Hadley Marie: 15 Months

Now that Hadley has passed a year, I'll do quarterly updates until she turns two.

Since her birthday, Hadley:

Attended her first parade.  We went with gMa & gPa Sunshine to CMU's homecoming parade.  That's my sorority house in the background.

Went Trick or Treating for the first time.  She is so definitely an extrovert.  She was waving to passersby the entire time, often with both hands.  It was like her own personal parade.  Hi-larious!

Started walking.  The week before Thanksgiving she took off and never looked back.  She also weened about the same time.  It was her choice and it went very smoothly.  

Traveled with us to Chicago and met Aunt Jean and Uncle Matthew.  She had a cold and the beginnings of an ear infection and slept through most of the commotion.

Found Thanksgiving dinner to be most enjoyable.  She was incredibly suspect of the mashed sweet potatoes until I managed to get some on her tongue and then she was smitten.

Helped set up our feeble attempt at outdoor decoration for the Holidays.

Was WAAY not into Santa Claus.

Was simultaneously confused and excited by our little New Year's Eve celebration.

During this span, she also cut six new teeth; three of them within the space of a week.  Ouch!  And graduated completely from bottles, another smooth transition.

She took a little break from working on her vocabulary while she was perfecting walking, and is now back to jabbering away.  She's at that stage where she's stringing an unintelligible litany of gibberish with full expectation that we understand her.  Sounds more like Chinese, and I've heard "she she" or thank-you in Mandarin multiple times which only provided more evidence.  She's also displaying baby signs with proficiency - "more" being her favorite.

See you in three months!

Easter 2012

As proof that I stepped away from flag production to celebrate Easter with my family, here are a few from an egg hunt we took Arden and Hadley to at our local state park and then dying eggs at home later that day.  I have more photos from Easter morning with baskets and another egg hunt at our house as well as a visit to my brother's house for yet another egg hunt, but those are still in the camera.

Did you hear that some egg hunts had to ban parents from the course so there wouldn't be problems with aggressive adults?  Insane.  Parents were allowed to walk with their kids but asked not to handle the eggs.  The older kids were on their own but were on a different section.

That's Erwin in the background.  We have three cats, two dogs, and two kids three and under.  It can get cra-z at times!

Butterfly House

I took the girls to our local garden's Butterfly House this morning.  Hadley started out with a little snooze in the car to build her energy for the big outing.

These big butterflys were more than willing to perch on the visitors.  Arden wanted nothing to do with it, but Hadley didn't seem to mind.

It sort of looks like a big hair bow!

Still there!

And proof that Arden went along and I exist - here's a group shot of us; butterfly still included!  One of the staff from the house went to grab her camera because it was so cute and offered to take one of all of us with my camera.  I'm still getting used to handing my DSLR to people - everyone's so accustomed to being able to preview the image on screen that going back to the eye piece requires explanation.

I have done some sewing (other than nautical flag banners!), but Arden has been reluctant to model my creation even though she says she likes it.  Maybe tomorrow...

Entering in the spring challenge at:

Hadley's 1st Day at Daycare

My maternity leave has ended, so Hadley started daycare on Monday.  Since we had kept Arden there to hold her place and to keep her attending preschool we were all pretty used to the routine for getting out the door in the morning.  I don't remember why Arden was upset, but check out that pouty lip!

The 2nd was a holiday for most businesses so it was pretty quiet.  Both Dave and I had decided to take the girls to daycare and use the day to get some projects accomplished - One Month To Win It for me and building a wall between our breakfast nook and the office for Hubby. 

She did fabulous!  I had to refrain from overselling her to the teachers because I didn't want it to backfire, but she's such a good baby.  Everyone said she was super easy - drank her bottles down no problem, burped right on cue, slept really well, etc.  She's more excited and happy to have her diaper changed than any baby I've ever met.  Cracks me up!  Since there were so few kids there that day, Arden got to spend some time in the infant room with Hadley, which makes me feel happy that they both got to have a special day for Hadley's first day.

With Arden, Dave used a week of paternity leave and stayed with her the first week I returned to work.  This really helped us determine how she would react to bottle feeding for a whole day - she was a snacker and I didn't want to make the bottles too big and risk having them dump them out because they were out too long.  No worries like that with Hadley.

I work three days a week, so we sort of have the best of both worlds - the social interaction for the girls at daycare and some adult and intellectually challenging time for me, and then four days at home with my babies!

Hadley Marie: Two Months

Hadley is a little over two months!  I was waiting for her two-month well check to post this so I would have her updated measurements.  As of today, she is 14 lbs., 13 oz and 24" long.  That puts her at 97th percentile for weight, and 90th for height.  Looks like she's going to be tall, though not too surprising since I'm 5' 8" and Dave is 6' 5".

Here she is modeling some knits I had originally made for Arden; a little bolero sweater and a (raspberry?)beret.

