Lilly is 2! The Stats.

So many updates, so little time!  I have quite a few blog posts to get in over the next few days, so I thought I'd kick it off with an update from Lilly's 2-year doctor appointment last week.  I am happy to report that, although we already knew it, the doctor confirmed that we have a perfect baby (not so much anymore, I guess!) girl.  :-)  The following stats are as of 1/31/14, so 2 years and 1 week old.

Weight/Length:  Lilly is tall like her Mama!  She is 34.5 inches in height, which is the 74th percentile (I realized that I never updated with her official 18-month doctor stats, but to put it in perspective, she was 29 inches long or 70th percentile at one year old) and she weighs 29.5 lbs, which is the 70th percentile (22.13 lbs/85th percentile at one year).  Dr. G told us that at this age, those numbers and percentiles are perfectly normal, and not to be concerned in the least.  She actually estimated that L's growth will slow a lot and that she will only gain 4-5 lbs over the next year but she'll keep growing taller and thin out.  I will be sad when she loses her sweet little chubby legs...just want to nibble them!

Sleep:  We luckily still have a champion sleeper on our hands!  We typically put Lilly down between 8:00 and 8:30pm.  I should clarify that she does not always go to sleep right away - some nights she does, and other nights she'll talk/sing/play in her crib for sometimes an hour or more before winding down - but she seems to like having the alone time to wind down.  Anyway so she normally sleeps until at least 8:00 am, most mornings it's more like 8:30 and sometimes it's even later than that.  She goes down for a nap around 1:00 or 1:30 pm depending on the day, and typically sleeps until 4:30 or 5:00 pm (We let her sleep until 5p on MWF because those are school days and she's always more tired, but most days we wake her up at 4:30p.).  The doctor said that all of this is great and that she should still be napping at this age - she actually said to cling to that nap for dear life and let her take it as long as she will.  Don't you worry, Dr. G., that was def our plan.

I don't think I've formally discussed on the blog our decision to keep Lilly in her crib and get a new one for the baby.  Most people think we're insane for buying another crib and having two, but I was happy to hear that the doctor was totally on board with it and she actually told us we definitely made the right decision.  Our reasoning was that Lilly sleeps so well and has literally never (knock on wood) tried to get out of her crib, so since we'll be losing sleep with the baby we thought we'd keep her sleep routine as normal as possible.  Plus, both cribs that we have are convertible, so even if L decided tomorrow that she wanted to bust out of that joint, we can just convert hers into a toddler bed.  Dr. G agreed and said that we definitely did the right thing and she would have done the same, and estimated that L will probably stay in her crib for another year.  I am not so sure about that, but I guess we'll see!

Feeding:  Lilly has become decidedly more picky about what she eats over the past several months.  Long gone are the days where she will eat anything I put in front of her!  She is wary of anything new, and in fact a lot of times will tell me she doesn't like something without even trying it.  I continue to try to offer her new things and try to have her eat things that we are eating, and most of the time it does not work but at least I'm trying.  We discussed this at length with the doctor, and she assured us that it's perfectly normal.  She gave us some literature to read (by Ellyn Satter for anyone who may be interested) and discussed it with us in detail.  The gist of all of it was that as parents it's our job to offer Lilly a variety of safe, nutritious and reasonably appealing food at meals and snacks.  We should pair familiar things with unfamiliar things but let her choose what and how much to eat of what we've put on the table.  We are not to push food on her, and we are to let her eat her own way.  We are also not to bribe her or do anything of the sort - it should truly be up to her what she chooses to eat and how much she eats (from what we've offered).  This is completely different than what we've been doing - I resort to bribery all of the time ("You can have a cookie if you eat three bites."  or "If you try this, Mommy will jump up and down."  Seriously.) - so we'll give it a try and see how it goes.  Apparently for kids her age it is more about control than the food itself.  If we bribe her and do all of these crazy things to get her to take one bite, then she has control, and she has won.  If we just ignore it and continue to offer her things, eventually she'll try them and like them and expand her palate.  It is also OK if she doesn't eat a lot - some days she won't.  It is important not to create an over-eater.  That's the basic premise of what we discussed with the doctor - I'll report back on how it goes!

