Growing Up, Moving On

My how time flies. It feels like I blink and my children have grown and changed in so many ways. This week both of the Molloy children demonstrated just how quickly they are growing up. I can hardly believe that we have a 2 1/2 year old and an 11 week old!

Lucas demonstrated that he truly loves his mother and cares about her sanity when he began consistently sleeping through the night (usually 11:30pm - 6:30 or 7am - 7-7/12 hours of sleep every night!!)! The early Christmas miracle began on Thursday and has shown no signs of fading (though because I am putting it in writing I am sure that he will wake up at like 4am tomorrow just to prove me wrong). After the second night, we decided that two days was enough of a pattern to move him into his own room. He's been sleeping in a cradle in our room, basically because I am lazy and walking to his room to feed him 2 or 3 times in the night did not seem appealing. But once he started showing that he has the ability to sleep through the night, we decided to go ahead and move him.

The next step is to move him from his cradle to the crib - we will probably give that a try later this week, but for now we're doing one thing at a time so as not to jinx the sleeping. It was a little bittersweet to move him out of our room - it's nice to have our own space back (helpful hint: if you have a small room, put a big piece of furniture in the middle of it for 11 weeks and then remove it and revel in how enormous your space actually is!) and not to have to worry about doing something to wake the baby in the night, but it is also sad because our little baby is growing up so quickly! Where have the last 11 weeks gone?!

Speaking of growing up, the other day Elise was sitting on the potty before bed and I was crouched on the floor waiting for her to finish up (using the potty before bed is her latest procrastination technique). She leaned into my shirt and pointed out that I had letters on it (it said Polo Ralph Lauren), then pointed to the first letter and said "That's P". I was surprised because while Ellie can recite the alphabet, I didn't think that she actually knew what the letters were individually. Maybe it was a lucky guess or she was just talking about the letter P at school. So I covered up the other letters and asked what the next one was. "O!" Right again. Ok, the next one. "L for Lucas." Um, seriously? When did my child learn this stuff? She then proceeded to rattle off more letters, a few of them with a word associated (a for apple, u for umbrella, e for "me"). I was getting more and more excited as she did it so she was getting really excited and smiling and so incredibly proud of herself. It was amazing. I think that she got all but one of the letters right. Of course, a few days later when I pointed to the letter S on something and asked her what letter it was she said "8" so obviously she doesn't have the whole thing down pat. But still I am amazed how quickly our little girl is growing up and how much she's learning everyday (without my even knowing!)

As for the Dairy Challenge update - it had mixed results. Luke's cradle cap actually got 100% better and his congestion issue did improve slightly. I actually didn't even realize that his congestion had gotten better until I started eating some things with dairy in them again and noticed how stuffy he became. Urgh. However, his eye is continuing to goo up like crazy - it's worse than ever and becoming somewhat of a problem. Every time he naps now his eye is gooed shut when he wakes up and while he's awake it's not sticking shut but is a continuous fountain of goo. I am not sure what to do about that - maybe I will check in with the pediatrician about it again. Anyway, I think that I am going to largely avoid dairy when possible, but not go crazy analyzing every ingredient of everything I put in my mouth, like I did with Elise. I think I am also going to try giving up eggs for a few days to see if that gets any results.

I go back to work next week (!!) but only for two days and then we're off until January 5th for the holiday break. My maternity leave went by so quickly and both kids continue to grow up and move on the the next big thing every single day.

Our Cheeky Monkey Ellie at 10 weeks- first 2 pics













Our Cheeky Monkey Luke at 10 weeks(3rd and 4th pictures)