Lauren on Living

A Lifestyle Blog about Simplifying Healthy Living

Reese’s Monthly Growth Series // 5

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Rolled over (back to tummy), slowly getting over her sleep regression, has giggles a few times this month, loves to be in the center of everything, can hold things fairly well now, had some chest congestion, still drooling like a faucet, really wants to sit up, enjoys bouncing in her jolly jumper, loves to splash at bath time, flat out refuses a bottle

5 months old! How is this little girl five months old already?! Where is the time going? This past month has been one fraught with many challenges, mainly due to my knee surgery but also in large part due to Reese’s sleep regression (although, things are finally looking up on that front!!). Juggling 3 children under 5 while being immobile has been one of the greatest trials of motherhood, it has made me so thankful for all the blessings in my life. Being temporarily laid up has really put things into perspective for me. My cousin Dana (who’s a super human) and my mother-in-law both came and stayed with us this month to help out during the last 2 weeks I had to be on crutches. They were both God sends and I’m just so blessed to have such a wonderful support system. While I’m off crutches now, I’m still in a straight leg brace and have to ‘peg leg’ around, but still, this is a VAST improvement.

Reese loves to roll over now. If I put her down on her back, she’ll quickly roll over onto her tummy and then immediately start protesting the fact that she’s on her tummy. She can roll back over, but for whatever reason, she simply doesn’t and instead has decided that screaming to be rescued is the way to go. This girl has a flare for the dramatic, I can already tell.

We got her a jolly jumper this month and every time I put her in there I can barely hold back my own giggles, she looks like a teeny tiny river dancer while in it. It’s hilarious but she absolutely loves it!

This baby will not take a bottle, which is a problem because with her sleep so erratic I never know when she’s going to wake up and need to be nursed, which means I’m afraid to leave her with anyone and Raf and I are in sore need of a date night. She has been sleeping a bit better. I generally am able to nurse her and then put her down in our bed, surrounded by a pillow blockade, and she’ll drift off to sleep happily. This is fairly new though so I’m still hesitant to rock the boat and attempt to put her to sleep in her bassinet. Lately, she’s been doing a 3 hour stretch in the evening, which is way better than the waking up every hour that she was doing last month. However, even that isn’t consistent and therefore can’t really be relied on. She’s basically moved into our bed and she seems quite content to stay there.

Reese continues to smile more and more but she’s a tough crowd when it comes to laughing. I mean I’ve only been able to make her laugh heartily one time and have been able to illicit the barest of giggles a handful of time and usually only be tickling her, at which point, it really only seems like she’s doing it to make me stop. She’s my serious girl for sure.

Asher and Bennett continue to fawn all over Reese and it’s basically the sweetest thing ever. She’s a very good sport about it, even when Asher insists on picking her up, or rolling her over (to rescue her from tummy time) and inadvertently hurts her, or when Bennett sit on her for reasons only she knows. Reese is certainly a luckly little girl and we’re clearly all obessed with her.

Reese’s Monthly Growth Series // 4

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13 pounds 11 ounces (37th percentile), 25 inches long (70th percentile), 16.3 inches head circumference (75-90th percentile), started laughing, rolled (tummy to back), first plane trip, normally sleeps 4 hours straight, drools A LOT, likes to clasp her hands together, enjoys sucking on her fists, sticks her tongue out often, smiles more readily, hit a sleep regression, first fever 🙁

This past month has been quite the adventure. We spent the first three weeks in Texas where the weather was warm, it was quite the welcome respite from the cold and snow of Maine. The kids spent nearly every waking moment outside and often asked to walk to the playground twice a day. We all really needed it. The tension my body completely unwound. Raf’s family spoiled us rotten and took such good care of us, Raf and I even got to see four (!!) movies and go out at night a couple times without any children. It was amazing! While we were there we spent a couple days in Austin, TX and in addition to visiting some dear friends, we basically ate at as many vegan places as we could. A few days after getting back home I had knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus, which means I’ll be immobile for 6 weeks!!! I can’t put any weight on it for 4 weeks, and therefore I’m basically useless and can’t even carry Reese around. Thank God for all the help we’ve been getting, my sweet sister-in-law making us dinners, friends coming over and lending a helping hand, my cousin bringing us food while entertaining the kids and my mom and Rafaan, who have been real MVPs, doing anything and everything to keep this place running. If that isn’t challenging enough, we’ve all come down with epic colds. Reese is running a fever of 103 and vomits every time I try to get some acetaminophen or ibuprofen into her. So, while we started this month on a high note, we’ve ended with quite the challenging situation on our hands.

