A Letter to Elise at 3 Months

My precious girl, how I love you and your sweet smiles! This month has come with bigger smiles, more coos, better sleep, and so much happiness! I'm starting to feel rested which is nice. You interact more which your brother absolutely loves! My favorite times of day are when you are awake, we're at home, and we can all play together. Carter loves hiding and having you find him. If I find him he'll tell me, "No, sissy find Carter!" I carry you to where he is and hold you so you are peeking over at him. He giggles every time. He also loves holding your hand, giving you your pacifier, holding you, rocking you, singing to you, and shoving things in your hands so you can feel them. I made the mistake of leaving you in the living room with him while I switched laundry over. I heard you grunting and went running back in to find Carter laying on the ground rolling you onto his chest. You were fine, just not too pleased that he rolled you around. You are so freakin tough! Carter will roll you around or accidentally bump you with a toy and you hardly cry at all. He rolled over and slapped you in the face one day and you didn't even cry. You just gave him the stink eye. I'd say that is going to suit you well throughout your childhood as a little sister!

Carter is all about you right now and loves everything you do except cry, he hates it when you cry. At the beginning of the month he went through a jealous patch for a couple of weeks where he didn't want me holding you pretty much ever. I'd take a nap with you on my chest at naptime but when I heard him wake up I'd sneak you into the Pack N Play so he wouldn't know. I think how much you love him helped him kick the jealousy to the curb. You always smile for him and almost always stop crying when he soothes you. When you see his face you give him the biggest, goofiest gummy grins. Whenever he's around you track him and watch him with interest. He asks to pet you and then sweetly rubs your head or your belly, it cracks me up!

You are so sociable and it's the best! When you are crying and hear my voice you instantly get quiet and listen to figure out where I am. You'll turn your head to locate me. It's so sweet. Any time you're awake and look up to see me, you smile. You do this giant open mouthed smile with your tongue moving around which has me convinced you will laugh soon. You even make noises while you are doing your big smile that sound like the start of a laugh that just can't quite get going. You make adorable little noises and coo, mostly when you're looking at someone's face. My favorite sound you make is goo. If I repeat back to you the noises you make you get really excited and continue talking. If I stick my tongue out at you, you mimick me and stick yours out at me. You also really like to blow bubbles with your spit which Carter thinks is hilarious! When you have your pacifier you will actually spit it out to smile. Sometimes you'll just lazily let it fall out of your mouth and still suck the very tip of it while smiling and hamming it up! Something else funny with your pacifier is that sometimes when we put it in your mouth you make choking sounds like it's being rammed down your throat. It cracks me up every time!

Before you were born I totally thought your nickname would be Ellie Kay. Then you arrived and I spent pretty much the entire first month of your life calling you sissy. Sometimes I even call you Sissy Lee on accident, I think because my mom calls me Bissy Lee. This month I've been calling you mostly Elisey Leesers, Leesey Leesers, or Leesey Leese. I have a song I sing that Carter loves to dance to which goes like this:

Elisey Leesers,

Leese, Leese, Leese.

Elisey Leesers,

Leese, Leese, Leese

Leesey Leesers, Leesey Leesers

Leesey Leesers, 

Leese, Leese, Leese 

You move around a lot, especially when you are working on putting yourself to sleep. You roll to your side quite frequently and often sleep on your side. You haven't rolled all the way over much, but I think that has more to do with not getting enough practice than not being ready. You'll get almost rolled over and start crying so Carter comes to the rescue rolling you the rest of the way, sometimes even by pushing your head. Like I said, he's not super gentle! You've rolled from back to stomach when propped up on a pillow a couple of times. You push yourself around a lot with your legs and will push yourself around until you've moved 90 degrees. Your legs are so strong! You like to kick off the side of the bathtub and also like to stand. If we put you up on your legs you push yourself up and bear weight on your legs, often times even on your tippy toes!

Speaking of bathtime, some days you hate it and cry the entire time. Other days you love it kicking and splashing around, not crying until I get you out and you're cold. I've discovered you prefer taking a bath with your brother. If I give you a quick bath before his by yourself it's hit or miss whether you cry. If you take a bath with Carter you don't cry at all. So we've been doing your baths with him. It still makes me a little nervous due to the incident a while back when he poured water on your face but he's been so good with you ever since!

Man are you determined! You just keep working and working until you get what you want. You suck your fist and sometimes your thumb. You grasp things like toys and rattles. Carter loves to hand you leaves for you to grab and feel when we're outside. You like to play with your hands and move around a lot. When you are on the floor or in your bouncer your legs and arms are going pretty much the entire time!

