General
Juliet is still winning the award for being a super awesome baby. She is pretty predictable about when she will cry now - mostly she is either hungry or wants to be picked up and carried around. She loves to be held facing out and hates being alone when she is awake. She is pretty much bald right now with a very thin/short layer of fuzz that looks to be brown but has a reddish tinge if she is in the right light. Her eyes are still newborn grey/blue color, but I am thinking they will be brown like her sisters. I have been calling her my little squish lately because she has some awesome baby chub going on.
Feeding/Sleeping
Her bedtime keeps creeping earlier. Right now she usually goes down around 7:30 pm. I start to put Ellie down around 6:50 and am usually done by 7:20 pm then it is usually time to put Juliet down. I nurse her and she falls asleep pretty easily. She is still swaddled and sleeps in a rock n play but I think I am going to start transitioning her to the Merlin sleep suit and her crib this weekend. I have been avoiding it the past few weeks because I have been working full weeks at work and I want to start on a week where I am back to my old schedule. Juliet has been getting squirmier lately so I think it is time to take her out of the swaddle. I am a bit nervous because she sleeps well right now, but hopefully the transition will go ok.
Most nights Juliet goes down around 7:30-7:45 pm and wakes up once at night around 1:30am. She has been doing this for the past week, before that she was sleeping through until about 5:30 am. I am hoping the middle of the night wake up is just a phase and she will go back to sleeping through, but I have been really lucky with sleep so far so I really can't complain much. With the two kids though usually one is up each night - Ellie has had a cough lately so she might wake up at 11 pm and need some more water or some soothing. So sleep isn't super great for me but better than most folks with a 4 month old I think.
No real nap schedule yet - she mostly sleeps in the bouncer still, but I am going to try to start putting her down for naps once she is in her crib and once patterns start to emerge.
Work
I have been back at work for a month now and it is going well. Most weeks I work 3 days a week but I worked two full weeks the first two weeks of January because I am an accountant and it is year end. Working 3 days a week is perfect for me, but working 5 days is really tough. It has also been tough in the mornings getting ready for work because most mornings Brian leaves the house at like 5:15 am so I need to get myself and 2 kids ready for the day. I end up getting up around 5:30 am to pump and shower before they get up.
2 Under 2
I am not sure if it is all the transitions that Ellie has had in her life or if it is just being 2, but Ellie is having a bit of a rough time right now. She has been throwing lots of tantrums and crying if she doesn't get her way (example: When we go downstairs in the morning at like 6 am she will ask for an M&M and when I say no she has a fit). She is very attached to me still and I think that is probably because I started back at work and because Juliet takes a lot of my time now. If I am around she usually only wants me to do things for her. So I end up pretty much having to put both girls to bed every night because Ellie wants nothing to do with Brian doing it - which is tough because he would like to help out it is just easier on everyone if I do it. Juliet also doesn't like to be away from her food source so poor Brian has to deal with screaming kids a lot.
Body/Recovery
I am about 7 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight. I pretty much stopped going to the gym over the past month because 1) we have been moving back into our house which has taken up a lot of time 2) I keep dropping weight on my own 3) Now that I am back at work I don't feel the need for as much "me along time." I am sure it will catch up with me soon because I haven't been eating very well lately.
House Update
We moved back into our house! It was CRAZY! We moved back in a few days before Christmas so having to move all our stuff (we had brought so much more stuff over to my mom's house than I had ever imagined) plus getting ready for Christmas, plus having 2 small children equaled a very busy Christmas week (not to mention I was back at work). But we survived and we are in and it is great. We still have workers coming in and out and such every day but at least we are in. There are still a lot of things that need to be completed, but it is 96% complete at this point. They will need to paint it in the spring because it is too cold now, but the outside doesn't look horrible because the clapboard is light grey - so it sort of looks like a light grey and white house.
I guess we got an "illegal" tub for MA because the plumbing inspector would not approve it, so we had to take the tub out, put it in my mom's garage and will have to bring it back in once the inspection is complete, nuts! I can't wait for it to be installed because I am dreaming about taking a bath in it on a wintry night with a glass of wine in my hand. Here is said tub:
Here is the kitchen:
We have a lot of decorating and such to go but that will be done slowly over the next year I would say.
More pics of the ladies:
