Neola is 14 months old as of July 12. These past couple of months with Neola have been so fun! She’s not walking yet, but getting oh so close!
In Neola’s 11-12 month post, I didn’t mention anything about what we did for her first birthday. Her actual birthday on May 12 was pretty lowkey — we had doughnuts for breakfast (that we had just bought that morning from Cub), played in the rain, had McDonald’s for lunch, and went to soccer practice for the older kids at night. #fourthchild #firstbirthday
But we celebrated all four kids’ birthdays with our families on May 21. We did a (very, very loose) superhero theme. It ended up being a FREEZING day. We had the older kids’ soccer games that morning, and I ended up running home between games with Neola to get winter gear for everyone because we were all turning into icicles. For the party, we ate food and played with water balloons (for the kids, the fun of water balloons outweighed how cold it was).
Size
A week after her first birthday, we took Neola in to the doctor because she had had a ton of mucus, a bad cough, and was super fussy/clingy (unlike her), and it has been going on for almost three weeks. Turned out, she had a double ear infection. 😢 So we gave her amoxicillin for 10 days and she was better…
For about a week. Then she got the same thing again: congestion, cough, fussy. After two weeks, I brought her back in. Another ear infection. 😢 Now she was put on a stronger antibiotic, Augmentin. She hated the taste of that medicine, and it gave her a bad diaper rash.
During that same time, she got two new teeth on bottom, and two molars on top. And then she got Covid on top of all that! Needless to say, there have been some rough nights of sleep!
Long story short, I just took her in for her well-child visit on the day she turned 14 months, and she is now 22 lbs 9 oz (76%), 2 feet 7 inches tall (81%). At her (sick) doctor appointment on May 19 (only a week after her first birthday), she was 21 lbs 10 oz and 2 feet 6 inches tall.
Sleeping
Neola’s sleep is still not ideal. But since I’ve been sleeping on the floor with her (I’m on a twin mattress, she’s on a crib mattress), the wake-ups are generally not terrible (unless there are a LOT of them, then it’s painful). On an average night, she probably wakes up 2-4 times, nurses, and goes right back to sleep. On a rough night, she wakes up 6-8 times, and sometimes cries when I try to roll her back onto her mattress.
She mostly sleeps on her side, though recently she has started sleeping on her belly a little. She rarely sleeps on her back anymore. I am encouraged that there have been a few times when she has fallen asleep on her own (with me laying right there) after flopping around a bit (as opposed to nursing to sleep). She has also fallen asleep in her crib a few times after crying for 5-10 minutes (I reserve that for the times when she won’t settle down and go to sleep, even though it’s bedtime). That’s progress!
She is still consistent in her napping preferences: she falls asleep either nursing, in the stroller or in her carseat. I actually wish she didn’t fall asleep in the car so easily because she will take a 20-minute cat nap at 5 or 6 PM sometimes when we’re on our way home, and then she’s wired until 10 PM. We also discovered that she likes mowing the lawn with Travis.
Her typical schedule is wake up around 6:30 AM, first nap 9:30-10:30, second nap 1:30-3:00, bed around 7:30.
I’ve been tempted to feel guilty about Neola’s sleeping habits, and while they are often challenging (because holding a baby for naps when you have three other kids is hard), I come back again and again to the conclusion that these are just the circumstances God has for us right now, and we don’t need to “solve the problem.” Thinking that we can (and should) “fix” this leads to us trusting ourselves, instead of trusting God.
I’ve also reminded myself that all of our other kids had their own unique sleep challenges at this age, but are sleeping champs now, so we must’ve done something right! And I also found a community of people on social media who are supporting kids’ sleep habits without sleep training. Those are the messages I needed to hear: It’s ok to not sleep train! It’s ok to share a bed on the floor with your toddler! It’s just a season!
Eating
Neola is an eating champ! She eats almost anything. She loves pretty much any kind of meat (lunch meat, chicken, brat, pulled pork, pork tenderloin, taco meat, salami, meat stick, summer sausage). She also LOVES cheese (we mainly feed her cheddar and mozzarella). She also loves berries, grapes, watermelon, teething wafers, Graham crackers, Goldfish, and raisins.
I always feed her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then usually a couple of snacks too. Sometimes she eats a snack while I’m making food, and then she eats more while we’re eating. I’m actually kind of amazed that she’s not chubbier based on how much food she eats. 🤷♀️
She’s still nursing, mostly in the middle of the night, but also before both of her naps (if I’m planning to hold her, otherwise she will fall asleep in the stroller or carseat without it), and when she goes to bed. We’ve given her cow’s milk a few times, but she doesn’t seem to love it.
