Category Archives: ivy

Dear 2 year old sleep regression, I kinda wanna punch you in the face

September 22, 2015

WHAT THE HECK. I definitely jinxed myself. I have been all worried about Leo’s nap and schedule last week, well now this week it’s Ivy! Can’t I catch a break here?!! #nobreaksinparenting #ever

This is essentially my (chaotic) afternoon:

11:30 – whipping up some lunch for Ivy and scrounging around what I can eat
11:45 – Ivy’s eating and watching her cartoons (guilty). I’m nursing Leo.
11:50 – “Ivy EAT, Ivy EAT.” “Ivy take a drink of water. IVY take a drink of water.”
12:00 – Trying to get Leo to sleep so I can get Ivy to bed
12:15 – Ivy’s done eating. “Time to get ready for nap time!” “Read books, mama, read books!”
12:30 – We’ve read 2-3 books. This and this are currently her favorites.
12:35 – Tucking her in to bed with her favorite stuffed animals and covering her with her blankie. “Nigh nigh Ivy, nigh nigh.” Door shut. I go get the monitor and go downstairs.
12:36 – Eating my lunch and asking myself if I should have a beer too. Sometimes I do : /
12:40 – Ivy’s talking to herself and her stuffed animals
12:45 – Now singing to herself
1:00 – Takes diaper off. UGH
1:01 – I got up there to put her diaper back on. She says “new diaper cause it’s icky.” WTF.
1:02 – New diaper, tucked back in. “GO TO SLEEP IVY. GO TO SLEEP”

Alternate worse scenario
1:00 – Takes diaper off. UGH
1:15 – I don’t notice she’s taken her diaper off and then I finally look at the monitor and realize she’s taken it off
1:16 – I go up there to put her diaper back on and realized she’s peed in the bed. UGH. Screaming inside my head. So annoyed
1:17 – Changing bed sheets. Thank god I have a backup set
1:19 – Running after Ivy down the hall to corral her back in the bedroom. I lock the door
1:20 – Tucking Ivy back in to put her to sleep again. Freaking go to sleep kid

1:25 – GO TO SLEEP IVY. GO TO SLEEP.
1:30 – She’s trying to reach for the plugin to unplug the fan.
1:31 – I tell her NO through the monitor and to STOP and she stops and lays back down. GEEZUS
1:35 – Still talking to herself. Still talking to her animals.
1:40 – I go up there again and now she’s pooped in her diaper.
1:41 – Changing her diaper. AGAIN.
1:42 – Tucked back in, “Ivy, go to bed ok honey? Go to bed.” “Ok mommy, ok.”
2:00 – Still talking to herself. Still taking to her animals.
2:10 – Leo’s awake. SHIT.
2:30 – Ivy’s singing the alphabet
2:35 – She’s putting her cup on the nightstand
2:45 – Now she’s tucking in her animals to bed
2:46 – I go up there AGAIN and say “GO TO SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I tuck her in again and make her lay down. She cries.
3:00 – Talking to herself. Again.
3:04 – Reaching for the curtains and tugging at them
3:05 – I yell in the monitor to “GO TO SLEEP IVY!!!!!”
3:06 – She tucks herself back in. Ok, fewf, finally, maybe…
3:07 – Singing to herself. FML
3:10 – Leo’s crying. I haven’t cleaned up from lunch yet.
3:15 – I give up and go get Ivy
3:18 – I’m screwed. And exhausted. Haven’t even sat down yet.
3:19 – I make her sit on the couch and watch her ipad. Just so I can sit for 2 minutes.
3:21 – Leo’s crying. Hungry. Time to nurse again.

So this has pretty much been the last 6 of 7 days. YES. She has skipped 6 days of naps!!!!!!!!! And 4 of those 6 days she has peed the bed!!! I’m dying and so torn about WHAT THE HECK. Ever since I tried potty training, she takes her diaper off and says “cause it’s icky.” UGH! So I made some progress because she doesn’t like the diaper on anymore, but IN BED?! Blah. I have finally learned that I need to just leave pants on her so that she can’t take those off or her diaper. And I probably need to take all of her stuffed animals out of the bed. Like really. Take everything away from this kid! Even her voicebox? I need a mute button.

There’s gotta be some scientific parenting reason why this is happening. Well, last night I found myself googling “two year old won’t nap” (Ivy will be two on October 1st) because please PLEASE let this be a “thing” because if it’s a “thing” then she’ll grow out of this “thing” because I seriously CAN NOT TAKE THIS “THING” MUCH LONGER. And yes. Thank god. It’s a “thing.” That makes me feel better for some reason. That it really is a “thing.”

