Munchkin Update: 2 Years, 8 Months

Posted on January 28, 2014 by justeeni

This month Lydia found her way into Mommy and Daddy’s closet. There she found, not only some high-heel shoes, but all of Mom’s necklaces. She promptly put them all on, along with the shoes, along with a pretty dress she had asked to wear earlier that morning. Lydia loves dressing up. She loves being pretty. We’re just trying to teach her not to eat the dress up accessories!

Every night Lydia asks Mommy or Daddy to lay down on the “green bed” with her. The sheets on her bed aren’t actually green right now. They’re striped blue and purple. However, the original sheets were green, and even when those aren’t the ones on the bed, it is still the “green bed”. Anyway, Lydia loves to snuggle up with Mom or Dad before going to sleep each night. In the morning, Dan lets Lydia sit on his lap and eat two crackers while listening to Adventures on Odyssey online. So, each night we excitedly tell her all that is in store for the coming day and she eagerly asks, “Odyssey!? TWO crackers!?!”.

Lydia has also gotten quite excited about church and Hope Group (Bible study). Almost every day she asks, “Church?” and if the answer is a no, “Hope Group?”. She is learning to sit quietly through most of the “boring” stuff and then eagerly plays with her other little friends. She doesn’t really understand that it’s not always her turn to talk but we recently taught her what it means to close her mouth. So sometimes we tell her it’s time to “close your mouth” and she’ll make one of her “close mouth faces”. One of these faces is a closed mouth with teeth showing, a bit like a beaver. The other is, of course, sucking her thumb.

Lydia loves to copy Mom and Dad. Whether it’s feeding her baby dolls, wearing Mom’s clothes, or standing next to us at church and singing along, Lydia loves to be like us. On Sunday Dan was holding Abby in a cradle hold during a meeting at church. Lydia was wearing a headband of mine that she found in the diaper bag. She finished “feeding” her doll and then started holding it with the doll’s head on Lydia’s shoulder. After a quick glance at Dad she rearranged her doll in a cradle hold, just like Abby. It melts my heart to see Lydia wanting to be like us, and is extra motivating for us to be good parents and model our lives the way we want Lydia to model hers.

Lydia also started potty training (again) yesterday, but I’ll hold off any of those updates until next week when it becomes more clear if she’s really ready.

NICU Survival Guide

Posted on January 13, 2014 by justeeni

Now that we’ve had two babies spend time in the NICU (124 days between the two of them), I wanted to take some time to write a little guide for ourselves and anyone else who may find themselves spending any extended amount of time with a baby in the NICU.

Preparations

If you have a clue ahead of time that baby might come early, my best advice is to plan ahead as much as possible. Cook and freeze meals, the more, the better. Make sure you have everything prepared for when Baby comes home. Errands are no fun once Baby is born. Figure out a workable routine, find out if you (or your spouse ) can work from home, and set up any extra help or baby sitters.

When Baby Comes

When Baby is born, the first thing to do is take a deep breath and process a little. A new baby changes everything, but a new baby in the NICU really changes everything. Once you’ve had a chance to take a deep breath (and decide on a name!), it’s time to make some phone calls. Announcing the birth of you child is exciting and when Baby comes early it’s even more of a surprise to those on the other end of the line. When I called my mom to tell her that Lydia was born (nine weeks early), she answered the phone by saying, “What do you know about puppies?”. My sister’s new puppy had just hurt her foot and my mom was trying to decide if she needed to take her to the vet. It was pretty comical (later).

If your baby is healthy and doing well, considering the circumstances (just trust what the doctors tell you) make sure you start off every announcement with that information. And halfway through, you should say it again. And then, before you hang up or say goodbye, say it again. Most people don’t know much about premature babies. I certainly didn’t. And they don’t know how critical of a condition your baby is actually in.

Believe the Doctors

The first question everyone has about a preemie is, “How long will we have to stay in the NICU?”. Doctors don’t like to give out false hope or unrealistic expectations, and their estimates are usually pretty good. For Lydia, they guessed 6-8 weeks, and she came home in 6. For Abby, they guessed 8-12 weeks, and she came home in 11 1/2.

