9.5 and 17 Months

Nova is now 9 1/2 months. We are no longer in uncharted territory! this is the age Juneau was when Cris arrived in Vietnam. Now we can say "ah yes, 9 1/2 months, we know all about that age". We find it very funny that when Juneau was this age, and nova was just a little bitty baby, we thought Juneau was so old and grown-up. Now that Nova is almost 10 months, and Juneau is 17 months, it seems like Nova is still such a tiny little baby. I guess that's what happens when you are the baby of the family, you stay a baby.

Nova at 9.5 months

Nova is still Little Miss Sweetiepants. She stands very well on her own, and is taking 1 or 2 lunging steps. She has also become rather adventurous, and will climb up and slide down the big slide on the playground by herself. She is still a little lacking in the hair department, but it is starting to fill in a little. She has 4 top teeth and 2 bottom teeth. She prefers bottles, but is trying some food. She prefers to munch on bread, but eats some baby food as well. Still not sleeping through the night, but gettting a little better about putting herself back to sleep (sometimes!)

June-bug at 17 months:

She's a smart little bug (at least in her mom and dad's opinion!) She picks up on EVERYTHING. She is saying so many words. Her favorite words are Mom, Dad, Sis, Dog, Watch, Fish, Juice. She is walking/running/climbing all over the place. She now spontaneously hugs and kisses all of us all the time. Still super independant, and full of adventure. She learned the word "no" last week, and has been trying that out quite a bit. She loves to look at books, and her favorite by far is "Go Dog Go". She excels at her 2 nightly chores, feeding Sherpa, and unloading the silverware from the dishwasher. She loves to wrestle and play rough.

Week 1 of Night Shift

We have officially survived our new schedule with me working nights. In fact, it's really not too bad at all. It actually has some rather nice things about it. I get home about 8 a.m., and the girls are in a great mood. We have been going down to the park near our house in the mornings. I know it sounds a little silly, but that is always something i've wanted to be able to do, just to be able to take a walk down to the park and play with the girls. But given my normal work schedule, this wasn't really a possibility.

Also, the other great thing is that on Friday mornings I stay until about 11 a.m. to see my clinic, then Cris and I take a couple of hours to go get lunch and/or a movie while Sally is watching the girls. This is really amazing for us since we very very rarely actually just hang out.

The tough part is that Cris has to fly solo 5 nights a week with the girls. 6-8 p.m. is usually their roughest part of the day, and he has to handle that alone. I think Cris has some kind of superpower. In the week that i have been working nights he has taught Nova to lie down in her crib and put herself to sleep (juneau is already pretty good about that). He has it down to a record time of 4 minutes. It's really quite amazing. He has a whole little nighttime routine (including CHORES!). Juneau helps unload the dishwasher, then helps feed Sherpa, then they put on pajamas, brush teeth, get in their cribs, and go to sleep. I think he should start some sort of workshop or write a book, or make a video, or something. It's seriously unbelievable.

Juneau Doing her nightly chore

In other news of the week, we recieved THESE in the mail from Grammy Saccenti! I had been envying the pettiskirts from Kaiya Eve but was unwilling to fork out the $80 each (and of course i would need 2!). So my mom set to quick work making her grandbabies the most amazing pettiskirts ever. Nova's is so pretty and sweet. Juneau's is a little on the crazy side, but hey, Juneau is a little on the crazy side, so i think it is PERFECT!!

Juneau modeling Nova's pettiskirt

Juneau showing off her own pettiskirt

I know it looks like nova hates her skirt, but really she hates that i wasn't holding her

mmmm.....morning eggs, toast and blueberries

Nova has decided she just might like food afterall

Just Some Pictures

Juneau is growing up soooo fast!

Both Girls LOVE theslide

Check out thoses baby converse!

Dr. Juneau

I have a confession. We have a berry addiction. These are our weekly berries after i washed them today. I can't evey tell you what our weekly Berry Budget has become, but we can't stop eating berries. Every week we end up buying more. Juneau loves "Boo" (blueberres), Cris is partial to Black/Ras, and i love them all.

Happy Birthday Grandma Stickley!!

the latest drama

Things seemed to be going well when we left for work yesterday morning per our usual routine. Nova had only woken up once that night, and wasn't really coughing too much. I was minding my business at work, when i got a page from my mom that there was a problem with nova, to call ASAP. As I'm sure you can imagine, absolute panic ensued. I got through to my mom, and she said Betsy had been watching nova, and tried to give her her medicine. Nova got upset, and started her usual breath-holding, and then her body became completely rigid, and her arms extended, and she completely arched her back until her head was almost bent back to her bottom. She was like that for about 20 seconds, and then became flaccid and unresponsive for 20 seconds. Of course betsy freaked out (justifiably!) and called my mom. Once nova snapped out of it, she was fine, and acting like her normal self.

I had bets bring nova to the E.R. anyway, to see if there was anything wrong, or that we should be doing. The E.R. doc just told us basically that is a rather classic breath holding spell, and that it is not uncommon for baibes to have "seizure like" activities after a long spell of breath holding. He said there isn't really a whole lot to do about it, and it doesn't really have any long term effects. So, I guess the breath holding is back with a vengance.

