In honor of Audrey's first birthday:

Joy

The face of my baby Audrey, sleeping restlessly on my chest at 2 a.m. on the couch. She's a perfect angel, so divine, and so powerful.

The blissful peace of resting on Mama's lap, nursing for a long stretch while being rocked in the glider.

The discovery that she can walk just as easily as crawl. The awareness that she can climb stairs. The fearlessness on the playground. The sheer lack of restraint in the bathtub. The yearning to go everywhere and do everything NOW, and damn the consequences.

The gentle evening walks around the neighborhood, me holding her in my left arm, while she points her little fingers at everything new and asks "Da?" "Tree. Car. Bush. Mailbox. Kitty cat. Doggie."

Holding her favorite book in the car - in truth, it's plastic, so it's the only one she can't chew up - and endlessly exchanging with Mommy or Daddy or Aria: "Da?" "Hello Bee, Hello Me." "Da?" "Hello Bee, Hello Me." "Da?" "Hello Bee, Hello Me."

Her mysterious attraction to the walkway outside Trader Joe's.

Her four unique food groups: Leaves, Bristles, Rubber, and Chalk.

The sly smile as she takes every toy out of the toy box and throws them all over the room in less than ten seconds.

The giggles and squeals of sisters running through the living room, around the corner, up the hall, and careening into the kitchen; next caroming off each other into the living room, then over to the piano, where they bang out a duet of pure explosive creativity before starting the whole cycle again.

The huge smile on her face first thing in the morning when she wakes up in between her parents... no matter how groggy or grumpy they are about it.

"Helping" Daddy clean the kitchen by banging on the sink, climbing into the dishwasher, slamming cupboard doors shut over and over and over, and exploring the items in the door of the fridge.

Gleefully playing naked in the sprinkler in the back yard, not even caring as big sister keeps turning the water up higher and higher until it's spraying well up over her head.

This year has been so hard, so full of multiple challenges that we have never faced individually, as a couple, or as a family. But we've pulled together and, for the most part, met what was thrown our way. As the year winds down, and summer is on the verge of flaming out, we are full of optimism and excited about the future. And we love our baby girl like we never before imagined we could love anything.

Technical note - the hard drive containing our iPhoto library crashed, so no pictures for a while until we get that straightened out. (Yes, it was recently backed up, although we may have lost a couple months worth of stuff.)

Day trip to Upper Lake Clementine

So on a happier note, we had a fantastic trip today out to Upper Lake Clementine. It's a spot on the American River just outside of Auburn (on Foresthill Road for you locals). The water is shallow and warm, with barely any current. No alcohol allowed, either, so it's a great family spot. Since we were there on a weekday there weren't very many other people.

Prior to the trip, we equipped ourselves with some new gear - tevas for us, crocs & a life vest for Aria. The first life vest we got was a bit small though, so we put it on Audrey to see what it would be like. As a result, I admit, we ended up having some laughs at her expense:



We ended up getting a different one that fits Aria much better. Here she is contentedly sitting in the lake. She played out there for a couple hours.




It's shallow enough we could even do "boat rides":


Audrey got to play in the water for a while too, but then eventually got tuckered out. (Not pictured: Nana, the champ who rocked Audrey to sleep, then got in the car and drove back to her house for a second babysitting shift with Tobin.)

night terrors

I took a few days off so we could regroup and try to come up with a better plan to handle our family's growing sleep issues. Of course there's Audrey's continued night wakings: she still wakes up every 1-2 hours, all night long, even now after 11 months. But then, in the past three weeks, Aria also started getting night terrors.

Night terrors is a crazy phenomenon. It goes like this: Aria's in a very deep sleep, but sits up and starts crying - seemingly uncontrollably, and pretty loud. I come in the room, but she doesn't see me. I talk to her, but she doesn't hear me. I reach out to try and hold her, comfort her, anything, but it just makes her more upset and she pulls away like my touch burns her. And it just goes on like that for 15, 20, or even 30 minutes. Then eventually, she just lies back down, whimpering a bit, and then goes back to sleep like nothing ever happened.

The first time it happened, I completely panicked. I had no idea what was going on. I thought she must have had the most terrible nightmare, and I felt so helpless sitting there, totally unable to help soothe her. The second time it happened, Hosanna was with her, and she was pretty close to taking her to the emergency room. When you don't understand what's happening, the whole thing is pretty damn scary.

