Hellobee

Olive turned 11 months old this month! When I was writing this post, it hit me that she’s going to be 1 in less than a month — when did that happen?!

Olive has been so fun and easy the past couple of months, they’ve just flown by. She’s happy, eats well, sleeps well, and she’s still not that mobile yet, so she’s not getting into mischief. She was a rockstar on our trip to the Philippines, and she’s just been so great and mellow!

On grandma’s back in a traditional Korean carrier called a podaegi, enjoying the breeze in her hair. This is how my mom wore both me and my brother. They don’t really even sell these anymore… my aunt in Korea had to go to an open air market to find one.

Sleep

I thought I would have to renap train Olive once we returned home from our travels, but she went right back to her old schedule after a couple of days of recovering from jet lag. I was amazed! Her naps are perfect, but she’s still waking up once a night. I’ve considered sleep training that one wake up because I’ve been suffering from really bad insomnia lately and I’m utterly exhausted. But so many moms on Hellobee had babies that started sleeping through the night by themselves around the one year mark, so I’m waiting it out for now. I suppose I’ve been waking up at night this long, a little while longer won’t kill me!

Left: Sleeping on the travel boppy for 8 hours straight on our return flight home; Right: Olive loves to stick out her tongue when she’s concentrating.

Her schedule hasn’t changed that much from last month. I wake up her up at 7:30 every morning during the week so that she stays on schedule, and we also wake her up from her naps. She gets about 15 1/2 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. On weekends I usually let her sleep in and take longer naps so I can sleep in! I think she tends to be a sleepier baby because she can sleep 13-14 hours at night, and still take 3+ hours of naps. Not that I’m complaining at all!

7:30am – wake up
10:00am – Nap 1 (1 1/2 hour)
2:30pm – Nap 2 (1 hour)
6:30pm – Bedtime

Olive’s many versions of Blue Steel.

Breastfeeding/Weaning

I wanted to make it to the one year mark with breastfeeding, and with only 2 weeks left until Olive turns 1, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll reach my goal! When we first started this journey together, I never imagined that we would make it this far, and that I would come to love breastfeeding as much as I have. It really is a special bond I share with my little girl.

Olive still loves nursing, so we’re not going to wean any time soon. We’re at 4 nursing sessions during the day – morning, after both naps, and at bedtime – and for any night wakings. A friend of mine has a baby two days younger than Olive, and though he’s still nursing a little bit, he mostly takes bottles and his interest in nursing has been waning since he was 7 months old. I have two other good friends whose babies self-weaned at the one year mark. The decision to wean is so personal and different for every mom. I thought that I would wean by 1 year, and then possibly continue pumping once or twice a day for up to a year. But now that the 1 year mark is here, neither of us are ready to wean.

As far as my long term plan, I’d love to wean Olive by 15 months. By that age, she’ll probably be walking and talking a fair amount. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll want to nurse at that point, but I’m not ruling anything out… who knows how I’ll feel when the time comes! And Olive will only take a bottle from our nanny and doesn’t really like sippy cups either, so we’re really going to have to work on that if we’re going to wean!

Left: At the airport; Right: in a cab in Manila.

Milestones

Olive only started pulling herself up to stand this past month. She’s definitely determined and not a tentative or shy baby, but she is a little behind when it comes to physical milestones. If we adjust her age since she was born a month early, she’s actually 10 months old. By this age Charlie had been cruising for months and was on the verge of walking. Olive can’t yet walk with a walker, and still army crawls. Well it’s more of a worm crawl now. But since she’s my second child, I don’t really worry about milestones like I probably would have if she were my first. The fact that she hasn’t started cruising actually makes it easier for me since I haven’t had to babyproof!

Olive is babbling more than ever, and she can clap, stick out her tongue, and wave on cue. My goal was to teach her some sign language this month, but with all the traveling and jet lag, I just didn’t get around to it. She does seem to have grown up a bit from our trip!

When Charlie was a year old and we flew to LA to visit my parents, we got him his own seat because I couldn’t imagine holding him for 6 hours. Olive was almost 11 months and she’s taller than Charlie was at her age, but she flew as a lap infant on our recent 8-flight roundtrip. She just seems like such a baby compared to Charlie, perhaps because she’s been much slower to hit physical milestones. Or maybe I’m just savoring every last moment of her babyhood because I know she’s my last child.

Playing trains on the tape track I made at grandma’s house.

C H A R L I E – 3 3 M O N T H S

Charlie’s daycare closes for the entire month of August, so I thought we’d see some clinginess and reluctance to return to school after spending so much time with us. But he’s been happier there than ever! He adores his daycare, which really makes me feel like it’s been the right choice over a nanny for him. He is a sweet, affectionate, social little kid, and he gets along great with all his classmates.