Like I mentioned earlier, Neola got two more teeth on the bottom middle (for a total of 4), plus two of her top molars, bringing her up to a total of 10 teeth. Now I think she’s starting to work on the bottom two molars. Teething affects her sleep a little, but it mainly makes her clingy and snotty during the day. This girl produces so. much. mucus!
Development
Neola is a mover and a shaker these days! She learned how to pull up on things and crawl up the stairs (but not down) around 13 months, and is getting into all sorts of things these days. She is pretty timid when it comes to learning how to walk though, and doesn’t even have much interest in pushing the alligator clacker around.
Her favorite activities these days are playing in the sandbox, playing in the water table, pulling tupperware out of the cupboard, crawling up the stairs, and nesting on the floor mattresses in her room. She enjoys swinging, but definitely gets to a point where she’s had enough sitting around and wants to get out. She also loves ripping apart tissues, napkins, wrapping paper, books, etc.; digging through mommy’s purse; and pulling books off bookshelves.
Neola is curious and likes checking out almost everything — except her baby toys! She plays with those the least. (After her hip dysplasia surgery, I might declutter most of her baby toys… we’ll see if she plays with them more when she’s not mobile.) Her favorite thing to play with is my earbud case (now with the earbuds taken out). She opens and shuts it, opens and shuts it.
Speaking of which, because Neola got Covid right before her surgery (and still tested positive two days before the surgery even though it had been over a week since her initial positive), her surgery got rescheduled to August 18. So we have a whole other month to do summer activities that involve water and sand. 🙂
Since her first birthday, Neola has gone kayaking on our river, boating on Gull Lake, camping at Itasca State Park, and on an weekend trip to Duluth.
She is almost always a trooper, and actually did no worse than normal with sleeping away from home, which is all I can ask for (haha!). The hardest thing about camping was that she just wanted to put the rocks at our campsite in her mouth all the time!
Of course, Neola still gets a lot of attention from her siblings. Corbin has started really playing with her too, which is super sweet overall, but he often gets a little rowdy and makes her cry.
Neola is the sweetest little girl, and we love her so much! I am really trying to soak up the baby stage with her, because it is going by so fast! She’s almost a toddler already! (single tear)
And that’s Neola at 14 months!
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Development
She did well in Kindergarten at Pillager and can read sight word books fairly easily. She also likes to pretend to read books, making up her own story to go with the pictures. She has also started sounding out words and writing sentences on her own. The harder words aren’t spelled correctly, but I love that she is trying! She’ll even repeat slowly things that we say, and I can tell that she’s thinking about how you would write that.
In February, Emma got strep throat and Influenza A at the same time, and she did nothing but lay on the couch for about a week straight.
She has gotten better about praying with us at dinner. She used to refuse to fold her hands and would just keep eating, but now she’ll stop, fold her hands, and even sometimes offer to pray for us.
She loves playing with Annabelle, and is still usually the boss and mastermind behind their activities. They can totally be two peas in a pod, but they can also be at odds with one another. One day recently, Annabelle had set up her outside kitchen stuff and was pretending to cook mud pies. She walked away momentarily and Emma came along and started using the kitchen, putting things in a slightly different spot. When Annabelle returned, she started crying and collapsed into a puddle, looking at Travis. When Travis didn’t intervene, Annabelle went and got a stick, and started hitting Emma on the back with it. Undeterred, Emma played with one hand, and blocked the stick with the other, telling Annabelle halfheartedly to stop it.
And that’s Emma at 6 years!
Corbin’s nicknames so far are Corb Man, Little Man, Mister Man, Little Guy Guy, and Little Bud.
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Development
He can bring his hands to his mouth when he wants, and loves to suck on them. He can also reach for and grab dangling toys and bring them to his mouth. (A new skill in just the past couple of days! They change so fast!!) He also still loves his pacifier, and needs it to go to sleep. We give him his pacifier when he’s going down for a nap, in the carseat, or in the Baby Bjorn (when he’s tired).
Tummy time is still not a favorite activity, but a couple times, he has tolerated it for probably 3-4 minutes, and actually lifted his head up off the floor, so progress! I plan to do more tummy time with him now that he doesn’t absolutely hate it.
I’ve taken him on a few short stroller rides (with him reclined in our jogging stroller), but the girls are the limiting factor there (they’d rather do other things instead of going on walks, though that’s changing now that they can both ride their bikes).
As a parent, it’s nice to have other people to entertain the baby if I need to get something done. The other day, I was just finishing painting my toenails when Corbin woke up, and I sent Emma in to his room to entertain him while I finished. And she did…by putting makeup on his face to make him look beautiful. 😉
A few milestones for Corbin this month were his first trip to the cabin on Lake Namakan (which also means first boat ride, since you can’t drive to the cabin), first time meeting all 4 of his cousins (on my side), and first time swimming in a pool (which he actually enjoyed!).
