twelve months

Looks like we made it a year! I could go on and on about the passage of time and how fleeting it all is, but lets just all agree that time passing is something no one can completely comprehend. Measuring time by your child's life makes it even more difficult to understand. I also struggle with the phenomenon of my child changing right before my eyes. I mean I was with her every moment of every day and yet each month she has grown different. Lets not even attempt to rewind time back to the fact this child began her growth inside of me. I really thought I would have a better handle on all of this the second time around, but it just leaves me even more perplexed. Enough, enough! Here we are one year with Eliza Lynn!

At twelve months:

-Eliza is still fussy. She has had some wonderful moments, particularly when we have gone out of town recently. She leaves people asking, "Is she always this happy??" and we just have to laugh. Her crying has been the one constant this past year and that aspect of her has contributed most to the difficulty of transitioning to two kids. 

- She is sleeping mostly all night. She wakes up, but we just leave her alone. She has been boycotting naps recently and has had her fair share of screaming protests to sleep, but overall much better. I guess it just takes our children an entire year to figure it out. 

- We may have inadvertently weaned her of the pacifier. We were down to only one and yesterday she seems to have misplaced it. She was just throwing it out of her crib anyway, so I am assuming no pacifier will not be too painful. 

-She is mimicking a lot of our behaviors. Puts the phone to her ear, puts purses on her shoulder, holds her shoes up to her feet,  and copies sounds of words. I can see glimpses of toddler hood in her. 

- We have tried to give her whole milk, but she is still not the biggest fan. Hopefully, she can be drinking it in the next month or so. 

-She is getting about six teeth right now. I am sure this contributes to her fussiness. She will soon have all her top teeth peeping through. 

- She is an expert straw drinker. She much prefers to drink water out of a straw than anything else. 

- We got her ears pierced when I went to Texas this past weekend. I had planned on doing it when she was nine months old, like Madison. However, with her temperament, I kept putting it off. She did not seem to mind the actual piercing, but now she screams in frustration when I try to clean them. 

- No signs of walking yet. I have a feeling she will not walk until 15 months or so. She has figured out how to climb stairs, but not how to climb down. This has proven to be a bit of an issue at the park. Trying to keep my eye on children that are going separate directions, is a bit tiresome. 

Her birthday is actually tomorrow, but had to take advantage of the time I had. I am still trying to find time to at least bake her a cake. We decided we would just have a family celebration tomorrow. I feel a bit guilty because we had a party for Madison and Eliza's birthday seems to be just another day. 

I would recap this year in one word, "survival." We have been stretched and pulled more than we ever anticipated with the birth of Eliza. I think we will spend the remainder of this year trying to recover. I wish that I could recount this year with fluff and wonder, but we are still trying to find our rhythm. Just when we think we are turning a corner, something else will happen and we are grasping to get a grip again. I am thankful that we made it through this first year and also thankful we do not have to go through it again! 

Despite all of the struggles, Eliza Lynn has made her mark on all of us. We feel like a complete unit now with her here. I love that she is completely her own person and has little resemblance to Madison. I love that she has required us to always take notice of her, she did not just blend in. The comfort that she finds in our arms has given us a chance to spend countless hours holding her tight. Her mannerisms leave us laughing and giggling often. The way she adores Madison has given us the ability to witness a sibling relationship unfold. I can tell that this little girl will leave us on our toes constantly. I am convinced she will continually surprise us and leave us shaking our heads in disbelief. I look forward to the future with my Eliza Lynn with great excitement. 

Here is how my petite peanut has grown, simply amazing! 

a two week recap

Will says that I set impossible standards on myself, but it has been bothering me I have not had a chance to write a post about some of the things we have been doing these past two weeks. 

Two weekends ago, some of the girls (or are we women?), went away for the night. One of them has a family house in Silverthorne on the golf course there. It ended up being so much fun. I had decided at the last minute to go and it was worth it for me to get away. We did not do much except shop at some outlets, but it was still a nice change of pace. 