She's turned out to be a really good sleeper, and has slept through the night on several occasions.  A typical night has her zonking out around 10 or 11 pm and waking around 3:30 am.  I'll get her up at 6 am to nurse and then back to sleep until after we get back home from taking Arden to daycare.  On days that Arden doesn't have daycare she'll sleep until around 7 or 8 am.  I'm pretty much caught up to her with breast milk, and only have to supplement with formula on rare occasions.

Arden continues to be enamoured with her little sister and likes to hold and feed her on occasion.  She offers her toys whenever I'm changing Hadley and makes sure she has a pacifier if she wants one.

Here's Hadley at one and two months for comparison.  She's not really as much larger as it appears, but I couldn't get the collage to be proportional.  My plan is to take a monthly picture of her on the quilt for the first year so we can watch her grow and change.

A Fair Isle Sweater for Big Sister

I did it!  I finally finished the second fair isle sweater for big sister Arden.

Here it is with the smaller version I made for Hadley.  I made this one size larger than the pattern was written, which involved a lot of figuring, so I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Don'tcha just love the fair isle part?  I wish it didn't go up all funnel-y, but I like it irregardless.  It works better on Arden because she actually has a neck.

I staged a mini photo shoot of the girls in their matching sweaters before Hadley completely outgrows hers.  You can see she's already testing the buttons...

I like this one - it looks like Hadley is tickling Arden.

Arden's such a nice big sister.  She likes holding Hadley and feeding her bottles.

Too bad Hadley was having some trust issues with letting her 2.75 year-old sister hold her!

I can't imagine how professional photographers manage to get two or more little ones with good expressions!  Do they swap out the heads in photoshop or something? 

So anyway, Arden's sweater should fit her through this season and likely the next, while Hadley's might fit through next week.  So sad. On the bright side there'll be more sweaters I had knit for Arden that she will grow into!

Hadley Marie: One Month

Our sweet little Hadley has reached her first milestone - one month!  After initial concerns about failing to gain weight after leaving the hospital, she's made up for it in fine form and at her one month check was 11 pounds, 4 ounces and 23 inches long.  Both measurements put her in the 97th percentile - quite a change from Arden who was 15th percentile for weight and was nearly three months old when she was Hadley's size now.

She's a super snuggler, and pretty quiet unless she needs something.  We started calling her "mouse" at the hospital because she was quiet except for some squeaks.  I've added "Gus", after the chunky mouse on Cinderella now that she's gotten into her eating groove.  She likes to fall asleep while eating, and then get really upset as soon as you try to put her down to sleep; begging for more.  This is a bit tiring at night when I get up to nurse her, but I'm getting the routine down a bit now.  She sleeps in three hour stretches and is creeping up on four hours, so that's not too shabby for one month.  I'm not able to keep up with her appetitie solely with breastfeeding and expressed milk, so we're supplementing a bit with formula.



She's doing great with tummy time; doesn't complain and lifts her head up really nicely and tries to scoot with her little legs - I'm thinking we have an early crawler on our hands.  She loves to look at lights and faces, and there's a tree outside our living room window that she could stare at for hours.  She's awake and alert most of the morning, and then begins a cycle of cluster feeding and snoozing from afternoon through night.

Big sister Arden is still doing amazingly well with her and as a bonus seems to have clicked with the potty thing and is now on her fifth day accident-free!  Let's hope I haven't jinxed things!  The key seems to be some cute panties I got from Old Navy and we let her pick a new pair of "big girl panties" at the end of each day without accident.

Trick or Treat

Arden's daycare had their Halloween party on the 31st, and I stuck around to help out and take some pictures.  This is the only one I can share without other kids identifiable in it, but it was a great party with lots of activities.  This is the first time I've seen Arden use scissors, and I thought she did really well.  There was a candy corn craft with stick on buttons, coloring, stickers, and a chain craft with the paper where you scratch off the black coating to reveal colors beneath - not sure if there's a name for those!

She was the only girl not wearing a princess costume with the exception of a duck and Minnie Mouse.  I like that she chose a more original outfit; I wonder how many more years she'll escape princess peer pressure...

Posing with our pumpkins while waiting for Daddy to get ready.  You'd think a man would take less time to get ready, but I can be out the door in less than half the time it takes Dave.  I guess I'll give him an allowance because he was also getting Hadley ready!

I just love her smile.  She kept the goggles on the entire time, which I think is really surprising for someone her age.

We took the sit n' stand stroller, which she's really taken a liking to.  Hadley was all snuggled up in her bundle me carseat snuggie.

Hitting her first house.  She did a nice job saying "trick or treat" and "thank you".  I'm not sure everyone could hear her, but she said it.

Dave dressed up as Gru, the super villain from Despicable Me to go with Arden's minion costume.  We had the bald head cover and he wore running pants and his pea coat.  I thought it turned out darn good for a free impromptu costume.  Only one group of fellow trick or treaters got Arden's costume, but we expected that.

Hadley slept through the bulk of the festivities.  I love the button nose and pouty lip!