This “thing,” starting back at me on my phone… “sleep regression.” UGH. It says that “it reflects a normal developmental leap or shift in which your child is rapidly developing a new skill or entering a new phase. For your 2 year-old, some of these leaps are verbal, and you may encounter sleep issues right around when your toddler experiences a word explosion or learns to express more complex ideas,” (link here). It also says that sleep regression is a normal “phase” and to not give up on naps completely. They will go back to normal.

WHEN. WHEN. WHEN.

Two weeks ago we had Ivy skip a nap because we wanted to go boating and she had slept in, so we thought she would be ok and we would put her down early for bed. And she was. And ever since then, it’s like she realized, “look at how much FUN I can have when I don’t nap!!” (CURSE ME). Plus, Ivy fell out of the crib last week trying to reach the light to turn it on after we had pulled the crib away from the wall. Smacked her two front teeth! It was really scary! I’m hoping the teeth don’t discolor and have to get pulled! But anyways, the dentist recommended no more pacifier to get the soft bone tissue and teeth to move back, and I was happy to get rid of it! I just told her the pacifier (she calls it a dissy) hurt her teeth so no more dissy. She only cried on the first day! She still asks for it, but then I tell her, “remember, no more dissy…” And she will go, “Oh ya,” all enthusiastically, haha. So that could definitely be part of this nap regression as well : / Ugh.

Yesterday, she skipped her nap AGAIN. And wet the bed (F me). And she actually fell asleep as I was pushing her in the swing before dinner. Seriously. Take your naps, kid!!!

Well I have waved my white flag. You go ahead and lay in there for 2 hours and talk to yourself. At least she’s not crying!! And she’s going to bed at night fine. So I’m just gonna ride this out and stop trying to solve this problem. It will pass eventually, so they say…

And have you read THIS book?! My friend just told me about it and It’s called, Go the F**k to sleep,- HILARIOUS!!!!!

Meanwhile. I’ll continue to get absolutely NOTHING accomplished during the day. #desperatelyneedabreak #callforpizza #dirtyhouse #givemeabeer #andsometylenol

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Big Fat Fail #pottytraining

August 7, 2015

First off, could she have that ipad ANY closer to her face? Ok, but getting to the point… we failed. A BIG, fat, no good, cleaning-up-a-ton-of-messes, I-need-ten-beers, FAIL. Read up on the “How to Potty Train in 3 Days” method that I went with from my last blog post (here). Now here’s the story:

Day 1

As anticipated, Ivy was all excited to take off her diaper and be “potty trained,” as she started calling it, and Mom was just as eager as well. We started off the morning great, she peed on the potty right away in the morning, and then, accident, after accident, after accident. Basically, Day 1 was a riot. One highlight though, was when she realized she needed to poop and actually got up from playing and went to the potty and pooped! That gave me hope! But it didn’t last for long.

Day 2

Same as day one. Barely any progress at all. But she did wake up with a less wet diaper, so a little better. And she is actually realizing she’s peeing and walking to the potty, but not waiting to be ON the potty to pee. We went out for the one hour today and she peed on our walk around the neighborhood :/ Lots of accidents. Feeling discouraged. Sick of hanging out on the hardwood floors. Sick of cleaning up messes. Should I stop and not even bother? Eh, I’ll stick it out. But, I’m not one to just sit at home… so I’m dying.

Day 3

Basically, the same. When I put her diaper on for nap, she wasn’t happy about it. And it took her forever to fall asleep with it on. I went in there once to see what the heck she was doing, because sometimes she poops and won’t fall asleep, but she had just peed and wanted me to change it. I changed it, and straight to sleep. So at least she’s not enjoying her wet diaper anymore! Still just walking to the potty while peeing, not actually walking to the potty to pee. And on our two one hour departures, she peed both times. Humph. So ya, barely any progress.

Here is her potty chart – wow she pees a lot! And this doesn’t even count wet diapers at her nap and bedtime! Geesh! This chart is TMI. Mommy apologizes if you see this when you’re 13 Ivy :)

ivypottytraining-10 Conclusion

Well, it didn’t work. But she LOVED the potty chart! I’m glad I made one that was so simple and one that she could actually put the sticker on herself, she really enjoyed that. With going potty, she didn’t learn the sensation of needing to pee, she never really went to the potty to pee, just if she would happen to be sitting on it, we got lucky. Otherwise, I would say we had little progress. I guess we will try again in a couple months! I am ok with that! She’s only 22 months so I was hopeful, but in reality, she’s just too young still… which means she’s still a little baby… which I’m ok with :)

ivypottytraining-6

What to do from here

I think I’ll just kind of continue the naked trend. Practice makes perfect, am I right?! So anytime we are at home, I think I’ll just have her go commando and hope that one day she starts acknowledging that pee sensation. Then we will try the 3-day thing again in a month or two.

