Where to begin…so many things…
The farther into the toddler hood we go, the more difficult it seems to become (again). Learning to walk was a “cake walk,” because while mobility started, they were still easily contained. Now that everyone is so very busy running around and climbing on everything, we are constantly trying to monitor all activities while successfully feeding, cleaning, and playing (sleeping is apparently not on this list anymore!).
We are now in the “no fear” stage, meaning the girls are up for trying anything and don’t yet comprehend possible injury when they climb into the windowsill, or up onto the fireplace hearth, or run full blast at the stairs (after successfully making it through the dog door).
How to you manage to keep three toddlers from injury? Well, you don’t…at some point they will understand it, and for now we just try to keep the bonks to a minimum. Harper seems to hit her head on the table edge, or anything equivalent to her height really, while Reagan more often gets bumps from moving quickly and Emerie from climbing on things. Everyone is quickly learning how to go down the stairs too (safely).
Ironically, no one is identical at the moment, because everyone has different injuries. That makes them temporarily fraternal right? Minus the whole DNA thing…
Emerie still has mild redness in her eye from last month’s surgery, although it continues to improve and is now less irritating for her. The doctor told us this week it is healing up nicely, but that her eye tracking is not improving as much as we were hoping. That could indicate the need for a second surgery later this year to correct it, or optimistically it might improve in the next month or two; we’ll have to monitor it and see what happens. Her purple colored eyelid is mostly faded now and she’s back to those big, smiling eyes. She’s also patching more easily and will soon have glasses!
Reagan’s left arm has almost healed scratches from the dog versus cat tussle last week, where she happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Luckily they weren’t too deep, although it looks pretty terrible and scabbed over quickly. I’m pretty sure I took it worse than she did; that is a mother’s right, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s only the first of future tumbles and bumps and bruises as we navigate toddler hood full throttle ahead!
Luckily that shouldn’t scar and doesn’t seem to bother her now; she didn’t really stress too much about it, even later into the day after receiving it.
Harper has a tea drip stain down her chest, with the top portion blistering a little and the run to her belly button nearly gone. In terms of her fearlessness, she climbed the deck chair and made it onto the table (you know, in the 10 seconds we weren’t looking), picked up the cup of hot tea, and proceeded to pour that straight down on herself. While she was definitely less than thrilled at that, I’m not sure how much of a lesson she learned from it or if it’ll take a few more painful things to teach her to be more careful. Surprisingly she doesn’t have a forehead bonk right now either!
A cute observation we’ve noticed- Emerie and Reagan are light footed when they walk and run (more like me), while Harper is so heavy footed that I can tell who is walking around without even seeing them…like a heavy, but adorable, baby elephant. She walks like Daddy for sure! She also likes to stand in one spot and stomp her feet, not angrily, and often to music. It’s very adorable.
Emerie graduated from PIC last week! We were meeting with our wonderful PIC consultant twice a month, just to monitor progress and give us ideas on how to help with development. We are now fully caught up developmentally for all three, before the standard age of two! This means our adjusted age doesn’t need monitoring quite as much as their actual age, because we are now hitting milestones pretty typical to their age.
Another thing I’ve been tracking is the baby talking. I can’t wait for the bigger conversations to start and am impatient! Everyone’s vocabulary has expanded to about five words. Conveniently it’s the same five words for everyone: momma, dadda, ba (bottle), baby, and the new one for this week, kitty (minus the “t” sound). Emerie says baby all the time and it’s incredibly cute, while Harper and Reagan have been saying kitty a bunch when Rafi or Rory are nearby. Harper also grumble talks, she’s done this for quite a while now, when she’s upset or mad. She will tell you all about it in baby speak, especially to tattle on her sisters! Overall, the goal for our 18 month pediatrician appointment was five words, which we tackled by 16 months!
Essentially, everything is going pretty well except the actual concept of sleeping. No one wants to nap, especially Reagan, who hasn’t napped even a whole hour in several weeks, let alone two! Some days we get a solid two hour nap out of Emerie or Harper, or both; other days they only go for 45 minutes. What makes it more difficult is they aren’t supplementing less nap time with better nighttime sleep. Nope! Craig and I haven’t had a full nights sleep since the week before we went to Juneau; and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight on how long we will have to drag on this way, since new molars are still popping up for each kiddo and our neighbors are still putting up new siding (which has been going over three weeks now and is noisy).
I’ve graduated from sleeping in my (our) own bed with no kids, to sleeping in our bed with one baby (who varies), to sleeping in the guestroom with a baby while a second baby sleeps next to Craig, to the last two nights, where Reagan slept in our bed with Craig, Harper slept in the guestroom with me and then I ended up holding Emerie in the nursery arm chair so she would attempt to calm down and sleep. Such fun…we are definitely deteriorating and becoming crazy, sleepless parents a little more each day. This is the first week since they were born that I put food in the oven and forgot about it (sorry bacon!). I hope this phase will end soon and that those molars will get here already!
The last minor household change in the past couple of weeks involves more freedom. During the day the girls freely roam the living room, with the baby prison opened up to block off the couch and living room windows, which are clearly meant to be climbed on. Everyone once in a while someone figures out a way around the gate, but for the most part we’ve been able to outsmart that toddler geniusness (for now!). We aren’t too far from no more baby prison, although luckily no one has figured out how to climb the walls yet, unless there is a climbable toy nearby.
Fingers crossed my solo Friday is survivable. It’s pretty great that I managed to finish the blog before the rage started!
Update…by the time I posted this everyone was up and mad. Oh well…
We rocked the park this time, bringing our new portable (and compact!) high chairs with trays. They worked amazingly at several things. Keeping the girls from running all directions? Check. Allowing us to eat and socialize while they ate? Check! Get the girls superrrrrr messy with fruit and cupcakes? Check check.
The Douglets 