gooo hawthks!

daddy has a hockey buddy! she shouts 'goooo hawthks!'
when exciting things happen during games :)

lily updates - 21 months

how is our lily ALMOST 2? we can't believe we soon will have a 2-yr old monkey on our hands.

lily continues to love school and knows everyone in her class by name. on the friday before mother's day when I came to pick her up she picked up a doll and play bottle and was pretending to feed her. I turned to her teacher and was like 'she plays with dolls?!' (in the past she had been a bit rough with them.) her teacher was surprised too and said wow, usually she's in the corner with all the books! i love my lil book worm!

lily updates - 18 months

we could hardly believe how fast time has passed. our baby has grown into a little person, with an opinion, a sense of humor and so much love to give.

with everyday that passes both mark and I just are so amazed by our beautiful silly little lily and are thankful that god made us parents to such a wonderful girl. she is full of love--frequently still attached to me like a little monkey and will give hugs and kisses galore! When you mention monkey she's repeat you and say "MON-KAYEE!" and scratch underneath her arms. such a goof.

in school, she recently moved up to the toddler classroom and it's so amazing to see her interact with other kids. every morning when I drop her off she gets seated at the table in a mini chair and gets handed a bowl of eggs or pieces of bagel and chows down with her other friends. (funny at home she acts quite differently.) she still frequently comes home with art, recently being shamrock stamps made from the outline of a pepper and beautifully scribbled drawings. The other day they played doctor and took turns listening to a dolls heartbeat :)

lily is quite our tiny dancer and whenever at dziadzia's house she runs over to my old school boom box and turns on a CD. she's even learned how to skip songs she doesn't like or are too slow! she shimmies, shakes, gets low, stomps, turns around and hops... quite a show our lil can put on. she loves it even more when people dance with her and will often grab your hands so you can follow her lead. I think part of the reason she loves the show 'yo gabba gabba!' is because of all the songs, music and dancing they do--definitely a hit in lily's book.

overall, you can tell her little mind is growing so fast and has started to mimic things we do and say. the other night I started to put away some of her 12-18 month clothes and just can't believe another 6 months have gone by. we're looking forward to easter and the springtime and getting outdoors again! for now and always our lily is the center of our world and love every minute of the crazy and fun that goes along with being parents of a toddler.

doc appt: 
weight: 23 lbs. 15 oz. (70%)
length: 33 inches (80%)

favorites:
food: chobani yogurt tubes, gogo squeeze apple sauce, grapes, mac and cheese
song: 'if you're happy and you know it!' and 'get the wiggles out!'
show: yo gabba gabba, electric company and super why
app: PBS kids, disney it's a small world
books: baby einstein first words,  it's a small world furry animals
toys: yogi bear and ellie elephant (huge stuffed animals from IKEA), coloring book and crayons

funny things she says:
animals: TUR-TOW! (turtle), GURR (tiger), SHISH (fish), DOL (dolphin), OW-WOAH (owl), BEIIR (bear)
food: APP-OW (apple), YOYO (yogurt), CHEESH (mac & cheese), MIK (milk), SHISH (goldfish)
expressions: 'OH NO! OHH NO' (when she doesn't know what to do/what happened), 'NO GOOOD!' (when she doesn't agree with you), 'MMMUAH' (gives kisses)

lily's monthly updates – 7 months old

so much has changed for lily this month.

right after she turned 7 months I started having to go back to the city to finish up work at spoon. the first full week lily was cared for by my aunt marysia and she did very well. I surprisingly was happy to get out of the house and work again. the second week she started daycare... holy moly I think she screamed for the full 8.5 hours she was there on both monday and tuesday. I called in monday during my lunch and could hear her screaming the entire time. I felt bad but there's really nothing I could do. by wednesday she got used to her surroundings and was better and better each day. mark picked her up and one of the teachers asked if we could pack a pacifier or anything else that soothes lily. much to their dismay lily is comforted by one thing and one thing only... HER MOMMY. :)

overall, this month will be a lot of adjusting. hopefully me physically going to work will be a smooth transition and still get as much lily time as possible.

for now I leave you happy pictures!

ciocia marysia + lily

daddy's girl

sleeping beauty.

play time... loves swings!

my two favorite people.

daddy's girls.

i've officially been replaced.

goofy lily at day care.

lily's classroom.

my sweet goofy girl.

lily's monthly updates – 6 months old

my favorite picture of my loves!

lily started off this month by sleeping the entire night! but a day later went back to her old habits. mark and I just could not take the interrupted sleep any longer so we tried the "cry-it-out" method. those first few days were awful... first night took 50 mins, second 24, third 14 mins and by the fourth we were at 5-7 mins and down for the night. what a relief! this has changed our life completely! you take for granted sleeping every night uninterrupted... it's not like you went to sleep late and didn't get enough and you feel tired. it's more like you are completely exhausted and the second you fall into a deep sleep someone wakes you up and does that repeatedly throughout the night for days on end. so glad we're finally getting sleep again!

loves the baby in the mirror!

lily is still very much a good eater. we've bought her happy baby organic food so she's had a great variety of foods. we've also started her on a sippy cup while she eats to get used to lifting the cup on her own.

during this month I accepted a new position and mark and I started looking into day care options. we would have loved to have my aunt watch her since she does so well with her already but she had to go back to Poland for a while so we've looked into all types of care. CDW offered subsidized care but still was way out of our price range. there were recommendations from other CDW colleagues but those were inconvenient for us due to time constraints. ultimately, we decided on a daycare in deerfield since hours worked well for the both of us and the location was in between our work locations. definitely nervous about how lily will react not being with me and having new surroundings. hopefully she doesn't cry the entire time and get kicked out!

lily has learned how to sit up on her own this month which give her a new perspective. no crawling yet but she sure knows how to roll her way to things! she gets more and more curious each day :)

6 month doc appt: 
weight: 17lbs 2 oz
length: 26.75 in

our big girl!

all dressed up for her 6mo doc appt!

curious lil lily.

love her smile!

sofie and lily.

singing her screechy song!

lily's monthly updates – 5 months old

almost sitting.

this month went by so quickly! or maybe I should just say blur because our lily has been a horrible sleeper and by horrible I mean we've nicknamed her lil terrorist. right as you fall into that deep cozy sleep you hear the monitor go off and she's woken up. mark and I pretty much feel like zombies... I don't require too much sleep but I've never felt so tired in my life. before baby mark would be cranky if he didn't get 8-9—you could on imagine the dynamic in our home right now :)

big smile.

so we thought by changing her eating habits (feeding her one meal of cereal/fruit) would solve our lily waking up in the middle of the night hungry dilemma. wellllll. not entirely. for a good while she still wanted to suck down 2-3 oz of milk in the wee hours of the morning. or just wake up a couple times just to have (mostly mark) walk in and pat/rub her back till she fell asleep again. most times she'd be back to bed in 5-10 mins but it still interrupts your sleep cycle especially the times it takes long than 10 mins to get her to calm down. so i'm writing this when she is now just turned six months and last night she did sleep all the way through with out a peep! so maybe (knock on wood) she's growing out of this phase. please god let it be the case!

goofball.

lily this month is getting much better being around people other than mommy—my aunt now could play and keep her occupied all tuesday morning which is a relief. i've had a couple conference calls where all i hear is Lily wailing in the background, but I think she trusts ciocia marysia a whole lot more. i am very thankful for that change.

she smiles so big when daddy gets home and loves hanging out with him saturday mornings when I get to sleep in. mark I love you so much that you do this—sleeping till 10:30 feel amazing!

toes...nom nom nom.

our silly lily learned how to blow raspberries with her lips and we know she's in a good mood when she does this. it's funniest when it happens in church! she also loves to grab her toes and have caught her a couple times with them in her mouth—kinda gross but they're probably cleaner than her hands most of the time!

I try to make her laugh as often as I can because that laugh of hers is the best. puts me in a great mood. since the weather has been so nice we've taken many walks and even enjoyed the park. caela and lily hung out at the park and lily tried the swing for the first time and loved it! she also spent a whole day with granpa, auntie gosia and ryan when we went on a much needed social outing. that was the first time I was away from lily for 6+ hours!

she also gives us kisses (i think it's a kiss mark would argue otherwise) but she opens her mouth and kind bites/sucks on your chin or face. she only does it for 1-2 secs but we give her kisses all the time and she knows where to get food :)

baby jeans!

lastly, although our lily bear is not mobile, she rolls and shimmies every which way around the living room. it's nice to just plop her down and she could play with her toys for 20-25mins without wanting me.

love our girl and she's changing so much! we'll see what new things happen in month six!

lily's monthly updates – 4 months old

since around christmas she learned how to roll it's basically the thing she does best. she does favor rolling to her left though, but just recently she'll just keep rolling or you'll see her roll back. she shimmies herself on her belly to reach things to the right and left of her, but no signs of crawling.

she also has decided to sleep on her belly—which at times scares us a bit but the doc said it was ok. lily's sleep is hit or miss. she's getting better at going down for the night, but always seems to wake up at the 5 or 6 hour mark and then will continue waking up every 1.5 to 2 hours until mark goes to work. I have late nights working (it seems to be the only time I could focus and not be interrupted every half hour) so her not sleeping is especially miserable for me. she used to be so great at sleeping but regardless we're working on it. she needs to learn how to self soothe, because right now she won't go back to bed unless one of us goes in there.

