The Babies :)

Here’s an update on the babies.

Raelynn will be 4 in 4 months.

Briar is almost 15 months old.

They are growing so fast.

Following up from One Year Milestones…Briar is evolving into her personality. Man, I thought Raelynn was full of it, nope…Briar is going to be a handful. She is a little diva. She constantly says “No”, “Uh-oh”, “Dada”, “Dog-Dog”, “Mama” (only when she wants something), and “Rae Rae” once in a blue moon.

We started some sign language with her when she was about one. Just basics that we knew, “more”, “eat”, “drink”, “please”, and “thank you”. She uses “more” all the time because this child always wants more food. Oh my god, she can put down some food.

Briar is still having constipation issues.

She constantly has a beer gut because she gets so backed up. We have recently tried some prune juice. She didn’t take to it as well as Raelynn did, but when she actually does drink it, she goes to the bathroom good. I’m trying to get her off the baby food prunes.

She still has hard poops even with baby food prunes. It’s so terrible. I literally have to help her each time by driving her knees into her stomach to get it out. I know, it sounds terrible, but it’s the only thing that works. **Praying the prune juice will be our savior**

Briar still only has two teeth. I cannot believe it. When she sprouted her first two at 9 months, I was like, okay, this is it, here we go….then nothing…So she is still somewhat of a toothless wonder.

Briar is slowly not being so attached to me.

It’s nice because I can breathe a little bit. Before she was up my butt 24/7. She wanted nothing to do with Scott, so it just made it difficult. As the months go by, she is slowly needing me to hold her less, she goes to Scott a little more, but, she is becoming more independent than anything.

Just in the past week or two, her and Raelynn actually play together. It’s probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. So, all in all, we are going in a good, positive direction!

I didn’t really get to talk about changing her over from breast milk to alternate milk and just our dairy free journey coming to an end in general.

We slowly introduced dairy through the dairy ladder.

At this point, we have tried everything expect milk directly. And I am going to keep it that way. More than anything, for her constipation issues. Dairy is really bad about causing constipation so we still try and limit it for the most part. Towards the end of breastfeeding, I started incorporating some of the pumped milk that had cow’s milk in it and she did okay. But, what I find most interesting is the color. It’s so crazy, but so awesome.

In order, the bags of milk are dated 1/28/2017, 2/6/2017, 2/8/2017, 2/18/2017, 3/17/2017. On 1/28/2017, she was only 6 days old so that explains the super yellow milk because it’s colostrum. But actually seeing the change go from yellow, to gradually whiter, and then even the last bag in March looks a little yellower.

breast milk color change

Whenever I decided our breastfeeding journey was coming to an end, I decided that I was going to keep her off whole cow’s milk and try to decide on another alternate milk. Through a ton of research, the main reason why whole cow’s milk is recommended after a year is because the calories are high and the fat content is high which aids in brain development.

Many other alternative milks do not have this type of ingredient makeup at all. I was a part of a dairy free breastfeeding board on Facebook and the main consensus was Silk Almond/Cashew Milk with added Protein and Ripple Rice Milk. We actually use both of these now and she loves them. I chose these milks because they are very high in calories and they do have a higher fat content, also the protein they have in each are also nice additions.

alternate milk alternate milk

And my big girl, Raelynn.

She is changing so much, too. She is evolving into the best big sister. She ALWAYS, for real, ALWAYS wants to carry Briar around. It’s hilarious. She reads to her all the time, she always wants to play with her.

But, she bully’s the shit out of her, but not maliciously. She wants to play, so she slings her around like a rag doll. She pushes her sometimes. I keep telling her that I can’t wait for Briar to get bigger because she is going to get what is coming to her.

I’m a great mom 🙂

Raelynn is going to be just like me.

She is a little controller of all things, but I can already see her “worry” in a lot of situations.

In my opinion, more so than what a normal child of her age should worry. She overthinks a lot of situations. I know a typical toddler asks, “Why?” a millions times a day, but her “Why’s” are valid for the most part and a little deeper than just “Why”. I will be really sad if she gets my anxiety.

My therapist told me that I probably had anxiety as a kid and I was probably a worrier. Looking back, I was definitely a worrier. I hope that Raelynn isn’t like me in this aspect.

Here are a couple of pictures of the girls over the past couple of months.