Hellobee

Months 10 and 32 were pretty mellow for Charlie and Olive. Since Olive has been on a consistent two-nap schedule for the past month and a half since we nap trained, scheduling activities is much easier, and we’ve been in a really good routine as a family. It’s been hot in New York, so we’ve been spending a lot of time at the local public pool, enjoying the last weeks of summer.

O L I V E  –  1 0  M O N T H S

Health

Poor Charlie is typically sick the entire winter and spring, but he usually has a break during the summer. He was completely healthy this entire month, which was the first sickness-free month since last fall hooray! But alas Olive got sick this past month. This is the third time she’s been sick since she was born. She previously had a fever for unknown reasons, and a persistent cold. This time she came down with roseola, which is a very common childhood viral infection. I completely self-diagnosed her, so I could be wrong, but Charlie had roseola when he was a baby as well. According to WebMD, older infants from 6 -15 months are at the greatest risk for contracting roseola because the antibodies babies receive in utero have faded by this time.

Initially I thought Olive had an ear infection because she had been tugging on her ears, so I took her to the doctor the first day she spiked a fever. He couldn’t find anything wrong with her other than the fever, so he told us to call back if she still had a fever in three days. Olive continued to have a high fever with temperatures reaching 104.4. Acetaminophen wouldn’t reduce it, and even ibuprofen took a very long time to kick in. Lukewarm baths were the most effective in bringing her fever down. It’s always scary when your baby gets a fever because you don’t always know the cause. On day 4, the fever broke and a rash broke out on her chest and back for a couple of hours. It wasn’t until the rash appeared that I guessed it was roseola. She also had other symptoms for roseola including loss of appetite (still nursing but refusing solids), general crankiness, and swollen eyes.

Considering how sick she must have been, Olive was a little trooper. It took over a week for her to get back into solids (I think she had a sore throat), but she continued to sleep pretty well, and was back to her smiley self in about a week.

Sleep

For most of month 9, Olive was waking up between 8:30-9:00am. Then I posted about her good sleep on the boards last week, and she started waking up between 7:30-8:00am! Even though I miss that extra hour of sleep, it’s actually much better for her 2-nap schedule to wake up an hour earlier.

This has been her schedule for the past couple of days:

8:00am – wake up
10:30am – Nap 1 (1 1/2 hour)
3:00pm – Nap 2 (1 hour)
6:30pm – Bedtime

We usually wake her up from her second nap by 4:00pm so that she goes to bed by 6:30pm. She is awake 2 1/2 hours before her first nap, 3 hours before her second nap, and 2 1/2 hours before bedtime. Most babies are usually awake their longest stretch before bedtime, but Olive gets cranky and tired after her bath so we’ve found that the 2 1/2 hour interval works best. At that point she’s not overtired, so she doesn’t pass out on the bottle/nursing and goes into the crib awake.

6:30pm is also the optimum bedtime for Olive. On the weekends when we’re out and about and more lax with her schedule, she often goes to bed at 7:30-8:00pm, and then she wakes up around 7:00am. She always sleeps much longer when she has an earlier bedtime, so I’m not going to mess with it for now, even though she and Charlie are on different schedules.

Olive still wakes up once a night, sometimes twice a night, although the first stretch she does has been getting longer and longer. She goes down at 6:30pm, and wakes up around 4am. Then she goes right back down after nursing until 8am, or she might wake up once more between 4-8am and go back to sleep after nursing.

Nursing/Milk Supply

My milk supply has started to decline as Olive started sleeping longer stretches, and I dropped a pumping session because I was just getting tired of pumping. She may not sleep through the night until I night wean her, but waking up hasn’t been bad enough for me to want to sleep train yet. Since I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for 10 months, what’s a little while longer? I still have plenty of milk for now, but as it starts to decline and Olive gets more into solids, she may self wean.

Nursing is still going well, and I’m thankful that we never hit any stumbling blocks. She never had any problems with latch. She has bitten me a couple of times, but never that hard. She’s never had a nursing strike. And I can still rely on nursing to get her to sleep, which I’m really thankful for since we’re going on a monster international trip in 2 weeks. I’m going to be a nursing machine on our 8 flights!

