Beach Trip

For Mother's Day weekend, we were invited to join Heather's parents on Hilton Head Island. Since Eliza's last beach trip, she's grown so much and made so much progress developmentally (even if my prediction that "next year, we'll be one of the families walking hand in hand with their toddlers" was a bit overly optimistic) that it's hard to believe it's been less than a year since then.

The beach in mid-May turns out to be a bit early in season for Eliza's liking - though she enjoyed sitting and playing in the sand, the chilly breeze and bright sun (hardly a cloud in the sky!) were more than she wanted to handle for an extended period of time. After a half hour at the beach, trying to eat handfuls of sand and rubbing her eyes against the brightness and wind, she was well and truly coated with sand, so that counts as a successful beach trip right there. Across the three days we were there, we probably only spent an hour total on the beach, but it was fun anyway and good for Eliza too.

We spent more time at the hotel pools than at the beach. I'm not sure Eliza even noticed how cool the water still was - we got her out when she started to turn blue but I think if it was up to her she would have stayed in longer. She really likes being in the water lately! Bath time is probably her favorite time of day at home, and in the pool, floating free in her ring (with us nearby of course) really made her happy. We're signed up for swim classes with her in June and are really looking forward to it!



Since the official reason for the beach trip was a Rotary Club district conference (for Heather's dad), we were also able to cross paths with my brother Paul and his wife Michele, who were there for the same reason. It was the first time we'd had a chance to see them since December, so it was a very welcome visit. Unfortunately I didn't think to take even a single picture with them and Eliza!

That's enough news for one post, I think. Hopefully another post soon!

Changes?

Apparently keeping this blog up-to-date has somehow fallen off of my to-do list. Along with grocery shopping. I don't think I have been in 3-4 weeks. Luckily, I had (HAD!) a decent stock of food and we get a weekly delivery from the farm so no real lack of food here.

I've been struggling with what's happening with this blog and that's been demotivating for doing any updating. Lately it's evolved into an irregular, sanitized, and general update to family, friends and whoever else wants to read. Ideally I would like to see it be more of an accurate, day-to-day view at Eliza's childhood. The ups and the downs and all the nitty gritty in between. I think we've tended lately to highlight just the positives and especially the "normal" child milestones. Probably cause it's easier, and we don't want to feel like we are complaining about any of the downs or the struggles that we go through....cause people definitely have it much worse.  But this is our story and I think we owe it to ourselves and to Eliza to document it completely and honestly.

Perhaps others are also interested in a closer view of one baby's (and her parents') journey through overcoming her much too early beginnings, and perhaps not. But even if not, this is Eliza's only baby book, so we need to at least keep it current for her! Poor kid, she doesn't get anything normal.

So we will see if we can manage to make changes around here... since living the nitty-gritty seems to take time away from writing about it. :)

And to make up for all that  philosophizing here are cute pictures of babies (from way back at Easter, woops!)

 

Any resemblance?

Looking through pictures of Eliza from last month, we were struck by one in particular. Eliza seems to be looking more like her Daddy lately, don't you think?

Plane Ride

Eliza took her very first plane ride over Easter weekend. We were super nervous since we decided to fly "Infant in Arms" instead of buying her own seat. (Cheapskates.) We had valid reasons for concern. Eliza likes to constantly move, my friends. Sitting contently on a lap? No. She is a wiggle worm; she pulls, yanks, tears, puts-in-mouth everything she can reach. We were also overwhelmed thinking about lugging a bunch of baby stuff, and a baby, around the airport. Plus, we didn't want to pay (cheapskates) to check any bags. Therefore due to some very creative (skimpy) packing and my mom having a well-stocked house, we ended up only taking 2 small rolling suitcases, a backpack, a diaper bag, and one large toddler car seat. This feat of minimalism would've been hard to accomplish if we were going anywhere other than Nana's house, but for this trip it worked!

After doing some research on traveling with a car seat I came across this little gadget: traveling toddler car seat strap. It was inexpensive (remember, cheapskates?) and a good solution! It basically turns one roller case and car seat into a stroller. It was pretty easy too. It took a little practice to get the tightness of the straps right but once at the airport things went fairly smoothly:

1. Take car seat out of car and decrease recline of seat. 

2. Use strap to attach seat to case with LATCH system. (A matter of click, click and tighten)

3. Unclick at security and put everything on conveyor for x-rays.

4. Reattach easily on the other side (while juggling baby and waiting for spouse to get the full-body pat-down by a TSA officer).

5. Nod and agree with strangers about what a good invention it is. (the strap, not the pat-down)

6. Planeside, detach and check car seat into baggage, and carry baby onto plane. 

Pretty painless! 

