Picnic time

Mommy and Daddy decided that it was high time for the kids to start eating outside on a regular basis and as often as possible, so they are the proud owners of a new picnic table.

First dinner on the new table

We know that this will be something they will enjoy for years to come (and so will we since Brooklyn is happy to sweep up after they are done instead of Mommy mopping the floor every day!)

A Mia update

Again, it's been far too long and I have way too much to say about Mia at 16 (nearly 17 - where does the time go? - months).

Wow - she has SUCH a personality ... and by that I mean that she's a little Miss Sassy Pants. Yikes! I'm sort of starting to really worry about what she'll be like as a pre-teen. Crazy! She just knows what she wants and is not happy to settle. Perhaps this trait will serve her well one day - I hope so. For now, however, it makes life a lot more difficult for the rest of us! A few examples of things that Mia does NOT like:

• changing her diaper (um, sort of a necessity). This typically elicits a full out screaming, sometimes pulling my hair and scratching my face, kicking and rolling all over the floor fit


• putting on or changing clothes (similar reaction to aforementioned diaper change)


• getting in car when she doesn't feel like going "bye bye" (again, usually accompanied by a full out, blood curdling scream, arching of the back, flailing of the arms, fit)


• being picked up or having her hand held in a parking lot or other dangerous place for a one year old to be roaming alone (similar reaction as above, often including throwing self on the ground/pavement)


• having Luke take back a toy of his that she has previously "stolen"


• sitting in her highchair too long ...and by "too long" I mean more than 30 seconds after she has determined that she is finished (this results in throwing of food and yelling)


• going upstairs when she knows it is bed or naptime

And the list could go on and on. Needless to say, we have our work cut out for us. It seems that her tantrums have ramped up in recent weeks, so I am trying to be sure that she sees and begins to understand that that type of behavior will not alter what is about to happen.

All that aside, there are certainly times (most of the time) when Mia is a happy little girl. She loves to climb, play with Luke's toys (tools are a current favorite all around), feed her baby dolls, dance, splash in the tubby, be outside, and be read to. She is so happy to bring one book after another to us right now, plop down in our lap, and have us read ...and read....and read, which I LOVE. She also loves to "read" her books to herself (super cute!). Her favorite people: Daddy, Luke, and Paw.



Despite her little tantrums leading up to nap and bedtime, once she resigns herself to what is happening she is a complete snuggler. She loves to lay her head on my shoulder, twist my hair with one of her hands, and fall asleep while I rock. I don't think that there is anything better than having a sleeping baby on your chest.

According to our bathroom scale, Mia is between 20 and 21 pounds. She fits well into 12-18 month clothes now, is still wearing her medium size cloth diapers (or size 3 when in disposables), and her feet are now comfortably fitting into size 4s. Her 1 year molars are nearly all in now - the last one on the bottom left has been working its way up for the past few days, bringing the total count for teeth to 12.

Mia continues to be a pretty good eater, but she definitely goes through spurts when she doesn't eat much ... but I know that she'll make up for it later. In terms of sleeping she is ready for bed between 7:00 and 7:30 each night and typically sleeps for about 12 hours. She also takes a good afternoon nap for between 2.5 and 3 hours.



Vocabulary has not made any huge changes since I last posted. I think she's added a few more words, and she is certainly communicating better overall. She is using more hand gestures and putting them together with words to convey her wants/needs. One word that she has most definitely added to her repertoire in recent weeks: "no, no, no, no, no" (it is never just one "no"). What I do know is that her comprehension of what we talk about or ask her to do has increased significantly in recent weeks. She is now completely able to follow directions (when she feels like it, of course!).



Oh, Mia, we just adore you. There are no words for all of the ways that you light up our lives. What a sparkly little girl you are ... and how lucky we are to have you as part of us.

A Luke update

Wow, I feel so behind on updating the blog. I haven't been taking the same volume of pictures that I usually do, and I often gauge the necessity of updating the blog on the number of old photos I have sitting on the camera. So, this post and the subsequent one about Mia will be short on pictures, but full of descriptions of who they are and what they are like right now.

It is so hard for me to believe that in a few short months Luke will be 4. FOUR? Really? That sounds so old for me to have a 4 year old child. Unreal how quickly the time has passed. The reality is that the next year will be full of decisions in terms of where he will go to elementary school. Kindergarten ... it just doesn't seem possible, yet it is. In the meantime, Luke is finishing up his 2nd year at Mandala. He did so well this year in their morning preschool class. He has made some new friends (Christopher, Heather, and Noah are his "favorites"). His teacher, Miss Tabatha, has told us on several occasions that Luke has really started to develop his social skills, is coming out of his shell, and is initiating play with other children. This is all so good and I am so happy to hear that not only is he progressing academically, but also socially.

