Happy birthday, baby girl

Four years ago today, after 32 hours of labor, we held our tiny little firstborn baby.  She was born at 24 weeks and weighed 1 lb 10 oz.  We named her Ada Elizabeth and, a few days later, scattered her ashes at this beach at sunrise.  Every year we come back on her birthday to remember and honor her.

I remember sitting on the beach holding her ashes in my hand and imagining what it would be like to bring her little siblings here on her future birthdays.  They're even more beautiful than I imagined.

Figuring out that sand doesn't taste good
We tried to tell him, but I guess there are some things in life you have to figure out for yourself.  ;)

These people came along and found at least 2 sea turtle nests on the beach.  Very exciting!

Today I prepared 4 boxes to take over to the hospital (since Ada would be 4 years old) for parents who are there to deliver stillborn babies.  Each one has a blanket to wrap up their baby with, a book that really helped me, a journal, a handprint mold kit, and a candle to burn in their baby's memory.  I have thought about doing this in years past, but this will be the first time I've actually done it.  I really hate the thought of these boxes ever being used, but I do hope it helps parents who have to go through this painful process.

Dinosaur birthday party

We celebrated Eleanor's birthday a little early today with a dinosaur birthday party.  She was thrilled!!  I got there early to set up and when she arrived later she spent about 10 minutes walking around and taking everything in.  At one point I found her standing next to the cake, just staring at it with a huge smile on her face.

Come on in!

She requested these three dinosaurs on her cake

Pretzel stick pterodactyl nests with grape eggs

Hamosaurus sandwiches

Cheese stegosaurus spikes

T-Rex watermelon

(tutorial here)

Veggies, dip, and baguettes

Fossil sugar cookies

Dinosaur tails for everyone!

Swamp punch - the added lime sherbert made it extra swampy looking

Arthur loved the mirror

How many dinosaurs can fit in the little baby pool?

Eleanor sang the Happy Birthday song along with everybody else!

Mmm, cake!

Dinosaur baseball

(T ball with tails as bats)

Slipping into a sugar coma

Present time!

Sweet friends

Arthur enjoyed the party, too

Creating new dinosaurs

Because who doesn't love gluing feathers and pom poms?

All worn out!

Four years ago today I got the news that Ada no longer had a heartbeat at 23 weeks 5 days.  Today I got to watch the pure joy on Eleanor's face as we celebrated her three years of life.  What a day!

9 months

I'm a little late with this, but Arthur turned 9 months old on the 4th!  His checkup isn't until later in the month so I don't know how big he is officially yet, but he is definitely a growing boy!  He mostly wears 12 month or 12-18 month clothes, though some of his 12 month clothes are starting to be too tight if he's wearing his cloth diapers.  He now has his 4 front teeth, tons of hair, and a huge personality!  Here are just a few of the times he has made me laugh in the past few days.

• Yesterday I ran some errands by myself and came home to find Arthur looking at a book on the floor.  He saw me and his face broke out into a huge smile and he started army crawling towards me as fast as he can go.  He got part way to me and then turned around, grabbed the book he had been reading, and brought it to me.  He wanted me to read him the book!  He sat in my lap and we read it 3 times in a row.  And he didn't even want to stop then - the boy LOVES books!  Here are some of his favorites if you want recommendations.
• His new favorite game is to be chased!  If he thinks that I'm going to pick him up, he giggles and starts crawling away as fast as possible.  He even does this in his crib, which is pretty funny because it's not like he can go far!
• The other day I was giving him a bath and he peed.  He looked down and watched the little fountain he was making and was extremely interested in this new discovery.  He thought it was hilarious, and spent the rest of the bath looking down and waiting for it to happen again.
• Last night I was giving him a bath and he was playing with a cup.  I put out my hand and said, "Can you hand me the cup?"  After saying this several times he smiled and handed me the cup.  This went back and forth for a while and I called Hunter in to see it.  Arthur handed me the cup again, and then Hunter put out his hand and said, "Can you hand the cup to Dada?"  Arthur grabbed the cup, giggled a lot, and crawled away from Hunter as fast as he could.  Of course he could only go like 2 feet because he was in the bath, but he made his point!  He has quite the sense of humor!
• He is all over the place now, and of course sometimes we have things lying around that he shouldn't get into.  The other day I was fixing dinner and Arthur started crawling right up to a tool that had been left out that he shouldn't touch.  He was clearly going for it.  I used my stern voice and said, "Arthur, no touch."  He stopped about a foot away from it, looked up at me, and smiled his biggest smile.  I didn't smile back and I kept saying, "No touch."  He kept smiling at me, like he was trying to get me to smile back, and when it didn't work he finally moved on and didn't touch it!  I just *know* that if I had smiled back at him, he would seen that as permission to touch it.
• His list of potential words ("Is he really saying that?  Or am I just imagining it?  Was that just a coincidence?") is growing.  There's now "nana" for banana (that one is pretty consistent), "dada" (he seems to just say this when Hunter is around), "mama" (though this seems to mean food, not me), and "bah" for ball.  "Eh-nor" (Eleanor) and "eh-che" (leche) have disappeared.  I remember Eleanor doing that too - she would use a word for a month and we would be all excited about it and then not hear it again for 3 or 4 months.
• Arthur is LOUD.  I love him and his hilarious personality, but I really, really wish that he had a volume knob sometimes.  Usually when he starts getting loud it's because he's tired or hungry, but sometimes he just starts screaming when he's frustrated with a toy or book.

How my baby sleeps

We contained him!  Temporarily...

Arthur and his cousin chasing the dog

Playing with Micah

9-month-old cousins!

You can see the bottom teeth

 

Getting into his books

And just to balance out the Arthur pictures, here are some of my sweet girl!

Licking the spoon after making rice krispie treats for the 4th

Budding scientist

P.S.  This is my 500th post.  Whoa!

Books we love for babies

We have a very large selection of board books, and when Eleanor was about 9-12 months old there were some that were clearly her favorites and some that she got bored with after 2 pages.  (Sandra Boynton books, for example.  She never liked any of those books until she was probably 18+ months old.)  Now that Arthur is getting into books, it's pretty interesting to me that the same books are *his* favorites and he gets bored with the same ones she did.  So, I just thought I'd share a few of their favorites if you're ever book shopping for a baby.  You can click on any of the covers to see them on Amazon.

And these are some that Arthur loves but we didn't have when Eleanor was a baby: