Hellobee

Somehow I blinked, and then realized that Baby Lion is already 3 months old! We are officially out of the newborn stage, and I am not quite sure how that happened so quickly! With Little Lion I blogged monthly about how he was changing, but I am not feeling quite so ambitious this time around. And in typical second child style, Baby Lion isn’t growing up in a vacuum, so our updates will have to include how things are going with big brother too.

Siblings

Somehow I hit the newborn jackpot, and have had two unbelievably easygoing newborns. Baby Lion is sweet as can be, and we are finding our groove as a family of four! Little Lion is adjusting well, and is so very sweet with his baby sister. He loves to rock her rocking seat (a little too hard at times!) and gives her kisses. Sometimes he even lays next to her on her mat and shows her the toys.

For a while when we first brought her home he pretty much ignored her existence, although he could point her out if we asked him where she was, and if you asked who she was he could tell us. He is a little more involved now, running to give her “kiss kiss” when he hears her cry. He is also learning to drive his trucks “swow” instead of fast in the hallway when she is sleeping.

Schedule

Thankfully, Baby Lion is not quite as high maintenance when it comes to sleep as her brother was. She takes a couple long naps a day, and a couple shorter cat naps, although if she misses a nap she still remains pretty happy.

We have a pretty loose schedule at this point, but it works for us. We are all up for the day around 6, which is quickly followed by breakfast. We play a bit after that, and then BL goes down for her first nap of the day and LL and I play and do some chores.

When BL wakes up from her first nap, we usually leave the house to go to the YMCA to play or meet some friends at the park. By the time we get home it’s time for lunch and naptime for LL, and I get some solo time with BL before she takes her afternoon nap. Thankfully I am able to overlap their afternoon naps by about 2 hours, so I get a good chunk of rest time myself (wahoo!).

Once everyone is up from naps we usually play outside until Mr. Lion gets home around 5. Then we have dinner together (BL usually is napping or bouncing in her bouncer while we eat) and then play outside some more, go for a walk to the playground, or collapse on the couch to watch some cartoons with LL. Bedtime routine for BL starts at 6:45, LL at 7:00, and by 7:30 both kiddos are usually sound asleep (one perk of the very early wake up time I suppose!).

Eating

LL, who used to be a pretty adventurous eater, has pretty much zero appetite these days. He eats very little, and really doesn’t seem to mind. He is still gaining weight on his curve, so we aren’t too worried at this point. It could be his 2 year molars, which have been slowly starting to come in since about a month before BL was born (we have the slowest teether everrrrrr). We do still expect him to stay at the table with us at dinner time, even if he doesn’t eat anything. We are trying to just go with the flow and not worry too much about it. Since he is otherwise pretty healthy we are taking the wait and see approach.

Feeding BL could not be more different than my experience with LL. She has been nursing well since the beginning, although we did have to use a nipple shield for a while. She weaned herself off of that a few weeks ago, and we haven’t really needed to go back. She is a snacker, and often she wants to eat just a little bit at a time. This has been a source of some stress for me, because I constantly wonder if she is hungry, and feeding her every 1.5 hours is tough with a crazy toddler running around. But as she is getting older this seems to be settling down a bit (though we still have some tough days). We go back and forth between bottles and nursing, and she seems to do well with both, thankfully.

Sleeping

LL continues to be a finicky sleeper. He has always gone to bed easily, but every little change or milestone is cause for a disruption. After a long round of sickness when we first brought BL home we have adjusted to our new norm, which is about 10.5 hours of nighttime sleep and a 2.5 hour nap. We did some experimenting with shorter naps, earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, and so on…but it seems that he really needs the long nap during the day (probably to recover from the constant running, climbing and jumping) so his need for night time sleep is less. So for the forseeable future, our house will rise early.

Because of this we have set BL’s wake up time to be early as well. If she is still sleeping at 6:30 we wake her, so that she can have one solid at home nap every day before we leave the house. While I don’t want to constantly be tied to our home, I do want to protect a little bit of her sleeping time every day. When LL starts preschool in the fall we will have to rearrange things, but for now this works.

As of right now she takes a 1.5-2 hour nap in the early morning, then a shorter 1 hour nap later in the morning. She then takes a long afternoon nap (either 1.5-2 hours, or two shorter 45 minute naps with a little play time in between). We can sometimes get her to take a cat nap in the late afternoon, but often she is up from her 4:00 feeding until she goes to bed at 7. This seems like a really long stretch for her to be awake for her age, but she is usually  happy and still goes to bed easy at night, so we are rolling with it. Since she naps well during the earlier parts of the day, I trust that she is getting enough sleep. She sleeps from about 7:30 pm-3 am, when she wakes up to eat. After a quick 15 minute feeding she is back to sleep, and almost always stays that way until sometime between 6:00 and 6:30. We have had a few nights in the last few weeks where she wakes up twice, usually within an hour of each other. I think this may be gas or congestion related, and never lasts more than a night or two (thank goodness!).

Temperament

LL continues to be a happy, bubbly, full of life toddler. He is incredibly sweet and loves to talk to everyone he meets. We have our struggles, but the good far outweighs the bad, as long as I make sure he gets enough sleep. When he is overtired his personality completely changes, and it is no fun for anyone, especially for him.

BL is following in her brother’s footsteps in this area as well. She is an incredibly happy baby so far, and really is only fussy if she has an upset tummy or is hungry. It is very rare for her to be fussy outside of those two circumstances, and we are incredibly grateful. She is content to lay on a blanket watching the leaves and clouds, and loves her play mat too. She has the best smile, and we do all kinds of ridiculous things trying to get her to laugh at us.

Adventures

Last month we made the trip up to New York to visit my family. My dad and brother live closer to us, but much of my extended family is up north, so we wanted to make sure they got to meet BL fairly early on. Traveling with BL was completely uneventful. LL on the other hand was not so easy. This was completely our fault…we attempted driving during the night to try to maximize our drive time (it is an 8 hour drive without stopping) but we didn’t realize that LL’s new car seat was not as comfortable as his old seat for sleeping at night. He woke up screaming every 45 minutes the entire way up and back. It was pretty miserable. No more overnight driving for the Lion family! But overall the trip was great, and BL got to meet my three living grandparents, as well as my aunt, uncle, and cousins.

Mr. Lion and I were also very blessed to have the opportunity for our own adventure…our first one together in a very long time! We left the kiddos with a very close friend of mine and went camping at Cape Lookout National Seashore, which requires boarding a passenger ferry with all of your gear and walking until you find a location to camp. It was our first “real” adventure (ha, as if having 2 kids in 2 years isn’t enough adventure) since before I found out I was pregnant with LL, and it was very much needed! I know many people wouldn’t leave their baby so soon, but for me going away earlier proved to be easier with LL. And since BL has been such an easy baby, takes a bottle like a champ, and I had a pretty substantial freezer supply, we saw no reason not to jump at the opportunity. It was definitely the right decision. Life with two kiddos is busy and hectic, and we hadn’t really gotten a chance to have fun together in a very long time.

It has been a busy but amazing 3 months as a family of four! Here’s hoping the next 3 months is just as smooth, and maybe that time slows down just a little bit….it is going way too fast!