Academically Luke is very bright. He loves to count (he can count to 100, and also by 100s to 1,000, and by 2s), understands the difference between upper and lowercase letters, is able to match letter sounds to all of the letters, is beginning recognize sight words, his drawings are getting more detailed all the time (he now always adds a body, nose, eyes, ears, hair, arms, legs when he draws a person), he is constantly asking us what time it is (and really, questions are coming at us constantly pretty much all day), shapes, colors, seasons, and days of the week he seems to have mastered .... it's all pretty incredible really. I mean, when I think about how much and how quickly he is learning I am blown away. His vocabulary surprises me daily ... it's like I'm all of a sudden speaking with an adult. One of my favorites from just today was when I asked him if he would like to take off his jacket and he replied (full of expression), "I would love to, thanks." His articulation still lags slightly (I think), but his teachers are no longer concerned as they can usually understand what he is saying. I may still initiate another screening in the fall, just to be sure that he's on track.

He continues to be a very sweet boy. He is full of snuggles, hugs, and "I love yous." He told me as I was tucking him in bed the other night, "Mommy, thank you for being my best girl." I just about melted. Of course, along with his sweetness comes some brutal honesty ... he doesn't hold back from telling us when we smell :). He also has proclaimed that he will one day marry Mia and live here in our house forever (ha!).

Luke still doesn't eat much variety. He is very much a creature of habit and is not a huge fan of changing things up. He's happy to have the same meal each and every day for breakfast (banana milk and waffles). He has incorporated some new fruits and veggie (yes, that's singular ... as in carrots) into his diet. Despite all this, the kid has grown like a weed in recent months! I could not believe that the jeans he was swimming in in the fall I had to put away because they were too short. When it got warm here (for about a week), we had to go out and get some new summer outfits for him - size 4/4T. He can still wear his 3T shorts from last summer and a few pairs of 3T pants that happen to be long enough (they actually fit him better at the waist than the 4s, but the length just isn't enough in most cases). Shirts are most definitely now 4T. His feet are still size 10, but I know how that goes (they seem to grow a ton in a short amount of time, then his height catches up ... so I'm sure that they will be growing again very soon!). He seems HUGE to me lately ... such a boy, no longer a baby :(

Favorites right now include: Handy Manny (all of a sudden he loves to "fix" everything .... it's driving us a bit nuts to be honest), Cars, Toy Story (Buzz Lightyear), and Chuggington. He really enjoys playing soccer and going to swimming lessons (where he recently moved up a level, graduating from being a Sea Horse and moving up to the Octopus level!), and he often asks us to play baseball with him in the backyard. Oh, and he could still swing for hours and hours. Favorite books lately have been anything Dr. Seuss. He loves to read before bed at night and good behavior can often be encouraged just by threatening to take a book away at bedtime (that sounds horrible to discipline by taking away reading time, but I promise, he still gets read to a LOT).

Speaking of behavior, this year has brought several rough patches, but I think that is normal for 3 year olds. For the most part, he has been just testing the boundaries, and in recent weeks he seems to really want to be be good and make us happy, which is a good thing and has made life with Luke very easy (for the time being!). Sharing with his sister has also been a source of difficulty, but we continue to work on it. I can understand and relate to his frustrations with her since she is not yet capable of playing in the same way that he does. I know it will come in time.

Naps are officially gone with the rare exception on a day when he "accidently" falls asleep (usually in the car). He rests in his room most days, but also tends to do quite well through the afternoon with no rest. Bedtime has been moved up to, pretty strictly, between 7:00 and 7:30. He's ready by then, and so are we! He sleeps for about 12 hours every night. We still diaper at night, but never any other time.

He's doing great wearing his glasses. The transition really couldn't have been any smoother. He must feel pretty comfortable in them because he pretty much doesn't touch them all day. For this we are so grateful!

I could go on and on describing our sweet boy. He's such a joy and a delight, and we are incredibly lucky to have been given the gift of raising him. Loving, sweet, smart, cute, energetic, and full of personalitgy ... how could we ask for more? He makes loving him so very easy.

Cake

Okay, this is the same girl who refused to even touch her birthday cake and had absolutely NO interest in digging into her cake at her 1 year old photo session with Anna Feccia (we could only get her to eat a banana!). Really?


Maybe she just likes to eat her cake in private?

Mmmm ...