It's a little tough, b/c we are trying our hardest to not raise a drama queen. for example, on Sunday nova was playing with her cell phone, and Juneau took it from her, which caused nova to cry, of course. I didn't really want to coddle nova over such a tiny little thing, so i let her cry a little. when she realized i wasn't going to pick her up, she got a little more hysterical, and then started breath holding, until she did the rigid posturing thing again, and then had the flaccid thing. That time it only lasted like 10 seconds, but it is still quite terrifying. It is a fine line, because of course we want to prevent breath holding if at all possible, but at the same time, we don't want her to become overindulged by us responding to every time she makes a peep. She is just so incredibly sensitive, and gets her little feelings hurt so easily, that it is hard to protect her from getting hysterical about little things.

Here is her x-ray from last week. Isn't it just the cutest :)

The Countdown is on...129 days

I had a very rough weekend at work. The roughest in a while. Saturdays are always the worst anyway. It is a 24 hour shift, and usually is busy and steady for the whole 24 hours. sometimes i am able to sleep for a couple of hours around midnight to 3 a.m., but often not. By the end of the shift i am so ready to be done. the other thing i hate is the fact that working a 24 hour saturday shift means that you are actually in the hospital every single day for 12 days straight. Don't even get me started on working 2 saturday's in a row. Having a day to not set foot in the hospital is really a very psychologic thing. I need it to feel normal. Anyway, now that I have the girls, a Saturday shift is truly like torture. I can't stand it. Fortunately I got to see them for a little while because nova has been getting progressively worse with her coughing/vomiting/breath holding, and cris ended up bringing her to the E.R. The last thing i want is to be the crazy Dr. Mom in the E.R. expecting the ER physician to be able to cure the common cold, but i was just a little worried since she has now been sick for about 10 days. basically i wanted to be sure it wasn't pneumonia. Which it is not. In order to make this determination, Nova had to sit in this terrible infant torture machine to position her for the x-ray. she cried and cried and cried. but no pneumonia. they did give us an albuterol inhaler with a spacer, but it is rather ridiculous to try to get a 9 month old child (particularly one that breath holds when she is supposed to be making deep inspirations) breathe through a spacer. I guess she probably needed a nebulizer. anyway, we think she is on the path to recovery. At least recovery from the Chuck E Cheese Ball Pit Virus. I am concerned, however, that the McDonald's Play Place Virus may hit her next, as that is where we ate dinner last week. Also, did you know little kids pee in the ball pit? I didn't. Nova has thoroughly sucked on and salivated on every single ball in the ball pit, and now i just wonder how many strange kids urinary germs are in her little mouth. Once my very wise mother told me about the urine in the ballpit thing, we couldn't help but also notice the overwhelming stench of urine in the tunnels at the McDonald's Playplace.

Anyway, back to the title of this post, the countdown is on. While i was enduring my terrible (on so many levels) call, i counted up the days until i graduate from residency, and came up with 129. Days. I had to look at that a couple of times for it to seem real. After starting this crazy process at a naive 18 years old, rushing through undergrad in 3 years, then struggling through 4 years of med school, and now nearly 4 years of residency, i am finally counting down in Days the time i have left until my training is done. Since I still owe the army 3 years of service, i don't get to (or have to, depending on how you look at it) find a job. I will just go wherever the Army thinks i should go, which is actually ok with me.

so enough about boring old work, and disgusting urine infested ballpits. Here are pictures of the two most adorable little sweeties in the world. I need to make an update on their development soon. They are both doing so great. I know i say it all the time, but I am the luckiest mama in the world. I tricked the girls into thinking they are playing in the baskets, but actually i was just confining them there for a few minutes while we got some stuff done.

The obligatory sleeping in the highchair picture

Did i post one of Nova in her little Hipppy Baby outfit yet? She's so stinkin' cute.

Super 36!

We helped cris celebrate his 36th birthday on Super Bowl Sunday! We had a really fun day, and got to spend the whole weekend together since i didn't have to work at all. Cris and our friend Saioa celebrating their birthdays at the SuperBowl Party

We were planning to see a movie that night; however, our plans were slightly disrupted. Remember when i said everyone had recovered from the Chuck E Cheese Ball Pit Virus that had caused lots of vomiting in the stickley house, well, i was just kidding. Nova has been coughing up copious amounts of mucous, and then vomiting from coughing so much. So, going out to the movies didn't work out so well when Nova got herself into hysterics from coughing and vomiting. No one has really be sleeping since Nova has been up much of the night coughing.

I don't think we had mentioned yet that we have moved both of the babies out of our room. They are both in the nursery now, which is overall MUCH better (Especially since cris and i get up at 4:30 a.m. for work, which is not really a good wake up time for babies). However, it means many many middle of the night trips to the nursery, as they have been waking each other up crying.

Juneau and Nova in their Football Gear watching the superbowl

Nova was OBSESSED with Tracy's (from here on out known as Auntie Pretty) Wine Rack

We have had a couple of cold mornings. Probably at least in the 60's :) Nova and Juneau have been practicing with their cold weather gear in case we end up leaving Hawaii this summer.

Saturday we attended our adoption agency's Lunar New Year Celebration. We forgot the camera! but Juneau had a fun time doing some of the activities. Nova had fun too, until a giant balloon she was playing with popped right in her face. Poor, fragile Nova about jumped out of her skin. Seriously, though, she is toughening up pretty well. She has become more of a dare devil, and her fear of loud noises and elevators seems to have subsided. She is crawling so fast these days she skinned the top of her foot from friction.

She is doing really well lately, so i think we can cross the following previously applicable Birthday Party Themes off our list:
Nova: I'm Afraid of Elevators

Nova: I'm Afraid of Loud Noises

Nova: I'm Fragile

Nova: I Hold My Breath Until I Pass Out

Still in the running is:

Nova: I cough so hard I puke