Leah, Emma and Claire (and Jen and John)

Things are looking up since my last post. Leah was not good for most of this week. The whining and crying was out of control. Very similar to what she was like for the 4 months after Claire was born. Hmmm…is it obvious what might have been wrong? Yes, she was constipated again. The screaming over having a bath should have tipped us off but seriously she was so disagreable that it just got lost in our frustrated sighs of exasperation. Finally it dawned on me to think back to her pooping. I’ve been so good at keeping track but I guess I got lazy because she’s been so good. So yeah some Senokot and some cleared out bowels and our happy go lucky Leah is back just in time to enjoy the weekend.

The girls have not recovered from the clocks changing and 6:30 is the latest they sleep in these days. Three mornings this week Leah was up before 5:30. Knowing what we know now I might have been a little less frustrated, but all three mornings it just about put both of us over the edge. Yesterday she had us up at 5:09am. Last night John put a clock in their room and told them they could not come out til it said 7. They were up at 6:10 this morning but willingly sat in their room and talked and read when we reminded them about the clock. At 7 they started giggling and screaming that they could get up now. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. And no, I am not above messing with their clock once they get the hang of this.

In other news I am sick. Just a cold but my streak of good health is over. For the first time in nearly 2 years I can take good drugs. Unfortunately I don’t think me taking somethng that would make me even more tired than I am would be a great idea. John also has a sinus infection. He is booked in for sinus surgery in the spring. Claire is also stuffy and was really bad one night (I forget which one) at the beginning of the week.  Emma and Leah have a bit of a runny nose but that’s it.

The title of this post was inspired by the song the girls sing at school. “E is for Emma, that’s good enough for me. L is for Leah, that’s good enough for me”. I think it’s a silly song but I can throw out any letter and they know who in their class it belongs to. They have also started the holiday stuff at school. They really like Feliz Navidad - and they are about as good as their mom at mumbling the spanish words to the tune. I’m sure Dora can help with this one.

 While I’m thinking about it I should write that the girls are obsessed with Tim Hortons. They are going to be lifers for sure. They call it Timportans though. It’s cute.

It’s 7 o’clock and all the girls are sleeping. John’s got work to do and I’m done my book so I figured I come upstairs and do an update. I should probably just leave it, but who knows when I’ll have the time/energy again.

Today was one of those days where John and I look at each other and wonder what we’ve done to our lives. I think my bad mood started when I found out that today was not the end of our 6 weekends of double swim lessons (that we all go to now that stupid me introduced the concept of watching the other swim). Oh no, there are two more weeks of the torture. I am so done with weekend family swim time that I have pulled the girls out of the January session and enrolled them at the Y. They are now on the wait list for a weekday morning and they will go themselves. Once they are in, they will progress at their own pace and I will never have to endure the stupidity of trying to get them in the same class again. 

The Y was one of the bright spots in my week and I’m hoping it lives up to my expectations. I fully expect to be singing it’s praises to the tune of previous vonage and dvr ravings. In addition to the weekly swim lesson, the girls also have 1.5 hour unparented dropin programs they can go to pretty much every day of the week. Not only can I drop them off but I can leave the building. Some are in the gym and some are more quiet craft/playtime. They went to one program last week and they loved it. It was a bunch of running around with gym equipment - they were tired that night. The only part that I’m not so sure about is that it’s in a well to do area of Oakville. The first mother I spoke to was actually a Nanny, which was fine, until she started boasting about her charges and their exceptional abilities. She kept on referring to Mom which was a bit weird. “I told Mom that the Y programs were stimulating and an excellent place for charge C to burn off some energy while working on their social skills.” I guess when you’re a Nanny you can’t say things like “I got 1.5 hours away from the little buggers and I got to go to the gym…and get paid!!”.

