Happy 6 Months Maribel!

To my adorable Maribel:

Happy 6 month half birthday baby girl! As I start to write this letter to you on your first half birthday, I feel like I don't even have the words to tell you just how much I love you. You light up my life just by being you. Your sweet chubby cheek smiles just make my heart melt all over again. I am so thankful to God that He saw fit to entrust you to me and your dad's care - what a huge responsibility. I know I'm not a perfect mom and I make mistakes, but I pray each day that God will use my efforts to raise you up to be a woman after His own heart.

Here are some of the wonderful things you are doing these days... You have learned to sit on your own really well. You still fall over sometimes but are becoming more and more stable every day. You drool A LOT and love to eat anything in your sight.... toys, your hands, my phone! You know how to roll from your belly to your back and have almost rolled the other way but not quite yet. Sleeping has become much better these days for you. You take either 2 or 3 naps a day and the morning and afternoon one are getting longer. You sleep on your belly for naps and your back for nighttime with your little taggie blanket. You go to bed around 7:30 at night and get up around 7am. You usually wake around 6am... sometimes you go back to sleep and sometimes you don't. We started solids about 2 weeks ago and so far you have tried rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and carrots. Rice cereal is definitely on your not like list! You have started making these yucky faces when I try to feed you rice cereal. You have 2 feedings with solid food now (breakfast and lunch). You LOVE bathtime, especially when your sister is in the tub with you. We have to work hard for your laughs but when you do they are so full of spirit. Your sister can make you laugh more than we can!Here are your stats from your 6 month check-up: Length is 28 inches (off the charts!), Weight is 18 pounds 8 ounces (90th percentile), and Head was 44 cm (80th percentile). You are our very very tall girl!! Everyone says you look just like your dad.

My prayer for you sweet Maribel as you grow is best summed up by God's Word: I pray that "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints." Ephesians 1:17-18

I love you baby girl!

Love always and forever,
Mommy

Then:Now:

Late 2 month update!

Realized I never posted this 2 month update on Maribel that I had written... :)

As I'm sure other mothers can attest to... having two children keeps you on your toes and you don't have much down time to do things like blog! So my Happy 2 Month Maribel blog is coming a bit late. :)

My beautiful Maribel is already now 2 months old and growing so quickly! Right around the 2 month mark she has started to really be much more social. She gives big cheesy grins to me all the time and I've gotten a faint giggle once or twice! It's so rewarding when your sweet baby starts responding back to you! You know you must be doing something right. She LOVES her bouncer and "talks" to the little monkey and lizard that go up and down. She wasn't doing this right at 2 months, but this past week (10 weeks) she can now hold her head up on her belly for short bits of time. Go Maribel! I love my sweet baby girl and treasure every single moment that I have with her.

After her 2 month check-up, I started putting her on her belly in her crib for naps because napping had become very difficult for her. She has been sleeping SO much better for naps since I did that. I have the monitor in her crib right next to her so I can hear her breathing over the monitor. She takes about 4 naps a day - sometimes 3. Her middle of the day nap is usually the longest one. We are mostly on the eat/wake/sleep cycle except for evening time. She seems to be MUCH hungrier in the evening hours between her last 2 bottles - about 2 hours between. The other periods of the day are usually between 3-4 hours.

I had been doing the babywise format - waking her in the morning at the same time, feeding her at the same intervals (every 3 hours) but it just didn't seem to work well for her and she is more varied during the day of when she needs to eat. So even though she's on a routine - it's not a strict every 3 hours. She has fallen in to her own pattern really well. She marches to the beat of her own drum unlike Lily did at that age. :) Lily was already going every 4 hours predictably and eating a lot more. Maribel usually drinks between 3-4 ounces.

She goes to bed now at about 8:30 each night. I lay her on her back for nighttime sleep and swaddle her. She sleeps really well. I wake her at 11 to feed her before I go to bed and then she is still eating one more time in the night - usually around 4am. Hoping we'll get through the whole night soon though!

lily-isms

I also forgot to post this blog I had been updating about little Lily-isms... some recent, some a few months old. :)

"it's okay, it was just fudge."