Riding the concourse train in ATL

As for baby wrangling while on the plane: It went pretty well too. I think it would have been impossible for one person to keep her contained for the whole flight, but with two of us, it went just fine! Eliza spent a lot of time climbing between Glenn and me, leaning backwards to check out the aisle and people, looking at books, listening to us sing at her, shaking rattles, slobbering on Delta cookies, and making friends with some of the flight attendants. She even got her picture with the pilot in the cockpit! (After we landed, of course!)

She looks a little freaked here but she gave him a shy smile right before this. :)

He's Here!

My nephew made his long awaited appearance on Friday, March 30th!  This was 6 whole days before our scheduled trip down to Georgia to meet him. I kept telling myself it was only few more days, and that worked on Friday... but by Saturday morning I couldn't wait any longer and I was in the car making the long drive to GA on my own. Glenn was awesome to handle the house and Eliza for the weekend and he even downloaded a digital audiobook for me to listen to on the drive.  Good hubby isn't he?!

I am so proud of my sister! My nephew is a super cute, sleepy, and healthy little man. I was so honored to be there for the first couple days of his life!

Benjamin - born 8 lb, 8 oz, 21 inches long. What a cutie!

As a side note: apparently there are still hospitals out there that haven't gotten the message that “breast is best”. Theirs was one of those hospitals. When a woman wants to breastfeed and you deter her and suggest that it is NOT what is best for baby? CRAZY. We're still shocked about that one!

Coming soon!

My sister is having a baby any day now! We are so excited to meet the new baby boy! I can't wait for Eliza to meet him and have a new cousin to play with. In February we threw my sister a shower to help her get ready for this new, exciting, and expensive time in their lives! We had a great group of people join us and I had a good time creating things for the shower. I left all the yummy, creative food prep and coordination to my mom, grandmother, and aunt and they did an amazing job! I wanted to share a few pictures on here from the shindig, but of course I completely forgot to take even one picture. :( I think that makes me a very bad at this blogging thing. Fortuitously my brother-in-law took some pictures. We went with a "Cute as a Button" theme for the shower.

The yummy food spread

Another of the food and  the flower arrangement created by my grandmother

My gorgeous sister



The loot! Also, a beautiful afghan by my mother for baby b.


Trike diaper cake. My mom and I had fun putting this guy together!

Button cake, cake pops and pretzels. Cake was red velvet with cream cheese icing and fondant buttons!



Close up of fondant buttons created by my mom

Shadow box of invitation and button flowers

'Cute as a button' cookie favors that my mom outdid herself on. These were super cute. Sorry no close up picture of these!

Button flower arrangement. These were a lot of fun to make and hunt buttons for.

My nephew's nursery. My sister did a great job of putting together this room. It is so sweet and full of love. My mom, sister and I spent a few days over the holidays making these yarn eggs and I think they look great hanging in the corner. 

 

I made this fabric garland for the room. It's the same pattern of the one I made for Eliza's first birthday but with colors to match baby b's nursery.

Everything is ready (well, as ready as can be) for baby b so now we are just waiting to meet him. I know he will be cute as a button (or much cuter!) :) 

March Update

So what's new with us? A veritable assortment of novelties!

We've decided to start a vegetable garden in our back yard using the square foot gardening method. Since neither of us have much gardening experience, we're starting small, with one 2 x 8 foot box and one 2 x 4 foot box - 24 square feet total, each with a different vegetable planted in it. The cool thing about square foot gardening is that you can fit a lot of veggies in a small space. We have cauliflower, broccoli, 2 kinds of cabbage, 2 kinds of carrots, radishes, 3 types of onions, spinach, several types of lettuce, sugar snap peas, and mustard greens in our 2 boxes. Hopefully we got the soil mix right and we manage to keep up with the watering so that we'll start having some yummy home-grown vegetables in a couple of months!

In the front yard, the flower beds that we put in last fall with the help of my parents are blooming nicely and looking great now that they've had a good weeding.

But enough about the yard - I'm sure what you're really wondering is "What about Eliza?" ☺ All in all she's doing great this month! She turned 18 months old a few days ago, which is a huge milestone in itself, but that's just the start. Thanks in large part to a sudden increase in her interest in moving around, and in part as well to some extra focused PT time and effort from our end, she's continued to make a ton of progress in her gross motor skills too. A month ago, she was rolling around on her own. Now she's getting really good at transitions - getting from prone to sitting and vice versa is still a little tricky for her but she's almost doing it entirely on her own with only a little prompting. When she's prone, she's figured out how to use her arms to turn herself left and right until she's oriented toward something of interest. And biggest of all, today she started to "army crawl" for the first time! She used her elbows and feet to push herself forward a couple of feet across the carpet to get to a toy. (It was actually one of Pasha's toys - funny how someone else's stuff is always more interesting...) Exciting times and no doubt a lot of babyproofing of the house are in store!