Almost 18 months!

Lily continues to play mom, and it's so amusing to me. She washes my arms when I'm giving her a bath; she points to the pictures in her books and asks me "What's this?", just like I do when reading to her; and of course, she covers me with the blanket and says "shh"to put me to sleep. Adorable. This really is a fun time to be a mom. My sister, Suzanne, and I were talking about her daughter's upcoming birthday (one already!), and as she said, "The first birthday party is really more for the parents - we made it, everyone survived - whew!" I imagine this is even more true with two. But the truth is that the first year is hard - amazing in its own right but still hard. There are still challenges with Lily's age, but it's not the same for many reasons. Probably the main difference is that we are all on a schedule, and Lily sleeping from 8:00 pm - 7:00 am on a regular basis helps immensely. The rewards seem to increase as well. Rolling over, sitting up, and crawling are all huge milestones, but there is nothing like watching her figure out the world. The most wonderful development to date is her increasing language skills. There is no doubt that parents and babies have a communication system from day one, but it is awesome to actually be able to talk with her and have her understand. We are just at the beginning of the language adventure, but I am loving it so far. With increased understanding however, she will be subjected to Carl's jokes, poor girl. Today Lily requested her juice cup while she was riding her little bike, and Carl said "no" because he is opposed to drinking and driving. He actually told her that and so matter-of-factly. Again, poor girl. Below are some pictures of my little girl working hard at being a big girl.

Dinner on the deck

Sitting at the table like a big girl

...On second thought, daddy's lap looks like a much better dining spot.

Lily's latest

Lily continues to rapidly expand her vocabulary, parroting a lot of what we say. Her latest favorites are "shocked", "jacket", "sit", "nice", "milk", and "poo poo". She started saying "poo poo" after she would do the deed about a week and a half ago. Not long after, she started saying it before she went - a surprising development. I figured that we had better follow her lead on this, so we bought our first potty chair today. We are by no means in the process of actually potty training, but we have started the precursor stage by introducing the potty chair to her and familiarizing her with its purpose. I wasn't sure what she was going to think (if anything) about it, but she absolutely LOVES it. We spent over an hour in the bathroom with her just playing with it. She would sit on it, look into it, move it, put things in it...I was not aware of the potty chair's potential to totally captivate and amuse a toddler until this afternoon. Tonight, she again said "poo, poo", and I asked her if she wanted to go on the potty. A huge grin spread across her face as she ran to the bathroom, opened the door and sat down on the potty - all clothes still completely on. The biggest problem so far is getting her away from the potty; she would stay on it all night if I let her! So, this was not something that I anticipated we would be involved with so soon, but so it goes with Lily. She is on her own time line, and we just try to keep up!

" May I help you?"

Catching up on some reading

Gettin' comfortable

*The funniest thing was that she actually went to get a book from the family room completely on her own so that she could read it on the potty. Too funny.*

Our little helper

Helping fold laundry while watching movies in her pj's

(Does anyone recognize the movie on the tv? Anyone? Anyone?)

Helping with the painting

Helping with the gardening

We had an extremely productive weekend, clearly due to Lily's contributions. What would we do without her help?

Daddy's girl

Safe and sound in daddy's arms

Testing...testing...

Being pregnant with Lily was as close to textbook as I think we could have gotten. Most of the classic symptoms, positive and negative, came right on time. She even arrived into the world when I predicted that she would. She has followed all the developmental milestones pretty much as expected. So, it is no surprise that she is right on time with another phase in her toddlerhood: limit-testing. Yes, sweet little Lily has been has been throwing things (and food) when she doesn't want them, hitting her parents when she is unhappy, and shrieking over and over again to get our attention . We have remained consistent with our responses: two warnings of "No, we don't [fill in the blank], followed by removing her from the situation and us by putting her on the floor and looking away. So far her response has remained consistent as well. She has a very dramatic "how could you mistreat me so" cry coupled with a very well-staged fall-out (lowering the head slowly so as to not injure herself and then proceeding with full fledged tantrum). My experience in working with children tells me to continue in our efforts and soon she will become bored with the routine and discontinue the undesired behavior (or at least drastically reduce the frequency of it). I think that I've seen some progress already, but only time will tell if we will need to switch tactics.

I am extremely happy to report that both Lily and I both very close to fully recovered from the nasty stomach bug that we caught. It was definitely a lot worse for her than it was for me, but I think that Carl might have gotten the worst of it and is still very much under the weather today. Lily and I celebrated our release from the chains of illness that had us housebound by having a jam-packed mommy and me morning. We played on gym equipment, sang songs and moved to the beat at a Terrific Tots class, made a quick stop at the post office, had lunch at a diner together and then stopped by the store for a couple of new toys. We were both exhausted by the time we arrived back at home, but it was a great morning.

