Beach Life

A couple of weeks ago, Sean and I finally took a vacation. 

Between me being in my probationary period at work (where I wasn't able to take vacation days) and Sean working 6 days a week for the last 9 months, not to mention a growing baby to contend with, it felt amazing to finally take a little break. 

And break we did. 

We started with a visit to our lost love, New York. We spent 14 hours there, 12ish of which were spent in our hotel room (with some of our favourite New York friends very accomodatingly coming over to hang with us there) but we still managed to have the best time.

   We did very New York things like eat burgers from, allegedly, the best burger place in the city, and took a walk through Central Park (...after getting sick of sitting in traffic in a taxi). In the morning I took Lola down to Rockefeller Plaza so that we could have coffee (me), eat oatmeal (her), and watch the Today Show as we do every morning.

And then just as quickly as we arrived, we were off again. This time, headed down the shore to Long Beach Island, NJ.

My most favourite place ever.

We first started going to LBI back in...maybe 1992? Ages and ages ago, in other words. A few years back it dawned on me that Uncle John and Aunt Corinne were around our age in those early years. It blew my mind. I suddenly realized we aren't the children any more, we're the adults.

Luckily, our adulthood (i.e. finding a rental, planning the week, organizing meals, cleaning, etc. etc. etc.) was put off for yet another year as the ever-hospitable Connelly clan took us all in once again. I can't tell you how nice it is and how great they are as hosts, we are truly blessed.

The best part of it of course was that Lola got to spend time with her family. She's always been a bit of a mamma's girl but now that she's 9 months old, oh boy the separation anxiety is at its height. This makes her a little unsure about hanging out with others, which kills me because I so want her to be a social girl. Either way, she managed to chill out a few times and enjoy the company of a crowd of her fans. The family is great with her, everyone takes such joy in the little things that she does. And watching everyone try to help her crawl - hilarious and heartwarming. You've never seen so many grown people down on all fours. She never did manage to figure out the forward motion so essential to crawling but she did pick up a few other things during our vacation anyway. Mostly an affinity for Big Brother, which somehow went from being just "something on" during a rainy day to a full on obsession for some who shall remain anonymous (cough cough Sean cough). 

After nights drinking beers on the deck and late night runs to Meltdown (formerly referred to as Skipper Dipper to my husband's confusion), the house was often quiet in the mornings and Lola and I found ourselves mostly on our own for a short period of time. Not ever having been a morning person before Lola, I wasn't exactly sure what to do with this. And then I remembered one summer at the shore when Nicole, just a little thing at the time, had told me about seeing dolphins jumping out of the water during an early morning walk on the beach. For years I had thought about that, wishing I had enough will power to wake up early enough to go check this out for myself. But it never happened. The only reason I ever woke up early down the shore was to go eat breakfast at Uncle Wills Pancake House. And unless chocolate chip pancakes were part of the deal, an early wake-up was just not going to happen. 

But here I was, awake early! With a little monkey who naps by 9:30am and is unlikely to cooperate with a 30min + wait followed by a crowded restaurant, Uncle Wills was not in our sights. But a walk to the beach? That we could do. And do we did. 

(Lola's first selfie!)

No, we didn't end up seeing any dolphins but it was great nonetheless. Just me, my girl, and the ocean 

It was really such a great few days, overall. We celebrated the 4th of July by blasting Springsteen and playing a family game of Flip Cup, we rode bikes past Fantasy Island, we wedding planned and shopped, we swam in the big Jersey waves, drank summery beers, and laid out on the beach for as long as possible. I could go on and on. 

I mean really, is there anything better than a good ol' fashioned famjam at the Jersey shore?

#LBIfamjam2015 you were a slice! 

Thank you so much Connelly's!!

Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me?!

In the last year and a half, life has changed a great deal for Sean and I. From the second you see that little pink line on the pregnancy test, I knew this would be the case, I did. Its just, I thought I could intellectualize my way through these changes. I though I could prepare for them. We would read books and have discussions, google weirder things than we'd ever googled before, that kind of thing. This would lead to success, I told myself. I would do my due diligence and as a result I could, at the very least, anticipate what changes might lay ahead.