Now to talk about the big one, nighttime sleep! You've come so far this month. You always have a long stretch of sleep first thing at night, going 4-4.5 hours. Your longest stretch was 5.5 hours and it was crazy awesome! I'm talking last feeding at 10 pm and then sleeping until 2 or 3 most nights. Before you'd have one long stretch and then only sleep for 2 hours at a time after that. Now you typically have 2 long stretches at night, only waking 1 or 2 times a night. You are still sleeping in our room in the Pack N Play. I figure I'll just know when it's time to switch you to the crib in your room. I just haven't felt the need to do that yet. I like having you in our room so I wake up to you grunting and moving around before you even wake up and cry. You go to sleep so well. I just lay you down whether you're asleep already, partially asleep, or seemingly wide awake and you put yourself to sleep wonderfully. We had to sleep train your brother and it was horrible. I'm so glad we haven't had to do that with you! You will sleep in your crib. One night I even had you asleep in your crib and Carter in his bed at 8 pm when your daddy got home from running an errand. It didn't last long as you woke up. You don't go down for the night until 10 or 11. I've tried putting you down at 8 and you'll sleep for a while but are always up again for your witching hour. Starting at 9 pm pretty much on the dot you get almost colicky, crying and crying. It is so hard to soothe you and it seems like what works one night never works the next. Some days daddy gets you soothed some days I do. It's always a toss up for who and what will work. It can be frustrating and seems to me that you are overtired but will wake up from being asleep to do it so who knows. Rather than put you to bed with Carter we just hold you and let you snuggle on our chests until we go to bed. It's lovely but I know we'll have to transition away from that soon.

You do such a great job of napping on the go! We go on a playdate or outing every morning and you sleep the whole time most days. Normally you wake up right before lunchtime so I can nurse you before making Carter and my food. A lot of the time you are awake for part of Carter's naptime. I love getting to play with you and have some one-on-one time with you! While you nap during Carter's naptime I lay you on my chest to sleep. Then when I lay down for a short nap we sleep together. It is so nice to have snuggle time just the 2 of us! You usually wake up a little bit before Carter which works out great because I can nurse you before he wakes up. Your longest awake stretch is usually after naptime during dinner while daddy's home. If we're home and you nap in your crib Carter loves watching you on the monitor and will say, "I check on sissy!"

Clothing wise you now wear 3 month and 3-6 month clothes with a few 0-3 month items still in the mix. You have a ton of 3 month clothes. So much so I had to rearrange your dresser drawers to get it all to fit! I hope you wear them for a while. All of your outfits are just so cute! Carter enjoys it when you wear something that he also wore. I'll pull up a picture of him in it so he can see it. It's crazy to me because you look so much like him but at the same time nothing like him! You wear size 1 diapers at night. I've switched to cloth diapers during the day. Our Bum Genius diapers work great but the Alva baby diapers are still too big around your legs so you have accidents in them. I weighed you and measured you at home so it's not super accurate and I don't have percentiles. I had you at 11.4 pounds and 26 inches.

Elise, I love you so much! I'm so grateful to spend every day with you! At this point with Carter I was back at work and it was so hard! I'm so glad I have the opportunity to snuggle with you during the day and nurse you for all of your meals. I've only pumped a few times so I could go on a date with daddy or volunteer at a charity event. You are a good girl and take a bottle but I know you prefer to nurse and the crazy thing is that you eat faster nursing! You are an efficient eater taking on average 3 minutes per side to eat! I can't believe you are already a quarter of a year old! I love you so much and feel so lucky to have another month of all day cooing, snuggling, nursing, and love with you!

Now on to Daddy:

Three months old already, its so hard to believe! It is fun watching you grow in all of these different ways. You have recently started being very liberal with your smiles and it is so fun to make you smile. You have attempted to laugh several times, but are just not quite there yet.

Soon you will be, and then it will be onto the next mile stone! Your brother is still very much smitten with you, and I am sure will be for years to come. You two will have so much fun running around and playing together.

We have also noticed that you are much gentler with Harper, more willing to pet and touch, not grab and pull! Carter tugged and pulled her fur from almost the get go! I am sure Harper will appreciate that. Skippy has made it clear that he prefers non mobile children such as babies, and will allow you to push on him and lay next to him when I am holding you.

You are such a happy girl, and I cannot wait to see you grow into the next stage of life, and see what kind of sweet little girl you will be!

Love you!

