Let me just tell you about the first week of month three.

Wednesday Afternoon:
Ella takes a three hour nap. I think to myself "Weird. But YES!" And watched 3 episodes of chopped.
She's in good humor after her nap, but a little on the quiet side. "Must be a growth spurt."

Wednesday evening:
Ella picks at her dinner. This is no surprise.
9 o'clock rolls around, she's falling asleep on her Daddy.
Goes to bed without drinking her milk. There's something sinister going on here.

Wednesday night/ Early Thursday:
Ella moans and groans in her sleep. Cody goes to check on her.
"Kaylea. Kaylea. Kay-lea. Kaylea. KAYLEA GAINES."
"What?!?!?! Shut up! It's 2:30!"
"Ella has fever."
"Okay." *rolls over*
*sighs, shakes Kaylea back into reality* "Listen to me. I think Ella has fever."
"What?"
Cody gives up and marches back to Ella's room. Kaylea follows behind in a zombie fashion.
Kaylea touches her sweet baby's foot and is instantly awake. Tries to remember where in the world we put the thermometer that we've used exactly once in her life. Checks temp. 102.2.

What?! There were no symptoms! No snotty nose. No irritability. No tears.
We gave her a little tylenol and Cody stayed in the room with her. He was already sick and feverish anyway. What else could be done at 3 in the morning?

Thursday Morning/Afternoon:
A miserable little baby turtle snuggled up with Mama while Mama closed her eyes and prayed without ceasing that Adam would be unscathed. How could I protect him without rejecting her germs? Then the dread settled in that he had already been too exposed yesterday. What was the point in freaking out about it now? We waited anxiously for the doctor appointment while Ella came in and out of sleep and tears. When we finally made it to the doctor, her fever was under 100 for the first time all day. Because why would it cooperate? After a dramatic start to the appointment, things didn't get much better when it was time to actually examine her. So I held my baby down while the poor doctor tried to look in her ears and mouth. She listened to her lungs. "Sounds good." Looked in her right ear. "That looks good too." Seriously? All this way and there's nothing wrong?! Looked in her left her. "Oh, that's no good." Looked at her throat. "That's definitely not good." Yep, after almost 22 months, Ella ended up with her first ear infection and tonsillitis. JOY. We were given appropriate prescriptions and sent on our merry way.

Thursday Evening/ Friday Morning:
Cody was sent home early from work, and it worked out so wonderfully, because it meant that the two sicklies could cuddle together while I sanitized and kept Adam away. She was the saddest, most pathetic thing I've ever seen. It broke both of our hearts. She wouldn't eat or drink anything, not even slushes or milkshakes. She just laid and trembled from weakness and fever. I felt helpless and distraught for most of the following two days.

Saturday and Sunday:
Ella stayed miserable and spent a lot of time crying.  Still no eating, just a tiny bit of drinking. We would see peeks of her sweet personality before the sickness settled in again. I began to feel a bit of exhaustion settling in and began to wonder if Alexander Fleming was actually a fraud.

Monday:
Adam was due for his two month vaccinations. He was sniffling a bit that day, but the pediatrician assured me shots wouldn't make things worse or better. Ella was at my Mom's house, irritable as ever, seemingly unable to heal from this blasted sickness. Adam took shots like a champ, and seemed in great humor.

Monday night/ Early tuesday:
Ella cries all night long next to her equally exhausted Dad. She begins running fever again. She's also still refusing food. She's surviving on milk and pumped breastmilk at this point. Adam lays next to me running a low grade fever and coughing a scary cough. We call the doctor and get an immediate appointment. Kaylea breaks down in tears for the first time. That afternoon, I'm assured that both kids are recovering. Ella's ear is healed, and her throat looks much better. We're on the upside, she says. Adam is great, coughing because of drainage from allergies. The timing was uncanny, but whatever. She agreed that his cough sounded scary enough to bring in. Ten points for not being excessively paranoid. She even showed me his oxygen levels to reassure me. Best pediatrician in the land.