Lilly has also decided in the past few months that she no longer likes milk.  It was a real battle to get her to drink it to begin with, but once we started mixing it with Ovaltine there was never any problem...until one day when she all of a sudden decided she didn't like it.  She looked me in the face and said, "I don't like it, Mommy.  I don't like the milk."  Ummmmmmmmm I'm confused since you liked it yesterday?!  I can't say I blame her because I do not like milk myself, so for the past couple of months I haven't been pushing it much...I've still offered it but she never takes it, and on the rare occasion that she does, it's always the same, "I don't like it."  The doctor said that if L decides she likes milk again, we can switch her to something other than whole (i.e. 1 or 2%).  In the meantime, Dr. G said that L gets plenty of calcium from other things she eats like yogurt and cheese, but the only thing she's missing is Vitamin D, which you can only get from milk and direct sunlight.  SO, we have started her on a vitamin.  At first she suggested giving Lilly the same liquid vitamins that we will be giving the baby, but I told her I don't think there's a chance that will work since L doesn't really like juice either and only drinks water - I'm not even sure what we'd mix it with.  SO we went with "Plan B," which (per Dr. G's suggestion) is a Flinstones Complete vitamin, and she gets half a tablet each day. She loves them and asks for them all the time, so I consider it to be a win.

In terms of what Lilly does eat, there is a decent variety of things.  She definitely prefers sweet things (i.e. likes fruit way more than most vegetables) and likes carbs, just like her mama again!  She typically eats breakfast, lunch, a snack after nap and then dinner.  Breakfast is by far her biggest meal of the day - she will eat more than Dan and I combined for breakfast and then mainly picks at the day's remaining meals.  Doctor assured us that this is a-ok, too.

Developments:  There are so many here, I don't even know how to begin to name them all.  Lilly is such a little sponge - I feel like she is learning something new every day, and teaching me something new as well!  Her vocabulary is very robust for her age - she comes by it honest for sure between her Mommy and Daddy.  I often tell Dan that she's too smart for me, too.  I'm worried that I won't be able to keep up with her and continue to challenge her for long!  I am amazed almost daily by the things she retains, even things that I didn't think she was paying any attention to.  She is pretty outgoing - she is often shy in new settings or around new people but it doesn't take long for her to warm up, and once she does, good luck getting her to slow down!  She's sweet and helpful and her teachers always rave about how well she plays with the other children.  Lilly is also very independent (and pretty stubborn, too!).  Her favorite phrase these days seems to be "I do it, Mommy" (or in situations where Mommy is too impatient and would rather whatever we're trying to do be done quickly, she'll say, "Lilly do it together, Mommy").  She is also pretty hard on herself and gets frustrated if she can't do what she set out to do by herself immediately.  That is one trait from me that I was hoping she would avoid - I was hoping she'd inherit her Daddy's laid-back personality instead!  Mostly, I think she is a pretty good mix of both - she definitely inherited Daddy's mischievousness.  Finally, Lilly has more energy!  It is enough to wear anyone out, pregnant or not.  If Lilly is awake, she is moving.  In fact, I am pretty sure she rarely walks - she mostly runs full speed ahead.  I can't mention that without also noting that she definitely inherited her mama's grace - as in she is so clumsy.  Just within the past week she busted her lip and bruised her eye by walking/running into the door frame, and then yesterday bit her tongue falling into the wall.  Seriously, I can't make it up.  I guess the only other thing to note is that we have officially moved into the terrible twos and the accompanying tantrums.  They mostly come and go within a 30 second period, but she is very good with the theatrics and drama.  Perhaps there is an acting career in our future?

