Zoe Lately - 5 month update

Zoe is such a smiley and happy baby. She gives the best smiles after waking. She has so much hair and looks 100% like a girl to me, even when she's wearing her brother's old clothes. Her hair is starting to curl at the ends, and it's SO cute!

She has started holding her head up super well and can now be placed in her standing toy and Bumbo 🙏 This makes life SO much easier. Laying her on her back all the time was starting to get boring for her and with her reflux issues (which were exacerbated when she was on antibiotics over December and January) having her upright after feedings is best. Her favorite position, though, is being held facing forward.

Before getting sick (she had a cold or two, then RSV when she needed two nights in the hospital due to breathing issues) she was sleeping super well, only waking once around 3am. During December and January she was sick on and off, and this was terrible on her sleep. She woke every 2 hours, and due to her reflux, needed to be upright for 20-30 minutes after eating. Some time after she started feeling better, and her reflux was getting milder again we started to shift her from the swaddle to sleepsack (we went from the Miracle Blanket swaddle to the Halo swaddle size newborn to the Halo swaddle size small, Halo swaddle with one arm out, then Halo swaddle with two arms out, then sleepsack size small). Once she was adjusted to the sleepsack, we moved her to the crib in her room, and returned the Halo Bassinet (we LOVED it for both Elias and Zoe!) to our friends. During these adjustments, I got very little rest. Now that she's recovered, she's sleeping much better, going to bed at 6:15pm (and fully sleeping around 7:30pm) waking at midnight or so, around 4am and then is up for the day at 6am. This is very early for us. We've started switching off who gets morning duty. When it's our turn, we brew a pot of coffee. And that's how I've started drinking coffee again, a habit I broke almost two years ago!

Back to Zoe. She LOVES her brother so much. She loves to watch him play, run around, sing songs, dance and eat. Really, she likes to watch anyone eat with her eyes getting big and wide. On the days I am home with her, she definitely misses her brother while he's in day care. I know because she's pretty fussy like she wants more interaction, and on the weekends the void is filled when she can watch him all day long. He loves her too, and has recently started giving her hugs and kisses. It's the most adorable thing to watch.

Elias and Zoe last week

She loves looking in the mirror, and laughs when you make silly noises or move her back and forth. She loves her changing table and the accompanying mobile. She kicks her heels so hard into the changing pad in order to move the mobile and it works! She hates tummy time, but honestly we (I) don't make her do too much of that because she's getting good neck strength from being held all the time, and now the standing toy and Bumbo. I need to have her do more tummy time so she can practice rolling, I suppose...

She is very interested in toys, and will reach to grab most things and put them in her mouth. She can't hold onto them long though, and often prefers to have her fingers in her mouth instead. Her hands are usually cold because she sucks on them all day long. She's also a drooler, like her brother. We go through 5-10 bibs a day!

Music is also big for her. She loves Beethoven's Fur Elise, Paramore, the Eagles and Foo Fighters. She loves for you to sing "Patty Cake" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" while doing all the hand motions and giving her tiny tickles. If she is fussing, it's usually because she has to burp, or she's bored in the position/activity. She loves for you to walk her around the house.

She is eating well. We are breastfeeding every 2-3 hours and then giving her a 7oz bottle of breast milk at bed time (with a breastfeeding top-off), and a 6oz bottle of breast milk at midnight (sometimes with a breastfeeding top-off).

I kept pushing off her 4 month pictures (oops!) and finally got around to them yesterday. Better late than never!

December and January

No posts from December and January because we were all sick.

Elias' Favorite: Music Time

Elias is almost 20 months old and LOVES to sing songs and dance. At daycare, his providers J and K say he LOVES music time. Some favorites moments, songs and dances include:

• Before age 1, he loved to listen to us sing or play: Baby Beluga and Wheels on the Bus
• Today, Elias' number one request is "E-I-E-I-O" (which for the longest time he called "EEYahYo"). This request has many meanings and interpretations such as:
• Show me videos of nursery rhymes/songs on YouTube on your phone (he asks anyone he knows has a phone, especially Grandpa!)
• Play kids music (Raffi, etc)
• Play the song "Old McDonald"
• Sing "Old McDonald"
• He requests "Row Row" AKA Row, Row, Row your boat. He especially loves the second verse: "when you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream" which is when he likes to let out a scream. Though sometimes he screams after the first verse too. It varies.
• He can sing the WHOLE happy birthday song by himself and often sings it in the car or when he's falling asleep
• He can sing all of "Twinkle Twinkle" in key. He gets that from his dad! 
• He can sing the whole alphabet song!!! This was his FIRST favorite song. When he started at daycare, he loved having me or J&K point to the letters on a banner as we sang the song multiple times in a row. We immediately purchased an alphabet banner that we hung in the playroom.
• Loves to dance to "Let it Go" (with a twirl with hands above his head) from the Disney movie Frozen. He learned this from the older girls at daycare and is too young to think this is girly.
• Loves "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" but mostly touches his toes. 
• Has been requesting "Rosey, Ashes" AKA "Ring Around the Rosey" all weekend recently (did you know: this song is about the Black Plague!)
• Has specific dances for his musical toys:
• Loves to flip the "light" on his table toy to play a song "turn the light on and off, and the switch goes up and down ...." as he does a specific stomping dance
• Loves to sway dance to the alphabet song on his table toy
• Loves to play his piano and xylophone
• Loves the "Cocomelon" (ABCKidsTV) and "SuperSimpleSongs" channels on YouTube

