Our little Ellie isn’t so little anymore! She’s three!
In honor of her 3rd birthday, I made a little movie (with no sound) compiling pictures of her as she slept over the past three years. I love how you can see her change and grow even as she’s sleeping!
We are so blessed to have this precious girl in our lives. We love you, Ellie!
Happy Birthday!
You RACE!!
How do you like those jazz hands?
on the way to the grumpy upset face because I stopped her from running any farther! 🙂
I have several friends who are either very new mamas of two or are getting ready to have their second, so I thought I’d share my “Top Ten Tips” for leaving the house by yourself (i.e. with no other adults) with two kids. These mostly apply to when your second child is still very little. I don’t follow all these rules anymore but they were very helpful to me in the beginning.
I also think these are all good rules to follow when you just have one newborn, with no big sibling! They help you take care of yourself as well as your baby.
1. Don’t leave the house! In the very beginning, let yourself rest and stay at home as long as you can stand it. If you can stay home for a month or more, you’ll most likely find that your first trip out is much easier. Both you, your first born, and your new child need time to adjust to each other and your new world. Your body needs to heal! You need to rest! So stay home! Let other people do the shopping and errands for you.
2. When you are ready to venture out, only make one stop. It doesn’t even matter if the stores are right next to each other. Just go to one place. Get your toes wet in this whole “going out with two kids” thing. Accomplish one errand, feel good about yourself, and then go home. And that one stop? Don’t let it be buying the groceries for two weeks! Make sure it’s a small, easily accomplished task.
3. Plan your trip so that you can get out and back home again without needing to nurse. This has two benefits – one, it ensures that you will plan a quick, easy trip and two, then you won’t get stuck nursing in some uncomfortable place for FOREVER while your newborn takes his good sweet time having a meal.
4. As we know, Step #3 never goes as planned (newborns are notorious for wanting to nurse all the time) so also have some kind of activity planned for the older sibling if you do need to nurse while you’re out. A snack is always a good option. Snacks and water for everyone – mama, big sibling, baby (OK, only milk for baby)! (That’s a bonus tip!)
5. Wear your baby into the store and LEAVE THAT CAR SEAT IN THE CAR! Those infant car seats are SO heavy. Besides, you’re going to need to have both hands free – one for the big sibling and one for your very small bag of stuff that you’ve bought (see #2). Infant car seats are best left in the car, where they belong. Also, never tell yourself, “I don’t need to wear my baby for this trip – it’s so quick, it’s not worth the trouble.” Inevitably, this will be the errand where the “short” checkout line is super long or you have to get some help to find what you need and your back will ache and your arms will hurt and you will wish you hadn’t left your wrap/Ergo/Boba/whatever in the car. It’s worth the extra two minutes to strap your baby on.
6. When getting into the car, let your older child get in and close the door on that side. Then, strap your baby into his/her car seat. Then go back to the other side to strap in the big kid. This keeps the big kid contained long enough to strap in the baby! (Remember, you should be leaving that infant car seat in the car – it’s far too heavy for you to be carrying when your body is still recovering from pregnancy and childbirth.)
7. When getting out of the car, get the big kid out first, then your stuff (like the diaper bag), then put on your carrier/wrap/etc., and then strap the baby on. I know that then you have to keep track of the big kid while you get out the baby, but I find it difficult to lean into the car once I have my baby strapped on me. You could unbuckle the big kid but leave him/her in the car until you have the other baby and stuff ready to go.
8. Don’t leave your keys in the car if your big kid is not strapped in and you have the kind of locks that lock all four doors if one of them is pushed down. Thankfully, this has not happened to me but I have nightmares of it happening. I try to keep my keys in my pocket or hand at all times or sometimes I put them in the door handle of the kid I’m buckling in. I especially worry about this on hot days.
9. Ask for help if you need it. People are amazingly kind when they see a mom with a toddler and a newborn. Take advantage of this! Ask for help!! It will make other people happy to help you!
10. Make your first trip out a fun one for everyone. Choose a fun place to go – even if it’s just to Trader Joe’s to use the little shopping cart. Or treat yourself to something delicious while you’re out. You could share a hot chocolate with your two-year-old daughter and enjoy it so much that you forget about the time and then realize when you’re getting in the car that your six-week-old son needs to nurse and then get stuck in your car for 20 minutes while your newborn nurses and your two-year-old complains about being hungry and you’re hungry too and everyone is grumpy. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! (And yes, that pretty much sums up our first shopping experience after Mark was born – all of these rules are born out of personal experience!)