Despite all my efforts though, I find myself almost daily asking: why didn't anybody tell us this??

For example: My hair. All I have heard about babies and hair is that pregnancy makes your nail and your hair grow longer, faster, and thicker. Perfect, I thought and readied myself for my beautiful, well-earned mane. Yet as my belly grew and grew my hair seemed to get worse and worse. By the time Lola was out in the world, the top section of my hair had almost completely broken off, leaving me with a jagged, mushroom-cut/mullet combination in the front. Less than ideal.

But she was out, she was out and it was breastfeeding time - that also does fantastic things to your hair and nails I heard. Here is where the hair rehabbing would begin! But oh wait, nope, things just got worse! Only recently when I started noticing thick baby hairs growing all over my head did I realize what had been happening - my hair had been falling out at the root.

Upon complaining about this to anybody who would listen, a peculiar thing started to happen. Other mothers would nod their heads in sympathy and tell me all about how that had happened to them too. Once again I found myself asking, WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THIS??

And then I came across this video and quite suddenly I understood. People do tell you. They tell you everything - the good, the bad, the weird, the unusual - but we don't listen. Because thats the funny thing about parenthood, you can read and study and prepare and discuss as much as your brain can handle but it will never be enough. Because you'll never know what anybody is talking about until you're there, in the moment, experiencing it.

I mean, if somebody had told me that I'd not only cry like a baby every time I watch this video but that I'd cry even when I'm just thinking about this video, I would have never believed you. But alas, its happened.

I'm still adjusting to life as a cryer. Its quite different than what I'm used to, that's for sure. But while it can make things uncomfortable from time to time (i.e. I've had to hold back tears at work a few times when discussing cases and in difficult sessions), I can totally see its benefits. "All the love," as they say in the video, is what keeps me going day to day. Its what makes it possible for me, the most un-morning person ever, to wake up early 7 days a week with a smile on my face.  After a completely terrible, exhausting, awful day, its what makes me look forward with excitement to the next day. Those beyond-my-control, overwhelming, all-consuming emotions are what make me feel, for the first time in my life, relaxed and positive, like no challenge is too big to take on.

I have to say, never in my life would I have believed you if you told me this time last year that I'd be feeling this way. Which I guess is why I should stop asking why didn't anybody tell me because they did tell me. I just wasn't ready to hear it then. I wasn't a mom yet.

~ 9 Months ~

Nine months in and our little Lola is changing from a baby to a child right in front of our eyes…

Sam reminded me of this pic the other day and asked if Lola still uses her swing. I sent her this back in response:

Whereas last month was all about happiness, this month seemed to be more about frustration. Lola suddenly became much more able-bodied – she can push herself backwards, reach and wiggle her way over to toys just beyond her grasp, hold herself in her sitting position even when playing hard with a large and heavy toy, and can even hold her bottle one-handed! 

But with all of these new skills comes the realization that so much more is possible, yet her muscles and body don’t seem quite ready to oblige. Never is this more apparent than when Lola tries to crawl. She’ll throw herself down so that she’s on her back, flip over with great force, pull her knees up, stick her arms out, and stares determinedly ahead. And then… well, that’s as far as we’ve gotten. 

Usually what comes next is Lola down on her belly again, laughing, kicking her legs, and waving her arms as if she’s saying “this is what I meant to do all along!” It looks like she’s happily swimming in place. 

To me, this is great development. We are so close to forward motion. But to Lola, after a few times of this, she gets pretty annoyed. And who could blame her? Watching her do this you can almost see her thought process – come on body, work with me here, why aren’t you moving like I’m willing you too???