Reese has really blossomed this month. She smiles readily and we’ve even been able to get her to laugh a handful of times. When she really gets going she makes the most adorable snorting sounds. She started off this month going down to sleep at 7:30, falling asleep peacefully on her own and not waking up until 11:30pm, but since then a sleep regression hit and has since been compounded by the fact that she’s sick, she really only sleeps if I’m right next to her and I’m not really able to work on getting her back on track (and I wouldn’t until she was well again anyway) since I’m not able to pick her up and soothe her very easily.

This month Reese rolled over from her tummy to her back, she still hates tummy time and now has a way to get out of it lickety-split. She drools constantly and soaks through all her clothes, so my mom made her a couple drool bibs that she wears on rotation.

Reese sings the sweetest little cooing songs to herself as she’s falling asleep. Every time she starts Asher will point out that she’s singing her “sleep song”. She’s kinda over the pacifier this month. She takes it occasionally but for the most part, she’s content without it (this last week when only my boob will soothe her notwithstanding ). She still seems to have the exact same amount of hair that she had had birth, no more, no less, so I’m definitely interested to see what happens with that.

This girl is quite proud of her long tongue and when she’s happy, her tongue will be out. It’s so silly and cute and uniquely her. She likes to claps her hands together and every time she does this Asher will exclaim: “Look, Mommy! Reese is being reverent!” She still hasn’t figured out how to grasp anything else yet but I can tell she really wants to.

I fall more and more in love with her every day and I’m really savoring this time with her, because I know all too well just how fleeting it is.

All in a Name // 2

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We get asked all the time how we came up with the names for our children, so I thought that I’d write about it.

Rafaan and I like unique names. We also feel strongly that a name should have a positive meaning.

Asher Nathan

Asher is a Hebrew name meaning “happy, blessed, fortunate” and since we met and got married in Haifa, Israel we felt that this was only fitting. Ash, we also felt was a nod to his Persian heritage and Asher also has Arabic roots, meaning “wise or knowledgeable.” Furthermore Ash is a type of tree, and when I was pregnant with Asher I said a prayer for marriage every day that has a line in it that states: “…that there may branch out from this great tree boughs that will grow green and flourishing through the gifts that rain down from Thy clouds of grace.” So Asher just felt right to us.  It was the first name we thought about and really was the only name we ever seriously considered. At the time it wasn’t common, but apparently, everyone else had the same idea and it’s now a fairly trendy name, much to my displeasure.

Nathan is my paternal grandfather’s name. I was very close with him and love him dearly. He passed away nearly 9 years ago, but I still feel strongly that he played a part in bringing Raf and I together. He was a wonderful human being and made everyone he encountered feel special. Nathan, also happens to be a Hebrew name, meaning “God’s gracious gift.”

Bennett Rose

Bennett is latin from the root Benedictus, meaning “blessed.” We first came across this name years ago, when our friend Kent mentioned that he liked the idea of naming a girl Bennet, after Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (our Bennett is not in fact named after that Bennet). When I was pregnant with Bennett, but before we knew we were having a girl, Kent was over one night, which I think reminded Rafaan of the name, and he stated that he liked the name Bennett for a girl. I agreed and we liked it even better once we found out what it meant. When we found out we were having a girl, we never even considered anything else (although it did take a while to decide on how we were going to spell it). Bennett just felt right. We both like non-traditional names for girls and names that may more commonly be used for boys. Bennett may be slightly trendy as a boy name, but we’re confident that it’s fairly unique as a girl’s name. In addition studies have shown that women with sexually ambiguous names tend to be more successful than their effeminately named female counterparts in typically male dominated fields. This and this are interesting reads. This certainly didn’t influence our name choice, but instead just affirmed it. However, I certainly hope that by the time Bennett is old enough to get a job her name won’t matter.

