Halloween Fun! :)

This was the first year we decided to let A go trick or treating. In the apartment, there was really no where to go unless you went outside your own neighborhood, and she was so little, we'd have had to carry her the whole time anyways. But this year, we decided she was old enough and there are plenty of houses with kids around ours.

Hurricane Sandy gave us a rather windy, cold and rainy Halloween, but at least we got to go - it could be much worse, and our prayers go out to all those affected by that superstorm. Since it was so chilly outside, I had to make sure that A's wings would fit around her winter coat, and J and I decided that he would just take her down our road and the road next to ours. They were out about a half hour, and she has plenty of candy for an already energetic toddler.

This year, we dressed A up as her favorite Sesame Street character, Abby Cadabby the fairy. Mimi made her the skirt and the "Abby tail" pom poms. Pink, sparkly stretch pants and a pink turtle neck made up the rest of the costume, and we added a fairy wand and a pair of wings to complete the fairy look :) I think she looks pretty adorable :)

We, of course, did not take Kylar out trick or treating, but I did dress him up. Isn't he adorable? :D My little Tiger :) 

K's 1-month Photos

These are by no means professional shots... I just took a couple of him in his room. Special thanks to his Aunt Allie, who gave us the monthly stickers and adorable matching hat :) I can't wait to fill up a frame of his first year, month by month!

Twinkle Pink!

I had to write this down before I forgot, or she stopped doing it. Aria's favorite character in all of this world - besides Elmo - is Abby-Cadabby, also from Sesame Street. She has the little doll, and is even going to be her for Halloween tomorrow. Abby's show on Sesame Street, Abby's Flying Fairy School, is really geared towards kids A-bug's age, and teaches them basic logic skills. One of the phrases they say all the time is "Twinkle Think!" whenever they face a particularly puzzling problem. Now, whenever A is playing with her Abby doll, costume or doing anything with her ABC's she says "twinkle pink! twinkle pink!" - it's like her 2 favorite things combined: Abby and her favorite color, pink. It's so cute, I hope to catch it on video soon. If I can't, I hope I don't forget the cuteness of the way she says it :)

One Month... Already?!

Today, my baby boy is 1 month old. Already. Crazy talk. This past month, I have been reminded of what extreme sleep deprivation is all about, how much newborn spit up and how much money I will be saving by nursing this baby instead of using formula. I've also learned for the first time what it's like to really cuddle with a baby... A-bug was never really into that. I've learned that Gripe Water really does work for some kids, just not A. I have come to appreciate nap time on a much higher level than ever before. I have gained a whole other skill level when it comes to multi-tasking. I have eaten more leftovers than food prepared that day (and thank you VERY MUCH to everyone who was a part of bring food to my fridge.)

I have also learned that it is indeed possible to love your second child as much as your first, and that your heart doesn't run out of room. I have watched some of the most adorable moments happen between A and K, and I'll always treasure those nightly kisses she gives him. I have been reminded of how wonderful a feeling it is to watch your new baby carefully studying your face and cooing at you. And there's never so much cuteness as when a newborn yawns and stretches out that teeny-tiny neck, scrunches up his little wrinkly face and momentarily turns himself into ET :) 

Here is some of the adorable-ness that's gone on in our household in the past month :)

Getting kisses from his big sister :)

All dressed up for his first trip to Grandma and Papa's :)

4 generations! Plus Uncle Mike :) 

Chilling outside during the October Indian Summer

I'll never get over those dimples

Sacked out in his Flannel Hoody - just like daddy :)

Piled up in all the blankets :)

I just love this little face :)

Such big eyes :)

Serious Sleep Deprivation

Overall, Baby K is a wonderful baby. He eats really well and is incredibly laid back, which is a welcome change from when A-bug was a baby. The one major issue we're dealing with right now, however, is the fact that his days and nights are still mixed up. This isn't an issue every night, but about every other. He's not even always bad, either - he's just awake. And awake infants aren't fold of laying in the dark doing nothing. They like attention. And while I love my son more than anything, I'm not the best attention-giver at 3am.

Last night, however, he was a totally different child. He was screaming and fussing all. night. long. As soon as he would calm down for a few minutes from eating, he would get the hiccups, or have a dirty diaper, or spit up. It was just one thing after another, and if he did get quiet for longer than 30 seconds and I laid him down to sleep, he would immediately wake up as soon as I turned the lights out and start screaming again. It was a fun night.

