I’ve been meaning to post about our biggest adventure to date. And yes, I do consider what we are doing to our house to be a bigger adventure than having kids. Our home renovation and addition discussions began while we searched to buy our house back in the winter and spring of 2012. We bought this 1930s home in the historic Richland West End neighborhood with the intent of building on and renovating. We love the neighborhood and are just mile or so outside of downtown Nashville. Anyway, after meeting with several architechts in early 2014, we signed on with one who grasped our vision quickly. He had plans drawn up that we loved within weeks. The next 10-12 months we spent hunting for the right builder. 

Current state: 3 bedrooms (2.5 really), 1.5 bath, all one floor  Future state: 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2 stories, new kitchen / living room

Below is the progress thus far:

4/2 – This picture was taken right before we left for Easter weekend in Cincinnati.    When we got home from our weekend away, the back bedroom had been demo-ed and they were ready to dig.   4/14 – I pulled this picture from our builder’s updates. Much of our kitchen wall and floor has completely rotted away.  

4/16 – The rain. Stupid rain. This was not a fun sight to wake up to. Somehow we escaped without much water getting into the basement. 4/17 – The dumpster sat here for far too long. The dumpster company couldn’t get it out because the yard was too wet. Frustrating delays.  The digging process really took longer than anyone had planned. 
5/1 – Digging is complete. Ready to build!  

5/6 – footers dug  5/8 – foundation work  5/14 – more foundation progress

5/21- almost ready for framing  5/29 – this week was a fun week to finally see daily progress. Framing, cement slab inspected and poured, demo in kitchen.   

I am slightly behind on this ol’ blog. Shocker I know!  Here’s what’s been up with us the past month or so.   Grammy, Grandpa and Sable came down for the weekend so Tim and I could go to the Kenny Chesney concert.   Guess we need to beef up our sitter list. We celebrated Jim’s 65th birthday while they were in town.  Just cute.  This little bunny lovie thing has turned into Emery’s pacifier. She cuddles up with it at night and falls right asleep. We went to Cincinnati for Easter. Right before we left, we got the back room room completely cleared out so that work could begin on our house.  Easter pictures
  

Vandy baseball games.  Emery will learn to love baseball too. 

 Lastly, probably the most exciting thing of all is that work finally started on our house. I will do a separate blog post on our progress in April.  Drew really loved watching the “bull-dzzzzer”. 

5 months old?!  What?  Ok, let’s just chalk this last month up to the month I totally forgot I even had a camera.  It was kind of blur of a month too.  On one hand, we’ve settled into some sort of routine but that “routine” is/was a killer.  Throughout April, Emery continued to regress on night sleep and it was the hardest month yet.  I swear I’ve read and tried everything to get her to sleep as well as to get her to EAT more during the day and less at night.  I was that mom who sort of chuckled at other moms when they said their <insert month older than 4> month old still woke up at night to eat.  But I get it now and I totally feel bad for any time that I did chuckle at those other moms.  I have learned how to function on a couple hours of broken sleep and I’m sure my work thanks me for that.  ha.  Back to Emery; she really is the sweetest, happiest and most content baby – just um, not at night.

 Ok so Emery this month you:

• rolled over from back to belly!
• started eating solid foods.  Well – we started oatmeal with the high hopes that would help with our sleeping issues but you happily pushed / spit most of it out.
• continued to wake up many times each night.  Sometimes you acted starving (ok you weren’t acting, you really were starving and that showed by the little you’d eat in bottles at daycare) and sometimes you just were happy to not be sleeping.  You confused the heck out of me that’s for sure.
• got your first two – yes TWO – teeth!  Whew, that had to be SOME of the sleep issues we had right???  We just found them at the end of April right before you turned 5 months old.
• got tons and tons of hugs and love from your brother. Ok that is sort of a Drew update but it was so interesting that one day a light sort of switched on for Drew.  All of the sudden he loved hugging her, talking to her and overall acknowledging that he had a sister.  It’s adorable.

