Moms, Should I Force Her to Eat?

I need opinions/experienced moms to chime in here.

Alice seems to be going through a "reverse" growth spurt... at least that's what I'm calling it. She goes through phases where she eats whatever I put in front of her without a problem. Her current phase, however, requires me to pinch/pull her ear and tell her to open her mouth... with EVERY bite, no matter what I'm feeding her. I was attempting to hold her head and that was just hard to do. She turns her head and rests it on her shoulder away from the food. The ear pinch/pull has been most effective. Occasionally I can get her to "help mommy" by holding the fork/spoon with me and getting it into her mouth. Once in a while I just need to touch her ear slightly and she'll open her mouth. Most of the time I have to get her by the ear and (attempt to) patiently tell her to open her mouth and eat her food. If I give her finger food, she eats some and then plays with it and makes a HUGE mess or throws it on the floor.

Mind you, her meals have been significantly smaller because I can only force feed her so much. PLUS, if she doesn't eat a good sized meal at breakfast/lunch/dinner, she wants to snack all day. She does have a fairly regular "snack" after she wakes up from her nap in the afternoon. A typical eating schedule for her is breakfast at 8/8:30, lunch at noon, nap time from 1-3ish, snack around 4, dinner at 6. One book I read said that you shouldn't be concerned about what your toddler eats in ONE day, but look at the content of their meals over 2-3 days. Clearly that's not intended for a pregnant mommy who can hardly remember at lunch time what SHE ate for breakfast, let alone what her daughter ate two days ago. Do I really need to keep a food journal for my 19 month old??

So.... Do I continue the route I'm going, trying to get her to eat a decent meal at "meal time"? Should I let her dictate being all done and then not feed her snacks when she wants them so she'll eat a better meal at the next meal time? Do I just go with whatever and let her snack here and there throughout the day? No one ever tells you about these kinds of things before you become a mom. I guess I wouldn't have been that interested in hearing it before I had a child. Funny how that works. But seriously, I'd love to know what others have done or even if you're going through the same thing with your toddler... What has worked for you???

Three days til Christmas! And just for fun, here's a really cute picture of my two favorite people :-D

Laughing with Daddy

Another one...

More Spaghetti

For those who don't have Facebook...

Moved

Russell Moore's writing usually leaves me wowed. His talent for turning a phrase in a new or unusual way makes me laugh or cry or marvel. His blog post today is worth a read and it probably affected me more because Moore just celebrated the arrival of his baby boy. Here's a sampler:

Early on in your unborn life, a doctor told us he thought you would have Down Syndrome. He turned out to be wrong, but we didn’t know that until you were born. Sadly, you probably won’t meet a lot of kids with Down Syndrome because so few of them ever make it to birth these days, so you might not even understand what that is.

When the doctor told us this, your mother and I looked at each other and knew right away that you would be a gift: Down Syndrome or not. Your worth and your value wouldn’t be in whether or not this age saw you as having “power” or “success,” but instead based on your bearing the image of the God who made you and who loves you.

Read the rest here.

Thrift Stores

For those who don't know, I LOVE thrift stores. I especially appreciate ones that are well organized and know that they are thrift stores (i.e. CHEAP). This morning we went to my FAVORITE thrift store because as a club member I received 50% off all clothing, shoes & accessories. Woot. I'm totally there. We got a ridiculous amount of clothing for the girls (mainly Alice) and a few things for Andrew & me. I feel much more ready for "winter" in southern California and am thankful that I no longer will need to wash Alice's clothes every few days to keep her in long sleeves :-)

Today marks 36 weeks of pregnancy, which means only four more weeks until my due date. For a good couple weeks I was convinced that Emma was going to come early. I'm not so sure anymore. I think it was just wishful thinking since I'm starting to get more and more uncomfortable. We shall see if there are any changes to report from the next doctor appointment this Friday. It will determine our Christmas whereabouts.

This particular Monday also happens to be the first of SIX Mondays where Andrew will have the day off work AND school. Of course our thrift store morning was something that wouldn't have happened without him. I love having my husband home and less stressed with a break from school. We are so blessed!

Quiet Moment

At our doctor appointment yesterday we learned that Emma is head-down! I'm very thankful for that as I'm not good at determining what lump on my stomach is which body part of hers. But she's creating a LOT of pressure and lower back pain that comes and goes.

Alice is having a rough morning and is now in playpen time--apparently the ONLY thing that's okay at the moment. She's already gotten one molar and the second one is either just poking through or about to. It appears the behavior (crying, inconsolable maniac) may be connected with incoming teeth. I've also had some pressure in my sinuses the last two days that's causing headaches and throbbing. I'm sure you can imagine how that feels with a screaming 19 month old to add to it. Please pray!

Less than half of the month until Christmas... :-D

To Do

This morning Andrew pulled out the advent calendar ornament which begins the second third of the month. Just 16 days until Christmas!

It's also (according to the countdown <----) 38 days until my due date. THAT seems very soon. I think Emma "dropped" on Saturday. I won't go into detail, but I can breathe easier and haven't had any heartburn since then. She's still moving a lot, but does seem to have slowed down a tad. I'm pretty sure I look smaller than I did with Alice, but I'm not sure. I've gained right around 20 lbs, though having the flu certainly influenced that. I feel like there are still so many things to do before Emma arrives, so I'm going to make a list. I like lists :-)

To Do:
-Take hospital tour (planned for Monday, Dec. 19)
-Get a few more baby items
-Make list of who to notify of Emma's coming
-Figure out what to do with Alice when Emma comes
-Make & freeze some meals
-Pack for hospital
-Install baby car seat & move Alice's car seat

Okay... that doesn't seem as overwhelming as I was making it in my mind. And now Alice is awake. Today was a good nap day. This week has been good nap, bad nap, good nap, bad nap, good nap. At least she's sort of "consistent." Happy Friday!

