"I wanna wear Mama hair band!"

In Alek's long neglected baby book there is a mostly empty page for "Cutest Mispronunciations." Well, here's what I WOULD write in there if I could find it, or the time:

"I wanna put Mama keys in the Gig-Nition!"
"I LIVE-oo" (I LOVE you)
"Where's otherbody tomato?" (i.e. "somebody else's", i.e. "the squirrel's")
"I wanna open the Shrater" (i.e. the refrigerator)

That's all Erik and I can think of right now. More to come, I'm sure. We're still looking for those July 4th pictures.

Erin in the Bumbo seat

Meanwhile, Erin is really really trying to talk to us, but we still have no idea what she's saying. She did manage to turn half-way over today, which conveniently puts her in the "recovery" position - it lets the spit-up drain out of her mouth without bubbling up her nose as much. Yeah, I know, it's kind of gross - but think how she feels!!!

The missing video!

7/15/2007, Sunday morning, and what comes out of Alek's mouth? "I don't like frozen blueberries. I like fresh blueberries. I want fresh blueberries on my oatmeal."

Uh, OK, Alek. That would be what we call a "paragraph", and you're too young to be giving orders in paragraph form. What next - the introspective essay?

In the mean time (as Abbie's Sara would say), Erin has been working on getting all of her fingers in her mouth, usually sequentially, but sometimes all at once. She has a lot to say too, but we just can't understand her yet. Maybe that's for the better.

Landmark inch pebble last night - "Babysitter Puts Both Kids to Bed" - and she did it all before 8 pm. This coincides with another milestone, "Erik and Heather Go On a Date."

More pictures coming to Fotki soon (highlights: "July 4th fun in the hot tub with Max and Miriam"), as soon as Erik figures out a new PC-free strategy to compensate for the loss of the last remaining non-Mac computer. And somewhere there's a video of Alek feeding Erin a bottle; it's as cute as it sounds like and will be displayed promptly. Eventually. Soon.

June 2 – Poppie Doug and Grandma Diane get married; many beloved family members converge to celebrate. The bride was gorgeous, the groom was happy, and the boy walked the dog down the aisle while the baby stole the show.
June 14 – Mimi and Papa Alan come to visit for the afternoon. Much love is bestowed.
June 14-19 – Nana comes to visit. Much love is bestowed. USAirways almost loses a customer (and the luggage), but as I tend to say about traveling by air, all's well that ends well.
June 18 – Tonya starts (happy day!); Alek leaves Ms. Carolyn’s (sad day). We are sure that Alek only says "Please", "Thanks", and "Excuse Me" (if only to the dog) because of Ms. Carolyn's wonderful patience and care over the past two years. Though it is sad to say goodbye to Carolyn, it is great to have Tonya here picking up where she left off (including all the protesting at Mama and Dada walking out the door). Erin already loves Tonya so much that she'll fall asleep for her without a swaddle!
June 22 – Erik turns 35; Mimi and Papa Alan and Uncle Scott and Sheri come to party; Alek gets to sit at a real "kids" table for the first time. More gifts are bestowed. Alek enjoys the presents, even if they are mostly not for him.
June 24 – Welcome to the world, baby cousin! John Francis (Jack) Mummery is finally born, after many months of pregnancy and many hours of labor, and most importantly, Heather and Erik are finally an Aunt and Uncle.
June 27 – Heather turns 34; family eats Taco Bell on the floor of a house in Zebulon that they will hopefully never see again. Goodbye, Zebulon house - Alek turn the light off and close the door.