However, both our girls started out fantastically. Every day we came in to hear praise about how well they were doing. We let it get to our heads and figured, surely, they would be home sooner than the original estimate. But the NICU is a roller coaster with unexpected turns, and both times the doctors were ultimately right. When I asked Dan what his best NICU advice was, it was to listen to the doctors estimate and don’t doubt it even if your baby seems to be doing amazing.

The First Week

The first week always feels like a whirlwind to us. First Baby comes, then there are announcements and visitors. You get to watch everyone’s reaction to your news and share your story. But after a couple of days, and you head home from the hospital, you have to get a plan together for how you’re going to handle your NICU stay. When Abby was born, both my parents and Dan’s parents came down at different times to watch Lydia and help around the house while I recovered. We would have completely fallen apart without that help.

During that week I sat down on Excel and figured out a tentative schedule that allowed us to visit Abby twice a day. We had to see if Dan could get in eight hours of work each day. It turns out he could, but only by working six days a week, getting up early, and going to bed late. If you do this, don’t forget to account for drive time. It was not uncommon for either Dan or I to spend over two hours in the car every day between driving to work, the hospital, home, and Lydia’s Babysitter’s.

Also during the first week, my parents took me grocery shopping. We stocked up on food for the next four weeks. I also got to ride around Meijer in one of their little electric scooters.

It’s OK to Cry

When I have babies in the NICU, I cry. I cry when they are admitted. I cry when they are not doing well. And I cry, even when they are. It’s sad. It’s hard. Your baby is supposed to be at home or in your belly. Not in an isolette. So it’s ok to cry.

I talked to a NICU mom once who had been in the NICU for two months already. They had a long road ahead and I empathized with her. She smiled and light-heartedly told me it was “sort of fun” to have a baby in the NICU. I hid my shock, but in my mid-NICU-super-emotional state, I felt like she had no heart.

I saw another Mom standing at her baby’s isolette, just watching her baby sleep. She was crying. I always liked that Mom after that, because it was so obvious how much she loved her baby boy.

Now, I’m all for having a good attitude and looking on the bright side. But you don’t have to pretend everything is perfect. It’s ok to cry.

Feeding Your Baby

Feeding times are the times you really want to be in the NICU. This is when you get to change your baby’s diaper, take your baby’s temperature, and, once your baby is stable enough, hold him or her. Once babies are over a week old, they usually have their feeding time every three hours.

Mothers of preemies aren’t able to nurse their babies so they have to express milk with a pump to be fed to their baby through a feeding tube. Lactations consultants recommend pumping every three hours, around the clock. I found that it works best to pump one hour after Baby’s feeding time, so that you can be involved with the hands-on part and not skip a pumping time. I also found that, once the milk supply is established and if it’s plentiful enough, it worked well to pump an hour early before bed and and hour late afterward so that you could have a couple of four hour stretches during the night.

Dan and I like to be at the hospital at least twice a day. This way we could each get a turn holding the Baby, and we could often be there for rounds. We got a morning update on how the night went and an evening update on how the day went.

What about Meals?

I’m sure a lot of NICU parents just eat out for every meal during their NICU stay. Dan and I avoided this for two reasons. One: it’s more expensive. Two: It’s much less healthy. And during the chaos of a NICU stay, eating junk won’t make things any better but it can make things a lot worse.

To handle this issue I made a meal plan of fast, easy-to-put-together meals for one week. We ate things like spaghetti, rice and beans, curry with frozen veggies and a store-bought sauce, veggies and hummus, and chili (which was the most time consuming meal and I wouldn’t choose that one again). And we repeated it every week until Abby came home. We would go grocery shopping once a month or so to buy the non-perishables. For the fresh produce, we asked a family from church to buy our groceries once a week and deliver them to us at church. They graciously continued to do this for the entire time Abby was in the NICU.