The Advent Calendar

I can't believe an entire month went by and nothing was posted on our blog. Actually... I can believe it. Hopefully the rest of December won't be like November was.

Now that it's officially the Christmas season I've been listening to Christmas music almost non-stop. I hope my husband would say something if he's annoyed... He hasn't said anything yet :-)

I also finally made our own advent calendar which I plan to use every year. LOVE IT! I got the idea from a blog I randomly stumbled upon, though I changed a few things based on what I had (or didn't have). Part of my lack of blogging has been trying to get this thing completed during Alice's lamely short naps and once she's in bed. Not to mention the fact that I got the flu right after Thanksgiving and wasn't feeling 100% until about a week ago. Then Alice started throwing up. Oi. When an 18 month old has a tummy ache, there's really no way of knowing until they throw up all over your bedroom floor. Not that it happened that way with us or anything.....

Anyway, the advent calendar is FINALLY done and I'm getting back into the swing of things after a really wonderful (despite the flu) break from it during the Thanksgiving week. Finally got the Christmas decorations up on Sunday night and got some much needed cleaning done around the apartment. Laundry is in full swing... actually almost done so I'd better get these pictures up... Plus Alice (of course) is awake after a 1 hr 20 min nap. Sigh.

I digress. Here are the much anticipated pictures of my handmade advent calendar. Okay, maybe not all that anticipated, but I'm pretty thrilled about it. The last step is to write names of Jesus on the backs of the ornaments along with a reference of where it appears in the bible. Thank you Pastor Ron for that idea!

In other news, Fred the frog finally kicked the bucket. I refuse to believe it was entirely out of neglect, as we hadn't gotten him crickets in quite a while. He was old and, as far as I know, lived a good life. Poor Fred. He's in the dumpster now. It smells a bit nicer around our apartment without him, but he was a very interesting conversation piece. He didn't contribute much to that conversation, but that's okay. He was a cool pet for a few years. Alright, off to get the girl and fold laundry. Happy December!!

Small Miracles

At this very moment a miracle is happening in our apartment. The first miracle happened about two hours ago when Alice pointed to her crib after a short 5 minutes of rocking/singing with mommy, indicating that she wanted to lie down in there. Whoa. I put her down, she was awake. As I listened to her over the monitor, she settled herself and fell asleep after less than 10 minutes. Yes, that was miracle number one.

Miracle number two is still in process. She's... still... asleep... TWO HOURS LATER!!! After three and a half weeks of bad naps I am SO thankful for this one day. I don't know how long she'll sleep. I don't know if she'll do this again tomorrow. I don't know if this is a result of bad naps on Saturday and Sunday. Frankly, I could care less what caused this excellent nap. I still haven't heard a peep from her. YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

We also had another doctor appointment this morning and little Emma's heartbeat sounded good and strong. She kicked the machine several times, but everything is right on track. Alice really doesn't like it when mommy lays down on the table so we can hear Emma. She sat next to me on the table today and it helped a little. Funny girl. I asked about making a Christmas (driving) trip and the doctor said he'd give us the okay as it gets closer, but I'll probably be fine.

Speaking of Alice... She just started making noises. Wow. That was just over two hours. She's not crying, but making happy noises. YAY!! Miracle number three.

Here are some updated pictures for those of you who haven't seen them on Facebook. And of course, a really excellent family picture. Because every woman who is decently pregnant around Halloween should have a jack-o-lantern shirt and carve a pumpkin to match.

Trimester the Third

I realized last week that I'm in the third trimester already. Whoa. Feels like the Emma pregnancy has gone MUCH faster than the Alice pregnancy. Monday will be 30 weeks, which then (in my mind) begins the count down, as opposed to the count up, of pregnancy. Single digit weeks until she arrives. Whoa.

For those interested, Alice is still fighting her naps. For several days now I've had to hold her and rock/sing until she falls asleep and then transfer her to the crib. Today I put her in while still awake and she fell asleep in about 10 minutes. It was a small victory. It felt even smaller when she woke up after only an hour and 10 minutes. Sigh. Yes, she's awake right now. No, I'm not getting her yet...

She's been making more attempts at words and will grunt the number of syllables in a word that I try getting her to say. It's pretty funny. She's got "up" and "bye" for sure. Although "bye" sounds like the same sound a sheep makes: "buh." Hey, we'll take it! It also appears that she's about to get some teeth. I realize I said that recently, but they still haven't shown up. Her gums look sore in spots and she REALLY doesn't like me sticking her toothbrush in there. I'm really hoping that the teeth will come and she'll go back to normal (as in at least 2 hour) napping. I've heard of some kids who stop napping at a young age (some as young as 6 months??) and I'm praying Alice isn't one of them. Sure, I could still attempt "quiet time," except I'd have to supervise in order for it to actually be quiet and it still probably wouldn't be that quiet. Alice isn't exactly a quiet child. Shocker if you know her daddy. I'm listening to her squeal over the monitor as I write this.

Okay, the maybe-she'll-fall-back-asleep hope has been completely crushed. Off to get the girl.