Eight Months for Anna Kate

Goodness. How's my baby eight months old? I haven't blogged about her in four months. Oh, I had every intention of trying to do something monthly or at least every other month, but life has a funny way of getting in the way and making you prioritize. This month I feel like Jeremy and I have turned a corner and things are getting better. There are still many days when I feel overwhelmed with three kids, but at least we are getting a little more sleep and time for ourselves. This June we had a record THREE dates! (Once to a Giants game, once for a dinner out when grandparents were in town to watch the kids, and once we met up on a Friday evening for dinner in SF and rode the ferry back home together.) Also, I was able to get away for 6-7 hours to meet my college friend, Lacy, in the city. Jeremy was able to feed the kids dinner and get them all to bed. Anna Kate took her bottle pretty well. (She rarely has a bottle since she's exclusively breastfed and pumping milk is not very efficient in comparison.) I came home to a quiet house which was totally lovely.

Here's what our Little Miss has been up to lately:

Gross Motor

Dang girl, just slow the heck down! This is the one area in which she is advanced. This girl is a mover and shaker! She was rolling over at two months, Army crawling at four months, sitting up unsupported at 5 1/2 months, hands/knee reciprocal crawling at six months, pulling up to stand at seven months, cruising now at eight months, and climbing stairs at eight months! She just started letting go while standing and balances for a second or two before she plops on her bottom. Pretty sure she will walk at 9-10 months. I learned she could climb stairs by accident and I'm very thankful she didn't get hurt. Emily left the gate open. I heard a bump and a cry and I went to look for Anna Kate who had been playing with toys in the living room. She wasn't there and I followed the crying sound up ten stairs to our first landing. She apparently bumped into the wall, but luckily had not fallen down any stairs.

Fine Motor

Anna Kate can now pick up cheerios and other small foods and bring them to her mouth. Pincer grasp is developing and she also uses the raking motion to get what she wants. She's at that age where if you give her a big chunk of banana, she will eat all around it and leave a big messy piece inside her palm that she forgets about. (Eeww!) She plays with toys purposely, enjoying pushing buttons, lights, sounds, opening/closing doors, etc. Overall, she's using her hands more and manipulating objects like the older baby she is now.

Sleep

Sigh. I wish she slept through the night. She was the worst sleeper for the first few months that getting up twice a night at eight months totally feels like an improvement. Emily and Caleb's schedules messed her up quite a bit this year. We are trying to be more consistent with naps this summer now that we don't have school pick-ups/drop-offs to interrupt us. Here is a typical "schedule" for her:

6:45 am: Wake-up/Nurse
7:30 am: Breakfast (solid foods)
9am: Morning Nap
9:45: Wakes up from nap
10 am: Nurses
11:30: Lunch (solids)
12:30: Nurse her a little before afternoon nap.
1:30: wakes up. Sometimes I can get her back to sleep and then she sleeps another hour. She rarely puts herself back to sleep even if I let her cry fuss for a little while.
4pm: Maybe another nursing session? If she takes a terrible early afternoon nap. I'll try again and I can usually get her to sleep another hour.
6pm: Eats solids with us at dinner.
7pm: Nurse her again before bed.
7:30: Asleep for the night
11pm: Wakes up again. Nurse her.
3 am: Nurse again if she wakes up, otherwise she might sleep until 6:30 or so.

I have two thoughts about right now. 1) Dang, no wonder I have no time to do anything and 2) Actually, this schedule is a total lie. I have no idea when I nurse this child. lol. It completely varies, but I'm guessing it's about every three hours. Some of the sessions are pretty short. At night she is normally getting up twice over an almost 12 hour period. I've only been able to get rid of her Halo Sleep Sack Swaddle in the last month. She often got her little arms free from it, but holding them down and away from her face helped her to go to sleep easier and sleep more soundly. She still uses a pacifier some, but she can go asleep without it, too. We basically use it as needed if she needs another thing to put her over the edge to sleepy land. Oh, and she's a belly sleeper.