 So today was tiring. After swimming we came home to our Christmasy house (we decorated yesterday) and the girls and John did a gingerbread house. After lunch I took Emma grocery shopping. Leah was in full whine today and it got so bad that we had to follow through on “if you whine again you’re not going to go see the Christmas lights with Daddy”. She stood at the door while John took Emma. She thought he was coming back (he might of had he not known I’d kill him) and when he pulled out of the driveway she was horrified. Sobbing, screaming “HE’S GONE, HE’S GONE AND LEFT ME, COME BACK DADDY!!!” - the whole production. Thankfully she was sobbing that she didn’t listen and Daddy left without her. She definitely got the lesson, whether or not she’s learned anything depends on her state of mind. I think that’s the most frustrating part of three - you know they know but sometimes they just can’t seem to work it out.

Sweet baby Claire is doing well. She is a very unpredictable baby. Just when I think I’ve figured her all out she changes it up. She stopped eating again mid week and I decided to just give her chunks of table food. She gobbles up bread and baby cookies so I know she can chew. She’s hit or miss but on Friday she ate an entire meal of chicken and sweet potato chunks. She is definitely more interested in table food than mush. We’ll see where this goes but I am enjoying putting stuff on her tray and letting her feed herself.

I have also completely weaned her. Nursing at night was beoming more and more frequent and I reached my breaking point. This week she is getting up to eat twice in the night at around midnight and 4am. She still stirs for her soother many times a night. It still sounds horrible but it is so much better than it was. I changed her formula last week and it did not go well. She was up for 2 hours in the middle of the night. I wasn’t sure why but with the green poop for three mornings in a row, I decided it must be something in the formula. She’s back on the old stuff now and things are running smoother…and browner.

Not much else to report. Our busy Christmas weekends start next weekend. The girls are very excited about Christmas this year and have already written their letters to Santa. We had a very small amount of snow last week and we had to go out and play in it. Leah lasted longer than the rest of us and played alone in the backyard for 30 mins.

The Halloween treats are officially gone. I’d say about 80% of them ended up in the garbage. In the end the only thing they finally stopped trying were the candy body parts. They never quite caught on that they were body parts (who buys body parts??!) but they figured out they tasted awful. The two of them are now very interested in treats after meals which can get a bit tiring. They’ll have two bites of dinner then say they’re so full their tummy might get sore if they take another bite - only to ask for a cookie in the next sentence. They’ve got a long way to go in learning how to be sneaky. Emma has also started saying that Daddy (or Mommy) let’s them do things. Some of it is just down right ridiculous. Yesterday she claimed John let her lick peanut butter off a steak knife. When I said maybe a butter knife she insisted it was the sharp knife.

That’s all I can think of. I’ll get some pictures up on Flickr. I used the continous feature for some pictures and got some funny series. Claire wrestling Emma and John making faces with the girls.

A little late this month. I blame her sisters and their 5 am wakeups.

Hair:
Same colour. Getting long enough to actually look scruffy. Sometimes it gets all frizzy at the back.

Eyes:
Same greeny brown.

Teeth:
She’s had all sorts of what I would call teething issues but still no 7th tooth.

Eating:
This month I daytime weaned her. With having visitors, and her sleep issues, and lack of appetite for solids, it just kind of happened. So far it has been a good choice as she now has a huge interest in solids and eats up at every meal - sometimes to the point where she’s too full for yogurt! 

She’s still what one might call behind in her eating. This month she finally started eating the puffs and cheerios. She has yet to try to self feed anything else beyond bread and will just stubbornly stare at me when I put it on her tray. She will flat out refuse any chunks I offer her on a spoon.

She usually has 3-4 bottles during the day. She’s falling into a bit more of a food routine which is easier to manage. I still breastfeed her at night but even that is becoming more consistent since she is eating so much better during the day. Her latest groove is eating twice a night - around midnight and 4am.

Sleeping:
We were in a really bad place with sleeping last month. Thankfully things have really improved. As I mentioned, she is now eating so much more during the day and she is much more settled at night. With the cold weather we are nearly always home for her to have a morning nap and she is getting better at working out her catnaps to suit her sisters afternoon schedules.

