Since our last update, I (Cheryl), have gone back to work. I made the decision to go back to work part time while I was on maternity leave with Ty. After a lot of discussion, we decided that we can make it work and I’m SO glad. I’m really looking forward to spending time with Ty and Lily other than just an hour at night between work and bedtime. So I have been back at work for 2 weeks and its going pretty well. I’m hoping this will be the best of both worlds!

Lily is loving her new school. She has been at CAOS since August and she is doing great! I think we were both a little nervous about taking her out of the daycare she had been in for almost 3 years but,  it was of course, much more traumatic for us than it was for her. The school has been a lot of fun. Josh has had the opportunity to go on 2 field trips with her. I was able to go to the Thanksgiving lunch (so yummy!). And most recently they went to the Dollar Store and bought Christmas presents for another friend at school. Shopping at school!!! This is my kind of place!

Tyler is just growing and growing and growing. He had his 2 month check up last week and weighed in at 14 lbs 9 oz. He is in the 96th percentile for weight and the 50th percentile for length. He’s adorable! He definitely can be a little fussy and I haven’t been able to drink milk in about 6 weeks now but then he has his happy moments and I just melt. Lily loves to see Ty smile. That’s really the only time she interacts with him right now. I think once he gets more interactive she will be a little more interested in him.

Today is a great day for me! Josh was finally cleared to pick up over 10 lbs again after having his gall bladder removed 2 weeks ago. For the past 2 weeks he hasn’t been able to lift anything over 10 lbs which included Ty. It has been a loooooong two weeks for me. So I definitely took advantage today and kept passing Ty off to Josh. In case you missed his gall bladder saga, he has been having “attacks” for almost 6 months now. He originally scheduled the surgery for Oct 31st but when I had the c-section I had my own recovery and restrictions so Josh’s surgery was postponed. He is very glad for that to be over with and is happy to report that he can now eat whatever he wants!

We are really looking forward to Christmas this year. We were blessed over the weekend when my dad, Heidi and Joey drove down to celebrate Christmas with us. Friday we are celebrating with my mom and Sean and Christmas day we will be with Josh’s family. Lily is very excited; she loves opening presents! She has been asking Santa for a Barbie house and dolls… so we’ll see We have also been trying to impress upon her the real reason for Christmas and might start a new tradition of singing Happy Birthday to Jesus. She also loves to sing! And talk. And talk. And talk.

We are all adjusting to our family of 4 now. Josh is pretty set with our little girl and our big boy but I told Josh that I didn’t feel like our family is complete. I don’t know what is missing but I just don’t feel it yet. To which he replied, “Are you telling me that you want a dog?”

We have had great family support and lots of visitors!  We even have a loving church congregation who has been bringing us meals the last two weeks, we have been eating well (the only way Lutherans know how).  Lily has still been really interested in Ty and more than willing to help out.  When he cries, she tries to give him his binky; when he fusses on his play-mat, she turns the music on for him.  Tomorrow starts a new challenge to overcome, I will be working (from home).  I will work from home tomorrow and Thursday and then go into work on Friday for my first day back at work in over 3 weeks.  This long break from work makes me want to be retired now, and work later in life.

I feel like I am rambling now so I will stop typing.  I think we are going to do much better with this blog, feel free to leave us comments or questions (we are trying to do more on here and less on facebook).

We have had some issues with breastfeeding but we are working through them. As you might remember, Ty was 10lbs 12oz when he was born. He dropped to 9lbs 8oz which was a little over a 10% weight loss so we started supplementing with bottles. We saw the speech therapist yesterday and actually he did really well. She said that the bottle helped him learn how to suck and not chew and the past couple tries at breastfeeding have been better! We’ll keep trying.

Ty is also a really good sleeper. I’m sure he would sleep through the night if we could let him but because of the weight loss we are waking him up to eat every 4 hours at night and 3 hours during the day. He’s usually pretty good about going back to sleep but the 4am feeding he tends to like to be awake after that. We’ll work on that

Ty loves his big sister and she is pretty ok with him.

Lily’s Language – 9/1/2011

If we get more of them I will post them below.

We did go to Hollywood/LA and it was awesome! We saw everything we wanted to see including celebrities! Lily had a great birthday party in AZ which was so nice that we were there and were able to do that. I can’t believe as I write this, that was a year ago and I really need to start planning her 3rd birthday party!

One thing that we hadn’t mentioned in the previous post was that I was pregnant. Heading to AZ for a wedding it didn’t seem possible to hide so family knew. When we returned, we had our second prenatal appointment. To our surprise, the baby did not have a heartbeat. The following week or so was pretty awful. Thanks to family and friends we got through it. We still have a picture of the baby on our nightstand and will never forget how that baby and that experience changed us.

A couple months later we found out we were expecting again. The anxiety was terrifying but again we have a great support system and focused on positive thoughts. Baby Boy Reeley is due Oct 19th! I have to say that this pregnancy has been different than with Lily but basically just because I feel like I have grown so much faster than I did with her. I told Josh that I’m pretty sure this is as big as I got with Lily and I still have 10 weeks to go. He disagrees but he doesn’t have to carry it around 24/7 So with 10 weeks to go, we have everything we need for this baby but nothing is set up. I finally convinced Josh that Lily and Baby Boy are going to have separate rooms. So we (I) have been working on cleaning out the office. We had a huge garage sale and sold a TON of stuff to make some room for the baby. But as I type this, the “baby’s room” is occupied by a bookshelf, a computer desk complete with computers and printers and a piano. I did manage to clean out the closet, so that’s progress

We have an appointment on Monday that includes an ultrasound because so far every time I have been measured by belly is measuring a couple weeks ahead. The first time it was 2 weeks and the second time it was 3. So we’ll see. I think the Oct 19th due date isn’t right and it should be a little earlier… All we can do is wait and see.

