Who is this wonderful little person and how did I get so lucky?
Zoey is 20 weeks old now. She's an amazing baby. She sleeps well and often, most of the time without needing to nurse to sleep. She doesn't cry much, but she sure can yell! She's sitting up for a few seconds on her own and rolled from back to front and front to back yesterday for the first time.
We still nurse exclusively and on demand (though she's getting more and more eager to steal my food). We did hit a road block there for a little while when she fought against me while nursing. Whether it was discomfort from overactive letdown, her disliking any position other than lying down, me feeding her too often, or something else I haven't determined. But the fix was to wait a couple of hours (more or less) before I offered and trying something other than feeding to meet her needs first. She eventually learned that nursing could be pleasant and eats with gusto now. It only took a couple of weeks to sort it all out and now we're back to not paying any attention to the clock. Though I still feel that scheduled feedings are for the birds, (not literally, birds like babies should get to eat when they're hungry!) doing this broke the vicious cycle of back-arching, screaming, sputtering, and puking, and made me feel like my baby likes me again.
Ava is still loving her sister and being super helpful. She takes her (self appointed) job of throwing away Zoey's diapers very seriously. This morning, as I was having my morning pee, Ava ran into the bedroom yelling, "Mom, Zoey NEEDS us!!" :) Zoey loves Ava so much. She has a special yell that she does when she wants Ava. It sounds like. "Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!"
I hope they'll be best friends for life.
The girls have been really good lately, even through our major disaster. In 30 minutes, 3 feet of water poured down the walls and through the windows into our basement soaking 1/3 of our belongings and ruining most of it. Even the things we had stored a foot off the ground and stacked were just picked up by the rising water and dumped over. Poor Mike held the deep freezer as it floated and had to just watch everything topple into the water around him. We've salvaged some things (Mike's missionary journal, the deep freezer, some pictures, Mike's basketball cards, hopefully my wedding dress - still at the cleaners, so we'll see) but others were completely lost and had to be thrown away. We've learned a lot and managed to keep our faith and spirits up. We've seen many blessings come from this disaster. It's not only strengthened us, but it's also helped us to let go of a lot of things... not just physical things, but emotional things too. We feel stronger due to our loss. I know 5 years ago this would have broken us. It's amazing what the last 5 years have taught us about coping with loss, dealing with trials, and moving past heartache. I guess when you have something huge happen every 6 months you learn to just deal. All of this was caused by 2 hours of rain backing up in the street and going all the way past the curb up to our house. It would never have happened if the city had cleaned out the drain on that street. Our landlord has been awesome. He feels really bad that this happened and has helped us clean up and has been here a lot to help deal with little problems that arise. He even invited us over to his store the next night for some free ice cream, much to Ava's delight.
Ava was pretty shaken by all the change. She's doesn't like chaos. She was just headed to bed when all this happened Monday night and was really worried about me. I was crying pretty hard not knowing what would be ruined and what we'd do in the following days. My mom talked to Ava for a while while I sorted out calling people to help. She told me that Ava was relieved a bit when she knew people were coming to help. I sent her to a friend's house the next day so she would be safe and well taken care of while we sorted through the mess. That night and the following few days she was super clingy and acting out a lot. She pushed our buttons a lot and was being overly physical, trying to kick or push or poke someone all the time. I think she was trying to let us know that she was internally in turmoil and needed some normalcy. We stayed in the motel for a few days thanks to some very kind friends but as soon as we could go home again and get back in our routine, Ava got back to her normal, sweet self. Thank goodness.
We're still dealing with the aftermath. Boxes and bins still need to be sorted through and put somewhere. There are a lot of things that need to be washed and cleaned. Thankfully, the clothes (about 15 bins full of baby clothes and a lot of our clothes too) were all washed and dried the next day by those very awesome friends of ours. They are being stored at the motel until I can sort through them (again). The basement stinks. I'm afraid that mold and mildew are growing since it has rained every day since. We can't clean up at all since our landlord's insurance adjuster is taking his sweet time to get here. He's supposed to come Thursday. Last night I could smell the basement coming through the hole in the closet in our room. I'm feeling asthmatic. We're going to have to come up with an immediate solution or this house won't be safe for the kids. I hope it gets cleaned up soon. I don't want to move again, but if that's what we have to do to stay healthy we will.
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