She is usually in bed and asleep by 7:45pm. She will stir once or twice before we go to bed but goes back over with her soother. She is still in bed with us - I’m not willing to mess with somewhat regular sleep quite yet. It’s also really really cold in the night and I remember why we ended up with her in our bed in the first place!

All that being said we did have a few nights this month where she was up in the middle of the night ready to party. On those nights one of us ended up downstairs with her playing. I traced it back to the chocolate I ate before bed. Unfortunately enjoying a half size Burnt Almond is not worth two hours of lost sleep. My children - slowly taking away my pleasures one by one!

Getting Around:
Big changes this month. She started pulling up not long after I wrote the last update. She is now a pro and can get back down. She is pretty daring and her favourite thing to do is pull up on the tub to watch her sisters in the bath. She is very persistent and I should get a picture of me trying to wash two little heads while straddling a baby between my legs.

We found out Claire could walk assisted by accident. Claire was playing at her table and Emma started pulling it. Sure enough Claire walked along behind it. We took her down to the basement and got out the hippo walker. Sure enough she can walk behind that too. I’m not sure how long she’s had this ability (bad mother!).

She is also very quick at crawling now. When she sees one of the four of us coming to get some contraband off her she takes off. I’m not encouraging her to do stairs but she can get up on my treadmill no problem so I’m pretty sure she could climb them. I take no chances with stairs and the gate is now closed or I have my two little watchdogs on her. 

Things she’s saying:
Moving on to ‘words’ this month! These are the things she says in context:
Mum mum - me!
ma ma ma ma ma  - she says this when she sees her bottle (which I call milk)
hibye - says when she’s waving 

Things she’s doing this month:
-waving
-putting her hands up to her head when you say peekaboo
-circling her index finger on the palm of her other hand when you sing round and round the garden
-getting excited when you say milk
-getting excited (and eating!) when she sees a bowl of food coming
-defiantly throwing food on the floor when she’s full
-crawling away quickly when she knows she’s up to no good.
-Screaming when you take something away from her
-looking for each family member by name
-walking behind walker
-saying mum, ma (milk) and hibye
-trying really hard to be where her sisters are
-following me around the kitchen trying to pull up on my leg
-crawling around after Emma and Leah while they scream she’s a monster coming to get them
-playing with the cat door
-heading for the bathroom if we forget to close the door
-gently touching things and using her index finger to feel and study things
-pulling books (and everything else she can get) off the shelf

Personality:
She’s a good baby. No change there. I still wish she’d sleep a little more but she is so incredibly easy to deal with during the day that it doesn’t bother me as much as it probably should.

Emma and Leah are still really good with her. Things have changed a lot during the past two months as Claire has become increasingly mobile and quick. She is always very curious to see what her sisters are doing and for the most part they are very accomodating. When they do get annoyed with her it doesn’t take much to get them to remember that she’s a baby and doesn’t understand.

I brought out some of the girls old stuff for Claire this month. They are always interested in her toys but this was the first time we had three children going for the same thing. When I told them to let Claire play with her toy I was quickly corrected with “Claire has to share her toys Mommy. We share with Claire so she has to let us have a turn.” Let’s hope that in 14 years they’re still teaching her nice things!

Ticklish Claire. She loves watching this video of herself.

Discovering her hidden talents.

It’s freezing outside. Lugging three kids around in the cold is awful.

Claire and Emma are snotty again. Nothing serious and hopefully it will stay that way. These preschool germs are out of control - I’m thankful I had my preemie twins first. The girls were walking and talking before they were ever as sick as Claire gets now. Of course I was also pretty anal back then about having them around sick people. Now I pretty much let everything go except when they try and suck on Claire’s soother to clean it.

