Alaythia Ruth at 3 mos

Here are a few things I want to remember about sweet Alaythia at this stage in her life:

asleep on Mama's bed

Sleeping- Alaythia is still not sleeping through the night.  She typically wakes up to eat 1-3 times, which is a bit of a bummer, but her excitement to see me when I open her bedroom door makes it a little less of a bummer.  On a more positive note, she has begun taking more significant naps during the day (1-2 hrs each), and she is able to put herself to sleep 90% of the time now if I lay her down awake but tired.  Both of those things are good indicators that at some point she will sleep through the night.  I currently don't have any bedtime routine with her (mainly because I haven't had to), but I expect that at some point I will need to begin some routines with her.  I was honestly really concerned about how in the world I was going to teach her to fall asleep by herself (mainly because I have 2 other big kids to care for during the day, which makes sleep training harder than in the past).  Somehow the Lord showed abundant mercy on me, and she learned not only how to fall asleep by herself but also how to sleep in the crib (instead of the rock n play sleeper) almost overnight when she was roughly 2 mos old! 

Typical Schedule-

• 7 am - nursing and then awake while the big kids eat and get dressed and play
• 9:30(ish) am - laid in crib to fall asleep (this awake time can't be too long, otherwise she'll have a hard time falling asleep)
• 11 am - nursing and awake time while big kids eat lunch and then go down for naps
• 1 pm - laid down for her 2nd nap
• 3 pm - nursing (sometimes she skips this one and stretches her nap until 4ish)
• 5 pm - nursing while we eat dinner at the table
• 5:45 pm - she usually lays on the table during family worship and sometimes dozes off a little
• 6:30 pm - gets in her jammies & nurses to sleep (sometimes she doesn't fall asleep while nursing though, and then I just burp her and lay her down awake)
• 11 pm or midnight - nursing
• 2(ish) am - nursing
• 5(ish) am - nursing

A typical dinner for us

 asleep on the table (with thumb inserted, of course)

pit stop on an all girls trip (filling bellies)

Eating- As you can see from the above schedule, Alaythia basically nurses between 6-8 times per day.  On some days, Alaythia will skip one or two of the night nursings, meaning she may fall asleep at 7 pm and wake up only at 2 am and then 5 am.  Sometimes she does 7pm, 2 am, 6:30 am.... those are great nights!  When she chooses to only nurse 6-7 times per day, then I try to pump a few extra times (once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening depending on how many nursing sessions she skips) to keep my supply up.  When she eats, she typically nurses for 10-15 minutes, and since my supply is still doing well, we are continuing to block feed (one side per nursing session).

asleep for the night in her snuggly fleece jammies

Size- Alaythia is currently wearing size 6 mos clothes.  This is mainly because she has long legs and a long torso.  When she wears summer clothes, she can still fit into some 3 mos things, but in her footie jammies, she really needs a 6 or 9 mos size to be comfortable.  She does seem to have short arms though, so I often end up rolling her sleeves once or twice (Karis is the same way!).  At her 2 mos check up, she weighed 13 lb, 6 oz and was 23.25" long.  On our scale at home, she weighs 14.5 lbs now though.  And though she is a little chunky, she pales in comparison to Little Man at this stage.  ;)


Playing- Alaythia can currently hold her head up while on her belly, and she usually enjoys tummy time for brief stretches (5-10 min).  Her favorite thing to do is lay on her back and observe the world around her.  She is also very good at coo-ing, and she just loves smiling at us!  I had hoped to add a video of her coo-ing, but I'm currently experiencing technical difficulties (I need Hugh to update a few things on my computer).  So maybe I'll add it in a separate post once things are functioning properly again. 

Other memories- 

in the bumbo for the first time

• Though she has tried the Bumbo seat, Alaythia is still not crazy about it and only stays in it for 3-5 min max these days.
• Alaythia likes falling asleep with the lights on, and she really prefers for someone (or even a herd of people) to be in her room doing things like putting away laundry, sweeping, etc. 
• She is just beginning to have more hair grow in on the top of her head.  It is soft, dark brown, peach fuzz hair, and I can surely attest that it is very kissable!  ;)
• Alaythia has found her thumb and often sucks it while trying to fall asleep.
• Her dark eyes have lightened and are now a beautiful blue color.
• My vertigo is pretty much gone now!  It just slowly became less and less until now I hardly ever have a spell of feeling dizzy.

Other photos-

smiling at one of our friends after dinner

playing with Grandma Mary

talking with Daddy

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Touch A Truck 2015

This weekend was our town's annual Touch A Truck event.  We went last year and loved it, so we thought we'd make a go of it this year as well.  The advantage to this year though was that we found out about the horn-free hour!  We tried to arrive right on time for the quiet hour, and we managed to walk through the entire exhibit before it got loud.  Enoch enjoyed touching lots of trucks, but he wasn't real keen on sitting on too many of them.  One change I noticed this year was that Enoch had a lot of questions for the machine operators, and he was especially curious about how things worked.  "What does this button do?"  or "Where does the cement come from?" were some of his typical questions. 

I didn't get many photos this time because we were just enjoying all of the big trucks and equipment, but here are the few I did capture.

 this was about the only machine he was willing to sit on (other than a police car), and he had quite a few questions about it!

This was our view from the car when we were leaving.  Quite a popular event!

Karis sported Enoch's construction hat for a few minutes at lunch.

And the beloved CFA cows came by to say hi.  Karis is quite smitten with them.  :)

They had actually just come from the Touch a Truck event too, which is why they are wearing a fireman and police officer uniforms.  

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FFF: Karis is standing and walking (with a little assistance)

Over the past 2-3 weeks, Karis has taken some huge leaps developmentally!  This has especially been true with her gross motor skills, like standing and walking.  She has also increased her oral skills too though, like imitating our intonations and really being passionate and animated when talking. Our Speech therapist commented this past week that she thought some of the gross motor and oral skills were improving because Karis isn't the baby anymore and is no longer getting the majority of my time and attention - giving her more incentive to voice her opinions and to gain some mobility.  Whatever the cause, we are thankful and so proud of our hard working girl!!  Now, onto the details...

Karis has just begun pulling up to stand really well in her pack n play (where she sometimes plays while I rock Alaythia to sleep).  She loves standing up in there and yelling, and as of this week she has also learned how to throw her toys out, a favorite game of hers.  ;)

Karis pulling up to stand in the pack n play


She has also just discovered how to really get around in her walker.  Our PT let us borrow a graduated walker a few weeks ago, and that really helped her practice walking so that she could learn the left, right, left, right concept.  I think when she finally figured out that moving her feet could get her some mobility, she had even more incentive to move (and to keep up with Mommy and Enoch!).  Now she just loves chasing us down the hall, she often goes to bedroom doorways to look for people, and she can usually get herself unstuck in a tight situation.

This a common sight in our house these days!

Karis walking in her walker

Karis even gets to use her walker outside sometimes, like when we garden.  She loves this option much more than being put in the stroller, though we do have to watch those little hands carefully because she loves grabbing big handfuls of dirt and leaves out of the raised garden bed and silently shoving them in her mouth... and let's don't get started about her new ability to reach our trash can inside the house...  ;)

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