Pictures at 4 and 5 Weeks

Sienna is 4 weeks old in this picture.  One of the women on our team gave her this little bathrobe as a gift.  How cute!

The pictures below are of her in the play gym at 5 weeks.I think the look on Sienna’s face is funny in this picture.  She is looking at Ethan like, “What in the world are you doing?”  I’m sure we will see her give Ethan this look often.Ethan still loves to hug her a lot.  He even asks to hug her while he is eating meals.He is encouraging her to do tummy time by doing it with her.And, of course, another hug.  I sure hope that she ends up enjoying hugs because Ethan loves to give them.  He has a couple of friends who don’t like hugs (and he wants to give them hugs a lot), so it will be difficult if his sister doesn’t end up liking them.Gary is giving Sienna her first bottle in this picture.  We decided that we had better go ahead and see if she would take a bottle since I have a Crusade women’s thing tomorrow night and hoped to leave her at home with Gary giving her a bottle.  Maybe I will be able to get a picture sometime of Ethan trying to pull his shirt up and use the breast pump on himself.  He understands that it is to get milk for the baby, so it’s funny to watch him try to use it on himself.

Third Try is Much Better

The weather here has been so nice lately.  We finally got the Baby Bjorn figured out with the help of Michelle.  I don’t know what happened since we used it with Ethan, but it seemed to be all tangled up or something.  So, I have been venturing out with Sienna in the Baby Bjorn and Ethan on his new trike that my mom bought him when she was here.  We have gone out the last 3 days with today being the first successful day (so-to-speak).

The trike is too big for Ethan, so he has to use his tip toes to push himself, and the wheels hit the back of his heels.  Since he’s never had a trike before, he has to get used to how to do it.  For those of you in the States, basically all of the little Hungarian children have these little plastic trikes once they start walking well.  The moms take the babies or younger children in the strollers and have the older children ride these trikes alongside of them as they take their walks.  I don’t know how it is in the city, but that is how it is in our village (where there aren’t many sidewalks).

So, on Monday we headed down the street.  45 minutes later we got to the end of our block.  Yes, 45 minutes! On the way, Ethan stopped at 2 trashcans that were turned over by the trash men and wanted me to pick them up and set them back the correct way, since he couldn’t.  He stopped to look at every dog on the way down the street, and since the trike was too big, he took longer to ride it than to walk (which is the opposite of how it normally works with these trikes).  When we got to the end of the block, he wanted to go into the little playground which has a sandbox.  So we went.  Soon after he got into the sandbox, Sienna woke up and started crying (because it was feeding time).  It took quite a bit to leave the playground and even get back to our street (with Ethan trying to make the trike go up hill and on a rather bumpy surface), so by the time we got around the corner to our street probably 10-15 minutes had passed (the playground is right on the corner of our street).  I finally just picked Ethan and the trike up and carried him, the trike, and Sienna all back to our house. 

Yesterday, we ventured out to try again.  We made it a little faster this time, in about 20 minutes.  Ethan chose to walk some of the way and pull his trike, which did help with making it faster.  Ethan figured out that the road goes slightly downhill, so he can pick his feet up and the trike will go faster and on its own.Ethan looking around me to watch some people come walking toward us with their dog.Ethan went back into the sandbox (which was more fun because someone left their bucket and shovel).  

I decided that we would try to leave at 1:30 to give us 30 minutes to get back in time for his nap.  As soon as we walked out of the playground fence, Kristen was walking down the street with Seth and Kate.  So, of course, we stopped and started talking.  Ethan and Seth played in the ditch and little field beside of us while we talked. I finally thought that we’d better start walking toward our house since it was close to Ethan’s nap time and Sienna’s feeding time (and knowing that Ethan could just walk with Seth, or even run, and it would be much faster).  When we got in front of our house, Kristen and I kept talking and then Yulia, who lives down the street, came walking down with her kids.  So all 4 of the boys were running around in front of our house while we talked.  Most of y’all reading this probably know what a talker I am.  So, needless to say, we got inside past Ethan’s nap time.  Well, when we finally went inside, he was hungry from the running around, and he had a poopy diaper.  Sienna was still asleep in the Baby Bjorn, but I knew I couldn’t change Ethan’s diaper with her in front of me like that, so I put her down.  Ethan’s diaper was so bad that I had to give him a bath, and of course, Sienna woke hungry (past her feeding time) before I even put him in the bath.  So, I was trying to quickly give him a bath, get him dressed and down for his nap while she was just crying.  And, of course, I could have prevented much of this by just not talking as long. :-)

