So we arrived Monday. It was a little crazy getting here but we arrived. The house is so beautiful. I love it. The kitchen is white and the house is an open layout and we are just a walk to the bay or the beach.

Just in the past 2 days Sam has rolled over from her back to front and I swear is eating pizza late at night cause she looks huge. Max has a crew cut for the summer and not because I chose that. Max had his hair cut the other day and my sitter took him and he cried endlessly and so the cut was not so good so I thought the hubby should shave it since ALL boys know how to cut hair.WRONG!! not my hubby so he shaved a test run from front to back-GO FIGURE. I cursed, he yelled, I cursed, he cursed and I cried. I took Max, who was screaming bloody murder to the kid barber for an emergency shave. I had to hold him down in a wrestling move but he actually looks adorable.  Yeah he is that kid that screams with snot coming out of his nose and mouth. 

Regardless we made it but I did not lock the front door. yes you heard me. It was not locked because my mom had come over and I guess she just closed the door and I never checked it so our alarm went off last night because it just opened with the rains and the wind. I was amazed that the hubby was so sweet and understanding. He is generally very calm with that stuff but come on the front door. he just said that we all make mistakes and it was a crazy day. What a sweetie.

So Sam is not sleeping. I know she is teething really bad and will only sleep after a small dose of tylenol. She also will only sleep in her swing. UGH! She also does not like food at all. Could this all be teeth? I knew over the past 3 weeks that she was getting bad since she was sleeping half the night in her swing and if not, she screamed and screamed bloody murder. Daphne Goldberg, her doctor and I felt that it was more important to have her sleep that to force her to sleep in her crib but do they make swings that can hold a baby past 20 pounds. I know she is in pain and so I just dont have the heart to let her scream. I know she knows how to sleep and I know she is in discomfort. I tried giving her some homeopathy, Chamomilla 30c, and it seemed to work for a little but did not hold. I will probably call the homeopath today. Teething sucks. 

But the beach is awesome and as soon as I get the camera charged I will upload some pics. We will be here for 10 weeks and already I feel relaxed.I found a local moms group that is letting me join for the summer. I am so psyched.

Dearest Max,

(Please excuse no pictures but I am having problems uploading.)

So much has happened this month. You are growing up so fast. You are 32 pounds and becoming harder to carry everyday. You are growing into a little boy and your chubby cheeks are lessening each day. 

You are such a helper and your favorite line is, I HELP! So you clean your dishes and put them in the sink, you load the dishwasher, help with your sister, and help your mom and dad constantly. You are so vocal now and love to say I do or I don’t want to. You also love to say All Done. You also tell your sister to STOP or Don’t if she is playing with one of your toys. You have so many words in your vocabulary now and you are enjoying using them. You work great with both your teacher and speech therapist and you are such a good worker at night when we do our puzzles, books and flash cards. You are really trying and I am so proud of you. I have learned to just keep you excited and so you keep working. You call me Bom because you cannot say your M’s easily but it is cute. 

This month we got back your allergy test results and oh boy. There are so many NO foods and luckily it did not freak me out. I just figured it was a blessing because it would give me insight into how to get you better. The big ones were eggs, chicken, turkey, almonds and cantaloupe. I am so happy we did the test and holding you down was totally worth it…not fun..but totally worth it in the end for this info. No wheat, no gluten, no soy, no chicken, no turkey, no safflower, sunflower, almonds and more. It took me forever to find a potato and tortilla chip that is not made with safflower and sunflower.

You rode a train the other day with me, Nana, ans Sam from Ardmore to Center City Philadelphia. You thought ti was amazing. We had been watching trains every Saturday for the past month and you finally got to ride one. It was exciting. Nana loved sharing this experience with you and so did I.

Tomorrow we leave for the beach for 10 weeks and I am so excited. I think you are really going to love living at the beach. I know it will be fun to be together everyday as a family for 10 whole weeks. I am sure you will blossom just like a flower.

Things you love this month: tickling your sister, watching bugs, playing in the dirt, playing in the rain, snuggling as always, singing songs, playing with cars and trucks, Curious George, your grandparents, burgers, being outside, going to the aquarium and zoo and watching or riding trains.

You are one of the sweetest boys I have ever met. You are really good, most of the time, sharing your toys and you always offer toys to a friend who is sad. You still want to snuggle and cuddle with me. You are an amazing big brother and such a funny kid. You have an awesome sense of humor as well. You officially peed on your sisters head this month while you were both in the bath. Of course she thought it was hysterical and so did you. I tried to explain that we cannot pee on people, especially our own family. 

I still think of our few few moments together and how you allowed me to see myself in so many ways. You opened a door to my heart that could only be opened by my own child. I have become the mom I want to be because of you. I will always be there for you. I will always be there. I am forever grateful for your relationship. I love you Max! Keep growing. Keep finding out who you are. It is wonderful to watch. 

Love, your momma

So here it goes: almond, garlic, cantaloupe, eggs, oat, chicken, turkey, wheat, gluten, soy, millet, most nuts, most grains, some fish and the list goes on. He did not show up for dairy but he also does not eat dairy so he probably would not show an IgG response. I know he does not do well with it because his ears always turn red after he  eats dairy. So it is confirmed that Max is gluten and wheat intolerant. The big one for me was the eggs since he eats them one or two times a day and not just an IgG response but an IgA, which is the bad type of allergy..the one where he could have a severe reaction. 