"i'm not going to get a treat" - to ms. phyllis about pooping

uses the phrase "if you say so" a lot

loves watching fraggle rock, busytown (richard scarry)

in reference to thanking God for our daily bread she said "no not daily bread, we're having macaroni and cheese!"

Me to Lily: "don't put your spit on your sister"

A recent prayer "Dear Jesus, Thank you for a good day and help me to be patient while daddy watches the news and i pray for maribel and help me to listen and obey. Amen."

"It's okay mommy, accidents happen."

"I spy something horsey" - her thing for me to guess when playing I spy... she obviously didn't quite get the concept of the game yet.. I guessed the horse pretty quick. :)

lily things

I feel like this past month has been a real turning point for Lily. She seems to have "grown up" and changed so much! I've been trying to jot down things that I want to remember at this point in her life. Might be disjointed for reading but the whole purpose of this blog is to have our memories recorded... so here goes:

Lily recently got her first board game - Candy Land! A classic and one of my favorites. She actually does pretty well with it although doesn't quite have the patience yet if it takes too long.

Most times when she is singing ring around the rosy she sings the chorus like this "lettuce lettuce we all fall down." I have no clue where she picked that up from but it's hilarious!

Lily can draw really good circles and lines now and is attempting to draw other things like a stick person. She can recognize a lot of letters now including L, Y, O, A, B, and S.

She will "read" books to me now and it's so cute hearing her turn the pages and make up the story as she goes. She actually is pretty right on with books that we read a lot.

Lily loves to pretend to play ghosts or as she calls it "ghosted." I'm pretty sure she has picked up on wanting to play this from her cousin Aaron. Her imagination has really taken off and she is pretending/imagining lots of things now.

She LOVES to dance and put on shows for us! Most times she likes using this backyardigans radio player thing to dance to. She will name her dances that she comes up with too - my favorites are the pointy dance and the princess dance!

After we have family Bible and prayer time in the evening, Lily likes to play woodpecker. It's not really a game but she came up with pretending that there is woodpeckers in the room and we point to them and describe what they look like. She also just likes to shout the word woodpecker together. Crazy, I know! :)

One night during prayer time, Matt asked her what she wanted Jesus to help her with. Her response: my hello kitty puzzle. :) Most times she wants to pray for her sister, too sweet! At mealtimes she has started saying her own prayer versus the traditional "God is great" prayer. One night she prayed "dear Jesus, thank you for my family and my food, amen."

Still working on potty training. Never thought it would take this long! She has good and bad days in that department but we'll get there eventually.

Can't believe my first baby girl is starting preschool at our church in just a little over a week! She'll be going 2 mornings a week so it's not a lot but still bittersweet for me. I know she is going to love it though because she loves going to sunday school. And she is going to have a wonderful teacher too!

Finally... got Lily's haircut this past week and it's ADORABLE!!! It desperately needed it because the top layer was getting out of control and longer than the underneath so it was weighing everything down. We went to this cute kids haircut place called Pigtails and Crewcuts. She loved it! Here's a picture of my sweet girl:

one month of maribel

Dear Maribel,

You turned one month on Saturday and I can hardly believe it! I always worried when I was pregnant with you about having enough love for two children instead of just one. Boy was I wrong. I can't imagine our family without you. I have fallen head over heals in love with you! The past month has been a whirlwind and you're already growing so much!

There are so many things that I love about you but here are a few. I love how you smile as a reflex when I kiss your cheek. I love your sweet face as your asleep on my chest. I love that you have your dad's hairline right now. :) I love your adorable cute perfect nose. I love when you stare at me and move your mouth like you just want a noise to come out of it. I love how your head bobbles when I'm holding you up. I love how you squeak in your sleep sometimes. I love your little feet. I love how you smell.

Most of all... I just love YOU Maribel! I'm so thankful that God has blessed me with such a sweet little baby girl as you.

Love,
Mommy