Laughing with Sarah

Three months...and twelve days... (April 8, 2017) Four months (April 28, 2017) Once again, two months have flown by in the blink of an eye. All of the sudden, my little newborn is not so little anymore. Eleanor, you are bright-eyed, curious, emotive, sweet, smiley, easygoing, and feeling so much older than just your short four months on this earth. On the health front, you are doing great. At your four month check-up last week, you checked in as a long skinny baby who is pretty darn ahead of the curve when it comes to developmental milestones. It was nice to be at the doctor and have only good news. Earlier in March, you had a weird vomiting episode that sent us back up to the St. Mary's emergency department to get checked out. The good news is that everything was fine, inside-belly-wise (you tackled the repeat upper GI test like a pro!). The bad news is that you had sprouted an incisional hernia under your previous incision (a little soft lump poking out of your belly)...

One month...and eight days (February 4, 2017) Two months...and two weeks (March 15, 2017) Seeing as Eleanor's first month was pretty much dominated by hospital and doctor events (and seeing as life is a little too chaotic with two kids to take timely pictures and write timely blog posts), we're just going to shamelessly combine her one month and two month update into one post. Eleanor, you are settling into your own little personality! Your brother was a pretty easy baby. I remember thinking, at the time, that Sam must be the easiest baby in the world, an that we were so lucky. Well, you, my dear, are proving to be perhaps even easier than he was, at least in some ways. Sam hated being put down. You are quite content being set into a seat or swing. Sam needed to be rocked and nursed to sleep, and he often woke up in the transition from arms to bassinet/crib. You, on the other hand, are a champion sleeper. After the first week and a half of your life, when you hated be...

Today is Monday. I am currently four days past embryo transfer, and feeling curious about whether I am pregnant, though not anxious. How far we've come in all of this, that I could have such a deep and yet such a loose hold on the outcome of this cycle. More on that in a moment. Probably our best pre-transfer selfie ever! First of all - what? You didn't know that we had started another cycle? Oh right. Because I never mentioned it. Maybe all of this has become routine enough that I haven't felt the need to chronicle it all? Maybe frozen cycles are more of an obnoxious and tedious process rather than the excitement of a fresh cycle? Maybe we've just been busy? Anyway, we started a cycle mid-March. Protocol was birth control pills for a month, then pills and Lupron injections for five days, and then Lupron injections and estrogen pills for a couple weeks, transitioning to just estrogen pills and progesterone up until transfer, and continuing through my pregnancy te...

Fifteen months (or so) - March 11, 2015 Sixteen (almost seventeen!) months - April 14, 2015 Seventeen months (and one day) - April 22, 2015 Sam, life just continues to move faster and faster and faster...and so do you! It's hard to keep up with taking your monthly pictures and writing up your monthly updates! It is springtime, and the weather has finally started to turn warm, and you are growing and growing up as beautifully as the spring shoots and buds that are peeking through the dirt outside. You are so many things these day, little man. You are talkative: You have a pretty decent list of words that you can say! And you babble to yourself and to us in complete sentences, so even when we don't know the words you are trying to say, we know that you are intentionally working to communicate with us in a verbal way. Your favorite words are ball, box, bath, brush teeth (you have a thing for "B" words), and are especially interested in the multi-syl...

Thirteen months (or so) - January 5, 2015 Fourteen months - January 29, 2015 I'm writing this over breakfast, Sam, a week past your 14 month birthday, a month and a week past your 13 month birthday. You are eating Cheerios off of your tray. You just finished a big bowl of oatmeal and yogurt. During breakfast, you've been practicing your baby signs, which you just figured out in the last couple weeks. You signed "more, please" when you wanted another bite. You signed "milk" when you wanted your cup, even though it's a cup of water and we just started working on the sign for "water" today. You said "all done" when the bowl was empty, and signed "eat" when you wanted some post-oatmeal Cheerios to munch on. We practiced signs for "bathtime" and "sleep" and "kitty" and "mama" and "daddy." You love saying "da-da" like you mean it, but you can't quite get your...

Ten months - September 26, 2014 Well, little Sammy, I'm writing this post with a lukewarm cup of coffee by my side, trying to keep my eyes open after a second night in a row of bad sleeping on your part. It's a good thing that you are darn cute... Cute and kind and funny and sweet, that is. :) You are now ten months old (plus a few days), and you are a little man on the move. You're so busy that you're still hugging that skinny 10th percentile curve for weight. And it doesn't seem matter how many bites you take of scrambled eggs, quiche, muffins, grapes, chicken, shrimp, rice, Cheerios, pasta, bagels, donuts, bread, yogurt, squash, or anything else. You love playing and you love eating. Eating will get easier and easier as you get more teeth. You have two big ones on the bottom, plus a third one that is poking its way through. Someday you'll have top teeth, and then you'll figure out that chewing is the best. You've been a good sport about teeth...

Nine months - August 24, 2014 And just like that, another month has flown by. These days, it's hard to keep up with Sam as he crawls around all over the place. We are in full hands-and-knees territory. He can crawl, and sit, and change directions, and crawl while holding a toy, and bat a toy around and chase it. He laughs and grunts when he's moving at top speed toward something he wants (like when he races over from across the room when mama comes to pick him up from daycare). He shrieks - LOUDLY! - as he chases the cats around. He can pull himself to standing, though he's not quite so good at sitting back down once he's up. This is one mobile kid! Which means that we now have three baby gates and a bunch of corner protectors guarding the house. And it means that he has a few bumps and bruises from random pieces of furniture that he has decided to try to crawl through instead of going around. All this movement means that he's still burning calories like...

I'm getting good at posting things out of order here. Sorry about that. But even a month after the fact, I'd be sad if I didn't write something about Sam's baptism, which took place on Sunday, June 8 at First Lutheran Church in Decorah, Iowa. It was a beautiful, crazy, family-filled, celebration-heavy weekend. Matt's parents flew in from New Jersey. My parents drove in from Chicagoland. All three of my sisters came - Stephanie, Bethany, Kristin (plus Patrick, Laura, Shannon, Joanna, and Cameron). Jon and Charisse rode their motorcycles out. Throughout the weekend, we tripped over one another as we ate together and played together, as we celebrated together and gave gifts (two May birthdays, three June birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and baptism). At the center of the whirlwind was little Sam, our miracle baby, and the worship service where we would get to hear the promise that he, Samuel Tyler, is a claimed and called, anointed and beloved chi...

Just a quick drive-by post because today is a day that I need a little cheering up, and thought you too might want a little something to make you smile: