Lily is 3 today!

More to say later, today we are celebrating!

10 Months

(The sign wasn't all wrinkly when we started the photo shoot.)

Abby's personality is really starting to come out now, which has been fun. We feel like she's really coming into her roll as a second born. She always wants to make sure that she's heard and that we're paying attention to her. If we're talking, she starts "talking" loudly so we start paying attention to her and so she can be apart of the conversation too. If we all laugh at a joke or something funny, she laughs along too.

Abby is still a great eater. Although we did find something she wouldn't eat this month--crepes. We're not sure why she doesn't like them since she likes similar things like pancakes, but she definitely didn't. She's started practicing eating with a spoon by herself. She thinks she's pretty special when she has one, kind of like she's doing something she's not supposed to. She's actually not bad at it, I think she'll pick it up pretty fast. She really eats quickly for not having any teeth yet. I'm not sure how much she chews versus how much she just swallows whole. She enjoys eating a lot though. She does still put everything in her mouth too. She can find the tiniest piece of paper on the ground and try to eat it.

Her sister and the cat are still her favorite things. She loves being near them and playing with them. Whenever the cat is nearby she wants to touch her. Abby and Lily play together really well. Lily finds Abby so much more fun now since she can do so much more. Abby just started crawling this month (March 23rd). I'm sure she'll have even more fun with Lily once she gets faster and can try and catch her.

She loves babies so much. Not actual babies, baby dolls. Lily has a doll that Abby became obsessed with. It's Lily's favorite toy right now too and Abby would get extremely angry if she could not have it. Lily often let her hold it just so she wouldn't get angry and scream. But we had to get Abby her own baby. And she loves it. She likes to carry it around with her and bring it wherever she goes.

The crazy amounts of snow finally left this month (but we still had a few more smaller snow storms). But we were able to start getting outside more and even had a few trips to the park. We now live walking distance from our favorite park so we're excited to start taking advantage of that.

Still cold, but we're at the park anyway! And having fun!

Abby getting her new baby at Target, and really upset that she can't get it out of the box.

Playing at our Friday playgroup, but with a tight grip on that baby.

Helping her sister cook up some dinner at Mystic Seaport.

Catching some fish in her net at Mystic. We spent a couple hours in this small part of this huge living museum. Their children's section was really well-done though.

St. Patty's Day at the park. It's hard to keep an eye on your kid when ALL the kids are in green.

Another day at the park, can you tell we've been cooped up all winter?

9 months

Another month into the history books. Abby's doing well. She's still scooting around but not crawling yet. She's spending more time up on her hands and knees and she always gets down on her stomach from a seated position. She really wants to crawl, she just hasn't quite figured it out yet. Some times this is very frustrating for her when she can't get what she wants. She's always getting into things, pulling on cords, finding tiny pieces of paper to put in her mouth, etc so I think we'll be in trouble when she really starts moving around. She can always find the one thing in a room that you don't want her to get into. This is especially difficult with Lily around. Lily always seems to have stickers or rips paper and leaves it on the ground and Abby is always there to pick it up and try and eat it.

Speaking of eating, Abby still doesn't have any teeth yet either. That doesn't mean she doesn't like to eat though. She loves to feed herself. She's not so fond of eating baby food but she loves to eat on her own. I think she has a problem with the texture because she always makes very strange faces when she's eating pureed foods. She does tolerate some things, like applesauce though. She mainly just wants to eat whatever everyone else has though. She doesn't like being the little baby that has to eat something different. She really likes cereal, like Cheerios and Kix. And when she's full she likes to smash everything she doesn't want to eat (especially peas and beans).

She likes to mimic other people. If I blow, she tries to blow back. If Lily makes a high-pitched screech, she makes one back. She'll keep this up for a while. And she's very proud when you tell her what a good job she did.

It's funny how different babies are and how things happen at different times. Abby was able to sit on her own earlier than Lily but Lily was crawling all over the place by Abby's age. Babies are different.

At the Peabody Museum

An out-take.