Rose is latin meaning “rose, a flower” and since Bennett is a somewhat long and masculine name, I wanted a short and feminine middle name. I really liked how Bennett Rose sounded, but I didn’t want her middle name to be arbitrary, rather I wanted it to hold significance or be after someone we loved. We tested out a few other middle names, but none felt right and then I was saying a prayer for children and realized that the rose in fact is mentioned in many Bahá’í prayers and Writings. Furthermore, the Bahá’í Shrines are scented with rose water and the gardens at the Bahá’í World Centre (where Raf and I first met) are filled with roses. So, we liked that the name Rose was a nod to where we met as well as the fact that it holds special significance in Bahá’í texts. We also liked how it’s a fairly old, traditional name and felt that it brought balance to the more recent, trendy name of Bennett.

Reese Marie

Reese is English/Welsh and means, “ardent/ardor, passionate, enthusiastic, fiery.” We first considered this name when we were expecting Asher. We had a list of backup names that we would use if he was born and we felt that Asher just didn’t suit him. Reese was one of those names. We obviously didn’t end up using it. But of all the names on that list, it was the only one that I continued to like over the years. When I got pregnant with Reese I decided that I really wanted to wait to find out the sex of the baby. With this in mind, Raf and I decided we would pick one gender neutral name that we could use for either a boy or a girl and then we would pick two middle names to go with it. In keeping true to form with our naming history Reese was the first name I suggested and it just felt right. We did toy with one or two other names, but we kept coming back to Reese. Raf was convinced that we were having another girl and really wanted to find out the sex to prove that he was right. He finally wore me down and we were overjoyed to find out we were having another girl!

Marie is the French and Czech form of Maria, which in turn is a form of Mary which is derived from the Hebrew Miryam and means “wished for child.” When I was in labour with Reese, Raf suggested we give her the middle name Marie. Up until that point, we had been going back and forth between Olive, Olivia and Jasmine as middle name options. But none of them felt quite right. We like Marie, because just like with Bennett Rose, we feel that it brings a nice balance to her name. We gave her the middle name of Marie as a mash-up of sorts between the names of several notable women. First, Virginia Maria (pronounced Mariah) Breaks, who was the Knight of Baha’u’llah for the Western Caroline Islands. When I was a little girl, she lived with us at the end of her life and I came to love her deeply. She was an amazing woman and really like a third grandmother to me. Next is my maternal grandmother, Mary Evelyn Hardy. With Asher named after my paternal grandfather, we felt that it would be nice to honor my mom’s side of the family. Grandma Mary is a remarkable woman. I’m named after her, with my own middle name being Mary and we felt that it was a nice way to pay tribute to my Mom by naming our daughter after her mother. Lastly, she is also named after Queen Marie of Romania, who was the first Royal to recognize Baha’u’llah. Reese is quite the lucky little girl to be named after such incredible women.

Anvari is Iranian and means “something that has been set alight.”

Reese’s Monthly Growth Series // 3

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12 pounds (34th percentile), has found her hands, coos and babbles a lot, still hates tummy time, no laughs yet, smiles more often, falls asleep on her own, first plane trip (to Texas), eyes are brown, thrush is gone

Reese is 3 months old and the time is just flying by. Developmentally she seems to be somewhat behind where her brother and sister were at this age, but she’s her own person after all (something I have to keep reminding myself of). She hasn’t laughed yet, but she is smiling more. It could just be that she doesn’t find me funny. She has found her hands and loves sucking on her knuckles. She’s very talkative and is often cooing or babbling. Reese still takes a pacifier but she’s not as in love with it as she once was, instead, she’d much rather nurse, and since her weight percentile has increased, I guess it’s paid off!

We’ve finally kicked thrush to the curb and fingers crossed it doesn’t come back to hitch a ride again. She’s a much happier little girl than she once was, but she also such a serious child. While she smiles more often it’s still not all that frequent and instead, she likes to look at everyone with a very serious expression on her face. She sticks her tongue out a lot and will often like me when I’m kissing her, which isn’t pleasant.

Reese sleeps fairly well. I no longer swaddle her during the day and I tried to stop swaddling her at night but she just isn’t ready yet as her arms keep startling her awake. She’s a pretty floppy baby, which is something I’m not used to, but it does make her extra cuddly, which I love. She’s a mommy’s girl and is happiest when she’s with me. This girl still loves her sleep although she is spending more and more time awake, which is nice.