Emery has clearly had enough.  😉

Sweet baby girl is 4 months old.  

Stats

• Week 1 – weight: 6lbs, 8% – height: 18.75 in., 13% – head circ.: 33.5 cm, 27%
• Week 2 – weight: 6lbs 8oz, 9% – height: 19.5 in., 25% – head circ.: 34 cm, 24%
• Week 6 – weight: 9lbs 5oz, 26% – height: 20.75 in., 11% – head circ.: 37.5cm, 56%
• 3 months – weight: 11lbs – height: (oops, have to find this)
• 4 months – weight: 12lbs 9oz, 17% – height: 24.25 in., 42% – head circ: 41cm, 64%

Emery, this month you….

• Started daycare on March 2nd.  Overall you really did great.  You adjusted nicely and slept just as well there as you do at home.   Your teachers said how pleasant you were and remarked how you are never fussy.  We only had one little issue with daycare…ahem, well big issue….
• Stopped sleeping through the night and started eating through the night because you would eat just enough from your bottles to get by at daycare.  Your sort of sleeping through the night before daycare started quickly vanished and for the past month you’ve been up 2-3 times a night starving (or so it seems). Let’s just say it’s been a long month with days and nights running together often.
• Started to enjoy hanging out on your play mat and actually playing with objects, watching your hands, etc.
• Continue to be a super happy baby.  You are thrilled to wake up in the morning.  It’s not fair that you wake up that peppy, almost like you’re mocking me for being um, not as peppy.
• Have lost some of your hair and your eyes continue to darken.  You didn’t have much hair to start off with but you have less now.  Your eyes are not definitively brown yet, closer to a dark gray at the moment.
• Really love being up on your legs!  We will definitely be getting your jumper out soon because you prefer to be upright on your feet.

  Oh what will April and month #5 bring us?  Hoping for sleep!!!

Drew turned two and a half last week so I thought it was a good opportunity to give him a little blog love and document what he’s into at this age.  Wow, two and a half is super fun yet extremely exhausting!!!  I am be a bit biased but I think he’s pretty darn smart.  Actually last weekend at the Vanderbilt baseball game, Drew was singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game (not during the 7^th inning stretch) and the sweet elderly lady in front of us turned around and said to me – “He’s two?  He is very smart.”  I like hearing that even if she was just going off of hearing him sing a song he memorized.

So a little about Drew and two and half….

Personality: Persistent, friendly, impatient, stubborn, funny, goofy.  A quote from his daddy: “I hope he can keep that lighthearted personality, yet also a healthy dose of stubbornness.”  He’s persistent when he wants something.  Example: He’s not a fan of bedtime.  On one particular night, Tim put him to bed and told him not to get out and he screamed “Dadddddddyyyy” almost until he was horse.  I do not think “crying it out” would have worked on this kid.  Good thing we didn’t need that.  He’s friendly to everyone; he loves his friends and teachers at school.  One of his teachers told me that although he does have two “BFFs” (Griffin and Mason), he’s really everybody’s friend.  He says hello to everyone in the neighborhood when we take walks, loves talking to people in the grocery store, etc.  He can certainly be impatient especially with me.  “Mommy, I need a cheese stick nowwwwww.  Everything is “Right now, Mommy, right now!!!!” More than anything though, he is just a ton of fun.  He regularly has us laughing hysterically at him.

Drew-isms

• What’s dat in your mouth?
• Oh! That’s a good idea.
• Where da commodore go?
• Mommy lay down 5 minutes.
• Ohhhh Toodles!
• I cannot believe it!
• I’m ok! (he falls…a LOT but more often than not bounces up and looks around saying “I’m ok!”)
• I watch a show?