An interview with Lily

Mommy: What is your favorite show?
Lily: Nice shows. Dora. And I like Beauty and the Beast.

M: What is your favorite color?
L: Pink!

M: What is your favorite food?
L: I love all your food you make for dinner and breakfast and lunch.

M: What is your favorite animal?
L: Elephants, tigers. I think I love dogs, it runs to me so I can be happy. (mommy note: She told me this story several times that day, about a dog runny to her and how it made her happy.)

M: What are you really good at?
L: Playing with toys.

M: What are you not so good at?
L: I can't make animals.

M: Who is your best friend?
L: Avery, Skylar and the new Avery. (mommy note: Lily has recently met a second Avery.)

M: What is your favorite thing to do?
L: I like to play with Abigail.

M: What is the best thing about having a sister?
L: I just want to jump with Abigail. The End. There I told you a story. (mommy note: I think she was getting tired of my questions by this point.)

M: What do you want to do when you grow up?
L: I want to stay in my own house.

M: Tell me something that is really funny.
L: Want me to tell you a joke? A joke about America? yabababyaba yayayayaya

M: What is your favorite thing to wear?
L: I love dresses.

M: What makes you cry?
L: No nothing.

M: What is your favorite toy?
L: I love Rex and Woody. Rex really scares you. (mommy note: Two characters from Toy Story.)

8 months!

Eeyore has been missing since our move. Piggy is standing in.

Abby is 8 months old. That means we're 2/3rds of the way to a year. It's hard to believe. It feels like she's always been apart of our family and then it feels like she was just born at the same time. Abby is such a sweet baby. Her favorite things are: milk, Lily, the cat, tummy tickles, Gerber puffs (kind of like breakfast cereal), and 'talking' to other babies. She loves being around other kids and watching them play. She seems to get frustrated sometimes when she can't get up and run around with them.

Abby definitely recognizes her favorite people. She gets really excited when her sister comes into the room, especially when Lily comes downstairs after nap time when she hasn't seen her for a while. She's very excited to see her Daddy come home at the end of the day and wants him to pick her up. When she sees him she often starts bouncing up and down to get his attention. Another favorite is her buddy Ripley. Ripley is the little sister of Lily's friend Skylar and is 3 months younger than Abby. They like to sit next to each other and "talk". They actually have long conversations going back and forth with each other. But if Ripley leaves Abby gets very upset and starts to cry. She loves Ripley. She also likes to try and hold her hand (she likes to grab things that are moving in general and Ripley likes to flap her arms up and down when she talks). And of course the new cat. Abby loves the cat. She loves her so much she almost can't stand it. She squeals when the cat walks near her. She tries to reach out to touch her. She likes to grab her feet or her tail when they move. Fortunately Cookie mostly puts up with this.

Abby also learned her first sign this month. We're very proud of her. Her first sign is for "milk" of course, her favorite thing in the whole world. She also always says "mmmm, mmmm, mmmm" while she's doing the sign. She does kind of use the sign interchangeably with "Mommy" but usually when she wants mommy she wants milk too.

Favorite toys: Lily's baby doll, books
Favorite foods: puffs, anything she can pick up
Least favorite food: pureed baby food, cottage cheese
Favorite activities: tummy tickles, watching Lily play, yelling

Sitting in the bow of Papa's boat.

Abby sitting on Aunt Cat's lap in Papa's boat.

Practicing her standing at the library.

Abby's 8th month had a lot of snow.

And we moved into a new house! (Currently hiding behind a lot of snow).

Lily's dreams

Lily woke up from a nightmare last night. She woke up crying and was quite scared about it. She rarely wakes up at night and if she does she almost always goes right back to sleep on her own. She dreamt there were mice in her bed. She didn't want to sleep in her bed alone any more so she came and slept with me and daddy took her bed. In the morning she was still concerned about the mice so Daddy told her they were gone, she kept asking for more details and he told her he threw them out the window. The rest of the day they she kept bring the mice up saying that daddy took care of the mice and threw them out in the snow. She said they should go to someone else's house. She told me they were just playing in her bed but she didn't want them in there.

