Visit with Grambo and Grandy

Frank's Dad "Grambo" and his stepmother Denise "Grandy" just headed home from a wonderful week-long visit.  They were a big help keeping Frankie entertained, helping with Liliana, and even babysitting one night so that Frank and I could enjoy a wonderful night out at the Four Seasons.  We are so thankful for them allowing us to go out and have a relaxing night without the kids!  While they were in town, we went up to the club pool and we took the kids to the Fort Worth Zoo and the Klyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas. We have been to that park the past two Sundays, and we love it.   There are fountains for kids to splash in, an awesome playground, and a bunch of food trucks and picnic tables for lunch.  I think it is awesome that such a cool place exists in the middle of downtown Dallas.  Grambo and Grandy have been visiting us a few times a year ever since Frankie was born, and he really loves spending time with them.  They always bring me a custom box of my favorite See's candy, and this time they also brought Frank his favorite salami from San Francisco.  We love having them come visit, and we are excited to see them again in November.  Here are some pictures from their visit:

Pushing limits

Yesterday, while my infant was behaving like an angel, my toddler was driving me absolutely insane.  Frankie has always pushed my limits, but lately he has been going above and beyond to test me.  For instance, yesterday at nap time, I put him upstairs in his room, read him a couple of books and told him two stories, and then told him he needed to stay in his room.  I left the room, and he ran outside and wanted me to go back in.  We repeated this scenario about 50 times over the course of the next hour, only add in him poking me in the eye, kicking me in the face, and a whole lot of screaming and crying. I try being nice, being firm, being mean, offering rewards for being good, taking away favorite toys for being bad, ignoring him, offering extra love....nothing seems to work.  The only way I finally got him to stay in his room was when I let him stand at the gate at the top of the stairs, screaming, crying, and shaking the gate, for about 10 minutes until he wore himself out.  He is about to break that gate though, so that is not really the best or safest option, and I really need to figure out a way to get him to quietly go down for his nap when he is at home.  Even after this huge ordeal, he still did not take a nap, but at least he stayed quietly in his room for two hours.

About an hour after he woke up, we had another battle that resulted in a two-minute time out that lasted thirty minutes because he would not stay in time out unless I held the door to the room closed for the entire two-minute period.

I have been wanting to keep Frankie home with me and Lily for a few days each week for the rest of my maternity leave, because I think it would help him get through his issues with the baby, and it would help mend our relationship and reassure him that Mommy is still here for him, too.  However, on days like yesterday, I cannot imagine spending every day at home with both kids.  I think he would drive me absolutely insane.  I know that this phase too shall pass, but I also know that this is my only chance to get to spend this quality time with both kids before I go back to work, and I really wish that Frankie was making it a little easier to want to spend this time with him.  He is so, so sweet to Lily, and I know he loves his sister, but I also know that he is going through a hard time with the whole transition from one to two kids.

My girl (7 weeks)

Baby girl is seven weeks old today!  On the eve of her seven-week birthday, she has been sleeping since 8:30 last night....which means she has been sleeping for 10 hours and counting!  We need to figure out how to make this a regular occurrence.  She has been sleeping a nice 6-7 hour stretch followed by a 3-4 hour stretch the last few nights, but this is the first time she has slept all the way through the night.  Of course, she is mostly sleeping in her swing, which is not ideal, but I feel like we might as well keep her in there for now since she clearly prefers it to her crib.  Mommy got her first full night's sleep in months, which I am very excited about!

I finally got a few pictures of me with my sweet girl this past weekend.  Mommy is always the one taking all of the pictures, so it was nice to be in a few for a change.  I have been spending the majority of the last seven weeks holding this sweet girl, and it has (mostly) been wonderful.  She is very smiley, and she is starting to giggle.  She makes a lot of noises, and she has a very expressive face.  I always think she is trying to tell me something.  She is having more awake time most days, and although she definitely still has fussy periods, she also has some wonderful happy periods each day too.  

She has already been to parks, pools, the mall, the zoo, and on two road trips.  She is a little trooper and she is the perfect addition to our little family.  