We also had one night a week when we ate Qdoba using gift cards given to us by loving friends from church. Those nights were my favorite. No preparation and no clean up.

Babysitters

With Abby we had another challenge of taking a care of a toddler while visiting the NICU. It worked best for us to bring Lydia once a day and leave her with a sitter during our second visit. Our favorite way to do this was to take her in the morning. In the evening we would eat dinner together and tuck her into bed. Then the baby sitters would come and stay while Lydia slept and we went to the hospital. We had such loving sitters who also tidied our messy living room, cleaned our dishes, and did our laundry. Those nights were also my favorites.

We found that it was very important to spend one-on-one time with Lydia. Snuggling, reading, tickling, talking, and playing were very important because she was getting much less Mommy and Daddy time than before. Sometimes she would scream from her bed at night, but we realized it wasn’t because she was being “bad”, it was because she was having trouble coping with our being away so much. So on those nights I would snuggle her extra until she was ready to sleep.

Get to Know Parents and Nurses

One of the most therapeutic things Dan and I chose to do was to make friends in the NICU. Time in the NICU passes slowly, but having another baby to cheer on helps a lot. Talking to other parents is encouraging, distracting, and helps pass the days. We had a lot of fun celebrating when our friends would move to an open crib or take their first bottle.

It also helps to make friends with the nurses. They are the people you’ll see the most and they are the ones caring for your (very) little bundle. It’s a lot better to have friends watch your baby than strangers. We also discovered that nurses which we didn’t care for at first, grew on us as we got to know them.

Once we transferred to Mott’s, we had trouble getting to know our nurses. It was just a less-friendly atmosphere. So we made an extra effort and brought them chocolate. That helped a lot. We also befriended Russell, the parking lot attendant.

Take Naps

The house is trashed. The sink is full of dishes. The laundry isn’t folded. Take a nap.

Someone just called your phone. A delivery man knocked on the door. You didn’t get to shower today. Take a nap anyway.

Some things just have to wait. Sleep isn’t one of them. Life in the NICU is hard enough without being exhausted. And, even with naps you’re still not going to get enough sleep, so take them!

Turn to Jesus

Even if you follow all of my NICU advice and think of fifteen other helpful things, having a baby in the NICU is still rough. Our greatest source of strength and hope rested in Jesus Christ. God is, after all, the Great Physician, and even if doctors fail, He never will. He knit together that Baby in Mom’s womb, and He can keep knitting that Baby together out of it.

Many times, I felt like everything was falling apart, and I didn’t even know what to pray. But I remember riding in the car, looking up at the night sky and silently crying out, “Help me! Help us! We need Your help!” Sometimes the change wasn’t instant, but He always came. He always helped.

Times when I felt so down I knew no one could offer me any comfort and He would. Through a song in the car, through a sermon at church, or through some unexpected blessing, He would carry us along.

The Roller Coaster Must End Sometime

There were times when I seriously thought Abby would never come home from the hospital. I thought she would just stay there forever, not finishing her bottles, not gaining weight, not keeping her temperature up. It’s silly, I know. But that’s how it felt.

Life in the NICU is a roller coaster ride. There are unexpected turns, and many ups and downs. But, the roller coaster will end. There will be a time when you will stop taking those car rides to the hospital every day. There will be a day when you have time to wash your own dishes and do your own grocery shopping. It’s true, what they say, that there are no kindergarteners in the NICU.

I hope this post will be useful for some. Or perhaps it can give others a glimpse into NICU life. And if not, thanks for bearing with me. If Dan and I have another baby I know that we will, at least, find this to be a great help.

Bedtime Moments

Posted on January 6, 2014 by justeeni

I had no idea what a major transition it would be to move Lydia into a “big girl bed”. It’s not that she gets out of bed now. We were pleasantly surprised when Lydia learned her very first night that she can’t just get out of bed whenever she wants. No, the major transition is that Lydia is becoming a very big girl.

