Mother's and Father's Days

I realize this is a late post, given that Mother's Day was over a month ago, but I'm in the better-late-than-never camp. We didn't do anything particularly fancy for either Mother's Day or Father's Day, but we did spend our respective days hanging out with our family of four and eating food that we like (Chinese for my day, lasagne for his). 

We also took pictures!

Mother's Day was Lily's first day at church!

Ever since my very first Mother's Day, we've taken pictures with Claire in this chair. Last year, Claire was sporting a black eye (she tripped a few days before), but this year, we have Lily!

The girls on Mother's Day.

This isn't a great backdrop, but it is a great picture of my people.

First Father's Day with Lily.

The traditional shot. With an unfortunate glare.

I hope everyone had lovely days celebrating or lovingly remembering their mothers, fathers, or friends who filled those roles.

Letter to my Little Lily: 2 Months

Lily Lou,

You are 2 months old, and it boggles my mind that this is already the case! Your baby days are just flying by, and I'm so torn over it; I can't wait to hang out with you every day and see what you're going to do or look like next, but I also want it to slow way down so I can hold on to it longer. You are just such a joy.

You are our happy smiley girl. You've really gotten into smiling over the last month, which has been so fun for all of us. Claire, especially, likes to get you to smile (and you love to smile at her!). At bedtime every night, Daddy and I spend several minutes talking goofy to you and making faces so that you'll smile for us. You always oblige. And sometimes you even throw a few smiles at the fan. Just for good measure.

We've been really impressed with your physicality so far. As of right now, you're already much more interested in using your muscles than Claire was. You love holding up your head and having us help you stand up in our laps. I fully expect you to be sitting up unassisted very soon. I'm also expecting that you'll walk much earlier than your sister. Perhaps you'll even crawl (Claire never did; she scooted everywhere. Feel free to do the same, if you want. I loved it.)! But, again, I'm not in any hurry to rush you along. 

Daddy is, maybe, your best friend. You really really love hanging out with him, and it is so very sweet. The two of you have a little bedtime ritual where you'll lay in our bed for a few minutes while we're wrapping up for the day, and you'll hold Daddy's finger. It's the best. Oh, we've also discovered that you loooove memory foam. Our mattress has a memory foam topper, and you're more than happy to hang out there.

Generally speaking, you love to be around people. Nobody even needs to be holding you for you to be happy; you just want to be where the party is. You, Daddy, and Claire all share this tendency. I am very interested to see how this personality trait plays out as you get older. As of right now, it pretty much charms everyone.

You eat like a champ and are filling out nicely. Eating is one of your most favorite things to do (you are a baby, after all), and it's just about the only thing you ever get upset about. We laugh about it sometimes, because you will sometimes cry to let us know that you're hungry, and if I don't feed you fast enough, you kind of give up on life and start hibernating. Maybe it's your equivalent of pouting...? It's pretty funny right now, either way.

We love that you still have hair on your head. It is so cute. We also love the sweet little noises you make when you try to tell us things. I haven't caught them on video yet, but I hope I can make that happen at some point. You love to lay on the floor and look around you while you stretch and kick, and so far, I have kept Claire from jumping on you. You're welcome.

To celebrate your two-month-old-ness, we spent a week at the beach with Gran, Grandpa, Ray Ray, and Takia (ok, so it wasn't just to celebrate you turning two months old, but we did all talk about it and say we were glad you were born). And let me say, you have the makings of a natural beach-er. You thoroughly enjoyed laying in your bouncy seat in your little tent on the sand (who wouldn't?). You're definitely a Boswell (with a healthy dose of Brassart).

We are just so thankful that you joined our family, Lily. Love you so much!

My favorite thing to do. Lots of chores go undone so that I can snuggle you.

Your weekly pictures for Month 2:

Week 6 (you were not into smiling for this photo shoot...)

Week 7 (every single picture of you was blurry this week)

Week 8 (yes, you are sticking your tongue out in this one)

Two months! (sorry there is an outlet plate in this picture. Work with what ya got.)