Sibling love

This morning I snapped a few precious pictures of my two little sweethearts.  Frankie always looks so sweet in all of the pictures I post, and this is because he truly is so sweet to his little sister.  He is always giving her kisses, hugs, and wanting to know where she is and how he can make her happy.  I know that her arrival has rocked his world, but I am so excited to watch their relationship grow.  I know that he is going to be a fantastic, protective, and loving big brother, and she is just going to adore him.

Six weeks

Time continues to fly on by, and Miss Liliana is six weeks old today.  At six weeks, Lily is still not on any sort of predictable schedule during the day, which makes getting things done difficult.  Sometimes she eats a 4 ounce bottle, other times she will eat 2 ounces, and sometimes she will go for 6 ounces.  She will sometimes take a 30 minute nap, and other times a 3 hour nap.  I never know what time she is going to wake up in the morning.  However, the one semi-predictable thing is that she almost always wakes up between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning, no matter what time we finally get her down to bed.  This means that she is typically sleeping one 4.5 - 5.5 hour stretch at night, which is great!  However after that stretch of sleep, she goes back to being very unpredictable.  Sometimes she eats an ounce and wakes up an hour later, and other times she will chug a 4 ounce bottle and wake up three hours later.  We usually put her down to sleep at 8:30 p.m.  Sometimes she goes directly to sleep with no problem, but much more often she needs to be re-consoled and put back down multiple times before she finally goes to sleep for a long stretch of time.  Frank never did that--once he was asleep, he was good to go.  It is really frustrating for me to have to go back upstairs and put her back to sleep over and over and over again.  I really want her to learn to fall asleep on her own, or at least to stay asleep once we put her down.

Lily is usually the most interactive and happy in the afternoon/evening.  She loves hearing Frank's and Frankie's voices.  Frankie loves to give her kisses and hugs and to make her happy.  Both of them hate to hear her cry, and she usually has one big crying fit around dinnertime.  Since starting this new formula she seems to be crying less, and she is definitely better when drinking her bottles.  However, she is still having some crying spells and she is still having problems with lying flat on her back, particularly to sleep.  I really don't want her to get dependent on sleeping in the swing, but right now the swing is my lifesaver, and it is the only way she will nap for any length of time during the day.

If I could use three words to describe Miss Lily at six weeks, they would be:  particular, demanding, and beautiful.  We love you so much baby girl, and I cannot wait to see your little personality develop.

I survived

I survived my first day/night alone with both kids!  Barely.  Thankfully, Lily had a fantastic day today, with three good naps and no colicky crying.  Frankie was great in the morning, and we successfully ventured out to the club this morning for an hour and a half so that Frankie could swim, play in the sand, and get out of the house.  I left Lily covered up in her car seat in the shade, and everyone did great!  However, the day went downhill from there.  Frankie would not take a nap, and although he stayed in his room for "quiet time," he was not quiet, and he never really relaxed, so he was bouncing off the walls and overtired the rest of the night.  He was not listening well, and even though I had told him we would watch a special movie after dinner, I ended up putting him directly to bed because he would.not.listen to me!  He was hysterical when I put him to bed, and he got out of bed a bunch of times crying, screaming, stomping his feet, and shaking the gate at the top of the stairs.  I went up there and calmed him down, put him back to bed nicely, and went downstairs.  It literally took over an hour, and me going up there many more times, for him to finally go to sleep.  He was crying for Mommy, saying he was scared, saying that the monsters were going to get him....it is sad to listen to him cry, but I was trying to feed Lily and put her to bed, and he was seriously driving me insane.  Finally he went to bed and then I put Lily down.  Phew!  I need a drink, but I am scared to open the refrigerator and wake Lily up, so I will probably just go to sleep myself.

Yesterday, I left baby Lily with a babysitter for the first time so that I could go on an interview.  It is funny, because I left Frankie for the first time to go on an interview for my current job...so we'll see if this interview has a similar outcome!  My sweet friend Kristi watched Lily, which we really appreciate! We are so lucky to have great friends who will help us out with the kids when we need it.  I could not fit into any of my suits at only 5.5 weeks postpartum, so I wore a professional dress and a blazer.   The dress was a little tighter than it normally is, and Frank told me that I looked like I belonged in a music video, and not on an interview.  I can only hope that the people I interviewed with did not agree with him!

