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Ila is still the sibling that shows the most interest in Thomas.  She loves to climb up next to me when I’m holding him and give him hugs and kisses.  When she hears him cry she says “it’s ok, Thomas” and hugs him or puts his pacifier in his mouth.  She hugs and kisses him all day long whether he’s in the swing, on the floor, or in the bouncer.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t just hug him when he’s awake.  He often sleeps in his swing and she regularly wakes him up with her hugs and kisses.  The other day she was buckled into her seat at the table when she heard him cry and she said “I need Thomas!”  Which meant that she needed to be unbuckled so that she could comfort him and help him stop crying.  She is always so gentle and loving towards him, I can’t wait to see their relationship develop as he grows.At Church, Isaac heard me telling someone about how affectionate Ila is to her little brother and I think he was a little jealous because since that time, he has been asking to hold Thomas more and he has been talking to Thomas and trying to make him smile more often.  I want to foster a good bond between my boys and help Isaac feel like he doesn’t need to compete with Ila, so I have been making comments about how Thomas will enjoy playing with his big brother when he gets older and how Isaac will be able to teach him about all sorts of boy things.  I can tell Isaac likes those ideas because he usually contributes to my comments and says things like “you’d be really happy if Thomas was just like me when he’s my age, right?”Nicole is the child who has shown the most jealousy towards Thomas.  The following scenario has happened more than once:  Nicole is playing happily when Thomas starts to cry.  She stops playing and comes between me and Thomas and says “I don’t want Thomas.” (meaning she doesn’t want me to go pick him up and comfort him).  She also likes to tell me to “put Thomas in the swing,” when I’m holding him and she wants something.  I try not to be unavailable to her when I’m taking care of him and to help her show affection to him, but she is often so rough with her affection that I have to moderate her interactions for fear that she’ll hurt him.  She has had some moments when she has seemed to like him (or has at least treated him like a really fun doll).Charlotte generally likes Thomas, but she doesn’t interact with him as much as Isaac or Ila. 

Thomas is starting to smile a little more, but I have not been very successful at getting a picture of his smiles, instead I end up with pictures like this:Isaac even tried to help:

Isaac and Charlotte went out to play this morning and before I could stop her, Nicole went out wearing this:The weather was so nice that I didn’t demand that she come back in and change before playing outside.  In fact, I even allowed Ila to go out in her PJs (which I had been in no hurry to change her out of since we weren’t going anywhere today):Here she is trying to pick up an ant:The End

(not because I don’t have more to say, but because I have to go to bed while I still have a chance to get some sleep)

 

Name:  Thomas Deane Cochran

Age: 2 months, 3 days

Weight: 11 lbs     10th percentile

Length:   22 inches       25th percentile

Head Circumference: 15 1/2     50th percentile

Last well check (11 days) comparison:

Age = +almost 2 months, weight = +3 lb 4 oz, length = +1 3/8 inches, head = unkown

Here are some fun pictures from last time I did laundry.  I love that Nicole and Ila are interacting with each other more.  They are both in laundry baskets:Trying to kiss each other:

Then they sang “Ring Around the Rosies” and “fell” over:

It’s after midnight, so he technically turned 2 months old yesterday (3/6/12).  I should be going to bed, but I wanted to share these pictures that I took of Thomas today (yesterday).  I kept catching him “smiling” up at nothing in particular.  I managed to catch a few of his wide mouth smiles on camera. They’re not the true smiles that you can provoke at about 3 months, but I love them (and him) anyway.

I regularly find rocks around the house.  I’m pretty sure Nicole has brought most of them into the house.  One day I picked up her coat and noticed it was heavy–I found 8 rocks in the pockets.  She picks them up on the way to and from the bus stop in the morning. Nicole’s favorite thing to do with her rocks is to give them a bath.  She will announce that her rock needs a bath and then fill the bathroom sink with water.  After washing the rock with hand soap and water she carefully dries it with a towel.  One day she said her rock was hungry and requested some bread.  She shared the bread with the rock, offering it a bite between each of her bites.

Charlotte has been bringing home flowers for me lately.  They’re always tiny and have very short stems, but she is so excited to present them to me.  Here is one that she gave me either today or yesterday:I think it was less smashed when she gave it to me, but all the flowers she has been bringing have been about the same size–too small to even attempt to display or preserve in water.