Current favorites

• Foods: Pickles, milkshakes (breakfast smoothie), cheese sticks, tomatoes, ham, carrots, broccoli, fruit snacks, apples, “canny” (candy)
• Toys: legos, trains, 3 little piggies in a plane (yep), cars, toolbox
• TV shows: Mickey Mouse Club House, Doc McStuffins and pretty much anything else on Disney Junior
• Stuffed Animals: E (the Elephant), Woof Woof
• Other: Yellow blanky, books (A Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, Little Blue Truck, It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny)

He is our knee skinner, blanky lover, lego player, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse watcher, fruit and veggie eater, bed jumper, book reader, kitchen helper, lollipop earner, car singer, bedtime avoider Drew.

Friday night dinnersFriday night naps

Sweet squishy baby EmeryBeing sillyValentines Day funPretty girlFirst time playing in the ….ice. His face says it all. Iced in for almost a week. Mommy had to get creative.

Still iced in and Pjs for daysVandy games





Little sister, big brother

Here we go – three months old!  Emery is just as cute as can be and is such a fun and easy going little baby.  The only times I have even heard her cry in the last month were when she refused taking a bottle (read on) and when Tim would “tickle” her with his whiskers.  Poor baby better get used to that one.  Here is her update for the month.

 Stats

• Week 1 – weight: 6lbs, 8% – height: 18.75 in., 13% – head circ.: 33.5 cm, 27%
• Week 2 – weight: 6lbs 8oz, 9% – height: 19.5 in., 25% – head circ.: 34 cm, 24%
• Week 6 – weight: 9lbs 5oz, 26% – height: 20.75 in., 11% – head circ.: 37.5cm, 56%
• Week 11 – weight: 11lbs – height:

Emery, this past month YOU:

• Refused the bottle – over and over.  This month was allllll about the bottle.  You have not had to take many bottles thus far but on occasion you would or you would at least eat enough to where you weren’t starving.  I realized that since you’ll be headed to daycare that I really needed to make sure you’d be ok taking a bottle.  You decided that no, you really didn’t want to do that – AT ALL.  Woah it got ugly and there was even some serious regression.  The more I wanted you to take the bottle, the more you full out refused.  We tried different bottle nipples, we tried Daddy feeding you…but nope.  Sigh….you and I went through bottle boot camp the third week of February and by the end of the week we turned a corner.  It’s February 24^th as I type this and you just finished 3 ounces fed from a bottle by me.  At least I know you’ll (hopefully) eat next week. Whew!
• Slept through the night on February 20^th!  Wooo hoooooooo!!!!!!!!!  You slept from 9pm – 5am!  Just last night you slept from 8:30pm to 7am!  Way to go!  I’m just hoping this isn’t a fluke, but I don’t think so.
• Rolled over from belly to back!  Whaaat?!  Ok your brother didn’t roll over until he was 5 months old so I was not expecting this at all.  This also happened just hours after your first ‘sleep through the night’ on February 20^th.  I put you on your belly for some tummy time and decided to take a quick video (since I really have none of you yet) and you rolled right over at 11 weeks.  In the last few days, you’ve done it many more times.  I vividly remember how much we worked with Drew to get him to roll and to you it seems like the easiest thing ever.
• Settled into napping in your crib.  Last month sleeping/napping was our big focus.  Luckily you enjoy your crib now as long as we get you in there before you are overly tired in which case we use your swing.  God bless the swing makers.  I seriously don’t know what people did without these.
• Went to your second Vandy basketball game and slept the entire time.
• Still don’t want much to do with the pacifier.  I’m not giving up yet.  I sooo want you to take a pacifier as it saved us so many times with Drew and truly “pacified” him and settled him down (long car rides, planes, church, going to bed, etc.) Anyway – no go on this with you just yet.

I love this sweet monogrammed gown which was a gift from Anna and Trey Ely.  

Here is how we went through bottle boot camp.  I’d put Emery in the bouncer or high chair to feed her the bottle, otherwise she’d try and nurse.  This worked. The first few days she’d only take a little bit but she made great progress throughout the week.  It’s a huge relief to me that she’ll take it now. 

