Discipline

Maggie has gotten into a spectacularly messy stage. If I have my back turned for 5 minutes she'll get into something crazy. This morning she scattered unpopped popcorn kernels on the floor, one at a time. Then, this afternoon (get ready) she wiped her snot all over one of my lamps. Yes, you read that correctly. I have three words: What. On. Earth? I think it's probably an attention-seeking behavior and it's been successful so far. Anyone have any good tips for this? It's literally impossible to keep my eye on her 24 hours a day.

All of that is to say that when Grant got home from work he had the unpleasant task of spanking her awaiting him. (My spanks are lightweights. If she's really naughty it's up to Grant. Bad, I know.) Tonight after he spanked her he was giving her the usual spiel about why she was spanked and that part of the reason why he spanked her was because he loves her so much. She said, "What?! That is no way to show someone you love them!!!!!"

I love how she looks a little maniacal in this photo, but she was really being very sweet. By the way, we accidentally did some "team dressing" today - Maggie's dress is hot pink and navy stripes and Finn's is red and navy striped. Go Team Howard!
He was just ready for a nap, as you can see!

Late October update

I help out with the flowers at church once every 6 weeks or so (I'm pretty sure I'm the youngest flower lady by, oh, at least 20 years), and this past Saturday it was my turn to do the arrangements. I took Maggie with me and several times I mentioned something about the sanctuary ("Maggie, let's just do the flowers in the sanctuary"). About halfway through Maggie and I had to walk from the Abbey House down the hall back to the sanctuary and Maggie said, "Mama? Can I stop off at the potty on the way to the February?"

Here's Maggie in her cool bat 3-D glasses sent to her by Uncle Steve & Uncle James. She likes to wear them around the house and loves that everything is red with one eye and blue with the other eye.
We've been riding bikes a lot lately. It's simultaneously one of the most fun and most irritating things we do. Once she gets going and gets comfortable on the bike it's great and so much fun, but it takes her a good 5-15 minutes to even want to peddle. She prefers to go uphill because it's faster going downhill (boy does she have a lot to learn!), and her best riding partner is her friend Caleb because she always wants to be first so she'll go speedily enough to keep up with him. When she's scared she says, "Get me Get me Get me!" over and over again. I'm embarrassed to admit it drives me batty! I love riding my bike and I just want her to have fun and it's so hard to be patient and allow her to enjoy it on her own time frame. Patience, patience...a state I have been striving for, oh, forever.

We've all had some kind of cough/sniffle/24-hour fever viral cold the past two weeks and Maggie turned that into her first ever ear infection. It was pretty mild and we didn't even have to treat with antibiotics but I'm so glad she's gone 4 years without getting one.

Finn is also doing great. He had an appointment with his geneticist, Dr. Summar, last Tuesday and it was wonderful, as usual. They even let us skip the blood draws this time because he's been so stable. We talked to Dr. Summar about his moving to Washington DC and mentioned that our only saving grace is that we'll get to see Dr. Lanpher (our second favorite dr) and he said, "Ummm...about Dr. Lanpher. I'm actually recruiting him to come to DC, too." Of course he assured us that the next guy down the totem pole is great and a genius, but we're pretty bummed. Honestly, Finn is doing so well now that we're not worried about it at all but Dr. Summar and Dr. Lanpher feel like a major security blanket for us and we have so much trust in them. Then I said we were glad our favorite nurse practitioner, Natalie, wasn't going to be moving and they sort of looked at each other in a weird way. Apparently he's working on recruiting her, too. I guess Vanderbilt needs to get their act together! Dr. Summar did say that once Finn is 2 or 3 he'll get down to 1-2 appointments a year and that theoretically we could just come to see him in DC for those. That actually sounds like a great idea to me, and even do-able. Dr. Summar also took some photos of Finn and asked if he could use them in a talk sometime (I think I've mentioned it but apparently he travels the world lecturing/teaching about organic acid disorders - sounds pretty thrilling, doesn't it?!). Let's just say it's a mutual admiration society at all of Finn's appointments (pulling me out of the equation - we all love them and they all love Finn!). Anyway, blah blah blah, medical stuff...

Here he is sucking on his bottom lip. I don't know why but this is one of my favorite faces he makes.
In more fun news Finn is doing great with solids and is up to rice cereal, apples, several types of squash, sweet potatoes, and I'm making pears for him this week. His weight was actually only a few ounces higher than it was 5 weeks ago which is a big change from his first 6 months when he was gaining at least a pound a month! Now he's about 39 percentile for height and about 44 percentile for weight. Not such a big guy any more (but he looks just right to me). He also sits really well by himself and is starting to balance himself on his hands and knees with his tummy off of the ground.

Ahhh! So smiley! What a lovebug.

Happy Happy Happy

Well, Maggie is four! I can't believe I have a four-year-old child! When I think about my life three years and 364 days ago it brings me to tears. The year after losing Elle I was depressed, terrified, lost, and anxious, and I barely dared to hope that Maggie would be born healthy and alive. Unless you've been through it you can only imagine the joy and relief we felt when we heard that first cry, which, to us, was the most beautiful sound we had ever heard. I will never be "over" losing our sweet Elle but once Maggie was born I feel like we started to wake up from our nightmare. When I think about what she means to us, well, there just aren't even words.

So. We are happy for all four wonderful, hilarious, frustrating, silly, madcap, adventurous years we've had with Maggie.

