The Next Chapter

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Everett Ford Phillips

Wow, this is long overdue. I think the radio silence perfectly describes how demanding it is to have two kids!

Everett Ford is turning out to be quite a sweetie, definitely mama's little boy. He turned 3 months a few days ago (13 weeks). He is smiling at me a lot and laughs when he's extra ticklish. He is very vocal, I think he listens to his brother all day and wants to make sure he contributes his two cents. He goes to bed sometime between 8 and 9, usually wakes up around 4 am and again at 7. He doesn't have a regular sleeping pattern during the day but usually eats about every 3 hours. Because we're always on the go with Brent, he sleeps and eats when can. Everett loves to be held and sleep on me. We continue to work on taking naps in his bed or in the swing but those usually last 30 mins. On the other hand, if I hold him, especially in the glider, he will sleep for hours. Everett is boycotting the bottle. He is not a fan, prefers his milk straight from the tap. He was a very good breastfeeder from the start and doesn't want to deviate. We will continue to work on this.

Everett really loves his big brother, his whole face lights up when B says hi. B loves him too, he is always concerned about the baby. B even gives E cars and trucks to play with.

Everett loves the beach. We were in Tahoe last week and he was totally relaxed on the beach. Just for kicks I dug a hole in the sand, put a towel down, put him in the hole, and he fell asleep! Just like that, no rocking or nursing required. The sound of the waves and the warm sand was just perfect for him. Needless to say, he was in hole in the sand for much of the rest of the time.

Everett started out his life pretty grumpy at night. He liked to scream in the evenings, especially at his dad. He is now calming down a lot and Dad is enjoying not being screamed at. Between the anti-bottle attitude and excessive screaming, I've been away from E 3 times since he was born, once to walk the dogs, once to go to Costco, and once to buy B shoes. I think we turned a corner this week and hopefully Ill get more time to myself. Today I had him on the couch, he tipped over onto a pillow and fell asleep. Yay Everett!

Everett is a big guy, he is wearing 6 month clothes now.

5/5 8 lbs 6.2 oz

5/12 8lbs 14.5 oz

6/13 12.8 (clothes & diaper)

6/30 14 lbs 2.5 oz

Being a second time parent, I've learned a lot more about what's really important. I haven't really tracked his weight, sleep, or milestones like I did with Brent. All that matters is that's he's healthy and mostly happy, Brent's healthy, and as happy as a 2 yo can be. I'm trying my best not to compare the boys, they are already very different. My only prediction is that Everett will be bigger/taller than Brent and Brent will be sillier than Everett.

Managing two boys, two dogs and a marriage is tough and just for the record we have had a few other things going on:

- 30 weeks pregnant (2/8/14): move from redwood city to apartment in San Jose

- mid March 2014: close on Pilar ct house

- 36 weeks pregnant: start maternity leave and take B out of daycare

- 40+ weeks pregnant: Everett born 4/28/14

- 6/6: take possession of Pilar ct

- June & July: remodel Pilar Ct

- July 19: move to Pilar Ct, drive to a Tahoe that night

- July 27: little boys & I move in with grandma & grandpa while Ryan oversees remodel at the house

Meanwhile, Brent is talking up a storm, playing with trucks, scooting, and hitting me and sometimes Everett a lot. Simple things like getting dressed, brushing teeth, and sunscreen are an epic battle that end in major frustration. I struggle with this everyday and am trying to figure out what to do. Yelling and time outs don't work. I hate these battles, makes me feel terrible. Brent starts preschool on Monday, I have mixed emotions about it.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Brentley on Maternity Leave

I have been home full-time with Brent for a month and have really enjoyed spending so much time with him. He is mostly such a happy, goofy guy. He's friendly, likes to play with kids, interact with strangers, and talkative (just not always English). He is also strong willed when he has an opinion but sometimes struggles with communicating what he wants. He rarely cries when he hurts himself, just gets up and brushes himself off (literally). He seems to be fascinated with the way things work - always investigating moving parts. He laughs every time he shouts “AH, AH, AH, CHOOOO,” (like he’s sneezing), plays chase or hide and go seek, and wrestles with Dad. He insists on brushing his teeth every time we brush ours and turns on the sink to make a mess at every opportunity he gets. Today we went to CurioOdessey in San Mateo and he was happy running around to all of the animals and letting us know which dog they looked like (Olive was a raccoon and Bowzer was a river otter). He knows the difference between basketball, baseball, and football on tv and the radio although he prefers to listen to his music.