Erin milestones:

• Smiling tons
• The occasional giggle
• Enjoying more tummy time
• Sprouting! 75th percentile for weight at 2 month doctor’s visit!
• First vaccines
• Slept 11 hours straight at 11 weeks (from the girl who slept 6 hours at 6 weeks)
• Upgrade to big-girl crib at end of month
• First mosquito bites
• Cooing
• Outgrowing swaddling
• Endless spit-up, but happy about it (at least she seems to be, mostly, thanks to Zantac)

Playing "airplane"

Alek milestones:

• Enjoying the world of imagination (“Bye bye! See you later! I’m going to work! Have to get gas!” as he motors around the kitchen in the little yellow car)
• Making jokes (“Abby Lou!” as he points at the dog – no, it was NOT a mistake)
• First music class
• First Little Gym class
• First movie (30 minutes of “Happy Feet” at the Phoenix 10)
• 20th percentile for weight at 2 year doctor’s visit! (We’re happy with anything that’s ON the growth chart.)
• Potty training . . . maybe next month
• Much hilarity – sleeping with the laundry basket, driving the kayak, stealing Mama’s cereal bowl
• Beginning to earn his keep – feeding the dogs, letting the cat in, and vacuuming the kitty litter all on the same day

• Screened porch!

Coming soon . . . Minivan?

The past few weeks have been rather eventful: Alek's second birthday has come and gone (it didn't make it to Freather but there are plenty of pics on Fotki of straw-boo-berry pie, grandparents, and sand-snatching alligator), Erin is sleeping much better now that she's on Zantac for her worse-than average lack of lower esophageal sphincter tone, Erik is working so much that I miss him even though we're both home together most of the time, and I've made it to book V of The Dark Tower series (that's 1885 pages, read almost exclusively while breast-feeding). But nothing compares, in terms of eventfulness or fun, to our first family trip to New Windsor. Here's our recipe for success when traveling with a 2 year old and a 6 week old (and let me be the first to say that I am never traveling with a 2 year old and a 6 week old again):

• Despite volumes of generic advice to the contrary, fly to Newark, NJ. This allows the trip to be made with a non-stop flight, a very cool train ride, and a rental car. Also, there are lots of elevators. This keeps the 2 year old happy.


• Let the toddler sit in the "big boy seat" on the airplane - no car seat to lug around, and there's still a seat belt for him to play with.


• Carry the newborn in a sling. If you're really smart, get a sling with no metal parts (we weren't that smart) and then you won't have to take the sleeping baby out of the sling to go through security, and you won't have to experience your toddler having a meltdown when he sees scary people in uniform "wanding" down his mother.


• Let the toddler have his favorite toy for the trip. If this toy turns out to be a 7 foot long shark tent, all the better.


• Ice cream. 7-up. Potato chips. The All-American experience. Enough said.


• When all else fails, let him eat a hot dog for dinner.


• If anyone says "Can I hold the baby?" or "Can I change a diaper?" say yes!

Uncle Chunks and Aunt Dani were true troopers - they let us take over their house and break in all their baby gear, and CJ in particular was keen to master the arts of diapering and swaddling. Auntie Oates came up on Saturday, which turned into a rather large impromptu barbecue that Dani whipped together on short notice, despite being 8 months pregnant (you make it look easy, Dani!). Erik helped CJ finish some projects (he is proud of his innate skill at helping others overcome project momentum - no more so when they are someone else's projects, I can't help but observe), and I helped out by cooking dinner one night. Perhaps my greatest contribution, at least to CJ's nervousness about impending parenthood, was the disasterous double-outfit 6-diaper diaper change on Monday morning - I'm supposed to be experienced at this, and it can still all quite literally blow up in your face every once in a while. And let us not forget Alek's never-ending love of project management: "Aunt Dani, come here! Ruby, go over there! Uncle Chunk, open door!"

We made it home in time to get both kids to bed at a reasonable hour, and as for the rest of our travel home, let's just say all's well that ends well, the laundry machine is our favorite appliance, and fortunately Erin didn't seem to mind wearing nothing but a bib and a diaper for most of that day.