We then had a week of wonderful weather. The good thing is that now I am pretty sure the beautiful weather is here to stay. So I spent the week trying to do as much yard work as possible for Will. We have high hopes for our backyard to be ready for outdoor events. I pulled a lot of weeds, dug up piles of dirt, mowed the lawn, put down landscape fabric, and so much more! We have nearly everything prepped for the huge delivery of rocks we should be ordering soon. I am excited to have nearly all the areas of weeds on our property taken care of. Landscaping work is so much more difficult than what it seems and requires more work then I ever imagined. My advice for home buyers, put a lot of emphasis on whether or not the yard is landscaped because it will require a lot of money and work to get it manageable. 

We then packed up and headed to Bozeman a week ago. I was really nervous about the whole driving ten hours in the car with two kids thing. The drive ended up not being terrible and I found great relief by driving and allowing Will to entertain the girls. One of us sat in between the car seats in the back nearly the entire time. Once we got to Bozeman, it was really neat to be back. Unfortunately, we picked an odd time to visit and none of the fun community events were going on. We did get to catch up with some friends and explore downtown a bit. It was really fun to see family as well and makes me excited for the new addition that Aunt Erin is busy growing! 

Now we are back at home. I am trying to catch up on school work that I have I did not have time to work on while we were away. We will also be finally finishing all the projects that we recently started. We are also dealing with a certain 11 month old who is rebelling against sleep. 

half-marathon and instagram

I ran in another half-marathon this weekend. It was a different experience than all my others because I signed up with three of my other "mom" friends. They had not done a half-marathon before and I was the one who convinced them they were capable of running one. I knew that my pace was vastly different than theirs, but knew that the race was about helping them to finish. We stayed together the entire race and I finished about 50 minutes slower than all my other races I had done. However, it was a really wonderful day with friends. 

Will woke the girls up early and pulled them in the bike trailer to meet me different places in the race. It was so much fun to see Madison eagerly waiting for me. The picture above is right at the beginning. She had run full blast into my arms, like I was the best thing she had ever seen. 

We had brunch reservations for our rowdy bunch afterwards. Luckily, the manager decided to give us a private section of the restaurant and we could enjoy our meal. We have seven kids between us and they are all a bit wild. These are the moms I first met when I moved to Denver. We all started off with just one child about the same age and the past three years we have added children, changed jobs, and moved houses. I am thankful that we have been able to watch each other grow as mothers and have some time to enjoy things that do not directly involve our children. 

I feel myself getting an itch to do another marathon, but I think that might be too much crazy to add to our life. 

I also decided that I would attempt to take part in instagram. My phone is taking progressively worse photos, but I might as well give it a try. I am pretty convinced I will not figure out or use hashtags, but at least I will have a way to organize some of my iphone photos in a way that is easy to share. But lets be honest, my instagram will be less than interesting with my constant photos of the girls, but I know that the grandparents might like it. So I added a link to the account to the side of this page. I have no idea how to properly search for people, so please add me. For example, just a random example, if I search "Claire Lester," I get results that are not exactly what I am looking for... 

I officially spend all my free time today updating my blog a bit, writing two blogs posts, putting pictures on the computer, and figuring out a username for instagram. Little things like that take so much time now and the window to accomplish them is so small. Oh children! 

eleven months

Here we are, one month from Eliza turning a year old. I am not in quite as much disbelief as I was with Madison, but it is still crazy how fast a year truly does go by. 

At eleven months Eliza is:

- Still sick. I really wish I knew what to do for her. She has had some sort of ailment since March. She has even been on antibiotics, but the runny nose and cough persist. She just seems so uncomfortable most of the time. The doctors do not offer any help either, I guess we just have to wait it out. 

- She is cutting about three teeth right now. This might have something to do with her fussiness. She is getting two on top and one on bottom. The teeth are not coming in proportionally so she will have quite the crooked smile for a while. 

- She is pulling up to stand on everything now. I have even caught her pushing offing and trying to stand unassisted. I think she may take a while to start walking based on how long it took her to finally crawl, but she is getting stronger on those legs. 

- She eats constantly. I thought that Madison was an eater, but now Eliza has shown me how much a kid can actually eat. We are really feeling the increase of food consumption in our grocery trips, as in, we have to go every other day. Where all the food is going, I am not quite sure. 

- She is vocal. Whether she is crying, or whining, or singing, she is usually make some noise. She screeches in opposition when Madison takes a toy from her and if she thinks she may never be fed again. She also says, "ma, ma" "da,da" and "mmmm," like she is starting to sing an Hanson song. 