Asher and Bennett are still enamored with her and it’s so sweet how affectionate and attentive they are towards her. We took her first plane ride to Texas and she didn’t love it. She was pretty fussy on the flight but nothing terrible. She does, however, enjoy the warmer weather in Texas and loves being outside, which is something she has in common with her older siblings. Reese has the loveliest olive complexion and I think she may actually be our Persian looking child. Her thighs have filled out deliciously and she’s got a chunky backside to go with them.

I found out that I have a torn meniscus this month, so I’ll be having knee surgery to repair that April 3rd, followed by 6 weeks of crutches. I honestly don’t know how I’ll function with an infant let alone the older two. But I’m sure we’ll find a way. Thank goodness my parents live nearby!

Reese’s Monthly Growth Series \\ 2

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10 pounds 6.4 ounces (28th percentile), 22.2 inches long (41st percentile), 16.3 inches head circumference, got thrush again, started smiling!!, prefers sleeping over eating, loves her pacifier, loves bath time, hates tummy time, has a bedtime schedule, falls asleep on her own, wakes up 2-4 times at night, looks most like Asher

Month 2 with my little Reese Marie has been a vast improvement on month 1. She responded almost immediately to her prescription thrush medication and all of a sudden she was happier and more comfortable than I had ever seen her. She actually looked relaxed! She started nursing better and spending periods of being awake and happy. As a result, my mood has greatly improved as well. It’s not perfect, but I think that has more to do with the cold winter weather than anything else. After my last post I received such an outpouring of love and support from people near and far, it really helped remind me that I have an amazing tribe. And it just goes to show that we should be talking about these things more, the people in our lives want to help, if only we’d let in. So thank you for reminding me of that!

I found a pacifier Reese likes, which was AMAZING! Getting her to sleep anywhere that was away from me was no longer an enormous struggle. I could put her down awake and just give her the pacifier and she’d be content, I’d replace it a couple times and she’d fall asleep. It was seriously such a game changer.

AND she smiled at me!! She smiled for the first time on my birthday and it was the sweetest present ever. She’s still not quick to smile and often can be seen sporting a furrowed brow but I’ll take it! There have been a couple times this month when she makes a noise that sounds like she’s on the verge of laughter, but I’m still waiting on that front.

Towards the end of the month she started pulling off the breast again and sleeping more and I was pretty bummed to discover her thrush had returned. This time I went straight for the prescription medication and she returned to her happier self in a day or so. With that said, she’s never been a great eater. She prefers to sleep over nearly everything else. At her 2 month appointment, we learned that she has dropped from the 48th percentile in weight to the 28th, which isn’t good. So her pediatrician wants her to come back in a month for a weight check. In the mean time, I will make it my mission to nurse this girl ALL the time. It won’t be easy, but the past couple days give me hope that it’s possible. She has pretty much nursed around the clock for a couple days. Sure it could just be her wanting some extra snuggles after her vaccines but I’m rolling with it. I also learned that she has a very sensitive gag reflex, which is to blame for all the times when she vomits from seemingly nothing. Her doctor recommended I try distracting her by blowing in her face or stroking her nose, when she gets into one of her coughing fits that leads to her vomiting. I’ve tried this a couple times in the past day and so far it seems to be working. I also think that while her pacifier has been a God send, it has contributed to her percentile drop. There are times when I try to nurse her but she flat out refuses, but will happily suck away at her pacifier, so I’m going to try to have to work on that more as well.

She did sleep a 6 hour stretch one night, which was awesome! In the mornings when she first wakes up she coos and babbles a bit at me and she gives me the most smiles during this time. She’s becoming a little more sturdy, she holds her head up more and likes to kick her legs out to support her weight for short periods. She HATES tummy time, so we need to work on that as well. All in all this month has been 2 steps forward 1 step back. Asher and Bennett are obsessed with her. They love her so much and are constantly showering her

Asher and Bennett are obsessed with her. They love her so much and are constantly showering her in hugs, kisses and sweet caresses, it’s the sweetest thing, but also makes me slightly claustrophobic to watch. They just give her no space!!

She is starting to feel familiar to me, and I’m really looking forward to watching her personality unfold!

