23 Months ~Amelia~

Whew… we are so ready for the weather to warm up and stay warm.  I can’t wait to unleash Amelia to enjoy the yard, bikes, and swing set in our yard.   

Growth: 

Weight:  26 lbs  

Height:  ~34.5”

Amelia is still in 24 month and 2T items but we are really in need of some larger items.  I put a short sleeve and capri 2T outfit on her the other day and it was really small!  Yikes!  We need some new items.  Diapers are a size 4 and shoes a size 5-6.  

Mobility/Coordination:  Amelia can get pajama pants on by herself and tries for every other article of clothing as well.  She loves sitting on pedal toys and can pedal if she has momentum in her favor.  She really enjoys shape sorter and stacker toys and is getting pretty good at them. 

Language/Communication:  Amelia’s favorite game is to make sure everyone in the family is named and accounted for.  When I wake her in the morning, she first asks “Daddy?” and I tell her he is at work.  Then she says “Gant?” and I say he is still sleeping.  She pokes my chest and says “mommy” and then points to herself and said “Ah-ya-ya” (Amelia).  By that time we are down the stairs and she spots the dogs to which she yells out “Monty, Bucky!”  

Overall talk talk talk!  She has so many words I can’t keep track any more.  She loves point out owls and saying “owl” and “hoooo.”  When she wants something, she says “Me, me, me.”  However, we notice that she still has some difficulty putting two words together.

Personality/Amelia-isms:  This little stinker…  I wish I could eloquently put into words Amelia’s personality.  She is fun and silly and sassy and goofy and sweet and spunky.  We just never quite know what we are going to get but I wish I could bottle her up right now and keep it this way for a very long time.

Her newest joke is that when you ask for a kiss she immediately crams her thumb in her mouth you can’t kiss her lips.  She calls the dogs to her chair by making a kissing sound at the dinner table to feed them.   

Sleep:  On the 1^st of March we converted Amelia’s crib to the toddler bed not really knowing what to expect.  She did amazingly well!  We tucked her in, she stays in bed, and goes to sleep on her own. 

    

She's an active sleeper!

The move went so well we decided to take another big plunge and move her up to a full bed so we could pass our crib on to what will be the newest Fisher addition.  So just shy of two weeks later we moved Amelia up to the full bed.  Yet again, she has done exceptionally well.  I keep waiting for it to change but thus far we tuck her in, read a story, kiss her good night and she literally doesn’t get out of bed until we go get her whether we have to wake her up or she is already awake and just lying in bed. 

So small in that big bed!

Eating:  I'm not sure what has changed but Amelia's thirst has slowed for milk and dinner time has gotten somewhat better.  She doesn't battle or refuse as much as she had been.  She likes having a napkin so she can  neatly place her plate/bowl, cup, and everything on it like a placemat.  

Teeth:  No new teeth this month but those two year old molars are really close!

Illnesses/Owies:  Well we had a nice streak of quiet sick months that came to an abrupt end this month.  I picked Amelia up from daycare on a Thursday and she seemed ok at the time but about a mile from the house I heard her cough, then gag, then vomit.  Never fun but definitely not fun in the car!  At the time, I thought maybe it had been a fluke.  She had a loose cough and I thought maybe when she coughed she had gotten gagged on phlegm which caused her to puke.  Well that was not the case!

Amelia threw up again at 7 and 9 that night and then beginning at 9 I kid you not this poor little girl literally threw up every 20-30 minutes alllll night longggg.  She gagged and dry heaved until there was nothing left and then was dry heaving more.  We slept downstairs in the recliner covered in towels.  The next day the pukes slowed to about every hour but by this point she was getting dehydrated and I couldn’t get it to stop.  We made the trek to the doctor to which the doctor said a bad bug was “going around” and they gave her an anti-nausea med with the direction that if she still couldn’t keep things down we needed to go to the ER. 

Sick baby girl

Going into the night she seemed better and no vomiting with the med and very small sips of liquid.  I woke her every hour all night just so she could take a sip and go back to sleep.  However, the next morning Amelia still did not seem to be on the mend.  I called the doc and talked symptoms and signs for dehydration and at what point we needed to do something.  We felt reassured we were still ok at this point but she was so weak we had to hold her up to take sips of water and she couldn’t stand or balance on her own.