How do you explain a dream to an almost 3 year old? I told her it was like she was watching a movie that she was in but it wasn't real and the mice weren't really in her room. She just looked concerned and confused. She wasn't scared to sleep in her bed again though. We have no idea why she was thinking about mice.

7 months

Abby's 7th month was a busy one! Almost as soon as Thanksgiving ended, Chanukah began. We enjoyed our 8 nights of gifts. Abigail didn't know what was going on but she did like the presents and watching the candles burn down.

But most of the month was spent traveling, traveling, traveling. All the girls left for California on December 11th for almost a month in California. It had been over a year since we've visited (since we moved!) and Abby had never been there before. The grandparents and other friends and family were especially excited to meet her.

Traveling alone with 2 kids wasn't terrible. There were other families on all of our flights with much worse kids so that always makes my girls look especially sweet. Daddy did drive us to the airport and get all of our luggage checked in at Sky Cap so we only had to deal with our carry-ons in the airport. Unfortunately there isn't any way to take a direct flight from Connecticut to California, so we flew to Denver first, changed planes, then on to Sacramento and then ended with a 2-hour drive to Redding. What a long day. The flights were 3 1/2 hours and 2 1/2 hours. Abigail did great on her first flights (I think Lily had flown 8 or so times by Abigail's age). We were very glad to get to California. Apparently, California didn't want us to stay too long because we had nasty weather the whole time we were there. We saw the sun a few times and it was a good 20 degrees warmer but it was rainy and gray most of the time we were there.

The happy travelers.

In the middle of our trip (when we drove down to pick up Daddy) we stopped in Davis to visit Scott's old boss from the very first lab he worked in and to reminisce and wonder if we might live in Davis again someday. Then we headed to San Francisco for the night to meet up with old college buddies and a couple of Scott's UCLA lab mates. We spent a few hours at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Lily thoroughly enjoyed running around enjoying science and Abby mainly enjoyed yelling at another baby (she loves babies).

Abigail thoroughly enjoyed her first Christmas. She figured out the opening presents deal pretty quickly and loved ripping the paper. She also didn't mind the constant attention which meant being held a lot of the time. She definitely likes being the center of someone's attention at all times (middle child syndrome?). Grandma even got to babysit and mommy and daddy got to go see a movie (only the 2nd one in 7 months). We came back to Abby sleeping on Grandma and not in her bed. Big surprise, her favorite place to sleep is on someone else.

Just a couple days after Christmas we headed South to visit the other set of grandparents. Our flight from Sacramento to San Diego was very delayed; 4 hours for a 1 1/2 hour flight. We could have driven at that rate. Oh well, we stopped in Davis for lunch then went to the airport.

Southern California was also busy. We visited Disneyland, Legoland, Los Angeles and went sailing in our week there. Abby was mainly just along for the ride but she did enjoy seeing a few more babies: Addie in LA who's only a month older than her and another Addie who was visiting San Diego who's about Lily's age and Jake who's somewhere in between Lily & Abby.

Abby reading a book in the library.

Bundled up the the New Haven Christmas tree lighting.

They are all looking the right way, but no one is smiling.

Decorating the tree.

Big sister Lily, cousin Bella, and cousin Jacob.

Abby & her cousin Claire (almost a year old, but nearly the same size).


Abby opening her presents Christmas morning.


The craziness of Christmas morning.

Opening Chanukah presents at our belated party in San Diego.


Opening presents again.

Meeting Chip.

Looking for Nemo in a submarine.


Waiting for the parade to start at Disneyland.

Building with Legos at Legoland.

6 months

Abby has turned into a terrible sleeper. She doesn't like to nap in her crib at all. She'd rather nap on mommy or in her swing. She doesn't like going to sleep at night until someone is sleeping next to her. So this makes it difficult for her to get good sleep and for mom to get anything done.


Abby went to Maine this month. We visited our friends in Maine for Thanksgiving. Abby loved this because she loves watching kids so she had a blast just watching the other kids play. They also have two girls; Molly is 3 and Isla is 1. All the girls had a good time hanging out together.

