Potty training, day 1

I thought I would just jot down how things went yesterday (the first day we tried potty training) so I can come back and read this for posterity.  I'm sure no one else is very interested.  haha.

Our system is very simple:  I bought some panties for her, and some M&M's and jellybeans.  We've had a little potty for her for a while.  I originally set a timer on my iPod for every 15 minutes, and I let her pick the ringtone she liked the most.  She did really great at first.  No accidents for the first few hours, and she even ran to the potty before the timer went off and took off her own panties and went pee-pee.  Then I don't know what happened ... I even set the timer to go off every 7-8 minutes because she started having accidents.  I don't know if she was too focused on playing but it seemed like every time she never made it until the timer went off.  Then I had to put Ian down for a nap, which means I go nurse him in his room and lay him down.  It usually takes me about 15-20 minutes, so honestly I expected to come back and she have had an accident.  But she had peed in three different places and had pooped in her panties during that time.  So after that I just put her in a diaper because it was naptime and I needed her to have a good, uninterrupted nap time for both my sanity and hers.

I also had a very complicated dinner I was making last night so after she got up from her nap I let her wear a diaper the rest of the day.  Call me lazy, but I needed the break.

So that is how our first day went.  Not the greatest, but I know she understands what to do, and I also realize it's the first day EVER in her life that she's been asked to pee-pee or poo-poo anywhere else but her diaper, so that's a big thing to get used to in just one day.

Six month follow up visit with Dr. Lambert

We went in today for Lucy's six month eye visit.  As usual, it takes a lot of work to get there and keep both kids happy while we're there, for what seems to be not a lot of information, but I'm used to it by now.

They had, and always have had, a hard time getting Lucy to look at things they want her to look at so they can test her eyes.  First, the assisting doctor tried to put a piece of tape over Lucy's eye (instead of one of those black eye cover things they use at the grown up eye doctor...) and Lucy was NOT having it.  Imagine this scenario:  you put a bunch of sticky tape over a two-year-old's eye, then ask her to look at a small TV monitor all the way across the room with a small picture on it and then seem disappointed when she neither knows what the picture is or even cares where the TV is -- all she wants to do it get that tape off her eye!  haha.  So we moved on to the black eye cover thing, but that didn't work any better.  All this time, Ian is sitting on a blanket on the floor of the room, crawling away every minute and trying to grab the paper off the printer, etc.  LOL.  They ended up trying to turn on a movie for her to look at (she could care less) and then they brought in another nurse to try to do silly dances for Lucy to look at.  I guess they got what they wanted (finally!) and Dr. Lambert took a look at her and said everything looked great.  Then they had to dilate her eyes, and we had to go out and wait in the waiting room until the drops worked.  Then they had to try to get her to look into this machine so they could measure her eyes (that tactic barely worked!)  Dr. Lambert looked at her once again, then we were on our way home, only 2 hours after we arrived.  Poor Ian.  He was so tired because it was during his nap time.  He got passed from doctors and nurses to try to make him happy while I helped them try to make Lucy do what they wanted her to do.  I just realized today that getting a two year old to do anything they don't want to do at the doctor's office is nearly impossible, especially when it involves looking at something.  I can hold her down or hold her head all I want, but I cannot physically make her look at something.

It's over, and we don't have to do it again for a year, so hopefully she will be much more compliant and Ian will definitely stay home next year, even though he will be in a very different state next year, I'm sure.

I will say that it was very nice of all the doctors and nurses to sense my inability to deal with both Lucy and Ian at the same time and offer to hold him instead of just leaving me in a lurch!

Stopping time

Dear Lucy,

Today you are 24 months and 24 days old.  I went to an open house for a Parent's Morning Out/preschool type thing to see if we were interested in enrolling you in the fall.  I know it was just for a one day a week type thing, but it made me feel like you were very grown up already and I was looking at schools, etc.  Sometimes I feel like time is rushing past me and that you will be five and ten and twenty-one before I know it.  Other days it feels like you can't grow up fast enough because I have so many exciting things I want to do with you when you are old enough.  But just for today, just for now, here are some random tidbits about you that I love so much and that make me want to stop time.

The way you slip your little hand into mine while we pray at bedtime.

How you get SO excited to rush into Ian's room the very second you hear him wake up.

I'm amazed at how you connect things we've talked about and some things we've never really discussed ... like how the fire trucks on Ian's onesie are the same ones you see occasionally and you knew they made the same siren sound, which you are great at demonstrating.

I love how you persist in saying "hold you" when you want to be held, even though we always tell you it's "hold me".

How you trust me and you like to walk with me and hold my hand.  Even when Mommy can't find the right building and I make you walk all over creation, you sweetly just held my hand and walked beside me like such a big girl with no complaints.

You have such a caring heart, my baby girl.  You get very concerned when other babies or kids cry, especially Ian.  Likewise you love to see other babies and kids smile, and you really just love babies.

You are funny and you love to share. You are observant and exuberant.  You love to read and you love to count things (except you only know "1, 2..." so you just say "1, 2, 1, 2" over and over).  I'm so happy you're mine, Lucy Frances, and I know your Daddy would say the same thing.

I love you,
Mommy

Lucy's second birthday!

Sorry this post has been so long in coming. I rarely have the time to sit down and write a lot or post pictures. In fact, I may be interrupted writing this by Ian waking up from his nap any time now. We'll see.

Lucy had her two year old well visit and I'm pretty sure she was 24 lbs., 8 oz. The paperwork that had the exact numbers written down is in Ian's room. LOL. So we'll go from memory. She's doing great.