Food

At eight months, she still has no teeth. We started solids at about 6 1/2 months. I started with avocado which she does not like by itself, but loves mixed with banana. Then, we moved on to mashed bananas, cereal, and prepared baby food. At first, I used a few of the stage 1 veggies because that's my least favorite thing to make homemade (especially when sometimes they take a few bites of something new and then refuse it.)  Now, we do a mix of prepared baby food, pouches, and table food. I'm really trying to give her more table food so HOPEFULLY she will eat what we all eat. It is really exhausting to prepare a nice meal for Jeremy and myself only to have both Emily and Caleb barely eat any of it. I could write a separate post about that. So, I'm giving Anna the healthy things we eat whenever possible. So, she's had potatoes, pasta, soft peaches, watermelon, cantaloupe, peas, pears, carrots, chickpea nuggets, bites of grilled cheese sandwiches, steelcut oatmeal, and yogurt to name a few things. I'm wanting to add eggs and meats soon. I guess I'm worried about how to give pieces of meat to her when she has no teeth, but I think maybe I waited too long to introduce meats to Caleb and Emily since neither of them care much for it. My whole family needs to eat more veggies. We have a few favorites, but we could do much better with variety. We all love fruit and eat a huge variety of that.

Personality

She's a pretty happy and easy going baby. She happily lets me walk around with her in the Ergo for most of our outings. She actually prefers that and gets more fussy if she's in a stroller. I have to time the strolls JUST right. I had a lot of frustration with her not wanting to be in the stroller when she was a younger baby, but it's better now. She tolerates riding in the car for trips of about one hour or less pretty well---as long as we're moving. She gets really fussy if we're stuck in traffic! ha! Funny how that's how I feel, too, when I'm stuck in traffic and not moving. She has a funny little laugh that sounds almost like a quick double cough. She also has a deep belly laugh that is awesome. I can get the belly laughs when I tickle her or play "Boo" with her. It's my favorite when something amuses her and we get the belly laugh out of the blue.

Sorry for a long, wordy post. Just trying to play catch up.

Oh, just a random photo in the bathroom by the potty. Hope we washed her hands...I try to keep this door closed. 

At Emily's last day of school park picnic. The girls had on coordinating tops and skirts. Emily's last week of school deserves its own post, maybe some day. ;) 

Hanging out with me in Santa Cruz

With Dinkney and Poppy in Santa Cruz. This also deserves its own post some day soon! 

At Sister's ballet recital

Father's Day at home prior to driving Dinkney and Poppy to the airport.

Oh, so much love for this sweet photo. Happy Father's Day to Poppy and Jeremy! 

We're Moving

BUT not back to KY! ;) It is unsettling how everything can change with one email or phone call. You're just going about your every day life making plans and then you get hit with unexpected news that changes everything you THOUGHT you were going to be doing. Thankfully, our unexpected news wasn't about the health of a family member or a job loss, but still, we were quite shocked: our landlord will not be renewing our lease. Our current lease expires August 31st. The Reisses have to move. Cue the tears. BOOHOO! I HATE MOVING! It is hard to put into words how challenging, disruptive and stressful moving is. Taking care of three children five and under and managing the household is already difficult without adding anything extra to that load. My emotions are all over the place. First I was shocked, then just really sad, and now I'm pissed. ha! The irony is that when we moved into this house two years ago, I didn't want to be here for more than two years. Our house, while fairly large, is divided into a duplex. We like our "house neighbors" and rarely see them or hear them. We don't share anything other than the back yard patio. However, the house was not what I  was accustomed to owning in KY. It met our needs, but it didn't have a yard or a very large living/dining area. Anyway, I simply could not imagine living here for long, but now I don't want to move! The house still has the same downsides, but now I have seen and experienced the major upsides. We have made good neighbor friends. We live in a nice walkable neighborhood with local restaurants, our ballet school and even my nail salon just a block or two away. We are able to walk three blocks to Emily's school and a park in a beautiful, unique neighborhood. Emily's school is one of the best around and she has had a great kindergarten year. I hate to think of starting all over with a different neighborhood school. (It remains to be seen if Emily will have to switch schools or not.) Also, I'm well aware that real estate costs and rentals keep climbing and while I may wish for something bigger or nicer, I certainly don't want to pay more than we already do to rent.

We have discussed if this would be a good time to seriously consider buying a home. Without discussing specifics and money, let's just say that Jeremy and I do not have a peace that that would be the wisest thing for us. I had hoped that if we moved from this house, it would be to buy something, but I don't think that will happen under this kind of deadline. Our friends who have bought homes often searched for months and put bids on a half dozen homes or more before finally getting one. I don't know if Jeremy and I can even stomach trying to buy something in the Bay Area. Surely, prices can't keep increasing at this rate! I feel like if we were certain we wanted to stay here 5-10 years, we could weather any temporary market downturns, but what would happen if we wanted to move back to KY and the house we bought at the top of the market was now worth much less? We might be stuck or worse. (Foreclosure/bankrupt?) Stakes are very, very high when you're talking an average 3 BR, 2 BA home can easily fetch $850K.

