Hank 8 Months

If I were to give this past month a title it would be Clingy-butt.  Hank has really started to notice when I am in the room with him and when I walk away (And sometimes daddy just doesn't do the trick, this boy loves his momma).  If he's not in a really good mood (i.e. just woke up and was fed and snuggled with for a while) and I try to set him down, he starts crawling after me, crying as he crawls.  It's actually kind of cute, and if it weren't for having to run after the other crazy kid at my house, I would absolutely love it. He's an extremely cuddly little guy and while he does well with independent play, he definitely needs time when he can bury his head in my chest and suck his thumb (oh, I hope this lasts for a long time!)

He's also really got the hang of the idea that he can cry and get his way - he let's me know when he's done eating by crying, when he wants out of the car seat by crying and when he isn't ready to go down for a nap he crys and/or jumps up in down in his crib (pretty cute to watch in the video monitor).  He still doesn't fuss a lot, but I've just noticed that my once pretty silent boy likes to voice his opinion a lot these days.

I think we went through one sickness this past month - Hank was pretty fussy and Ben needed his ears checked, so I had him take Hank to medcheck to check his ears.  Nothing was wrong (I'm now batting 2/4 with my personal diagnosis of him having an ear infection...shoot), so we just suffered through some rough nights until he started feeling better.

SLEEP - Hank dropped his third nap early this month. He was giving me three really crappy naps (not laying down easily and waking up early) and I couldn't figure out what was going on and then I realized I was laying him down to much.  He typically gives me two 1hr 15min - 1hr 45min naps a day.  Some days he needs 3, but that is pretty rare.  Naps are typically from 9:30/10am-11/11:30am and 1:30-3pm (ish).  He then goes down for bed around 7pm... it's tough to stretch him till then, but it just didn't make sense to throw a nap in between 3 and 7pm.  He sleeps till 7/7:30am, with a nursing around 4-5:30am.  He seems to randomly go through weeks when he wakes another time during the night (around 2-3am) but I try if it all possible to ignore him.

EAT - With dropping the nap, Hank also dropped a nursing.  He is now nursing when he wakes for the day and when he goes to bed, then after each nap (and of course the middle of the night feeding...) I'm starting to get excited that Hank is getting close to a year and will be done with nursing.  It's not that I don't love it, but I'm definitely ready to get more sleep at night and ready to have a little more freedom as a momma.  Although I did such a good job storing up milk at the beginning, I've had way more freedom than I did with Lucy (at this age with Lucy I remember not being able to ever get enough milk to leave a bottle).  He eats solid foods when we do, and is basically eating whatever we eat.  I try to give him more pure forms of the food we eat - but he will pretty much put down anything.  He still won't take much from a spoon and prefers to feed himself... which is quite a mess!

We get comments on his smile all the time - the things people say the most about Hank are that "he's got the best smile" and "he is so happy!".  I agree with both!

He has really gotten the hang of waving (see below) and he also learned to clap this month.  Before he started clapping he would bang both his hands on the table in response to us clapping or whenever he was excited.  He loves crawling to things and pulling up to standing (especially the back door).  He LOVES ruthie's food, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we are inadvertently starving Ruthie because I have to put the food up almost the entire day.  Sorry Ruth.  I love listening to him work so hard and move so fast across the kitchen floor to get to the dog food, once he's eyed that it is down.  And then he gives out a cry of protest once I pry it from his fingers and move it to the counter

He also does a lot of cruising and has started pushing objects around and walking behind them.  He likes to walk while we hold his hands, but he doesn't really seem to have the whole balance thing down yet, so I think we're pretty far from the walking stage.

He still mostly just says da da and likes to do a lot of squealing, screaming, grunting and blowing raspberries

I decided to try a couple different poses for this months pictures since I haven't been having much success keeping Hank sitting still in the crib.  Here is Teddy with Hank in the kitchen.

And posing in his chair...

And now for what started as a photo session with Hank and turned into a party in Hank's crib...

If you're thinking that the blonde little peanut had anything to do with it.... you are correct...

 This is Lucy's favorite way to hold Hank... it looks cute here, but typically it goes from a lovingly sweet hold to a strangling death grip.  We're working on that...
I love the below shot... how that leg got in that position is beyond me...

Summer Update

As I mentioned before, we have been busy!  Here is my attempt at updating the blog... a big photo dump from my phone.  Not all of these items were on the summer bucket list to begin with... but I think we'll add them!

Buy A Trampoline... check! More to come on this....

