11 Months

Wow! The last month has FLOWN by! I feel like I just wrote this post.

Here is Daphne at 11 months:

Not exactly what I want to remember, but thankfully she has recovered quickly!

Daphne was 16 lbs, 1 oz last week at the doctor. Sometimes she does great with her bottle, sometimes she has NO interest. She was doing great with her finger food, but after not eating for a couple of days, she has gotten a little lazy. She prefers to have us hold her bottle and spoon feed her. We were basically done with baby food - until she got sick. Oh, well. She is not a big fan of the sippy cup. Daphne usually takes a drink and throws it and since we don't do no-spill sippies, this is getting quite messy.

Daphne's newest skill is standing without holding on. She hasn't taken any steps yet, but she can stand for several minutes all by herself! She continues to cruise on all of the furniture.

Daphne prefers to be with her sisters. If they are downstairs and she is upstairs, she will crawl to the basement door and bang on it and cry.

We are working on some Baby Sign with Daphne. Right now she just smiles when I sign and then sign hand-over-hand with her.

Just like Norah and Lucy, Daphne is a GREAT sleeper. She sleeps about 12+ hours a night and she takes 2 good naps a day. We are thankful for 3 great sleepers!!

We are excited about Daphne's first Christmas, although, I don't think it will mean much to her!!

I know the next month with fly by and I will be posting birthday pictures!! Agh!!

What a Week!

I have been a little out of touch over the last week because life has been crazy - some planned events and some unexpected activities! I think the best way to review the week is with bullet points.

• Monday - We hosted a Christmas cookies exchange with some mom's and their little girls (one little brother tagged along because his dad had to work late - he didn't seem to mind being the only boy). We ended up with about 8 different kinds of Christmas cookies - that is the way to make the perfect plate of Christmas cookies without having to bake them all!!
• Tuesday - We had a wonderful, lengthy playdate with a friend who is the sister of our babysitters. She is in 4th grade and the girls had a BLAST playing with her and I really enjoyed my visit with her mom who is a dear friend of mine. Tuesday night, Kevin had a client event so he had to work extremely late. The girls and I had an early dinner and the girls hit the sack by 7.
• Wednesday (here is where we took a detour in our plans) - We were going to have an easy day at home getting school work done and playing, but little Daphne Jane had other plans. She woke up with a fever. . . AGAIN. . . and I took her to the doctor just thinking her ears were not clearing up from the previous ear infection. By the time we got to the doctor, her fever was 103.3. The doctor checked her ears - while she thought they looked clear, she didn't seem totally confident. She kept saying, "I think they look okay." They did a flu culture, strep culture, and took a urine sample, but of which came back negative. The doctor asked another doctor to come in to look in Daphne's ears to confirm and that doctor also said, "the right one looks great and I think the left one is okay." They were concerned, though, that she had such a high fever when she was still on her antibiotic from the earlier ear infection. They sent us to the hospital to get some blood work done. About an hour later, the doctor's office called telling me to take Daphne to the hospital immediately - her white blood cell count was really high. I dropped the girls off at my friend, Cherie's house (thank you Cherie - you are a God-send!) and drove Daphne to the ER at Progress West. Kevin met me there (my sister came later to check in and then picked up the girls to take them home and put them in bed). After attempting 4 times to get her blood, the nurses finally got a sample to send away for a blood culture. They gave her a 24 hour antibiotic and sent us home about 6 hours later. She still had a high fever - 104.4, but the doctor thought we could manage the fever ourselves with motrin. No one slept much that night - Daphne was awake and crying about every hour and a half.
• Thursday - I already had plans to take Norah and Lucy to see the Nutcracker performed by the St. Louis Ballet. Kevin really thought we should go ahead and go and he would take Daphne back to the doctor (they wanted to see her first thing in the morning). The girls had a blast at the Nutcracker - although, Lucy started to get antsy after about an hour. It was an excellent production! Daphne ended up having another ear infection - not sure if it was missed but the 3 doctors the day before or if it just came on all of the sudden. She is now on a new antibiotic - hopefully this one works. My sister and I took my mom and grandma to see White Christmas at the Fox. We went to dinner first and then to the show - it was wonderful and we had a great time. We didn't get home until almost midnight and then Daphne was awake again. . .A LOT, so we didn't get much sleep that night either.
• Friday - We hung out with my grandma and mom in the morning. They headed out after lunch and we cleaned and cooked like crazy (well, I did. The girls just played and rested). We had our new pastor and his family over for dinner. We had a really great time. They have 3 girls, too, right around our girls' ages!
• Saturday - Kevin and Lucy did some Christmas shopping then Norah and I did some. I baked and wrapped presents then we headed out to another Christmas party with the Goods, the Bohlmanns, and the Biggers.
• Today - Church, of course. The girls' classes had birthday parties for Jesus - complete with cupcakes! We are headed to yet another Christmas party this evening.

