Doak Family Site

This week we’ve been going through a wave of Beverly wanting to wear Big Girl Underwear. Some days she’s quickly ended up back in a diaper since I get tired of dealing with accidents on the carpet. Yesterday she spent the whole day in BGU (not counting naptime) and took herself to her little potty every single time she needed to go! Huzzah, hip hooray, and happy hamster dance. I know that it’s too early to count on it as a certainty, but it’s still exciting to think of having fewer diapers to wash.

Beverly & Naomi both have the sniffles right now. It’s fairly mild for Beverly, just a slimy nose she tries to wipe off on the couch, but Naomi has been rather clingy and hasn’t been napping well (though thankfully she’s still sleeping pretty well at night). I hope they start getting better soon, but holiday weekends are just so tantalizing to kids. It’s like they think, “I can be really sick for three whole days before I have to get better enough to avoid a Dr visit!”

It’s interesting to compare the two girls’ development tracks, especially since their birthdays are so close on the calendar. When Beverly was a baby she discovered her hands just before Christmas, so in most of her 1st-Christmas pictures she is holding her own hands. Naomi didn’t discover hers until week or so after Christmas – but now that she has, she’s making up for lost time! She’s getting more interested in toys too. Beverly is quite ‘helpful’ at giving her anything and everything to play with; most recently she was trying to give Naomi a taste of her cracker Naomi wants to be able to sit up sooo badly. Sometimes she’ll settle for being propped up in her boppy or half-reclining in her baby chair, but most of the time she wants to be in my lap or up on my shoulder. I got some finger-paint for Beverly with some of her Christmas money. She seems to thoroughly enjoy doing “ping(er) paints”.

Beverly baby pictures are on the left, Naomi baby pictures are on the right. It’s fun to see the little similarities between them!

Beverly-sized Christmas trees	Lil’ pink Ewok
Playtime!	Play time!
Our First Family Christmas	Merry Christmas from the Doaks!
	Camouflage baby, take two
Sleepy baby	Naomi loves to slurp on her fingers and thumbs

We had lots of playdoh and duplo blocks and fun times with family. Pictures from the last two months are now posted. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas from the Doaks!

Today we went to Naomi’s 2 month check-up. She weighs 10 lbs 10 oz and is about 22″ long, so she’s tracking solidly along in the 50th and 50-75th percentiles; hooray for growing babies! When we put her on the exam table on her tummy, she promptly demonstrated her rolling-over skills – then went into hysterics because the crackling paper frightened her! Naomi was totally freaked out and it took several minutes for me to calm her down, but at least she’d used up her tears so she didn’t cry much when she got a shot at the end of the visit. Naomi is normally pretty mellow but I’ve noticed that lately she’s developed the ability to become frightened; sometimes when Beverly suddenly begins howling, Naomi will get upset and start crying too. They make a beautiful duet of wails together. :/

Last night we popped Naomi under the floor gym at my parents house. She had a blast kicking her feet to make the dangling elephant rattle make noise!
This morning Beverly let herself out of her room; she has finally figured out the secret of how to open doors. Noooooooo! Now I have to put on the annoying plastic door knob covers that are about as effective against adults as children
To give you an idea of how Beverly’s language skills are progressing, last night on the way home from my parents’ house she got worried that she couldn’t locate her drink, and finally declared, “I left my sippy cup at Gramsie’s house!” Beverly enjoys looking at pictures of her baby cousin Evelyn. She’ll say things like “Dat’s cute” or “I love it”
Naomi now carries on little cooing conversations with us and plays the stick-out-your-tongue game with glee. A few days ago she was in the mood to play so I propped her up facing me… then I got distracted by Beverly. Naomi was opening her mouth and waiting for me to mimic her, but she began getting worried when I didn’t immediately respond. When I turned my attention back to her and stuck out my tongue, she was visibly relieved. Her frown lines just melted away and she grinned as we started playing our little game.