I think this is Nicole’s way of saying that she wants me to go cook dinner.  I walked into the kitchen to find the chair at the counter, a pan on the stove, and another pan on the counter:In other news, she dressed herself this morning:(Did you notice how the shirt and pants are backwards?)

Last month, I had an idea to make a video of myself reading one of Nicole’s favorite books.  I had already read it to her 3 or 4 times that day and she wanted me to read it to her again.  So I made a recording of the book and played it for her.  She loved it and watched it over and over again.  A little more than a week later, I recorded several books with Ila and another one with Nicole.  I recorded a few more books today.  My current plan is to make a DVD for them to watch and read along with.

Ila has several of her favorite books memorized.  These two are my favorites to read with her because I love hearing her cute little voice reciting them.  The first one is “A Sick Day For Amos McGee”(sorry for the shaky camera work):
My other favorite is “The Shape of Me and Other Stuff”:
I tried to get Nicole to do a similar thing with me, but she just wanted to listen.

I have been trying to overcome the effects of lazy parenting.  I was so tired and achy by the end of my pregnancy, that I started turning on the TV more and more.  This bad habit continued when I came home with our new little family member.  Now he’s almost two months old and I’ve felt very guilty about the amount of time the TV is on. 

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on breaking the habit/addiction of having it on.  The first battle has been with the girls who keep requesting their favorite movies (currently WALL-E and Monster’s Ink).  The first day or two was the worst because they yelled and cried when I wouldn’t turn on the movies that they requested.  We’ve had a gradual withdrawal, because let’s face it, it’s exhausting keeping a 2 and 3 year old busy while trying to keep the house clean, care for a new baby and feed (and launder the clothes for) a family of 7.  So the second battle is with me, because it’s so easy to turn on a show so that I can get the dishes done without worrying about what they’re getting into.  Instead of being frustrated with myself when I finally gave in and turned it on, I told myself that I should be proud of the amount of hours that we had it off.  I think yesterday was the first day that I made it through an entire day with no TV/Movies.

I am already seeing the benefits of my efforts.  Ila and Nicole are playing together more and they are playing more creatively with their toys again.

Anyone who has spent much time around Nicole lately will recognize the title of this blog as Nicole’s request to color/draw pictures on a tablet, phone, or computer. She’s been a little obsessed with coloring on technology ever since Zach let her color on his tablet while I was in the hospital having Thomas.  She will spend hours carefully coloring in pictures.  I don’t know that I have ever seen her tire of this activity and she spent entire days drawing after Thomas was born.  Last week, I let her color on my phone so that she would sit still while I cut her hair.Another thing that Nicole really likes is thick books.  I used to think that she really liked the thick Curious George book because she liked Curious George.  I have since noticed that she shows similar interest in any thick book.  Last time I went to the library,  I picked out two books from the children’s section for no other reason than that they are thick.  Nicole has loved both of them.  This week she found a phone book and spent at least an hour carefully turning each page.

This is what happened while I was writing the last post:

(and it was a short post too, I guess I won’t be writing any long narratives during the day anytime soon!)

Ila pointed out an “owie” on her finger.  So I kissed her finger.  She picked up the kiss with her little fingers and placed it back on my lips and demanded that I return her owie.

She’s a funny little girl.  She likes finding “owies” and has actually been disappointed when one of her owies has healed and she can no longer find it.

This picture is unrelated to this post, however, I thought it was cute.  This is Ila all ready to walk to the bus stop.  She insisted on bringing two books and her blanket.  I’m not a fan of bringing blankets to the bus stop because we live in (near) Seattle and the sidewalks are often wet in the morning.  So I have to wrap the blanket around her neck to keep it from dragging and I usually have to re-wrap the blanket several times before we return home from the bus stop. 

Ila and Nicole have started to interact more with their new little brother.  At first they mostly ignored him, but would talk about him or order me to “put him in the swing.”

I’ve been expressing milk and bringing a bottle with me whenever I need to go out.  On Tuesday, I was out with my three youngest when Thomas became hungry.  When I got out the bottle, Ila wanted to feed him.  She really enjoyed feeding him and kept saying “I la you, Thomas.”  She asked several times if she could kiss his hair before giving him a kiss.  When I picked him up and started patting him on the back she started patting his back too.  Since then, whenever she sees me patting his back she says “I want hurt his back” which is her way of asking if she can pat his back too.  She also loves to bring him things that are his and she tells him that she loves him many times throughout the day.