Meanwhile, I’m at Costco buying more paper towels : /

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Two Under Two

July 16, 2015

The (so-called) dreaded three words… two under two. But is it really that bad? I’ve waited a month to write this post because if you would have asked me two weeks ago, I would have said, “It’s like a dream!” But now, not so much, I might speed up the post-partum hair loss and actually just pull my hair out.

I should start by saying I love my children. I have two incredible children, one with a budding comical spunky personality and the other who has a sweet little boy soul. Being a family of four is just awesome, for lack of better words. I really feel like a family with four now. A boy and a girl, and two loving parents…perfect.

But it’s not.

Things were going soooo smoothly, too smoothy, like the calm before the storm, I just knew it couldn’t be this good. I knew I should wait to write the dreamy post that would trick all of us into thinking two under two was easy peasy.

So, let’s first start with the good.

Leo is like a dream baby, sleeping really well, eating really well, and pooping really well (had to include that because THANK GOD no gas/stomach/colic issues). I had forgotten how much they sleep and was thankful for him being an easy sweet baby. It was a relief because I was certainly scared and anxious to see how the whole two kid thing was going to go. He was my chill little babe. Didn’t intrude with our family at all. Accepted with open loving arms.

Now to the bad. Or, challenging, if you will.

Ivy. At first, she was perfect too! She was sweet on Leo, making sure to hold him (“Hold him, Mommy, hold him,” But like 10 more times in a row until I acknowledge her), always wanting him sitting with her, telling me when he was crying, hugging and kissing him, and most of all, being patient with us while we had to take care of him. She wasn’t throwing tantrums, wasn’t rebelling, wasn’t being mean to Leo, or us for that matter. She was going about her daily spunky behavior, like, HELL YA. Ok, WE GOT THIS. Who ever said TWO UNDER TWO would be awful?! And we were so busy! I made sure to get out of the house with her each day and we would go to art class once a week, or go to the pool, or zoo, or children’s play, or the park, or something, anything, to still have fun with her and make her feel special.

Well that was the first three weeks. And then the storm hit.

Ivy, ohhhh, my sweet, patient, loving Ivy, where has she gone?

It makes me think of Snow White – “Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” IVY. IVY. IVY. IVY. (Except she’d be saying it rudely or whiny, instead of her cute little voice when she says her name right now).

Ok, so maybe not THAT bad, she’s not QUEEN of our world, but she has changed into something I don’t even recognize once in a while. Like, where did this WHINY WHINY voice come from? Where did all of this CRYING come from? Where did this ANNOYING behavior come from?! (SHRIEK, I just called my child annoying).

So I’m trying to remember, was she always this needy and I just didn’t realize? Or is it because now I’m busy with Leo sometimes and she’s begging and whining for something and I don’t have the patience? I hope it’s the later, because I don’t remember ever being annoyed with her.

Ivy has started to say “put Leo down,” and “hold you mama,” (I always said hold you, so she doesn’t recognize that it’s hold ME mama, yet, it’s kinda cute), and she even threw a toy at him yesterday. EEEEEEK. Thank god it didn’t hit him. Or like when you’re nursing and you have NO IDEA where your other child has gone, only to come back from the garage with five popsicles in her hands, oh goodness, deep breath, deep breath.

I am learning from all of this though. An instance the other day that had us both wailing. She had started wanting something I don’t even remember what, and I told her no, and she just LOST IT. I actually had to just walk out of the room the other day and leave her there crying, the crescendo of her wailing was like a knife in the heart, and I just sat there in the other room, tearing up in defeat, not even knowing what to do and thinking “I can’t do this.” I took a deep breath, eventually gathered myself, and went and just held her, I think we actually held each other.

And that’s when it hit me, she is still my baby. My BABY. She’s only 21 months. I can’t expect her to grow up over night now that there is a younger one in the house. It had seemed like she was all of a sudden so old now with Leo around, and I could recognize that I was treating her like she was older. But, it will take time, and she will still have her fits, and her whining, and her tantrums because for goodness sakes, she’s also entering her terrible twos through this. And we need to be patient with her also, just like she’s trying so hard to be patient with us.

So all those people who GASPED at me when I said they would be 20 months apart, touché, touché. Yes it is hard, but is it any harder than being farther apart? Who knows. We were happy to have them this close, and yes right now it may be hard, but I’m sure it’s not the last hard stage that they will grow up together through.