All of this turmoil, but yet we both feel certain that we aren't ready to move back to KY. Jeremy is still very happy at his job. We have good financial reasons to believe that it would be best for our future to stay another couple of years. (The housing market obviously isn't one of them.) We are happy with our lives here, the friendships we have made, our church home, schools, etc. I continue to have a million and one things I want to do on the west coast and while we have seen and done a lot, it barely scratches the surface. We get so much joy with our adventures here that it makes up for a lot of what we lack. Everything is good except we do long to own our own home again and we wish it wasn't so difficult to see family. I've started researching flights for the summer. Just browsing through the flight costs and thinking about air travel with the children puts a big knot in my stomach. I literally feel almost sick about it every time. Just when flying should have gotten easier for us, it is now worse than ever because of our third child--an active, crawling, seven month old. How in the world can I ever hope to contain her for six plus hours in the air? Aggh, I have to stop thinking about it! We may have to postpone our trip depending on if we can find a new rental in time. It's pretty common for a desirable overpriced rental home to have 7-10 qualified applications for it. Crazy. Prayers needed and appreciated for sure.

Anyway, despite these very real concerns and hardships that come with being forced to move and find a new place, we are enjoying all of the special moments we can. We are excited about our upcoming mini-vacation to Santa Cruz and our staycation activities with Dinkney and Poppy. Time will go by quickly, but our current predicament isn't as dire as when we moved out here completely alone with no idea where we wanted to live. No, now we know many people and mamas are already offering to help me with the kids from time to time while I pack. We know exactly where we want to live. We just have to get to work finding it and pray that by the grace of God, He will once again prove Himself to be faithful in providing for our needs.

Addendum: I forgot to mention WHY our lease is not being renewed (at least there's a valid reason). The wife suffered a brain aneurysm last year and underwent surgery. She's recovering well by all accounts, but is no longer able to work full time anymore. So the family has decided to sell one of their properties in order to reduce stress and expenses and allow her to stay home with the children. We are thankful that she is doing better because a brain aneurysm can cause serious longterm disability and even death.

Six Months for Anna Kate

On April 25th, we had six month photos taken of Anna Kate and the kids. The photo session was mainly for Anna, but I couldn't resist getting at least one good pic of all the siblings. It is SO hard for us to get photos of all of them together! Inevitably, one of the three is in an uncooperative mood and it's usually Caleb! I was so disappointed that we were unable to get a good photo of all three of them at the newborn session with Carissa--totally not her fault. I learned my lesson to never schedule an appt. after Caleb's nap ever again. (He is often slow to wake up and is in a bad mood for awhile.) So, we made this photo shoot for first thing in the morning and headed over to San Francisco for Mrs. Rachel Blackwell to do her thing! All of these photos were taken by Rachel. (We own the rights to them.)

My little photogenic girl. Hope she never loses her sparkle. 

This one may be my fav. Those Eyes! That Hair! And sucking on her sweet lip! Darling!

Oh, the precious chubby rolls and toes and that smile! 

Wish we would have started in this outfit instead of ended in it. Love the blue on her.

Sweetness!

Lashes!!!

Family Hike

Last week Jeremy expressed to me that he was feeling a little homesick for KY. He said he felt like he just needed to see some wide open spaces and green fields. He works every day in San Francisco and the city bustle can get intense after awhile. Our hometown is just across the Bay in Alameda. It's a charming city and we love it, but it is densely populated. Definitely no fields of wheat or corn here! So, when we get to feeling like that, it means it's time for a hike!