The baby that we lost would have been due on April 19th. So on that day this year we both took off of work and decided we were going to plant a tree in our yard. My family had experienced a lot of losses in a short amount of time. So we were thinking of those family members as well while we planted the tree. When we woke up that morning it was stormy, grey and bleak outside. We decided to forge ahead because this is the date that we wanted the tree planted. We had already picked out the tree that we wanted, an October Maple Glory, headed for Lowe’s and brought it home in my little Nissan Sentra. By the time we were actually ready to start digging the rain had stopped but it was really cold. I was wearing my winter coat with the hood up and remember, it was April! We planted the tree and got it all secured and by the time we were done the sun was out. I’m proud to report that the tree is doing great! It has definitely grown and is a great addition to our yard. Lily has a special love for the tree too which is weird because she wasn’t there when we planted it and we really haven’t made a big deal about it to her. But if its ever leaning she makes sure to tell Josh that its leaning so he can fix it. And when we pull into the drive she exclaims, “There’s my tree!”

This summer has been a lot of fun for us! We have been having a great time taking Lily places and doing fun things with her while she is still an only child. We are looking forward to getting the baby’s room ready and welcoming a new addition to our family!

This past Thursday, Lily had her first day of preschool! She is going to the Carle Auditory Oral School which is actually right next door to the daycare that she has been attending since she was 6 weeks old. Earlier in the spring, we contacted CAOS to see if she would be able to start considering her birthday is so late in September. Since they don’t have a cut off date they said we could come in and they would screen her to see how she does. During the screening Lily had to name body parts on a picture of a girl, color with markers, listen as the teacher read a story and a couple of other activities. There was also a pronounciation screening because the school is for children with hearing problems and they integrate normal hearing kids with the kids with hearing problems. The teacher would say a word and then Lily had to repeat it. Lily got to the 4.5 year old words before she started mispronouncing them and at the time she was only 2.5. They had no concerns about her starting this year so we signed her up!

On Wednesday night we had an orientation to attend. Lily played with the kids and teachers while we sat in a meeting to learn about the school, drop off and pick up times and before and after school care. We also got to spend a good amount of time in Lily’s new room with her teacher. There are 5 kids in the class including Lily! Its crazy!

We have been preparing Lily for her new school for a couple weeks now. I thought we may have started too soon because everyday she would ask if she is going to her new school tomorrow. But when the time came, she did great! Josh does drop offs in the morning so unfortunately (but probably fortunately because I would have been a crying mess!) I wasn’t there. Josh brought her up and took a bunch of pictures and she had no problems! I picked her up and she was telling me all about her day, her new friends, her new teacher and what she did that day.

Each day her journal (yes, my not even 3 year old has a journal!) gets sent home and we can read about something she did that day. So in the car, before we get home, I ask her what she did and so far, two days in a row, she has talked about what is in the journal. On the first day they made magic play-doh. And the second day she cut out shapes with scissors. I know this activity went over well with Lily because she LOVES scissors!!!

So I would say the transition has gone well!

In other excitement this summer, Lily seems to be ok with the idea of having a baby brother. Every time she has stickers she gives me two, one for the baby and one for me. So far she’s a good sharer.

This summer, Lily has been swimming a couple of times and loves it! We got a slip and slide but that didn’t go quite as well. The pictures are cute but the actual experience was pretty much torture for all of us! She spends a lot of time outside in the backyard playing in her house and in her sand/water table. She loves play-doh. She loves to color pictures, put stickers on them and then hang them on the wall. At one point we actually ran out of wall space in the living room for her to hang them so she started going down the hallway. We have since put a stop to this though the Lily museum was quite cute! We have taken a couple trips up north to see the family. Car rides are getting a little less fun especially since the Binky Fairy came and took Lily’s binkies to give to the babies.

Also this summer, Lily has discovered a love for the library! I think she likes it because Mommy doesn’t say no everytime she picks something up. She plays with the toys and puzzles. There is a house there too that she loves to play in. And she just wanders the bookshelves picking out random books and putting them in our bag. The idea that she can have whatever she wants is pretty awesome! We usually let her bring home 10 books and she picks out two and those are the only two that we will read before its time to go back and get some more. But that’s ok. This has been the hottest summer since we’ve lived here and with me being 7 months pregnant I do not mind the air conditioning at all! Today when we went to the library, we checked out our books, walked out and they were playing with bubbles! This was of course a big hit with Lily! And all totally free! Did I mention, I love the library!?!?

Looking forward, we are just enjoying our time together as a 3 person family before it becomes 4! I really think Lily will be a great big sister. She is very task oriented so we are hoping to use that to our advantage!

After our wedding festivites this weekend Cheryl and I will be heading to California for a week to hang out in the LA/Hollywood area.  We will be leaving Lily with Oma and Papa (Cindi and Sean) while we have a vacation that involves sleeping in and not just a change of scenery.  We have both been looking forward to this trip and I am sure that we will post an update on how it went after we get back.

We will slide back through Phoenix to have a quick Birthday party for Lily and then be on our way back to Illinois.  I know! Can you believe that Lily is going to be 2!!!  It seems like just a little a couple days ago that I was up in the wee hours of the night typing up a post that “She is here!” about how momma and baby are both doing great.  Well anyway we hope that we get to see you guys in the next couple weeks as we have a wedding and two birthday parties (yes two… one in AZ and one in IL) for our spoiled little girl.