Photo Jun 30, 2 21 04 PM

There was a very good line that I read in the book Am I Messing Up My Kids (we are reading this in our book club and it is SOOOO hilarious and helpful), the chapter was titled, “Would My Kids Say I Love Being a Mom?” And such a good question to reflect upon. As my heartrate boils and I’m pulling out my hair and/or crying in defeat, I need to remember one thing –

THIS IS WHAT I’VE ALWAYS WANTED.

I wanted to be a Mom, I wanted to have children, I wanted to have a family, I knew it would be challenging. And when I think about my future and past and about these things that I wanted in my life, I picture smiles, and laughing, and having fun, and those are the days I should dwell on, not these bad moments, these challenging moments. They last so briefly and then they’re gone. You have a new day, a new hour, or your child takes one of those naps that you’re like hell ya, and then your baby comes to give you a hug and kiss and gives you that look like they just absolutely adore you… and then you know your kids would say that I love being a Mom. I LOVE BEING A MOM. I would ask for one thing though… could we speed up through these terrible twos? #andshesnoteventwoyet

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PUBLISHED! In Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine

July 13, 2015

Umb, AWESOME! I got published in a NATIONAL MAGAZINE! The Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine! Fanning myself for the moment!

Here’s the jist – I had submitted Ivy’s birth story last October and it had gotten published on the Pregnancy and Newborn website blog (see shortened post here or read the whole story on my blog here) in March. I thought that was pretty cool! And by the way, anyone can do this, they post a new birth story each week, so send yours in to birthstory@pnmag.com!

magazine-4 Well then after my story was published on their blog, I got an email from the associate editor asking for my permission to get it published in their July issue. Obvs I said yes and was ecstatic! So I couldn’t WAIT to see the magazine when it came in my mailbox. I’ve subscribed to this magazine since I was pregnant with Ivy, it really is a GREAT resource and has a ton of helpful information for parents and pregnant mamas. Get it if you don’t have it! (Subscribe here).

It came in the mail last week and I skipped right ahead to Ivy’s birth story page (p. 44) and THERE IT WAS! So cool. So cool!

On the other hand, it was a sad reminder of her NICU stay, but hopefully it reaches with other people who have had similar experiences, so I hope some people are able to relate to it!

Anyways, check out the magazine this month! On stands now! (Just had to insert the cheesy sales pitch, hehe)

Ivy // 21 months

July 1, 2015

// Dress // Shoes //

Ivy is now 21 months! I feel foolish calling her that, like, why don’t I just say almost two, but I’m milking this month thing till she is actually two and she’s saying she’s two and I shouldn’t call her by the month anymore. So we are going to go right ahead and finish out these next few months so I can feel like my baby isn’t as grown up as she really is : /

She is practically saying sentences now, with several words in a row. My favorite is how polite she is! She always says “thanks,” or “thank you” when you give her something, I love it! Still working on the please, but she will say it if you ask her the right way to ask for something. Starting on the manners young!

She is also OBSESSED with the ipad. We just started giving it to her this month and she’s already a PRO! She loves to play the puzzles and matching games. The “Tiny Hands” educational games are great for toddlers her age. She loves the sorting ones! It’s incredible. She can drag them and match them, like whoa! She also loves the “Toddler Farm” which has animal sounds and puzzles. I wonder what education will be like by the time she’s in school? Technology is key!

// Dress // Sandals //

Lately, Ivy is a BUSY girl! WIth summer here, there is something to do every day! Tuesdays she is at an art class at the Washington Pavilion, Wednesdays she is with Grandma Koch, and Thursdays I love to go to these fabulous children’s theater plays at McKennan Park. We go for walks or go swimming or hit up the zoo in the afternoons and then all of a sudden it’s Friday and we are headed to our cabin for the weekend. Life is pretty busy lately! This new baby Leo (aka tag along) hasn’t slowed us down one bit!

Took out the Maui Mat last weekend and she went WILD! Running and running back and forth. And when she would fall she would act like a frog and bounce back saying “Ribbit, ribbit!”

Zoo with Uncle Joe

We just had cousins Anna and Nora in town for a week and Ivy LOVED them! And they were equally obsessed with her! It was so nice to get them together and the three of them had so much fun together.

What are you all doing for the 4th? My sister Jillian and her husband Brian fly in tonight and I can’t wait to see them! She is due in September so I am pumped to see her bump again! And I will be thankful I don’t have one anymore :) My cousin Carson is also coming from Denver so we will have a ton of family fun this weekend at our cabin. They are anxious to meet Leo too! Anyways, hope you all have a happy and safe 4th of July! God bless America! ;)

And because Leo needs some love on this blog too – here he is at THREE WEEKS (Already! YELP!)

// Chair //

Annnnnd… I should probably get started on the baby book : / #procrastinator