The only other Lily-related news is her very endearing attempts to play the role of an adult which usually results in us taking on the role of a child. For example, she will cover me up and pat me while saying "sshhh", clearly putting me to sleep. Also, the other day, she grabbed a napkin while we were eating and wiped my hands. Very cute. She has also learned that when Terra scratches at the blanket, it means that she wants to go under so that she can snuggle up and go to sleep. Yesterday Lily actually lifted the cover when Terra scratched and then patted her and said "sshhh". Today we found an old hands-free cord for our phone. Lily picked it up and put it to her ear and said "hi". For the life of me, I cannot figure out how she knows the function of this cord. We don't use those cords, and she doesn't have any prolonged exposure to anyone that would use them either. It is amazing how she is learning the details of life!

It is clear that Lily knows more than we realize, and she continues to pick up vocabulary like nobody's business. In the past couple of weeks, she's said jacket, piggy, off, shocked, ma, and quack - and those are just the few that I remember. (You'll have to excuse some of the details. Since I have not written anything in her baby book since before she was born, this blog has to serve multiple functions.)

So, all in all, things are looking better than they did last week at this time. If we could just get Carl feeling better, we would be happy as clams. Hopefully tomorrow we will all be able to enjoy some of this gorgeous weather together because Carl has the day off - yay!

PRETTY Sick Baby

How come I never look this cute when I'm sick?

Sometimes you just want to curl up with a good book - in a basket

Counting with Lily

1 sick baby
2 days spent at home due to sick baby
3 walks with a fussy baby and antsy dog
4 issues: diarrhea, vomiting, stomach cramps, lethargy
5 oz. of food taken in by Lily today
6 o'clock - time daddy gets home
7 times I've been thrown up on (3) plus times I've barely avoided being thrown up on (4)
8 books read over and over and over again
9 VERY stinky diapers
10 coping strategies used by an exhausted mommy dealing with: 9 noxious diapers, reading 8 repetitious books, cleaning up 7 puddles of vomit, no help with baby or dog until 6 o'clock, 5 oz of food taken in and immediately coming back out, 4 issues leading to cranky baby, 3 frenzied walks, 2 long days spent at home with 1 sick baby.

Weekend Update and Random Thoughts...

...should have posted this one on Saturday night, I guess :)

We had a dreary, rainy weekend here further dampened by Lily's illness. She seems to have caught a stomach bug that has caused several bouts of diarrhea over the past two days and one episode of vomiting at around one o'clock this morning. Fortunately, Lily has remained her usual playful, perky self. She was a little more whiny than normal tonight, but I think that it was largely due to the fact that I cooked for about 4 1/2 hours straight, and she was understandably trying to redirect my attention to her. I felt guilty about not being able to focus on her, especially since she was not feeling well, but Carl is on-call twice this week so I knew that I needed to prepare in order to make the upcoming nights more manageable. We are looking forward to next month - no call nights - yay!!!

On the subject of next month, Carl and my six-year wedding anniversary is coming up in May, and I starting thinking about all the changes that have taken place in our lives since we got married. I think the thing that I have enjoyed the most in our relationship is watching Carl as a father. It amuses me to watch his quirky personality traits expressed through his parenting. Some examples...

*Last week at dinner, Lily was feeding herself with a spoon (as usual) and held it in a funny way (as usual). Carl very supportingly said, "It may be hard to pick up your food, holding your spoon that way, but that's a perfect continental backhand grip." He then proceeded to tell her how she would be a fierce competitor in tennis, especially if she indeed ends up being left-handed.

*Lily and I were reading nursery rhymes out of a children's book this weekend, and Carl beckons Lily to come over and sit by him because he has a rhyme that he wants to share with her. Lily goes over to him and adoringly smiles at him as he recites the tale of Mary Lee as told by a drunken Quint from the movie Jaws.

*Lily was being particularly fussy right after dinner on Friday night. Carl scooped her up, draped her over his shoulder and headed up the stairs to begin the nightly ritual of giving her a bath, letting her pick out her pajamas, putting on her lotion..., and as he was going up the stairs I overhear him say, "If you were a zoologist living in the mountains of Africa and working with gorillas, your name would be Dian Fussy."