Olive eats three solid meals a day, and I nurse her after she has breakfast, after her first nap, after her second nap, at bedtime, and for any night time wakings. Since she’s getting a lot of calories from solids now, our nursing sessions are usually only a couple of minutes.

Olive prefers to nurse on the right side, and as a result, I produce three times as much milk on my right side! I’ve been trying to make her nurse way more often on the left side to even things out, but I was shocked at how big the disparity has become when I pump!

Solids

Olive continues to love beef/chicken, vegetables, pasta, and bread, but she’s not a big fan of fruit, or dairy like cheese and yogurt. We try to offer her everything we eat except for nuts and honey because we don’t want another picky eater on our hands. So far, so good because Olive loves to eat way more than Charlie ever has!

I do miss the days when Olive wasn’t eating solids though, because it was so much easier. Now I have to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for two kids, which means a good portion of my week is spent grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking, and doing dishes. Plus everyone in our family eats different things — Charlie has to have a soup, Mr. Bee eats a lot of fish, and I try to offer Olive the most variety since I want to encourage her palette (I eat everyone’s leftovers). In my dream world, I’d have a cook come in twice a week!

Left: Charlie holding Olive; Right: Olive adores Smokey the cat. Smokey is afraid of Charlie, but lets Olive pet her!

Milestones

Olive had her 7th tooth pop through this month — her lower left lateral incisor. She also has her upper and lower central incisors, and her upper lateral incisors. The right lower lateral incisor should be next, as her teeth are sprouting exactly according to this schedule! Charlie also got his teeth at pretty much the exact same timeline.

For physical milestones, Olive is just belly crawling super fast, and hasn’t started to pull up yet. By 10 months Charlie had been cruising and standing for a while (you can see his 10 month update here). But I’m glad that Olive isn’t that mobile yet because life will definitely be harder once she’s more mobile. Right now I can put her in a sitting position (she can’t get to it herself yet), and she’s stuck there.

As far as cognitive milestones, Olive finally started saying the monosyllabic sounds mamama and dadada. Some parents think their babies are saying mama and dada at 5 months (when Charlie started making these sounds), but mamama and dadada are just the first discernable “words” that most babies say.

We also have to start doing a better job of teaching her verbal cues and sign language. Olive has clapped on cue since she was 8 months old, so I know she understands. I very easily taught Charlie to wave bye and clap on cue when he was her age and he knew how to sign “more,” so getting her to wave bye and learn the sign for “more” will be my goal for the month!

C H A R L I E  –  3 2  M O N T H S

Sleep

Mr. Bee blogged about how we transitioned from laying next to Charlie until he fell asleep to having him fall asleep on his own. Charlie has been putting himself to sleep after storytime, and we’ve continued to lock his door and unlock it after he goes to sleep. It was going well so one night we experimented with not locking the door. Charlie came out of his room 7-8 times, and Mr. Bee just kept putting him back in bed. Eventually, and miraculously, he went to sleep on his own!

We wanted to continue along that path so that we don’t have to use the lock anymore, but then Charlie’s sleep took a turn for the worse in the past week. He’d been waking up at 8:30 with Olive for most of the past month, and then he started waking up frantic in the middle of the night, like he had a nightmare. He also started waking up at 4-5am and refused to go back to sleep for a couple of days, but the past couple of days he’s been waking up later again. Sometimes he wakes up so cranky and throws a tantrum. We have no idea what’s up with his sleep!

Left: Daycare sent Charlie home with a clip in his hair because it was so long! Right: We chopped it all off and spiked it up. He looks at least a year older!

Potty Training

When Charlie is at home, he always pees on the potty. But because he absolutely refuses to poop anywhere else except his diaper, his daycare still wants him in diapers. Now Charlie will beg for a diaper and deny that he has to poop, even though he has to. And once he has the diaper on, he goes into a corner and tells us not to look at him while he’s pooping. Since he very rarely poops at daycare, I want him to wear underwear full-time in the fall because wearing diapers some of the time is impeding  his potty progress. He asks to go to the potty most of the time in daycare, but when he’s having fun, he’ll just pee in his diaper.