As difficult of a infant as A was, the one thing I could count on was that she would sleep at night. I'm not sure how to go about getting K's  nights back on schedule. I had thought that keeping the lights on during the day, and not tip toe-ing around him would help get him on a better days/nights schedule. I have tried waking him up, but once this child is asleep, there is no changing his mind. I have changed his diaper while he stayed asleep before. If he wants to sleep, he's gonna sleep. And at night, if he doesn't want to sleep, he's not going to. It doesn't matter that we keep it dark at night and it's considerably quieter after Aria falls asleep. To him, that signals the time to wake up, not the other way around. All that to say, I am fresh out of ideas of how to train this child to sleep at night and not during the day. Anyone else deal with this issue? I hear it's rather common. If we don't do something about this soon, I'm going to lose my mind.

"Don't forget me!"

I think one of the biggest struggles for me - and maybe any mom will a new second child - is making sure that my oldest is still getting some one-on-one time with mommy. I psoted before about how we let her spend a couple weekends at my parents, partially as a special treat and partially to let me settle in with baby K. And she loved that - it really was special. But I still worry about her feeling neglected here at home. Before the new baby came, everything was all about her - she was more than just "my job" - she was my life. Everything I did pretty much revolved around her. Now, things aren't like that. She's still one of the most important things in my life, and I still spend lots of time taking care of her needs and wants. But now there's a 3rd person in the mix, and I get the feeling that as much as loves on and kisses on her new baby brother, she somewhat resents not getting all the attention anymore. 

Now, don't get me wrong; there are a lot of benefits to not giving one child all of your attention. We've all heard about the cliche only child, who's spoiled and doesn't know how to share or play with others. This is not what you want for your child, and that's part of the reason we wanted another child "so soon" (according to some people) - because we wanted Aria to learn that the world does not revolve around her. And so far, she's doing very well with that fact. More to come on that in a later post.

Anyways, I was feeling guilty about not spending as much time with her. She gets sad when I'm sitting there nursing the baby and she can't climb in my lap. She doesn't like it when she has to be quiet because the baby is sleeping, and she's never had to be quiet in our house before. :) And I'm sad I can't spend as much time playing with her as I used to. So on Sunday night, I decided to make a "mommy - A-bug date" out of an ordinary grocery run. As many of my regular-type readers know, A loves her some Meijer shopping. She always has. It also helps that there's always the thrill of riding the penny horse at the end of the shopping trip. We had fun zipping around the aisles looking for a couple random items; saying "weeeee!" with a toddler in your cart is always a surefire way to get a big smile outta your little one. :) After checking out and riding Sandy, the penny horse, we stopped by Wendy's for a frosty and "booger cheese" (cheeseburger.) Because we really didn't have anywhere else to be that night, I decided to "eat in" with her and her happy meal, and we had a great time chilling while she chowed down on her burger and frosty. She and I "chatted" and she amused half the restaurant by yelling "Go Tigers! Yay!" when a guy in a Tigers' hoodie walked by. 

It really wasn't a big deal of a date; Meijer and Wendy's really aren't all that special or out of my way, but to A, it was some much-needed alone time with mommy. No baby brother to be taking up mommy's arms or time, no screaming to make her nervous, none of us telling her to be careful around baby K's bouncy seat. Just me and her.

Riding the horsey at Meijer.
She was actually a lot more excited than she looks lol.

Working on her burger and Frosty.
With those 2 favorite things around,
she didn't even touch the fries lol.

It's never easy to pull yourself away from your newborn, but if you have older kids, it's pretty important to let them know that they're still pretty important. 

My Hungry Little Monster

And no, the title doesn't refer to K, although he does eat like a horse. Actually, I'm referring to A-bug, who seems to think that the kitchen is her own personal buffet as of late. Now, she's always loved to eat - that's never been a debate. But she's never eaten this much, even during growing spurts. She had eaten 3 full meals by 3 pm today, and that's not including all the food she asked for that I wouldn't give her. I honestly think if I would let her, she'd eat her own weight in peanut butter. She's also figured out that she can now open the refrigerator, which has been an endless source of pain in my rear. Thank goodness all the drawers and shelves are out of her reach because we have a bottom-mounted freezer.

I'm wondering if this frequent snacking/food inhalation has anything to do with the fact that she sees baby K eating all the time, and she wants in on the fun. I've noticed that she is particularly susceptible to hunger right when I sit down to feed him. This is especially inconvenient since I'm nursing him... very difficult to nurse and make a peanut butter sandwich at the same time.

How do you approach a kid who wants to eat constantly? Do you feed them whenever they want, despite what they've eaten already or what time it is? How much is enough? A isn't in any danger of being obese by any stretch of the imagination, but we are in danger of going broke if she doesn't slow down on the peanut butter... 

"YAY FOOD TIME!"

A-bug's Trips to Mimi and Grandpa's

Like I mentioned before, A has been spending a lot of time with my parents, so I can settle into a schedule with K, or at least attempt to. He's been mostly uncooperative in the scheduling department, but what can you do? :) She loves going to their house because not only is Mimi her favorite person in all of this world, (you think I'm kidding. I am not) but she also gets to play with different toys, read different books and go to school with my mom, where she hangs out in the nursery with 2 other kids her age. Since she rarely gets to see and play with kids her age, she thinks this is awesome, and I'm happy that she's getting some socialization. More so than I am, actually....

Anyways, these are a few shots of her wonderful life at her grandparents' house. 

On her way to "school" with Elmo
by her side :) 

Playing the piano with Grandpa

Riding the horsey that used to be
mine and my brothers. :)

Reading books with Grandpa

She found her princess crown :)

Settling in with Baby K

I have to admit, I have it relatively easy when it comes to settling in with a new baby. My wonderful mother has been keeping A-bug on and off since K was born, or has been staying at our house. J also took the entire week right after he was born off from work, so I had a TON of help the first week. Even this week, since A has been with her Mimi and K sleeps constantly, things haven't been bad. Tomorrow will be my first full day with both of them and just me. 2 against 1. We'll see how it goes. 

But even with all the help in the world, there are adjustments that any household has to make when a new baby comes along. We also had lots of little things to finish up after we got home from the hospital, since we weren't expecting our little man to come along for another couple of weeks. So J finished putting up his shelves, we finished unpacking his clothes, discovered we had no where near enough diapers for this little pooping machine, and bought some more warm sleepers. A was always such a hot baby that we never put her in fleece until it was the dead of winter. K gets cold much easier than she did, so we have to get him more warm clothes than we had realized. 

So far, he's been a much easier baby than A-bug was. Long-time readers may or may not remember the long-term battle we had with her severe acid reflux. She had a hard time relaxing, was a terrible eater, and couldn't ever calm herself down enough to sleep well. We mostly lost our sanity and knew that we couldn't handle something like that again. Fortunately, this little man is just an eating, sleeping and pooping machine. I kid you not, that's all he does. And he does all 3 frequently. He rarely cries, and only occasionally fusses when he's hungry. The only difficulty we've had so far is that his days and nights seem to be mixed up, especially the hours of midnight till 2-3am. None of us are getting much sleep during those hours. He has no issues sleeping all day long, however, and we're working hard to train him that light time = awake time, and vice versa. He is getting better, but I'm still looking forward to going to bed before 2am sometime in the near future. 

As I wrote in the previous post, A is just crazy about him. She loves kissing the top of his head and patting his hands. She's still confused as to why he doesn't talk back to her, but I think she'll get the point eventually. So far, her shrieks, squeals and cries haven't bothered him in the least - he can sleep right through them all. She's a little more wary of his fusses and cries, however. It makes  her very nervous when he cries, and sometimes she'll join in if the fussing goes on for an extended period of time. She also loves riding in the car with him because she can see his face, and he's a captive audience to her chatting and singing. 

Here are a couple more shots of life at home, Week 2 with Mr. K. 

All dressed up to go to Grandma's for the first time!

Sleeping...

more sleeping....

sleeping again....

Aria loving his "leetle lips" lol

Smiling in his sleep... check out those dimples :)

Hanging out with daddy

Great-papa Wardell, daddy and baby K

Wardell great-grandparents meeting their first Wardell GGson 

Little Miss A Meets Mr. K

As many of my readers know, there's only been one thing that has caused me great anxiety over the past couple months of my pregnancy, and that is how A is going to react to having K around. Getting used to a bump on mommy's belly is much different than getting used to a new baby brother. At least, in my experience, that's been the case. I remember when my baby brother was born - I was not a happy customer.  And I didn't want that to be the case with A and K. I recently had several friends have their second child, and I was loving all the loving sibling pictures popping up on Facebook of the big brother or sister giving sweet kisses to the new baby. That's what I wanted.

K was born on Sunday morning, and A was coming by to meet him after going to church with her grandparents. All day, I was wondering if she was going to know who he was and how she was going to react. Thus, I could not have been more thrilled when she walked into the room, pointed to the little baby bundle sitting on my lap and squealed "baby Ky-Ky!" After running around and giving everyone else there hugs and kisses, she crawled right up into my lap to explore what this new baby looked like. She very gingerly patted his head, saying, "Nice baby. Good baby." And then, a moment I will never forget that still brings tears to my eyes; she leaned over, kissed his sleepy head and whispered, "lub you, baby Ky-Ky. Night-night."

