Samantha 3 Months

What a bundle of personality we have here. Samantha is all smiles all the time. She likes to laugh and is a real chatterbox. Samantha is a real happy baby. Keith says that she is needy, but I call it being social. She likes to be held, and she likes to be around people. When you leave her alone, she complains.

I'm sure a lot of parents compare their children. For the most part, it is not a good or bad. It is just different. The comparisons start as early as the pregnancy. I felt these symptoms with this one and these symptoms with that one. It then moves into the birth and then how the child is as a newborn, an infant, a toddler. You get the picture. This is where the needy, um I mean social baby comes in. Joshua was very easy. (It is not that Samantha is not easy). With Joshua, we would put him down, and he would be ok just hanging out in his pack n play or swing or bouncy seat. If he got a little fussy, he would get a pacifier, and then would be nice and calm. With Samantha, she won't take a pacifier. So, if she gets a little fussy, we have to hold her. She will fall asleep while nursing and then when we move her to put her down to sleep, she instantly wakes up and wants to be held. On the flip side, when you look at her, she looks at you back and instantly smiles. It is the most beautiful smile and she lights up. Joshua didn't smile as much and it was nearly impossible to get him to smile for the camera. Actually, at age 2, he still hardly smiles at the camera.

It has been 3 months, and Samantha is still not sleeping through the night. Hopefully, soon. We still have her in the bassinet and I like having her there in the room with us. While she is still in the bassinet, I feel that she is still a newborn. Once Samantha goes into her new room, I feel that we are letting the newborn go and an infant is emerging. These first 3 months really gone by fast.

Backward Pajamas

Joshua is in the heart of the 2s. What does that mean? That means he is defying his parents in any way possible. (Gosh, sounds like the teenage years). No, actually at this age he is not being defiant. He is just trying to be independent and trying new things. Getting dressed on his own is a new skill he is learning and another way for him to be independent. It is winter, so for pajamas he wears one piece feety pajamas that zip. One night when we looked in the monitor, we noticed that he took his pajams off. We went into his bedroom and put his pajamas back on. 10 minutes later, we noticed that his pajamas were off again. One last time up to the bedroom. Next thing I see, he takes his diaper off too. That could have ended up much worse than it did. "Diaper Off" we can hear him shouting through the monitor. This time, we decide to get smart. We put his pajamas on backwards and zip it up the back so that he could not take off his pajamas again. Problem solved!

No - Yes - No

Ah, the fun 2s. The age where defiance is learned. A taste for the teenage years. Yes, the lovely age of 2. I do know why they call them the terrible 2s. Josh's new phase is "No - Yes - No". You can input any other two words in there too "butter - cream cheese - butter" "syrup - ketchup - syrup". I think you get the message. I give Josh choices. If I ask him if he wants X, the answer is going to be "no". So, I try not to ask him yes or no questions. As he is getting older, I want him to also be able to start to think for himself and learn independence. Therefore, if he is going to have a bagel, I ask him, "Do you want butter on your bagel or cream cheese?" Unfortunately, at first, he had me running around like a chicken with my head cut off. He would tell me he wants cream cheese, so I bring out the cream cheese. Once the cream cheese is out, he would tell me he wants butter. So, I would put the cream cheese away and give him the butter. Once the butter was out, he would tell me once again that he wanted cream cheese. Ugh. So, now I show him both choices and have him pick. It doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't change his mind anymore, but at least I am not really running around ragged.

Our Little Chatterbox

New Year's Eve

Last year for New Year's Eve, my friend, Kellie, had a bunch of families over for the night. It was like one big family sleep over. It was a lot of fun. (OK, maybe it wasn't like going to a club when I was in my 20s, but times change. What else are we supposed to do with 2 little ones?) We did have fun when the kiddies went to bed, and we hung out drinking wine to the wee hours of the night. This year, Kellie was hosting the party again. It was going to be a bit trickier this year as we now have 2 children, so that is twice as much stuff. Add the fact that one is a newborn and not sleeping through the night, and it does get a bit trickier. However, Kellie is a good friend of mine, and I liked those NYE plans better than the alternative. Unfortunately, it is a 3 hour drive, it is winter, and the weather didn't cooperate. So, we didn't make it to Pennsylvania. Damn Mother Nature!


The alternate plans were not too exciting. Yet as I mentioned before, when you have a 2 year old and a newborn, you really can't expect a "night to remember". After we ate dinner, we went over to Keith's parent's house where his aunt and uncle were staying as well as cousin and her baby. We put Joshua into his pjs, and Josh and his cousin, Dustin, played together. Well, as much as "together" can be for their age. What was really amazing was that Joshua stayed up until midnight, and he watched the ball drop. You would think by 10pm we would have a miserable, cranky 2 year old on our hands. Nope. Joshua was loving it. He was an absolute angel. It could have been 2pm in the afternoon for the way he was acting. I was really surprised. By staying up so late I was hoping that he would possibly sleep in a little bit. Not really. He was up at 8am. Joshua was also his usual self, so having him stay up late this one night didn't really affect him. I guess we were lucky. Some other kids are on very strict schedules and there is no way they would have acted like that. Lucky me, I guess.



Happy 2010! Wishing all of my readers a happy and healthy new year.