We decided to stay close and go to Tilden Park in the East Bay. Tilden Park is lovely and I still had not seen Lake Anza that is nestled within it. We were there within 30 minutes. We parked and did a nice little trail around the lake. It only took us about 30-40 minutes, but that was perfect. Caleb was able to walk that distance so we didn't need to get out the big hiking back pack for him. Anna Kate napped in the Ergo for most of the walk. It was a nice, flat trail with views of the lake the whole time, but it was very bumpy with roots from trees plus we had to climb over a few rocky areas. When it got particularly rough, Jeremy carried Caleb in those sections. Rock climbing with Anna Kate on me is not that easy, but I only had to do that twice. :)

I decided not to take my phone. I hate how much I use it. It's both a lifeline and a terrible distraction for the stay-at-home mom. How many times at the end of a long, tiring day have I completely checked out and vegged out while scrolling though social media? How many books could I have read instead of checking my phone? How many hours of sleep have I lost when I could have gone to bed at 10 pm instead of 11pm after playing on the phone an hour. I hate it, but it is a terrible habit to break. It's always there unless you leave it on purpose. So, I focused entirely on my little family that afternoon with no distractions to take a perfect pic and upload to Instagram.

Here's a few of the things I treasured in my heart that day: Jeremy holding Caleb's little hand while helping him navigate bumpy trails. Visibly noticing the work weariness leave Jeremy's shoulders and face as he walked in nature and said, "You know me so well. I needed this." Emily proudly leading the way most of the time. She loves to follow a path--to discover what's just around the bend before the next person. My two big kids happily climbed and ran and discovered a little bit of God's creation. They were happy and healthy and beautiful. I just felt a big dose of mama pride that despite all of the more "productive" things I could have been doing that day, I had chosen well what we all needed most.

After the hike, we took the kids to Tilden Park's Merry-Go-Round. I had wanted to do this with the kids at some point, so I was pleasantly surprised that the historic grand carousel was so close to Lake Anza. I had just enough cash for the kids to do one ride. Emily rode a horse that went up/down while the carousel spun its circle. Caleb was too timid to ride the horse even with daddy standing right beside him. So, they sat together on one of the benches during the ride.

Caleb fell asleep on the way home from the park. It was a good day. The cool, windy weather kept the crowds away, but we were totally comfortable in a light jacket and jeans. I love my little family.

Four Months for Anna Kate

Keeping up with Anna Kate's milestones is proving to be a major challenge. ha! There is ALWAYS something else that needs doing if I find myself with a few minutes where I can think and type. As we speak, the two littles are sleeping, but the whole house is as messy as it's been since Anna was born. I need to go through the children's closets (again) to organize and purge things they are outgrowing. I'm hoping to shop for a new rug and throw pillows online soon (we just got a new couch.) All of these other things are just going to have to wait today because my baby girl is growing fast and I must write something down!

Today we had her four month well check-up and she got her shots (at 4 1/2 months). She weighed 15 lbs. 3 oz. and was 25 in. long. Head circumference was 41 cm. She's about 60th percentile for her height and weight. Four month old Anna Kate has the most delightful leg rolls now. She's a doll! I'm enjoying four months WAY more than one month (as I knew I would.) The last time I wrote, I was pretty negative, but truthful. The first couple of months were terribly hard. It wouldn't have been as bad if she was our only child, but obviously we still had to function for Emily and Caleb, too. The little one mainly just needed to be held A LOT. We're able to put her down more now for playtime or naps, but she's still a big cat napper and she still wakes up a lot at night. I'm not sure when/if this will get better. I can't tell you how many times I have to wake her up from a nap to go somewhere or delay the nap altogether until we get somewhere and I can let her sleep on me in the Ergo. I try to stay home in the mornings a few days a week and let her nap before we go anywhere, but naps still get messed up or delayed all the time because of preschool drop-off/pick-up, kindergarten pick-up, church, MOPS, etc. I also can't be super consistent about how often I feed her. I can say that she rarely goes more than three hours without a feeding. There are times I have to feed her again after she just ate a couple of hours ago because we have to pick up Emily from school and I don't want her hungry and crying as soon as we get to the park. Basically, she has to go with the flow. I try to be as consistent as I can within the limits placed on me, but there's certainly no way we can have her on a consistent schedule.

A few Instagram photos:

One Month Old--Very suspicious of mommy's phone in her face!

Two Months Old and wearing big sis's first fancy smocked dress!

Proud of herself in this Four Month old photo. 

Big sis reading to Anna Kate. Emily "babysits" little sis for a few minutes when it's time to put Caleb down for his nap. I'm really close by and can hear if she needs me, of course!

So here's a few milestones I've tried to remember, but haven't yet blogged about:

Smiles/Laughs: Around 8 wks she smiled regularly. I remember that on our flight back to the Bay on January 5th, she smiled and laughed out loud as a passenger and myself talked to her. 