With subtitles in "Alek-speak"

Sand-biting alligator

Alek's nap was sabotaged by a thunderstorm today ("Big noise? Alek see thunder?"), so we were able to get out of the house in time to make it to our friends' graduation party. After nine years the rest of my entering med school class ("Dook!") finally finished their dual degree MD/PhD biathalon, so we loaded both kids into the Subaru ("Red Car! No, Alek do buckle!") and headed over to Aaron and Allison's house ("Stop, Dada - Dada go to Science Museum!"). They have a son, Orion, just 4 months younger than Alek ("Orlion? Olionrion?") so we knew the occasion would be kid-friendly, and sure enough, we hadn't made it past the front porch before running into some offspring of former class members. Once inside, kids were everywhere - running, walking, toddling, crawling, slung, or sprawled across laps. Our two were an insignificant addition to the chaos; Erin would have been entirely non-contributory anyway, except for her usual 10 minutes of pre-sleep crying, and Alek was quickly absorbed into a swirling current of toddlers underfoot ("Alek play with red stove? Yes. Okay."). Banana pudding was consumed, conversation was enjoyed, and great fun was had for over an hour. We left just in time to get rained on and have Erin scream the whole way home, bright red and famished, and narrated by Alek ("Erin crying! Erin tongue out! Erin spit up on cheek!").

Walking to the Eno

Before I had kids, I had no idea how logistically challenging it could be to go out in public with your offspring. After Alek, I realized exactly how difficult it was - our first trip with Alek consisted of dinner at Durham Pizza Restaurant when he was three weeks old, and we were so afraid that he'd cry the whole time that we barely ate, and probably didn't venture out again for weeks even though he slept through that whole dinner. And somehow, now that I have two kids, it's gotten easier instead of harder. In the past two weeks we've gone hiking at the Eno, been to the science museum twice (once it was just me with Erin and Alek, meeting Kristin, Oliver (15 months), and K.'s mom), been out to lunch a couple times, and gone over to Abbie and Joel's to eat pizza and hang out with Sara (2 1/2 years old) and Leah (2 months). Oh, and did I mention the day trip to Wrightsville Beach? Tomorrow we're driving to Raleigh at 9 am to visit Poppie Doug, then we'll head over to Kevin and Kristin's to meet the moms/dads for a walk/ride in Umstead with the jogging strollers/bike trailers. Not all of our outings have been raging successes - a few have left short-lived emotional trauma, mostly due to Alek's incredible independent streak rearing up at inconvenient times ("No! Mama stay at end of driveway, Alek go up stairs" in response to "Alek, it's time to leave Sara's house") and Erin's inconsolable shrieking accompanied by inhuman color changes (though Abbie thought she sounded more like a bleating sheep, looked just like a lobster, and was kind of cute). Most trips have been successful enough that we keep going back for more, though. Yeah, it is kind of hard. But somehow it's easier, too. Go figure. Parenting is full of paradoxes.

Erin's Second Bath

The past week can be memorialized by a single moment (which actually happened several times): I'm sitting on the couch nursing Erin with one hand, and holding Alek's head over a towel as he throws up with the other. It was the moment when I realized what it really meant to be a mother of two: multi-tasking. Never before had Alek had any serious competition for my attention, not when he really needed me. Nor had Alek ever had to wait so long for comfort when he was crying as an infant, unlike Erin who spent 15 minutes alone and crying in her bassinet while I cleaned up Alek's bed one night from yet another round of vomiting. Where was Erik during all this? Alek had lulled us into a false sense of security by going 12 hours without throwing up one day, so Erik waited until after Alek's bedtime to go forage for much needed supplies. Ten minutes after he left, the storm hit - Erin was hungry, and Alek was sick again. What do you do? Clean up the bigger mess first, I guess, and let go of the insecurity that failure to console an infant somehow results in permanent neurologic/emotional/developmental damage. (Well, it does, but only to the parent, I'm sure.) If only we'd known that that was going to be one of the easier days of the week - Erik got sick that night, and the next two days are a blur that I'd rather not try too hard to remember.