I’m not sure how to address this poop issue, but I don’t like being in limbo with pee training because I know he’s ready. He understands, he can hold his pee for a long time, and he regularly wakes up dry from naps. His constipation issues have been better lately, although still not 100% cured. Hopefully as his constipation gets better, we’ll be able to poop train. He starts pre-k in fall 2013 when he’s 3 1/2, and we can’t send him to school in diapers then!

At this point we’re not pushing it because we’re going to be traveling for 2 1/2 weeks (8 flights!), and there’s no way we’re going to be able to be consistent with potty training, so we’ll have to redouble our efforts once we get back.

Left: spiked up; Right: au naturale

The Dentist

Charlie had his first dentist appointment last month. Yes we’re slackers — you’re supposed to go before your baby turns one, but oh well. The dentist examined all his teeth, brushed them with his special super brusher, and applied something on all his teeth. Charlie happily sat on my lap in the dentist’s chair throughout the exam. The dentist told us not to use fluoridated toothpaste until Charlie was 3, but we’ve been using it since he was 2. After he saw how well Charlie understood how to rinse and spit, he told us it was fine for us to continue using fluoridated toothpaste, and he told us to start flossing at age 3.

Charlie was an angel throughout the entire exam, and even bragged to his daycare teachers that he went to the dentist. I think he has Mr. Bee’s perfect teeth genes because they’re perfectly straight and healthy, despite his penchant for (decaf) coffee, and all those nights we let him fall asleep after a bottle when he was younger.

Left: pre- hair cut; Right: post- hair cut Charlie is bad to the bone with his spiked hair, tats, and iced coffee (decaf)

The Haircut

In our hipster neighborhood, lots of parents want to keep their boys’ hair on the longer side, but often children’s salons or regular salons will cut it short.  The two times we’ve gotten Charlie’s hair cut at a children’s salon have been utter debacles that ended up in bowl cuts.

We have this great stylist that comes to your house and cuts mom’s hair, then cuts the child’s hair for free. He always gives Charlie a great haircut whether we want it long or short. I think Charlie looks much better with longer hair, but his hair grows like a weed. If we want to keep it long, it requires a lot of maintenance, so I really want to learn how to cut hair. This short hair is perfect for the hot summer, and because we’ll be traveling for a couple of weeks, but we’ll probably grow it out again for the fall.

It’s amazing how much older he looks with short hair!

Favorites

I thought I’d start tracking some of our favorite foods, toys, gear, etc. in my monthly updates, because it’s so hard to remember once you’re past that stage. Here are some of our favorites for this month!

Olive’s favorite foods: chicken, any pasta, dumplings
Charlie’s favorite foods: fruit leather, cucumbers, Petit Suisse yogurt, yakult drinks
Olive’s favorite toys: Baby Einstein Take along Tunes, Sassy Wonderwheel, egg shakers, straws
Charlie’s favorite toys: Tegu blocks, Thomas trains, markers, paint (watercolor, tempera, & shaving cream), water balloons, Bright Starts ride-on car that we received as a gift (thanks Irene!)
Olive’s favorite book: Tails (formerly Charlie’s favorite as well), Where Is Baby’s Belly Button?, How Big?
Charlie’s favorite books: Sharing Time, Press Here, Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site
My favorite gear: Combi Twin Sport Stroller (so glad we got a side by side stroller because they love entertaining each other)
My favorite purchase: Bedhead pajamas for Charlie from Gilt Group (pictured below)

Morning hug from big brother in their teepee.

We’re about to embark upon our biggest adventure yet as a family — a 6 hour flight to LA where we’ll visit my family for a couple of days, then 3 flights and 2 days of travel to visit Mr. Bee’s parents on a remote island in the Philippines. That’s 8 flights in 2 1/2 weeks! I think Charlie is at an age where he’ll not only have a blast, but he’s also old enough to remember the trip. There’s been so much to prepare, so stay tuned for a million and one posts on traveling with kids!