Rolled prone to supine: 2 months. She did this at her two month doctor's check-up. I thought it was just a fluke because of the firm table surface, but she kept doing it. 

Rolled supine to prone: 3 months. At four months, she is a very proficient, roly-polly little baby! Dr. Yoon said she doesn't know if she's ever seen a four month that could flip over supine to prone so quickly and easily. 

Blows raspberries: She started blowing bubbles at three months and is blowing raspberries now at four months.

Reaches for objects: Started doing this between 3-4 months.

Grasps and holds toys given to her: ~4 months

Sits well in Bumbo at four months. (We didn't try it before then. Just borrowed one from a friend a few weeks ago.)

Touches toes with hands: Four months

Army crawls: Yes! This baby army crawls. She can scoot all over our living room on her belly and forearms to go after a toy. I was hoping things would get easier when she was older, but things may get harder first if I have a baby that doesn't sleep that well AND is mobile! 

I'll leave this post today with a few photos we've taken from January-March. 

Making Memories with Emily

Today was supposed to have been a regular Thursday, but this morning Jeremy woke up and decided to work from home instead of heading into SF. His design team was having an off-site today. (Basically, this is an all expenses paid cool hang-out time during normal work hours. They do awesome things and I'm usually completely jealous of him, in a good way.) I always encourage him to go and have fun, build relationships, etc., but he enjoys not having to commute and being with us, so I don't try to talk him out of it too hard. :)  Anyway, he had a Hack Week poster he wanted to finish up and thought it would be nice to work at a coffee shop this morning. Jeremy got back home around lunchtime which freed me up to go pick up Emily from school without my usual entourage (i.e. Caleb and Anna).

It's February here, but in the low 70's in the afternoon. I headed up to Emily's school on my bike and decided just us girls would play together a little while after class. I thought for sure she would want to go to the "Fish Park"--her nickname for one of our nice local parks, but she actually just wanted to go home to see Dad! I talked her into going to the beach with me instead. I said, "Dad will be home the rest of the day, don't you want to go put your toes in the sand for a few minutes?" Emily lit up at that thought and followed me on her scooter the one mile to the beach from her school. We parked our rides and then sat down to talk and eat. I knew she wouldn't have finished her lunch, so we polished off that and drank some water. Talked a little about how the day went and then I just let her wander and play. She found a few shells and made me promise to take them home.

Emily is five now and I can say that I have some definite memories of five. I know that everything from here on out is fair game for memory making, but that she will forget almost all of it. I want her so badly to remember living in Alameda. How we could hop on our bikes and be at the beach in a mile after school. Will today make the cut? Childhood memories are such a funny thing. I think about kindergarten and my strongest memory is being taken out to the hallway to be disciplined for laughing at our class's dead fish. I thought I was going to get paddled. (They still did that back then.) We tend to remember things that had a strong emotion attached to it at the time. I don't really have memories of bath times, but how many hundreds of baths my parents must have given me! I don't remember much about Disney World even though I was probably about 12 when we went. I remember that my brother passed out on a ride! We have told that funny story many times over the years to the point that I don't know how much I recall from that day versus what I'm remembering from the retelling. I know I can help solidify many of her memories, "remember those times we rode to the beach after school, just you and me?"

Recently, I was thinking about what you remember about people after they pass away. Unfortunately, I have a negative memory of someone who has now passed. I didn't know her that well, but I have a very distinct memory of her talking badly about her new daughter-in-law. I was a new daughter-in-law myself and I had a strong emotion to hearing this talk. I felt badly that the young woman wasn't there to defend herself nor was her husband and other members of her family were chiming in about her, too. I thought, "I hope my mother-in-law never talks about me like that." It was just a sad feeling and I felt very vulnerable even though she wasn't talking about me. I hate that that is my strongest memory of her. I'm sure she was wonderful in so many ways, but that's the lasting memory I have because it was attached to a strong emotion at the time. I only tell that story to remind myself how strong words can be and that they last in our memories for years--especially the negative ones. Words are so powerful and life giving, but they can also be demoralizing and soul crushing. Being a mother is a powerful thing. Every day I'm molding and shaping lives. That kind of power is God-like. Raising well-adjusted, happy, emotionally healthy children into adulthood is a daunting task, but it can also be SO much fun. Like when you pick up your oldest daughter from school on your bike and head to the beach in February!