Year: 2014

WARNING: Infant nudity in this post.

You know how babies have that sweet baby smell? Alex’s is just as wonderful but by day 12 of life, he was getting a bit sticky. The general rule is that you have to wait until their umbilical cord heals and falls off before giving them their first bath. I thought this happened on day 10, but it turned out to be a raisin that Ashton had dropped on Alex’s bouncy seat.

Anyway, once it finally occurred Alex got his first kitchen sink bath. Only the best spa-like conditions for my baby! Luckily, it did not wash off his sweet smell 🙂

Right before the big event: greasy hair and dirt spit up on his shoulder.

It’s go time.

 Where’s my towellllll?

Squeaky clean 🙂

Like most babies, he loved the warm running water and had no problem lounging in the tub. First bath = success!

What has not been a success lately are the nighttimes. Alex has been super fussy, to the point where he seems physically uncomfortable due to gas or some other gastrointestinal distress. I took him to the pediatrician yesterday and we ruled out reflux because he doesn’t spit up or vomit. She  said it could be a lactose intolerance and advised me to cut out all dairy and soy. Sigh. This is not a new thing, I had to do it for Ashton too, but it’s hard! The cow’s milk protein won’t be completely out of my body for two weeks so there’s no way to see any results really until then. Ashton’s at Christine’s today so I need to hit the grocery as there is not much in this house I can eat right now. I think soy is going to be hardest – it’s in like everything. Very sneaky, soy is.

Also turning out to be unsuccessful are Ashton’s food allergies. His bloodwork came back and his doctor advised not to do the food challenges at this time. I guess it didn’t look as good as he thought it would. They will check him again in a year so there won’t be anything new on that front for awhile.

Ashton continues to be hit or miss with Alex. He does love to “hug” his brother, which is really him laying his head somewhere on Alex’s body.

But he also loves to rock or bounce Alex in whatever seat he is in to a precarious tipping point. I supervise, but I swear Alex is usually one degree from going over and I’m not entirely sure that’s accidental.

We’ve spent a lot of time this week out at the playground, scootering, and oh Ashton got a haircut.

The next time I take him I think I will spring for the crew cut. He’s never had a complete buzz (you know, with the little spike in front) and with summer coming…we’ll see. It’s just hair, so if it looks bad, it’ll grow 😉

That’s about all from our little household for now! 

Sometimes when you are two and a half, you have bad days. Ashton has been having a bad week, at least when it comes to sleeping. Naptime approached yesterday afternoon and the all-too-familiar protesting began. Desperate to avoid a standoff, I did what I always knew was not beneath me: I bribed him.

A little background. There’s a new favorite book in our house called Steam Train, Dream Train. It was a gift recently, I really love it and so does Ashton. We read it a half a dozen times a day. One of the spreads looks like this:

It has spawned an ice cream obsession (Ashton has never really had it – most real ice cream has egg in it and besides maybe two soft-serves, it just has not been part of his life up until this point). So at naptime yesterday, when he was laying in his crib but threatening to cry, I said, “Do you want to go get ice cream? If you go to sleep, when you wake up we can go have some.”

I’m shameless. I know. Parenthood can make suckers out of the best of us. But it worked!

At 4 pm, I walked into his room to rouse him. I honestly wondered if he would remember. I opened his shades and saw his eyelids start to flutter. He rolled over on his back and stared up at me from his crib. Before I even said anything, he whispered: “I want ice cream now.”

That answered that. But I was happy to take him on his first real trip to the “ice cream store” and we set out for Rancatores in Belmont Center, where I knew they had great frozen yogurt (shhh!). He chattered on about his ice cream the entire way there.

“Ashton, what kind of ice cream are you going to get?”

“Blue.”

“Okaaay, are you excited?”

“Yeah! I’m going to take my ice cream and I’m gonna drink it.”

“Okaaay. Sure if that’s what you want to do.”

“I see it! I see my ice cream! Right here!” (and points to the local dog grooming salon as we pass it)

“Okaaay. Maybe there is ice cream in there but we are going to a better place.”

“Yeah! Because it’s my birthday.”

Ummm…not sure what to say to that one.

So anyway, we get there, I pick him up and point to all the flavors in the cooler. “Which one do you want?” (turns out many were egg-free)

A very distressed reply. “Noooo! No I don’t want dat!”

“You don’t?”

“Nooo! I want ice cream! Where is it?”

I explained to him that it was ALL ice cream but he looked very confused, presumably because it was all in deep tubs and didn’t look like it did in his book.

I ordered him vanilla. Toddlers often don’t like things mixed together or “bits” in their food (at least mine doesn’t) so I figured that was safe. Ashton saw the gummy bears in the jars of toppings and basically started to vibrate. I asked the scooper to add those as well.