- She is still sleeping decently well. With all her sickness there have been a couple of rough nights, but she is still waking up about once a night. I think this helps me to deal with her constant day-time fussiness. She is also still adamantly against sleeping in the same room as Madison. We tried yet again, only to be met with screams of terror. Maybe some day Eliza will no longer demand an entire master suite to herself, but today is not that day. Which also means that we are still banished to the guest room. 

- She seems so much like a baby still. It is as if she is frozen in time a bit. I have gotten several people asking if she is six months old at the park. She just lacks that, " I am on the verge of toddlerhood" look. I think it is nice to have her stay a baby for a little while longer though. 

Despite her ever present fussiness, she is turning into a perfect piece to our puzzle. We have had several meals this month where we have all sat together at the table and ate independently (you know, since I am usually having to spoon feed Will). There are several areas of our life that are getting easier with every passing day. Sure, we have another year before Eliza screams bloody murder in the car, but we are getting there slowly but surely. I feel very hopeful for the summer and all the rest of the adventures this year has in store as a family of four. 

See you next month, my big one year old! 

mother's day

Here are me and my girls yesterday after breakfast. It was quite the snowy Mother's day, but it was still a wonderful day. Breakfast was delicious and both girls are very cooperative as long as there is food in front of them. I then went to the mall by myself for several hours. While Will took the girls to the grocery store. Then we topped the night off with chocolate covered strawberries and a movie. The movie we watched was, About Time, it was fantastic! So many parts of the film moved me and provoked a lot of thought, even Will said he thought it was good. Oh, and Will bought me a pair of Birkenstocks. I totally had a pair from high school up until last summer. Since they are back in style, Will bought me an updated version, they are red! He says he wanted to make sure I was the cool mom at the park, so very thoughtful. 

Other highlights from our weekend included: 

- Me running ten miles with the girls on Friday. I stopped at a park every thirty minutes to let them out and play, but it was still really difficult. The half-marathon I am running is next weekend, so this was the last long run. I kind of enjoyed touring around the neighborhood with the girls, I like the freedom of just putting them in the stroller and going. My goal for this summer is to get confident in pulling them in the bike trailer and spend our summer commuting that way. 

- Heading up to Estes Park Friday night. We have friends that are starting an open air adventure park in downtown and they needed some extra help to put the finishing touches on the property. Will did manual labor all day on Saturday while our kids played together. It was a bit of a stressful trip because Eliza screamed the entire car ride and was up all night, but the change of scenery was still beneficial. 

Today we are snowed in still. I have some school work to do for a class that started last week and maybe I can convince Will to finish our kitchen. The whole snow in May part of living in the mountains really gets to me. I am just so anxious for continuous warmth. 

calistoga

I feel I still need some time to process this past weekend, but I figured if I wait too long, I might not ever post. 

We went away for my dear friend from high school's wedding. I felt so honored that she invited us and even more so that we got to experience the day with her. Weddings are such a joyous, monumental event, and I love getting to take part in them. It was also interesting to reconnect with friends from my past, several whom I have not seen in nine years. It was neat because the last time I saw a lot of them, my future was pretty unknown and I had no idea where I would be. I certainly had no idea I would be a wife and mother of two living in Colorado. Life is so strange the majority of the time. 

This trip was also the first one that we have been on since we had Madison. All of our trips in our marriage have been planned around seeing family, but this was one was pretty much just for us. If it was not for pumping every four hours, I might have forgotten we even had children! We were able to do nearly all the things we love. We had the most wonderful breakfast every morning, explored the town by running six miles, leisurely strolled through the shops, went to a few wine tastings, climbed up a trail that overlooked wine country, and worried only about ourselves. I think the trip was just fantastic, but it reinforced to us that we need more maintenance time together. We just can not keep going that long without connecting. 

I think the grandmas were thrilled to spend so much time alone with the girls. I am so thankful that our girls have such devoted grandmas to love them well. 

I hope this is a start of many more vacations and exploring together with my mate because all of this crazy would not be possible without the two of us! 

Trying to take pictures when it is just the two of us is always fun, reminds me of the honeymoon!