I know I say it at every age but Lilly is just so much fun right now.  She's such a joy to be around, and I just love watching her learn, grow and explore.  I am sure we'll be in trouble with this little firecracker before long, but for now I am just soaking it all in!

Likes:  Lilly LOVES books.  You can't read to her enough.  I am even more grateful  now than ever for all of the books that we've accumulated over the past two years, because she wants to read all of the time.  She loves anything art-related: coloring, painting, play doh, etc.  She loves all kinds of music and she loves to sing and dance, and she loves the gymnastics class that we enrolled her in one day/week.  She loves Layla, and Layla sometimes even appears to be warming up.  Just this morning I went in to get L up and when Layla came into the room she said, "Good morning, Layla!  I'm so happy to see you!"  Lilly loves being outside, bath time, and Elmo.  She loves pretend play, jewelry, dress-up, baby dolls, Legos and her kitchen.  And her Mommy and Daddy, for sure!  Hopefully before long she'll love her baby brother, too.  :-)

Dislikes:  Being told "no."  Being dirty.  Not being able to do something perfectly on the first try.  Most veggies.  I know that there are a LOT more that should go here, but those are the big ones and I'm drawing a blank now!

What I'm Thankful For:  I am definitely not saying that it has been perfect and that there have been never been any bad days, because believe me there have been days when I wanted to pull my hair out and run as far away as possible, but I am so thankful that for the most part, Lilly has made it so easy on us.  I can only hope that her baby brother follows in her footsteps.  Could we be so lucky twice?!

What I'm Looking Forward To:  Big sister status.  I am sure we will deal with some jealousy and emotion that comes along with no longer being an only child, but I just can't wait to see how L interacts with her baby brother.

I am sure I left so much out - I really have to get better at keeping lists about these things - but I think I hit the highlights.  Here are a few crappy iPhone photos from tonight's pre-bed snuggle fest.  L really is the sweetest child, I just want to squeeze her tight and never let go.

"Daddy help Lilly do yoga"

My heart!

Just love her.

Lilly, if you ever read this, I want you to know that you bring more joy to your Daddy and me than we could ever even put into words.  You are so smart, funny, sweet, loving, and genuinely kind.  You have taught me more about life and about myself in the past two years than I ever thought possible, and I can't wait to see what this next year has in store for all of us (although I wish that time would slow down!).  I am happier than it is possible to describe that God chose me to be your Mommy, and your Daddy and I are so proud of the little (big!) girl you are becoming.  You have truly made me better, and I can only hope to teach you half of the things you've already taught me in your two short years.  I love you to the moon and back and even further than that, baby girl.

Love,

Mommy

Lilly's 2nd Birthday Festivities: Part 2

Happy Superbowl Sunday!  The Panthers lost in the playoffs and I didn't see any super thrilling commercials in the first half of tonight's game, so I left Dan at the neighbor's house and after putting Lillian to bed decided I'd finish blogging about her 2nd birthday festivities while I have time and it's still fresh (you can read Part 1 here).  We had a great weekend, by the way…no roundup this week because I only took one photo the entire weekend.  I had big plans to make this weekend all about L since it's probably her last weekend as an only child, but it ended up being all about nesting instead so I guess it's a good thing she won't remember unless she ever reads this.  Seriously, today I decided that vacuuming wasn't enough and I absolutely HAD to take off the couch cushions and wash them.  I'm insane.  

Anyway, I digress.  Prepare for another photo overload!  I'll try to narrate via captions and let the pictures do most of the talking since there are a ton of them.  I felt a little guilty that I didn't go "all out" this year like I did last year, and I was also terrible and did not get photos of L with everyone that came - I am using the exhaustion related to carrying around a whalephant as my excuse.  :-)  I am sad to say that I didn't even get a photo of the three of us aside from blowing out the candles.  So sad!  There's always next year, I suppose.  Here we go...

The invitation.  So cute, right?  I love it.  L's birthday is so close to Christmas and we are so busy, I procrastinated on this but luckily Libby Lane Press was able to accommodate and turned them around literally within a day.  I am so happy with the way they turned out, so cute!