One of the perks to tucking Lydia in at night now is that one of us can lie down with her for a while. Usually Dan stays with her for a few songs on the cd we play for her as she falls asleep. A few nights ago, however, Dan told me I could stay with her.

“Mommy come? No room?” Lydia would ask and I said, “Nope, I’m going to lay down with you for a while.” She snuggled up next to me, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and grabbed onto my hair with her free hand. She asked me to put the “baseball blanket” on her and the “pink one” on myself. We sang and hummed some songs. Then we started chatting.

When Abby was in the hospital a couple of different people from church would stay at our house some nights while Lydia slept. Even though we tucked her in before we left, she still knew that we were leaving. By December she was no longer happy when Mommy and Daddy left. So after Abby came home Lydia would often ask at bedtime, “Mommy, Daddy stay?” with excitement in her voice. Sometimes she still does.

As we lay in her big girl bed she asked me again, “No leaving? Mommy stay?”.

“Yep, we’re staying here tonight. We’re not leaving.”

Lydia smiled a satisfied smile and stuck her thumb back in her mouth. “Mommy tired?”, she asked me.

“No, but Mommy has a headache.”

We had a short conversation about my headache and what I was planning to do after I left Lydia’s room. One of the things I told her was that Dan would probably rub my shoulders, because that helps my head stop hurting. I showed her what it meant to rub someone’s shoulders. Lydia listened intently, all the while holding my hair and sucking her thumb. When I’d finished, she reached up with both hands and started to rub my shoulders.

After I left the room I couldn’t help thinking that, when Lydia grows up and moves out, these are going to be the moments I miss the most.

Munchkin Update: 2 Years, 7 Months

Posted on January 3, 2014 by justeeni

Many times when Lydia was a baby, I prayed that she might grow to be a good helper to me, and lately I have seen the effects of that prayer. Lydia loves to help! One of her most common phrases is, “Help me?”, which really means “help you?” but we’re still getting the pronouns all figured out. Her very favorite way to help is when I wash dishes. She sits on the edge of the sink with her feet in the water and takes a sponge and washes away. The only unhelpful thing about it is that she doesn’t every want to stop! Even when there are no dishes to be done, she still asks, “help dishes?”.

Lydia also helps me unload the dishwasher (she hands me the silverware, one piece at a time as I put it away), fold laundry (she’s learning how to fold wash cloths), and vacuum (she pushes the on/off switch). She likes to hold Abby and run to get her clean clothes or put dirty clothes in the hamper after Abby spits up. When we tuck her in to her new “big girl bed” at night she often yells out the door as we leave, “help me Mommy?”.

Whatever Lydia does, she does it with all her heart. Often while she is playing alone I will hear loud yelling from her room. I rush in only to find her holding a book out in front of her and singing at the top of her lungs. She makes up her own songs, sings some that she knows, and mixes up the words of others. Some of our favorites are:

YES! Jesus loves me, the Bible made me so

and

Jesus, Jesus PRECIOUS Jesus, oh for God so loved the world

While it was on the radio, Lydia would ask for Christmas music every bed and nap time. Now that there’s no more Christmas music, we play a cd of children singing hymns and Bible songs. She knows each song from the beginning and will frequently burst into song at the dinner table or in the car.

When she’s playing, Lydia often gets so absorbed in whatever she’s doing that she doesn’t hear when we talk to her. She’ll come out of her room decked out with a toy tutu, purse, sunglasses, and toy keys and say “bye! see ya later! love you!”. She is all girl and loves accessories and sparkly things. She has two pretty Christmas dresses from Nana and wants to wear them every single day with her silver sparkly shoes. Because she loves to be pretty, Dan and I have been teaching her the two things that make her the most beautiful: to obey, and to smile.

Lately Lydia will occupy herself by removing every single tupperware container from the cupboard. Then she’ll climbs in the cupboard and yell “HIDING!”. If I am ever looking for something and I ask Lydia if she knows where it is, she either says, “hiding”, “all gone”, or “in the closet”.