And, before you know it, your newborn will be a big grown up baby and shopping with two will be just about as easy as shopping with one. Hooray!
not pulling up yet but definitely wanting to stand if we put him there! 🙂
Yesterday, I listened to a terrifying This American Life show, “Use Only As Directed.” It details how frighteningly easy it is to overdose on Tylenol (rather, acetaminophen). You only have to take something like 2.5 times the recommended dose over the course of not that many days in order to cause severe liver damage and/or death. (In comparison, you have to go something like 20 times over the recommended dose of aspirin to have similarly horrific effects.) **
Even more scary to me is how easy it is to give your children an overdose of acetaminophen (such as with children’s Tylenol). The dosing recommendations are confusing (particularly for under 2, which simply says, “Ask your doctor”). They shared the story of one little baby girl who died of catastrophic liver failure after her parents were told the wrong dosage.
Having always thought that Tylenol was super safe, this was particularly scary for me. I’ve always been wary of giving my kids Tylenol. Mark has never had it and Ellie only once or twice. I’ve avoided it because even the dye-free stuff contains artificial flavoring. But now I’m particularly leery of giving them anything unless I absolutely have to.
Acetaminophen is in many other products besides Tylenol and so, even if you’re not going over the recommended does with Tylenol tablets,it’s still pretty easy to take too much.
If you use Tylenol or any other product with acetaminophen in it, please listen to the story and be ultra-extra careful when taking it and/or giving it to your children.
**I don’t remember the exact numbers and I couldn’t find the transcript to verify them. If you listen to the show, you’ll get the correct numbers.
As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been blogging very much over the past couple weeks. That’s because I feel like I’m drowning, almost literally, in everything that I need to do. Much of it is computer-related and so the few minutes of time I get on the computer are consumed by those things and blogging gets pushed further and further back. I still have plenty I want to write about but most of that writing just gets done in my head these days. Any serious blogging (outside of quick picture posts) has been done when I’ve stayed up way too late and that’s costing me too, in terms of sleep. Not the best decision, I know.
I’ve been really frustrated recently with how little it feels like I’m accomplishing relative to my to-do list, not knowing what to cut out, knowing that it’s all important, but having to admit that I can’t do all of it. Today I’ve been forced to admit to myself that I’ve had WAY too high expectations about what I was going to be able to accomplish as a mom of two. I struggle with this daily, thinking “Mark is almost 9 months old, what’s my problem? Why can’t I get more done?” Today, I came across this article and it spoke a lot to me in terms of giving myself the permission to mourn the productive me that I was before kids and even with only one kid relative to two. I think I need to accept that it’s OK to be sad and/or to think longingly about the person that I once was, even while realizing that I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing right now.
I just have to figure out what to give up, what to cross off the to-do list permanently, and what to keep. I honestly don’t want to give anything up but I think I need to.
How to you decide what to say yes to and what to turn down, when they’re all good things?
(Part of this is that Mark is teething like a mad man and has me up MULTIPLE times a night, not to mention the [insert-really-bad-cuss-word-here-if-I-was-the-cussing-kind] recycling truck that came at 4:24 this morning and woke him up. I was so mad at that I could have thrown a brick through our window at it. So I am operating on very little sleep. This all might look a lot better next week when we’re [hopefully] sleeping better with tooth #3 safely popped through. We can just barely see it now so I’m hoping the worst of it will be over soon.)
Two years ago, I made a “Here We Go” bag for my sister, Rachel in celebration of her second child’s birth. Around the same time, my friend Steph was also expecting a baby and decided to make the same bag for herself. Alma was born and at some point in Steph’s maternity leave, I went over to help her get through a tricky part at the beginning of the sewing process (curves!). We made a little progress on the bag but didn’t complete it.
Fast forward two years – now, Steph and Ben are expecting the birth of their second child within the next month and so I asked Steph if she’d ever had time to finish her bag. She hadn’t and so I offered to finish it for her as our present welcoming Baby #2 into the world.
Here it is!
Steph had already sewn the outside and had cut out almost everything else. I added a bonus divided pocket to the divider panel, sewed the lining, and assembled the bag.
I also added the solid yellow bottom so that I could use that piece of patterned fabric for the changing pad. I like the surprise pop of yellow down there!