Reese’s Monthly Growth Series \\ 1

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9 lbs 4.5 oz (48th percentile), 21.5 inches long, 14.9 inch head circumference, loves bath time, sleeps constantly, only really sleeps touching mommy, doesn’t care much for nursing, got thrush, had a tongue tie clipped, has a clogged tear duct, very fussy when she’s awake (which is rare), eyes are dark grey/brown, looks most like big brother Asher

I can’t believe it’s been a month already! This has been a hard month for me. Reese has been a challenging infant thus far. She sleeps all the time, but only if she’s on me and when she isn’t sleeping she’s been incredibly fussy, purple crying.

She nurses only when she absolutely must and the rest of the time wants nothing to do with it. She won’t nurse to be soothed or for comfort only to eat and even then she stops just as soon as she can, rarely draining my breast or taking a full feed. The first two weeks I was waking her up to nurse every 2-3 hours but since then I’ve been letting her feed on demand, well kinda, I still offer her my breast often, she only sometimes will take it. When she is nursing more often than not she chokes while feeding and pulls off, sputtering and coughing, only to then start screaming in annoyance. If I can coax her back to the breast, she’ll nurse a bit more and then stop. She detaches often to fuss while feeding, which results in a lot of milk being sprayed everywhere. On the rare occasion that she does do something close to a full feed, she vomits everything right up. So needless to say this aspect has been pretty stressful. I was frankly amazed that she had gained the weight that she has.

She sleeps a lot and I know that sounds like a good thing, except that she’ll really only sleep when she’s on me or right next to me. I spent the second half of this month working on getting her to sleep anywhere else, with little success. It would take me around 2 hours to put her to sleep in the bassinet at night. Every time I put her down she’d wake up screaming and after a few times of that she’d start purple crying and wouldn’t be soothed by anything until she finally became so tired that she’d more or less pass out. At first I stuck with it because at least after the initial battle to get her to sleep she’d stay asleep for a good 4 hours but that was short lived and she then started waking up every 45 minutes to an hour, which quickly became unbearable since she wouldn’t nurse back to sleep, so I resigned myself to having her sleep on me in the evenings until I went to bed at which point she slept in the bed next to me. She wears a breathing monitor to give me peace of mind, but it’s definitely not ideal as I just don’t sleep as well when she’s next to be, especially since she has to be touching me which means I can’t roll over or change positions at all.

And then there’s the crying. It’s such a grating cry. She spends almost all her time asleep unless she’s nursing and really dislikes being awake. She is almost always extremely angry whenever she’s awake and again won’t be soothed by nursing, so it’s been a real challenge. If she isn’t crying, she’s looking at us with the grumpiest of looks. She mainly just wants me to hold her against my chest so she can sleep. I’ve worn her a couple times, but since my core muscles are basically atrophied it’s really hard on my back at the moment. Sometimes she just wakes up screaming even when she’s on me or right next to me, leaving me at a loss. It’s been pretty challenging.

Reese was born with a clogged tear duct which isn’t supposed to bother her, but if I don’t stay on top of wiping all the gunk away her eye basically becomes glued shut and her little eyelashes pull whenever she tried to open her eyes. We’ve also had thrush. I just can’t seem to avoid it with my kids. I used gentian violet for a week, which got rid of the white patches on her tongue, but then it became apparent that her gums and the roof of her mouth were bleeding, poor thing. Turns out thrush can do that when it gets really bad. So now she’s been prescribed 14 days of liquid fluconazole and I have to use a nystatin nipple balm. Fingers crossed that this get’s rid of it.

We’ve had such an outpouring of support from our new community up here in Maine, with people bringing us meals and taking Asher and Bennett on playdates. And my parent’s have been really helpful, but also a bit overwhelmed since my brother and sister-in-law had their 3rd child the day before Reese was born and they’ve basically been helping watch 4 kids and take care of 2 postpartum women and infants. Raf’s aunt also came to stay for a week, which was such a God send. And Raf works from home now and even though he wasn’t able to take time off that does mean that he can pop in a help if I really need him to and it does allow for more flexibility in his schedule. But even with all that, it somehow feels like we’ve had less support or help this time around than we did with the other two. I think it has something to do with the fact that with the other two we had family visiting and staying with us which resulted in 24/7, round the clock help. So it’s been really hard on me emotionally. I’m also hormonal and probably have some baby blues but I’ve been crying a lot and I’ve pretty much just felt invisible most of the time. Like no one really sees me. Which is all new territory for me. After Asher and Bennett were born I was so blissfully happy I felt like I was floating. So that’s been a real bummer. Raf has been doing his best to be as supportive as possible but it’s just been really hard on me. I wasn’t entirely sure I would write about this here and perhaps this topic needs a dedicated post of it’s own, but I do feel it’s important to talk about these things and to shed light on the topics of baby blues and postpartum depression if only to destigmatize them. So please let me know if you want me to write more in depth about this topic.