Here's what a typical day in the life of two year old Lucy is like:

7:30am. Wake up from her big girl bed. Knock/bang on door until I come get her, usually asking her to be quiet since Ian is still asleep. She usually immediately asks for "ahm-ee" (oatmeal), which we go to the kitchen to start.

7:45am. She likes to help me stir the oatmeal and then she sits at the big table in her booster seat and watches Elmo's World while eating her oatmeal.

8:15am - 12:30pm. We play, we run errands, we almost always go to the park, etc. At the park she can basically do everything by herself, including climbing up and down stairs and going down the slide on her tummy. She's still a little nervous to go down on her bottom due to a previous tumble she took down a slide.

12:30/1:00pm. We eat lunch usually around this time. She loves to eat almost anything I feed her. This is either leftovers from dinner the night before, pasta, sandwiches, fruit, hot dogs, or whatever strikes our fancy.

3:00pm. These days she's been going down for her nap around 3 or so and sleeping for about an hour and a half.

5:30pm. Daddy comes home and we eat dinner and play until...

7:30pm. Bathtime! Daddy usually takes care of this since Mommy is feeding Ian.

8:00/8:30pm. Bedtime! Mommy likes to do this part unless Ian is being especially fussy. We read several books, then she lays down and I rub her back and her hair and pray for her and sing songs. Her favorite songs are "God is So Good", "Jesus Loves Me", "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider", and "Patty-Cake, Patty-Cake."

Lucy has a huge vocabulary, but a lot of it is probably only intelligible to Wesley and I and even then sometimes just in context (like her words for water, raisin, and videos sound very similar so we have to look for other clues...haha). But these days I am noticing huge leaps in her abilities, like recognizing letters and words and colors and concepts without prompting from me. You can see those little neurons firing and making connections left and right! We're so proud of her.

Here are some pictures from her birthday party, taken by her Gigi since she is a good photographer and I am a lazy picture-taker. haha.

These are a little out of order, sorry!

Lucy with her princess tent from PopPop and Nana!

Lucy and her birthday balloon!

This girl loves cupcakes, especially the icing!

Sitting at her table which was a present from her Gigi and Papa, using the new drawing toy we bought her.

The party guests (some of them!)

Peeking at Gigi from the playground equipment.

Our beautiful daughter.

Enjoying her second (or third? we're not sure) cupcake with her Gigi.

Visit with Dr. Mackay

We had a visit with Dr. Mackay today. I took both kids by myself, thinking Ian would be asleep the whole time. He wasn't! But that's ok.

The visit went well. He said she is looking great and everything is right on track. They took some pictures of her from the front and both sides (while I bribed her with fruit snacks). She just mostly wanted to look at herself on the screen. This child loves being photographed for sure. Just on her terms, that's the problem. We don't have to go back to see him for another 2 years! I love that! We made an appointment today for the year 2014. Wow.

Lucy's eye surgery: 12/15/11

We decided to have Lucy's eye surgery on December 15, 2011. I was due with baby Ian on November 10th, and we were thinking at least he'd be a month old before I would have to take care of a child that just had surgery. I was so nervous about it, thinking it was going to a huge repeat of her head surgery. I really shouldn't have been worried! It went so quickly and easily and then the recovery was just that she was kind of out of it and cranky for the rest of the day, but she didn't even really try to rub her eyes. We had to put ointment in her eyes for a week and they were really bloodshot and a little swollen the weekend after the surgery. The funniest part was that they gave her like a "happy drink" before taking her back to surgery that just made her really relaxed and calm and she started to giggle at everything and slur her words a little bit. We captured it on video and we like to watch it occasionally. Here's some pictures of the day.

Arriving at the hospital at 6:00am! She doesn't know the difference!

Our little family (minus Ian, who was asleep in his car seat) before the surgery.

Lucy and her daddy, before they came to take her to surgery.

A few weeks post-surgery. Don't her eyes look great?

Lucy turns 2!

Today is Lucy's second birthday!!! We had her birthday party this past Saturday, and my mom and mother in law got some great pictures of her. I'll put up another post later with all of those pictures. She also has a follow up yearly appt. with Dr. Mackay tomorrow and her 2 year well visit on Thursday, so I will post after those as well. I also just realized I never posted about her eye surgery which was December 15th, 2011. Guess I have a lot to catch up on! (having a second child really slows down this chronicling process)

Lucy, deciding to get pregnant with you and then discovering we were successful on the first try was the BEST thing ever. I always knew I would be a mom and we had to wait a little while after getting married before we decided to have kids. I'm so glad I had that time with your dad, but it was also hard to wait. I originally wanted to get pregnant at such a time that I would have a baby in May or June because I was still in grad school and was graduating in May, but we thought we might have trouble getting pregnant so we started trying a few months ahead of schedule. And lo and behold, you were there and you were due in March, not May or June! But I couldn't be happier. I had to quit working so I could do two internships for grad school, and I'm sure both of the colleges I interned at thought it was odd to have a pregnant lady waddling around campus in the student centers and in chapel and at SGA meetings. Then on a lazy Saturday morning, you let us know you were coming that day, and you did! You were born at 4:24pm on March 27, 2010. Even with all of the health problems you had and the hospital stays and the surgeries, I couldn't be happier with you or more proud of you or more in love with you. Sometimes I think my heart will burst, just knowing that you are MY daughter and I get to be your mom.

I love you immensely. Happy birthday, Lucy Frances!

Your mommy