2010, in review.

I did one of these last year and it was fun, so here we go again. A recap of 2010 in the life of the Hills.

January: Raleigh gets a ton of snow and Theo has a fun time playing in it (or something like that). Trying for a second baby.

February: More snow. We visit in Richmond for Superbowl Sunday. Theo gets accepted to preschool. Melissa finds out she is pregnant!

March: We spill the beans about the pregnancy. Theo goes on his first Easter egg hunt. Theo stops breastfeeding after 16.5 months.

April: Easter. We travel to Richmond for Easter on Parade. Theo begins hiding things, like his shoes. We find out the baby is probably a girl, but don't tell anyone. Neverending nausea continues. We go strawberry picking and make jam.

May: Susan's birthday. Susan and Theo take a trip to Suffolk without me for the first time. Theo and I visit friends and family in Virginia. We find out we are in fact expecting a baby girl! We visit Charleston, SC to attend the wedding of an old family friend. It's really muggy and buggy, but fun. Susan ends the trip on a high note by having to visit urgent care.

June: Lots of trips to the pool with our water baby. Melissa finally starts feeling better. Melissa and Theo fly down to Florida alone to visit Mima, Elena, Tony, Summer and Shannon. Theo's first trip on a plane!

July: 4th of July in Richmond. More and more swimming. Theo gets a big boy room and bed to make room for baby sister.

August: We go peach picking and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. We decide to switch prenatal care from the birth center to UNC hospital at 32 weeks, which was an incredibly hard decision. We have to say a sad goodbye to our cat, Otis, who had been with Melissa for 9 years. August was a tough month.

September: Theo and I go on a date to ride a train before his sister arrives. Theo begins preschool! It's hard for everyone at first, but we all grow to love it. We finish up the nursery.

October: Birthday month. The pumpkin patch. The state fair. Theo's first real haircut. We welcome our daughter, Lucinda Katherine, into our family. Lucy has a frenotomy (twice). Halloween.

November: Melissa and Lucy struggle through breastfeeding, but come out on the other side. Theo turns TWO years old! Thanksgiving in Suffolk with the Hills.

December: Lucy is diagnosed with reflux. Theo is diagnosed with allergies. We go to a Christmas parade and freeze. Christmas in Richmond where Lucy meets her Aunt Dawn for the first time. Christmas with the Hills at our house. Our first Christmas at home with two kids. Kids have their check ups and we learn they are both tall and slim! Melissa and Susan return to work after two months of maternity leave.

Whew! It's been quite a year. Same house, same jobs, same cars, but pretty much everything else changed! We had both a significant hello and a significant goodbye. We traveled a lot. We all grew a lot. We are all older and we are definitely all wiser. Sometimes, we are all a little more weary. We are still a strong family. Susan and I probably mess up a hundred times a day as parents and as spouses, but somehow, we are still here after another year as a family. Some days surviving, some days thriving, but happy and healthy. I am hoping for a quieter 2011 with a little less change but a lot of growth as we take care of each other and learn to do a better job at life every day. I'm so glad to have these three by my side for another year!

Happy 2011. May it be the best one yet.

From us to you.

Merry Christmas!

May your 2011 be simple, challenging, fun, peaceful and fulfilling in all the right ways.

Bummed.

I have a lot I need to blog about. Lucy's two month update, Christmas in Virginia with my family, Christmas here with Susan's family, our return to work, etc. I was all ready to do that, but then something came across my Facebook feed that instantly made me sad. You can Google it, but there has been a high profile case regarding second parent adoptions in NC that has been in the NC Supreme Court (Julia Boseman) and the decision was handed down yesterday. Second parent adoptions can no longer be filed in North Carolina. This means that before yesterday, Susan could be deemed a legal parent to Lucy and Theo without my having to waive my parental rights. Not anymore. The case was filed by the biological mother to a little boy who was every bit as much Ms. Boseman's child as Lucy and Theo are Susan's. But, the couple (one of whom happened to be a senator) broke up and the biological mother decided to sue to overturn the adoption. Well, she won once she finally appealed high enough. The kicker is that the supreme court didn't overturn the shared custody granted by the lower courts, so while the biological mother may have wanted to exclude Ms. Boseman for their child's life, she didn't. All she did was ruin the chance for the rest of us to obtain what she squandered. So completely unfair.