So, today, we tried for a 3rd time soon after Sienna ate, but still just an hour before lunch time and 2 hours before Ethan’s nap time.  This time I took the stroller planning to possibly push Ethan home in it.  I didn’t time how long it took us to get to the end of the block, but was successful with Ethan having some time to play in the sand with the toys that were still there and then coming home with him in the stroller and me carrying the trike.  Sienna stayed asleep until I got him his lunch, and then I was able to nurse her as he finished lunch.  I put him down for his nap just a few minutes before two (and I actually was able to take a nap myself while both of them napped- yeah!).  I was excited that this 3rd try to the end of the block was much better! :-)

3 Weeks Old

Well, Sienna is 4 weeks old now, but I’m actually posting pictures of her at 3 weeks.  I’m still trying to catch up on things. :-)My friend, Lori, gave Sienna this Piglet stuffed animal at the baby shower.  Of course, Ethan saw it and asked to sleep with it.  As you see in the picture above, Piglet is about the same length as Sienna.Sienna is trying to get her head as high as Piglet’s head.  She has done well with holding her head up every since we came home from the hospital.  I remember a lot of people commenting about how well Ethan held his head up when he was around two months old.  She holds her head up much more and better than he did at this point which surprises me since she is so much smaller than he was.I think this picture is adorable with her head to the side a little like she is trying to figure out what I’m doing.

Mom’s Last Few Days in Hungary

 

Mom bought some cucumber and zucchini seeds for us to plant, and then dug up an area for us to plant them.  Ethan is “helping” her out.  I can’t even keep house plants alive, so we’ll see how it goes.  These pictures are from Mom’s last night before heading back. 

Baby Shower

The women on my team gave me a baby shower last Sunday.  I wasn’t expecting a shower, so was surprised when Yulia mentioned it to me.  I guess it’s more common when you have a 2nd child of a different gender.  It was a lot of fun to get out of the house and socialize some.  And Sienna slept the entire time which was nice.   The decorations were great!  Becky used this bassinet/crib for her children, so it wasn’t one of the gifts, but was perfect for holding the gifts.  The mobile hanging above it was made by my team leader’s wife, Vivian.  Sadly, she was sick and wasn’t able to come to the shower.  She had planned to read something about a mobile and made this as an illustration.For now Sienna is sleeping in the pack‘n play in our bedroom, so my mom hung this from the ceiling fan in there.  I still can’t believe that Vivian made all of these little birds and thought to hang them on sticks to make a mobile.  I’m just not a crafty person at all to even think of such things.

Ethan’s Birthday Party

We decided to wait until Mom arrived to have Ethan’s birthday party.  And then he ended up being sick when we had it planned.  So it was postponed again.  We finally had it this past weekend.  I made the cake and icing, and Mom decorated it with some spray green icing and stuff she brought from the States.  I never heard of icing that you spray on a cake to give it color- very cool!Mom bought Ethan a Thomas the Train set, so we did that as a theme for the cake.

It’s so hard to plan parties for young children around naps, etc., so we did it from 12-2:00 and just had sandwiches and fruit for lunch.  Then we had carrot cake and frozen yogurt.  I put in 3/4 cups of sugar for the cake instead of the 2 cups that it calls for, but made the icing with the normal amount of sugar.  I had planned to just scrape the icing and gum drops off of Ethan’s cake since we don’t give him sweets (the cake would be more than what we normally allow).  I asked Ethan if he wanted cake and had a piece ready to give him.  He responded, “No.”  He wanted yogurt.  I was surprised since all of his friends there were going to have cake, but of course, I was excited over his response. :-)  For those of you reading this and who are thinking, “If you don’t let him have sweets then he will ‘pig out’ at someone’s house when he gets older and can have sweets there,”… well, we do plan to let him have sweets, but right now, he basically doesn’t even know what he is missing.  I know a handful of people with older children who didn’t let them have sweets until they were from two years to school age and said that their children didn’t want or crave sweets as often.  The key is moderation, but when Ethan doesn’t even know what ice cream, cake, cookies, potato chips, etc. are, our attitude is why introduce it to him for him to just want it a lot.  Plus, Ethan is the firstborn.  It’s much easier now with him than it will be with Sienna.Next year we will probably be celebrating both Ethan and Sienna’s birthdays at the same party since they have the same birthday.  Hopefully that will work until they don’t want to do it anymore or have very different friends.Later in the day, we gave Ethan his presents and cards from family.  We also learned not to do it so much later.  He went down for his nap as soon as the party was over.  When he woke, I needed to nurse and then it was dinner time.  So he got his gifts after dinner… too close to bed time.  Not a good choice on our part. :-)  We bought this Thomas the Train book with attached tools when we were in the States in December.  He enjoys trains and loves tools, so we thought he would enjoy it.And he did!  I’m sure he will still enjoy using the real screwdriver, wrench, and hammer more than these toys, but he had fun playing with them.  The next morning, it was the first thing he asked for when Gary walked into his room.