On a lighter note, she really loves bath time. It’s really the only place I’ve seen her look remotely content or happy. Asher and Bennett absolutely adore her. They are constantly asking to hold her, kiss her and hug her. It’s really so sweet. Every time she cries they both run to her and try to calm her OR they immediately tell me that she’s crying, even if I’m clearly right next to her. It’s pretty sweet. Bennett has really blossomed into her role as a big sister. She gives Reese the gentlest of kisses albeit while squashing her with the rest of her body, but still. Bennett isn’t so thrilled to have to share me, but at least she doesn’t seem to harbour any jealousy or resentment towards Reese. Since Asher is older this time around he really understands what it means to be a big brother. He keeps exclaiming how cute she is and asking for reassurance that we’re keeping her. He really seems a bit worried that we may just send her back or something. He’s really quite taken with her. Both Asher and Bennett have been great mommy’s little helpers. I’m just in awe of how gracefully they’re handling this transition, even if they have been acting up a bit more as they vie for attention.

We really can’t decide who Reese looks like. Everyone says she looks like Asher, but Raf and I just don’t recognise her when we look at her little face. I think she has Raf’s mom’s nose, my mouth and Raf’s eyes. But to me, she just looks so different than Asher and Bennett. I think her nose is really throwing us off since Asher and Bennett have the same nose and Reese’s is so clearly different. I do believe we will actually have a brown eyed child this time as her eyes are a dark muddy grey. She’ll be our brown eyed girl 🙂  I’m definitely looking forward to settling into our new normal as a family of five!!

Introducing: Reese Marie Anvari

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Born: December 10, 2016 at 5:19pm. This little girl has brought a whole new element of sweetness and joy to our family. Asher and Bennett are totally smitten with her. Asher is constantly remarking about how cute she is and he keeps seeking reassurance that we are in fact going to keep her. Bennett is always showering her in the tiniest little kisses and stroking her head and softly shushing her whenever she becomes unsettled. They both rush to her side and try to soothe her every time she cries. I think she is about the luckiest little girl around to have such loving and doting siblings.  Birth story to come.

Big Life Changes

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So admittedly I’ve been pretty completely m.i.a for the past 8 months. This space has been utterly and completely neglected. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to sit down and write but I’ve just been so overwhelmed with all the changes happening in our lives that I haven’t had the mental head space to do so.

What’s been going on you ask? Just about every major thing you can think of, well not really, but you get where I’m going.

First let me fill you in on a little of what we’ve been up to. This past July the four of us jetted off to Florence, Italy to celebrate the union of my sweet cousin Siria and her Scottish groom Ashkan. Raf and I spent part of our Honeymoon in Florence and seeing as how that was in the middle of winter, it was so nice to go back and experience the stunning city in balmy weather.

img_0136Siria and Ashkan’s wedding was something out of a fairytale. It was held in the stunning Tuscan villa, with the ceremony overlooking the rolling hills and cypress trees, while the reception was held in the garden lined with olive and lemon trees. It was unreal. The best part was being able to be there with so many members of my extended family. Here are the kids with their Great Grandma Carol.

img_0191Raf has been itching to leave his government job for a while now, and after applying to a few places he got hired as the Lead Data Scientist at a really cool start up that allows him to work remotely. So we started asking ourselves “if we can go anywhere do we really want to stay in the D.C. area?” Basically, the answer was a resounding “no.” Right around the time that this was happening my parent’s decided to leave China and move to Maine, where they had built a house. At the same time, my dad started a foundation call SolHEALTH devoted to promoting health and preventing disease, one population at a time and he asked me to come work for him. Now since we had only owned our house for a year and a half we knew that selling it would be tough, especially since we didn’t want to lose any money. So we decided to test the market and basically over-priced it, cleaned it up and went to stay with my parents for a few weeks. Well to make a long story short, the house sold. We played hard ball and it still sold. Ten days before closing we started packing. We found a place to rent in Maine and drove north. Here’s a picture of us in front of our first home in Virginia, right before we got in the car and left for good.

img_0398Ok, so now we’re in Maine. Now what?! Do we even want to be here?! What have we done?! We HATE THE COLD!!!!