Blowing bubbles on grandma’s bubble themed rug.

Sleep

Charlie had a much tougher time than Olive getting back on track sleep-wise after our trip. Laying down next to him would only keep him up because he wanted to play with us — he could stay up for hours! But when we’d leave the room, he’d fall asleep in a couple of minutes. We actually had to let him cry it out for a couple of nights after trying and failing to get him down for hours. Is he too old to cry it out? We were just so jetlagged and exhausted that we didn’t have the energy to deal with his hours-long night time shenanigans, and a little bit of crying got him back on track. The first night he cried less than 10 minutes, the second night maybe 3 minutes, and the third night he whimpered for a couple of seconds before going to sleep. Now he’s sleeping by himself from 8:30pm – 7:30am.

Charlie naps great at daycare from 1:00 – 3:30, but naps at home on the weekend have been a challenge. He’s skipped naps a couple of times, and when he does want to nap, he asks us to take us out in his stroller so he can fall asleep there. I know he’s not ready to drop that nap because he naps at daycare every day and still sleeps well at night. I really want him to hold onto that nap as long as we can because Olive will be on the same schedule as him in a couple of months, and we’ll get a good 3 hour break in the middle of the day. I fear the day he drops his nap!

Charlie is way too big for Olive’s pack n play.

Potty Training

I put Charlie in a diaper on the planes because I was afraid he might have an accident, but he actually used the airplane bathroom just fine. He didn’t have any potty regression at all, and even figured out how to climb up on the toilet by himself and use it since he didn’t have a potty in the Philippines.

We still put him in a diaper for naps and bedtime. I think we can get rid of the naptime diaper easily, but bedtime training is going to be tough because he shamefully still drinks milk before bedtime. He uses the potty before he goes to sleep, but he needs to stop drinking liquids much earlier than just before bedtime in order to make it through the night dry. One night when we were in LA though, Charlie actually went to bed without a diaper and with his potty near him, and he woke up at night to go to the potty all by himself! We haven’t pushed anything with all the travel and jet lag, but maybe he is ready to be night trained. It seems that some kids night train pretty easily, while others continue to have accidents for quite some time.

Behavior

I think Charlie is a pretty typical almost 3-year old behavior-wise. Most of the time he’s a happy, sweet, funny little boy and we have a blast together. But the whining… oh my goodness I can’t stand the whining! It’s amazing how patient Mr. Bee is with Charlie, because the whining drives me absolutely bonkers! In fact I once read that the most annoying sound to a parent is the sound of their child whining…. I believe it!

Charlie throws tantrums about 2-3 times a week and they’re usually due to him being tired or hungry, but sometimes he’s just so naughty the entire day. He whines, he throws tantrums, and he doesn’t listen to me at all. If I ask him to do something, he refuses or does the opposite. I know that Charlie needs to test his boundaries and this is all a necessary phase for his age, but sometimes I get so frustrated and lose my patience with him. Then I quickly feel guilty afterwards.

But then there is the sweet Charlie. He calls me mama instead of mommy because he knows how to pull on my heart strings! He is so affectionate and full of love. He constantly tells us we’re his best friends and that he loves us. He gives us unsolicited hugs and kisses, and he loves to snuggle. He is a little charmer that one.

Enjoying the warm water my mom had installed in her backyard just for the kids.

Diet

Feeding Charlie is still so tough. Even when he’s hungry, he just doesn’t like eating. He won’t even finish things he loves, like ice cream! So I’ve been reading up on the GAPS diet, the Paleo diet, going gluten-free, and general nutrition for babies and toddlers since diet can have a big impact not only on health, but also on general eating habits and behavior. I’m considering doing a complete overhaul of what we eat, but it’s been really tough because I have poor eating habits and a poor relationship with food. If I could take a pill instead of eating actual meals, I’d do that in a heartbeat!

A lot of what I’ve been reading has been really eye-opening, and I hope that by sharing it here on Hellobee, I’ll be more motivated to make some big lifestyle changes when it comes to our entire family’s diet.

Favorites

We’re still loving our favorites from last month, but these are some of our favorite new things this month.

Olive’s favorite foods: avocado, buttered toast, butternut squash
Charlie’s favorite foods: mandarins, dumplings, buttered toast, bagels w/ cream cheese, eggs with parmesan cheese
Olive’s favorite toys: play kitchen, the dishwasher, knocking down Charlie’s blocks
Charlie’s favorite toys: playdoh, blocks, blocks, and more blocks
Olive’s favorite books: Elmo Puppet Book, That’s Not My Monster (basically anything with flaps and textures)
Charlie’s favorite books: I Want My Hat Back, The Gruffalo
My favorite gear: Breeze Playard, GoCrib

When I look at these two together, I often think to myself, how did I get so lucky? I love being their mom.