For the changing pad, the pattern calls for two solid pieces of fabric with quilt batting sandwiched between. I didn’t have enough of either of the yellows to do one solid piece so I did some piecing to come up with a pleasing changing pad with no noticeable seams (i.e. no seams between like fabrics).
the “business” side of the changing pad
I should learn not to do calculations in my head though because I ended up cutting pieces that were too small and then had to slice up the front side more times than I’d intended to add extra fabric in order to make it big enough. This was far more complicated than I’d intended to make it!
Pretty cool though, right? 🙂 You may also notice that I had to use the selvage strip in order to make it long enough (another measurement miscalculation). I decided to embrace that mistake, because selvage projects are so cool these days. I did it on purpose, actually, just so Steph’s changing pad would be extra cool. 😉
I quilted around the outside of the yellow strips. I like the detail it created on the back too.
After all that work, I just realized that I forgot to add in the ribbon ties for the changing pad. Oh well!
As is my tradition with making diaper bags (as you can see in Meggan’s, Rachel’s, and Leah’s bags), I also included a baby in the photo shoot. Mark doesn’t like to sit so I had to con him into being in the picture (rather, I just put the bag where he was!).
a rather impressive pushup! 🙂
ooh – what’s this?
We’re so excited to welcome your little one into the world, Steph and Ben!
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A few pattern review notes for the Here We Go bag, from Handmade Beginnings: (Steph, don’t read these if you don’t want the nitty-gritty on what I liked/disliked about making your bag! :))
1. Don’t assemble the two parts of the bag the way she tells you to. The bag assembly instructions in this tutorial are far easier and end up with neater seams. You’ll have to use a 5/8″ seam allowance (rather than 1/2″) but can otherwise follow the directions in step 6. I do, however, like the way that Horner uses bias tape to do the final assembly of the bag . That’s a good technique to know how to do.
2. Don’t make the straps the way she instructs you to. Rather than sewing and turning inside out, it’s worth the trouble to iron the seam allowances in and then top stitch. The strap gets really narrow in the middle and if you’ve used relatively stiff interfacing (I used Pellon 808, Craft Fuse), it’s practically impossible to turn them right side out after sewing. Also, if I made this bag again, I’d use a 3/8″ seam allowance on the straps to get a slight wider strap.
3. I really don’t like the ultra-thick double-sided fusible interfacing that the pattern calls for. This is the first time I’ve used it (I used something different for Rachel’s bag) and it was really difficult to use. I ended up not being able to fuse it correctly in the corners and had to leave it out of the bottom entirely. Clearly there’s a learning curve with using it correctly and I don’t think I’m willing to go through it. I just bought this pattern, which promises a method that allow for sturdy, stand-along bags without the use of heavy interfacing. So I’m excited to try that pattern and perhaps not have to use super thick interfacing ever again.
4. Definitely add pockets. It’s sorely lacking in them. I ran out of time with Steph’s bag but if I’d had more time, I would have put in at least two more pockets (as I did in Rachel’s bag). Either that or make a couple zippered pouches that coordinate with the bag!
Lately, we’ve been teaching Ellie how to give kisses the Greek way – one on each cheek. She thinks this is very fun and so does it enthusiastically, particularly when we’re kissing goodnight. Last week, she started giving us two hugs at a time also. She tells us, “It’s the Greek way!” Who are we to tell her that it’s not? She is Greek after all!
her Greek outfit (blue and white, just like the flag)
If you ever greet someone you love with a kiss on each cheek, you might want to try adding in two hugs also! According to Ellie, the correct form is to hug, let go, stand back, and then go back for hug #2.
If you ever come over to visit, she just might give you a Greek hug too! 🙂
What kind of day is it for you?
Please excuse me while I faint from astonishment at how grownup my children are.
Good morning! 🙂
Before they visited in May, Lisa and I had gone over three years without seeing each other. But, this weekend, after just over three months, they came back again. Hooray!
This time, Lisa just brought her two older kids, along with her parents and her mother-in-law. They had an event to attend in Pennsylvania and rather than drive all the way home after it, they stayed a night with us! We stayed up far too late talking and then had a wonderful morning together.
Mark with two more grandmas he’d never met!
Lisa’s parents were a second set of parents for me while I was in college so it was so fun to introduce them to my children!
Ellie had so much fun playing with Caleb and Abbie. She was definitely sad to see them go (as, of course, was I). Lisa and I have both agreed that we could get used to seeing each other this often. 🙂 Now if only we could find a way to eliminate the 300 miles between her house and mine!
Smiling while covered in scrambled eggs!
Salmon and Souvlaki 