Wednesday:
Adam is on the upside. Everything is fine. Ella is in pretty good spirits. She even ate a little bit. We made it! It's over! Hallelujah.

Thursday:
I notice Ella has a rash on her belly. "Hmm. Must be heat rash." I go about my day. Next diaper change, the rash has spread. "What in the world?" I say. It's on her back, neck, legs, chest... basically if it was skin, the rash was present. It wasn't a raised rash, didn't seem to bother her... What in the flanahan is going on here? Another frustrated call to the doctor. "We've had three other recent patients call with a rash today. Email us pictures." Kaylea Bangs head against wall. A call twenty minutes later says it looks viral and to ride it out. Well GREAT, Kaylea says, then cries again. 

Friday- Monday:
Ella looks terrible. Like a sickly, diseased baby turtle. Miserable. It hurt both of us to see her. But she was finally acting more like Ella and less like a raging psychopath, so that helped. Ate a full meal for the first time in over a week. Adam was untouched by the rash and we were so, so thankful.

It took two weeks before things evened out around here. I can't tell you how many times I text my Mom and told her I was losing my mind. I cried in the kitchen while I cooked. I cried when my kids cried. I was so tired. I was the only healthy one in my house for over a week, and sometimes I wanted to join the sicklies, but I was so thankful for my husband. He looked and felt like crap, but he was wonderful to help me when I needed it. On one hand, while Adam did succumb to his allergies, I remained amazed at the power of breastmilk. On the other hand, he nursed constantly and I thought I was going to lose my mind. He takes a bottle better than Ella did, but not when he didn't feel well. And nobody slept for two weeks. When Ella did finally sleep through the night, we got up to check on her countless times before we finally accepted that maybe she just felt like sleeping. And she slept twelve hours. And hasn't slept through the night since. Because now, dear friends, we're cutting stomach teeth on top and bottom, and two year molars. SIMULTANEOUSLY.  AT THE SAME TIME, DO YOU HEAR ME?! It's never ending. It's always something. Sometimes I want to run away. But at the same time, I love it. And I love these babies. And I love comforting them. And I love that I'm able to stay at home with them and not worry about missing hours from a paycheck or what it will do to our budget. My husband is so good to provide for us in so many ways. I'm really just crazy about that hunk of burning love.

Adam is still thriving. He managed to nurse his way to 9 month clothes, but seems to be slowing down. He sleeps about five hours at night before he wakes up to nurse, but only eats for about five minutes before he goes back to sleep for an additional three hours. He goes three or four hours between feedings most days, but other days he eats every two hours until bedtime. Basically, he's breastfed, and I let him eat when he wants. Because he's a baby. He's got his head control pretty well figured out, and still has a great head of hair. As a matter of fact, he got his first haircut. He was not a fan. Ella got several inches cut off of her hair, because she uses it as a napkin and I was sick of the tangles. She was also a brat at her appointment, so basically we're not getting haircuts again until we're all recovered from that drama. 

To end the month, we took a trip to the farm so that Cody's family could meet Adam. He was so sweet, and so good natured the entire trip. His sister, on the other hand... Bless the child. Tantrum, fit, tantrum, fit, snot, tears, tantrum, kicking and screaming, fit, tantrum, nap, food, fit, tantrum, bed. That's really the only way to summarize our trip. I had never seen my child act that way, and it didn't help that every time you tried to explain to her family that she's normally a pretty easy going kid, they would just raise their eyebrows and say "mhmm" in a tone that said "Bull Butter." Blergh. I've never been more embarrassed, and this is coming from the girl who does or says something stupid at least once a day. Ella won the embarrassment game. Hands down, white flag waved. It rained a crazy amount of rain while we were there, and apparently that was like... day eighteen... of rainfall for them. When you're in farm country and farmers can't farm, there's a certain gloom in the air that kind of weighs heavily on everyone involved. We were trapped inside the entire trip, Ella went stir crazy, I loved the quiet, and Cody stood at the door and watched it rain a lot. Cody's Grandpa held Adam for three hours straight, and it was nice because I think it distracted him from the pending "planting deadline." I'm not cut out for the farm life, y'all. Just give me a job that doesn't depend on mother nature and her mood swings. Sometimes I wish I had a job that didn't depend on Ella and her mood swings, but that's neither here nor there.

