the time warp that has been the last four months...

 I catch myself telling people how old Eliza is, and it causes me to pause a minute. A four month old? Four month seems like such a long time, yet I can not really account for those four months. We have been taking everything day by day. Because of this approach, every day pretty much feels the same. I see no difference in a Wednesday or a Saturday. I try to think of what I did last weekend or the weekend before and I draw a blank. This bothers me because I feel upset that our precious, fleeting life is just vanishing into the abyss. However, I know that we are just doing what we need to do in order to survive. 

We have a four month old who wakes nearly every two hours at night and is not a dependable napper. She is struggling to gain weight, which we just found out last week, and we are trying everything we can to get calories in her. She is what I call, a full time job. Yet, we have a two year old, a house to maintain, a boss to please, graduate school to attend, groceries to buy, and a marriage to work on. Everything falls on just our two shoulders and we have not had any reprieve from it all in these past four months. 

I will catch glimpses of the fog clearing, only to have it followed by another overcast day. I thought we were truly finding our groove and things took a turn again. I desperately want out of this survival mode we are in, but do not exactly know how to do that. 

I had several moments last week where I thought we surely are not going to make it out, but here we are. Another week, another month, we are somehow making it through. My approach has been to just keep doing it day by day. I have started to mentally make a  note of what I want to do today and find a way to make that happen. When I start to get ahead of myself, I become overwhelmed. 

Maybe today is not such a foggy day because I felt inspired to make something for the first time in a very long time. I am going to make a little something for myself for Halloween. I am also going to try and turn some boot cut jeans into skinny jeans.  Maybe these two projects will spur on a blog post that is about something other than our struggles. Either way, Halloween is tomorrow and we have some plans to take Madison trick or treating. I am looking forward to sharing in the joy of watching her experience new things.

four months

Well, we made it another month. I still wish I could say we reached a real turning point in Eliza's sleep and fussiness, but I am afraid that just ain't happening. 

So I will try to keep all of her highlights from this month some-what positive: 

* I just took a quick look at the photos from the other months and it seems that Eliza is losing her hair. It is quite funny because Will got his haircut last week and now they have identical hair styles.

* She is pretty much rolling from her back to her tummy. She will arch her entire body over, but only commits to the roll occasionally. 

* She can scoot towards toys when she is on the floor. I can not believe she is already at the stage where I can leave her in one place and she will have moved by the time I check on her again. 

* She still has the most enchanting smile. She definitely knows who her family is, she greets all of us with the biggest smile (especially Madison). 

* This is probably related to the sleep issues, but I am pretty sure she still has another allergy. I am hoping to figure out exactly what her allergies are this week with a homeopathic allergist. She has improved slightly, but has still so many symptoms of an allergy and it is pretty miserable. 

* She now refuses to sleep for longer than two hours at night and usually does sleep longer than twenty minutes at a time during the day. We tried to let her cry it out last weekend, but that resulted in her screaming for hours on end without ceasing and still no sleep. Now our sleeping arrangements are essentially Will and I in separate bedrooms. Will sleeps with her the first half and I sleep with her the second half. We are kind of losing hope that there is a solution, but I am trying to just accept this as our situation and just deal with it.

* She is a drooling machine and we have to change her clothes pretty frequently. We are now putting her to sleep with out a swaddle so when we get her up she has usually drenched both sleeves from sucking on them. 

* I have done several more outings with both girls by myself. We are still running together (even though Eliza screams most of the time) and I have run a couple of errands with them. I still have not attempted a solo grocery shopping trip yet, maybe next month. 

I really had hoped that we would have had our act together by now, but oh well. Despite the lack of sleep, Eliza is incredibly adorable and have moments all day where I just want to eat her up. I just wish we could figure out what has been bothering her so she can have a chance to be a happy, well-rested baby, I know that she wants to be.

 

some janky pictures of the patio

As I said in the last post, I was hoping to blog again about sipping pumpkin ales on our new patio. We are not quite at the cozying up by a fire pit stage yet, but the patio is at least finished. I gradually took photos of the progress with my phone, so the quality is not that great. There is, of course, still more work to do (I mean, there is always more work), but the real, tough, hard, labor part is finished. It is sad the finished product does not accurately represent the amount of work that actually goes into building a patio, especially when all that work is done by one person.  I am antsy to get a real outdoor living space set up for us back there, but I am having patience. For right now, I think we will just have the Adirondack chairs and a fire pit. Next summer, we might get more fancy with the space. Will also is going to add gravel and rocks to all the dirt surrounding the patio, so no more big dirt mounds. 

