Hellobee

Olive turned 9 months old last week! I think her 8th month of life has been the month with the most changes to date. She’s sleeping well, eating like a little monster, sitting up, crawling, and generally just a super happy baby! She looks like such a little lady now. Check out how little hair she had at her 4 month update!

Olive in her bee swimming suit

Nap Training

I’m still in disbelief over how easy it was to nap train Olive. I’d been putting it off for months because I thought she would cry endlessly. But there were only three instances where she cried 1-3 minutes the first week of nap training, and then she never cried again.

Because she’s taking longer naps, she was also able to drop her third nap. Taking 2 naps instead of 3 has been huge for us because it gives us more flexibility with going out. I remember that it was really a turning point for Charlie too, and when we started enrolling him in a lot more classes. Both Charlie and Olive now take their afternoon nap together around 1. Having them on the same schedule makes life so much easier because I finally get a break!

Left: happily showing her 4 front teeth; Right: naked before bath time!

Schedule

Since Olive has been getting more sleep in the day, she started waking up an hour earlier in the mornings at 6:30am. I can’t complain though — she never wakes up earlier, and sometimes she wakes up as late as 8:00am!

This is a typical schedule:

6:30am wake up
9:00am – 10:30am – Nap 1
1:30pm – 3:00pm – Nap 2
6:00pm – Bedtime

Sometimes she wakes up early from a nap, so we’ll put her down a little earlier. Luckily no matter what time we put her down, she still wakes up at the same time. I love early bedtimes!

Left: Olive in my favorite color; Right: She looks so big here!

Sleeping through the Night

Olive has only slept through the night once in her life — the night we transitioned her from a swaddle to a sleep sack, she slept 11 straight hours. Then on her 9 month birthday last week, Olive slept 12 hours straight! She hasn’t done it again, but I’m hopeful that her improved daytime sleep habits will eventually rub off on her night time sleep. She’s been waking up 2, sometimes 3 times a night, but that first stretch of sleep has been getting longer (up to 8 hours instead of 3).

I’m pretty certain that she’ll start sleeping through the night if I night wean her, but I just wasn’t ready to do it because I don’t get enough time with her in the day. I haven’t minded getting up with her enough to sleep train or night wean. But I’ve been getting migraines the past week (perhaps from being too tired?), so the time to night wean may be coming soon.

Two of Olive’s many rompers.

Eating

Olive is sadly a better eater than Charlie. Sad because she often eats bigger portions that him! I prepared a plate full of mushrooms and zucchini for both Charlie and Olive to share, and she ended up eating the entire plate by herself. She actually loves vegetables way more than fruit! Sometimes she eats so much I’m worried that she’s going to throw up, and I wonder if a baby this small can digest so much food!

But at 9 months (8 months adjusted), her pincer grasp is still so poor that she can’t feed herself unless it’s big pieces of food like bread or bananas, so we’re still feeding her. Olive will let us know when she wants more — she sometimes gets mad if you don’t feed her fast enough — a problem we never had with Charlie! She loves chicken, vegetables of all kinds, bread, pasta, and all the Korean soups that I make (but she will not eat purees at all). It’s funny how you can have two kids with completely different eating habits.

Right: Three of Olive’s favorite toys: a spoon, the Sassy Wonder Wheel, and a potato masher

Milestones

Looking back at Charlie’s 9 month update he was crawling (real crawling and not belly crawling), standing, cruising, clapping, and had been “talking” for months (monosyllabic sounds like mamama, lalala, bababa). Olive is still belly crawling, can’t yet stand (her crib is still on the highest setting), and while she is very vocal, she’s never made the clear repetitive monosyllabic sounds that Charlie did. But… she has been clapping for the past month! She’s definitely on the slower side with her physical milestones, but talking to moms of other preemies, their babies were also slow to develop fine motor skills like the pincer grasp. Olive is continuing to progress though, so I’m not worried. Every baby truly is different.

Right: Charlie asked me to wrap his baby on his back.

