The J & L Adventures: March Updates: Life with a 21 and 1 month old

The last 5 weeks have been absolutely crazy and absolutely wonderful. Honestly, I'm not even really sure where to begin. I've taken a million pictures, so this will probably have random pictures of the kids air lifted sporadically into this post.

Playing and coloring with Daddy

I briefly mentioned last week that within a day or two of being home from the hospital, Jimmie began to show symptoms of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. He had it pretty bad for the first week, and it took about 2 weeks to fully disappear. Unfortunately, Jim picked it up as well and was sick for a few days as well. Thankfully his was a bit more mild, and passed much quicker. Apparently with HFMD, the blisters can be reoccurring (kind of like cold sores) and Jimmie has had them on his feet again for this last week. They're starting to get better so hopefully they go away for good soon. We're getting pretty tired of it over here.

Because of his sickness, we had to keep them pretty separated for the first two weeks. I wonder what impact it's had on his adjustment to her. For the most part, Jimmie has been pretty good with her. But for about a week after he was allowed to get close to her, he was doing a lot of hitting, biting etc. It was really frustrating to see that the teaching, redirection, and discipline we normally do for him hitting us, did not work at all for dealing with him hitting her. I knew he may act out for attention, so I'd made every effort to spend as much time as possible snuggling and playing and paying attention to him.

I don't think he's been doing it for attention. He's not looking at me when he does it to see my reaction. At the same time, he doesn't seem like he's doing it maliciously.

In all honesty, I think he's doing it because he's curious. It's almost as if he will pat her head (watch what happens), pat it a little harder (see what she does), and then smack her to see if she will cry. Or kiss her a few times and then bite her nose. It's rather strange to watch and deal with.

His favorite time to mess with her is when she's sleeping…and she sure does that a lot!

Jimmie's learning and has been a lot better this last week. I'm hopeful that he will just continue getting better and getting used to her. For now, I don't dare leave them alone together for even 2 seconds. After reading some books and watching an episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood about holding the new baby, he asked to please hold her. He doesn't really get how to hold her, but he just sits there with her propped up on a pillow with the BIGGEST, proud big brother smile. So, so sweet.

These pictures were from a few weeks ago. The first time that he really held her "on his own"

He loves to help do everything with her. He will pull out diaper wipes for me and throw the diaper in the trash can. Then he claps for himself. It's pretty hilarious. He helps do the dishes, he helps unload the dishes, he helps make dinner and all kinds of fun desserts. He's become such a big boy!

Making pancakes from scratch with Mommy!! He was not as helpful when it came to putting the fruit we cut up into the bowl. He ate most of it as I cut it :)

The other day for Pi day, we didn't feel like making pie. So we made a big round brownie. With peanut butter frosting. And some strawberries. Jimmie made most of it with my help :)

Lorelei is getting bigger every day. Most of the time, when you see someone every day, you may not see the physical changes. But with her, I can tell. Her face has rounded out even more, and she is just so long! Skinny, tall little girl. She can't fit into many of her Newborn size clothes anymore as she is too long. She's wearing 0-3 month for length, but she's so skinny that she kind of drowns in the shirts and some of the elastics on the pants are too big. It's quite an adventure trying to find an outfit that is not falling off of her :)

(I think I took these pictures around 2 weeks old)

And I'm going to include these ones...

…because they're hilarious. And it's kinda funny to include the ones that totally did not work out well!

Jimmie's been doing better at eating. He's been trying new things, thanks to his favorite show "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood".

There's an episode with a nice jingle "You gotta try new foods 'cause it might taste good!"

The kid hates pasta. But as you can see, he's tried it a few different times.

Speaking of which, Lorelei's gotten SO much better at eating.

She's got quite the appetite and will nurse now instead of just taking a bottle. For a while there in the beginning, I wasn't sure if she'd ever get it. You have to force about 3 burps out of her every time she eats or she'll be in the worst, saddest mood for the rest of the day.

Fair warning to anyone who will be holding/watching her: She's a major spitter. I'm talking…she will spit up normally AND through her nose. Yes, she spits up through her nose. I didn't even know that was possible and I nearly died of laughter the first time it happened. But then it just kept happening! And, just keep a large radius around her when changing her diapers.

That's all I'm gonna say about that :)

Messy baby=lots of baths

Thankfully, she LOVES bath time!

Here are some shots from her first bath:

She's got a lot of hair. It's fluffy and curly while it's wet. But once it dries...

…it automatically spikes into this little do. Sometimes she has some pretty crazy hair :)

Lorelei thinks it can be kind of shocking!

