6 weeks and bye bye Matt

Matt and Dean left last Friday to drive out to Seattle with both dogs and the cars. Luckily things were uneventful and they got into Seattle on Sunday afternoon. Matt has now laid eyes on the house that we rented sight unseen and assured me that it's really nice. I'm having a hard time not being there.

We've ramped up the activities now for Erin that I'm really winding down with work and we're not frantically trying to get Matt ready to leave. We went to breakfast both Saturday and Sunday mornings, got out on a nice long walk the last few days and spent some quality time outside playing. We're trying to ignore the reluctant summer weather and make the most of our time left here.

Erin has been having a tough time falling asleep at night. We tried moving back bedtime gradually, but really think that she's starting to outgrow her naps. She plays at nap time for a long time and finally falls asleep, only to sleep soundly late into the afternoon and then have trouble falling asleep at bed time. Today we had "quiet" time for an hour or so, but got her up before she slept in the afternoon. Late afternoon and bedtime were a little bit hairy, but she fell asleep much easier. If the naps are really on their way out, I'm really going to miss them.

Nora is growing by leaps and bounds. She goes in this week for a check up and shots and I'm excited to see how much she weighs. She is quickly outgrowing her clothes and really seems to be thriving. She has long periods of content wakefullness most days and is really starting to smile and coo. She watches people more intently and watches them as they move around the room. She seems to like to watch Erin and give her plenty of smiles. She still seems to hate her carseat, but is content most of the rest of the time. However, today she's very unsettled and has spent most of the afternoon and evening restless and unhappy which is very unusual for her as her ususal evening fussies last only an hour or two right before bedtime. I hope this doesn't last.

Nora's sleep is generally improving. She had about 5 nights in a row of sleeping for ~6 hours, but then decided that she liked her 2am meal, so she added it back. I'd prefer it go away, but who listens to me? She's getting easier to put back down again and spend most nights entirely in her crib (I'm a sucker for taking her back to bed with me after the 4:30 feeding cause she's hard to get to sleep otherwise).

Her baby acne and hair loss is in full effect so she's not looking quite her best, but I still think that she's pretty cute.

5 weeks

I talked to Gramma Beth yesterday and she's reminding me that I'm behind on posting. Nora is getting bigger every day and Gramma wants to see pictures!


We've had a good week. Nora is finally settling into a sleep routine (am I tempting fate by calling it that?) that doesn't leave me feeling like a zombie all day. For the last few nights, she's stretched out to 5-6 hours of solid sleep overnight. How delightful. We've been out late with her for a few nights at graduation parties for Matt so she's been settling down for good around midnight and then sleeping ~6am. I love it! She's also finally in her crib we're not having to hold her quite as long to get her to stay sleeping when we put her down. I'm optimistic that we're heading in the right direction.



Like I said, we've been doing a lot of graduation parties lately. We had the Peds graduation last week, a surprise dinner for Matt with the EM/IM folks, the EM graduation party Friday and the IM graduation Saturday night. Luckily we've only got on more party (the EM/IM barbecue) on Wednesday then we'll be done... phew. For a cranky hermit like me, I need the break.

Once we're finished with the parties though, Matt's going to be leaving MN. Dean and Matt will be hitting the road this Friday morning driving both cars and dogs out West. Even though we've known about this day for the last year, it's still hard to believe that it's actually here. Part of me is excited about this adventure and this new chapter in our life, but it's hard not to feel sentimental and sad as we look at leaving MN. We've lived here for 10 years, lived in our home for 9 years... this is where we've lived almost our whole adult life. We started our family and our careers here and have friends and family that we will miss deeply. I know that we'll be back for visits, but we will be walking away from the life that we had and things will never be the same. Sigh.



Erin's still doing great with Nora. She wants to hold her and loves to snuggle with her and talk to her. She is constantly telling me that "Nora is smiling at me!" I've yet to see more than a few half-hearted smiles from Nora, but it's nice that Erin is so optimistic. Erin also loves to talk about "my baby sister" and seems proud of everything that Nora does. Erin also seems unfazed by Nora's crying which is good. Nora hates her car seat and is usually screaming in the car (strange because she is otherwise so mellow). Erin often wants to try to make Nora feel better, so says "It's okay Nora, don't cry, it's ok." Unfortunately, Erin can't be heard over Nora's cries, so she turns up the volume until she's yelling "it's okay Nora!" repeatedly at the top of her lungs. Needless to say, by the time we arrive at our destination, my nerves are a little frayed.



Erin has gotten more and more into pretend play over the last few months and it's great to see what she comes up with. Today she made a tent on the porch and played with Grandpa and her babies in there. Most days we play "Birchwood" and "school" at least a few dozen times and Erin still loves to pack and go on trips. She made a reading fort yesterday and insisted that we all come in for story time. She also loves to try role reversal and will often tell Grandpa that she is the Grandpa and he is the baby. She's certainly continues to have a strong sense of how things should be and can get downright bossy if we let her.


Erin also is still having fun with word games. When she "reads" books to her babies and when she sings to herself at bedtime, she makes up her own language which she finds hilarious. She also loves to try saying words with odd accents and with intonation that is off and again, she cracks herself up.