He just like me has many foods that he has a very low response to and we must rotate them. I was pretty similar in my test. So Max is eating just plain whole foods and I am sure you are thinking what is he or myself going to eat. Luckily he loves burgers and so I can make beef and lamb and rotate them and give him bacon for breakfast. He needs to not ever eat eggs and for the other foods he cannot have them for anywhere from 3 to 9 months depending on the severity of his IgG response.

I feel so lucky that we did this test, yes overwhelmed, but lucky. Max has so many of my similar allergies and he is so little. I know it will make him feel so much better when he is feeling less allergic. We are hoping that his body will grow out of some of these allergies if he is not eating them for a while but I have a feeling that the wheat, gluten and soy will always be an issue and he will have to learn as he gets older that if he eats this stuff he won’t feel well. 

I even bought him potato chips yesterday and looked at the ingredients and saw safflower and threw them out. I know when he has an allergy because he usually throws and temper tantrum and has no patience and is very emotional. Sometimes the allergy is not just in a rash..it is subtle and sometimes it is the color of his face or the red under his eyes. 

Yes, this is hard and I am glad I did not do this 6 months ago because I would have lost it and felt so overwhelmed but now-well we will deal with it and move on. At least we know.

The good thing is that it has motivated me to start making different things for him to have like banana ice cream and muffins and corn bread and pancakes. So we will just take it day by day.

I am not sure how other moms have figured out how to get both kids on the same nap schedule because I an still lost. Samantha gets a good nap on days that either I have her alone or my sitter has her alone, which is 3, but the other days she is screwed. She naps for like 30 minutes in the car going somewhere and then 30 minutes in the car coming home and then she is so over tired that she does not want to go back down. She is always woken up by the toddler screaming because he is running like a mad man around the house. And I still have not mastered getting Max down for a nap when I am alone. Although, lately there have been days where I have just skipped his nap altogether and put him to sleep at 7 pm, like last night.

Let me also say that yesterday was not the day to skip a nap for either. Sam was not in a god mood and Max needed a nap so bad and I needed a break too from toddler play. We met another mom and her kids in the am and Max ran and played and he had so much fun. But he was fighting the nap and so I said, ” fine don’t take one!”. Bad mommy move. We went to get something to eat and he screamed on the floor, acted like a dog and whined the whole 10 minutes until I said, “Ok lets go!”

So Sam is sleepy, Max is sleepy and I have no patience. We had an ok rest of the day but I was so tired and so cranky myself. I yelled a lot last night and Max cried and Sam cried if she was not held. It was one of those days. But Max slept the whole night in his own room. BUT, I dont think a good night sleep is worth a day of whining with the toddler! But I also know that he is fighting the nap but he still needs one. He is almost 2 1/2 and I dont want the naps to go but since we took away the binky, he just does not settle down like he did before. 

Any suggestions for my sleepy baby? Any experiences with your toddler fighting the nap? All suggestions are apprectiated.

Luckily, I passed out at 9:30 pm!

So it seems a few of my friends have been asking themselves the same question..Who Am I? Most of us have decided we are done having kids and so that leaves the question Who am I? Over the past few months, I had a difficult time adjusting to life with two and going through some growing pains with my husband. I never thought that it would be so tough for us to get used to having two kids and more importantly for us to learn how to co-parent, which is something that did not happen so much because I did everything myself. I prided myself on the fact that I never asked for help, except from my sitter on the days she was here. I feel like I really learned so much about myself in the past 6 months. My fears, my wants, my lack of self confidence. For so many years I attached myself to an amazing body and that went with my first born and then I attached myself to my hard ass don’t care personality and that went with babies as well. So then I was left with me and who was that? No job anymore, no hot body..just me and I am glad I was forced to face the music.

So now I have lost the baby weight and feel great and I have accepted that I will never be a 24 waist and don’t want to because that was a life of denying food. I am comfortable at a 26 and I am comfortable at 110 instead of 105 to 108. Basically, I am comfortable with me.

A friend cried to me last night on the phone because she does not know who she is anymore. She has decided not to have babies and no job and all that stuff I just talked about but I said one thing..which is that having babies is the easy part and raising quality human beings in this world is the real job. I was happy that I could be there and not stuck in the same place. I feel like I have worked so hard to find me again..a better me..a more loving and secure me.

My hubby and I are doing great. We went through some rough times over the past 3 years years being pregnant or nursing because the kids were all I had energy for. My hubby also had to learn how to be a Dad since he did not grow up with one and I had to learn how to accept him for him. Funny because if you ask him we were fine but as a woman, we were not fine. We were not connected and we were struggling a little but now we are back and hanging out and enjoying each other as if we were just married. It is so nice. Another great thing is that his psoriasis is about 90 percent gone. He went to see our homeopath, Todd Hoover MD, and it is practically gone. Usually, he is bleeding and not happy and wanted to be alone a lot but now he is feeling good so it is all working.

I guess this is such a journey and the amazing part about babies for me, is they force me to look at myself in the mirror. So much of what I attached to being a great mom was not what Sam needed from me. She did not want to be breast fed or co-sleep..she needed something entirely different. Max needs me in different ways than Sam. Last night he needed to sleep with me.  My hubby needs me to love myself.

All in all, I need to be full in order to be the best person. So that is who I am today. Full!