Still feeling nervous going into another night and having had several vomit incidents on Saturday Matt took over re-hydration duty and woke her to take sips.  She made it through the night with no puking so we thought by this point we were on the road to recovering.  We tried small sips still and a little substance (toast) which didn’t go well Sunday morning and she threw up again.  Feeling like we had pushed too much too fast we took a step back and she did better for a while that day.  Again, once we tried solids she threw up so we just gave up on that all together Sunday.

   

Starting to feel better

Monday was finally a better day but then her stools began to loosen.  She only had three BMs but they were on the loose side.  Tuesday seemed like we were finally in the clear so we attempted daycare.  Unfortunately by 10 am I had received a call saying Amelia had 3 very loose, watery stools and I had to come get her.  At this point, I wasn’t sure how long this phase would last we headed home prepared for explosive poops.  Amelia never had another BM that day but wasn’t allowed back at daycare until Thursday.  Matt took stay home duty on Wednesday (no BMs) so by Wednesday (nearly a week after it all began) we were finally in the clear.  She headed back to daycare on Thursday (having not had a BM in a day and a half so we didn’t know what to expect).  For the record she did end up with one normal poop that day that was “enough to fill two diapers.”

Either way this “bug” was by far the worse our family has seen since Grant’s first run in with C Diff.  We waited for the rest of the family to fall ill with it but Matt and I escaped unscathed and Grant threw up just once on Sunday night and stayed home from school Monday.    

Brother/Sister Moment(s):  As can be seen from these goofy pictures, these kiddos have a blast together!

Two peas in a pod

Grant said, "she's baptizing me like John the Baptist!"

Funniest moment(s):  Amelia likes to strain to push out a fart and every time she does she says, “Toot!” 

Firsts/Adventures:  We attended the St. Patrick’s day parade.  Amelia seemed to enjoy watching but it was relatively uneventful. 

Amelia and Papa at the parade

Likes:  giving a thumbs up ~ ride-on and push toys ~ her new bed ~ blankie ~ closing her eyes when we pray (she does this adorable scrunch face and doesn’t actually close her eyes) ~ trying to walk the dogs by holding their collars

Dislikes:  taking pics/video (see below where she is happily playing with baby until she realizes I am taking a video)

Toddler Moment(s):  There have been a couple of biting incidents here and there that we are trying to get a handle on.  She is doing well otherwise.  We have our moments of stubbornness and persistence and insistence but we are working through it. 

 
Potty Training:  We have been focusing on sitting Amelia on the potty several times a day.  We haven’t had many successes but she is no longer scared of sitting on the big toilet using the training seat so I consider that an accomplishment!

Grant ~Winter 2014-2015~

4 Year Check up Stats

Height:  39.75" 

Weight:  35 lbs

BP:  100/58

At his 4 year appointment they also checked his vision for the first time which he did great with as well as checked his hearing.  

Grant’s 3T items have been retired and he is in 4T but some brands do fit better than others and some he still seems to drown in.  We even moved him up from 2T/3T undies to 4T undies (which are a little droopy).  He wears a size 9-10 shoe.  

Potty Training:  This section can officially be taken out.  Grant has been dry at night for many, many months.  We finally retired the diapers and mainly had been still using them just in case so mommy or daddy… let’s be real… mommy didn’t have to change the sheets in the middle of the night if there were an accident. 

December

Favorite words, sayings and/or things:  Grant still loves dolphin and takes him anywhere we will let him.  He asked if he could sleep with dolphin even when he is bigger and said he wants to sleep with him forever.  He then asked if he could bring dolphin to heaven.

Funnies/Grant-isms:   Grant told me one morning, "Mama, I tooted.  Now I have to go check to see if I puffed out any poop."

Observations:  As a general rule, I would say Grant is like his mommy and he is not a morning person.  When I wake him up (at 5:30 am), he first lays in the chair for a couple minutes while I nag him over and over to go potty and start getting dressed before he will finally get up and get moving. 

Firsts/Adventures:  We had another really fun Fisher family weekend in the Dells.  Grant stuck to the smaller stuff and was actually scared to go down a couple of the bigger slides he would’ve gone down last year.  I think his favorite thing by far were the bunk beds in one of the bedrooms.  He was so excited that he got to nap in them one day and he was calling them the “up and down bed.”