we've also introduced very soft food since she started waking up for us in the middle of the night hungry. so far we've given her ground rolled oats, bananas and brown rice cereal. I could tell the texture of the oats to lily is a bit strange so sticking with smoother options I think is best now.

we plopped her in the jumperoo one day and now she bounces around like a crazy goose—she loves the lights, music and of course being able to bounce! putting her in there is great because then I know I have about 15 minutes of freedom before she gets bored—I'll take what I can get. :)

I love our lil munchkin like no other. she loves her mommy so much which is endearing and I hope to get her out more that spring is just around the corner. she's been saying what sounds like "momma" but it's more like "mmmmm-mmmahh" so she could just be practicing her Ms. my aunt helps me every tuesday morning and she swears she grows every week she sees her! six month clothes fit her best and I just recently put everything with a 3 mo tag away.

lastly, she loves "Peek-a-boo". cover your face and reappear... puts a smile on lil's face everytime! till next month!


4 month doc appt: 
weight: 14lbs 6 oz
length: 25.5 in
head: 40.0 cm

lily vids – giggle monster

lily zofia: 3 months, 3 weeks

my apologies for being neglectful in the updates. mommyhood is wonderful but extremely time-consuming—so any free time I literally just try not doing anything but relaxing. writing should be relaxing but it's a task nonetheless so it's been difficult to keep up with blogging, esp weekly like I did when I was pregnant. but it's a new year so i'll try to be better!

a few weeks ago I did post lily's birth story—very wordy at first so there's a quick synopsis and then the fully story if you'd like all the details. :)

our little lily is almost 4 months old! I could hardly believe how time has gone by yet stood still. days are consumed with lily so weeks have go by slow, but then all of a sudden all the holidays went by and we're at a new year. being a mom changes your life completely, it's rewarding, it's a blessing, but also so emotional. people always told us you're life is going to change so much and trust me IT DOES. you never really think about how much time you have before kids (because there's never enough) and how much freedom you have to do WHATEVER you want, when you want, but let me tell you once you have a baby it instantly becomes all about them.

the major change we quickly had to get used to fast was we're now on "lily time". has lily been fed? has lily been changed? is she happy? does she need to take a nap? did you sing to her? did you rub her belly? did you burp her? where's her darn burp cloth?!?? along with a hundred others that will come up within a moments time. and the thing is you have to accomplish all of those things before doing anything further. at first it's overwhelming and you forget certain things but it becomes second nature by two months :) mommyhood and daddyhood are definitely learning experiences and you learn just have to go with it.

because we're on "lily time" everything usually takes about an extra half hour to do. want to pop out to the store to pick up groceries? hah. where before all you had to do is put shoes on, grab your keys and go, adding a baby to the mix deems going to the grocery store is now an event to prepare for. I work from home now and surprising to myself I rarely leave the house during the day just because of the anticipation that at some point miss lily is not going to be happy so i'd rather wait till dad comes home and I could just go by myself. :) I do have to say it gets easier. you prepare for the worst and sometimes she ends up napping the entire time so that's a golden moment.

my favorite time with lily are in the mornings she's freshly awoken from a long night's rest and is usually happy as a clam. she'll giggle and laugh at almost anything you do. her worst moments of course come right before bed... it's funny how kids know they're tired yet keep their eyes open to make sure you are still there. mark and I have learned that a well rested baby is a happy baby and if lily wants to sleep in the middle of the afternoon then she will sleep. we used to wake her up from naps worried that then she'd not go down at night... BAD IDEA. remember the lil line of advice of "never wake a sleeping baby." well it's true. let them sleep, they'll be more happy if they wake on their own versus you waking them.

overall, I really love being a mom. I love seeing lily learn and accomplish new things, even if it's just a smile or a roll. no matter how difficult times may get snuggling up to you baby and getting just one lil smile makes everything worth it and it truly brightens your life.

lily vids – first roll!

merry christmas

happy holidays from the prathers!

our lillian zofia's birth story

I'll give you the option of the long or short version...

long story short?

doc called me on sunday the 18th to go to the hospital to get induced that night. I was given cervadil that night, then 12 hours later I was only 1cm dilated. they broke my water (super awkward) and started the pitocin at 7am. after a couple hours of hard contractions that started to bring me to tears they checked me at 2pm... 1cm dilated. :( I couldn't get the epidural so another 2 exhausting hours went by and doc checks me only to tell me I'm 1.5cm and mentions c-section. I cry. not what I wanted to hear. I take an hour to feel better especially after I talk with susanne (sis-in-law who's also an OB.) I get prepped for surgery. I get the spinal. I feel nothing. there's pressure and I hear our lily screaming at the top of her lungs. she's here! 6:32pm.

all the details :)

lily vids – new voice