Its not just the lack of brain-body coordination that’s frustrating her though, its also the tricky situations she finds herself in as a result of crawling practice. Here she is about mid-way through her afternoon nap one weekend:

And after a good 10minutes of trying to move forward but only ending up moving backward and backward and backward:

I know that she’s SO close to crawling and that it’ll likely come any day now but despite that, I still worry. Lola is 9 months now and she’s still not doing a few things that “they say” she should be doing: She doesn’t pull herself to standing, she doesn’t show all that much interest in trying out any vertical movements of any kind, she doesn’t babble using consonant-vowel sounds… 

But on the other hand, she does do a heck of a lot and has made new developments this month. She can now sit and play on her own for quite awhile. I mean, she checks in with us and sometimes requires our singing and dancing to be entertained but other times she’s totally captivated by her toys and trying out new movements and signing and making noises that she doesn’t need us at all. Its really cool to see her interact with her toys and her environment like this, she really explores and checks things out. Lola can’t get enough of this one elephant toy that she has. If you squeeze its feet, it squeaks loudly and she thinks this is the most hilarious thing of all time. She hasn’t quite understood that she can make the noise just by squeezing, instead she jams it into her mouth to get it to make the sound. Then she giggles and giggles and does it again and again. Cause and effect learning at its finest! 

This month Lola also started working on waving and clapping. She does neither consistently. Sometimes she might slightly wiggle her fingers in response to us adults saying “wave Lola” and waving our hands like lunatics for far too long a period of time. Most time she just stares at us with a look that says, rightfully, “You’re all lunatics.” And when we ask Lola to clap we usually say, “clap Lola, yayyyyy!!!” to which Lola will make a noise that sounds like “yaayyyyyy” but will not clap. I’m working on her saying mama and dada too but all that happens is I keep saying , “Lola say mama” and Lola keeps giggling in response as if I’m telling her the best joke she’s ever heard. Which I guess is a pretty sweet second best. 

Anyway, somewhere in my brain I do know that everything is just fine and that she’ll  meet her milestones in due time. And it helps that her doctor isn’t worried one tiny little bit either. We just went for her 9 month check up on her 9 month birthday and all is good. Lola is still a dainty girl, weighing in at just over 15lbs, but she is thriving. And what she lacks in weight she makes up for in personality and smiles. 

Despite her small size, I can see her maturing daily. She now largely enjoys her bottles on her own. She sips on them as she plays, abandoning it for a couple of minutes to explore something that catches her attention and returning to it when she’s done with the distraction. Also, we’ve taken her to a few restaurants, including two DINNERS, and she’s been a star, eating bread and babbling as if she’s keeping up with the conversation. Things like that. 

I’m so excited to see Lola become so grown up but its been a bit sad for me too… She’s definitely not my little baby anymore. Just before putting her down for the night I used to hold Lola against my chest and rock her for a few minutes. It was the sweetest, I’d listen to her breathing slow as she sucked her thumb, cheek against my chest with her little feet tucked in and up so that she was just a tiny little ball of deliciousness. But now, she is just too big and active for that. I try anyway, I’m not ready for it to be over just yet, but it’s a rare occurrence now. Usually she is pushing herself up, looking around for Charlie or daddy, kicking her legs to try out new movements. And whereas I used to put her down sleepy and she’d just drift off, now I put her down and she practically bounces herself out with the velocity of her kicks and arm waving! We even had to put a few special stuffed animals in the crib with her so that she has some company as she transitions into sleepy time. She takes a few minutes to herself, kicks and moves about, rolls onto her belly then turns herself around to face the other end of her crib, tries out her side for a bit, hugs a toy, pushes it away, grabs another one, and on and on and on. She’s a busy little lady.

So its been a month of transitions. My Lola is becoming more independent and I’m learning to adjust to not being the center of her universe. Its nice really, the less central I am to her, the more she seems to enjoy BOTH Sean and I as well as others around her (so much less crying when others hold her! As in, she actually sometimes LETS other people hold her!), but it’s a change. And change is hard. 

One change I am looking forward to though is a change of scenery. Tomorrow afternoon Sean and I are taking Lola for her first ever trip to two very special places: New York and Long Beach Island. As it is with us it’s going to be a whirlwind complete with planes, trains, and automobiles but I already know it will be so worth the effort.  

Wish us luck!