Weekly Learning Theme: Fathers

With Father's Day on Sunday I wanted to devote a week of learning to fathers just like we had mothers before Mother's Day. When we learned about mothers we talked a lot about animal mothers. I felt weird talking about myself so we didn't make a big deal over me being a mother. I didn't have that going on with Father's Day so we talked a lot about Ty. I really enjoyed talking up Father's Day so Carter would really show his daddy some love!

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks.  I have updated our objectives from the original ones we focused on because Carter mastered those skills.  I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives.  Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually.  I feel we're ready for an update to these objectives so I'll look into what Carter should be doing by 3 years old and choose some new objectives for us by our next learning theme.  The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

1. Take turns in a simple game.
2. Understand the meaning of mine, his, hers.
3. Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).  
4. String beads or other objects.
5. Count to 3 and understand what the numbers mean.  

Activities/Movement:

• Since we celebrate our dads as well as our grandpas, I printed pictures of Carter's daddy, Opa, and Gpa. I picked a picture of each of them with Carter. I had Carter sort the pictures based on who it was. He loved that he was in it, but thought it was super easy! Then we counted how many pictures of each person we had.
  
  
• The next activity Leina helped me out with. I had a baby picture and an adult picture (obviously) of Ty but I wanted a child and a teenage picture as well. I called asking for them and she sent them moments later! I showed Carter the pictures and told him they were all of daddy. I asked him to put them in order from youngest to oldest. He did it so quickly and easily, I was shocked! He said the baby picture looked like sissy. I asked him if the big boy picture looked like him and he said no! 
  
  
• Using the same animal cards we used during the Mother's Day week Carter matched baby animals with their dadies. I started with a group of 4 animals and worked up to a group of 7. I made it more challenging putting the lion and tiger in the same group so Carter really had to pay attention but I didn't trick him at all! Once he'd matched up all the animals I pulled out the hen, duck, and lion which I had pulled to the side as the male and female animal looks different. I pulled up a picture of the male animal and compared it to the female on the card. We talked about how they looked the same and how they looked different. A few days later we were reading a book with a duck character. Carter looked at it closely and said, "Duck is boy, has green head." I was impressed again!
  
  
  
  
  
• We also researched how different animal daddies care for their babies. We learned some don't do much with their babies while others are very involved. We talked about what Ty does to care for Carter. Then we watched some videos about animal dads on youtube that were clips from an Animal Planet show. We found them under "Ultimate Animal Dads". I let Carter pick 3 animals from the ones I read him to learn more about.

• We went through magazines, cutting out pictures of dads. Carter helped me glue our pictures to paper plates. We made 4 plates. One with just one picture on it, another with 2, and so on. When we were finished we counted the dads on the plates and then put the plates in numerical order.
  
  
  

• I took Carter to the store to pick out a gift for Ty. I explained why we were getting him a gift and asked Carter what he wanted to get him. He said he wanted to get him a motorcycle so we went to the toy aisle and I pulled down all the motorcycle toys. Carter pointed at one and said it was for daddy. Then he pointed at another one saying it was for Carter so they could play together. I thought it was cute so we got them both. Then I told Carter we also needed to get daddy something he needed. We went to the clothing section and I had Carter pick out a pair of running shorts for daddy.

Carter picking out a pair of running shorts for daddy.

• As a special Father's Day treat for daddy Carter sat down with me and answered a list of questions about is daddy. Read his answers here.

Craft:

• We made a craft for Ty and all of Carter's grandpas using one of his handprints and one of Elise's. We put their handprints upside down and then I wrote "You are the best dad/Opa/Gpa hands down! 
  
• For Ty we made an adorable footprint craft. I traced Ty's shoes on construction paper and cut them out. Then I painted and stamped Elise's footprint in one and Carter's in the other. I glued them both to a sheet of paper and wrote "We hope someday to fill your shoes!"
  
  
  

Special Snack:

• I told Carter we were going to make a special treat for daddy. When I asked him what he wanted to make he said muffins. I asked him what kind and he said green muffins. I figured we'd make some muffins and just dye them green but then figured I might be able to find a recipe for green muffins, turning to the Internet. I found a recipe for spinach muffins here. Ty went out with my dad and Jeremy to pick some things up for a project he was working on so Carter and I got started on our surprise. When the muffins were finished he served them in the other room saying, "Happy Father's Day!"

Carrying a muffin into the living room to serve to his daddy.

Serving his daddy.

Serving his Opa.

Enjoying a muffin of his own with daddy.