Here are a few pictures from this week:

A ray of hope

We started Liliana on a hypoallergenic formula on Tuesday night, and--fingers crossed!!!!--it appears that we may have turned a corner!  She had a rough night on Tuesday and then a rough day yesterday, but she had a GREAT night last night, sleeping for 5.5 hours (her longest stretch in a crib EVER), 3 hours, and then 3 more hours, and taking all of her bottles without crying or screaming.  She has also been having a great morning today, eating a full 4-ounce bottle without crying, grunting, or pulling away.  I am so hopeful that this combination of Prevacid and this new formula will be the answer to Lily's pain and colicky behavior.  This mommy really wants to enjoy her baby girl and get some rest.

She is a screamer

Oh yes, in the picture above, she looks so sweet, but this sweet baby is not always as sweet as she seems in pictures.  It is so ironic to me that Lily entered this world so calmly, without crying much, tricking us into believing that she was going to be a chill, easy baby.  Oh, how we were wrong!  Let me tell you, this girl can SCREAM!  Just when I thought that this latest medication was helping, she just refused a bottle and screamed, inconsolably, for a good thirty minutes.  I finally just put her back down to sleep in the swing because I did not know what else to do!  I called her doctor this morning to give her an update on the medication and let her know that it was not working, and her doctor did not call me back.  I am so frustrated.  I did not press the issue, because she seemed better today!  But now, at 1:00 a.m. with a screaming baby, I really wish I had called over and over until we got some answers.  Yesterday she refused all bottles for approximately eight hours.  She would scream as if she was hungry, suck on the bottle without actually drinking, fall asleep, and then repeat, for pretty much the entire day.  But then, she ate fine and slept decent last night and ate and slept good all day today, so I thought we had made some progress.  I have researched acid reflux, colic, baby screaming while eating, baby arching back and craning neck, Sandier's syndrome, iterations of baby poop, and milk soy protein intolerance so much that I feel like an expert on these issues, yet, at the same time, I feel completely clueless as to what is wrong with Lily and how I can fix it.  Hopefully we will get some answers, and she will get some relief, soon!

"That's just like Uncle Monte"

Last night, I was making dinner and Frank and Frankie were feeding Baby Lily in the living room in front of the TV when a commercial came on TV about a program benefitting wounded warriors.  The commercial featured a man with prosthetic legs, and Frankie said, "look, that's just like Uncle Monte."  We saw Uncle Monte recently, but we did not really explain his prosthetic legs to Frankie, and we were so impressed that he was able to recognize that the man on the 30 second commercial was similar to Uncle Monte.  It was such a sweet moment.  It is moments like these where I realize just how smart and aware Frankie really is.

Smile!

Someone is starting to smile!!  I hope that Lily is as smiley and giggly as her big brother is.  Despite her precious smile in this picture, she had a very rough night last night.  It took us 2.5 hours to get her to go to sleep in her crib.  Every time we would put her down--whether awake or asleep--she would SCREAM within the first 5-10 minutes and we would have to go upstairs and reconsole her.  Frank finally got her to go down around 11:30.  She slept pretty well once she was finally down, but she had the same problem again when she woke up in the middle of the night.  Needless to say, no one in our house got much sleep last night.  We went back to the doctor today to discuss her reflux medication (that does not appear to be working) and the rash on her face.  The doctor prescribed Prevacid for the reflux, which is the same medicine Frankie took when he was a baby, and she gave us an antibiotic cream for the rash.  Hopefully the rash clears up soon and the new medicine starts working!  We gave her the first dose earlier tonight, and so far she seems to be having a night nearly identical to last night.  Poor baby girl appears to be in a lot of pain.   But, she sure did look cute earlier today when I took these photos!  Baby girl weighed in at 9 lbs 6 ounces at the doctor today, which means she is bigger than Frankie was at this age.  She already looks and feels so much bigger to me than when she was born.

One month photo shoot