Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a wonderful christmas! 

We are all excited. Last night we kicked it off by having Jess, Mark and Andrea over for some baileys and hot chocolate. Tonight we are off to John and Denise for Christmas Eve dinner, Jeff is making a venison stew, hope it is good. Tomorrow night is Christmas Dinner at my parents.

Well I got my christmas present early, last night Felix slept through the night, yipeee!!!!  He went to bed at 10:30 and woke up this morning 6:30am (I know still rather early but that is after jeff gets up so seems like morning to me). It is funny, I guess I had been alittte more lax with Felix that I had with Amelia, I let him sleep in our bed on occation, I didn’t let him cry that long at nap time and I tried to let him sleep on his play mat. Well after a very frusterating day on Sunday, Monday morning I turned over a new leaf, nap times were strickly enforced, he is not up for longer than a 2hr stretch at a time and the soother was chucked. You would this all these things would work against him sleeping through then night but no he has been much happier when he is awake and he has had two good night sleeps. Yipee for Felix!!

Merry Christmas!

The Adventures of Miss Melie and her Minders

Seeing as the last post was all Felix I thought I would update on Amelia’s activities as well. Amelia is Christmas crazy these days. She is singing Christmas carols all the time and primed for her Christmas Concert tomorrow night. OKay I wrote that a week ago, Amelia’s concert has occured and it was very cute, Amelia was quite the ham doing all the actions to the songs. She did have a massive chearing section with Felix, Jeff and I, Mini, Topo, JuJu and Grandmaman.

 

 

Amelia has been rather challenging recently, recently she has started to thinking that the best way to get her way is to whine followed by crying followed by wailing. Grrrrrr!!!!  This is her protocol for everything from not getting to wear the clothes she wants to not being given the type of cookie she wants. It is VERY frustrating and there has been a few threats of cancelling Christmas!  I think Jeff and I are just as stubborn as she is an we refuse to given when she starts with this behavior. After many talks about it she does seem to be starting to catch on and in the last couple days I have said no to something or other and she has looked at me started to pull a face then turned around and turned back, smiled and said “okay maybe next time”.  Last night though she woke up in the middle of the night and wanting to come into our bed to snuggle (I think she thought it was almost morning). Anyways this was the first time she has got us up in the middle of the night for a long time. It freaked me out abit because I know I pulled this for years when I was a kid and my parents were forever getting up with me until was in grade 2 or 3… I will cry if my daughter does it to me but yes I know just desserts… Anyways Mealie yelled and screamed but did end up back in her bed, I would have been furious if she had woken her brother up but so far they both seem to sleep through each others antics.

 

Amelia continues to LOVE her brother and be very helpful, though I think Felix’s cries do start to get to her, we are frequently told to give Felix his sousou! Or the latest is that she will yell from the other room (when Felix starts crying) that “Felix, needs breastmilk!”… Thanks Mealie we wouldn’t want any confusion there.

 

In addition to Amelia singing Christmas carols Amelia is regularly belting out Oh Canada, apparently she is very patriotic. They sing it at school every morning and I must say she is pretty good at it, there are a few missed words but she can sing it form start to finish. I took a video but can’t seem to get it to load up.

 

So we have a weekly routine where every Thursday Amelia stays home and Denise and John come and pick us all up and we take Amelia to Music class while we head across to the street to Starbucks, my mom usually pops up for a coffee with us. When Amelia finishes class she gets a hot chocolate and a polar bear cookie (red scarf not blue) and then we head off for our outing of the week. So far we have been to the Science Centre, Oakville, Christmas shopping and this week we went to the Terra Cotta Inn for lunch. The restaurant is rather fancy but Amelia and Felix both behaved. As a special treat Amelia and Denise shared a piece of chocolate cake for dessert, I think Amelia thought she had died and gone to heaven.