Handyman Mom

Mom has been quite busy doing handyman things and teaching us how to do stuff.  As soon as she arrived she began pointing things out in the house that needed fixing, etc.  With everything she pointed out, our reply was that we didn’t know how to do it.  Most of the stuff she was pointing out was stuff that she knew how to do with some exceptions.  I often comment about how Gary is a walking, talking Bible where you can basically ask most any question about the Bible and he can answer it.  Well, that is how Mom is with household things (indoor and out).  For example, they were outside today and Gary pointed out the moss that is all over our backyard, and my mom just said to put lime on it.  She also pruned our apple trees while they were outside.  Soon after coming in, a guy across the street began pruning his fruit trees.  Mom and Gary went over to talk to him about our trees.  He said that the family who lived here before us actually had him plant the fruit trees in the yard and that now is the time that they need to be pruned.  He said that our trees need it really bad (which makes sense, since we’ve never done it!).  Our other neighbor actually came over last year or the year before and pruned the apple trees himself, on his own initiative, since they are still pretty small and growing.  After Mom showed Gary how to prune the trees and they talked to the guy across the street, Gary is motivated to prune all of our fruit trees now. 

We talked to Mom about how we hoped to paint some day but we don’t know how, and it cost too much for us to pay someone to do it.  She just looked at us and said that she could paint while she was here.  Our neighbor, Jennifer, is good with decor, etc. and came over to talk about paint colors and explained how painting is different over here than in the US.  Everything she said meant nothing to us, but Mom has painted all of her homes, so she knew exactly what Jennifer was talking about.  That is when Gary and I began learning about painting walls.  During this time, we also learned that you can’t paint water-based paint over oil-based paint, which is what happened this fall when Gary’s parents were here and Gary accidentally bought oil-based paint for his dad to paint some shelves, and then bought water-based after it ran out.  So, we’ll see what happens with them. :-) One thing that was quite frustrating for us was that you can’t buy little swatches or samples of paint over here to test out on the walls.  You have to buy a liter (about 1/4 of a gallon), and paint is much more expensive here than in the US.  We finally decided on a color and Mom began.  She painted our kitchen and living room.  We love the colors!  Hopefully Gary was able to watch enough so that we can do any future painting in the house ourselves. Here are a couple of pictures of Ethan and Sienna with the finished brown living room wall in the background.Here Mom and Ethan are putting on upholstery fabric to a chair that had ripped fabric and foam coming out of it.  We had to go to one store to buy the upholstery fabric and another store to buy the foam.  Then we borrowed an American stapler gun from our neighbor.

No Pneumonia

We went to the doctor yesterday for Sienna’s 3-week check-up.  Sienna is doing better but still has congestion in her chest and is coughing some, so the doctor wanted to double check to see if she had pneumonia.  While there, they did a chest x-ray, that Sienna didn’t like at all.  We were all thankful that the results were negative.  So, now it’s just a matter of waiting it out for her chest to get cleared up.  Thanks to all of you who have been praying for her!We were at the doctor’s office for an hour and a half, so Mom took a nap in the chair while waiting. Gary and Sienna took a nap before dinner.