On the bright side, which even the dark cloud of "GI stomach bug hits flustered family within a week of baby sister's birth" must have, Erin and I escaped the illness entirely and Alek and Erik made full recoveries. (Unfortunately, Alek's recovery preceded Erik's, making for a long day on Tuesday when the boy was too sick to go to daycare but well enough to be bored and cranky - even with the silver lining, I still find something to complain about. It was just that kind of week.) We got by on the good will and donations of our fearless friends: Rachel gave us a whole frozen lasagna, Ann dropped off some minestrone soup, Bryan delivered a tray of chicken enchiladas that Erin and I enjoyed enough for all of us (since Erik and Alek were on the dry toast and electrolyte diet), Tiffany and Max donated a tray of freshly picked strawberries ("strawblueberries") that were devoured in less than 24 hours, and Abbie/Joel/Sara/Leah came over at the end of the very long week with take out from Macaroni Grill. Plus, Mimi showed up on Thursday after most of the viral invaders had been purged and stayed a couple days, keeping Alek entertained and getting us back on track. A final happy note: Erin got her first bath, and cried all the way through it just like her big brother did with his. But her second bath was much better, and we discovered she likes having her feet rubbed with baby oil (Arbonne, of course - Auntie Oates is already ensuring her niece has a preference for high-end baby products.)

Can't wait to see what week 3 has in store for us! We expect to see more growth in Alek's rapidly expanding vocabulary (now including "throw up", "sick", "diarrhea", and "Pedialyte"), and we hope that Erin will stick with her "go to bed by 11, wake up at 3:30 to eat" schedule. Worst case scenario, we only have to make it to next Thursday, when Nana and Papa Joe arrive for Alek's second birthday. (How have his first two years gone so fast, and these past two weeks so slow?)

"Alek push the cramera button!"

Well, not the whole story - I'll skip the beginning and the first nine months, and pick up where Erik left off.

We got home Saturday night and were treated to a night of just one feeding between 11:30 pm and 7:30 am (by the time Alek did this at about 4 weeks of age, we were so exhausted that we were willing to call that "sleeping through the night"). As I struggled to get back into the groove of breastfeeding (which seemed much easier the last time I did it . . . when Alek was 6 months old), Mom and Erik kept the routine rolling for Alek and it was a pretty smooth transition to "Family of Four". Though she kept it to a reasonable 8 or 9 feedings a day, that meant 8 or 9 hours of Heather sitting in one place and on parts that would have rather not been sat on so often, having just pushed out a bowling ball, thank you very much. Alek was very helpful, as usual, and the first morning he saw me nursing Erin in bed he offered "Alek feed baby sister?" I explained that he wasn't going to be able to do that until she started drinking from a bottle, and he immediately offered "Alek get bottle, feed baby sister?" He's my hero - I wish I could have taken him up on it. (This morning, he came in to Erin's nursery while I was feeding her in the rocking chair, and he insisted on "making the covers on the bed" - where does he get this from? I just love him!) We've had several more days of cluster feeding all evening, followed by one feeding between 3:30 or 4:30 am, and then sleeping again until 7:00 or 7:30. We're enjoying it while it lasts!

As we expected, Erin lost some weight before her first pediatrician's appointment on Monday (day of life 3, and her due date), and was down from 8 lbs 1 oz to 7 lbs 5 oz, an 8% loss. Alek did the same thing, and even once he started gaining weight managed to slip down the growth curve to level out between 5 and 10% - Erin has a look about her that says she'll be doing the same thing. Erin had to go back in for a weight check on Wednesday and had already come up 3 oz., so we were given permission to keep letting her "sleep through the night" (I can't help but call it that, even though I know it's not really true - she can't possibly have a circadian rhythm yet, can she? But I honestly have slept better since she's been born than I did in the past month.)

Overall, whether it's random chance, undeserved good luck, or just the calm before the storm, Erin has been what most of the self-help baby books would call an "Angel". She sleeps, she eats, she poops, and every once in a while she cries, but it's as if somehow she knows she's a second child. This is in contrast to what Erik and I remember - perhaps not vividly, due to the fog of sleep deprivation at the time, but at least sharply - about her brother's first week. Of course, now that we have ample evidence of Alek's "Spirited" nature, it's easy to go back and apply that to his first week of life, which consisted mostly of undifferentiated newborn personality, but a fair bit of crying as well, combined with poor parental coping and soothing skills. We're doing a little better this time, but it's hard to take much credit for it - Erin, like her big brother, is clearly going to do what she wants to do, and at her own pace! If that means sleeping 5 hours at a time her first week home from the hospital, who are we to stop it? Her amazing sleep "habits" have made it much easier to have visits from friends and family - she's already met Poppie Doug and Gramma Diane, and Uncle Scott, and Mimi and Papa Allan, and had a nice iChat with Uncle Chunks & Aunt Dani, Papa Joe of course, and Auntie Oates is coming into town tonight - and we look forward to showing her off more often in the coming weeks!

Our little Irish pixie

That's not to say we don't have some catching up to do - without Mom, the laundry would be up to the ceiling and we'd be eating a lot of frozen pot stickers, Taquitos, and all the other Costco buys that seemed like such a good idea at the time but which now inhabit the bottom back shelves of the freezer. Thanks to Mom being here for the past week and a half, we have lots of fresh leftovers, like lasagna and chicken breasts and Mac and Cheese. And brownies and nursing muffins ("Alek peel Nuffin!"). I'm starting to be able to do more - emptied the dishwasher today, to which Mom said "Thanks for doing that!" and I pointed out that she didn't really have to thank me for doing my own dishes . . . but boy, are we going to miss her when she leaves. Meanwhile, Erin needs a baby book, some pink sleep snoots (but she still looks like a girl, even in blue - that pixie hairstyle is just so cute!), and several other items we never got around to getting before she was born. Of course, "we can always just buy it after she's born" made a lot more sense when we'd forgotten what it was like to have a newborn around.

All in all, we're totally falling in love with our daughter and we know it will get worse every day. We're still going through it with Alek, after all - especially watching him handle his transition from only child to big brother with so much flexibility, empathy, and resilience.

I brought Erin and Heather home tonight. The beds, chairs and couches at the hospital are so uncomfortable, Heather was crazy to get out of there and go home -- even though there was the option to stay another night while kind folks would take Erin to the nursery upon request between feedings. Erin was such a sweetie yesterday and today though that we never had to take advantage of the "hospitality."

Alek and Erin had a chance to meet each other yesterday. Any of you who clicked the fotki link again later yesterday would have noticed that there are some adorable pictures of Alek holding Erin "petting her hair" gently. Also we took one of him kissing baby sister through momma's belly just before we went in to the hospital to deliver her.

It's been a much different experience this time. Many of the fears and insecurities we had with Alek weren't there, but we had much more in the way of logistical challenges. If it werent' for the kindness of Marty (Heather's mom) taking care of Alek, the dogs and cooking some amazing meals, it would have been a lot harder! Many of the things we thought we remembered from last time were (at least for me) a little less than crystal clear in the eye of my mind. Little details like the belly button stump. I totally forgot about that! Or how to get a baby to latch a nipple the Right Way. The hour spent with the lactation consultant today was amazing.

We have lots of stories I'm sure we will share with you in the coming weeks and we can't wait to introduce Erin to everyone!

Erin Jane Frederick
8 lb. 1 oz.
Born 4:52am on Friday, 13 April, 2007

Heather started pushing at 3:58am and after an hour or so of hard pushing, Erin was born. She, like Alek was "sunny side up" - also known as "the hard way".

Pictures at fotki

Heather, Erik, Alek and Erin.