Lola and the Boys

Well it appears I've officially become old. I have more grey hairs by the day, I struggle to stay awake past 10, and I can't seem to keep up with technology. I finally downloaded a picture editing program but so far no idea how to actually import pictures into it. I can barely figure out where my pictures are going these days once I download them off my camera! I think its safe to say technology is moving too fast for this old bird. 

So, as its likely to be a good while before I'm back on my feet again, here are some sweet (unedited) pics of Lola with two very important pals: Her cousin, Zac, and her dog, Charlie: 

8 Months/The Sweet Spot

Lola bean turned 8 months old last weekend...

Can you believe she's that old?? 

                            

My girl is growing like a weed and changing so fast daily. More and more we catching glimpses of what she'll be like as a kid not just a baby. Its wild.

 This month was all about Lola's personality. And Lola's personality is all about happiness. I swear she's smiling all day long. And she has a great sense of humour too, you can already see hints of that poking through. Like in the random things she finds funny, the joy she seems to get in cracking other people up. I have a feeling she's going to be quite the little comedienne one day.

But this month has not been without its challenges. After several months of going down without so much as whimper, Lola just suddenly started taking 30-40minutes to settle. While I'm sure this is quite a normal thing, it was just so out of character for Lola. And she was only doing it at night, not before naps. We couldn't' figure out what was wrong. Separation anxiety? Teething? Growth spurt? Is she eating enough? Is she eating too much? Is she eating too many new things? Yet again I found myself questioning everything just like those good ol' early days.

In the end some sniffles and a cough tipped us off to the probable culprit: a cold. Sean also caught it and was absolutely miserable. We finally had some insight into how our little monkey was feeling. After some baby advil and extra cuddles, Lola's sleep mostly returned to normal, although it still took us probably another two weeks to get to where we are now, back to minimal resistance at sleep time. Tonight she cried for a minute or two but looks like it was more related to finding a comfy position. All of a sudden Lola is preferring sleeping on her belly exclusively, with her bum high up in the air. No more side-sleeping for her. Problem is, it takes her a little while to get it just right, especially given that we still put her on her back to sleep. I know I could probably help her out and put her on her belly right from the start but I prefer to let her make that call. It makes me feel like then I've at least tried and at the same time shes getting some practice at rolling herself over and trying new movements. If we're gonna get crawling any time soon, she's gotta work out those muscles! 

The other thing about this month is that Lola has become a master at amusing herself. She can play on her own for an extended period of time. If you throw Charlie in to the mix, even longer. Although when that happens we have to be quite vigilant. Lola doesn't quite have the whole petting thing down, she prefers to grab and twist, especially Charlie's eyelids. Poor guy. He loves the attention and loves being near her but its definitely at a sacrifice. One time we didn't get to Lola quick enough and Charlie finally let out a loud yelp. He's such a great boy though, he still hardly moved. Any other dog might have snapped instinctively. But not our Charlie boy. We are so lucky.

Its been so nice to have Lola be able to play on her own. She's starting to really love toys and is so curious. It gives Sean and I plenty of time to make dinner together or just relax for a few minutes even when she's awake. Before this month I thought that was damn near impossible!

So yes, its been a great, great month. I know I say this often but it just seems like this is such a perfect age. We are in such a sweet spot right now - Lola is engaged and interactive, self-occupied and autonomous but at the same time immobile and relatively non-verbal making protest still largely a non-issue. I wish I could freeze time.

Anyway, I'm feeling quite proud of myself for completing this 8 month post only one measly little week after the fact! To celebrate, I am off to bed! Gnite!

Sleeping Lola

I have a confession to make...

Sometimes I watch Lola while she sleeps.

I know, its super creepy. And also pretty annoying given that I don't just passively sit there and watch her. Oh, no. I rub her back, pat her bum, touch her cheek. Often I'll smooth down her ever-disheveled hair. Sometimes I put one finger inside her loose fist and hope she grabs on reflexively like she used to. I could go on.

Sean tells me I'm pushing my luck. Or Lola will suddenly wake up crying 10 minutes after I was in there and he'll ask, "what did you do?!" He is totally not on board with my habit.