11 weeks old and rolling over!  

So this is it.  The true “newborn” days (in my opinion) are over.  This is of course, bittersweet.  One the one hand, I’m emerging from my sleep deprived fog and Emery is interacting and becoming much more, well, fun.  She’s three months old and headed to school next week.  I prefer to call it school even at three months rather than daycare.  It makes ME feel better, ha.  I mean, she will do baby yoga, learn sign language, develop social skills, etc.  Sigh…..whatever, it’s going to be super hard Monday morning but Drew came through just fine and I truly do trust this school and the teachers and I know they’ll take good care of her.  The school has a new app where I will get updates throughout the day (when she ate, how much, etc).  I will likely even get a few pictures through this app.  Hopefully this will be a reassuring tool and not one that makes me crazy.  We will see.  

I have enjoyed every second of my maternity leave and can’t believe how fast 13 weeks has gone, but it’s also time for me to get back into a new routine.  Wish us ALL luck. It’s March and we have a lot to look forward to in addition to getting into our new routine.  The first is we have 60 degrees in our 5 day forecast!!! Time to start shopping for a double stroller because we need to get outside and get some exercise (ok, I do!) and sunshine!!!   

A few pictures from our Valentines Day today…first Drew and I had a date with Lexie and Becca to see Peter and the Wolf (ballet) downtown. We had a great time and I was so impressed with our two year olds at the show. Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture except for the one below at the end of the show during the interactive part. Emery napped the majority of the day (growth spurt?) but I did catch her once or twice with her eyes open. We cooked a yummy dinner of steak, brussels sprouts with bacon and smashed potatoes and then enjoyed strawberries “three ways” that Tim and Drew made last night. Yum!!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that from last month….

Our happy hour one Friday night; Moscow mules for us, chocolate milk for Drew and a nap on her belly for Emery.

Just a little fooling around for the camera.  Drew would not take pictures unless his “lellow blankie” could participate.  He’s pretty into his blankie these days.  

If there was any question – this picture confirms she looks like a Greulich for sure!  But seriously – how cute is she?!

Drew has continued to go to daycare throughout my leave.  It’s been very good for both of us.  I just loved this note at the bottom of his daily sheet.  I pray this is how it always is – “Drew is everybody’s friend.”

Drew, Lexie, Tim and Craig spent one Saturday morning at the boat show downtown.  They had a blast.

While the guys and Lexie were at the boat show, Becca and I had a little playdate of our own with the two new little sisters.

Emery went to her first Vanderbilt basketball game!  This is the only picture we took, clearly not a good one.  She did fine the first half but was furious with the headphones by half time so she and I spent the second half outside walking the halls.

Here is my cute little grocery shopping companion.  We went to Kroger on this particular day and Drew spotted these cars a mile away.  Our typical store; Publix doesn’t have these.  Drew had a blast and we shopped fast since Drew would scream “Go Mommy GO, go Mommy GOOO!!!” anytime the cart slowed down or stopped.

We went to Cincinnati for about 5 days the last week of January.  Drew had an absolute blast at the Children’s museum with Grammy, Grandpa and Mom Mom.We got to see and play with Hannah and Aunt Becky quite a bit that week.  Drew and Hannah have become great buddies and Drew loves playing with her.  On this night these two were helping Mimi with Emery’s bath.

We had movie night and watched Frozen.  Drew had learned a lot of the songs and characters at daycare (I guess) but had never seen the movie.  He LOVED it. 

Papa, Hannah, Drew, Emery and I took an afternoon adventure to the Newport Aquarium!  To me – this was a huge accomplishment as Emery was still pretty much eating every 2.5 hours or so and not doing well with a bottle.  At first, I thought it was a ridiculous idea (I didn’t bring home a stroller, trying to get 3 car seats in Papa’s car, where would I feed her?, etc) but I’m the one who learned to loosen up a little bit and not let a new baby dictate our life.  Since it was a weekday the place was empty and we all had a great time.