In 2010, it boggles my mind that we are still dealing with issues like this. And yes, while it is a good thing that the custody issue was upheld (as it sets legal precendent to give non-biological co-parents custodial rights), why do marginalized groups have to continue to accept dinner scraps with a pat on the head? We aren't asking for much. Simply asking for our children to be protected legally, like all other children are. Men who impregnate women during an anonymous one night stand have parental rights by default, yet someone like Susan who was there not only for conception, but the births of both of our children and who has been every bit of a parent to them as I have have NO legal rights at all.

Look at us. Don't we deserve what is freely given to other families?

I'll take my MD now, please.

So, just as we are getting Lucy figured out, Theo decides he needs to have some medical issues, too. Since he's started school, he's been sick a lot. Well, like all the time. Countless colds, croup and a stomach flu. This most recent "cold" has lasted 6 weeks. We took him to the doctor who said it was just a cold and the cough was postnasal drip. Thursday he woke up sick *again* (meaning new/worse symptoms than the lingering cough we've been dealing with for over a month). Coughing, runny nose, fever and a coughing spell that made him throw up. Since he's under 6, he can't take anything, so we were reduced to trying to give him herbal meds. We finally started giving him a little Benedryl, dosed according to Dr. Sears. He was acting fine yesterday, so we sent him to school. When I picked him up, his teachers said they thought he had bronchitis and should be checked. I made a doctor appointment on the way home and she got him in yesterday afternoon.

Susan took him and the verdict is that he has environmental allergies and since they went unaddressed, they turned into a sinus infection. So, now he is on Zyrtec for allergies and amoxicillin for the sinus infection. I was a bit annoyed because we DID take him in earlier and were told it was just a cold, no mention of allergies. I was also puzzled, because he's never shown any signs of allergies. And just to make us feel like the worst parents ever, apparently you are supposed to clean humidifiers every other day. Yeah, we've had his for two years and have never cleaned it and use it almost every night when he has a cold. Yes, I realize we are morons. So, we've likely been blowing mold directly into his face all this time. I pulled the donor's profile out to check for allergies and guess what he's allergic to? Yep, mold. MORONS.

All this time, we've blamed the germy preschool (and, likely that is where some of this comes from) but it's been us who have made him sick. Ugh. Susan did have a conversation with the ped about withdrawing him from preschool to improve his health. It's a tough decision because he loves going and we think it's beneficial, but we don't need him to go. We are home when he is at school, we don't use child care. So, should we leave him somewhere that makes him sick for no good reason? Or should we continue to build his immune system? I think we have decided to clear up his sinus infection and see how the allergies respond to the Zyrtec over the Christmas break and then see how he does in the new year before deciding.

Then there is the issue of testing to see what he is allergic to. The ped wasn't convinced we need to since he is so young, but said she would support us if we wanted to. I can get him seen at the AI clinic at work, so that's not an issue, we just need to decide if we want to put him through it and what we would do with the information. We're already doing what we can - we don't have carpet in the main part of the house and keep the dogs out of the bedrooms. We are going to get him a new pillow with an allergen cover. We strip him down when he comes home from school, wash his hands and put on clean clothes. He takes a multivitamin, an immune support vitamin, drinks tons of water and doesn't eat any sugar. I don't know what else we could really change by finding out what he's allergic to. Well, unless it's the dogs, I guess.

So, yeah. We've been under water with medical stuff for the past few weeks and it's tiring. I have a cold myself and when it's super cold out, my Raynaud's is worse, meaning I have to take more meds which give me a headache. I feel like crap, but the kids seem to be improving. I'm so happy for that, I hate seeing them feeling bad.

Oh, and just in case we weren't already candidates for parents of the year - Susan took him to Stride Rite today and his shoes are a whole size too small. We are SO rocking out this parenting thing. Don't call CPS.

Smiling girl!

Lucy gave up her first smile on Thanksgiving, but she doesn't smile often. Probably because of the reflux, which causes her pain. In the last day or so, it seems like maybe the medicine is beginning to work. We read it would take 1-2 weeks before we'd really know if it was working, but it seems like she is gradually getting better. So, she's smiling more! She saves her biggest smiles for the pictures behind our bed, just like her big brother did. Her smiles are extra sweet because hopefully it means she is feeling better.

She has settled herself into a nice little routine at night and is sleeping really well! She's definitely ready for bed at 7pm and she lets you know it. She nurses and then gets wrapped up tight in the Miracle Blanket, pacifiered and laid in her pack and play. She puts herself to sleep and sleeps until 1:30am. I feed her, rewrap her, lay her back down and she sleeps until 3:30, when she is ready to come into our bed. I don't do anything but reach over and pick her up and she sleeps right next to me until 5:30 or 6! So, essentially, she sleeps from 7:30 - 5:30 or 6 with only one wake up!