Jimmie LOVES to steal her bink. It's the same as his, but it's pink. Oh, and he's lost his wubbanub again. We won't be getting a new one. He'd be off of binks by now, but knew he'd regress when she came along and figured we'd rather him have his instead of hers. Whatever, now he has his AND hers. He's lost one of them…and she only had 2. So now she's down to one little pink one. Don't worry, I told the Easter bunny who agreed to bring her some more for Easter.

He's also sporting my headband

Diaper head dude.

"Nope. I did not sneak into the box of Lucky Charms and eat all of the marshmallows"

Lorelei says: "Uh huh…sure…going with that story again?"

Jim and I have been doing great. I started work again a few weeks ago and am getting back into the swing of things. I'm nearly fully recovered and have been feeling very good. Very tired on some days, but she's adjusting well to sleeping at night. Starting to get a tiny bit stir crazy. It's extremely daunting to leave the house by myself with 2 kids. I wasn't the best at it when it was just me and Jimmie, so now this really can test my limits. This last week we've done a good job of balancing getting out and spending time together around the house.

Out for our first walk together using our new double stroller! Jimmie had a lot of fun and Lorelei slept. Jimmie's seat is a "sit n' stand" part of the stroller where he can sit and be strapped in to a bench in the back or he can stand on the platform to ride. He enjoyed it so much, that he would scream at me any time I tried to stop to take a picture. These were the best two shots I could get, haha!

Lorelei all bundled up for her walk. Her one piece full body jacket is still a bit too big, so we opted for a little bear jacket for this walk instead.

Not the most flattering…but I like this picture because of it's authenticity. Pretty serious bags under my eyes there, but the sweet snuggles make it all worth it.

Playing with his cars! Jimmie has become QUITE a fan of cars, trucks, etc as of lately. He makes "vroom, vroom" sounds while he pushes them along.

He also does this thing where, if he launches a car away from himself, he will count down "One, Two Three, GOOOO!". Except he doesn't talk…he grunts the noise with inflection in his voice copying how I would do it. It's hard to describe, but hilarious. He does it for all kinds of things. Spinning on his sit and spin, riding on his car, jumping down from his high chair. He's a real crack up.

Loves that his Daddy gives him baths and lets him play with fun toys!

Lookin' real cool with the shades.

Sneaking onto my computer and erasing my work during the few seconds I stepped out of the room to grab an extra diaper. Hmmm. Trouble maker!

By the way, I apologize to anyone who has been getting random phone calls or texts from me that don't make sense. Especially if I've texted you recently or your name starts with an A :) those seem to be the the most frequent victims. Jimmie's become quite amazing at stealing my phone and navigating it. Past parental controls and everything.

Apparently, he had set the phone camera on "burst" where it takes several pictures within a second or two. Which was perfect since he decided that'd be a great time to…brush her hair with his used toothbrush. What a dude.

We've been working on tummy time and individual play time recently. She hates tummy time, but we'll be more diligent than we were with Jimmie. She quite likes looking at herself in the playmat mirror. And apparently likes it enough to fall asleep on it too :)

Jimmie, just keeps on being Jimmie

I wanted to take a few 1 month photos last week, so here are a few of them. I'm no professional photographer, but I think we got some pretty cute ones

So wide awake!

This little smirk… :)

We'll take pictures with her next to her bunny each month to see her growth :)

Monday (3/16) was free cone day at Dairy Queen. Jimmie, Lorelei and myself had taken a trip up north to visit our friends who had just bought and moved into a new house. It was fun to let Jimmie just run wild and play with his buddy Wesley. Especially since they've reached the point of playing WITH each other (actually interacting) than just playing next to one another.

On the way home, we swung by the house, picked up Jim, and got our free ice cream :)

On Tuesday, we had planned to go up to the Discovery Gateway Museum in Salt Lake City. It was free admission day and thought it'd be a fun family activity. Unfortunately, we got kind of a late start and realized after just a few minutes on the road we'd be stuck right in the middle of rush hour traffic, coming and going. So in a spur of the moment change of plans, we decided to go somewhere else that was much closer. We went to Jump on It in Lindon. Jimmie had never been on trampolines before so we weren't sure how he'd do. But he LOVED it. He loved jumping, and falling, running, and throwing all of the foam balls. It was hilarious to watch him. Lorelei was good and just slept in her carseat the whole time. It wasn't totally free, but was still pretty dang cheap since Jimmie is free and we could only have 1 adult jumping at a time so that someone could stay with Lorelei.