All the girls in Maine.

Abby has also started eating solid foods. She's not so sure about it yet and doesn't quite 'get' the swallowing part. So far as much comes back out as goes down.

Abby's a big girl. She's already wearing 12 month clothing. She mostly needs the length in her legs and her torso. The arms are usually a little too long.

Hiking around Wintergreen Lake.

Abby enjoying the view.

At the town Christmas tree lighting in Maine. It was cold!

Halloween!

This year Lily was very interested in Halloween. Initially she wanted to be Dora, then she thought maybe a butterfly, then we saw a dinosaur costume in the store and that decided it for her. She's a dinosaur fanatic right now, so this was a perfect fit. Abby wore Lily's old mouse costume since her dinosaur costume got mixed up in the mail. It finally arrived 3 days after Halloween. Oh well, she made a cute mouse too.

We actually had pretty good weather. It was in the mid-40s when we went out around 6:30 PM. After one year in New England, this feels brisk but not too cold. We haven't even broken out the jackets yet. What a difference a year makes.

All ready to go.

We went trick-or-treating with Lily's two best buddies and their families, Avery and Skylar. Unfortunately, Scott stayed home to get some work done, but the three of us had a good time. We did about two blocks or so and almost filled one plastic pumpkin, so it was a successful outing. Abby enjoyed sucking on her costume and watching the kids.

Lily the T-Rex with Skylar as Tigger and Avery the monkey.

Lily was excited and actually said "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" at most of the houses. She wasn't so crazy about the houses that had strobe lights as a part of their decor and I had to carry her to the door of a house that had a spooky tunnel leading up to it. She also wasn't so fond of kids in masks, especially the Scream mask. I don't blame her really, that kid was scary.

She had a ton of fun though and thankfully she isn't too concerned about the candy yet so one Dum-dum sucker was enough for her for the night.

Abby's 5 months old!

We're quickly approaching a half year old already. I feel like Abby has grown up a lot in the last month. She's gotten so big for one but she's also definitely a baby now and not a newborn at all. I mostly welcome this change. I love her smiles and laughs and I love her talking. I love seeing her personality start to come out.

I think she's going to be our musical child. She loves music. She especially loves when we sing to her. She prefers our singing to listening to CDs, although she does like listening to those too. Lily and I spend a lot of the day singing songs and she really likes that. She especially likes her lullaby Give Said the Little Stream and this often makes her stop crying when she's upset. Other favorites are the ABCs and Twinkle, twinkle little star. She's also a burgeoning percussionist. She likes to use toys to drum on her high chair tray and sings along with her "music".

She has a very ticklish tummy. She loves to have it tickled and it makes her laugh really hard. She also likes playing games. She's figured out that if she drops toys off her tray someone will keep picking them up for her. She also plays a game with me when she's getting her diaper changed where she's kicks me in the stomach and then I say "Ow!" She starts laughing as soon as she starts kicking me and before I even react because she knows it's coming. But Lily has the easiest time getting her to laugh. Lily plays a little roughly with her and she loves it. Abby likes to keep an eye on Lily to see what she's up to and can keep her entertained for quite a while (long enough for mommy to take a shower). This has come in pretty handy many times.

She's also decided she doesn't care too much for sleeping. We've tried to establish a more structured bedtime routine where she gets dressed in her PJs, then she gets in Lily's bed with Daddy and Lily to read bedtime stories, then she nurses, then she gets in her crib to go to sleep. So far this hasn't worked extremely well yet. She'll stay in there for a little while but she hasn't actually gone to sleep yet. Her pediatrician said we should keep up the routine and she might get it eventually. We can hope. So we end up rocking her to sleep, often hold her until we go to bed, and then sometimes she'll sleep in her own bed for a few hours, or sometimes she'll just sleep in our bed the whole night. She's given up the co-sleeper. She's pretty much as big as it is now, so I don't think it's all that comfortable for her any more. Unfortunately she's not all that crazy about napping either. She's great at falling asleep in the car but she doesn't sleep as well at home. In the past week she has napped some in her crib so it's just something we have to continue trying and hoping soon she'll figure it out and decide it's OK to sleep there.