Lydia keeps us smiling and laughing. Even when she gets in trouble it’s impossible to stay mad at her when she gives us a smile and a hug. Some of our very favorite things she’s been saying lately include “swabagee salsa” (spaghetti sauce), and “silly goose!”.

Every night as we tuck Lydia in to bed, she asks Mommy, Daddy, and Abigail for a hug and a kiss. Occasionally throughout the day she’ll run up to one of us, grab our legs and say, “I love you Mommy/Daddy!”. She is getting better at sitting quietly for Bible time and often repeats phrases that catch her attention after Dan says them. After doing this for a while she started to perk up every time she heard us say “Jesus Christ”. Then, one Sunday she caught our Pastor say “Jesus Christ” and she burst out, “Jesus Christ?!?” with excitement. It was as if she was thinking, “Hey, Pastor Paul talks about Jesus too!” Lydia also likes to answer his rhetorical questions loudly enough for the people around us (and sometimes the whole church) to hear. Perhaps we should teach her to say “Amen” whenever she gets excited so she’d be less distracting!

Abby Update: 33 Days Old

Posted on October 15, 2013 by justeeni

Weight: 3 pounds, 10 ounces
Feedings: 33 milliliters fortified to 24 cal every 3 hours given over the course of 30 minutes

I have big news to announce in today’s update: Friday afternoon, after the last update was posted, we returned to the NICU to find out that Abigail had graduated to Special Care! Furthermore, on Saturday morning we walked into the NICU to find Abby out of her isolette and into an open crib! I had been feeling a little down, praying for some sort of obvious movement forward, as we walked back into the hospital on Friday and the Lord graciously heard my prayer and answered.

On Saturday, Abby stopped receiving caffeine in her milk, but she is continuing with her sodium. Her foot also seems to be improving as she is able to move it into a “normal” position when you tickle the outside of her left foot and calf.

The next big hurdle for Abby to overcome is learning how to eat. Right now she gets to try to nurse once a day. Once she is making progress there, eventually the doctor will put in orders to start offering her bottles for her feedings. As eager as I am for that order to be put in, I know it will probably be a while (at least days, probably weeks) before that happens.

Mini-Munchkin Update: 28 1/2 Months Old

Because I haven’t had a chance to post Lydia’s monthly update, I thought I would post at least a mini report.

Navigating the NICU with a two-year-old is no easy task, but Lydia is a sweet big sister and is handling everything remarkably well. As I’ve noted before, she just loves Abby, and all of the staff in the NICU absolutely love her. Her social skills (which were already great) have been growing as she interacts with new nurses, doctors, and techs every day. There is a “parents pantry” in the NICU with juice and some snacks for parents and siblings of NICU babies. In particular, they have these mini water bottles which are just Lydia’s size. Every day we take one trip to the reception desk and ask to be let into the pantry to get a water bottle for Lydia. Recently she became brave enough to be the one to ask “water bottle?” and even more recently she’s been able to say “pantry?” to the techs who have the access to unlock the door.

Lydia seems to be getting smarter and smarter, and her vocabulary has been growing in leaps and bounds. Her favorite phrase is “I do it!”, which she gets from her Daddy, who often says: “I’ll do it!”. Many days a weeks she spends time with a family from church and when we pick her up she’ll tell us what she did while she was there: “toys!”, or “bunny”, or “treats” (when she fed the cat treats). She has also started praying with our help and sometimes on her own will pray, “Dear Jesus, help…” but then she gets stuck. At the end, if we say “In Jesus’ name”, she’ll finish with the “Ah-men!”. She does tend to get her pronouns mixed up at the moment and often asks us to “read to you?” or “help you?” (instead of “read to me?” or “help me?”). Or, if she wants you do do something that she was doing, she’ll say “me!”(instead of “you!”).