We also seem to have finally won the keeping poop out of the pull-up battles that raged for so long. We made a potty chart and have her earning prizes and she's finally decided that the prizes are better than driving us crazy, so she's been good for about 2 weeks now. I think that I'm going to phase out the chart over the next few weeks. I am getting a little tired of scouring the target dollar bin, but this is way better than changing a poopy pull-up every night.


We had a low key Father's Day yesterday, but did enjoy spending time with Matt and Dean. Erin especially liked the "bessert" portion of the day and seemed to like rootbeer floats just as much as Daddy.

4 weeks

What a difference 4 weeks makes. It's hard to remember how much they change in the first few weeks, but obviously Nora has fulled out a bit and is becoming quite the chub. She's working on the elbow dimples and wrist rolls. Cute. Below is a picture from her birthday for comparison.

Matt's trying to enjoy his last days on elective before starting fellowship and has been running most days. After his runs, Erin like to stretch with him and join in with the push-ups. She prefers hardcore decline push-ups... what a stud. After doing her push-ups, we can usually get her to show us her strong muscles complete with sound effects.


Erin is now only in school 3 days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday). We thought about nixing it altogether, but she loves school and it seems to be great for her to have her own thing. It's also been great for us to have a chance to get some of our work done. Erin was home today and it was beautiful weather. We went to the park and Erin surprised me with her climbing skills. She scurried up the kiddie climbing wall without any help a dozen times.

We also played with sidewalk chalk, although she was more interested in talking about the neighbors dog rolling in bunny poop. Charming.



Nora is having a tough time with sleep. It's gotten worse and worse over the last 2 weeks and several nights she is up almost every hour and it's impossible to set her down and have her stay asleep. Last night we moved her out of our room (she's almost as noisy a sleeper as Erin was and it keeps me up) and things went a little better. She went to sleep at 11:15, was up at 2:00 and 4:00 and up at 7:00 which is the best night in a long time. We're up with her for about 45 minutes for each feeding and rocking. Luckily she's really not unhappy at night, just restless and awake. I'm hoping this phase doesn't last too long. I always try to remember what my mom says about babies and kids: no matter what the kids are doing, good or bad, it's always a phase and doesn't last too long.

3 weeks

We spent the first week out of the house in a whirlwind of cleaning, fixing and trying to get settled in. Erin got sick our first weekend with Jan and Dean, so Nora and I spent a few days hanging out in the basement trying to keep ourselves healthy. It worked and we're very happy about that.



Nora continues to be a pretty easy baby, although this week she's started with the evening fussies. She's content to nurse, but otherwise is awake and restless. It's nice to have a few extra sets of arms around to carry her and try to convince her that she's happy. She is still not to interested in taking the nuk, but occassionally we she'll humor us and give it a try. I didn't realize how nice it was that Erin liked it and would help soothe herself with it.


Nora's sleep schedule is still pretty up in the air. She has a few times during the day that she will typically sleep for a few hours, but night is a toss up. While Gramma Beth was here and we were still in the duplex, she had some great nights, only getting up once or twice to eat and sleeping from 10:30 until 8:30am. Since moving to Jan and Deans, things have been a bit more irregular. She did sleep for 7 hours a few nights ago. It was the first time in months that I'd slept that long without interuption. I foolishly thought that I'd won the baby jackpot, but alas, the next night she was up every 60-90minutes and she's having more trouble settling down after eating at night these days. Ugh. She's also not convinced that the crib is a place for sleep and she prefers the bouncy seat. I'm sure that time will fix all of these, but for now, we're all a little short on sleep.

Erin is doing great, despite all of the changes in her life. She has had a few rough nights with tantrums and asking "when can we go home?" and telling me "I want to sleep in my bed," but overall I'm very impressed. She still loves Nora and when Nora is crying she asks "what is my baby sister saying?" and asks if hugs will make her feel better. She also still loves giving hugs and kisses and asks when she can carry Nora all by herself.



Erin impressed us all last weekend when she showed us that she could write almost all of her letters. She's been able to write her name for a few months now, but I didn't know that she'd mastered so many more letters. She's also figuring out numbers and is working on her lower case letters. I'm really impressed with how much that her school has done with them and Erin is certainly soaking it all up.



We did get a few months of no child in diapers this spring before Nora arrived. Erin decided during the last day of a trip to Portland in January that she was done with diapers. I assumed that it would only last a few days like her previous attempts, but she's stuck with it. She does a great job, but wants ultimate control of when she wants to go and refuses to try upon request. I've let it go because she's only had a few accidents and seems to take care of it pretty well on her own. We did struggle, however, with pooping and we've had a months long struggle with her pooping in her pull-up as soon as she goes to bed at night. We'd tried multiple stratagies, but last weekend we started a new sticker chart/prize box and I'm optimistic that it may do the trick. We'll see.



We're so lucky to be able to stay with Jan and Dean. Erin has loved taking garden walks, having picnics in the yard, riding in the paddle boat and playing in the wading pool. We used the wading pool to try to cool off yesterday when it was 103 here and the air conditioning failed. Erin loved it, although Nora seems to dislike the hot quite a bit.