Already 2 months

Hard to believe Brooklyn was born already 2 months ago. Here are her official 2-month stats:

Weight: 14 lbs, 4 oz - Above 97th percentile
Length: 25" - Above 97th percentile
Head Circumference: 16 1/4" - 95th percentile

That's right. Still my Big Girl! :) I don't think she'll appreciate me calling her Big Girl as she gets older, so I've been also calling her Sweetie, Baby Girl, and Beauty. Then it hit me. This is the perfect nickname: Squirt! You know, like the adorable little turtle in Finding Nemo (one of my VERY FAVORITE movies)! Check out the resemblance:
Plus, with the amount of poops she does every day, "Squirt" is appropriate on that level too! ;) (Our term of endearment for Hayden is "Bud" or

We are still definitely adjusting to life with 2 kids. She is sleeping in our room and I'm not sure how we'll transition her into the crib in Hayden's room. He is such a light sleeper and still gets upset when she cries. She is a pretty light sleeper, too. And just like her big brother, rarely sleeps in the car! At night, we try to put her to sleep in the bassinet in our room, but inevitably, between about 1am and 3am I have her in bed with me. I'm trying to put her down 'drowsy but awake' so she learns to get herself to sleep unassisted, but it's not going so well and rather than let her get sleep-deprived, I usually put her in the Moby wrap or lay down with her and she falls asleep instantly!

When she is awake, she's full of smiles and adorable coos! She has the most beautiful deep blue eyes I've ever seen! Her hair is almost all fallen out on the top, replaced by a pretty bad case of Cradle Cap :( but her baby acne has cleared up now. We've been trying to treat it with Olive Oil. Seems to be working.

Last week she went all day without a poopy diaper (very unlike my 6 poops a day little girl!) and at the end of the day, did a GIANT, green poop that wreaked like vinegar. When I Googled "Baby poo vinegar smell" I was amazed to see it was a fairly common issue. The results indicated that it may be caused by a dairy allergy, or dehydration, or not enough hindmilk, or a Gluten intolerance, or completely normal. Gee, thanks, Google. Well, I'm going to start with the dairy allergy idea, since that's also what Hayden had. Although with Hayden, he never had vinegar-smelling poo, he had streaks of blood, which is another symptom of a food allergy. Since Hayden was exclusively breast-fed, I cut dairy out of my diet completely for almost a year (and no more bloody diapers). It was pretty rough, but I knew it was best. And the non-dairy based formula is SUPER expensive, so that was a no-brainer. Luckily, we were able to reintroduce dairy to Hayden when he was about 14 months old and didn't have any issues. He now eats anything and everything without a problem. So for Brooklyn I'm going to cut out dairy completely for a month, see how she does, and then go back to eating dairy and if the problem comes back, I'll probably have to stay away from dairy again until she's at least a year old. Fun. At least I'll lose weight even faster if I can't eat cheese and ice cream!

I started back at Stroller Strides a couple weeks ago and it is kicking my butt! For those of you who think Stroller Strides is a bunch of ladies pushing their buggies around, chatting while sipping latte's, think again! Stroller Strides is 1 hour of fast-pace, intense, full body workout. I go Monday-Wednesday-Friday and I am always sore the next day. The times they have had couples workout days, Phil has joined me and says the workouts are even tough for him! My goal is to be back to my pre-pregnancy weight by Christmas. Unfortunately, with nursing and exercise, my appetite is voracious and I find myself snacking ALL DAY (and sometimes not the healthiest choices, since those seem to be the easiest and fastest).

I'm getting lazier about Hayden's healthy eating, too. Sometimes it's just easier to give him some Cheerios. And he LOVES M&Ms, Jelly Beans, and cookies. As we've been working a little bit on potty training, his reward is 1 jelly bean for pee-pee, and 2 jelly beans for poopy. Last week he went pee-pee in the potty TWICE!! He likes to do it standing up - like Daddy! :) He doesn't want to poopy on the potty, yet, though. He almost always goes in my closet or the pantry closet to poop. I've put the potty seat in the closet to see if he'd go if it was in there, but then he won't go in the closet, or takes the potty seat out and then goes back in the closet to poop.

Hayden's speech has improved dramatically over the last few months. He speaks in sentences and attempts to repeat any word we say. We are definitely needing to be careful what we and others around him say. Hard to believe I was ever worried. What a relief! Now the next thing I'm concerned about (there always has to be something, right!?) is that Hayden is still very anxious around other kids and gets upset when they are close to him. He does not want to have anything to do with kids his age. If a kid at the park even looks at him or gets within a foot of his 'personal bubble' he starts to cry and wants Mommy. I hope he outgrows this phase soon, too.

We're thinking of enrolling Hayden into some kind of sports program. I know 2 seems awfully young to get him involved in sports, but we're looking at things like Little Kickers, Playball, Little Gym, or Gymboree. I just feel like he has so much energy and we have such a small house, that with the weather about to be 6 months straight of rain, we are both going to go crazy if he doesn't have an outlet for this energy. They are all kind of expensive programs, so we're just trying to figure out which one is best and works for our budget. They all offer 1 free trial class, so we're going to start checking them all out. Stay tuned for our evaluation!

Also stay tuned for a post from our visit to Remlinger Farms & Pumpkin Patch yesterday. I am so behind on all my pictures, videos, birth announcement, art project for their room, and the blog. Sorry!!