Rachel is 35 months old.
She is enjoying her routine at home, at preschool full days Tuesdays and Thursdays, and going to outdoor soccer Monday mornings. She is on the 25th percentile for height and weight and still fits 2T pants but wears 3T and sometimes 4T shirts. Her feet and length seem to have jumped up lately and she seems leaner and longer than she did in the Spring. She is now wearing a size 7.5 shoe. She loves reading books, especially Franklin and Mr. Happy books but loves reading day and night and we go to the library almost every week to exchange books and play. She loved her first soccer class, and we have bought shin pad socks and a size 3 ball for practice at home. She needs to learn to stand patiently in line for her turn and then soccer will be much easier on her mom, too! She loves to go to the pool but this has become an activity she does with Daddy while Mommy stays home with Ava.
She loves playing at home with her toys and will often choose to stay home rather than go outside to the park. Her creative play is amazing - dolls get dressed up and put on a show, go camping, have a picnic, become characters from books or movies. She loves the characters from Cars, Madagascar, Ice Age, and Finding Nemo. She tries to play lego and loves to put wheels on pieces and make interesting vehicles. She is a chatterbox. She is pretty good about saying please and thank you. She is quite respectful of Ava's needs. She is doing really well at staying dry day and night although we still wear a pull up at night because we are not sure.
"Mommy... I am concerned that it's raining and we don't have a jacket." - Rachel, last week.
We have five current 'projects' with Rachel.
1) Bedtime. Bedtime has become the most difficult time of day at our house without a doubt. The last few months, Rachel does not seem tired at night and will delay and delay going to sleep. There is talk of reducing or stopping afternoon naps, despite the thinking that she gets tired at lunch time and often sleeps for 2 hours still. There is difficulty with the fact that she almost always decides she needs to poop at 8:30pm, right after we finally get her in bed. Now we have a sticker chart and are rewarding her with movie time (her favorite thing) after 3 stickers. Earn a sticker by going to bed on the first try. It seems to be helpful, but bedtime still takes forever.
2) Thumb sucking. We are starting to gently try strategies to decrease this habit, but it's very hard. It's really hard to know what to do or not to do about this one.
3) Nunu. For a while she was needing her Nunu blanket a little less during the day, but since traveling again Nunu and Rachel have become totally inseparable. Preschool should help, since Nunu stays in her cubby unless it's nap time.
4) Blowing her nose. Somehow, Rachel is terrible at blowing her nose. She puts the tissue to her nose and blows out through her mouth, and barely wipes a little bit away on her nose, then inhales and sucks all the mucus back in. We keep trying to practice blowing out through the nose, but she doesn't get it and gets frustrated with us nagging.
5) Her hair. As her Grandpops says, she looks like a sheepdog with her hair down. She hates having her hair touched, brushed, clipped, put in a ponytail, washed, or rinsed. I was trying to grow out her bangs, then gave up and trimmed some, and now those bits are in her face anyway. Now she is resisting the haircut, and is too old to be strapped into her high chair for a forced cut like last year. I think she looks quite cute if she lets a pony tail or clip system stay in... but doing it is a huge battle and time waster. So, for now, while we pick our battles, she will continue to look like a sheep dog some days.
Ava is 10 weeks old.
Ava is a calm and wonderfully tolerant baby. She is smiling and rolling on to her side and discovering her hands. She is eating less often and sleeping more. She is huge. At her 2 month appointment, her percentiles were 89th head, 92nd weight, and 100 (off the chart) for height. She is so long she is wearing 6 or even 9 month sleepers. Her torso is very long so many diaper shirts that snap at the crotch are too short. Her feet are also very long for many sleepers or built in feet. She is starting to hold her head up better and lift her head a little more when she's on her tummy. She's a pretty good spitter-upper and needs to be held upright for a little while after eating.
Our current 3 projects with Ava are:
1) Schedule. People ask me how often she eats, sleeps, etc and I have a hard time answering because we haven't really had a routine. She eats and sleeps when it's convenient for everyone or when she demands it. So the last week or so I'm trying to pay attention to her schedule and turn napping into a dedicated morning and afternoon activity. We're putting her to bed awake in her crib to teach her to go to sleep by herself with moderate success. Sometimes she'll go 4 hours without eating but sometimes it's only 40 minutes. She often only nurses for 15 minutes and is satisfied (opposite from what her insatiable sister was). She is sleeping from about 8:30pm or until 4:30am without waking up (not always, but mostly) which is amazing and we hope it can continue. If she does wake, it's a 10:30pm feed so I still get a very descent chunk.
2) Bottle. Ava is not taking a bottle. She did once at about 10 days old or so, and then we didn't try until this weekend. Apparently a mistake because she doesn't want it. I went out to a wedding Sat night and left Jason with the two girls and plenty of hard-earned milk. I left at about 5pm and by 8:20pm Jason had had enough of trying and I left the wedding and came back. But if she won't take a bottle, it means I am very limited in how long I can leave her. I have plans to exercise and be social and leave her with people so this needs to change. So we will work at it.
3) Head/neck. Although it's improving, I have diagnosed Ava with mild torticollis. It means that her head wants to turn to the left and tilt to the right, so we have to work at getting her neck muscles to go the other way. It is improving but I am doing daily stretches and always positioning her certain ways.
Boulder County is flooded
We had 15" of rain from Monday night until Friday last week, causing water levels to rise and creeks to turn to raging rivers. The normal annual rainfall for the area is 21". Dams broke apart. Flash flooding warnings were given out and many were evacuated. The news can show you devastating pictures or roads and bridges gone, housing destroyed, people stranded, college students tubing down the street. We are totally fine and live on slightly higher land without any creeks nearby. Roads have been closed around us, it's been very wet and raining hard. Businesses, preschool, and school have been closed. Jason has not had to work since last Wednesday, so we've had some unexpected time together at the house.
It's sunny now and we expect Jason to be able to enter school tomorrow with students returning Wednesday and things to dry out all week. We feel lucky compared to all the horrible things that have happened to some people and know the county will be recovering and repairing for months and months to come.
100km
Jason is running a 100km race from Breckenridge to Vail in 2 weeks. He has put in a great summer of training, and over the last month has run almost daily with his high school cross country team (he is the assistant coach) and longer runs on weekends. Despite a few mild injury concerns in August, he is doing an awesome job and we are both very excited for this race. It's called UROC - the ultra race of champions and will be his longest race to date. If anyone is able to come out and cheer him on Sept 28th, we would love it. He's currently tapering after 20 miles (trail and at altitude) 8 days ago and then a good mountain running weekend this weekend as well.
2600yds
Is how far I swam this morning. I have been to 3 masters swimming practices, missing one last week. I love it. I have run 3 miles many times in the last couple of weeks and it doesn't feel like it's getting much easier yet. This week officially will start my half marathon training program, so my mileage will significantly increase over the next month. My half marathon will be Dec 7th. I will for sure run 3 times per week and swim 2 mornings per week, and then any biking/hiking or extra weights/running/yoga/swimming will be bonus. I know many people training for a half ironman would do more, but if I can get 5 definite workouts in per week with 2 small kids, I will be satisfied until Christmas.
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