A few days later, we were letting her touch him for the first time other than the occasional pat on the head. She was gingerly running her little toddler fingers over his mostly nonexistent eyebrows, chubby little cheeks and perfect little mouth. With each facial feature, she said "eyes, cheeks, 'leetle mouf'" etc. But when she got to his nose, she reached out, pinched it and said "BEEP BEEP!" and giggled. I laughed so hard; K was not so much impressed with getting his nose BEEP'ed. We gently informed her between giggles that baby Ky-Ky was not quite old enough to get his nose BEEP'ed because it was a "big girl" thing, and he needed to get a little bit older. She hasn't done it again since, but judging by the look on her face when she's talking to him, she is definitely thinking about it. I'm sure it's only the first of many times she'll annoy him and thus, entertain us to no end.

Now, every time she walks in the door, wakes up from a nap or just feels like making her presence known, she announces, "Mommy, Daddy - I here! Hi, baby Ky-Ky!" At night, when she's giving everyone kisses, she won't go to her room till she's kissed his little head and said, "Night-night, baby Ky-ky. I lub you." Sometimes she'll end with "see dweems" (sweet dreams) or "be good." She never ceases to amaze me with her cuteness and sweetness. I'm sure all this sibling love won't last forever, but I'm certainly enjoying how this has been going so far. I can't wait to see all the new things she's going to teach him :)

TA-DA! He's here! :)

"Hi, bebe! Hi!"

First ever family photo of all 4 of us :)

The Arrival of Mr. K

As many of you may (or may not, who knows?) already know, the long-awaited Mr. K has made his appearance on this earth. His arrival was quite unexpected and quick, so we've needed a couple extra days to settle in and get things done than I had previously planned on, but I'm finally getting the chance to sit down and blog. I'll keep the gruesome details to a minimum... ok, so it really wasn't that gruesome. In fact, things went incredibly smooth, all things considering. I mean, it is labor... I don't think anyone actually enjoys the experience. But really, things couldn't have gone better.

So here's Mr. K's birth story.... We were hanging out with J's brother and sister-in-law on Saturday night. We were going to have one last bonfire before the weather got too cold, drink cider and eat caramel apples. My mom and I had recently spent hours cleaning out and unpacking our basement, so I decided to show off all our hard work to my sister-in-law. While we were standing in admiring the fact that we could see the floor, my water broke. This caught me totally off guard, since with A, my water didn't break until about 1/2 hour before she was born. I ran up to the bathroom to confirm that this was indeed what had happened, and make sure I wasn't actually suffering from acute and severe incontinence. Not surprisingly, it was the former. 

I'm very thankful that our family happened to be there, because it really helped to have someone entertain A while we got everything packed up and ready to go. At this point, we were quite certain we would not be coming back without our 4th member of the family. We had already made arrangements for A to go to my in-laws when I went into labor, and she was dancing all over the house in excitement about heading to Grandma and Papa's house so late at night. All the way over to their house, she was wanting to see a "choo-choo train," and I was praying rather hard, for the first time ever, that she not get her heart's desire. Fortunately, we got her dropped off and to the hospital at about 8:30 pm without any train delays. 

The next few hours are rather boring... I checked into triage, they confirmed I was in fact in active labor, they blessed me with the modern miracle of an epidural, my parents arrived and... we waited. A lot. Everyone else slept at some point during the night, but the epidural had made me so itchy that I couldn't relax. And I was very excited about getting to meet my baby boy. The waiting is the hardest part. You feel like you've been waiting for 9 months, and then you're just sitting there, waiting again, knowing the end is so close and you're going to get to meet your little one so soon. Each hour feels like an extra trimester. 

Finally, at about 6am it was time to push. Again, no gruesome details, but you know how it goes. The nurses kept trying to get me to wait to push because my Dr wasn't there yet (she was delivering a baby in the next room over,) but I knew he was getting impatient and was going to come ASAP. Sure enough, after only 15 minutes of pushing, at 6:32 am, Kylar Joshua Wardell was born. He's a lil' dude - 6 lbs. 8 oz. (the same exact weight as his big sister!) and either 20.5 or 19 inches long... the hospital and pediatrician disagreed, so we'll stick with 20.5 for now, since that's official. Either way, he's perfect. I couldn't be more blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby boy.

Mr. K was able to meet most of his in-state family that day, including his big sister, but that's another post all together. Here are some of the pictures from one of the best days of my life :)

First picture on the outside :) Such a calm little boy!

Daddy holding his little man for the first time <3

First family picture (minus A-bug.) I love how
he's peering over the blanket here.

Snuggling with my boy. And
sleeping... one of the only times lol.