There’s a little wooden chair in the NICU that Lydia loves to sit in. It is painted blue with a big frog on the back. On the front, underneath the seat are some smaller frogs painted in a row. This morning, Lydia surprised us by bending down, pointing to the frogs one at a time, and counting them, “one, two, three, four, five”. We’ve never had a two-year-old before to compare mathematical skills, but Dan and I were impressed. I’ve also been practicing John 3:16 with Lydia for many weeks and she’s starting to memorize parts of it. I have a cute video of her saying it with our help, and one or two videos of Lydia and Abby in the NICU, so hopefully I’ll get those posted to my Facebook page soon.

(End of mini-Munchkin update)

As for Dan and I, we are learning that this lifestyle is not sustainable. It’s just not possible to do all of the necessary things in a day and still get a decent amount of sleep. On top of that, while we do get in three meals a day, they are often spread out. Many days I leave the hospital torn between my need to eat and sleep. If only I could do both at the same time!

Dan especially has had so much stress. On Saturday it got to be too much and, as he says, his brain exploded. He was bending over and suddenly got dizzy. For the rest of the weekend he would occasionally get dizzy and he had a headache and just felt altogether unwell. He has adopted my coping mechanism of not thinking about anything, and that seemed to help a little over the weekend. Now, however, he’s back to working, and that requires the use of his recently “exploded” brain.

While my brain hasn’t “exploded” just yet, my memory is struggling. If I don’t say what I’m thinking the moment I’m thinking it, I can’t remember what it was. Sometimes I forget my thoughts while I’m saying them and have to stop, think, and be reminded what I had just said before I can figure out what was just happening. In short, we’re tired and ready for Abby to come home! That, and Dan says we need a vacation. We continue to think, “this has got to get easier when Abby comes home”, and I’ll be sure to let everyone know which is easier when we get to that point.

Praise the Lord
We are thanking God for:
-Abby’s recent steps forward: coming off of caffeine, moving to Special Care, and graduating to an open crib
-continued weight gain: slow but steady
-Abby’s alertness, our nurse today said she’s the most alert baby she’s seen

Please Pray:
-for Abby to continue her steady progress and gain more weight
-for Dan to be able to relax and recover in spite of all the stress
-that we won’t completely lose our minds before Abby comes home!

Muchkin Update: 2 Years, 3 Months

Posted on September 6, 2013 by justeeni

When Lydia wasn’t yet two years old, I started writing down monthly “reports” describing the latest things she was learning, saying, or doing. I thought it would be fun to keep a record of how she was growing and changing, and to be able to look back with her later and show her how much we enjoyed her and all the precious things she brought into our lives.

Lydia has made some huge strides in the past month, language-wise! Some of our favorites include her pronunciation of “All finished” when she’s done eating (sounds like “All fiscious!”, and her latest expression of independence, “I do it!”. She also asks me every morning, “Odyssey? Blankey? At Stef?”, which translated means, “Are we going to listen to Adventures in Odyssey while I sit on the blanket and then watch an Aunt Steph vlog?”. The answer, on most days, is “yes”. Whenever we listen to music in the car and the cd gets to the silent gap in between tracks, Lydia almost always asks, “More?”

Lydia is back to loving her books. She often asks us to read to her (“Book?”) and can even identify some of the books with a name. A favorite is called Grandma’s Are for Giving Tickles, which she just calls, “Gramma”. It has flaps, and she is starting to memorize, not only what picture is under each flap, but the writing under the flaps as well. So, when I open the hop scotch flap, she says, “No cheating!” When I open the flap that shows a fireplace scene with hot cocoa, she says, “Cocoa”. And when I open the flap where Grandma is sending grandson out to play in the snow, she says, “Have fun!” She also enjoys reading her First Words book and identifying an impressive number of the pictures inside. She has another book with flaps, but it also has buttons that make sounds. For each flap there is a picture that matches a picture on a button, and Lydia can successfully match every flap to the corresponding button without help.

Lydia loves the playground. We are sad to think that, once we move, we will no longer be within walking distance of a playground. So I’ve been trying to take Lydia there extra to get some time in. She just recently started going down the tunnel-slide by herself, and has even done one of the bigger twirly slides. Recently Lydia went down the tunnel-slide 13 times in a row! I noticed that she followed the exact same routine every time.

