New year, new house!

And just over 5 months after moving out for demo, we are in the new house as of Dec 31! It is really nice and we are putting our own touches on it like blinds, lighting, furniture, etc. It was great to stay with Lori and Arthur but it is nice to be back in our own place. I do miss all the help with the girls though! Closing was on Dec 27, we got our stuff out of storage on Dec 28 and moved out of Lori and Arthur's on Dec 31.

Cadence is almost 2 1/2 and LOVES school. She goes twice a week and although she had some issues with being dropped off in the fall, recently, she is eager and happy to go (no more "no school" on the way). No crying or separation issues any more. Unfortunately, in the last 2-3 weeks, she has stopped napping completely at school which makes for a very wired and tired girl at home who doesn't like to listen. I hope she'll start to nap again as she naps like a champ at home for 2-3 hours.

Allegra joined us on Thurs 11/10/11 after I decided to evict her. There was no medical reason to induce, I was just done with pregnancy and with THanksgiving and 25 people coming to Penn Acres, I was nervous. Induction was fine--went in at 6am, got a low dose of Pitocin that they kept upping and she was born at 9:18pm. She was happy in my tummy--no heartrate drops like with Cadence but my cervix was not ready to have a baby (was still long) so it took a little longer than expected. Pushing only took 6 min once I was ready though! Dr. Shin was good to work with so we were lucky. Allegra was 7lbs, 12oz and 20 3/4 inches long. She is much more fair than Cadence hair wise. Her eyelashes are already starting to get darker though. YOu could barely see that she had any at first!

She is a bit of a fussy baby compared to Cadence and appear to be colicky or have a witching hour each night right after Cadence goes to bed. It has gotten better now that she is 2 months old and her night sleeping is EXCELLENT. She started going long stretches around 6 weeks old, right before we moved out of Lori and Arthur's. She now goes down around 10:30pm (after nursing around 9pm and then a short session in her room at 10pm) and sleeps anywhere from 5-8 hours. Today she slept until 5:20am, nursed, I was back asleep around 6am and she slept again until 8:45am. Not bad! Now only if we could shift her bedtime to more like 8pm. :)

Nursing is going so much better as she doesn't hurt me like Cadence did! No problems so far and we introduced a bottle of pumped milk right around 6 weeks old. She's not great at the bottle but she's had one less than 10 times in her life. I've only left her for two short trips to the bank before xmas and to get my haircut on xmas eve. I'm just glad the nursing is working since pumping all that time was hard! It is hard being the one who can solely provide food for her since I would have to anticipate her being hungry to pump in time but sometimes I express after she eats so we have something for the next feeding.

Cadence is a great two year old when she isn't exhausted. Since she started school, her vocabulary has just exploded even if you can't totally understand her all teh time. She loves to play independently which is great for us.

More later, A is fussing!