 Elias and his piano at 15 months

Elias with his Great-Grandmother, Grammy, playing piano at 17 months

Elias' favorite books, birth to 20 months

Elias LOVES books! When he was less than one year old, he loved to carry his books around between his room and the living room, and chew the pages and spines. We gave him access to board books only because he was too rough with the pages of other books. You can tell which books were his favorites based on the wear of the pages and spine.

At around age 1, he was interested in reading only his favorite books:

• Pom Pom Panda Get the Grumps (he is still obsessed with this book a year later! He loves the page that says "GO AWAY!")
• Pout Pout Fish
• Dear Zoo
• Five Little Monkeys
• B is for Bear
• Touch and Feel Pets
• Touch and Feel Farm

Since he started daycare at age 13 months, his focus on books improved, and he was more willing to branch out to new books. Credit to story time at daycare! Then at around 18 months he started to LOVE listening to stories, especially at bedtime. It was around this time that we allowed him to read/play with some non-board books too. He still loves to play with his books, pretend read them upside down, and carry them between his room and the living room. The living room always winds up with a huge pile of books that I bring back to his room. He now begs for us to read him more books (probably because he doesn't want to go to bed). There are few books he doesn't like. His favorites include:

• all the above
• Good Night Moon (he was obsessed with this book for a while and it became a nightly staple)
• Touch and Feel Halloween (he loves the "sticky" page)
• Where is Baby's Belly Button 
• Baby Faces
• Growl Growl
• Good Morning, Good Night
• Bedtime Peekaboo
• Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings (he LOVES ducks and animals in general)
• The Little Engine that Could
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear
• The Hungry Caterpillar
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom 
• Hello World! Weather
• Doggies 
• Moo Baa Lalala 
• The Busy Spider
• Animal Tales

Elias at 17 months with his favorite book

Was it a stomach bug?

Elias threw up for the first time last night. He's had a cough and no fever for the last 2 weeks. For young kids like him (almost 18 months) you are not allowed to give cough medicine, so we were just hoping and waiting for the cough to go away. But it didn't. Instead, it was getting worse because it bothered him more and more at night. So much that's he'd wake and cry, and yesterday he even had trouble falling asleep.

Instead of traditional cough syrup there is a natural children's brand called Zarbees. It's made with agave for babies under 1 and honey for children over age 1 (kids under age 1 cannot have honey because of a risk of botulism), and other herbs. We ran out for his stuff at bedtime and he only got half a serving. We didn't go to get any right away thinking we'd be fine if my husband got it during lunch the next day.

But Elias had a different plan. He couldn't fall asleep and kept coughing and stirring and crying on and off. We didn't know what to do. We went into his room and gave him warm water with honey, but he didn't want it. Then I tried mixing breastmilk with regular milk. He also didn't want it. At that point it was 10:30pm. My husband left for CVS and I cuddled with Elias in his rocking chair, the whole time thinking how are we going to manage to give him this herbal "medicine" he hates! He hates all medicine, actually, and it's quite a feat to get him to take any. I ordered a sippy cup that allows you to add medicine to a hidden compartment and squeeze packets of the Zarbees anticipating this, but those weren't set to arrive until Friday evening, two nights away!

We gave him his medicine in a huge bout of resistance where I held down his arms and legs with him on my lap and my husband holding the syringe. Then we held him down on the changing table while we worked as a team to saline and nose frida him. I went to bed just as Zoe was waking likely because of all the commotion (crying). We felt so bad. He had coughed so hard after the medicine and barely drank any of his milk or warm water.

Then things got interesting around 2am when he let out a cry and my husband discovered he had thrown up. He changed him and asked for my help cleaning up the sheets. I changed them and scrubbed the bed and surrounding floor, all the while thinking "OMG how gross..." And "should I be using bleach? Is this the stomach bug norovirus I had just read about?". I knew I needed to help, but I was worried I'd get Zoe sick because of how contagious the stomach bug is. And by that time it was too late to grab gloves so I resorted to washing my hands with all types of soap probably a million times, changed my clothes and washed my face before going back to our bedroom, not sure if any of this would even work to combat a stomach bug.