 

We are all getting into the Christmas spirit, we picked up our tree a few weeks ago and spent a night decorating it. Our house is looking all nice and Christmas cozy now. This past weekend Jeff and I undertook lot of Christmas cheer, Friday night John and Denise took Amelia and Felix and Jeff and I went out with a bunch of friends for dinner. This is the second year we have done this and we had a great time. It is getting abit trickier to plan though with ten peoples schedule. Since last year there are two more babies and one more due in a month, coordinately schedules and babysitters in a challenge that requires us to start booking this in November. After dinner and drinks we went out to Mississauga and stayed at John and Denise’s with Felix and Amelia. In the morning we had a lovely brunch with Bill, Betty and Laura and the rest of Jeff’s fam.

 

 

The merriment continued for me on Sat with Andrea’s annual Christmas party, good times and then Sunday we headed to Dani and Rory’s for some Trini cooking and more cheer in wine and beer form. It was a good weekend but I was bagged by Monday.

 

 

Our son is an Ass

So we are thinking of moving to Nebraska so we can returning our son… the better he sleeps at night to more ornery he is at during the day!  He naps well in the morning but the afternoons and evenings are long periods of grunting, fussing and whining. Evenings are just constant tears unless there is a bottle in his mouth, the good news is he would be happy having a bottle in his mouth from 6pm till 10pm straight, can babies have eating disorders? GRRRR Amelia was such a happy baby she was perfectly happy to lie on her mat and look at toys or chill in her crib with her mobile, not so much for Felix he isn’t even happy when we are holding him… Also the soother is the devil, he loves to spit it out and that mark the start of the meltdowns. I tried to put an end to it but there were many tears (mine and his). The good news is he has been sleeping 6 and 7 hours a night in the last few days, knock on wood it continues.

In other news he is rather cute at times.

Felix and his new touque

2 Months

Felix has started smiling over the last few weeks; he is all dimples and gummy grins. It is funny how much more abuse you can handle from them when they smile at you. I found myself up at 3am blurry eyed and feeding this grunting crazy man who couldn’t string together more than two sips without then spitting out the bottle but when he would spit it out he would smile at me, instead of wanting to wring his neck I was actually laughing at him.

 

In the last month not too much has changed, he continues to eat like a mad man, which has resulted in another jump in his weight. He had his doctors appointment yesterday and he is now weighing in at 14lbs, 7oz which puts him at the 97th percentile, up from the 90th last month. I was curious how that compared to Amelia turns out at 2 months she was only 12lbs 2oz but was about an inch longer that Felix. My theory is that Felix is trying to catch up with his sister all in the first year. He isn’t making a bad go of it either and has the advantage ever since his sister went on a hunger strike (with the exception of chocolate cake). His doctor thinks he should ask Santa for a neck for Christmas…

His sleeping continues to improve this month, he is now averaging 5.5hrs between feeds, this mean we goes to bed around when we do and we wakes up between 3 and 4am to eat then is down again until 8 or 9am. This doesn’t seem too bad but even better is he seems to be continuing to increase the stretch (knock on wood), made he will give me a full night sleep as my Christmas present. This month we also caved on the sleeping position, he won and we now put him down on his tummy, he is much happier and a much better sleeper this way. As a result he is great at tummy time and there are no fear of a flat head however he might get a smushed face…

I am still pumping and bottle feeding these days, I had a minor freak out the other week when my supply plummeted after I had the stomach flu. I was in a foul mood and Jeff was trying to make me feel better by staying it wasn’t a big deal if we gave him formula, at the time I couldn’t articulate it but I realized after that I wasn’t pissed about having to feed Felix formula but more about having to start to watch what I eat and loosing my built in diet, I am such a selfless mother.

Felix still is full of grunts groans and various noises, he is such a old man.

All He Wants for Christmas is some… Beano

My son has very impressive gas but to make matters worse it stinks!!! I don’t know about you but I am always abit shocked when a dog or cat’s farts and they stink so badly. My sons insides should not be rotting as such a young age, well obviously I am wrong because I find dogs have the nastiest gas followed very closely by my son. Ugh!! At the moment I am typing away with Felix strapped into the Baby Bjorn (more on that later) and I think he might gas me out. He is all brand new and fresh, his insides are rotting already… I think I might have to talk to his doctor at the next visit…

Anyways, other that the stench in my immediate vicinity, all is well here. Felix continues to pack on the pounds, I am abit scared to find out what he will weigh in at at his next appointment. I think he might be confused and he thinks he has to hibernate this winter…

He continues to be an okay sleeper… at night he has become like clock work, he is up every 4hrs to eat, this isn’t horrible cause if we time it right I means only getting up one in the middle of the night but still at this stage I wish he could do without this middle of the night feed. I really am not sure how to try to ween him off this either. If he was just waking up wanting to play in the middle of the night I would have no qualms about letting him cry for a few nights to break him of that habit but there is no sense in leaving him to cry when he is hungry cause he would just wake up an hour later still hungry and looking for food.

I am also torn about soothers, friend or foe? Amelia was not into soothers at all, she liked to suck her thumb from day one, Felix will suck his thumb and his hand on occasion but he also seems to not mind the soother. The soother has been great at times, it has got him napping really well during the day if I am there to put the soother back in his mouth 2 or 3 times as he is falling asleep and it is also great as a plug when he is screaming… The issue is in the middle of the night when I inevitably hear the clank of the soother hitting the mattress and I know that 8 time out of 10 this will be followed by the grunting then whimpers then screams… That clank noise drives me mad in the middle of the night… Putting the soother in his mouth a billion times a day is getting abit old.

Felix is still sleeping a lot and is fairly relaxed, though when he is hungry he wants it now and I mean NOW!!!! He also still likes to be held while napping, as I said above the soother has helped a lot and he will fall asleep in his chair (he also loves sleeping in his stroller or carseat) but if he is really wound up or gassy then he wants to be sleeping on my chest, this really cuts into my emailing, online Christmas shopping etc…Today I had both Amelia and Felix home with me for the day, I had all sorts of stuff I wanted to get done (I know I should know better but I can’t help myself, I am a planner) so when Amelia went down for her nap wanted to start my list of ToDos, well Felix had other ideas… As I mentioned above he is both gassy and currently strapped to me in the carrier… OH well sometimes one has to be creative.

Miss Mealie, is turning into a real kid/teenage with a mind of her own. She has started to turn the table on us, she frequently says thing along the lines of “hmmm mommy can you do me a favour and go get ______ for me downstairs” (this is something I frequently say to Jeff). She has also incorporated “cool” into her vocabulary, and for a few weeks “like” was in every sentence in every second word, that was removed after threats of beating and having to eat an extra bite of veggies each time she said it.

One thing I am getting a kick out of is Amelia’s new strategy for asking for something or getting what she wants, she will say something along these lines “You know mommy, some parents let some kids have two brownies…”, then she stops, I usually say “Oh Really” she confirms and then waits.

Last night she told Jeff that she ruined her life because he won’t let her do something, I was impressed I didn’t think that one would be cracked out until teenage years.

Although Amelia has her moments that make you want to tear your hair out (usually centered about eating dinner or getting dressed) she is a pretty smart, sweet girl.

I have been trying to get this post posted since Tuesday but a bout of the stomach flu has held me up. Luckily neither of the kids or Jeff have got it yet (knock on wood). Thank goodness for my WONDERFUL in-law who 45mins after my phone call came to collect Felix and I and we both spent the day there, me sleeping and Felix being pampered by his grandparents.

Yesterday the posted didn’t get up because Amelia, Felix, John, Denise and I went to the Science Centre. It was great, I think Amelia really enjoyed it, her favorite part was the pretend market that the kids could shop at. We also saw an IMAX film about the sea that was pretty cool. A few weeks ago we were talking to her and she said she didn’t like science and science wasn’t for girls, I think she has now changed her tune.

Below is Amelia was Linda, Denise’s doll from when she was a kid. I have a bunch of pics but I can’t seem to get them downloaded onto the computer.