Ellie turned 4 months old yesterday. She started out the day by rolling over from back to front for the first time! She was on her tummy trying to escape her swaddle when I walked in her room. It was cute. She is super smiley and sweet, and loves to laugh. It's hard to believe she's so big already.
James has been learning a ton of new words recently... Yesterday he figured out Duckies and Pete (from the Mickey show), and today he is saying Play, Sheet, Icky Sticky and a couple others I can't remember at the moment. He and I had some good moments this evening while Ellie slept... We danced together to some fun music and ran around outside. I pointed out some birds in a tree behind the fence and he said, "Mommy, get the key!" :-)
Now that James is finally talking some more, he picks up a new word every few days. This week he's learned "Coat" and "Miss." He also loves finding letters he knows... Today
he pointed out (and said!) each letter in the word SPOT in x marks the
spot on his pirate pillow case. Then he said, "T! Daddy eat that!"
(meaning Eliot drinks tea) and "I go night night T!" (meaning he lays
down and goes to sleep on the letter T). The connections he forms between things and watching him figure out his world is the absolute best part of my day... that and Ellie's smiles. :-)
Some of you may remember back when James was 4 month old, how he had some sleep regression and I spent literally all day getting him to sleep. Well, Ellie decided to do the same thing at 3 months. So the last few weeks we've been working out teaching her sleep, and its been an uphill struggle with very little sleep for anyone in the house.
But a few days ago I found a tip in the book I was reading (healthy sleep habits, healthy child) that putting her down 20 min earlier than the time she looked tired would allow her to have time to put herself to sleep without being overtired. LO and behold, it worked! She now naps way better. She doesn't sleep long stretches any more at night, only 4 hrs at a time, but I think it will get better from here.
Ellie is discovering her hands more and can just about grab anything she is interested in. She also "talks" a LOT, so much so that sometimes I have a hard time figuring out if it is her waking up or James. :-)
James's cute moment of the day was when I put a button up shirt on him and he pointed at it and said, "Daddy!" Because Eliot always wears button up shirts.
Meanwhile, I've been working on redecorating our guest bathroom on the side. Maybe because I need to be able to be in control of SOMETHING. I'll post some pics when it's done.
Also, I turned 29. And now I shall stop aging.
Here are a couple if shots of our activities around the house.
So here we are in 2013. Our lives are still pretty chaotic... it seems we are needed by a child every minute of the day. I celebrated getting my floor all clean at the same time for the first time in months yesterday. Eliot is preparing to start another semester teaching. And the kids are being their super-cute selves.
James has been doing great with his language... sometimes he won't stop saying the same thing over and over. When he counts, he says, "2, 2, 2, 2, 2!" and thinks he's counted to 5 haha! He knows how to say 2 and 8, and when he sees them in random places he gets very excited. James also has a running commentary on what all the members of the family are doing at any given time..."Baby go night night" "I eat that" "Daddy go away" (when Eliot goes to work) "Mommy go pee pee" (yeah, no so fond of that one when we are out and about).
"Mommy make baby go night night bed sit up book" means I'm putting Ellie down for a nap, and naturally the only way that happens is when we sit up together and read a book, since that's what we do with James. :-)
His logic makes me laugh, I can see his gears turning in his head as he puts the world together in his mind. When we were driving home the other night, He kept saying, "I get the AA!" I looked around wondering what the heck he was talking about, and it turns out he was looking at McDonald's golden arches and thought they looked like two As!
Ellie is growing much too fast... I can't keep up. She's roly poly and getting quite heavy. She hasn't rolled over from back to front yet, but she has great head control that I let her sit in the bumbo for a few minutes at a time. James thinks this is great and says, "Baby sit up! Baby sit up!" when he sees her in it.
We've been dealing with some nursing issues with Ellie... we thought we may have thrush and treated for it with awful staining gentian violet, only to find out that's not what is going on (so if you see pics with Ellie having a stained mouth, you know what happened there). I think we have the situation almost resolved, though... had more to do with blood vessels contracting and causing me pain. But I soldier on...
Ellie has had her ups and downs sleep wise... she's only sleeping 30 min for her naps in the daytime, and was only doing 3 hr stretches at night until last night when she did 7:30pm-4am. I am hoping this is a new trend because we've all been exhausted with round the clock childcare for quite awhile now.
In other news, we are making plans for some home decor changes and some possible trips at the end of the summer. Nothing set in stone yet though so I'll wait to talk about it.
I updated the Winter 2012/2013 album with more Christmas pics and just regular pics from around the house. Enjoy!
I was putting James down for his nap and Ellie came with me since I was alone with the kids. James was so excited that Ellie was going to sit with us and read books before his nap. He said, "I got that!" Meaning he wanted to hold Ellie's hand. He reached over and had such delight that she held his hand back when he held hers. I was worried that he would be jealous of his little sister but instead he just loves her a whole lot. It warmed my heart. <3
