One Month?!?! Already?!?!?

It's just so hard to believe that Paige is already a month old!!! The time is going by even faster than it did with Kyra and I wouldn't have thought that was possible! Paige is just such a wonderful baby. She's so mellow and content, she nurses well and doesn't have tummy trouble and she's a pretty good sleeper for only being a month old! She's already changed so much and is getting bigger every day! If she doesn't slow down she's going to catch her sister pretty soon! We had her first "birthday" cake tonight and Kyra helped me "sing" Happy Birthday to her.

Bye Bye Grandma!!!

We've spent the last few days playing and snuggling with Grandma while she's still here, taking walks and doing some shopping. We are really going to miss having Grandma here to visit and play with us every day and not just because she was helping with housework either!!! I'm sure after two weeks of grandparents to play with Kyra's going to think old Mama is pretty boring for a while. We took Mom down to get settled in at the hotel by the airport with the shuttle tonight and ate Chinese takeout down there. Kyra was quite entertaining, especially when Phil filled up the in room Jacuzzi to try to soak out his sore muscles since the hottub downstairs the jets weren't working. When he turned on the jets while she was standing by the tub she yelled and ran over to Grandma, then went back, yelled more quietly, ran more slowly over to Grandma and repeated that about four times before she totally calmed down. She loved the big floor length mirrors in the room and was enjoying watching herself in them and she took the phone off the hook at one point but was TRYING to put it back on when I got over there to take it form her (I think it was the first time she'd ever seen a corded phone). Both girls got in a few last snuggles with Grandma before it was time for us to head home. October when we'll see the grandparents agian sure seems like a long way off, but I'm sure the time will FLY by as busy as we'll be keeping up with these two precious girls!

Playball!!!

Today after church was Phil's first softball game of the season. It was a 2:00p.m. game which was quite a feat to get to with both girls since it was an ushering week for Phil and that meant leaving church around one or a little after to make it there for the 2:00p.m. game. We packed a picnic lunch but Kyra ate mostly crackers. Two of Kyra's little friends from church were there with their mom watching their Dad play and the older one who is 4 was over tickling Kyra. My mom commented on what a good baby tickler was and she replied "I am!". She should be since her sister is just about Kyra's age. :) Her mom called her back over to eat her lunch and her answer was "But she (meaning Kyra) LIKES me!" What that had to do with lunch I don't know but who's to question the logic of a little girl? I was amazed that, after a bit of fussing, Kyra actually took a nap in the stroller!!! Not a long one, but this is a girl who hasn't napped while we were out other than in her carseat while the car was in motion since she was about 7 months old! Hopefully this bodes well for all day outings in the future. The game went GREAT other than it making for a little bit of a hectic day trying to do late service and then the game right away (we'll either do early service or saturday night service before the rest of the 2:00p.m. games I think so it's easier to get lunch in.) They WON!!! The first game of the season! They were up by quite a bit after the first few innings (held the other team to 0 for three innings or so I think) and then ended up down by a couple and came back to win! How fun is that? Kyra loved watching the game and clapped quite enthusiastically whenever anyone clapped (including the other team) and sometimes when no one else was clapping (like when her dad was right in front of her at first base.... base coaching. Paige was less enthralled but content all the same.

All Tuckered Out

The girls' Aunt Jackie (this would be my dad's sister Jackie who sews, not Phil's mom's sister Jackie who also sews) sent Paige an adorable quilt and it came in the mail today! It has pretty pinwheels and her name on it (even spelled correctly mind you). Dad left early this morning so it was just the girls, grandma and I today. See the sad pouty look on Paige's face? I think she was missing her Papa. Or it could be because Mama was taking her picture in the swing instead of picking her up... Kyra was just STARVING today and kept asking for snacks besides eating quite a bit at her meals! What I wouldn't give to have a metabolism like hers! She did have a couple of nasty little tumbles today and her left ear has a bright red mark acrossed it. I'll be so glad when her feet are a little more coordinated and her body catches up with the size of her head somewhat so she's not so likely to take so many falls! Kyra got so tired after playing with her Grandma this afternoon and "helping" us organize the nursery that even after taking an extra nap she fell asleep on the floor before her bath! Poor tired little thing was out of it all the way through her bathtime but apparently it was a power nap that she took because once she got her new cute flannel nightie on (thanks Auntie Heather!) she was running all over the house so fast I could barely get a picture of her in it! She was so cute grabbing it and lifting it up by her knees and swirling it around. :)

Paige's 1st Pediatric Audiology Appointment

Paige's 1st ped. audi appt was today for her ABR test on her right (little) ear and a regular hearing screen on her left as that ear had failed the hospital hearing test. It went great! Phil couldn't get off work on such short notice without having to put it in as FMLA and since it would be the first day off it would have been a pain to get the hours paid because he used up all of one type of paid leave while he was off on parental leave so Dad drove us down there in the rolling tomato and mom came along. He did a great job of finding Emmanuel and decided that he would never want to commute through traffic. Angi and Chip were nice enough to keep Kyra for the day since it said in the instructions for the test to leave other children at home! I suppose we could have let her run around the hospital halls and lobby with Papa but I don't think he would have had enough energy after that long of chasing her to drive back home!!! (I know I wouldn't if I didn't have a carrier or a stroller with to contain her!)

Paige slept through the whole test like they wanted (2 1/2 hours!!!) and her pediatric audiologist is a WONDERFUL lady who is really nice and knows her stuff. Paige's left ear (the big ear) is PERFECT. She tested everything that could be tested on that side and it is fine. On the right side, she was able to confirm that there is a cochlea (sp?) and that it seems to be totally complete and can pick up high and low tones. She will go for more testing now with an ENT to have a CT scan and see if the bones, eardrum and ear canal are there and if they're present how much reconstruction would be necessary if possible for the ear to function normally eventually. The Audiologist is getting her signed up for Early Intervention right away and it sounds like she'll probably have a bone conducting hearing aid relatively soon that will stimulate all the nerves on that side to help her brain develop normally and so that if they are eventually able to reconstruct that ear that the nerves will be in place and so she can develop the ability to tell where sounds are coming from.

Rubber Duckie, You're the One

Yesterday was bath day and I gave both the girls their baths in Kyra's duckie tub so mom could get pictures. I did accidentally scare the bejeepers out of Kyra when I turned on the handheld shower head to rinse out her hair since she wouldn't lean back for me even when I counted 1-2-3's for her (she's too used to the big tub I guess) and accidentally turned it to the noisy massage setting instead of the regular shower! She screamed until she was dried off and out in the other room poor thing. Paige always loves her bath, although she didn't like it in the little tub quite as much as the big tub because the water wasn't deep enough for me to hold her head and let her float. I love that little thoughtful, serious expression she gets. In the evening we went over to Mom and Dad's hotel so Phil and Kyra could swim in the pool there with them. It ended up that just Phil and Mom swam and Kyra only modeled her cute swimming suit because the water was just too cold! She is awfully cute in that suit though, too bad being pregnant got in the way of her getting to wear it for mommy and me swimtime this winter! Maybe Paige will get more actual in the water use out of it. :)
Then tonight Phil's mom and Curt came over for dinner and they brought us the chairs that go with the diningroom table Phil's G-ma gave us when she moved out here from Prineville a couple years ago! The chairs have been waiting in their barn while we used folding chairs because we were slacking on getting them moved over and didn't think they'd fit in our car but they did all fit in the H2 so now we have 6 lovely ladder-back chairs, 2 of which will soon be obscured by highchairs. We got a picture of Paige with all the granparents while they were here posed the same way that my grandpa, grandma, grandma and step-grandpa were in a picture with me when I was an itty-bitty. Maybe I'll eventually get ambitious and scan that one so I can post them together. :)