Yes, the corny jokes have prevailed the test of time - and the test of having a child. It's true that a sense of humor (okay, that may be a stretch - but at least a lighthearted attitude) has helped us both to keep perspective during this somewhat hectic period of time in our lives. Carl shares his little quips with other medical students, residents, and attendings as well. One of his female co-workers said to him the other day, "Your wife must be cracking up constantly living with you". I don't know if I would go that far... Carl's jokes are definitely an acquired taste (I think Jean from the Pauza lab can sympathize with me on this one), but I do enjoy the completely random comments (and an amazingly extensive movie, trivia, and for that matter, general knowledge) that still keeps me entertained and amused after all this time.

Bubbles on the deck

A nose for reading

So, I'm trying this once more. Maybe this time you'll actually be able to see the video. I just think that it's so funny when she "reads" this scratch and sniff book. She really gets into it.

In other news, Lily has recently started saying "beep, beep" whenever she wants to get around us (or just move us out of the way). I have no idea where she got this (I'm guessing at school?), but it's too cute. Today in particular I caught myself looking at her a lot in complete wonderment. I can't believe how fast she is growing, and sometimes I find it hard to believe that this little girl is actually mine. I'm so proud of her.

I really wish that we could have celebrated Easter with family, but Lily, Terra, and I had a very nice day together. Dedicated daddy was at work all day and will be for the majority of the night. We miss him too and know that he would much rather be at home with his family. We'll keep on persevering, knowing that the end of these lousy schedules is in sight!

Easter Fun

Ready for the "Easter Eggstravaganza"

Lily speaks the language - whenever she saw the sheep, she would say "baa, baa".

Little cutie pie checking out the animals

Playtime with daddy on the deck

See Lily run

We spent the morning at an Easter event held at a local farm. Lily's favorite part was, of course, the farm animals that they had there. When we woke up, there was actually snow on the ground. We had some sunny weather for playtime this afternoon, and then some flurries a little later. No wonder I can't get over my cold!

Spring shots

One year ago

Hoppin' Lily

• We went to see the Easter Bunny today, and Lily was busy as always. She just had to say hi to all of the other children in line, stand on the fence to see the pretend bunny patch that had moving puppets, dance around, and of course try to get into the water fountain about 10 times. She is always on the go, and although I may have to eat my words later, I'm glad that she is so social and not a timid child. It's so much fun to watch her interact with other people. She actually stood in front of the line of people waiting to see the bunny and smiled at each person as if they were there to see her - she's definitely not lacking in confidence! I thought that she would reject the idea of sitting on the Easter Bunny's lap, but she was friendly as could be with him too. She reached up and patted his face, and even waved and said "bye-bye" when it was time to leave. What a sweetie!

• The most notable change with Lily lately is her pretend play. She now cooks the play food with her kitchen set and then brings the meals to Terra for her to eat. She covers her baby and her stuffed elephant, Ellie, and pats them and says "sshh" to put them down for "night-night". She also holds the keys up to doors to lock and unlock them. She continues to have conversations with someone very engaging on her pretend phone. She looks at books on her own more frequently, and she makes up her own jibberish story to go along with the pictures. It's so sweet to watch.

• Increasingly, Lily is letting her likes and dislikes be known. This morning, I put on the outfit that I wanted her to wear, and she started pulling at it and shaking her head to say "no". I had to use many distraction techniques so that she would keep the outfit on. I have to say that although I knew that this day would come, I'm not ready for it. It is true that part of my concern stems from the fact that I like to dress her a certain way (namely, my way). But there is a practical side to this as well. I don't want to spend money on clothes that she won't wear, but how am I supposed to know what she will and will not wear before I buy them? More importantly, will this mean that my e-bay days are coming to an end?...I can't even think about that.

• All is well with Carl and me. Carl had a one-week Spring Break that I think I enjoyed as much as he did. It is so nice to have someone home to get little things done without having to use precious evening and weekend time. But, tomorrow the break ends, and Carl will begin the last rotation of the third year of medical school, internal medicine. This rotation lasts 3 months. We've heard that he is going to be on-call every fourth night and have to work weekends, so naturally we are both dreading it. But, the end is in sight. I'm so excited about the prospect of counting down months instead of years - words could never adequately describe how that feels.

• I'm really looking forward to the next few months because we have several little trips planned, and I can't wait. Lily and I are set to go to see her cousins Mary and Katie in June for Katie's first birthday, and if all goes as planned, we are all hoping to go to Indiana to see Carl's side of the family as well. We are so ready for some mini-breaks and family time!