Whew! I'm exhausted after reliving all of that! I should add - Daphne woke up from her nap on Friday a totally different baby. She was happy and playful and HUNGRY!!

Now we are prepping for another crazy week!

Are you ready for Christmas?

TFT: Santa

This idea was spurred on by a discussion with some friends last week:

Do your kids believe in Santa? Why or why not?

Do you talk about Santa coming into your house and delivering presents or that Santa has a list of good little girls and boys?

If not, have you actually sat them down and told them that Santa is not real?

Just curious!!

More Sickness

I was hoping to post about all the great things that I got accomplished over the weekend because Kevin took Norah and Lucy to Indy to see his parents. However, my plans changed drastically when Daphne needed to go the the ER in the middle of the night on Friday night. She was barking/coughing and gasping for air - all of this came on very suddenly because she was totally fine during the day on Friday. As it turns out she has croup. Blah. I spent most of the weekend snuggling and rocking a very unhappy baby. I actually thought she was starting to feel better yesterday, but then she started rubbing her ear so I just knew something else was going on.

I took Daphne back to the doctor today and she has an ear infection, too. Lovely. She has been fussier today than all weekend!! Hopefully after 24 hours on the meds she will start feeling better!! I have a feeling this is only the beginning, though. It seems to be a Swinigan trait - the ear infections. Norah and Lucy both have tubes (Norah had 2 sets) and my niece and nephew also had tubes.

Side note: When they weighed Daphne at the doctor today she weighed 16 lbs so she has gained almost a half a pound since her 9 month check up. Maybe she will be 17 lbs by her birthday.

I did get all the presents (that I have) wrapped and under the tree. I cleaned out my laundry room during Daphne's naps - which was a HUGE job. Seriously, it was a dangerous place. Anytime I opened the door I had to duck to make sure nothing fell on my head and whenever I had a dry load of clothes, I had to lift the basket over my head to get it out of there!!

I was hoping to get some scrapbooking done, but was unsuccessful. I have everything out on the dining room table so I am going to try to work a little bit this week. I would love to have Daphne's baby book up to date before she turns one (I have 2 pages done).

Hopefully, I will get more down (and more rest too) next weekend. I still have about 1/3 of my shopping to do.

How about you? Anyone totally done with their shopping? Anyone not even started?

School Stuff

(so, clearly I am not taking that break from blogging that I mentioned yesterday!!)

While doing school stuff today, I casually told Lucy to write her name on her paper she was coloring. I tell her this whenever she colors/draws/"writes" just for the practice. The most she has ever written was her 'L' and then she writes random symbols for the other letters. I was helping Norah with something and I randomly turned and looked at Lucy's picture and this is what I saw at the top:

I was SHOCKED! She has never even come close to writing her name, and I didn't really expect her too since she is just 3.

Norah and I talked about what an acrostic poem is and this is the poem she wrote today:

The picture she drew is a manger.

The girls have been working like crazy on pattern bead wreaths! The have completed 5 so far and are each working on 1 more.

Totally random: Lucy's new thing right now is to say, "Ha ha ha Ha ha." She says it ALL the time. If she finishes something before Norah or if she gets to do something first or if she gets to sit where Norah wanted to sit - she says it. She is sassy!

December 1?!?

So I missed posting something yesterday, but I still did 30 in the month of November. I may need to take a week off - I am out of post ideas!!!

I can't believe that it is December already. Daphne is going to be 1 in a month and a half - that is UNBELIEVABLE!!

Norah asked yesterday what we were doing to celebrate December 1. Not sure why she wants to celebrate December 1. She decided Kevin should take the day off and we shouldn't do school - neither of which are happening. They have enjoying candy canes instead.