So, we did some reading, talked to our doctor, and talked to our midwives, and found out just what this is all about. It turns out that:

a) She's not awake at all during these attacks. She's actually in a very deep sleep. She's literally sleeping through the whole thing. The next morning, she won't remember that it happened at all. It doesn't interfere with the amount of sleep she got or anything.

b) It's a hereditary condition. Turns out I had it when I was a kid, too. It affects about 2% of children.

c) It's usually caused by overtiredness.

d) You can prevent the attack by gently waking her up about an hour after she falls asleep, to keep her from slipping too far into the deep sleep cycle during which the attacks happen.

So that's it. The past few nights we've been trying to get her to bed earlier, with modest success. It's much harder during the summer. It's really hard for her to sleep when she knows it's still light outside, no matter how dark we make her room. And, we've been waking her up after an hour. Sometimes that goes better, sometimes it doesn't go so well. For example, tonight when I went in her room, it was really dark in there, and she had moved off the bed and was sleeping on the floor. So I ended up stepping on her. Not exactly a gentle waking. :( She did manage to go back to sleep shortly thereafter, thankfully.

So, once we knew all this, we moved Aria's bed back into her room, and things are a bit more back to normal as far as she is concerned.

As far as Audrey goes, we're just doing whatever we can to keep getting through it - trading off nights, trading off half-nights, trying to get her to last longer between nursing, etc. We're also working on getting a bedtime routine together for her. It's just really hard to get both kids to bed early enough. Audrey's so loud, we literally have to get her out of the house most nights (e.g. take her for a walk around the neighborhood) so she doesn't keep Aria from falling asleep.

We're usually able to get Audrey to bed at a decent hour. But the middle of the night is still pretty rough. When I have her for the night, I'm able to rock her back to sleep fairly easily whenever she wakes up, but it's so hard to put her down without her waking back up. Half the time she ends up just sleeping on my chest for a lot of the night. And of course, when Hosanna has her, she ends up nursing a lot, mainly because Audrey's just so big now that it hurts Hosanna's back too much to walk around with her and rock her all night. We'll see how it goes. I continue to pray that this will get easier when all of her freaking teeth come in.

Audrey walks amid turmoil

Audrey did her first real walk yesterday, taking as many as thirteen tottering steps across the living room floor. And happily, Hosanna got it on video:



This amid what has otherwise been a very turbulent couple of weeks, during which neither Audrey (constant teething, general restlessness) nor Aria (nightmares, feeling sick) has slept very well. We finally brought Aria's bed into our bedroom because we couldn't handle the constant comings and goings from her room, and because she kept saying things like "I don't want to be away from my family" when we'd put her to bed. After the move, Aria's mood improved a ton, but none of us is sleeping any better. So I guess it's still a work in progress.

The dynamic when Audrey started walking was very eye-opening. Hosanna and I were obviously very excited, but the more Audrey started walking, the madder Aria would get. From her perspective, all that was happening was we were paying attention to Audrey instead of playing the game with Aria. After the walking, Aria was more aggressive to Audrey than usual: pushing her over, grabbing toys away, yanking her hands off the couch, etc. It was really hard to watch. I really feel for Aria in these situations, because Audrey has exploded her world in so many ways, and you've got to think that she knows exactly what Audrey walking will mean: "Now she's going to be in my stuff even MORE." But at the same time, I'm so excited for the growth Audrey is going through, and just love watching her develop and explore the world in a way that's so different from how Aria went about it.

In other news this week, one more of Audrey's teeth came through - the final bottom front one. It didn't stop her teething behavior very much though, so more may be coming.

way too tired...

...to write anything useful. The last few weeks have been ass-kicking hard. Audrey is still sleepless. Is she getting molars now? We don't know. I've had a LOT of coffee in the last month. Way more than I ever imagined I would ever drink.

Latest pic is one of my favorites. Too bad Audrey's face is a little washed out.

My amazing daughters.

By popular demand, here's Aria with her babushka dolls:



...and here's a proud papa showing off Aria's art gallery:



(editor's note: I've been informed by those in the know that the flamingo actually preceded the squirrel and the chipmunk.)

Lastly, here's our insane 9 month old (!) showing off her physical prowess:

Audrey walks!

Audrey took her first couple of steps today. Hopefully, we'll have video coming soon.

Oh, and the last tooth on the top broke through yesterday morning.

Big week for her. :)