Today I had Thomas in the bouncer when I heard Nicole saying something to him. I came over to see what she was doing just in time to catch her trying to pick him up.  Not knowing if she can hold him without dropping him, I grabbed them both in my arms and moved them over to the couch.  Thomas was starting to get upset so I told Nicole that I needed to help Thomas be happy.  She held onto him with both arms and said that she was going to help him be happy.  When I tried to take him from her, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and said that he was hers.  She held on with all her strength and it took some effort to extract him from her embrace.  I helped him clam down and got a pillow so that she could hold him more comfortably.  I let her feed him the remainder of a bottle that I had from earlier today.  The bottle didn’t have much milk in it and was gone quickly.  Nicole kept saying that he needed more milk.  As soon as I took him from her, she got my breast pump, lifted up her dress and said “help me put it on my bobum!*” 
*She says bobum which I think means bottom, but she uses the term for both her bottom and her stomach.  When I was pregnant I remember her saying something about getting the baby out of my “bobum” and proclaiming that she had a baby in her “bobum.”

I just think this little outfit is too cute not to share—and I’m trying to ease myself back into the routine of blogging more frequently with picture heavy and text light posts.

Unfortunately, Thomas was not cooperating with my attempts to photograph him:And by not cooperating, I mean he was not very well pacified and he didn’t want to put his hands down so that I could take a picture that showed the whole outfit.  Here’s a picture from yesterday that shows a calm, happy baby:Here he is in his suit two weeks ago, I also didn’t get a great picture of him that showed his whole outfit on that day:Maybe if I’m lucky,  I’ll get one I really like before he grows out of it

In December, I wrote about Nicole being evaluated through the school district for special services.  One of the main areas of concern is her difficulty answering questions.

Here is a video of a Q and A session with Nicole in October:

And for comparison, here is a Q and A session with Nicole from yesterday:

As you can see, she is improving.  In the first video she repeated the questions that I asked without answering them.  In the second video she answered my questions.  Some of her answers were wrong and it’s unclear if all of her wrong answers were just because she’s being silly or if she doesn’t completely understand the questions.  Like when I asked her where her eyes were and she said “my eyes is orange.”  I wonder if she just hears one word that she understands and responds to that, like she knew I was asking about eyes, but did she understand that I wanted a location, not a color?  Also, I’m fairly certain that she does know that she is a girl (or “grill” as she says it). 

She has a long way to go to get to completely normal interactions, but she’s making progress.  She still says things that make no sense, like last night she kept saying that she was scared that someone would turn into a bird.  I cannot figure out where she would get the idea of someone turning into a bird.

Last week I took some pictures of the girls with their little brother.  The pictures were looking like this:The girls were all starring off into space.  My solution was to ask them to give Thomas a kiss on the head.  I envisioned each of them leaning over to give him a sweet little kiss on the top of his head, but Nicole grabbed his head with both hands and planted one a firm one right on top of his head.I don’t remember if I asked Nicole to give Charlotte a kiss or if it was her own idea, but she grabbed Charlotte’s hair and pulled her in for a kiss on the lips.Charlotte was surprised by the forceful kiss and erupted in giggles:Ila did not want to be left out:So, I didn’t get my fantastic picture of all the girls with their brother–maybe next time.

the ban on children using markers resumes:

Today Thomas had his first well-check.  He is 11 days old.  They expect babies to lose some of their birth weight and then get back to their birth weight by the time they are about 2 weeks old.  Today, Thomas weighed in at 7 lbs 12 ½ oz.  He was 7 lbs 6 oz at birth and down to 7 lbs on the day that we left the hospital, so he has more than passed his birth weight.  He has also grown a little in length and is now 20 ⅜”.  He has been such a good baby so far.  He hardly ever cries and is easily pacified when he does cry.  He sleeps most of the day and has an amazing ability to sleep through noise.  I am continually astounded that he sleeps through his big sister Nicole yelling and dancing around right next to him.  I’m glad that they do a hearing screening at birth, because I would be worried about his hearing otherwise.

He was a good sport through a particularly rough appointment which included both a circumcision and a PKU screening (the test where they poke the baby’s heel and then squeeze it for what seems like a very long time as they fill all the circles on a card with his blood).  I was nervous about the circumcision because I didn’t think I could handle being in there with him while they did it, but I was overcome with guilt at the thought of sending him in by himself to go through it alone.  The nurse did a good job keeping him soothed with sugar water while the doctor did his thing and my good natured little Thomas didn’t even cry.