Elias was a much happier boy come the morning, and even had an appetite. He hadn't throw up since 3am. He and my husband barely slept throughout the night.

Today the doctor said it was likely a mucus throw up because the mucus had no where to go other than up and food came up with it. But of course they said it could also be a 24 hour stomach bug! So far, my husband nor I have had any symptoms. We hope it stays that way! We really don't want Zoe to get it!!

Adding to the chaos, Elias had to stay home from daycare and my husband had a crazy busy day working from home, so we had no choice but to have me and Zoe out in the main area while Elias played.

This all got me thinking, how do you manage to be so sterile with a stomach bug in your house when there are two kids to attend to, clean up after and ensure they don't breathe the smell of Clorox wipes? Ahh... We were so disorganized and I made so many mistakes not even thinking at first, just reacting. How will we deal with the real stomach bug in the future?

Burping Zoe

Zoe is a gassy baby. And she hates having to burp! You know she needs to burp when she kicks and she flails her arms while doing a fussy cry.

She is solely breastfed. At night she receives a large 7 ounce bottle of breast milk and this keep her full until about 2-3am. It takes her almost 45 minutes to an hour to drink the whole bottle! I usually burp her every 10 minutes. Sometimes the burp really doesn't want to come out. That's when I stand up and walk her around,  and she will eventually burp. If that doesn't work, my third resort is to lay her down for 5 minutes and burp her when I pick her up. I don't give her the bottle back until she burps. Sometimes I've waited as long as 10 minutes for a burp, but I know it's coming.

If she doesn't burp often during the bottle she is more likely to keep waking up to burp after the bottle is finished and she has been laid down for sleep. There have been nights where she woke up every 15 to 45 minutes after falling asleep, or just kept crying because she was so uncomfortable. Eventually the waking leads to her being hungry again if it persists for more than three hours. So to prevent all of these wake ups and her requiring another feeding in 3 hours, I try very hard to burp her during the bedtime bottle feeding. This leads her to sleep better and sleep all the way to 2 or 3am, her longest stretch of sleep.

She also tends to spit up a lot of this milk. I have found that burping her more often on the bottle helps to reduce, and in the last few days even eliminate, her spitting up. Some days her spit up got so bad that I needed to change the mattress pad, sheets, her clothes, and my clothes several times. Not to mention I have multiple spit-up stains on our wood floor from random spit ups I didn't even know happened as I was rocking her.

Elias was a gassy baby too. He had more trouble letting out farts and poop. When sleeping he would grunt and groan, kicking his legs until he was 2 months old. He did not spit up or burp nearly as much as Zoe does, so this is new territory for us.

Fake Amazon Reviews

I am huge Amazon shopper, despite some of the negative press Amazon has received over the years, and its dominance over smaller retailers. The convenience and product reviews are the big draw for me. On the rare occasion I go to a store to make a purchase, I usually look for the product on Amazon first or read the many product reviews on Amazon. In a store I am completely unable to make a decision without the power of product reviews. After all, how do I know if it's any good?!

Recently, I've noticed more and more products on Amazon seem untrustworthy. Weird company names, unprofessional product descriptions (with symbols, incorrect grammar, and/or weird phrasing as if the writer is foreign), and the words "sponsored" draw me away. Yet these products get tons of positive reviews. How?!

For example, today I was looking for a musical toy set for my 18 month old. There are SO MANY to choose from. The other day I was looking for a felt Christmas tree for a toddler and had the same experience. How do you sort out the good products when you don't recognize the brands and so many reviews are positive?

Today, I googled my problem and found a website called FakeSpot that has an algorithm that reviews all of the Amazon product reviews per product to tell you if they are "unreliable" (they also do this for Yelp and TripAdvisor). BAM. Just what I needed! So I started searching a lot of my recent purchases to find, to my relief, that many were trustworthy expect one - a face serum that received an F grade for its 1000+ reviews. I immediately started my return on it! I feel so duped - I bought the product based on these positive reviews.

To conclude about my musical toy and felt tree search I mentioned earlier:

This toddler musical toy set has all 5 star reviews, but receives an "F". I plan to add this one to my son's wish list instead. The others sets have good and reliable reviews according to FakeSpot, but the small parts on these toys seem untrustworthy.

The felt Christmas tree I bought has an "A" grade for review quality, even though the description was unprofessional. Phew! I bought it 2 weeks ago because the description and reviewers noted the thicker fabric, even though it was more expensive than other products listed. Fingers crossed it works out when we hang it this weekend...