Make Believe:

• We read about male penguins and male seahorses and how they care for their babies. We then watched a short clip of a male penguin caring for his egg, balancing it on his feet. I pretended to be a penguin balancing a small basketball on my feet as an egg, then had Carter's duck puppet hatch out of the egg and I cared for it. Carter didn't want to act it out so he put his egg between Harper's legs and acted it out with Harper as a penguin. Then we watched a video of a male seahorse giving birth and I took Carter's tub of small animals, put then by my stomach and sprayed them out. He did want to act that one out throwing the animals all over.

  

  Harper caring for her egg as a male penguin.

  

  Harper's egg hatching.

Songs:

• We sang an adorable song to the tune of Bingo that I found here. It went like this:

There was a man who had a child

And daddy was his name-o

D-A-D-D-Y

D-A-D-D-Y

D-A-D-D-Y

And Daddy was his name-o!

• We also sang a song that went to the tune of Where Is Thumbkin?. Here are the lyrics:

Daddy is special. 

Daddy is special.

Yes, he is.

Yes, he is.

Daddy is so special.

Daddy is so special.

I love him!

I love him!

Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

• We went to the Botanic Garden where they had a special craft for kids to make for their dads. Carter decorated a container and then planted grass seeds. The container has eyes, a nose, and a mouth to look like a head so when the grass sprouts it will look like hair.
  
  

• On Father's Day Ty took Carter on a special daddy date. They went out for breakfast, going to a nearby doughnut shop. Carter was so sweet, picking out doughnut holes to bring home to me and not eating a single one until he'd given them to me and asked if I'd share.

Carter and Ty ready to head out for their daddy-son date.

Books:

• Grandfather and I by Helen E. Buckley
• Me and My Dad by Alison Ritchie
• A Perfect Father's Day by Eve Bunting
• Animals and Their Young by Pamela M. Hickman
• Father's Day by Anne F. Rockwell
• A Perfect Father's Day by Eve Bunting
• I Love My Daddy by Giles Andeae
• I Love My Daddy by Sebastian Braun
• Kisses for Daddy by Frances Watt
• Father's Day by Ann Heinrichs
• Froggy's Day with Dad by Jonathan London
• I Love My Daddy Because by Laurel Porter-Gaylord
• Just Me and My Dad by Mercer Mayer
• Mighty Dads by Joan Holub
• Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
• My Father's Hands by Joanne Ryder
• Daddy All Day Long by Francesca Rusackas
• If I Were Your Father by Margaret Park Bridges
• Father Bear's Special Day by Else Holmelund Minarik
• My Dad by Anthony Browne
• What Dads Can't Do by Douglas Wood
• I Like It When... by Mary Murphy
• I Love You, Little Monkey by Alan Durant
• The Tub People by Pam Conrad
• More More More Said the Baby by Vera B. Williams
• I Already Know I Love You by Billy Crystal

What Carter Says About His Daddy

After having Carter answer the questions about me for a special post that we'll do each year around Mother's Day, I decided to surprise Ty for Father's Day by asking Carter the same questions about him.  I was shocked that some of his answers were similar even though I asked him the questions over a week apart. As an early Father's Day present, here are Carter's answers to the questions about his daddy!

Here are Carter's answers from June 12, 2015 at almost 2.5 years old:

What is something dad always says to you?
No

What makes your dad happy?
Motorcycle sounds

What makes your dad sad?
Hit him

How does your dad make you laugh?
Motorcycle house

What was your dad like as a child?
Motorcycle

How old is your dad?
2

How tall is your dad?
Bigger

What is your dad's favorite thing to do?
Motorcycle house

What does your dad do when you're not around?
Walk

If your dad becomes famous, what will it be for?
Ah, darn it!

What is your dad really good at?
Carry Carter high!

What is your dad not very good at?
Nope

What does your dad do for a job?
Work, runs (I think he said runs because Ty runs on his way home from work so Carter knows daddy works and then runs before he comes home in the evening).

What is your dad's favorite food?
Mac and cheese

What makes you proud of your dad?
Yes, Carter say, yes!

If your dad were a character who would he be?
Elephant too (pointing to an elephant in a book)

What do you and your dad do together?
Go play cars

How are you and your dad the same?
Carter, sissy, Harper, daddy.  Carter like them both.

How are you and your dad different?
Somethin in Carter's shirt.

How do you know your dad loves you?
Crash into cars.

What does your dad like most about your mom?
Her socks (I can't believe he said the same thing he did during our mommy questions!)

Where is your dad's favorite place to go?
Playground

How old was your dad when you were born?
Carter say no medicine for babies!