He loves playing with his trucks, cars, blocks, puzzles and riding his ATV, big wheel, and wagons. He also LOVES being read to. We probably read 20 books a day, every day. His favorites change weekly but some include: On the Night You Were Born, Good Night Good Night Construction Site, Llama llama Red Pajama, I Love You Through and Through, Hungry hungry Caterpillar, and any book that pops up or has moving parts. He knows his way around our apartment building – knows where the elevator is, which buttons to push, where mama’s car is. His vocabulary is decent; we’re definitely in the stage where Mom and Dad are the only ones who can decode most of his words. Some words are very clear – No, mama, daddy, hi, bye, more, agua, juice, car, bird, doggie, duck, bear, elmo, fire, and other animals. Others not so much, Bow (Bowzer), OLLLL (Olive), truck, milk, squirrel, otter, elephant, airplane, etc. We can tell he understands what we’re saying when we talk to him and sometimes he chooses to listen. He is getting pretty good at reciting the alphabet with our help. He loves to look for trucks and choo choos when we’re driving. He also really likes to FaceTime with Nana and Pop pop and his cousins Dylan and Lucan, Uncle Justin and Aunt Adri. His favorite songs are Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Wheels on the Bus, If You’re Happy and You Know It, Old MacDonald, BINGO, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Our schedule these days:

· He is usually up by 7 am at the latest, and has a poopy diaper waiting for us (every SINGLE time). He will occasionally grace us by sleeping in but it’s unpredictable and usually when Ryan has to get up for work anyway,

· He helps make his breakfast, usually toast and some sort of fruit. He really likes yogurt smoothies and helps put the fruit in the blender. He has a step stool that he is very confident pushing around the kitchen to get to whatever he wants or needs. He is not careful about avoiding my feet and is still learning that knives, the stove and the dirty dishes in the sink are off limits,

· He gets a nebulizer breathing treatment to help with the wheezing. He is much better now but we still do it as a precaution,

· He plays with toys while I get ready to go (or sneaks into the dog food)

· I try to get out the door with him by 9:30 (otherwise he turns into Brent the crazy terrorist toddler). We have been rotating through the Children’s Discovery Museum, Happy Hollow, two different parks, the library, and My Gym class,

· He eats lunch around noon, helps again with the preparation, and is usually down for a nap by 1:30. He is still a great napper, some days will sleep as long as 4 hours.

· After nap we play and/or take the dogs out for walk. He really likes walking the dogs himself or pushing the stroller so our 30 min walk can turn into an hour ordeal. We often meet Dad on his walk home from work.

· We eat dinner as a family around 6 or 6:30. The current challenge is getting Brent to stay in his seat during dinner. I’m not a fan of the in and out of his chair business that he likes to do,

· Bathtime is at 7:15, then teethbrushing, story time in Mom and Dad’s bed, and bed time is 8-8:30. Lately it’s been a procedure to tuck in and say goodnight to all of his friends.

When asked, Brent knows where the baby is and he points out babies wherever we go, but I don’t think he has any idea what is about to happen. He likes to try out the bassinet and put his baby in it. He likes to point out the mama and babies in all of his books too. It’s funny to me that it’s always a mama – apparently there are not daddies in his books.

Brentley is working on learning not to hit or kick, especially kicking his pregnant mama. I’ve stopped changing him on the table unless I have to because he attacks me every time and thinks it’s hilarious. We are doing time outs on a regular basis but it’s still a work in progress. We’re also trying to teach patience and “please.” I suppose "thank you" should be on the list too.

Bowzer and Olive continue to tolerate him. He loves them but also hits them a lot and climbs on Bowzer like a horse. They seem to get a long best when Brent is throwing Bowzer's toys or feeding them from his plate.

Pregnancy Story - Trent's turn

No, we're not naming our son Trent.

As I wait for Trent (aka baby boy #2, aka Brent’s little brother, aka BAY-beee) to arrive (now two days late), I am struck by how it seems like I’ve been pregnant for years and yet I have very little documentation to show for it. This pregnancy has been different than the first one, which means mostly uneventful, healthwise (a good thing).

We found out we were expecting in August 2013, the same week we had plans to have dinner with the Ranney and Stinson families (and also about 2 weeks after Brentley stopped nursing). Instead of trying to pretend everything was status quo, we gave up the secret early on to our close friends and immediate families. Everyone was legitimately surprised as I don’t think they were expecting us to try for kiddo numero dos so soon.

We were so excited to find out I was pregnant. It had been such a long process with Brentley, we couldn’t believe how quickly we were blessed this time.