This outfit.  Are you dying?!  I seriously died.  I bought the leotard on Amazon and had it shipped directly to For The Little Peeps (you can find her on both Etsy and Facebook) along with a photo of the party invitation and she came up with the rest (she also did the birthday shirt that L wore to her school party in Part 1 of this series of posts).  Didn't she do a fantastic job?!  Thanks to Steph for the recommendation.  Anyway, I remembered that we had leg warmers from last year, and they are supposed to be "one size fits all," so I decided to try them.  L's little chubby legs do not hold them up very well, so I tried to change her into yoga pants but she was not having it.  "MY TIGHTS!!!  MY TIIIIIIGHTS!!!!"  So we went with it.  Aside from her spending the entire party pulling them up, they worked out great.    

The decor!  Lilly saw me put out the cupcakes and had the meltdown of the century before the party even started because she just had to have one before she would even consider playing.  Is she my child, or what?  It was her birthday (and let's be honest, it's her world, we just live in it) and really who can blame her for wanting a cupcake, so I let her have one and then sent her on her way to play.  She had a blast (see below)!

I was surprised that this was the first thing she wanted to play with.  In her gymnastics classes, they call this activity "bear bear" - it's basically a ladder connecting two mats that they are supposed to climb across, and she is pretty terrible at it (can't quite get the hang of the rungs and falls through unless she has help from Daddy) but I guess she loves it!

I know this pic is blurry but she just looks so excited!

She also loves to do "monkey."  She tries to do this on the bar of the trampoline she got for Christmas when she's at home, as well.

Aforementioned chubby little legs.  I hope she keeps them for a while, they are so cute!

Mason came all the way from Charlotte to play!

Sweet Hadley, who is awesome at gymnastics.

Told ya.  Hiking up the leg warmers.

Ellington!  L adores Ellie and they had the best time together.

The kids were allowed "free play" (supervised by gym employees, of course) for about an hour, and then we fed them lunch.  Nothing too fancy: CFA nuggets, fruit, veggies, goldfish or chips, and applesauce.  

After lunch, we had cake and cupcakes.  I wish I'd gotten a better pic of the cake, it was so cute.  I got both the cake and mini cupcakes from the Cupcake Shoppe here in Raleigh - the cake was strawberry cake and strawberry icing and the mini cupcakes were a mix of those and plain vanilla cake with vanilla icing.  Again, I sent them a photo of the invitation and they did the rest, and I loved the way it turned out.  

Lilly is a big fan of cupcakes.  Comes by it honest, for sure.

Lunch and cake didn't take as long as we anticipated, so we decided to let the kids play some more after they finished eating and skipped present opening (I spread that out over a few days).  

Erica and Ry!

The party was a lot of fun. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and L was worn out - she came home and went straight to bed!  Although I am sad that I wasn't able to put as much creativity into it last year, I'm still pleased with the way it turned out…I guessed correctly that at this point in my pregnancy I'd be too tired to do much and that having anything at the house (even family-only) would stress me out.

Chris &  Andrea and the kids were able to stay for the rest of the weekend, so there was more fun all around.  Lilly loves her cousins!  And Aunt KK, Uncle Joshy and Mason hung around for a bit on Saturday afternoon as well.

My little chunker, Mason.  I could eat him slap up!  The cheeks!!!

One of my favorite pictures from the weekend.  Saturday night after dinner and bath, we put on a movie for the kids.  Lilly sure loves her cousins!  Too much cute for one pic, and I love all of the footie jammies.

Overall, I'd say Lilly had a wonderful second birthday.  She is so loved - and so rotten!  She asked to open presents every day for about a week after her party.  Hilarious!  If I think about it/have time to get to it, I'll try to do a post with gift ideas for a 2-year old, because our family and friends are all awesome and she got some great stuff.