Claire is doing well and will be 10 months later this week. She is doing all sorts of fun things but I’ll wait and add them to the update. One really fun thing she did was go 8 hours between feeds the other night. Sadly, at nearly 10 months, that’s a record (in fact she shattered her previous record). I’m not lying when I say I’m tired!

Emma and Leah are also doing ok. Leah was a bit of a handful when my parents were here and I am not convinced more than ever that she is a total pain in the ass when she doesn’t get enough sleep. She needs to be in bed by 7. If she stays up late she does not get up any later and is not pleasant to be around. After nearly 2 months of limited whining it drove me insane. Thankfully the last 2 days have been pleasant.

The girls continue to plough through the Halloween treats. They are allowed two treats a day. One after breakfast and one after lunch. It was originally dinner but trying to get them to go to bed on their sugar high wasn’t working. They are both drawn to the sugary crap but after a lick throw most of it in the garbage so they can try another treat. Sometimes it can take 5 tries before they find something edible. Lucky for John they aren’t at all interested in the chocolate and haven’t taken notice of how much of it goes missing every night. Today I went through the drive thru at Tim Hortons and they both asked for a tim bit (donut hole). I told them they could either have a tim bit or a treat. They both chose treat without another word. I was surprised I didn’t get at least one “pleeeeeeease mommy” but then Leah told Emma that if they had a tim bit and a treat it would be too much sweet stuff and their tummies would get sore.

This past weekend John was in Niagara Falls playing poker with his friends. While he was away we painted the girls room. I had my own ideas about what I wanted their room to look like but I knew anything that wasn’t yellow and pink wouldn’t be accepted. We ended up painting Emma’s wall pink, Leah’s yellow, and doing stripes on the window wall. It turned out really well.

While John was away I took over swim duty. I usually try to avoid loaded questions but I couldn’t resist asking each of them who they wanted to take them swimming next week. The answer wasn’t at all surprising but the delivery made me laugh.

Emma: “Mommy, I think Leah wants to go swimming with you next week”
Me: “Don’t you want me to go with you?”
Emma: “No. I want Daddy, but Leah will go with you. I know she will.”

Leah: “I want Mommy and Daddy to come with me next week”
Me: “But who do you want to get in the water with you?”
Leah:”Daddy. You can sit upstairs and watch.”

My mom and dad are off to Florida. Lucky.

Halloween is my favourite holiday. You can hype it up all you want and the only thing you have to worry about is how to deal with having a ridiculous amount of candy under the proud new ownership of your children. Thankfully the girls came out of their school Halloween party saying they could only have one candy at a time because a) their tummies would get sore and b) their teeth would get holes in them and fall out. I’m all for the fear tactics!

This year Halloween was an all day affair. We started off the morning carving our pumpkins. Thankfully Claire napped for this part so it was nice and relaxing. Afterwards they got washed and into their costumes and headed off to school for their party. They had a ton of fun and we got a full report of what everyone was wearing.

After school we had time for a quick dinner and then John and I took the three of them out (Claire lasted 30 mins) while my parents manned the door. I think starting out in the light helped a ton because the girls weren’t scared at all and there were some pretty scary houses. At different times they each ‘protected’ each other and it was really cute watching them race from house to house. It took them a bit to figure out they had to wait til the door opened to say trick or treat rather than yelling it right after they rang the doorbell. It was a warm night and they lasted nearly 2 hours.

Costumes were not a fight at all this year. Emma kept switching what she wanted to be, but she was sold on witch when my mom arrived with a hat and dress. She insisted she was a good witch. John’s mom got the girls yellow and red wings back in August and Leah has been set on being a yellow butterfly for a long time. There was no swaying her so we just went with it. In the end her costume was pretty funny but cute. Everyone thought she was a bee and she had no trouble correcting them. Once again their makeup was done by John. Claire wore (and filled) the giraffe costume that Leah wore on her second Halloween.

Butterfly, Witch and Giraffe.

Grumpy (with artisitic direction from Leah), Happy (by artistic direction from Emma) and C for Claire.