This year I am thankful…
… that my niece Evelyn is safely here!
… for how sweet Beverly is with Naomi. She loves ‘baby’.
… for my super-daddy husband.
… for my slowly (very slowly) increasing skill at sewing and the enjoyment that creativity brings to me.
… that hand-me-down baby clothes look twice as cute when I see them on Naomi and remember how they looked on Beverly.
… that Naomi’s tummy lump is starting to shrink!
… for health insurance. Even though the ER visit when Naomi was born was a huge unexpected cost, if the bills had been higher our health insurance would have kicked in long before we faced bankruptcy.
… that our car hasn’t needed expensive repairs this year *knock on wood*
… and last, but definitely not least, that the only cooking I have to do for Thanksgiving dinner is some scrumptious brownies!!!

Naomi rolled over for the first time yesterday… or maybe the day before.  We know for sure that last night she rolled over from her tummy to her back while Daddy & I cheered her on.  However, on Wednesday I had put her down on her tummy to play while I went to take care of laundry.  A few minutes later Beverly came to cheerfully inform me “Baby roll over!” and sure enough, Naomi was now on her back.  But, given how proud Beverly sounded, I rather suspect that big sister gave her some ‘help’ to get there   Beverly still adores her baby sister and is every bit as helpful as her two-year-old self can possibly be.  Sometimes I’ll check on Naomi napping in the swing and see her tucked in with a few extra handtowels and dishcloths to keep baby warm   Naomi is over 9 pounds now, WooHoo!  Over the last week Naomi has started to look a lot more like Beverly did as a baby.  It’s so cute to see the sibling resemblance emerging.

All summer I made sure our calendar for October was kept totally clear so we’d have plenty of time to adjust to our new two-kid family life.  So naturally now our November schedule is even busier than usual.  Ack!  The problem is that it’s all really good stuff; like no way are we going to skip Thanksgiving, and missing our own daughter’s baptism is not exactly an option (Nov. 20th, if anyone’s interested).  Oh well, housework is overrated

Naomi is growing so fast that we’re about ready to move her up to the box of 3-6 month baby clothes!  She’s rather generous though; she eats a lot of milk, but then she’ll return some to me as a tip.  Her best score is when she managed to spit-up on THREE of my shirts in one day.  Beverly is quite helpful, and when she sees “Baby spill” she runs to her room, gets out a new burp rag, and comes back to try to wipe it up.  This is totally not helping the exponential increase in our weekly laundry loads.  It still amazes me that one tiny baby produces more laundry than a full-size adult would.

Beverly is getting a better at her coloring.  Yesterday I drew a ladybug for her to color and she colored both the dots on the wings and the antennae balls blue.  A scribbly, wobbly, in-and-out-and-over-the-lines blue, but you could tell that she intended those areas to be blue and the rest not.  I want to do better at getting art supplies for her to experiment with; I tend not to think about doing it, but fingerpaints and watercolors would probably be tons of fun for her.

Naomi doesn’t particularly like her carseat, but after a preliminary protest she usually resigns herself and settles down to sleep (instead of screaming all through every car trip like her big sister did).  I’ve managed to go for little grocery shopping runs with both girls a few times now.  Beverly rides in the cart and Naomi rides in the baby carrier.  Normally I can scoop her up asleep from her carseat, maneuver her into the carrier, do the shopping, and put her back in the carseat still asleep.  This last trip she decided to stay awake and spent the whole time alternating between staring at my face and staring at the ceiling.  If she could have talked, the expression on her face looked like she would have said, “Duuuude, look at that ceiling… whoa man that’s like really far up there… the lights… oh man look at the lights…  so shiny… duuuude that’s deep” 

Our eyes met across a messy couch… I smiled… and Naomi smiled back!

Please pray for Nathan; we’ve both been battling stubborn colds, but mine is clearing up while his is getting worse

Our Sunday best

Sisters

Enough said