Big Fish Stories

It was SUCH a beautiful day yesterday for April!!! Part of my impressions of that could have been influenced by the fact that Paige slept SIX HOURS STRAIGHT on sunday night, but everyone else agreed that it was a lovely day too. :) (The first time Kyra slept that long straight through she was 4 1/2 months old, Paige isn't even 4 1/2 weeks!!!) We spent most of it up the gorge with my parents since they spent last night up there yet. We drove down to the fish hatchery by the Bonneville dam and Kyra thought seeing the great big sturgeon and feeding the trout was even more exciting than last year!!! It's been really easy to find Mom and Dad in parking lots this trip since they're driving a tomato orange Subaru Impreza for their rental car. :) The picture doesn't quite capture the oranginess except for the little glarey spot on the door. After the fish hatchery we stopped at a little park in Cascade Locks and Kyra swung in the baby swing while Dad and Phil went to grab ice cream for us. Grandma was nice and let Bean have a few bites of hers. Kyra liked it but as usual with her and sweets didn't get NEARLY as excited as she does about peas. While we were just hanging out back in their hotel room Kyra had lots of fun playing with her Papa. She crawled right up on the couch by him and sat there for a super long time while he teased and tickled her. Silly girl usually won't even sit with me to read a whole book anymore, she always wants to get down halfway through and stand on the floor while I read and show her the pictures! We also had our first real incidence of sisterly aggression, but it was unintentional, more like affection gone awry. Paige was laying on my lap and Kyra was visiting with her and she leaned down and tried to pull Paige's sock off with her teeth, biting Paige's little toes in the process!!! I don't know who was more startled, Paige or Kyra but Kyra definitely cried more!!
Kyra is terrified of the elevator in their hotel (well, all elevators actually.) It's almost funny because she doesn't get upset until it starts moving and it's only one floor so she has JUST enough time to start fussing before the ride is over. I am sort of dreading the next trip we make to the zoo on the MAX since that's an awfully big elevator coming up from the tunnel!
Today, while Dad got them checked into the hotel back down here, Mom and I started going through Kyra's outgrown clothes and sorting them out for Paige so they're ready to go as she grows into them. GOODNESS these girls have a lot of clothes! We actually are separating out a lot to give away now and there will still probably be more left than Paige will actually wear very frequently. At one point today I bumped my big enamel coated chili pot with my foot while walking through the livingroom where it was sitting out waiting to be put away and it made a clanging noise and Paige startled!!! This is very good news as we're still waiting for the hearing test on friday to know how well she can hear on the side with her big ear and if she can hear at all on the side with her litle ear and she hasn't really been startling at noises since she's such a mellow little thing. Later on mom bumped the pot on purpose to see if Paige would startle in her sleep again but bumped it a little harder than she meant to. Paige startled and Kyra jumped and dissolved into a big fit of hysterical tears that lasted almost five minutes!!! Goodness she can be so dramatic when it's getting close to nap time. ;)

Grandparents are Grrrrreat!!!!

So after all the waiting for them, my parents arrived on Thursday to meet Paige! They of course think both girls are adorable and the girls like them too. :) Kyra warmed up to her Papa pretty fast this time, but then, she did last time too! She decided Grandma was alright after just a few hours instead of taking 2 weeks like last time they were here to visit. Grandma brought them the cutest little matching jammies and rompers so now I have more matching clothes to dress them in. YAY! She brought a great big bag of clothes from their Aunt Heather too. Kyra was very impressed and spent a good share of the afternoon and evening repeatedly unpacking the bag of clothes as you can see in the video. Thursday afternoon after they got checked into their hotel, we went over to Wal-Mart to do some grocery shopping and wait for Phil to get off work. My mom commented later that she kept wondering why all the people in the store kept looking at her, but then realized they were looking at Kyra of course who was being her cute, charming self and showing off for Papa and waving at strangers in the store. At least we did have less people actually stopping us to TALK to Kyra with all the extra adults around the cart so the shopping didn't take quite as long as it normally would have!



The girls hung out in their PJ's on Friday until after Gma and Papa got here that morning since they were wearing their new matching ones and we wanted Gma to see them. Paige's new TrueFit carseat had arrived (Yay for Wal-Mart Site-to-Store) and I left both girls with the grandparents while I ran over to get it!! So it was only a 15 or 20 minute trip right next door but I thought that was pretty good for my first time away from Paige! We LOVE the new carseat so far and it hasn't even been in the car yet other than the ride home in the box! Kyra is madly in love with Papa because he is JUST so fun to play with and she thinks he's her own personal jungle gym and sound machine. Saturday, Kyra's 8th tooth finally came through! She has a matching set again, four on top and four on the bottom. Mom and Dad went with us to meet up with Phil's mom and Curt and their dogs at the dog park this evening after dinner and Kyra got to entertain both sets of grandparents at once. I must be getting to be less anemic because we walked quite a ways and I was feeling pretty good afterwards! I'm still amazed at how well that double stroller does out on the gravel trails out there. Phil put Kyra's new cribtent in her crib when we got home and she didn't seem to mind it at all when she went to bed so let's hope she just never realizes that without it, she could eventually get out on her own! We may leave her in there until she's five if she fits since she sleeps so well in her crib... I'm afraid to mess with what works, who cares about sleeping dogs, let sleeping BABIES lie!
This morning while I was getting my shoes on and grabbing the girls bags and stuff for church, Phil took them out to the car. He got Kyra strapped in and then Paige and then ran back up to grab a bink for Paige because she was fussing and when he got back down to the car she'd already stopped and was holding Kyra's fingers and they were both quiet. How sweet is that? Of course, they weren't about to let him get the camera and take a picture. :) Mom and Dad moved over to a hotel in Cascade Locks for tonight and tomorrow night after lunch today so we headed up there for dinner and to spend the evening with them. It was a gorgeous day so we were sitting on the deck outside the pool area at the hotel and Kyra was just fascinated with the flowers in the pots there. Grandma was trying to convince her to smell them but Kyra was just sure you must be supposed to smell with your fingers/mouth. She got ahold of a pansy and a primrose and tried to eat both of them. She was quite funny at dinner, she was watching all the people around us so intently it was hard to get her to concentrate on her food! The girls were both so tired when we were ready to head home that we changed them into their jammies there and they fell asleep in the car and barely made a peep when we headed in and got them into bed.

Paige Meets Dr. Byrne!!

bPaige had her 2 week well check yesterday. She weighed 9lbs 13oz and although it took the Dr. a few minutes to figure out where to put her on the growth chart (she's apparently just about off the top end) her weight gain is at a nice, healthy looking rate. Dr. Byrne did think she was feeling a small click in Paige's hips and wants to see her back in 2 weeks to keep an eye on it between now and her 2 month check. The PKU test was NOT fun (when is getting poked in the heel ever fun) but it was so much better than it was with Kyra since Joy, the new medical assistant since we started going there with Kyra, is just wonderful! It still took a lot of poking and squeezing to get all the little circles completely filled in with blood but since her bedside manner is so sweet it definitely could have been a lot worse (like it was with Bean...)
Now for the NON-medical side of the visist... So far, there hasn't really been anything noticable about having two so close together that has stuck out as being harder than just the normal things of adding a second child. At Paige's appointment though I realized just exactly why it can be such a challenge at times being a "Baby Buncher". (Baby Bunching is raising kids less than 2 years apart.) Well this was my first time out with both girls. Kyra started out really well when we got there and I was feeling pretty good about being out with the two of them! Then things started to go downhill. My little girl who lsitens so extremely well in public for a 14 month old decided she wanted to do everything exactly the opposite of what I said for the last half hour of the visit. She kept getting right under the doctor and medical assistants' feet, pulled the magazines off the table in the exam room several times and while Paige was having her PKU test done where I needed to be holding her, Kyra got into one of the cabinets and pulled out the extra pillow and ran around the room with it. This will definitely be the LAST time that we do a doctor's appointment where they both go along unless Phil can come!!!

Little Sister's first Easter!!!

Easter started pretty early at our house this year since there were THREE ladies to get ready! Kyra was nice enough to sleep in some so Paige and I got to shower and eat before she was up and then Phil gave Bean her breakfast while I dressed Paige. Kyra was great when it was her turn to get ready, she even let me really FIX her hair for the first time ever! I can't believe how patient she was. She didn't get antsy until the very end so she did have sort of and odd spikey ponytail sticking out of the back that kept coming untucked since she didn't let me secure it down at all. :) The hairstyle stayed in really well though, even through nap so I think we may have a fix to keep the hair out of her face until the front part grows out a little more, at least on days when she'll let me do this! We were ready to go on time, but I wasn't quite as ready as I would have liked! It seems like no matter what time we start getting ready, I always run out of time for getting MY hair, makeup, etc. the way I'd like them to be! I'm guessing it's going to be that way for many years to come.
When we got to church, several of our friends little girls were in the sanctuary "visiting" with each other while their parents talked and Phil let Kyra down to play with them. She was just SO thrilled to be down running around with the other girls, she's finally big enough to (sort of) keep up. They were all so cute in their Easter dresses, just like a bunch of little flowers! Paige did great during service again, slept right through. She's good company for me to since this is Phil's ushering month and he sits at the door throughout service.




























After church we all came home and had a nap (well, everyone but me had a nap). Phil's nap got cut a little short when Kyra got up and decided it was time for him to get up too. :) We went to Shari's for dinner around four thirty which was the perfect time as the restaurant was almost empty. Kyra was very patient at the restaurant and lots of fun even if her table manners still do leave something to be desired and Paige slept right through the meal while all the waitresses fawned over them. We had lemonade pie when we got home that I'd made during naptime (so easy and SOOO yummy) and Kyra "hunted" Easter eggs on the livingroom floor after she got her jammies on. She was more interested in figuring out how to open and close the eggs than picking them up, but she had fun!