See ya, March.

We are closing in on two months until Ivy turns TWO! Good gracious, how time flies.

It's kind of hard to update here, mostly because I feel like the milestones aren't coming as furiously as they were during her first year, and they're a little more complicated to explain. For instance, I can't just type out a bulleted list of her words, because her vocabulary is exploding. But let's see if I can categorize some stuff into at least a semblance of an update.

Words
Might as well start here since I just mentioned it above. Ivy's favorite words are "no" and "owie," like any good toddler. She usually takes the last word or two from the things we tell her and repeats them in the form of a question. "Time to get your boots on!" "Boots on?" It happens especially if the words are new. I also can see her struggling to remember words, which is fascinating to watch - before Ivy, I thought that the reason there was a communication breakdown between toddlers and their parents was because they physically couldn't quite say the word yet. But I watch Ivy try out a few collections of letters before she hits on a real word. The one that happens the most often is that she says "doo" instead of "dip."

We are working on words for colors; she's got a few colors sort of figured out but it depends on what shade or what object we're looking at. She can count to ten, though, and has been able to do that for awhile. She's got some of the alphabet as well- and this weekend she started pointing out the letter A on things. Whoa.

Personality
Ivy does NOT like it when kids touch her. It's really strange. She is cool with initiating touch herself, but if one of the kids at daycare tries to hug her, she yells "owie!" and seeks out the nearest mama. And if they take a toy that's in her vicinity, especially if she doesn't know the kid very well... bring on the waterworks. Learning to share is hard!

We also have the normal shyness that I think most kids have. It takes awhile before she warms up to new people (or people who she doesn't really remember). She gets friendly relatively quickly, unless we're at the doctor, which she now remembers is the source of shots and strangers touching her, in which case she gets super clingy and wants to nurse.

In all other ways, she's a pretty great kid. She likes to help, she's generally in a good mood (though toddler molars are the pits), but see above for her favorite word. Most of the time it's not a big deal, though when I'm in a hurry and she's dragging her feet I get a teensy bit frustrated.

Food
This girl eats like a bird, still. It is hard to get much into her. I was pretty stressed out about it a few weeks ago until I remembered that she also didn't drink much milk back when that's all she was ingesting. The other babies drank upwards of twice as much milk as her in a day. She only weighs about 20.5 pounds, which is still pretty much off the charts low, and I'm kind of steeling myself for the doctor visit in June. She seems like she has plenty of energy and is happy, so I think in general she's fine, but it takes an hour to eat dinner every night because we're trying to get just one more bite down her throat. Cory has started to make deals with her: "If you eat one more bite of meat, you can have a bite of this dessert!" I usually take the "woo, look how silly I am; oops you got some food in your mouth!" tactic, or sing little songs about eating, or make funny noises or that sort of thing to get her to eat more.

One of the things I really need to do but just haven't yet, is meal planning for her. We tend to not eat a huge variety of things because neither of us is good with meal planning, and I do want Ivy to try lots of new things. But because she's got toddler taste buds, sometimes I bank on new stuff being yummy and it's not. I also want to get as much protein and good fats into her as I can. So I need to sit down and plan out lunches and dinners and snacks for her soon.

Our usual favorites are avocado, tomato, lunch meat, broccoli, chicken, tuna, peanut butter, yogurt, bananas, blackberries, and of course anything sweet. She hates milk (any milk besides mine) and eggs (even in things like Dutch babies).

TEF Update
Things are going really well with her esophagus lately! When we were on our east coast business trip in late February, my mom came with us to watch her during the day and made sure she cut the food extra small because she was worried about Ivy getting things stuck. Since then, there have been very few times Ivy's gotten anything stuck! I'm not sure if it's because she's got four molars now so she can chew stuff a little better, or what, but it's been really nice. We still cut things pretty small, and avoid certain foods, but even things that she's historically had issues with (like tomato skins or chicken) have been fine.

Nursing
Happily, there is no end in sight to the nursing! I love that Ivy still wants that closeness. She usually nurses first thing in the morning when she wakes up, and then as soon as we get home, and then to fall asleep. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, she needs to nurse to fall asleep, which I think will slowly stop on its own as she gets older. We co-sleep, so it's pretty easy access. The only time I ever feel ever-so-slightly tired of nursing is those nights where she doesn't feel well and hangs on for super long periods of time. It ends up making my back hurt by morning, from sleeping in odd positions. For a few months I had some near-constant SI joint pain, which I realized was from the way I was sleeping, so I've been adjusting my hips just a bit every night and it's much better. But sometimes teething and being sick just make for a rough sleep.

Sickness
Oh man, it has been the WORST early spring. We actually avoided being sick most of the fall and winter, except for a couple of colds that moved into Ivy's lungs and needed a nebulizer treatment or two. But I think we're on cold number 7 in a row right now. It has been two months of a raw nose and waking up coughing and, this weekend, losing her voice, which is kind of cute but I still feel bad. Luckily, none of these colds have needed a nebulizer, and most of them have been so mild they haven't come with fevers either. Cory has had bronchitis for almost two months, too, which was pretty awful but is finally just about done. I'm thankful to still be nursing so that my immune system is still pretty superpower-y. Allergy season is coming, though, after a very wet winter. Grass is my kryptonite. We'll see if nursing can combat THAT. Anyway, you can leave us alone now, germs, we've had our share of sick.

Siblings
I don't know why this is suddenly happening, but the last month or so I've been feeling ready to try for another. That always brings up complicated feelings, because I get into internal arguments with myself about why I should be hopeful or why I shouldn't even think about the possibility of it working when it hadn't for five years. ("But I had that polyp removed, maybe that was the biggest problem!" "Bigger than the low sperm motility problem?!") Right now the plan is to not make plans. Cory doesn't want to go through IVF again (interestingly, when we briefly talked about it over the weekend, he was more against IVF because of how physically and emotionally difficult it was, not how financially difficult it was; when finances was the biggest reason he didn't want to try again, last time), and I don't really want to either, but at the same time... I kind of do. We had decided when I was pregnant that we wouldn't do IVF again, and that if it happened naturally it happened. But of course I still have that little niggling wish in the back of my head, or little niggling disappointment in not being able to build a family the way I want to, that I don't think will ever fully go away.

Whoops, this wasn't supposed to be about me. But look, a nice long post! Ha!