Voila! The treat-de-resistance:

And the corresponding pictures (and who are we kidding, here is a video.)

 He kept saying, “I’m so happy!”, “Mmmm! That’s good!” “That’s yummy, I like it!” and of course, “It’s my birthday! Where are my cupcakes?” It’s sad to tell your toddler it’s not their birthday.

But the ice cream was such a novelty that he moved on quickly. “That’s COLD!”

Over the past week, we tried to put Ashton’s mattress on the floor. Didn’t work. We tried to take a side off his crib so when he climbed out, at least he could get back to bed. Nope. We put the side back on and took the bottom off, so his mattress was on the floor but still contained. We thought surely he would not be able to climb out. He did. This is all accompanied by the sudden total fear of going to bed and of the dark. He now cries when I even mention naptime or bedtime might be approaching. I put him in his crib and he wants me to stay in the chair until he falls asleep. Lots of protesting “Mommy don’t go! Mommy stay in the chair!” and crying in general. What happened to my perfect 8 pm – 7:30 am sleeper with a 2-4 pm naptime??

It’s obvious there is a lot of acting out behavior going on with Alex’s arrival. But also, this new obsession with the dark definitely plays a role. Last night as dinnertime approached and the daylight faded, he kept pointing outside and telling me that it was getting dark. He also needs to see the crack of light from the hallway underneath his door, which has resulted in us keeping that on all night long. If we shut it off and he wakes up, he will cry, “I can’t see the light! I can’t see the light!” until we soothe him and turn it back on. He does have a nightlight too but I’m thinking I need to get a brighter bulb.

Anyway, we’ve had some long nights. Two nights ago he finally slept all the way through without climbing out, probably out of sheer exhaustion. Last night, he slept through again but at 7:08 am this morning, after hearing the telltale THUMP, the monitor revealed he had climbed out again. A few seconds later, “DADDYYYYYYY!!!” and wailing at the door.

The thing with parenthood? Always a new challenge. A friend of mine said that the hardest part about having two kids is not the baby, it’s the older one. SO TRUE.

Ashton is otherwise great, although we said goodbye to Fran this morning at our last Early Intervention session 😦 We will really miss her, she has helped Ashton come so far in the past year and tomorrow we will say goodbye to Allison when she comes for our final speech session. But while sad I know Ashton is ready to move on. He’s not perfect and we still have things to work on but Fran said she really thinks she has done all she can. I agree And speech wise, he is finally saying all those funny things that only toddlers say and it’s really been a joy to hear him learn to speak better and more effectively – I feel like it happened in a flash! The other night in the tub, he said, “I need my circles so I can see far away” and proceeded to make fists, put them above his eyes and crane his neck. I laughed so hard and said, “You mean you need your binoculars?” and he said, quite seriously, “Yes.” Not that I could blame him for not being able to say that word, but seeing him pretend with his fists on his forehead was pretty funny.

Anyway, because he has not re-qualified for EI and speech, we will likely not be going to Watertown Public Preschool which has a phenomenal integrated classroom program. He is enrolled at Belmont Nursery School and their summer camp weeks start in June (they do “water week”, “dinosaur week”, etc etc) and I might start him there before he goes full time in September. We all agree that while he is wild at home sometimes, he usually does well in structured settings and I think he will really like going to school. So that’s the latest with Ashton 🙂

The latest with Alex – he went to his 2 week pediatrician appointment yesterday and is up to 8 lbs 3 oz. A growing boy for sure! Jason took him and I had asked him to please mention Alex’s shoulders, which seem to me to be “loose” – when I pick him up they sort of feel like they shift or dislocate and I just wanted to make sure that was ok. Well Jason called me after and said, “His weight is great and everything looks perfect, except…” and I said, “What??” and he goes, “They put him in a tiny double baby arm sling! For his shoulders!”

“WHAT? Oh my god! What did they say about it?!”

[Cackling on the other end]: “April Fool’s! His joints are all still limber due to birth and are fine.” I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or murder him. I chose the former 🙂 But still. My husband thinks he’s so funny sometimes.

