Catching Up

Wow there's so much to catch up on- where to begin? I guess I will just pick up where I left off last time, which was when "Sister" was 2 weeks old...

At the time, breastfeeding had been going really well (or so I thought). But at her 4 week checkup, she still hadn't made it back to her birth weight, which is not a good thing. She was only 10th percentile for weight. Dr. Jones had me start supplementing her with formula and at her next checkup she was doing much better. He told me that babies get the full benefit of breastfeeding by 8 weeks so I could stop at that point if I wanted to. I intended to keep breastfeeding, but since I was supplementing my milk supply started dropping rapidly so I ended up stopping after 8 weeks afterall. If you witnessed how frequently this baby eats, you would totally understand how I couldn't keep up with her. Even on formula now it is rare to get her to last 3 hours in between bottles. In the evening she picks up the pace to every hour and a half until about 10-11 pm then she sleeps until about 2-3 am then wakes up again around 6-7. A couple times a week she will sleep a good 6-8 hour stretch. Then in the morning, it's back to acting like she's starving all the time.

It took Keira quite a while to adjust to having a sister in the house. As much as she loves Sister to pieces, she had been acting out quite a bit. I had to call Grandma for reinforcements more than once. One of the biggest challenges was that Keira got the idea that she could- and had the right to- carry Sister across the room from one place to another and would do so the moment she thought she wasn't being watched. Thankfully she was very careful and never had an incident, but I started buckling the baby in the bouncer or swing at all times. Keira is capable of unbuckling both, but it at least slowed her down enough to get caught before she picked her up. Thankfully, she got over her desire to move her pretty quickly. Keira loves her baby sister so much. She is always kissing her "fuzzy head" and loves to lay next to her on the couch, and even shares her precious blankee with her. Everywhere we go, she has to tell every stranger she meets about Sister. She is always asking me to take her picture with Liana too. She is still the most difficult child you will ever encounter, but she isn't acting up beyond her norm anymore.

At 6 weeks old, on July 1st we had Liana blessed at church. Art was able to do the blessing this time, which was really special. I started crying the moment he started. It was beautiful. A couple days later, we all went to the 3rd of July fireworks show in Kerman, as is tradition in my family. Liana slept through the whole show and hardly flinched.

The following weekend, I decided it was time for a haircut for Keira and a new color for me. My mom came over and trimmed Keira's hair for the very first time. I call her my brown-haired Rapunzel, because she is only 3.5 and her hair is down to her butt. Then I had this idea that I wanted to do some golden highlights and some reddish lowlights in my hair, but the color I picked out for the lowlights looked absolutely terrible mixed in with my natural light-ash blonde hair. So I ended up deciding to just buy more of the lowlight color and color ALL of my hair that color. The result- very dark, very red auburn hair. I could hardly look at myself in the mirror for days, but after I got past the shock, I started to be ok with it, and now I kinda like it. The only thing I don't like is that my root color looks awful next to the auburn, so I either have to dye it frequently or adjust the color so it doesn't look so bad when my hair grows out.

The day of my hair color incident, Art's grandparents came from the Bay Area to meet Liana and their other new great-grandbaby, Art's sister Sophia's baby Elani. Elani was 2 weeks old and Liana was 8 weeks old. She looked like such a giant compared to newborn Elani.

On July 12th, Liana had her 2 month checkup. All of that eating paid off, because she tipped the scales at 11 lb 7 oz which is 75th percentile. We were actually getting concerned that she might be getting too chubby, but Dr. Jones assured us that she is quite normal. We're just not used to having a chubby baby. Keira was never over 50th percentile.

My sweet Liana is 11 weeks old now. I'll be going back to work in one more week, which is not really a big deal since I'm still only working 2 days a week for a grand total of 6 hours a week. I had really wanted to take a day trip to the coast while I was still on leave, so a few days ago we found a day when my mom and Art were both off work and packed up a picnic lunch and hit the road to Pismo for the day. We went to Dinosaur Caves park to have our lunch, which is this awesome Rotary kids' park that is literally right on a cliff on the side of the ocean. It has a beautiful view. We let Keira play there a while and she flew her kite with Art then we went down the road to the pier to go out on the beach. At 63 degrees, it was a bit chilly for our taste, especially when we were used to the 100+ degree weather in Fresno, but it was nice to be bundled up for a change instead of dying of heat stroke. We built a sandcastle and Keira played in the water for a couple minutes until she got too cold. Then she took a little nap on the beach with Daddy and Sister who snoozed the entire time. Art was worried she was comatose or something, but she was just having the best nap of her life.

After we were sufficiently freezing from our time on the beach, we headed back to the car and realized we were parked right in front of a restaurant I had read good reviews about online called Hoagies. We were all starving so we decided to give it a try, and we were glad we did. Art and I had tri-tip sandwiches and my mom had their specialty called the Pismo Wrap. It was very good. We'll definitely be returning there in the future. It was an awesome day except Art closed his thumb in the car door when we were leaving the park and it was locked so it took a few seconds to get his thumb out. It probably felt like an eternity to him. He REALLY messed up his thumbnail. The next day he had to go to urgent care and have it x-rayed and they poked a hole in the nail to let the blood come out. He will probably loose that nail eventually. Poor guy.

Liana is still just the best little baby I could ask for. She never cries and rarely fusses. Besides being a little Starvin Marvin, she is practically perfect. She is at my very favorite stage of baby development which is cooing and smiling. It just melts my heart when she talks to me in her little baby language. I absolutely love it.