And that’s Corbin at 4 months!
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Her teacher Ms. Kayla says that Emma is the only student who writes her name with her last initial: Emma K. When she was still going to daycare, there was another Emma and so they learned their names with their last initial: Emma K and Emma V.
A few “firsts” for the girls that I haven’t mentioned here on the blog yet are that we took them camping this summer for the first time. We stayed at the Army Corps campground in Crosslake, which is about 30-45 minutes from us. The girls had a lot of fun, and we definitely plan to go camping again. Both Travis and I grew up camping, and think it’s important for the girls to have those experiences too.
A weird thing that happened when we were heading home after camping, though, was that Emma’s face got really red and swollen. We took her to the doctor several times to determine the cause and the best answer they could give us was an allergic reaction to the sun. We don’t really buy it, but it hasn’t happened before or since, so…???
Emma also tried ice skating this fall. We enrolled her in the Learn to Skate program, which met every Sunday evening for a couple of months. Unfortunately, after a few classes of falling down a lot, Emma decided that learning to skate wasn’t very fun, and started to refuse to get on the ice. It was a parenting conundrum for us, but we decided that we would still take her to the class and have her sit on the bleachers, and she could choose whether or not to skate. There were plenty of classes that she didn’t skate at all, but a few she did get out there, and the last class she did really well! So even though we didn’t sign her up for the second session of classes, there’s still hope for her learning to skate sometime in the future.
We took the girls to an Operation Christmas Child packing party at our church again this year, and Emma was super into it. She probably packed 20 boxes on her own! Each time she finished one, she raced back to the start of the line and packed another one.
Emma and Annabelle still get along really well, and often play together in the morning for almost an hour in one of their rooms. Their favorite games as of late are House (often overheard: “I’m the mom.” “No, I’m the mom!” “Two moms!”) and Doctor. They do fight fairly often over the same toys, but overall, they really love playing with one another.
Emma still does mischievous things, like covering her face in an entire tube of chapstick…
Or drawing on her and her sister’s face with marker…
But overall, her naughty antics have slowed down quite a bit. Which is good, because Annabelle has taken over that role.
This girl adds a lot of spice to life and keeps us on our toes, that’s for sure!
And that’s Emma at 4.75 years!
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She loves baby dolls, especially her Little Baby. While at my dad’s house for Thanksgiving, she found a little basket for Little Baby, and carried her around in that with Baby’s little blanket. So. Cute. She also loves pushing strollers around, and being pushed in them.
Annabelle also LOVES shopping and running errands, both the real thing and pretending. She often asks to go shopping, and if she hears that I’m going shopping without her, has a total meltdown. Luckily, she’s a pretty good shopping buddy and is fine with riding in the cart 80% of the time (especially when Emma isn’t there). Get the two of them together, though, and it’s game over. 
Annabelle doesn’t really have the attention span or muse for coloring, though she does like painting and doodling. Her new thing (that she picked up from Emma a while ago) is playing restaurant–sitting down with a pencil and paper, and asking us “What would you like today?” (though it comes out more like “Wha ya like day?”) And she gets very upset if we don’t answer her immediately. And she LOVES Playdoh.
I feel like we still don’t quite have a grasp on the things that Annabelle is truly interested in beyond baby dolls, shopping, and music (she loves singing!), because her most favorite thing to do is whatever Emma is doing. She goes along with Emma’s ideas 80% of the time, though there is still plenty of fighting over toys and “Annabelle isn’t doing x or y like I’m telling her to!” Overall, though, these sisters really love each other, and find some very creative things to do together.
Annabelle has started to be a good helper with picking up toys and putting things where they go, especially when there’s an incentive to do so (like helping mommy bake something). Often when we ask her to do something like pick up or to stop doing something like throwing pencils on the floor, she’ll say, “Oooo-kaaaay.” It’s so stinkin’ cute!
In general, she just likes climbing on people, and at night while she’s “falling asleep,” she’ll balance on her head and bounce her butt in the air, which inevitably leads to her falling over sideways into either the wall or your face.
Annabelle still loves being carried, and often says, “Carry me.” When I put her down after a while and say “I can’t carry you anymore; you’re too heavy!”, she responds, “No, I’m little! I’m little!”
We’ve unfortunately fallen back into the habit of watching technology right when we wake up, but it gives me a chance to drink my coffee and wake up before they demand too much from me. Annabelle often says when she wakes up and I’m still sleeping, “Mom, it’s wake up time!”
And that’s Annabelle at 32 months!
There’s not a whole ton more to talk about in the past 4 weeks that I didn’t address in my 
Finding Out
Life, Really Blog 