Milestones:
Wearing 6-9 months or 12 month clothing
Wearing size 2-3 diapers
Rolling from back to tummy all the time
Puts up with being on her stomach for longer and longer stretches
Can sit up for about 30 seconds unassisted
Loves being in her high chair or Bumbo chair
Talks a lot, often loudly
Has babbled once (ya ya ya ya ya)
Sometimes sings along with mommy
Really likes her feet and pulling off socks and playing with her shoes
Loves toys and sucking on them
Is sucking on her hands less than she used to, but still often
100% breastfed, but we plan on introducing solids this month
Loves a little stuffed lamb Lily picked out for her
Likes to scratch things to feel their texture

Abby helping pick apples

The whole family in New York City

Abby watching her sister at the Peabody

Abby is 4 months

She's a big girl. She's definitely getting enough to eat. She has lots of chubby rolls on her legs and arms. She's a really good eater and a decent sleeper. We've run into a bit of a rough patch where we're trying to figure out what she needs. Some days it's difficult to get her to nap at all. We had a few days in a row where she only slept for 45 minutes throughout the whole day (WAY too little sleep!). She falls asleep well in the car but when we get somewhere she wakes up pretty quickly. She likes motion and she likes background noise. Although the day after one of these 45 minute days I laid her down in her crib and she went right to sleep on her own without any fussing. So we're going to try that more. If she's tired but not too tired it might work more often. Generally she still likes to be shushed and bounced to sleep or nursed and rocked to sleep.

I am the center of her universe. I know this won't last much longer so I'm enjoying it now. She pretty much always keeps her eyes on me. If she's leaning against my chest while we're sitting in the glider she'll tip her head all the way back so she can see my face. If I'm not holding her she'll keep my eyes on me wherever I am in the room. Sometimes it's a little suffocating but it's nice at the same time. Pretty soon she'll be refusing to give me a kiss before she goes to bed at night like someone else in our house, so I have to soak up the attention while I can.

She has an extra ticklish tummy and it's pretty easy to get her to laugh. She really likes noses rubbed in her belly. Or anything Lily does. Lily is second only to mommy. Perfection for her is when mommy is holding her and Lily is jumping around entertaining her. She also loves bouncing around and flying through the air. I think she might grow up to be more of a daredevil than her sister. She's a little bit coy and flirty. While she's nursing she'll stop, look up at me to make sure I'm watching her, smile, then go back to eating. In general she just smiles and laughs a lot and is a very happy baby.

She loves music and she loves reading. She prefers Lily and I to sing to her. If she starts crying in the car Lily and I sing her songs and it often calms her down. Reading books also surprisingly calms her down. Even if she's upset she'll listen to a book. She likes to look at the pictures a lot and will pay attention to several books in a row.

She drools a lot and always wants to have something in her mouth. It's often her hand but she also likes to chew on burp rags and toys. I don't feel any teeth close to coming in so I think she just likes it. She seems interested in food and I think she's going to like eating. We're pretty committed to waiting until she's 6 months old to give her any solid foods, though we might move that up a week so her first meal can be Thanksgiving. Thus far she hasn't had anything but breastmilk. She's definitely thriving and she's finally eaten off all mommy's baby weight.

Wears 6-9 month clothing.
Wears a size 2 diaper.
100% breastfed!
Over 15 lbs (official weigh-in 10/14).
Rolled from her back to belly (9/30/10).
Smiling & laughing constantly.
Loves her sister.
Pays attention to her grandparents on Skype.
Starting to talk & practice making different sounds.
Lots of drool.
Starting to sit up, but quickly bends forward so her head touches her toes.
Loves looking at the trees outside.

Typical Abigail: happy & laughing.

The girls at a river/lake in Connecticut.

Aunt Kellie was here for most of Abby's 4th month. I think they both had fun.