My first trimester was a little rocky, morning sickness and tiredness set in quickly and I had some unexplained significant bleeding that was stressful. I have to say, even with all of the issues when I was pregnant with Brentley, the novelty of being pregnant still made everything exciting. There’s no novelty the second time around – being pregnant is not my idea of a good time! I was also training for my first ½ marathon – no easy feat considering I was not an experienced runner and the morning sickness and tiredness was working against me. The San Francisco ½ Marathon was October 20, 2013 – 13.1 miles when I was 13 weeks pregnant – I was proud of myself but mostly really glad it was over. I completed it about 2 ½ hours but was proud that I ran the first 6 or 7 miles without stopping at a decent pace. This was good for me considering I never ran more than 6 miles when I was training, the sickness and bleeding put a damper on my training schedule. Just for kicks, I ran a 5K at 27 weeks (Brent did a 1K). I also continued with Baby Boot Camp twice a week up until I was about 30 weeks.

The second big “pregnancy event” was we decided to sell our house in Redwood City and get into something bigger. There was no way I was going to raise two little boys, with two dogs, in an 830 square foot house with one bathroom. We were already outgrowing the space, especially since Brentley was in full-speed toddler mode (started at 15 months), and adding a baby plus all of the baby equipment, would be impossible. It was suggested to me that we find a house to buy first and then put our house on the market. We found a house to buy the week before Christmas which gave us the push we needed to get our house in Redwood City ready. We worked like crazy for several weeks in December to list it the first week of January. Long story short, the house sold very quickly for a very good price but the house we tried to buy didn’t work out. We decided to move to San Jose anyway to be close to Ryan’s work and Almaden, where were looking to buy. So, at 30 weeks pregnant, and after 6.5 years, we moved out of our first home that we had invested so much time, effort, manual labor, and of course, money, into. Our very helpful families were our laborers, we didn’t hire movers.

We moved to a 1200 square foot apartment off of North First Street in San Jose. It is as close as possible to Ryan’s office. The adjustment was difficult, Brent was unhappy, the dogs were unhappy, I was unhappy because I was responsible for making decisions that caused everyone to be unhappy, and Ryan was unhappy because we were all were unhappy. We lost Brent’s nanny that we had two days a week since he was 7 months old, she couldn’t commute any further south. We started him a daycare (in addition to the move I was frantically searching for a quality daycare not knowing where we were exactly moving to – lots of fun). The daycare situation added to the stress. It turned out not to be a good fit. Brent cried every time we dropped him off and was not his usual happy, easy going self when we picked him up. He was acting out at home a lot, was constantly sick with a cold, and eventually contracted hand, foot, mouth disease. On top of this, work was really busy for me, I was working 35-40 hours a week (28 hours is normal). We also found a house to buy and closed at the end of March. Searching for a house, making offers, signing paperwork, gathering financial info, etc is a full time job in itself. Needless to say, the second – beginning of the first trimester was so far the most stressful time of our lives/ marriage.

Healthwise, there wasn’t anything unusual during the second trimester. I’ve had almost daily nosebleeds that I didn’t have with Brentley. The best story is when I went for a little run at 26 weeks and my nose started bleeding uncontrollably. There I was a few miles away from home with no tissue. I was a mess. Blood was everywhere. Luckily, a man and his daughter pulled over to help and gave me enough tissue to get the bleeding to stop. On the flip side, I haven’t had the ankle swelling, allergy to my jewelry, or the tendonitis in my hands as I did the first time.

I started maternity leave on 3/31/14 and we decided to pull Brent out of daycare. I was really nervous about being a full time mom to a crazy toddler in the last few weeks of my pregnancy but it’s been the best decision we’ve made lately (hopefully buying our new house turns out to be a wise decision too). He is so much happier being with me every day and now that we have a routine, I am mostly really happy taking care of him every day. I say mostly, because Brent is working on hitting and kicking (he is never going to hear the end of how much he kicked me when I was pregnant with his brother).

Back to Trent, I am planning on a VBAC. As of Friday (my due date 4/25), I am 2 centimeters dilated, 90% effaced, and lost my mucus plug. The doctor says my cervix is “excellent” and if for some odd reason I don’t go into labor spontaneously, the doctors will try some induction methods. I’m pleased about this because up until then I was told repeatedly that Kaiser’s policy is not to induce patients who have had a cesarean. I have am having contractions all the time, have been for the past several weeks, but they are irregular and are less than 30 seconds. Some are painful though. As I write this, Trent looks like he’s trying to escape through my belly button and I’m arching my back trying to relieve the pain from the contraction.

We ready for baby Trent to be here. I am very much looking forward to the joy parenthood brings and holding my little baby in my arms. Hurry up kiddo!!