In the mornings, she kind of catnaps between feedings but largely stays awake until around 10, when she seems ready for a serious nap. I do the same deal as night time with the Miracle Blanket and she sleeps upstairs on her own (with the video monitor on, of course) for about 2 hours. We are still figuring out the afternoons and she definitely has a witching hour from about 5-7pm, but we feel on our way to getting her figured out. She's much more predictable and a much better sleeper than Theo was, which is nice. Let's hope it lasts!

I highly recommend the Miracle Blanket. We used it with her right at first, then she seemed to not like it, so I put it away. We got it back out a few days ago and it's been the ticket to good sleep. If your baby isn't a sleeper, give it a try!

I love a parade!

Well, I love a parade when it's not frigid outside. Last year we attempted the big downtown Raleigh Christmas Parade. It was largely a bust. It was freezing cold, parking was a pain, it was hugely crowded and Theo fell asleep. We decided it would be a long time before we tried that again. Susan heard that the little town over from us was having a Christmas parade and we thought we'd give that a try since it would be more low key. Unfortunately, this ended up being kind of a bust too. Parking was super easy and we walked right up to a spot to watch, but we were right at the end of the route so a lot of the bands and floats and whatnot had stopped performing and were basically just walking to the end point. And once again, it was FREEZING cold with terrible wind gusts. We didn't stay long, but Theo did love seeing the flags and hearing the drums in the marching bands.

Next year we know where to park and stand and not to try it if it's super cold. Lesson learned. Lucy was the warmest of us all. She had on a onesie, a fleece outfit with a hood, thick socks, sherpa lined leather booties (all the way from New Zealand, given to big brother when he was born), a hat, mittens, in the Pikkolo, zipped into my coat and covered with a thick blanket. She stayed nice and toasty while the rest of us froze. Ah well. Here's to next year!

Lucy update.

Finally have a minute to post an update on Lucy. I have mentioned that she's kind of a tough baby and cries a lot. Well, I finally decided it was just not normal to have a baby that screams every waking second she isn't eating. She would also be dead asleep and arch her back and scream like someone had bitten off her feet, had frequent hiccups, would cough and choke and had lots of wet burps that would cause her to cry. All this led to me to think she probably had reflux. While she almost never spits up, silent reflux has all the same symptoms, just no visible spitting.

I took her to the pediatrician on Wednesday and Lucy was screaming the whole time. She agreed that it looks like reflux and wrote a prescription for Zantac. I was somewhat disheartened, as I've read that this is not the most effective medicine for reflux, but the doctor said they have to start with this to appease the insurance company. We are supposed to call back in two weeks if we haven't seen remarkable improvement and then she will call in a prescription for Prevacid. So far, I don't see what I would call a "remarkable" improvement. Maybe a slight one and the medicine definitely wears off after 8 hours, but we can only give it twice a day. It sucks to see her in pain.

Obviously, this is a draining situation for us and her. We spend a lot of time holding her upright and walking her around, trying to make her feel better. By the end of the day, we are pretty worn out. She is basically not supposed to be flat on her back, ever and she isn't such a fan of the swing or the bouncy chair. We have Harry Potter books propping up her pack and play. So, if we seem scattered and tired, bear with us. It's a tough road right now.

She is gaining weight well and is up to 9 pounds, 8.5 ounces. She is still wearing NB clothes, but a few outfits are finally too short. The 0-3 size is still a little too big, but if it's a two piece, we just hike up the pants and go with it. She is staying awake for longer periods of time and has smiled twice. Haven't heard much talking (or "hooting" as Theo used to do), but that's probably because she is always in pain. Her hair is thinning out and she has VERY long eyelashes that curl at the ends. I love to look at them.

She sleeps well for the first part of the night, but is often up from 2 to 5 in the morning, very unsettled. This is when I think the Zantac wears off, so whatever little relief it's giving her is gone, but she doesn't get her morning dose until 6 or 7am. Her sleeping patterns are better now than Theo's were at a year, so maybe once we get this reflux under control, she'll sleep all night!

I hope to have a happy update on her soon. We feel just awful for her that she is in so much pain and wish there was more we could do. I've cut dairy, tomatoes and onions which makes eating quite a challenge, but I am hopeful that will help her belly. Keep her in your thoughts.