In our family we celebrate birthday week as introduced to us by our friends the Duprees. Basically it's just an excuse to stretch your birthday out as long as possible. This time I'm afraid we've been celebrating birthday month! We bought Maggie a bike for her birthday (big kid bike with training wheels...it seems huge) and we gave it to her about 2 weeks ago so that she could enjoy it in the nice weather as long as possible. Then we had her birthday party last night, her actual birthday was today, and I'm sure we'll figure out a way to make it last a few more weeks!

Here are a few shots of her on her bike. She zoomed away from me so fast I could only get her from behind at first:
She attempted to go up this long hill (it's longer than it looks) and made it about halfway up. I was impressed.
Here's a close-up of her so you can see how cute she is in her helmet:
Now show me your unimpressed look, Maggie:
Now show me "surprised":
Now give me your best "je ne sais quoi" look. Work it, work it... The party was a big success and I'll post photos when I can. Thanks for all of your birthday wishes for Maggie! We just love that little girl around here.

A fun fall weekend!

This past Saturday Maggie and I met our friends Jill and Riley at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens for a fun fall day. It was "free weekend" at Cheekwood so instead of the normal $15 or so admission, we got in for free! For all of September, October, and I think November there is a scarecrow exhibit going on at Cheekwood. Community organizations and local artists make different themed scarecrows that are all over the place. Below you can see Maggie and Riley with "Crow White" and a few other scarecrows. The one at the bottom is Giselle from the Nashville Ballet and when Maggie saw it she said, "That's going to be me when I get married!" Uh...okay, Maggie. I'm just glad she wasn't creeped out by it.Then from 10-12 there was a free craft project for children where they could create their own multi-media scarecrow.
THEN (I know you're wondering how it could get ANY better!!!) we had a picnic lunch and cupcakes to celebrate Maggie's birthday with Riley since Riley will be out of town during Maggie's birthday.Oh my goodness that little girl is cute! Sorry, back on track now...Lately we've been watching the big song/dance scenes from our new favorite show, Glee. Maggie is all into choirs now and will talk all the time about the choirs she's in. She tells me she has three jobs for three different choirs (I'm thinking she's not totally clear on how choirs work). In the morning she pretends to get ready for work and talks on her toy cell phone about the choirs and what they need to do. Then throughout the day she'll change into a blue leotard and say, "Now I'm in the blue choir!" Along with changing into her "choir costumes" she's also into changing outfits multiple times a day. Today it was only 3 or 4 outfits. Yesterday it was 14. Yes. Fourteen clothes changes. It's fun to me though because she's obviously very girly but she's really into active, athletic things. I think she's the perfect mix of girly and tomboy.

Later that weekend we had fun at the playground. There's not much for Finn to do at the playground right now other than hang out in his stroller, but he's pretty good at that.
Here he looks like he's giving a fist bump and saying, "Heeeeeyyyyyy!" He is just the most affable guy!He's been sleeping through the night for about a week now so I think it's safe to say he officially sleeps through the night! He's also really enjoying eating solid food now. He's up to rice cereal, sweet potatoes, carrots, and I have some acorn squash cooling in the kitchen right now, just waiting to be pureed for him. This first foray into solid food has been pretty easy as far as his Isovaleric Acidemia goes. Right now it's all normal baby foods (vegetables, baby cereal, etc.) and the only real difference is that he can only have one serving of sweet potatoes per day because that's got more protein in it than some of the other veggies.

Work outing

Here is something I've noticed about having another baby: you can't be as uptight about things like clothing/appearances/etc. You can see this point illustrated by the photo below where Finn is wearing a Thanksgiving bib. He's been wearing it since he was born in March so now that it's October it's actually somewhat seasonally appropriate. He spits up so much we go through bibs like tissues so I'll put him in any bib I can find. In this photo he's snuggling with Maggie's baby, Carol, named after Grandma Howard who gave her the baby. He's just sucking on that thumb again! I'm thinking he's working on a tooth as he's been uncharacteristically fussy the last few days and wanting to really gnaw on anything he can get in his mouth. He also has officially slept through the night (I'm talking from bedtime to morning, not 5 hours like the official definition) one time and is pretty consistently only waking up one time a night, but he doesn't eat, and he goes back to sleep quickly. I know several people whose babies slept through the night at 8 weeks or so but compared to Maggie who was over a year before she slept through the night, this really feels huge.
I love to work out and go to the Y as much as I can but I recently tried out an exercise DVD so I'd have something to do in case I couldn't make it to the YMCA. I figured I could do it while Finn napped and Maggie could either play by herself or hang out with me while I worked out (she calls it "work outing", by the way). She decided she wanted to work out with me so she went into her room and got on what she thought would be her best exercise outfit. She got her sleeping bag to put alongside my exercise mat, and then she did her best to follow the exercises. I have never had so much fun working out before. She was so cute following along and she really got into it. She did wonder why the instructor yelled "I want you to feel like you're dying!", but otherwise it was pretty good for her. Before you view her workout clothes please let me tell you that she was not inspired by MY workout clothes (shorts and shirt, nothing tight) so she kinda went out on her own here.
Here she is making up her own variation on the exercise. Sometimes she would do one or two reps and then say, "I'm done with this one." Instead of using weights she held her markers.Later that day she was hanging out with me on my bed while Finn napped. When he awoke I told her to just wait for me on the bed and that I'd be back in five minutes. I came back in with him and here's what I saw:She almost NEVER naps any more so I guess that "work outing" wore her out!