The McEwans: 18 Months + Phone Pictures

It was a rough January in this house! First, dad was super sick and ended up on steroids and antibiotics (I didn't get any sleep for a week listening to him wheeze and cough all night) but then he went and got the girls sick too! After two urgent care visits we finally got Lu on antibiotics for an ear infection and Emma improved on her own. So, in a two week period, I averaged about two hours of sleep a night only to get up each morning to take care of two extremely angry and uncomfortable little girls. I pretty much sent a generic text to friends and family that said "Don't judge me if I'm drunk before noon." On the bright side, I somehow managed to escape un-infected! Thank god for small favors huh? So we got everyone healed just in time for the girls 18 month check up and shots...

The girls' 18 month check up went fairly well: Olivia was her usual stoic self and Emma acted as though it was the end of the world. And in typical Lu fashion she was given ANOTHER referral, this time to see a dietician to see if we can get her out of the 5th percentile for weight. I honestly think their pediatrician didn't believe me that Lu actually eats more than Emma on a regular basis! I also tried explaining that Lu is actually bigger than I was at her age. I was told my entire childhood I was underweight and my parents were constantly given a hard time but I'm perfectly healthy (and still small for that matter). However, we will appease everyone and go to this appointment simply because I can always use healthy food ideas for the girls. Aside from weight both girls have average sized heads and Emma is 33.5 inches tall (90th percentile) and Lu is 32 inches (55th percentile). Essentially, Alex only contributed to Emma and I only contributed to Lu :-) These days both girls are talking up a storm, mostly it's jibberish but they seem to carry on hour-long conversations with each other just fine! They are very good mimic-ers...they can pretty much repeat anything you say and Emma has even started repeating small sentences like "up please" and "love you." Olivia has become obsessed with this book about colors and will sit flipping its pages all day and pointing to each picture and naming what it is. Most the time she says jibberish but every once in a while she will call the milk milk or the ball ball or the bear bear, she even identified the color purple one day which had me screaming like a crazy person :-) Lu is also my most exhausting child, she constantly keeps me on my toes with baby proofing and she is such a dare devil that I'm afraid I'll have a heart attack before I'm 30. These days she is foiling all my attempts at keeping her in her crib. The sleepsack solution worked for us for so long but, alas, life is not to be that easy for us. My mother would say she is payback for a what a hell-raiser I was. As of last night I no longer have any throw pillows on my couches because they are all surrounding Lu's crib! I really do not want to transition to toddler beds because I know Olivia and if she's this wild with a crib...well, give her free reign in her bedroom at night and bad things are sure to happen. I've already had visions of her scaling the bookshelf and pulling the curtains from the rods. I wish I was joking but I foresee a long road ahead of us. Emma on the other hand has never once tried to escape the highchair, has never considered leaving her crib (she loves her sleep too much), and has never jumped off the couch. It is always so incredible to me how different the two of them are given they have been raised in the exact same environment and fed the same diet haha. Even though they often exhaust me I love them to pieces and I couldn't imagine my life any other way.

Enjoy some pictures I finally downloaded from my phone :-)