And for a couple of outtakes:

"No more, Mom! I roar in protest!"

"Again, I roar in protest! (but mostly about the unconventional photo location)"

Nursery Trauma...I mean, Drama

I wrote this a little while back but thought it would still be a good update to post. Thanks to everyone who has checked on us through this process!

We left Boston when Claire was 18 months old, which was a fun age in many ways but proved to be difficult regarding life transitions. It's one of the regularly-scheduled age markers for separation anxiety, which, coupled with moving, caused us quite a bit of difficulty when visiting churches in Durham.

I've written about our struggle to find a church for over a year, but I didn't really touch on how big a factor Claire's nursery anxiety ended up being in that process. Very early in the visiting process, we discovered that Claire could not tolerate being left. Let me explain: we're not the hovering kind of parents who stick around too long trying to comfort her when she shows signs of anxiety at drop-off. We're pretty good about dropping her off and trusting the nursery workers that "they all calm down. It will be fine." It was basically never fine, though. Almost every church we visited ended up paging us/texting us/finding us to come get Claire. She would work herself up to the point of being sick and hysterical. She wasn't behaving badly or ugly or anything, but she was making herself sick and upsetting the other children with her panic. 

So, I would end up spending half, if not the majority, of the service holding Claire or walking around with her or just sitting outside the sanctuary while she tried to calm down. There were many churches where I didn't hear most of what the pastor taught (hard to form too much of an opinion about a church when you don't hear all of the teaching). Sometimes, we tried her out in the service. In general, she's a fairly quiet church child, but she's also really young, so she definitely wasn't super quiet. It became a stressful venture for me to make sure I had plenty of snacks and *quiet* diversions packed for her. Rather than spending the service walking the halls with her and not hearing the pastor, I would end up sitting in the service, supplying her with a steady stream of stickers/crayons/books/cars/snacks and not hearing the pastor. Either way, I usually left the service drained, tired, and frustrated while Brad tried to catch me up on what he took away from the service.

It was very disheartening, and we couldn't really figure out what to do. We figured out that the constant changing of churches was causing her more stress; seeing a different nursery with different faces every week added to her feelings of insecurity. Keeping her in the service with us kept her from learning how to navigate a nursery and to trust that we would come back from her. We just could not reach a happy medium.

When we decided to make Blacknall our church home, we knew we were going to have to put in some work to get her adjusted and let her know that this is how we do things and everything will be fine. What this looked like was a LOT of tears for several weeks. We got paged on many occasions and had to spend quite a lot of time slowly backing out of the rooms as very patient nursery volunteers worked hard to distract her. We really lucked out with the Blacknall nursery, though; their people are very committed to doing what it takes to allow parents to worship uninterrupted, and they are very creative in how to manage very upset children. A couple of times, the ladies manning the front desk at the nursery would bring a sobbing, upset Claire out front to calm down in a quieter area. They would hold her in their laps or let her roll a ball in the entry area, and this actually worked really well for her. 

Once my morning sickness calmed down enough for me to participate in the Thursday morning Women's Bible Study, I started brainstorming how to tackle putting her in childcare so that I could really benefit from my time. I came up with a plan: I would tell her before we got there that, if she would stay calm and wait for Mommy, she could have chocolate when we got in the car to go home. This is a big treat around here, as we still limit her sugar quite a lot. I also promised that she could watch Cars when we got home. We don't watch full-length movies outside of special occasions, so this was exciting incentive. To reinforce these prizes, we started reciting a catechism of sorts. It went a little something like this:
Q: What do you get if you stay calm at church?
A: Chocolate! I get to watch Lightening McQueen!

Q: Where will Mommy be?
A: Mommy will be upstairs with friends, and Claire will be downstairs with friends.

Q: What will Mommy do?
A: Mommy will come back for me...and then I get CHOCOLATE AND LIGHTENING MCQUEEN!

We went through this catechism countless times. 