C H A R L I E – 3 1  M O N T H S

Charlie turned 31 months old today! I thought that he wouldn’t get sick as often in the summer months, but he got sick twice this past month. Charlie is actually a really well-behaved boy most of the time, and the only time he really acts up is when he’s sick or hungry. Sometimes when I think he’s just being naughty, he’s usually sick. I’m not sure what we can do to prevent him from getting sick so often. We wash his hands religiously, which is the single best thing you can do. Hopefully he outgrows it like my brother and cousin, who were very sickly as children, eventually did.

Left: Charlie put his horse doll on his potty. The pig on the right is Olive’s doll, and it has a diaper on.

Potty Training

Potty training came pretty naturally to Charlie because I think he was just ready. We just have to be sure to remind him to use the potty if it’s been a while since he last went because if he’s having too much fun playing, he can forget and have an accident. When we’re home, Charlie is very good about using the potty all by himself, and he uses either the public restroom or his travel potty when we’re out and about.

Now pooping in the potty is a completely different story. Whenever Charlie has to poop, he begs us for a diaper and will only poop in his diaper. Since Charlie is still battling his constipation issues, we haven’t been pushing him too hard to poop on the potty. And though Charlie wears underwear when he’s with us, daycare doesn’t want to transition him to underwear because his pooping/constipation issues might stress him out. Talking to our daycare teachers, apparently potty training for poop is often much harder even for kids who aren’t constipated. A lot of Charlie’s classmates were perfectly fine peeing on the potty, but they would hold their poop all day until they got home!

Left: Our little garden is thriving! Right: Charlie wanted me to put Olive’s hairclip in his hair.

Constipation

I’ve been giving Charlie a couple ounces of breastmilk in his bottle every day to help with his constipation. I’m worried that the main cause of his constipation now is due to Charlie purposefully holding it in. Every night for the past week, Charlie has pooped exactly when the bedtime stories have all been read and it’s time to go to sleep. He is actually holding it in until he can delay bedtime! It’s not like we can tell him to sleep in his poop — and he will poop up to 4 times, a little bit at a time — so the bedtime routine has become even longer.

I’ve been researching nutritionists and chiropractors to see if we can treat Charlie’s physical problems, but we also have to treat the mental aspect of it as well.

Left: too hot to be outside so chillin in the tub; Right: I cut Charlie’s hair for the first time, and I think it turned out pretty well!

Sleeping and Eating

Charlie had been waking up at 5:30 for a while, but luckily he’s back to waking up at 6:30 or later. Early morning wake-ups are one of the toughest part of being a parent, especially when both Mr. Bee and I are such night owls! We still have to lay down next to Charlie until he falls asleep and then sneak out. But a couple of times the past week he did fall asleep by himself. Oh how I miss the days of plopping him into his crib awake!

As far as eating, we’ve transitioned Charlie from soy milk to hemp milk, and we’ve been diluting the milk with water so that he gets hungrier and eats more solids. When he’s not sick, he eats a decent amount — less than the average toddler, but still ok. When he is sick, he usually has little to no appetite, and it’s a challenge trying to get him to even take one bite of food.

Left: Playing with Jenga and Tegu Magnetic blocks; Right: Feeding his doll milk

Personality

Charlie really is the sweetest little boy. He recently started calling me mama again, probably because he hears the other kids in daycare say it. I love it so much more than mommy! He also says that Olive, mommy and daddy are his best friends all the time. He has a great memory, and his verbal skills continue to develop. He makes up entire conversations between his toys by himself and has quite the imagination! Just yesterday he told me to take a bite of his imaginary ice cream and when I took a big bite, he said, “That’s too big! It’s a pretend ice cream!”

Charlie is also an awesome big brother. He never shows any signs of jealousy towards Olive, and he is so loving towards her. I couldn’t have asked for a better relationship.

Left: This was the first (and not the last) time I dressed them alike. Right: Charlie said for the first time this month, “Olive is my best friend!”

Now that Olive is a little bit older, mobile, and able to stay awake longer, we’re having so much more fun. She will probably be on this two nap schedule for a while (Charlie dropped his second nap at 15 1/2 months), so we’re getting into a good groove as a family schedule-wise. It finally feels like it’s not so hard with two kids.

Left: Olive is the boss. Check out that look of determination on her face! Right: One of my favorite pictures of Charlie and Olive ever taken on July 4th.