 lbs 12 oz, 20 inches long
2 Weeks: 8 lbs 5 oz, 21 inches long
2  Months: 11 lbs 5 oz, 24 inches long

4 Months: 14 lbs 6.5 oz, 26 inches long
6 Months: 17 lbs, 27 inches long

Easter

 

The week before Easter, we kept meaning to find a place to take Libby for an Easter egg hunt. Luckily, we happened to drive by a church near our neighborhood that was advertising one for the community the day before Easter. 

The only problem was that it was scheduled for 10 AM, the same time Jared had committed to helping with a move for a member of our church. The move was just down the street from the church that was hosting the hunt, so he figured he would go to the Easter egg hunt (which couldn't last more than a few minutes) and then head over to help with the move. But when we got to the church, everyone was having muffins and drinks and we saw that the minister was going to be speaking for 20 minutes before the easter egg hunt. So Jared decided to go down the road and help with the move. By this time, it was already 10:15, and when he got to the move, they were miraculously finished. (Apparently 12 men showed up to help and it was just a single guy in an apartment.) So he rushed back to the church. But unbeknownst to Jared, the computer the minister was going to use for the presentation wasn't working, so he skipped it and started the easter egg hunt early. We were already finished when Jared got back. So poor Jared missed both things (though he probably wasn't too sad about not being able to move boxes).

 The picture of Piper was taken right after the church easter egg hunt. I had been carrying her on my back (in a baby carrier) and when I took her off and set her down on the seat (preparing to put her in the carseat), she fell asleep instantly. I had to snap a picture.

Baby Hair and Dreadlocks

When I was pregnant with Libby, I was sure I was going to give birth to a bald baby. Jared and I were both bright blondes as kids and I hardly had hair until I was 2. I had always imagined my babies as hairless. Eventually, all this imagining of baldness turned into a preference for baldness and then a repulsion of anything other than baldness. At one point during my pregnancy, I even told Jared "I don't care what our baby looks like; I just hope it doesn't have hair."

Well imagine my surprise when I was pushing Libby out and the doctor said, "I see a head full of dark hair." Instead of thinking "awesome! the head is almost out!" I remember thinking, "oh no. hair."

When the shock wore off, I realized that I actually loved Libby's head full of dark hair. (Even if the hospital lactation consultant did accuse Libby of being the milkman's baby.) As a bonus, Libby's long hair helped disguise her misshapen head.

My little Piper looked quite different than Libby at birth, but she also had a head full of long, dark hair. This time, I expected it and loved it from the beginning.

Piper's hair is long (I can put it in a ponytail on top) and tends to stand straight up. It's curly when it's wet or humid outside. She sometimes looks like a mom from the 90s with one set of bangs curled down and another curled up. Strangers comment often on the craziness of her hair. My favorite? "I have never seen a Caucasian baby with that much hair."

The quirkiest feature of Piper's hair is its ability to form dreadlocks in record time. If I don't comb her hair every day or so, she'll wind up with a gnarly dreadlock in the back. The first time it happened, Jared said, "I think you're gonna have to cut it out." I've gotten pretty good at getting them out with detangling spray and a fine-tooth comb. Recently, we seem to have lost our detangling spray and I put off combing her hair for a little too long. Before I knew it, she had 4 separate dreadlocks. This time, I did have to break off a few chunks that wouldn't comb out.

Pinterest Challenge: Completed

I'm 6 for 6 in the Pinterest Challenge!

Here are the project I completed:

1. Attach the growth chart (that I made back in December) to the wall. It's ridiculous that it took me 4 months to hang this on the wall. It was an easy 10 minute project to hang it up.

2. Popsicle stick picture puzzle. We've already lost some of the sticks, but it was fun while it lasted. And easy to make. I've made 2 more already.

3. Homemade air fresheners. I didn't bother taking a picture of these, because I was not happy with how they turned out. They smelled good if you held them right up to your nose and sniffed, but they didn't permeate the room at all - even in a small bathroom. So they were pretty much worthless. I'll stick to my spray air freshener (water and essential oils mixed up on a spray bottle).

4. Potty training underwear. I bought the Gerber training pants that this tutorial uses, but that's as far as I got. However, I completed another sewing project, so I'm totally counting that one. I made a ring sling to carry Piper (or Libby - it's totally adjustable, so it works for both!). I'm enormously proud of myself for sewing pleats. You can't see them very well because my fabric is striped, but they are there and they look darn good.

5. Grapefruit donuts. It was fun to make donuts for the first time, but I wasn't crazy about these. I think I'll keep my grapefruit and donuts separate from now on.

6. Bleach art on a shirt. I love the design I ended up using (anyone recognize the state flag this comes from?), but my technique was sloppy so it didn't turn out perfectly. But it's bleach on a shirt - it's not supposed to be perfect, right? It's a super instant-gratification project though because once you have your stencil made, it takes about 10 seconds.