Lydia sits down on the slide, on her knees.
Lydia: Sit down!
Tries to pull her feet out in front of her.
Lydia: Feet first!
Gets stuck.
Lydia: Stuck!
Gets unstuck
Lydia: Ready?!
Goes down slide. Gets up. Looks up the slide.
Lydia: Me?
Dan: You want me to come down?
Lydia: Yeah
Dan comes down slide.
Lydia runs back around to the spot where Dan lifts her up to the top.
Lydia: Again!

I don’t know if it’s an age-thing, a phase-thing, or a personality-thing, but Lydia really likes repetition and routine. (Maybe she takes after me!) It will be fun to see if she grows out of it or if it sticks with her.

As always, Lydia is super sweet. Yes, independent, feisty, stubborn, but super sweet. She’s almost always smiley and giggly, doesn’t get down even if others around her are, and loves meeting and watching other kids at the park. Sometimes, without a nap for a couple of busy days, she’ll get emotional and whiney. But as soon as she gets her rest, she’s her perky, happy, giggly self. She loves playing games, being tickled, pretending, helping, cuddling when she’s sleepy, and watching baseball. At the end of her Grandma book, the last page talks about giving Grandma a big hug and Lydia will say “Big Hug!” then turn and give the reader a big hug (and anyone else nearby). And this week, for the first time, when I tucked her in for a nap and said “I love you”, she shouted back “I luff oo!”.

Munchkin Update: 2 Years, 2 Months

Posted on August 9, 2013 by justeeni

Just like those early days in the NICU, Lydia is continuing to display her feisty spirit. She is very stubborn, very strong willed, and more and more, she knows what she wants. We’ve been working, though, on sitting still. Each morning we listen to Adventures in Odyssey online and Lydia loves to sit in my lap and listen. Recently I started putting her on her blanket for Odyssey each day, which is much harder for her. She usually cries and says, “Mommy, lap?” over and over for a while before finally getting distracted and playing with a toy or lying down and sucking her thumb. So, I have been rewarding her for blanket time with some time on my lap! When Aunt Steph has new videos up on her vlog, we’ll watch one of those as the reward. Often Lydia will wander over to me and ask, “At Steph?” She’s also been sitting in my lap when I do my German practice on duolingo, and when it gets to be that time (just after lunch), she’ll ask “Guh-man?”

Lydia loves raisins (which she pronounces “Reeses”) and peanuts (which she calls “cookies”) and watermelon (which she calls “gamma”). It’s a good thing we don’t have other people feeding and watching her or she’d be eating peanut butter cups and cookies and no one would know what to do for “gamma”!

Lydia also loves having Daddy home. (I don’t blame her!) She’ll often say to me during the day, “Daddy at wuhk?” When I answer in the affirmative she sometimes asks “home?” When Daddy is home, Lydia loves to play outside with him at the playground (where he often challenges her to hang from the rings all by herself) and exercise. She’ll copy him as he does push-ups or sit-ups and sometimes she sits on his back to help him get more of a workout.

Despite some battles we have to fight with her stubbornness, Lydia is still so sweet. When we ask her to, she can go get her hair brush from the bathroom drawer and put it away, throw away diapers in the trash, and fetch people their shoes (which she does on her own when she wants to go outside). When she gets hurt she will point to the painful area and say “it huhts” or, better yet, “it huhtses”. When I lay her down for a nap, she rarely goes to sleep without a little crying first. But even through the tears, she’ll give me a kiss and say “Bye” as she waves. She has started saying “See ya!” to Dan when he leaves for work, and also waves and says “bye” when we tuck her in at night. She’s picked up on some of the things I say to her. For example, when I have to quickly leave the room to do something I will point to her and say “I’ll be right back.” It’s pretty adorable to see her point at me and say confidently “All back!” before leaving the room.

Potty Training Update

Posted on July 26, 2013 by justeeni

I had no idea that potty training was such a big deal! Thank you to all who have given advice, ideas, prayer, and encouragement since I recently mentioned our first attempt at potty training Lydia. Here’s the full report on how the week went.