I did my first solo trip to the park with both of them yesterday. Alex slept in his car seat the whole time (thankfully) and Ashton of course immediately got to work on perfecting his scootering:

It’s all in the lean 🙂

That’s all from the Nills for now! xox

It dropped yesterday. My whole plan for the day went completely out the window when, about 15 minutes after we woke up, I realized Ashton had a nasty, nasty cold. He was wheezing, hacking and coughing and I just knew I could not send him to Christine’s. He made it through his EI evaluation and he did not qualify! Which is, overall, great news – he has made so much progress and all his skills now fall within the normal range. But bittersweet because Fran and Allison have become part of our weekly routine on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. They will each come one or two more times and that will be it

Anyway, Jason left for work and I had resigned to spend another day inside playing trains with my boys as it was freezing out and Ashton was sick. But by 2 pm, Ashton was having a lot of trouble breathing and, long story short, we ended up spending two hours at the pediatrician. It was my first time out alone with both boys and let’s just say, I cried the whole way home. We were a collective disaster, I was that mom in my sweats that could not take care of both of her kids at the same time. Ashton himself would have been a lot to handle – he missed his nap, had two nebulizer treatments and ultimately a dose of steroids and we were confined to a little exam room for two hours (the albuterol in the nebulizer is a stimulant for “some kids”. Ashton most definitely is a member of that group.). Alex needed to be fed, thank goodness I had brought a bottle, because as I was feeding him Ashton took off down the hall and had I been nursing, I would have had to tear after him through the waiting room with my shirt open and the baby hanging on for dear life. One of those days.

So today we were home again because Ashton is still recovering and again, just no place to go in this cold weather. He’s doing much better and to his credit, despite being sick, still plays at the same level. I had to change Alex so I left him playing nicely with his rice box on the blanket:

Of course, two minutes later I came back downstairs:

 And the rest of the day was the usual – duplos, books, Bubble Guppies on Nick Jr. We are definitely in our groove but the whole “not leaving the house” thing? Starting to feel it. Yyyyyep, starting to feel it.

I’ve gotten some questions about if we are sleeping, how the breastfeeding is going, etc. And the quick answers are: Alex sleeps in our room in the Fisher Price Rock N Play Sleeper (best thing ever) next to our bed on my side. He usually eats around 10:45 pm and then we go to bed. He’s up around 2 am for 30-45 minutes to eat and be changed and then again around 5:30 am for another feeding. He still needs to eat every three hours and it comes around quickly let me tell you, especially considering it’s 3 hours from the start of one feeding to the start of the next. I find he wakes pretty consistently and I don’t have to set an alarm or anything. He’s up for the day around 8. Luckily we have had no problems nursing but I really should pump so Jason can take one of the middle of the night feedings. What have I been doing? I should get on that.

Tomorrow Ashton has a followup at the pediatrician, my mom and sister come for a weekend visit, and we round out our second week as a family of four. Ashton’s asleep and this is my view right now:

When you don’t really leave the house, not a lot happens. And when not a lot happens, you have next to no new blog material. We’ve been pretty cozy around here, spending most of our days in pajamas long past breakfast, playing with toys, reading books, and napping. It’s just too cold to be outside and I find myself not feeling the need to really go anywhere anyway. Which, for those who know me, is shocking. I don’t “stay home” very well usually but I’ve been oddly content for the past week. Things usually look like this:

Yesterday I put the baby on his blanket and Ashton laid down for “tummy time” too.

I won’t really have a super huge amount of time to blog for awhile But I’m going to try and stick with it consistently even if I just put up a few pictures every few days. It’s funny, some of the ones below were taken a couple days ago but I already consider them “old”!

Here are a few of my favorites since Alex was born. I realize he is wearing the exact same thing in each picture but I swear I change him. I just do laundry twice a day because he doesn’t have much that fits him

With Daddy:

 Huge feet! This angle does amplify the size though, haha. When you weigh 7 pounds, “huge” is a relative term.

So Alex was born super early Sunday morning and we came home on Monday! Jason, Ashton, Alex and I rolled in just in time for lunch and Ashton’s nap and things felt almost like they had any other day – minus our new little addition! We have been doing great the past couple of days, Ashton definitely has some adjusting to do and has been giving me a run for my money, but I’m reminding myself that bringing Alex home was no small change, for any of us.

Just a quick post- our newest Nill is officially named Alexander Michael! Michael is Jason’s middle name and a family name on my side as well. We decided we liked the idea of both our boys having “A” names and after a little debate, our new baby was given his identity 🙂 oh and he measured in at 20 inches long. Alex had a great first day and is as sweet as sweet can be. He has blond hair and huge feet! We had visitors all day and Jason just left to go home to sleep. Ashton’s first meeting of our new little family member went well for the most part, except when he clocked him on the head with his toy truck. Ahhh brotherly love.

Anyway, Alex is down the hall in the nursery and I’m in the hospital room all alone- not the best but I’m going to try and get some sleep because fingers crossed we are going home tomorrow! More to come of course, thanks for all the well wishes and love!!

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He’s here! We haven’t decided on a name yet but gosh did this guy come into the world fast! Whole story to come, but no epidural for me, three pushes, glad we got to the hospital when we did…that kind of story!!

7 lbs 3 oz born 3:29 am.

We haven’t sent any real texts yet as it’s so early so apologies to anyone who finds out here before we can tell them ourselves. Really just didn’t want to wake you!!

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