DC Trip

Last week, Keith's aunt and uncle and cousin came to DC for a visit. Keith's cousin also has a one year old, so it was nice for Joshua to see his cousin and have a play mate. They wanted to go downtown to DC to see a museum. We asked Keith's cousin, Rachel, which museum she wanted to go to, and her response was "Smithsonian". Keith and I thought that was funny, but maybe you have to be a Washingtonian to get the joke. (There are over 15 Smithsonian museums. There isn't just 1 museum called the Smithsonian. Air and Space Museum, Museum of Natural History, Museum of American History are just 3 to name a few. Rachel is a twenty-something and a school teacher, so you would think she would know better. Maybe not, and I am just being a little shit. So be it).


We decided since we have toddlers with us that we would try to go to a museum that the kids would enjoy. (I guess that means we crossed off all of the exclusively art museums). We narrowed it down to the two logical choices, Air and Space and Natural History. In the end, we chose the Air and Space as we thought the kids would like all the airplanes. Reflecting back on it, the Natural History would have probably been better. Yet, if you read the rest of the blog entry, it didn't really matter which museum we chose, and the boring-to-all-kids art museums would have been just fine too.


We left Rockville at 10:45am. That was definitely a very late start. However, I guess trying to get 5 adults and a toddler out of the house took a pretty long time. Keith's Uncle Joel and his crew followed me downown in their huge rental SUV. The 45 minue drive took about an hour. No, there was actually no traffic. It was just that Keith's uncle drove as slow as molasses. We had to drive on the highway, and I think we barely hit the 55 mph speed limit. If Keith was driving, he would have been so frustrated.


When we drove into downtown, it was pretty crowded. It was winter break week after all, so all the kids across the country are off of school. Where are they going to go on a trip? The nation's capitol , of course. When we finally pulled into a garage, we got stopped at the entrance by a security guard. We were in DC, and it was just a couple of days after the terroist attempt that failed on a plane to Detroit. When I got stopped, they asked me to open the hood of my car and the trunk. I am not really sure what they are looking for in there. For some reason, I had trouble opening the hood of my car. In the 2 years that I have owned the car, I don't think I personally ever had to open it. So, I am standing there in 20 degree weather (it was freezing that day) trying to open the hood. I have opened car hoods plenty of times, so I am not sure why I couldn't get it to open. The security guard said that she could not touch my car. So, I am standing there like an idiot. Keith's uncle is behind us and doesn't really know what is going on and doesn't get out of the car. Finally, I managed to get it open. In my trunk, I had a shovel. (It was less than 2 weeks after we got 2 feet of snow, so Keith put it in there just in case we needed it). The security guard didn't seem to care about the shovel, or me, and let me go into the garage. I was wondering if the security guard was going to question the shovel.


Trying to find parking in the garage was a nightmare. It was so dark in there that you could barely see. The number of available spots in the garage was minimal and trying to find those open spots was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Plus, the garage was not well built. You would drive down one row and instead of going through, it would lead to a dead end. Then, you would have to put your car in reverse to get out of that row and try again. The row was too narrow to turn around. If there was a car that came behind you, forget it. Well, a car did come behind us. We motioned to the car to back up as there were no spots down that row. I saw the car back up, and I thought that the car had left. I was wrong. The car did back up but only a short distance and then just sat there - in my blind spot. I am a high up SUV, and she is a low to the ground, black BMW 3-series. No, I did not see her when I HIT HER. How could I see her? She is black and little and shouldn't have been there in the first place. I thought she moved. Luckily, I wasn't going very fast. I was going in reverse at maybe 2 mph. We both got out of the car, and of course I am freaking out. (I had my mother-in-law and 2 little children in the car). The woman was nice about it. She recognized that there was no damage, no one was hurt either. (It was pretty dark in the garage, but from what I could see, there was no damage). The woman took my phone number down just in case but said that everything was probably fine. (Luckily, she never called).


After the woman pulled away, I was a little shaken up. I was frustrated and worried that she might be a bitch and call. I also invented some back pain from the pseudo-accident. So, when I finally found a spot and got out of the car, Keith's aunt and uncle probably didn't get the warm and fuzzy "happy to see you after 5 years" hug.



When we got to street level, it was already after 12pm. The day is half way gone and we haven't seen anything yet. It is also now time to feed the baby. So, we sent Keith's relatives to go ahead into the museum, and I stayed in the lobby with the 2 kiddies and my mother-in-law and nursed Samantha. By the time we finished with Samantha and entered the museum, it was 1pm. Now, Joshua really needs to eat as his lunch time is usually closer to 12pm too. So, we headed straight to the very crowded food court at the museum and bought Joshua the $10 McDonalds happy meal. (Remember, when you have a captive audience, you can charge whatever you want. No $1 menu items here). When we were almost finished with lunch, Keith's relatives came over and joined us to eat as well. As they were finishing up (it is a little after 2pm at this point) they start discussing going to another museum. Um, I haven't even seen this museum yet! It is 20 degrees outside as this is the coldest day of the winter so far, and the other museum that would be good for the little ones is about 5 blocks away. No thank you. I am staying right here.



Keith's relatives decided to venture out to the other museum, and I decided to stay at the Air and Space Museum with Josh, Samantha, and my mother in law. We started walking down the main hall to look at the exhibits, and just as we are getting started, Joshua falls asleep in the stroller. With the double stroller and an extra crowded museum, it was a little hard to maneuver. So, we didn't really get to see much of the museum. I couldn't take advantage of Joshua sleeping to look at some of the exhibits I may have found interesting.



By 3:30pm, Keith met us at the museum and then his aunt and uncle returned as well. His cousins decided to stay downtown and explore a little more. Since they are from Texas and never really in DC, they wanted to take advantage of the one day they had to see the sites. Keith drove us home, and that ride back was luckily uneventful. What a day!