We’ve been doing a whole lot of this!  Potty training!  Admittedly, we haven’t committed 100% to his training or he’d be done. He’s doing a great job though and in no time he’ll be out of these diapers (I hope!).

Our big girl is two months old!  She is growing growing growing.  Look at those chubby legs!  I just love them.  I looked back on Drew’s 2 month blog post and just had to laugh out loud.  So much of what we experienced in Drew’s second month (primarily the challenges I thought I was having with sleep, naps, as well as the pattern and progress towards sleeping through the night) has been identical to how Emery’s second month has gone.

Stats
Week 1 – weight: 6lbs, 8% – height: 18.75 in., 13% – head circ.: 33.5 cm, 27%
Week 2 – weight: 6lbs 8oz, 9% – height: 19.5 in., 25% – head circ.: 34 cm, 24%
Week 6 – weight: 9lbs 5oz, 26% – height: 20.75 in., 11% – head circ.: 37.5cm, 56%

The below picture on the left is at one month and on the right at two months (9 weeks). She moved out of her newborn clothes at 6 weeks.  Drew was in his until 10 weeks!Emery, this past month…

YOU:

• Wore me out nursing.  Sigh…most of the last month you ate every 2 hours during the day.  It was exhausting but in the last couple of weeks, things have improved considerably and you are finally pretty consistent on every three hours.
• Woke up a lot in the middle of the night.  I typically would rush right to you because I did not want Drew to wake up as that would be an entirely different challenge.  Lately we’ve gotten into a groove though where you will eat and then sleep about 3.5-4 hours and then get up again 2-2.5 hours later to eat.
• Moved to your crib around 7 weeks.  At first this didn’t go that well as you woke up a lot (see above).  The past week, I’ve reintroduced the swaddle (which I now call the magic swaddle) because it’s been working like a charm, day and night.  Just last night (2/3) you ate at 8:30pm, 1:15am and 5:00am and didn’t wake up in between.  This is a huge improvement from just one week ago.  Thank you magic swaddle.
• Hated napping in your crib – it was a rough month in the napping department.  I have been working very hard on getting you used to napping in your bed so that you are ready for daycare but you would completely resist and typically ended up napping in the swing or in the car or while being held.  But again, major breakthrough in the past few days with the magic swaddle.  Unfortunately you can’t use a swaddle at daycare though.
• Liked movement – being held, rocked, your swing (yep you weren’t a fan month 1 but you are on board now), car – whatever.
• Smiled at week 5 just like your big brother did.  I was there to get Drew’s first smiles but Daddy got yours.  I was nearby with the ipad camera though (picture below).
• Went to your first Vanderbilt basketball game at week 8.  You tolerated the first half just fine but you and I spent the second half walking the halls.

I had all kinds of other things written down (blogged) about Drew’s milestones or learnings (finding his hands, bearing weight on legs, babbling)…um yeah Emery is doing all of those things too but I have no idea when she started doing them.  I guess I’ll chalk that up to her being the second child.  Sorry Emery!  People keep asking if she is a good baby.  I often wonder what they mean by that and feel really bad for those babies that aren’t “good”.  She definitely has been going with the flow and has had to be flexible in having a big brother who gets/needs a lot of attention too.  She doesn’t have a witching hour, she doesn’t have colic…I’d prefer her to sleep a tad bit better but overall, yes, she’s a very very good baby.  Actually now that I think about it, she really only has the normal ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m hungry’ cry and we’ve only seen the inconsolable cry a few times (a mis-timed outing to dinner at our normal Mexican restaurant comes to mind).

And now a few more pictures of our sweet girl last month….Blurry ipad pictures of Emery’s first smiles

I have one more month of maternity leave and although I’d love to say that she and I are enjoying it by laying around doing nothing together all day – that’s hardly been the case.  Regardless I really want to make sure I’m enjoying these next few weeks as much as possible because I’m fully aware that this is such a special time that’s quickly coming to an end.