Nine/Ten Months

Van Van, I must apologize that the following notes are all that formally materialized regarding your nine-month update:

Crawling to cruising and letting go, walking while holding our hands

Responding appropriately to gimme 5, clapping, waving bye bye is emerging, tapping knees for happy deuce song (Happy to See), babbling up a storm

Learning to use a sippy cup, enjoying big kid food at the table with family

drama king, head on the ground screaming when you are mad

enjoying books, music, other people...complete ham when someone's paying attention to you

two top teeth are in, first the right then the left

Mama's boy, fine until you see me walk in the room and then you follow me whining dramatically until I pick you up....pulling yourself up on my pant legs

Parenting, lately, has really been challenging me. You and your sister have been morphing so quickly that I barely have time to adjust before you're changing the game on me again. I am too often giving in to frustration and exhaustion and I find myself wishing that I could just live in the moment and soak you guys up a little bit, instead of constantly trying to figure out how to guide you in the right direction. This parenting gig...it is rough sometimes :)

You are FINALLY sleeping through the night after some pretty brutal sleep training. After nine and a half months of you waking me up every 2/3 hours so you could have a leisurely half asleep nursing session I decided enough was enough. You are now going down for bed around eight thirty with minimal fuss (most nights!) and waking around five thirty or six for the day. Although I would obviously prefer that you would sleep until at least seven thirty every morning like your sister (and shhhhh...don't tell anyone that I already sometimes ache for your little snuggle bod in my bed at night) I can't really complain!

You are a speedy little crawling machine and well on your way to walking. You pull yourself up on just about anything (sometimes you end up pulling things over on top of yourself!) and you get especially excited if it's something you can push around while trying out your legs. You love your walking toy and sometimes we take it out into the long hallway so you can practice without running yourself into Sofie's messes every three feet. You grin with your whole face and huff and puff and proudly careen that thing down the hall as fast as you can go until your legs fall out from under you. You are trepidatious about standing independently, but when we can trick you into giving it a try you can balance for quite awhile on your own. I'm looking forward to cheering on your first steps...it won't be much longer!

We've completely abandoned baby food and you pretty much eat whatever the rest of us are having at mealtimes. You're getting better at managing bigger chunks of food, so it has become much easier to share our daily menu with you. Your taste in foods sort of cracks me up. Given the vehemence with which you denied baby food it's a welcome surprise to watch you gobble up spinach, portobello mushrooms, tofu, and asparagus. You've got a healthy (er unhealthy?!) appetite for non-foods too and we are constantly fishing things out of your mouth with trepidation. Let's just say we've called poison control more than once!

This month I'm struck by how much you understand. You can shake your head no, wave goodbye, and put balls into a container. You love to push buttons on toys and you know how to turn on your sister's Tag reader and then jab it haphazardly at a book until it rewards you with a sound. You are a music freak and you dance like a crazy man, bopping, waving your arms, and banging your head to the beat. You like to play with the toy instruments and you sing, "Ahhhhhhhhh" along with Sofie and I. You are such a happy, wonderful little soul, and the cause of much laughter in this household. You have barreled into our lives and claimed your piece of our pie and, little man, I just can't imagine it any other way!

Inflation

Sofie, running up to me with both hands held up, all ten fingers displayed, "Hey mom...do you have six dollars?!"

Me, giggling, "What do you need six dollars for?"

Sofie, "For money of treats!"

Our Own Brand of Funny

My Beautiful Girl

Go take a look at my beautiful girl on Cassandra Plummer's blog by clicking HERE! If you've been thinking about having photos taken for any reason at all give me a ring and I'll talk your ear off about how wonderful Cassie is!!!

Missing Pieces

An Easter package from GranDebbie...

Painting Nana's toenails...

The boys (twins?) at the park...

Sofie pushing Van (and Nona) on the swing...

Cute head...

Decorating for spring...

Goofing...

Family portrait (bet you can't guess which ones she drew!)

Sofie's Scoot Scoot

The kids and I went down to visit Nana for an overnight this week. We were able to spend some time playing with Sofie's favorite cousin Marlo, taking a wagon ride to a nearby playground, goofing around with baby dolls, and riding Marlo's various wheeled toys in her ample sunroom. Sofie got a tricycle for her second birthday and, though we often encourage her to ride it, she hasn't quite warmed to it yet, so we were sort of excited when she eyed Marlo's mini-scooter and fell in love. Nana watched her scoot around for less than a minute before declaring, "Let's go get Sofie a scooter!" and just like that (with maybe just a bit of a lag to appease a bargain-hunting mama) Sofie has become the proud owner of a shiny red scooter!

Sing Like No One is Listening

Awhile back I joined a community choir. It had been nearly ten years since I had participated in any sort of organized singing and I was really feeling the itch. I was so excited to learn that a neighboring community had a choir already in place and it wasn't long before I attended my first practice and adopted the choir as my own. Nevermind that I am the youngest member by at least twenty years. That just adds to the charm!