When our first day of going to Bible study arrived, I was a big ball of nerves, worried about Claire and how she would react. I was working really hard to keep my anxiety at bay so that she wouldn't sense it and become anxious herself. At drop-off, she started sniffling and her chin started trembling, but we went through our catechism again, and she summoned her courage and walked over to play with some toys. 

I tried so hard not to watch my nursery pager like a hawk the whole time. I just knew that they were going to page me to come collect my inconsolable child. 

BUT THEY DIDN'T.

When I went to pick her up, she was not crying. She ran over to me, squealing, "Mommy! I get CHOCOLATE and LIGHTENING MCQUEEN!" Apparently, she was, in fact, able to hold it together and stay calm. It was a nursery miracle! 

She got everything I'd promised her, and shockingly, she decided that she liked church. :) We immediately started talking about how we would do the same thing next time...and we continued talking about it for the next week. The next week was kind of a bust, but it wasn't her fault; she actually ended up starting a stomach bug while in the nursery, causing us to leave early, and who wouldn't be upset by that? However, after that hiccup, she has gotten progressively more confident. She thinks playing in the nursery is fun now, and she trusts that we will always come back for her (she told the workers one time that her mommy "will be back in fifteen minutes!"). She still occasionally gets treats, but we've been cutting back on all the incentives, as that's not exactly sustainable long term. 

It continually gets better and better. We've progressed to the point of Claire asking- regularly- if we can go to church. In fact, a few weeks before Lily was born, I woke up after a night fighting a migraine and just did NOT feel like getting up and going to Thursday morning Bible study. However, Claire woke up and BEGGED me to please go to church. I could not say "no." I just couldn't. So, I loaded up on medication (still safe to drive, no worries) and Diet Coke (GAG. I hate diet, but I couldn't drink regular while diabetic.), and we headed off to Bible study. I'm so glad we went, even though I ended up leaving a little earlier than usual...which caused Claire to CRY because she didn't want to leave. She has become a completely different child.

And man. It has been a little bit life-changing, I have to say. Thankfully the prayers of family and friends + the promise of chocolate and Lightening McQueen eased our process of incorporating nursery into our life and has been a huge blessing for us as we continue to make Durham and Blacknall our home. For those of you who are nursery volunteers at your churches, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your commitment and perseverance. It's unbelievable how much of a difference it can make. Let me know that you work in the nursery, and I'll give you chocolate.

Having a Baby: Things Learned (or, perhaps, remembered)

Found these notes I made on my phone in the middle of the night one night during our hospital stay. True words, these are.

Things I learned or remembered during our hospital stay, in list format for your convenience:

1. Lactation consultants are intense people. They have very strong things to say about how you sit, how you hold your baby, how many pillows you prop up with, the evils of pacifiers and bottles, the semi-evil-ness of pumps, the great evil of formula...they are just really intense. I imagine they would prefer the term "passionate." Thankfully, this was my second baby, so I knew to let much of it roll right off, just saying, "Uh huh, you're right" and then do whatever worked for me. (Note: I am not anti-lactation consultants. I am just much more moderate in my opinions about breastfeeding and already have a year of experience under my belt.)

2. You use your stomach for EVERYTHING. You realize this forcibly post c-section. Coughing, sneezing, laughing, rolling over, sitting up, laying down. Everything you do hurts after a c-section because the doctor just cut into your stomach muscles and made them angry.

3. Hospitals are the least restful places. Oh man. The. Worst. Beeping things. Blinking lights. People coming in and out every couple of hours to check everyone's vitals. Babies needing to be fed. Worst sleeping conditions.

4. Medical professionals examining your body is a free-for-all. (not just your baby's body- yours, too.)

5. As is discussing your bodily functions.

6. And your birth control methods. Numbers 4-6 are kind of embarrassing to have discussed and whatnot, but nobody cares about your feelings on that. They will insist on doing these things at regular intervals, indiscriminate of how much it hurts/how loudly they are speaking/how red your face grows, due to embarrassment.

7. After you have been on fluids for 24 hours, you have to use the bathroom A LOT. A shocking amount, actually. Which is also a little bit painful, thanks to the truths mentioned in #2.

