Fun Kid Stories

Aly has been really growing in her ability to communicate with us (and hence has become a much more pleasant little lady to be around). This morning, she brought me some fruit mix that she enjoys and put it on my lap. Obviously she wanted some, so I opened it up, took out some pieces, and then over time, ate the rest of it. She toddled back after a few minutes, look at the bag, looked at me with a shocked look on her face and said, "uh oh, uh oh!" and held up the bag. Haha, it was way cute. I can't believe how fast she's growing up!

A bonus fun story about Asante:

The other day when I was yard saling, I found a cute stuffed giraffe and stuffed gorilla that I got for the kids- mainly Aly because she LOVES stuffed animals right now. Asante enjoys the gorilla though, so he brought it to the doctors office with us this morning. He was talking to it as we waited, and Jake suggested that maybe he should tell a little story to the gorilla while Aly held it. Asante said, "okay, once upon a time..." and continued to tell the gorilla the story of the three little pigs, complete with different voices and sound effects. It was priceless!

My Sweet Aly Turned One!

I can't believe that this year has gone by SO fast. I have vivid memories of the days when she was so teeny and slept ALL THE TIME. Boy are those days gone! :)

Aly has been such an awesome addition to our family. Who would have known that I had the capacity to fall completely in love with another person?!

Some memories I have of her over this first year...
- her bruised little face after flying out of the birthing canal (she was in a hurry to get out and meet her brother!)
- at 3 weeks, she had to be admitted to the hospital after having some breathing troubles. I think this was one of my first "motherly intuition" moments. and of course, she pulled her IV out of her head, even at 3 weeks old. I think they were quite surprised that she had that much coordination so early!
- aly LOVED (and still loves) the outdoors. She was slightly colicky, but would stop crying immediately when we took her outside. Sometimes just opening the door would make her stop crying. I can only remember one time that it hasn't worked. Daddy and Aly did quite a few late night walks around the Ashland Manor parking lot.
- i was incredibly thankful that aly began sleeping through the night so early. At 7 weeks, she was sleeping 10 hours in a row at night! She did this until 6 months. Haha, I guess she's making up for lost time or something now.
- Aly LOVES her momma. She lights up when she sees me and wants me to hold her, hug her, and give her kisses every time I come back into a room. This obviously makes me feel a special bond with her, but can be hard when trying to leave her with someone else :).
- I think Asante and Aly are best friends. Asante was the first person Aly smiled at and the first one she laughed at. She looks up to him so much and he's taught her a lot about the world.
- Her first word was "tickle" (at about 8 months), which is what she would say as she would start crawling towards us to attack us with tickles. I guess that says something about how often we tickle each other!
- Bath times are glorious for her. Typically she enjoys them a ton and could stay in them until she turned pruney.
- She's very artsy. She loves to dance, sing, draw, and listen to music.
- Her words at age one include: mama, dada, baby, girl, Aly, ball, tickle, dog, hi and bye. She repeats some other animal/truck sounds and words, but hasn't used them independently yet.

I love this girl! I'm so thankful for my little Alethea Amani Malloy.

Ninos update

Time for an update on my darling children! It's been awhile, and I'm sure you distant family will appreciate it. Friends who see my kids on a daily basis, you know all of this already, so you can go to the next item in your google reader. :)

Aly

Aly-doodle is doing great in the ways that she is moving and shaking and eating like a feign. She has been doing awesome eating whatever we eat, despite that she has had zero teeth up until Friday! She has been eating hamburger meat, cheese, spaghetti, beans, broccoli- anything that is "big people food." Up until last week, we could count on her to sleep through the night- I think she made it a whole week and a half or two weeks of going down at 7/8 and not waking until the morning! Yippee! In addition to all of this, she has been cruising along quite nicely and has recently discovered that she can go from crawling to standing up without holding on to anything. This was a skill that Asante didn't have until after he started walking. I hope this means walking is just around the corner!

On the other hand, Ms. Aly is a ball of crankiness. She has been crying a lot and often over the past week or so. She's been fighting a fever/cold/cough in addition (or maybe because of) this stinkin' tooth. This has interrupted her sleeping (both naps and night time) so needless to say, we're tiiiiiiired. :)

Asante

This little guy has been really into singing and dancing lately. He's been learning tons of songs and nursery rhymes and dancing around to them. We even had a little dance party in the living room this afternoon which was awesome (thank you, Slugs, Bugs and Lullabys!). He loves playing little games we make up and he's started driving (eek!) on daddy's lap. He is just getting over a few weeks of horrible stuttering. He's still struggling a little, but not anywhere near what it was. His favorite things to talk about? "What does ______ (porch, wife, etc.) mean?" "tell me a story about pigs", "Guess what?" (after which he proceeds to do something really strange), and "Aly, you are fiesty!"


As we approach Aly's one year mark, I reflect on what people told me when I first had Aly. "Tiff, this year will be hard. But after Aly is one, it gets a lot more fun and a lot easier." They were totally spot on. These kids bring me so much joy, even on the bad days. :)

Ferberizing

I've been doing a little more research on the "crying it out" method of sleep training. We've contemplated starting it, but are going back and forth since she's been sick lately. We are to the end of our rope with her bad sleeping the past week. It's a tough decision.