This year marked Grant’s first Christmas program at church.  It was so incredibly packed I couldn’t even get a good line of sight on him to get a picture.  He seemed to do very well though. 

We attended a breakfast with Santa in which Grant refused to sit on his lap which was weird because he had just done so about a week before when we were in the Dells.  His favorite thing about breakfast was by far the sleigh ride though.  

Christmas and all the festivities  were very busy and we did our best to slow down and enjoy it.  If you didn’t have the chance to catch up with us around Christmas you can read all about our fun here! 

Illness:  The only illness Grant popped up with all winter was a fever with loose cough that then turned into a very bad case of croup.  We barely made it through the night without a visit to the ER but survived with a couple of cold spells outside, steam, and diffusing and applying oils.  A couple days after the croup cough was gone, he then got a horse, raspy voice. 

January

Favorite words, sayings and/or things:   Disgusting=gusgusting  One evening Grant informed us the moon was a sem-me circle to which Matt and I replied no it’s a sem-my circle.  This game still continues today with Grant insisting his pronunciation is the only correct way.   Grant loves chewing gum on the rare occasions we allow it and actually does well not swallowing it. 

Funnies/Grant-isms:  “Mommy I drew you an I miss you card (after I was at work all day).  It's a house on fire!”

“What are organs?  What are blood?  If you skin your knee your organs will come out.”

On the way to church out of the blue Grant said "I love Addie.  She's my best friend."  Matt replied and said “I thought I was your best friend.”  To which Grant followed up with “Well Addie is my best friend at school.”

You know you are raising oily kids when they say “Oh no! There's a bug on my wall. You better get the thieves!”

Observations:  I had heard a consultant we work with at the plant had a massive heart attack in a very weird series of events and I was replaying the story for Matt at the dinner table one night.  Grant interjected questions here and there but followed my story up with “Mommy, should we pray for Mr. Jim?”  My heart swelled with pride for our thoughtful little boy and we all took a moment and prayed as a family for Mr. Jim. 

Grant wants to be a fireman and talks about it all the time.  He will tell anyone who will listen that he wants to a be a fireman and one day he is going to drive a firetruck with the number 57 (he has a fire truck puzzle and the engine number is 57).  He also tells us, “Someday I’m going to take my fire truck to the restaurant.”

Firsts/Adventures:  We hung out with some awesome friends on New Year's Eve and the kiddos even made it to midnight.  Grant also sang in church, had his first ice fishing/sledding behind a 4-wheeler adventure, tubing expedition at Sunburst, and started swimming lessons.  My parents were in town which is always a blast and best of all it was to celebrate Grant's 4th birthday.  You can read all about the fun we had in LegoLand.
 

 

 Illness/Owies:  Matt and Grant were in the basement one night playing when I heard a thud then a I’m hurt very bad cry.  Matt came running up the stairs with Grant who had the largest goose egg I’ve ever seen.  He had apparently fallen off the bar stool and hit his head on the way down.   

February 

I feel like there is so much I missed this month as can be seen from the short February addition. 

Favorite words, sayings and/or things:  Everything still revolves around being a fireman one day and all the stuff he will get to do when he is a fireman.

Funnies/Grant-isms:  Grant randomly told me one day “I’ll be going to the forest with a hunting gun and hunt for deer.” 

Grant also asked me one day “What are green poops?”  I responded, “Usually you get green poops when your tummy doesn't feel good.”  Grant replied, “Yeah and they squirt out like ketchup.”

Observations:  Grant has become very sensitive to others’ feelings.  He cries or gets upset when others cry.  We sadly witnessed a dog get hit and I stopped to make sure someone was going to stop and inform the family.  On the way home, he was asking about the dog and the family and said, “Mommy should we pray for that family?”

He is showing more interest in learning to write.

Sitting at the dinner Grant will say I have to tell you something but he can never say it from his seat.  He has to get down from his chair and tell us and usually it is “I love you.”

Firsts/Adventures:  Swimming lessons have continued this month and Grant has better weeks than others.  He is still really timid about dunking his head but otherwise does ok. 
 

Illness:  None