Sienna is Sick

Ethan got a cold when Sienna was just under a week old, just a few days after we all got home.  It was difficult because he wanted to hug and kiss on Sienna, but we were trying to have him kiss the back of her head and not touch her hands.  It made it more difficult with her being ‘new’ in our home and he could not touch her much.  Gary got the cold soon after Ethan, and then on Friday, Sienna had it.  Thankfully she didn’t have a fever like Ethan did, but she was congested, coughing, and had a stuffy nose.  It was so hard to know what to do since she was only 10 days old and doesn’t really breathe through her mouth, and had difficulty breathing through her nose.  Over the weekend she began vomiting (not just spitting up, but vomiting with retching).  Ethan never did that so it concerned us as to if she was getting enough food.  At first I was afraid that I had eaten something that she was allergic to which caused the retching and vomiting.  It was more noticeable that as she nursed she wasn’t able to breath and then would vomit.  We thought that it was probably due to not being able to breathe, so we started using the orrszivo on her (you can see a picture of it below).  The orrszivo is a Hungarian invention that is one of the best baby inventions that we’ve come across.  You put one end into the vacuum cleaner and the other end in their nose, and it sucks the mucus out.  It’s made for children from 0-6 years old.  It works WAY better than those bulbs you put in their nose and squeeze to get the snot.  Ethan likes it so much that he has learned to do it himself.  However, it doesn’t really fit in Sienna’s nose, so it only sucks the little bit that is at the bottom of her nose.  After going for her check-up today the doctor said to put saline drops in her nose which will dilute the mucus and cause it to come down, and then the orrszivo will suck it out.  We are to do that before every nursing. I started getting the cold yesterday.  The doctor said that now my body will produce antibodies against the cold, and they will be passed on to her.  I said that it’s too bad that I didn’t get the cold last week when Gary did, and the doctor said it would have been better if I had gotten it last week.  Gary said, “Well, if I would have known that, then I would have kissed you!”  Once he got sick, he didn’t kiss me so I wouldn’t get sick.

Many people say that a newborn baby who is only breastfed can’t get sick.  Yes, it’s true that they have antibodies passed to them through the breast milk, but if it’s a sickness that I’ve not had for me to have antibodies for, then she won’t have those antibodies.  She only has the antibodies that I have.  Dr. Orsi explained a lot about it to us today, so I learned a lot concerning those things.

Sienna seems to be doing better today, so we hope that she will continue to improve.  Ethan had a MUCH better day yesterday.  He was a total pill last week (probably between not feeling well and having a new sister around). I thought I would include this picture of Ethan from his two year check-up that was today.  He can actually say the word stethoscope pretty well.  We really like Dr. Orsi, our pediatrician.  It is evident that she really enjoys children, and she lets us take as much time as needed to ask questions without making us feel like she needs to get to the next patient (something that I have rarely experienced in the States).  She called me at the hospital a few days after I had Sienna.  She told me that she would be on vacation the following week so her colleague would need to see Sienna for her first check-up, but told me that if I had worries about anything to call her while she was on vacation.  She is even having us call her on Friday (her day OFF) to tell her how Sienna is doing with the vomiting, etc.

Already Two Weeks Old

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two weeks since Sienna was born.

In Hungary you go to the doctor for a check-up each week until the baby is one month old, then you go once a month for check-ups until they are six months old.  When we went to the doctor for Sienna’s first check-up, she had gained a lot of weight and was doing well.  The doctor said that she was very strong.  When on her stomach, she was able to move forward on her own with her arms.  The doctor said that she is actually strong enough to roll over without realizing it, and if she were to roll over onto her stomach, she could easily “crawl” off of whatever she is on.  So, the doctor said to be sure not to just leave her somewhere like the bed.  Her legs are pretty strong, and she is holding her head up well.  Now I understand why I felt such kicking/hitting while she was in the womb (much more so than with Ethan). :-)Here is a picture of her on the quilt that Mom made for her.  Mom was very eager to get her pink things, despite me not liking pale pink.  However, now that Mom has seen her in lime green, Mom agrees that it looks better on her than pale pink. :-)

You can see where she scratched her face with her fingernails in the picture above.  Unlike Ethan, she won’t keep her mitten on her hands.  I guess her hands are smaller than Ethan’s, so they come off easier, but she definitely doesn’t like it when we put them on.  I was able to go ahead and cut her nails so hopefully she won’t get anymore scratches like this.More pictures of her at two weeks…