We practice on Monday night for a couple of hours and Ben spends the evening taking over the bedtime routine with the kids. He's not that excited about that part, especially after a long day of work, but I think it's good for him and I know it's good for me to get out and do something for myself on a regular basis. Last night we met at a local church where we will have a concert this Saturday and sang through our concert program. This morning Sofie spotted my music and I volunteered to sing it for her. She was more than happy to participate as my audience and even chimed in a few times. After I finished singing through everything (eight songs) I turned to Sofie and said, "Which song was your favorite?" She thought for a moment and then said, "Um...the tire one." Puzzled I flipped through my music until it clicked and I burst into laughter. I can only assume that she was referring to Ezekiel Saw the Wheel.



(In case you can't see the embedded video: click here)

Music is such a wonderful accompaniment to life. My most joyful day to day moments always seem to be singing or dancing with the kids. Take some time to enjoy music in your life today...you can thank me later!

P.S. If you're in the area you're welcome to come see the choir sing on Saturday night. It's sure to be a rowdy time :)

Mama Milk

Sofie, at two years and seven months, is still nursing. You'd probably never know it if you didn't ask us about it directly or perhaps you'd suspect something if you overheard her asking me for some "cow milk" or saying to me, "I wanna murse." Sofie typically nurses twice a day, before her nap and before bedtime. It's part of a winding down routine that we've participated in for as long as I can remember. Lately we've been having some conversations about stopping, but honestly she is quite opposed to the idea and even the mention of it brings out some babyish behavior in her, almost a defiant statement that she is NOT getting too big thank you very much. I always had intentions of nursing my children for two years, mainly because all of the research regarding the benefits of nursing have shown that they continue throughout the first two years of life, but I never really thought about what quitting would look like. Lately, I've been asking myself why I feel compelled to stop and I can't seem to come up with any reasonable answers. Certainly I've heard plenty of people express their distaste with, or maybe it's just their discomfort with the idea of, nursing a child once that child can actually speak and voice its desire to do so. I have to admit that the disapproval of others does register, and sometimes even stings, but I'm finding that I'm caring less and less about what anyone thinks about the matter. My daughter wants to nurse. I am capable and willing. She is thriving. That is all...

Oh, and here is an interesting article on the subject: http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html

This and That

My lack of posting around here has been weighing on my mind a lot lately. Typically I have a bajillion pictures and funny video clips and stories rattling around in my head and typically I don't get around to posting them until they're no longer up to date and so I just don't post them at all. That has resulted in some pretty poor record keeping around here and golly that's making me feel rotten. So I've set a bit of a goal for my posting for the first time since I started this blog nearly four years ago. I'm not going to jinx myself by laying it out in print, but be assured that there will be plenty of updates around here in the days and maybe even months and years to come. Hopefully quantity won't affect quality too much...forgive me if I get off to a rusty start!














Today we were excited to spend a somewhat impromptu afternoon with Sofie and Van's sweetie cousin Ella. We read books and did puzzles, had a pretend birthday party and built a fort, played with our train tracks and spent lots and lots of time in the sunshine pushing strollers and kicking balls in the yard. It's so fun to have all the kids together and the sound of them all giggling, accompanied by the neighborhood munchkins who always make their way out when the sun is shining, is so infectious. Tonight we threw two grubby kiddos in the bathtub and they are both knocked out cold for a good sleep. A perfect summer day!

Eight Months

Little man you are eight months old today and you are so edible right now I can hardly stand it. You've entered into my favorite stage of baby/toddler-hood and it has been so much fun to interact with you lately. You are dripping with new skills and oozing with personality and we are just having such a fun time soaking it all up.

You started crawling early in the month and you're getting pretty good at it. You're so delighted to be able to independently explore your environment and you amble right up to everything and stick out your little index fingers for a poke. I like to call them your ET fingers and they are your first chosen line of experimentation. Other preferred experimentation measures include knocking things over, banging on them, and, of course, tasting them! When you first started to crawl Sofie and I would go and sit in her room and call out to you. We could hear you grunting and fumbling down the hallway and then your little head would pop around the door frame and we would all giggle together. So fun! Now you try to keep up with us as we flit from room to room and you have no qualms about letting us know just how ticked off you are when we turn around and go back the other way after you've just managed to catch up. Just today you managed to pull yourself up to standing a few times in your crib and I imagine it won't be long 'til you're able to keep up with us just fine!

The warmer weather has brought a few guest ladybugs into our home this month and you seem to have some sort of ladybug radar. Several times I've watched you poke intently at something on the floor only to discover some poor ladybug trying to escape. Goodness knows how many have made it into your mouth! You were also very interested to inspect some worms we found in the dirt with Grampy Dan and Marcy's help this Easter. I know you're young yet, but in contrast to Sofie's very cautious response to creepy crawlies your interest just screams BOY!! to me.

You are really talking up a storm and you'll go on and on about dada and mama, and nanana. Then you throw in a little yaya and some spit bubbles and then mix it all up a bit. You LOVE music and every time you hear it you rock your little bod back and forth. Sometimes you'll even add in your primitive singing, "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!" Daddy likes to tell people your favorite song is the Fillet o'Fish song from the McDonald's commercial because every time you hear it you stop what you're doing to do your little dance. You're absolutely mesmerized by The Wiggles and you completely freeze in awe of them when we play their music videos for Sofie.

Van, your presence has been an absolute delight this month. Your crazy antics fill us up with laughter. We are so fortunate to have you as a piece of this little family of four, an extra slice of happiness to brighten our days together.