8. Lab folks will come in the middle of the night, turn the harsh overhead lights on before you've registered that they're even there, and will then bruise your arm when trying to hit a vein. And then they might do it again on their second attempt. You will be very bruised for weeks. Oh, and then their colleague will come the next night and do the same thing.

9. After you've been diabetic dieting for several months, hospital ice cream cups are divine.

10. Nurses really are fantastic people (the majority, at least). They do such hard and good work. It really is such a noble calling. Thank you, nurses! You make hospitals easier places to be.

Around here lately: May 2016 edition

Enjoy, folks!

Hey, these Cheerios have SAUCE on them! (i.e. Honey Nut Cheerios. She usually eats plain Cheerios, so this was her reaction when she accidentally got the good stuff.)

Here's Baby Jesus. Praise the Lord, the God of my Salvation. And He will bless me. (I can only conclude that this was a mashup of various things she heard on some of our Superbook videos. It was oh so funny to hear her say these things while cradling a turkey baster.)

I can't see you on the phone... (We have an old phone set- with a CORD- that she plays with. You can see that she is a child of the camera phone era.)

Posing with her behavior chart on the first day that she reached the top prize!

Laundry day

Baby Sister is sleeping soooo nicely!

What are his eyebrows saying, Nana? (Again, Superbook. This was in reference to Zechariah's facial expressions in the video about John the Baptist's birth. He couldn't use his voice, so, you know, he used his eyebrows.)

Erin: That's such a tall tower, Claire!
Claire: It's not tall yet, but it will be soon.

Attempting a pose with the flowers. Not succeeding.

So focused.

I'm de-where-ee-us! (i.e. hilarious)

Mommy, look! The sun-bright is on!

Will you open my good morning door? (her bedroom door. Brad opens it and says, "Good morning" everyday.)

Getting the hang of her tricycle.

Hey, Daddy, I was thinking about getting a saxophone. (out of the clear blue, y'all.)

Barbara: What was bad about this morning, Claire? (reviewing why the morning didn't go smoothly, in hopes of having a better afternoon)
Claire: Um...ME! (she was correct)

Siwwy Wiwwy, what are you doing?

While watching Tangled, Claire decided that this princess wand was Rapunzel (the streamers were her hair), and this side table was Rapunzel's tower. Great imagination and improvising.

Sister snuggles.

It's ok, Baby Sister! I'm coming! (on several occasions. In answer to Lily's cries.)

Vitamummies (what she calls her gummy vitamins)

This is the baby called Wiwwy. (explaining who Lily is)

Just hanging.

Spending time with our friend, Mrs. Katie. (yes, she's one of the many friends moving this summer. We will MISS her!)

Mamaw and Papaw loooooooove me! (said while prancing around with a bag of Goldfish sent to her from Brad's grandparents)

That's so shay-bee, Mommy. (she heard me describe something as "shady" and wanted to try her hand at that adjective)

It's the night of the middle, Mommy.

Can I hold Wiwwy?

More floor time.

Mommy, wherever you go, I will go. And your people will be my people. (Yet again...Superbook)

The cars are so PROUD! (in the final race scene in Cars)

I'm sure that's a lot of dirt! (while "helping" Brad fix some issues under our dishwasher)

Ready to "help" with the dishwasher.

Totally helping.

Happy Memorial Day!

I realize that Memorial Day was 2 days ago, but I didn't get around to posting the pictures I took of the girls (when I have down time, I tend to sleep. Or hang out with some of our *many* friends who are moving away in the next few weeks.). 

We are so thankful for the sacrifices that so many have made for our freedom. It is such a gift, and I'm looking forward to teaching our daughters about the incredible men and women who have given their lives to provide our freedoms. And to any of you who have given your loved ones, we thank you, as well.

Happy (belated) Memorial Day, friends.

And now, a montage of the shots that were taken in an attempt to get a good one:

The one I consider to be the winning shot.

And then we had a wardrobe malfunction. Thankfully, we have a couple patriotic dresses.