Here's an article I found today that has been informative on some of the rumors surrounding "ferberizing":

http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-ferber-method-demystified_7755.bc

Here are some thoughts:

* Aly slept through the night (10-12 hours straight) from 7 weeks until 6 months. She put herself back to sleep when she woke up.
* When she's healthy (which has been few and far between since she's turned 6 months old), she sleeps through the night often and also puts herself back to sleep.
* When she wakes up recently, she sits up, screams, and when I pick her up, her heart is beating a million miles a minute. Could it be separation anxiety coupled with hunger and stomach hurting?
* People say people don't let their kid cry it out because the parents are weak or selfish and "can't handle it", but that it is "best for the child". But then again, is it okay for a parent to let her kid cry it out because she can't take it anymore? Seems like a double standard.
* People say you should let your child cry it out around 6 months because they can do it by then. But, what other milestone does anyone give a definite age on? Are all children ready to cry it out by 6 or even 10 months? Do we expect all kids to be crawling by 6 or 7 months? Or talking by 13 months? Or walking by 12 months? Of course not. We know that babies are different and have different personalities/temperaments.

Now, this is not to say we're not going to try it. We will try some kind of abbreviated version of it if she doesnt go back to sleeping through the night once she's over her sickness. But, I think that many assumptions are made about this method, and that many parents don't do the research for other options. So, my advice to all: Do your research! Read more than one book. Read multiple websites and read different research-- all sides of the discussion! :)

She finally did it!

Okay, so although I blogged the other day about my inner conflicts with blogging about children, I'm going to brag about my little almost-9-month-old, Aly....


SHE STARTED CRAWLING TODAY!!!!!

We were hanging out at the Parents as Teachers Lending Library, and Jake found something she really wanted. So, she got a determined look on her face and just did it! It was cool that Jake and I both got to see it.

I've been waiting on this for awhile; I even had myself convinced she would never do it. It must have been watching her great cousin Grant who is only a couple weeks older than her, but is crawling and cruising around like an expert. We hung out with them in Potosi for awhile this past weekend, so that must have done it!

This just goes to show me that all kids really are different. By this age, Asante was crawling, climbing, and cruising all around.

She has a lot of practice to get in before she actually does it on a regular basis, but it'll be getting crazy around here soon, I'm sure! Yippee!!

Big stuff going down!

There's big happenings going on in the Malloy family.

1. We've started potty training with Asante. It's going great. He's taken well to the "just put underwear on and see what happens" method. I'm guessing he just doesn't want to pee on his new Elmo undies :).

2. Tonight we took away the pacifier. After an hour of crying, he fell asleep. We'll see what happens when he wakes up in the middle of the night looking for it. We haven't thrown away the pacifiers though. I'm not sure what we're waiting for, but I feel more secure knowing that they are there, just in case :).

3. Today was also day one of the weaning process for Aly. I think I have a 8-week plan (ish) to stop nursing...this will put her at about 10 months. WAY longer than I ever planned. Right now we're at a bottle a day. She doesn't like it, but she'll get used to it.

Anyway, lots of changes. We figured this would be the best time...I'll be done with school in a couple weeks, so will have the time and energy to devote to these energy-consuming parenting tasks. Pray for us for patience, and the kids for flexibility! They've been rock stars so far.

Need Sleeping Advice!

Well blog friends, I need your opinions-- especially you moms and dads out there who have experience with sleep and kids!

Here's our situation. What would you do?!

Aly: Aly had been sleeping through the night, 10-12 hours without waking up, from 7 weeks - 6 months. Then, all of a sudden, she started waking up to eat once per night, which was fine. She wasn't eating the recommended amount of ounces (only 20-24 oz instead of around 30 oz), so she was probably hungry. We talked to the doctor, and he agreed. She needed that extra feeding until she started eating more during the day. Well, she has gotten up to that point AND started to eat a lot more solids (little bit 3x per day). So, hunger is definitely not an issue anymore. However, she's still waking up 2, 3, sometimes 5 times per night. This has been coupled with her being very clingy to me, and stranger anxiety.

Asante: Has been working on giving up his nap, so on days he doesnt nap, he sleeps from 6p-5:30a. On days he does, 8:00/8:30p-6:00/6:30a.

Momma: I am working on classes from 8:30p-midnight/1:00a most nights.

Dad: Gets up in the middle of the night with Aly AND gets up early most days with Asante since I'm going to bed so late.

This, as you can imagine, makes for a rough time for all of us. Both of us can't nap during the day, because Asante hasn't been taking naps, AND Aly only naps 2-3x per day, for 20-30 minutes each time.

Here's what we've been doing: If Aly doesn't go back to sleep when we go in to soothe her, Jake brings her up to me and I nurse her- she falls asleep- and then sometimes sleeps until the morning. Sometimes Jake ends up sleeping downstairs with her on the couch. I don't want to create bad habits, but, we need to sleep in order to function during the day.