To sum it, my kids are in two extremely different life phases, which makes life difficult and hard. Ella is trying hard to figure words out, and grows extremely frustrated at a rapid pace if she's can't communicate what she's trying to say. Adam is somewhere between newborn and infant. Content to "hang out," but old enough to know he doesn't like to be left alone. Ella is surviving on macaroni and tomatoes (until she finds out that I blogged that she was eating something consistently, then she'll go on strike.) Adam still loves to nurse and I don't see any signs of him needing another form of nutrition any time soon. Ella has started letting us know when she needs a new diaper, so her "training potty" was ordered last week. I'll be wiping Adam's butt for at least another two years, help me Jesus. See what I mean? Two babies, two very different life phases. Sometimes it's WONDERFUL that Ella is transitioning from "baby to toddler," but I go back and forth from wishing she was already a toddler to mourning the time passing so quickly. I'm in no hurry for Adam to change a bit. He's so easy going, a champion nurser, and the last baby. I'm holding on tight to every second of him. And to Ella. Look, I have a lot of feelings I'm working through, okay?

That's it! Here's his sweet 3 month picture and his monthly picture with his sister. Sweetest babies.

Turtle and Gus: Mother's Day

It's bedtime.

It's been bedtime for over an hour, and for some reason, tonight of all nights, you're not interested in sleeping. You're laying beside me and I can hear those tired little yawns, but I can also hear you sing "Itsy bitsy spider" as you fight the heavy of your eyelids. The room is mostly dark. But the glow of my cell phone provides enough light that I can see you doing the motions along with it. A text message alert draws your attention to my phone, and you sit up and say "Hi friend!" And hold your hand out for my phone. I tell you no for the umpteenth time today, and you sigh and plop back down on the pillow. We both stay quiet for a moment, because both of us are annoyed with the other... But I lose the fight first because I laugh at your attempt to sneak out of the bed. Sometimes I regret that I raised you to believe they somebody has to being laying beside you in order for you to go to sleep, but I think that in the grand scheme of things, I'll be thankful for it when you're grown and gone. So many nights, I've watched your baby head move closer and closer to my chest, until your ear finds my heartbeat... And you grow still just long enough to let your eyes get heavy. You jolt yourself back awake and I sigh in frustration, and the process repeats itself over and over until uou finally surrender to the sweet dreams that are beckoning you. I stomp down the stairs angrily and swear that tomorrow, things are going to be different. I'm going to put you in bed, read our nightly stories, and March back out of the room. But somehow, every night, your sweet baby hand lands on my face and you kiss my nose. I'm not a fool, I know that you do it whenever you know you're in trouble... But you're no fool yourself. You know I'll kiss your nose right back as I pull you up close to me again.

You exhaust me. Every day of your life, you find some way to make me want to bang my head against a wall. I dread the bedtime process all day long. The entire process wears me down, because I know your Daddy is waiting for me to come down so that we can talk about our days without you interrupting and without one of your obnoxious sing along videos playing in the background. 9 times out of 10, I trudge out of your bedroom because I know that as soon as I plop down next to your Daddy, your little brother is going to pop his head up and let out a disgruntled shout that he's ready to eat. And Daddy and I will look at each other, sigh, and then smile as we head upstairs to our own bed. Are we frustrated? Sure. Are we exhausted? Absolutely. But we're okay with it. Because we know these days are but a vapor.