Lovin' her spaghetti

Our 10 month old

10 months have flown by and as Mia's personality really begins to emerge, we fall more and more in love with her. Here is the latest and greatest at 10 months old

Eating
She continues to be a good eater. She loves her pureed foods (I've continued to make all of her food, which has been easy and sort of fun), and has been a bit slower to take on finger foods than I anticipated. Perhaps it is because she is still working with only two teeth. Favorite breakfast foods include waffles, pureed fruits, yogurt, oatmeal, toast (I've tried eggs a few times, but without much luck). At lunch we try to serve only finger foods. She seems to love deli turkey. Her tray usually has quite the sampling on it - cheese, different types of diced fruits and veggies, small crackers, pasta, etc. At dinner she eats several ounces of pureed vegetables (she's not picky - loves them all, even brussel sprouts!) and rice cereal along with any finger foods that she can have from the regular dinner table. Her favorite finger foods are puffs - and she enjoys teething biscuits as well! She has a cup of water or half juice/half water with just about every meal, and I have started to offer formula in a sippy cup occasionally to prepare her for the transition to regular milk in a few months. She still nurses about 4 times a day (wake up, late morning, before afternoon nap, bedtime) and in the past week I have substituted one feeding (late afternoon, when my supply feels lowest anyways) for a bottle, which she seems happy to have.

Sleeping
Ugh - this child has really put us in our place as far as the sleeping goes. I guess we were a bit over confident in our abilities to sleep train. Luke was such a difficult, fussy infant, but ended up being a champion sleeper by about 5 months old. Mia ... not so much. The good news: she is now very good at putting herself to sleep, both at night and for naps. The bad news: she still is not consistently sleeping through the night (and by that I mean, 11-12 hours). We often have a wake up somewhere between 2am and 4am about 4 nights out of every week. Until very recently, I would eventually respond to her because she could scream so loud and for so long that we weren't sleeping through it anyways (even without the monitor turned on), but we've made the decision with the go-ahead from our pediatrician to really put our foot down, so she's going to cry/yell it out at night. Earlier in the month I tried putting Mia to bed earlier (somewhere between 6:15 and 6:45), and this seemed to help her get through the night. So, her day looks something like: 6:45-7:00 wake up, 9:30-11:30 morning nap, 2:30-3:30/4:00 afternoon nap, and bedtime by 6:45.

Playing
Mia is very mobile. She is fast and often surprises people with how quickly she moves around given her size (since she looks so small). She can crawl at lightning speed, can cruise around furniture, and I even have caught her standing on her own without holding onto anything a few times in the past week. Her favorite game is climbing up the stairs while someone chases her. She also loves "helping Mommy" - putting laundry in the dryer, climbing into the open dishwasher, unloading newly folded laundry from the basket (onto the floor in one giant heap), and unrolling toilet paper from the rolls in all of the bathrooms. She doesn't seem to really love any one toy - in fact, she seems to like playing with all things that are NOT toys. And, of course, she loves anything her big brother is playing with, much to his dismay. Pat-a-cake and This Little Piggy are two of her favorite games and she has just recently started dancing (rocking) to music or singing.

Talking
This month has also brought with it some of Mia's first words. Her first word was "da-da," followed by "ma-ma." She also can now wave and knows the sign for "more." She loves to babble and "read" stories to us. We are working on learning many more new signs - Luke was such a great signer, and we loved to be able to communicate in that way with him when he was a baby, so hopefully it will be the same for Mia.

Growing
Ah, she's SUCH a peanut! People see her and almost always guess that she's about 6 months old (until they watch her take off crawling!). My guess is that she's about 16 pounds now. She is really fitting into the 6-12 month clothes, but sleepers in that size are still too big. Carter's 9 month clothes are still a bit big, but that's what she's wearing. When she wears disposable diapers they are size 2 ... although, I just bought a pack of size 3 this week for our upcoming trip to Cabo, and I just washed her medium sized BumGenius diapers and I'm going to put the smalls away. I am so savoring this time where she's still small and feels so much like a baby - I know it will be gone all too soon.

Just in general, Mia is a very happy and pretty easy baby. She definitely has a mind of her own, knows what she wants and isn't afraid to tell you, and is very short right now in the patience department (think yelling immediately upon waking or when she decides she has finished a meal). She can be very loud, loves to squeal, and is full of smiles and laughter. What a joy ... what a perfectly, well-rounded girl. We're in love!

Graduated!

Mia graduated to the big girl highchair this week. She's loving it and so are we! It's so nice to have her at the table with us. She is still pretty small for it, but she was starting to really be able to throw herself out of the Bumbo.

In other food news, Mia continues to eat everything we've presented. We've recently added zucchini, watermelon, honeydew, plums, and spinach to her repertoire. The Beaba Babycook, a new kitchen gadget for us, has made all of the difference. It makes it very easy to make a puree in not much time at all.

And, this just in: our little girl now has TWO teeth. Her other bottom front tooth came through this past week!!

Rice cereal

Mia had her first feeding of rice cereal tonight. Our pediatrician told us that at her 4 month appointment that we could start any time, but that we should definitely get some practice under her belt before she starts other solid foods at 6 months.

Mia was very serious about the whole thing, but she very obviously enjoyed it. She kept wanting more - so much so that I mixed up some extra after she finished the first batch. Looks like maybe she'll be our "eater" ... I hope so! I am not sure I could handle two kids with eating issues.

Lunch at Luke's house

Breakfast with a froggy friend

Everybody needs to eat breakfast, right?