Ismylah these days

Izzy is now 2 months old! I cannot beleive how fast it has gone by. She is growing and changing everyday. She loves to smile and is working on a giggle these days when you look at her. When she hears Elli's voice near her she looks around frantically for it. She is sleeping pretty well. She is a good napper and is working on a 6-9 hour stretch of sleep every night. She gets into these restless sleep cycles where she kicks and grunts for hours though which keeps me up because I'm listening to see if she's waking up pr not...makes for not great sleep at all for me. We have recently purchased a swing from a friend and it has been such a lifesaver, Ellie missed out on this luxury. Izzy has been known to take a two hour nap in it too. I know that is a big no no for naptime, but you do what ya gotta do, especially with the second baby. Otherwise, Ismylah is such a good baby and she very rarely cries. She is a huge snuggler. Her favorite thing these days is her little fist. She likes to lick it like an ice cream cone and talk while she's doing it, it's really silly...can't wait for some of you to meet her and hold her

Ellianna these days

"I pee potty"

Ellie has just started the wonderful adventure of potty training! She decided last Friday that she wanted to pee in the potty. She has done so well. We tried to stay put all weekend and not brave the public toilets and the moments of needing to pee where there might not be a potty around. All in all in the last 5 days she has only had 4 accidents. She even went to school wearing panties and when I picked her up I was bracing myself to see her wearing different pants then what I dropped her off in. But they said she did great and went potty once. We are very proud of her adn make a super big deal about going potty in the potty. I tried the Pottywise method with her and it worked exactly the way they said it would. It couldn't have come at a better time either. Diapers for two is pretty expensive. I forgot how often you have to change a newborn's diaper.

Life with our girls

Well, where to begin...First of all I will start with how unbelievably exhausted we are these days. Izzy is a great sleeper. She goes to bed a little on the late side and then Ben and I are up about another hour or so recovering from the day and preparing for the next and then she's up a few hours later and then Ellie is up a few hours afte that. Averaging us about 5-6 hours a night...mine is in chunks though. Everyone in our house has been sick for going on 3 weeks now too. We even took Ismylah to the doctor last week for congestion. Ellie had a fever and green snot and a really bad cough for a week I had a sinus infection and Ben now has an ear infection in both ears making him DNF for 10 days. Britt left us for 10 days to go back to Seattle which was of course when we were all our sickest making for a very interesting week on our own...or I should say my own. But I got Ellie to school on time with food in her tummy, clean clothes on her back, a kiss goodbye and a bath before bed (teeth not always brushed though), what more could you ask for at that point right?

Izzy is almost 5 weeks old! It's insane how fast it has gone so far and she has gotten so big. SHe loves to be snuggled and held and does not like to be alone. She'll take about 10-15 mins in her infant seat and then you pretty much have to hold her until it's time to lay her down. She has a period of time every night now from about dinner until she goes to bed for the night (between 9:30 and 10) where she has to be held and will not fall asleep on her own. So it's pretty much the whole night from when Ben gets home until she goes to bed. Ben and I take turns dealing with the girls throughout the night. The tiem we get to ourselves with each other is usually on the couch while Ben studies (for his Masters class) and watches Glen Beck DVR from earlier and I fold laundry and clean the kitchen and get things ready for the next morning. Then we carry oursleves off to bed and manage a kiss goodnight and not a peep from either of us. We just keep telling each other that it won't be this way forever and that we will eventually get caught up. But I really wonder if we ever will get caught up. If it is possible I've got about 100 or so hours of sleep that I'm behind on and the dishwasher just can't get unloaded before there's another pile waiting to go in and get washed just to get unloaded again while the other pile stacks up...it's just insane!

On a lighter and much more positive note we are happy, working on getting healthy, drinking lots of coffee (decaf for me though), having a blast discovering and getting to know our newest daughter, falling more in love with each other (probably in our sleep) and delighting in all the new things that Ellie is learning and how she grows and changes everyday...