Those were just a few of the thoughts that went through our heads right after the move. It was kinda surreal how it all happened so fast. Raf and I didn’t really have time to catch our breath. But with the thought that being near family would be good for us, the slower pace of life in southern Maine was exactly what we needed, and that being closer also allowed me to work for SolHEALTH more easily, we powered on.  We got to Maine at the end of August and although I was concerned about finding Asher a preschool that was still accepting students, it was actually pretty easy.

Here he is on his first day of Preschool!

img_0448Raf and I began looking for houses and in under 2 weeks we had put an offer on a house which was then accepted and on Halloween day we moved in. Needless to say, I had to break from my tradition of DIY Halloween costumes although I was dying to dress them as characters from Stranger Things. Asher really wanted to be an Astronaut and with everything going on I honestly welcomed the ease of ready-made costumes.

img_0580The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of unpacking and settling in. Raf has been painting every weekend and I’ve been nesting like crazy, because oh yea, I forgot to mention…baby number 3 is due December 3rd!! We’re having another girl and we couldn’t be more thrilled albeit stressed and exhausted from everything else going on.

Raf has really been so amazing during this whole time. Not only is he adjusting to a whole new normal in his career and day to day life but he also has a pregnant emotional wife and two small children who’s lives all just got uprooted as well. It’s been an incredibly stressful time for all of us but being near my parents has made it all worth it.

Life in Maine thus far has been interesting. We’re adjusting to the cold and slowly making friends. The pace of life here is much slower than we’re used to, which is both a blessing and an adjustment. The other day Raf looked out our window and saw some people walking their goats down our street. Yes, you read that correctly. Goats. It’s pretty awesome. Wild turkeys roam free and I’ve nearly (not really) hit a deer in the middle of the road on two separate occasions. It is stunningly beautiful and the people are super friendly if not a bit reserved at first. We are nervous about the fact that spring doesn’t come up here until MAY, but we are looking forward to living in a place where snow doesn’t shut down EVERYTHING.

img_0566So there you have it. In a couple weeks things will only get even crazier with the arrival of our newest little one, but hey at least that’ll give me a lot more blog material! Bright side, right? AND can I just say that I am SO looking forward to having another sweet little baby to snuggle! I’m already sad about how fast my time with her as a baby will go by and she isn’t even here yet. Seriously, the baby period is so fleeting and being firmly settled in the knowledge of the fact is both a blessing and a curse of being an experienced parent.

Bennett’s Monthly Growth Series \\ 12

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21 pounds 4 ounces (72nd percentile), 30.3 inches long (86th percentile), 18.6 inches head circumference (96th percentile) mastered the stairs, says “bye-bye”, says “Da-da” for everything else, stands her ground with her big brother, has taken off with walking, loves passing things back and forth with her mouth, 8 teeth, eyes are light hazel/grey, super affectionate, very opinionated

This little girl is ONE YEAR OLD!! One whole trip around the sun! I am feeling all the feelings. So much joy and yet so many achy aches. My baby is now a toddler. I can not do this child justice in writing. She is quite simply light upon light.

Bennett has become a champion eater. This girl puts food DOWN. She had so much fun eating her birthday cake. She took her time and savored every bite, whereas the next time we gave her a slice she shoveled it in like there was no tomorrow.

Ben Bucket has also developed quite the strong will. She no longer puts up with her brother pushing her around and will make her opinion heard. She has even started fake crying just to get him in trouble so I have to keep an eye on her to make sure I’m not blaming poor Asher for something he didn’t do.

Bennett is exceedingly affectionate and she gives me copious amounts of kisses which I absolutely adore. She has become quite steady on her feet. She has mastered the stairs and still loves to climb and is finding new ways to give me heart attacks every day. She constantly wants to be doing what her brother and the big kids are doing and will. not. be. left. behind.

This year has been one of the sweetest of my life, which is not to say that it wasn’t challenging or downright hard because it was, but the gift of having a second born child is that you learn to savor all the moments because you know all too well how fleeting they are.

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