Day 1

The method we decided to use involved letting Lydia go diaper-free all day for three days. Because of the current setup of our home, this required Lydia and I to stay in the bathroom all day, whenever she was awake. After breakfast we headed to the bathroom and brought the laptop with us. To pass the time we would listen to Adventures in Odyssey, watch my sisters latest vlog posts, and click through Swagbucks videos (Swagbucks is a topic for a whole different post, but if in the meantime you happen to decide you want to join, please feel free to put me down as a referral). The day wasn’t as long or difficult as I had been dreading, but it wasn’t as successful as I had hoped.

Lydia either doesn’t go to the bathroom very often or she was holding it in. She had about four accidents all day. Each time I would quickly put her on the potty and explain that we go in the potty. By the end she was saying “woops” if she had an accident and even said “Potty!” once right before she had another accident later.

For lunchtime, naptime, and once Dan got home, I put a diaper on Lydia and she promptly went in the diaper, like she had been saving it up all along.

Day 2

Tuesday morning was similar to Monday, but the time passed more slowly. Much to my dismay, Lydia had her first accident while I briefly stepped out of the bathroom to bring her some watermelon. Later, she had her first real success, but she had been asking to sit on the toilet for so long, I’m not sure she really realized when she actually had to “go”. Nevertheless, we celebrated with a short break outside and some raisins, which Lydia absolutely loves.

Lydia stayed in the bathroom for lunch and ate while sitting on the toilet. She went in the toilet again, but she had been sitting there for a while and I’m not sure she was actually learning anything. She filled her diaper at naptime. When Dan came home we decided to continue the training by just putting pants on Lydia without a diaper. She wet herself during dinner but obviously was unbothered because she had no reaction whatsoever and sat there until she was done eating and we cleaned her up.

Tuesday night was my breakdown. I didn’t see any progress, was questioning if I was doing it “right” or just confusing Lydia by putting the diapers on her occasionally. I was bored in the bathroom and not looking forward to another whole day of the same.

Day 3

Wednesday actually seemed like Lydia was making a little progress. She would say potty throughout the day, sometimes right before she went and sometimes when she didn’t appear to need to go at all. She was walking around like she had to go for long periods of time and I suspect she was just holding it in. This day she started crying when I put her on the potty and kept asking for me to put a diaper on her. We were both unhappy by the time Dan got home.

Wednesday night we had Bible study so it was on with the diaper for the rest of the night and Lydia seemed very pleased.

Where do we go from here?

While we’re not declaring our three-day attempt a complete failure, it also wasn’t all we had hoped. We suspect Lydia is (at least developmentally) too young to recognize very far ahead of time when she needs to go. However, we don’t want to confuse her by completely throwing in the towel. So lately I have been asking her throughout the day if she needs to go potty and then sometimes I put her on the potty regardless of her answer.

What do you think?

I have heard from a lot of moms already, but what do you think? I guess I’m not exactly looking for criticism on what we have already done (I’m sure there were lots of points where we did it “wrong” and could have done a lot better), but rather some ideas about what to do next. We’re really ok if Lydia doesn’t potty train for many more months, but don’t want to confuse her by just going back to diapers and forgetting the potty altogether.

The Seep Game

Posted on July 8, 2013 by justeeni

We just got back from our vacation up North (read more about that soon) and I had very long to-do list for the day. But when I picked Lydia up out of her high chair after a late breakfast, she asked, “Seep?”. Seep, or sleep, is a game Lydia likes to play where we snuggle up on the couch together and pretend to sleep for a while. So despite my long to-do list, we headed over to the couch.

“Bankie?” Lydia asked, and we pulled up the blanket and enjoyed a few minutes of the seep game. To-do lists can wait. It’s only a matter of time before this little munchkin no longer enjoys the Seep Game.

MI Taylor Family

We live in Michigan.

Category Archives: Lydia Hope