I'm pretty opposed to the Crying It Out method because of Aly's personality. She's incredibly sensitive, and I refuse to allow her to cry to the point of vomiting. We've been trying the "wait 10 minutes" thing, but it's not working.

So, parents and friends, I'm soliciting advice :). What would you do in our situation?

And Now For Aly

I figured it's only fair that I post an Aly update as well. She's not making as big of leaps and bounds that we can see, but one thing she IS getting- and that is happier! Up until this point, she's been a moderately cranky little darling child. I attribute this to her sensitivity (she's very reactive to different sights, sounds, smells, and touches). A change in environment can cause an overload for her, especially when she's sleepy. As she's maturing, I think she's able to handle these things much better.

Physically, she's sitting up by herself for indeterminate amounts of time, and tonight she got up on all fours for a little bit (but not making any forward motion). Jake predicts that she will begin crawling in 14 days. So we'll see. :) She is in the stage of loving to play with any kinds of paper/tags/etc. Aly's doing a good job of using her hands to grab things that she wants, and holding on to them as well. In fact, tonight she held a toad!

Aly was visiting Grandma and Grandpa Malloy's house, but is back with us now. We missed her a lot and realized that a half of a week is a long time in baby development!

We have lots of video and photo uploading to catch up on; I think we'll work on it some tomorrow and hopefully have some entertaining media within the week for your viewing pleasure.

Growing, Growing....

Aly had to go to the doc this morning because of a little problem, but no worries, all is a-okay (don't ask what it was, it involves gross things like excrement). anyway, one of the routine things is weighing in- aaaand, since last check up, aly has gained 2 oz shy of 2 lbs. For those of you who are wondering, that appointment was 3 weeks ago...making her weigh in at almost 14 lbs. The doctor seemed to think I just have a really good supply of milk.

Two month check-up

So, I forgot to post Aly's 2 month check-up details a few weeks ago. Better late than never.

On 6-11-09,
Height: 24.25 inches (90-95%)
Weight: 12 lbs, 1 oz (50-75%)
Head: 38.5 cm (95-99%)

No wonder she is eating ALL the time. We have it stretched to 3 hours between feeds, most of the time anyway. She is still sleeping all night, which i'm so thankful for. And I think everyone else in the family is thankful for that too. I tend to get REALLY cranky when running on little sleep.

A Momentus Monday

Tomorrow marks 2 exciting events- I begin seminary and Aly turns 2 months. :)

6 months ago I wouldn't have guessed that I'd be enrolling in Asbury Seminary full-time. I had just applied, but thought I'd be taking one class at a time for the next 8 years. Little did I know that I'd get the opportunity to go full-time. I'm SO excited to learn and move towards the vision God's given me.

Tomorrow morning some of my friends and I will be meeting to dream about how to better help collegiates and young adults grow in their walk with Christ from the ages of 18-30. I don't know what the brainstorming session will hold, but I'm excited about it nonetheless; I'm thankful for the really creative, passionate, and twentysomething-loving friends that I have. Hopefully we'll have a clearer picture of what the next steps by noon tomorrow.

On the other note, I can't believe Aly is 2 months already. She's becoming slightly less cranky everyday, which jake and i are both thankful for. She still isn't the happiest baby ever, but I think as her acid reflux is disappearing, life is getting better for her. We've been getting lots of smiles and "coo"s lately, which is excellent feedback for tired parents. She's also been doing some major sleeping through the night (for her age) most nights, which also makes her tired parents happy.

Sticker or No?

My friend Meredith gave me a baby calendar that she had gotten but wasn't going to use. You know, one of those things where you display pictures, month-by-month, and put fun little stickers on days of "first things"- first tooth, first steps, first word, first doctor's appointment...and first roll and first sleeping through the night.

A week or so ago Alethea slept through the night. 7 hours straight. Although it was slightly alarming, waking up and realizing your newborn hasn't woken up in 7 hours (is she breathing still?!), it was also a delight to have slept so long without interruption. I was figuring I wouldn't be getting that for at least 6 weeks.

Anyway, after sleeping through the night, Alethea rolled over during tummy time. Twice. So, the dilemma I faced, do i put both those stickers on the same day? Do I put either one of those stickers on? I mean, they were both accidents, not really likely to happen again.

So all day i was wondering, stickers or no stickers? It was one of the first things I asked Jake when he got home.

Oh the decisions I have to make as a stay-at-home mom. :)

(p.s. aly's now rolled over 4 times during tummy time. i can't decide if it's still accidents or if she just wants to be on her back!)

Alethea's Check-Up

Today was Aly's 2 week check-up, and she weighed in at 8 lbs, 4 oz, and is 22 inches long. That's right, twenty-two inches (says the nurse measuring her). When she was born she was 20.5 inches long. Two days after her birth when we took her to the doc she was 19.5 inches long. When charting her today, the doctor was like, "okay, good, weight around the 45th percentile, head around the 30th, and length... somewhere between the 25th and 95th percentile." nice.