One of these days, we're going to sit in our recliners and look at each other. The same sparkle in our eyes, but faces that say "we raised two babies that were nineteen months apart." We'll probably wonder what to do with ourselves when you're both upstairs sound asleep in your beds, without any help from us. I don't like to think about a day that you're not living in my house, though I'm sure as you grow older and start sassing me with teenage eye rolls, I might grow a little more ready.

I never want to fear letting you go out on your own. I want to know that I poured every ounce of what I had to give you into you before I let you go. I only get eighteen years of you (Lord willing) before I have to be okay with whatever choices you make. They won't always be the right ones, but I hope that they're decisions that you're willing to discuss with me. That you're willing to hear what your Dad and I have to say. I hope that all of the energy and effort and dedication that we're pouring into you right now will reflect on the grown up side of you. We want you to have 100% of us right now, because we want to see 100% of us later. We never want to look back and say "we should have cuddled that little girl more often." Or "I wish we had taken a picture of her covered in mud and grass" before we both sighed in frustration that we had JUST bathed you. We want you to know that were present in the little moments too.

That's not to say we want to raise a clingy brat baby. No, we want you to be fierce, and we want you to grab life by the... Well. That's not a phrase you need to know yet. Someday. Not today. We want you to be independent and bold, and not need us as crutches.... But that's why we're so determined to build you up now. While we have you here with us.

You made me a Mama, Ella Morgan. And you have made me work hard for it. Your brother melts me to my core, but you're my fighter. You're the stubborn that I see in myself. I'm your greatest ally AND foe, because I know where your brain is headed before it gets there. I frustrate you as badly as you frustrate me... And it makes your Dad laugh outloud sometimes. He throws his hands up and says "leave me out of this." You're everything I could have asked for in a "first child," even on your worst day. And I want you to know that I am absolutely, completely, totally, and irreversibly crazy about you. I'm so thankful that I'm the arms that you landed in almost two years ago. I always tell your Dad "that girl is going to kill me." But we both know that you're what brought out the spark in me. You bring out the best and worst sides of me, and you keep me running back to Jesus sometimes. I love you so much for that. Truly.

Your little brother is teaching me different things. Mostly the importance of loving your Daddy openly and compassionately at all times, so that he knows what to look for in a wife. He's still in a "sleep constantly and smile goofily" phase, so there's a great bond, but not much of a relationship. Maybe I'll write a blog about how crazy he drives me in a few months, but tonight, just as you do every day, you're teaching me. The sounds of your breath just got noticeably heavier, which means that you've given up. An entire hour later. Bless your stubborn little heart.

I'm mad about you. That's all there is to it.
Until tomorrow, when I lock myself in the bathroom and say "NOT NOW!" For whatever fight we're having at that moment. I can't wait... Although maybe I can wait a little.


And as for Mr. Adam Jace... I already hear you. I hear your Daddy trying to distract your rumbly little belly. He knows that on any other night, I would come down the stairs and hear you crying, then put my head in my hands. "WHY DOES EVERYBODY ALWAYS NEED SOMETHING?!" I shriek exhaustedly. He knows I don't mean it. He knows that I know the day is ending and I can really freak out. But if we're being honest, nursing you in the quiet of my bedroom are the moments I look forward to with you. Your little sister is sound asleep, your Daddy is usually knocked out as well... it's just you and me. I inhale the sweetness of the "newborn smell" that I've grown to love so deeply as you look up at me through the sweetest blue eyes. I see a little bit of your Daddy looking back at me, but I mostly see myself. It's so true that little boys grab onto their Mama's hearts and don't let it go. May you stay this cuddly and sweet. I hope that your eyes always light up when they see me, because mine will always light up when I see you. You were unexpected, but certainly welcomed into our lives two months ago, and being your Mama is the greatest accomplishment in my life. Be strong and warrior like, sweet one, but hold on tight to the tenderness that's already peeking through your demeanor. 

Today is Mother's Day. And a sappy blog might have been expected, but I certainly didn't intend to write one. The Lord is so good to steady my heart at the best moments. It's a challenge and so hard, but I'm so thankful that I'm their Mama. Today and every day.