Ok, here are the pictures!

 I am very proud and impressed with Will's determination with this patio. We spent all weekend "helping" him to finish it. He was bent over on his hands and knees slaving away. 

fall fun

Will's parents came into town this past weekend. We found enough energy to head to a free pumpkin festival in Golden. This outing embodied just about everything that makes me happy; no money spent, boot wearing, mountain viewing, and family time. The only downside was the windy chill in the air, but it warmed up fairly quickly. 

The other big thing we have been working on is our back patio. Will has been trying to do it all himself, but it is a huge undertaking. We thought that we could start laying the pave stones on Sunday, but Will realized he probably needed more sand to fill the huge hole he dug. It was a bit disappointing because we were hoping to have the help of his parents to watch the girls while we worked on it, but oh well.

The girls have also decided to not sleep at the same at all during the day. This made the last two weeks really difficult for me. It is kind of amazing how well they have it timed. As soon as I lay Madison down for her nap, I will hear Eliza waking. Then as soon as Eliza is finally back down, Madison is up. I just get pretty exhausted during the day when I have no moments to just sit. This is probably why this is the only blog post I have done in the past two weeks. I am slightly concerned because my class is supposed to start on October 21. I thought that life would have leveled out by then, but I am afraid it is still quite tiring. I am not even going to mention the every two hours we are up at night. But, like I keep saying, I know that all this will get better, and we are incredibly blessed. Blessed, but tired. 

I am probably crazy, but I decided to train for a half marathon. It will be on December 22 in Galveston, when we are in Texas for Christmas. I think I just need something that makes me feel normal, running makes me feel normal.

Hopefully, the next thing I can blog about is our stone patio and how we have been sipping pumpkin ales by the fire pit.

eliza meets grant

I spent all of last week in Texas. My sweet mother, always serving our family, needed me to take care of her for a short bit. So off Eliza and I went to Texas. Even though the circumstances were a bit unfortunate, the time ended up being really great.

 I think the highlight was when my brother decided to surprise my mom and fly in for the weekend. Neither of us have seen him in a year and he had not met Eliza yet. It was wonderful to all spend some time together, even if it was so short. Eliza was great the entire time (well, except for night, she woke every two hours). We even grabbed some mexican food, but mexican food without dairy is just is not quite as amazing as mexican food with diary. 

Overall, it was a much needed time away from my cave I created for myself. I needed the push to leave and this trip was just that. I am very thankful I was finally able to just focus on Eliza and have a chance to really know her. I am eager to get to spend more time with my brother. He is still trucking away on his Special Forces training and will be finished next Spring. I am blessed to have him as my daughter's uncle, he loves them so well.

And this is what Madison did while Will was in charge of her. He did such a good job of caring for her. I think they needed some quality time together. Madison and Eliza are some lucky ladies to have a father like Will.

3 months

We made it to the three month mark, woohoo. While most things have gotten easier, we are still flailing a bit. I think that once she finally figures out the beauty of sleep, we will be golden. 

At three months:

* She is all smiles. I think the first two months were spent trying to figure out how to get her to stop screaming, I sort of forgot to really notice her personality. I am thankful I can really notice her now. She has the most captivating smile.  The toothless, full body smiles, make my heart ache because I  know how quickly they pass, but I am soaking them up now. 

* She is much more content to just be awake now. She has been pretty predictable in when she cries, she is either hungry or tired. I am so thankful for this because the not being able to fix her crying, was awful.

* She can roll from her tummy to her back. Madison was her biggest cheerleader during this accomplishment. She kept saying, "you did, liza, you did!" 

* She falls asleep on her own in the pack in play. This is huge because Madison had to be rocked for thirty minutes at this age before she would fall asleep. 

* She seems to enjoy her carseat now. This makes car rides and runs much easier on me. 

* She is still waking up quite a bit at night. We have started to give her the chance to fall back asleep when she wakes at night, so hopefully that will help her sleep longer. 

* She pulls all her shirts up to her mouth to chew ont hem. At first, we thought it was accidental, but she knows what she is doing. This causes her shirts to become soaking wet. 

* She really likes to chew on her hands. She is only able to find her thumb every few days, but when she does she sucks on to it with a passion.