Hellobee

Time is still moving at lightning speed over here! It has been a busy season in the Lion household!

Siblings

Little Lion has continued to warm up to the idea of being a big brother. He loves to try to help feed Baby Lion her bottles, and loves to bring her lovey blanket to her when I put her down for a nap. I did notice this month a little bit of jealousy starting to sprout up. There’s an occasional, “NO Baby Lion!” when I sit down to feed her because he wants me to play with him instead, but these moments are, thankfully, not the norm.

Schedule

We still have a pretty loose schedule, though now that BL is a bit older we will probably be working toward a more steady schedule during the next few months. LL usually wakes up somewhere between 6 and 6:30, but has to stay in his room until his “light turns green” on his stoplight alarm clock at 6:30. Lately BL has been waking really early, usually around 5, and then on some days isn’t falling back to sleep. On those days I usually put her in the stroller and head out for an early morning walk/run around the neighborhood so that she doesn’t wake up her brother. This is pretty brutal some days, but it’s actually kind of nice to get a little fresh air before our day really begins.

Early morning stroller time!

Once LL is up we have breakfast, then play for a while. I try to make sure BL can get her first nap of the day at home, and then after that we usually head out to meet friends, or go to the YMCA. LL has been going to a babysitter two days a week so that I can work some from home, but now that preschool started he will be doing that two days a week instead.

After our morning outing it’s lunch/naptime. Fortunately they still typically have a nap at the same time. LL sleeps 2.5-3 hours, and BL sleeps for about an hour and a half. This gives me some solo time with BL and some rest time or work time for myself.

Once the kiddos are both up we try to play outside or go for a walk until Mr. Lion gets home, but sometimes we just hang around the house while I cook dinner. Bedtime for BL depends on whether or not she takes a late afternoon nap. No nap means bedtime around 6:30. If she does take a late nap, she goes to bed at the same time as LL, around 7:30.

Teaching his sister all about cars

Eating

LL is still far from what I would call an adventurous eater these days. Many times he eats less than 3 bites of whatever we serve, but seems perfectly content to go about his business with far less to eat than I would expect. I did talk to his pediatrician about this, but he doesn’t seem concerned. As long as he continues to stay on his weight curve and is healthy we will just continue to offer healthy options and let him eat when he is hungry.

As I wrote about previously, I decided a couple months ago to stop breastfeeding. We had a little bit of a rough transition to formula, as BL had a bad reaction to the formula we chose. Once we switched her over to a sensitive formula (we tried Similac first and then switched to the generic version from Sam’s Club), she stopped having the gas pains that were making her very uncomfortable. She is doing very well on the formula now, and has even stopped spitting up (though I am sure that is just a result of a more mature tummy, and not from the formula itself).

Now that BL is 6 months old we are easing in to Baby Led Weaning. She has no interest at all so far in picking up food and putting it in her mouth. We have held out large chunks of banana and sweet potato for her to lick/taste to see her reaction and generate some interest, but so far she doesn’t really care and we aren’t pushing it. She sits at the table with us for dinner (as long as she isn’t napping), and I am sure it is only a matter of time before she is ready. Hopefully I will have lots more to report in a few months!

Sleeping

LL’s sleep has finally FINALLY evened out a bit. His wake up time is much more consistent, and he doesn’t seem quite as prone to getting overtired as he used to be. We still have to be pretty fanatical about making sure he gets to bed on time, and I am pretty sure he will be napping until he is 12 (ha, right), but overall his sleep is pretty good.

BL has had a rough week or so with sleep, but I think that is because she is getting her two bottom teeth and was a little sick at the same time. Overall (this week excluded) she typically wakes up once during the night to eat, and then wakes around 5 am. Sometimes we can feed her at 5 and she will go back to sleep until 6:30, but sometimes she is ready to play. I think it is time to adjust her naps a bit and let her fuss a little during the night before rushing in, but I am still so nervous that she will wake up LL if I let her fuss too long. As of right now she is taking 3-4 naps. Usually two of them are about 1.5 hours and the other two are about 45 minutes. I would like to get her to stretch her awake time just a bit so that she is taking just the two long naps and one 45 minute late afternoon nap. Hopefully in the next month or so this will work itself out a bit as we work toward a more steady daytime schedule. We did have a solid week of her sleeping through the night without needing to eat before the teething started, so I know there is hope!

Milestones

BL has become an excellent roller and no longer hates tummy time. She isn’t sitting on her own yet, but she is getting stronger every day and sits pretty well with support. She spins and scoots backward a bit when on her tummy, especially if there is a toy just out of reach. It’s amazing to me that pretty soon she is going to be mobile!

LL has been working on potty training too! That’s a post all in itself, but overall it has gone relatively smoothly. With the exception of night time, we are diaper free!

Adventures

This has been a really busy season for us! In June we went on our first day trip to the beach and took an unexpected trip up north (about 14 hours travel time each way) to see my grandfather shortly before he passed away. In July we took trips to see my dad (about 2 hours away) and Mr. Lion’s parents and grandmothers (about 5 hours away). Then in August we went on a 9 day road trip through New England to see many places we have never been and attend the wedding of one of my cousins. This trip included staying in 7 different places, and about 48 hours in the car.

BL loves her Nana  |  Sunrise on Cadillac Mountain  |   Loving the ocean, just like his momma!

 
Hiking in Acadia National Park  |  Checking out the giant boot in Freeport, Maine  |  Looking at “feeshies” at the New England Aquarium in Boston  |  Changing tires at the Please Touch museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Road trip picnic, somewhere in Virginia

Lake front near Bar Harbor, Maine

Now that I see all of that written down, it is a miracle that we still have any sort of routine at all! It was a lot of fun, but traveling with two really young kids is a lot of work and very exhausting! They say that once you have kids, you are no longer moderately happy…that you experience times of being much more happy, and much less happy than you were before kids. This has always been true for me, and when traveling it is magnified a million times. Traveling with kids is h.a.r.d. and the lows can be so low. But the highs are so high that it makes it all worth it. We are choosing to just remember the good parts! (Not pictured: 4:30 am wake ups, tantrums, seasickness, more tantrums, and an endless loop of “The Little Einsteins Huge Adventure” DVD which played in the back seat the entire trip).

That said, we will probably be staying home for the next few months. We are all traveled out…for now anyway!