I also cannot end this post without thanking both my husband and his brother and family for all of their help with the party.  I definitely would not have been able to pull it off without all of you, so thank you!!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Up this week on the blog: L's 2-year post and hopefully the announcement of the arrival of baby boy (still no name, ugh!).  I'll know more after my doctor appointment tomorrow (if I make it to that point…holy contractions tonight!).

Later, taters!

Sarah 

Lilly's 2nd Birthday Festivities: Part 1

With the possibility of a baby next week sneaking up on me, I figured it was now or never for the birthday posts!  I am starting them a little less than a week late, which I think is a huge accomplishment considering I still haven't blogged about Christmas Day…whoops.  Fair warning: photo overload to come.  Another fair warning: I am writing this from the Mac and I can never get picmonkey to work properly from here so although collages would make things cleaner, I shan't do them.  SBI (not really)!

Lilly's birthday is so close to Christmas that it's hard to find ways to keep it special.  I already blogged about some of the surprises that awaited her when she woke up, but another thing we did was to continue last year's tradition of sprinkle pancakes (I just realized when looking for that post that I never actually posted a photo of it, but I found the idea on Pinterest and loved it, and Lilly loves pancakes, so clearly it was the best idea ever!  We skipped the frosting part, but luckily she didn't seem to notice.). 

Daddy went all out this year.  Guess we'll have to keep this in mind when choosing a name for Baby Boy - must be easy to write in pancake batter!  :-)

Blowing out her pancake candles.

L's birthday was on Friday, January 24th, which was a school day.  We woke her up early that morning so that we could all have breakfast together and gave her the doll accessories that we got for she and Baby Grace before school - we decided to save the rest of the presents for later so that she could sleep as late as possible.

You can't really see the high chair here, but both the high chair and cradle are made by Kidkraft.  We love them!  Easy to put together (in fact I did both by myself while Dan was out running errands for me), sturdy, and the reason I chose these in particular is that they look realistic/sort of like her high chair and crib.  She LOVES them!  And I think Baby Grace must, too, as much time as she spends in each. :-)

Birthday girl in her birthday shirt, not smiling properly per the usual.  "Cheeeeeeeese!"

I was so excited that L's birthday fell on a school day so that we'd be able to celebrate with her school friends.  It just so happened that one of her teacher's (Ms. B) birthdays is the same day!  We took a few of her current favorite books to school for the class to read, which the teachers said was a big hit (Aliens in Underpants Save the World, Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons, and Peekaboo Surprise Pops - Where's that Hippo? - HIGHLY recommend all of these, btw, they are so cute!).  I also made cupcakes (rainbow chip, of course, since it's the best, but unfortunately I couldn't find any rainbow chip icing so I had to improvise with even more sprinkles!) and Dan and I went to school about a half an hour before pick up so that we could have cupcakes and play.

Again with the cheeeeeeese!

Daddy was a big hit

Dancing to "We Are the Dinosaurs," Lilly's fav!

That evening, Dan's brother and his family came as well as my best friend from high school, Diana and her husband Brennan and their two boys, Logan and Emmett.  We let Lilly open the rest of her presents from us (a new Pete the Cat Book and a Lego Duplo set) and in typical Eaker fashion, I made a lasagna feast for dinner (which I was shocked that she would still eat, since she mostly "doesn't like" anything I put in front of her these days!).  She also got to open her presents from her cousins, Diana and family and Aunt Meredith and family.  Rotten girl!

I got to this point in the post and realized that I'm exhausted and can't face the bajillion birthday party pics that were taken at her party, which was the day after her actual birthday, so I made the executive decision to name this "Part 1" and call it a night.  :-)  Stay tuned and I'll try to post the birthday party pics at some point over the weekend.  We have L's 2-year-old well check tomorrow afternoon as well (we had to reschedule due to all of the crazy weather here!), so there will be a post with her 2-year stats at some point, too.  Lots to do, as always.

Almost Friday!

Sarah