Not that he's all that innocent either. Every night after turning off all the lights and climbing the stairs to bed, I see him poke into Lola's room to look at her for a few minutes. He claims this is different as he just looks, never touches. I think thats just semantics.

But you can't blame us. There's just something about this kid.

And there's just something about watching her sleep.

I feel like I notice so much more when she's asleep. I marvel in the little details. I love when she puts one hand under her cheek so that it smushes it up in the most adorable way. I love her long pretty eyelashes. I love how she sleeps on her side, with her feet crossed over one another, ever so daintily.

Sometimes I try to pinpoint exactly where it is that she looks older, bigger. I wonder if she's really grown so much again today or if its all just in my head. I think about how much I love this exact moment, this specific age and try not to imagine what she'll be like even with one more day of development. I try to savour every single minuscule bit about this moment in time.

What I try not to think about while I'm doing this? That at any moment Lola could wake up and see me there staring at her, like a big ol' creepy creepster.

Eventually the thought of that pulls me out of there to leave my little monkey to her peaceful night's sleep. A restful, serene slumber, without her crazy mother lurking just beyond the crib slats.

Seven Months (Like a month ago...)

Ohh its been SO long since I’ve posted anything. I feel terrible about this always. You see, I finally broke down and realized that yes it is finally time for a new computer. Of course, even though I’m finally read, the universe, I guess, is not ready for me to have one. There has been much waiting and many hiccups and unfortunately it looks like it’ll still likely be a good month before my state of affairs changes.

Honestly, I would be blogging so much more if everything didn’t take so LONG. It takes a solid 15 minutes before computer even recognizes my camera, another 5 at least to upload a handful of pics, and a million more hours if I want to try to edit them in the slightest. Its also stopped reading my iPhone altogether so I have to email myself pictures I want to blog. Which would be fine except that I can’t open gmail if any other window is open or any other program is running . Its not an impossible task (obviously, as you are currently viewing pictures I emailed to myself) but it certainly is a long process.

And in that life has been incredibly busy lately. Perhaps that’s where I should get started.

Lola turned 7 months old on April 24th and wow does it feel like we’ve entered into a new phase. I can hardly remember what she was like as a newborn and I can almost catch glimpses of what she might be like as a child. Its wild.

Normally its all about Lola’s changes and her development, but this past month, it seems like both of us have been changing. For example, about one week before her 7 month birthday I stopped breastfeeding entirely. Months ago when thinking about this milestone I had worried that I’d lose something, that maybe we wouldn’t share as close a connection. But I have to say, I don’t feel that in the slightest. Not even a second goes by where I doubt that it was time to stop completely. Now when I give Lola her bottle at night I feel more like I’m choosingto spend that cuddly time with her rather than having to out of necessity. And I love that Sean can put her to bed on some nights all on his own now too. I love that for the both of them.

And I love that for me. Its been quite important for two big reasons. One – I went away for an entire weekend which meant three whole nights where it was just Sean and Lola tackling the bedtime routine together. Two – I started working out again. Sam got me into Barre classes and we joined a studio so now I’m trying to get myself there at least two evenings a week. I used to be weary of spending even more time away from Lola but in reality I only miss out on 15 minutes those nights and I think we can both handle that just fine ;)

It also helps that Lola is continuing to do so well. She makes me feel so at ease and confident that we are doing a good job with her. I mean, its not hard to feel that way when the kid is smiling and giggling all day long. She wakes up smiling and goes to bed smiling. Seriously, she opens her eyes with a smile, coos, and kicks her legs (see video below) and at night it’s the same when we put her down. I truly believe I have become a happier person because of how happy she is. Its infectious.

Ugh there is so much more to write but as I let this post sit for 5 days straight and still didn't manage to add in all the pics I wanted to, I think I'm calling it here.

Update: I ended up getting a new computer today but turns out iPhoto and Aperture are no longer things. Ugh! So while I may be able to blog with a little more frequently given my ability to download from gmail more efficiently, I'm still going to be a little while longer before we're truly back into the swing of things...