Cheer For Daddy's Softball Team.... check!

Add Wall Decor To Hank's Nursery... Check! (eventually I'll have Hank's room fully decorated and then eventually I'll put pictures on the blog, but for now, you can see the cute banner my talented friend Heather made for Hank's room)

VeggieTales Dance Party... check!

Swing... check!

This next series is how our trip home from the park went.  We made a stop at the creek...

Hank didn't get out to play, but waved from the stroller

We started out with Hank in the Baby Bjorn and Lucy in the Bob (I didn't take the double this time because often Hank gets fussy and Lucy wants to walk, so I end up pushing around an empty double stroller while holding one baby and chasing another).  Lucy wanted to walk on the way home so I put Hank in the stroller.  After several times asking, Lucy then ended up in the Baby Bjorn... It was pretty hilarious.

She also attempted a ride in the basket below...

Pool Party... check!  We watched our friends kids, Ben and GiGi a couple weeks ago, and everyone enjoyed a little pre-dinner swim.

The babes... such divas.  They each insisted on having their own pool..

But then realized it was easier to share toys if they sat in the same pool.

I'm not going to lie, it was a little crazy trying to get 4 kids fed, then two babies changed and put to bed while two toddlers ran around, but we did it! And after the babies went to sleep we relaxed with some popsicles!

Farmer's Market... check! (I think this is the only item that was actually on our original bucket list)

More Park Time... Check!

 

 

We are enjoying our summer to the fullest!

Lake Wawasee

 We have been busy, busy, busy!  All with really good, really fun stuff, so I can't complain, but I am looking forward to a weekend at home with no packing (even though that weekend at home includes, volunteering, a wedding, a shower, a family gathering, and a girls night out!)

Here are pictures from our trip to Lake Wawasee (from a few weekends ago).  It is my absolute favorite place to be, and luckily for us, Katy and Brandon invite us up every year (despite the fact that we keep growing).   We are so thankful for their (and their family's) graciousness!

Lucy and Drew tubing

Which did not end so well!  I lost my balance and took both kids in with me (going about 5 miles an hour).  This led to both of them crying and drew yelling, "I want to go back to the car!".  After the boat came back and Dave jumped in to help me, we realized that I was actually only in waist deep water.

We had surprisingly good weather, considering how hot this summer has been.  A good mix of sunshine and rain!

The "big kids" out skiing with the girls

love that little face peeping in the background

life lessons from b-bop

love these girls

the babes

We got some skiing and tubing in and I even got up on the wake board for the first time.  Both babies slept really well, we ended up being able to separate them so Hank slept with us and Lucy slept with Katy and Brandon upstairs. 

Thanks Katy and Brandon for an amazing weekend!!!

Lucy - 28 months

I was commenting to Ben the other day that although the tough times have been getting tougher with Lucy, the sweet times have been getting even sweeter. Lately this girl has been amazing me and in the same breath frustrating me beyond measure! I'm guessing this is the track we'll be on till she's 20+ years old.

 Some of the sweet moments - saying "I love you mommy" without me even having to say it first, repeating back Bible stories to us, singing, singing and more singing, calling Hank her best friend, saying "ok?" after everything she does (I'm going to take my clothes off, ok?... and trust me, this sentence usually happens every morning after she's been awake for about 30 minutes.  This girl is naked most of the time). 

 She still is an extremely sensitive little girl - she loves snuggling and we usually spend the first 15 minutes after she wakes in the morning or after nap time just cuddling together.  And we usually spend about an hour a day reading and cuddling, I would say reading in my lap is probably her favorite thing to do right now.  We usually go to the library once a week - this has been my favorite thing to do because it gives me a change up to reading the same stories over and over again!  When she is upset about something or not getting her way, she typically breaks down crying and needs a good snuggle in order to calm down - I've found when disciplining her, the best reaction for me to do is to sit, hug her and explain to her why I am upset, otherwise she will not calm down. 

 Right now for discipline we have been having her sit in time out for two minutes and then follow up with an apology and a hug. I would say most days she does not have to sit in time out, but we have days when it feels like all she is doing is going  in and out of time out.  Those days usually coincide with the days she is not sleeping well.  Those are the hard days! I would say most of the time she is in time out because she is not listening to Ben or I, or chooses it versus what we ask her to do.  I try not to use it often, and like I said we usually don't have to, but it does seem to be effective for disciplining her (right now anyway!). 

 As I mentioned the bad temperament weeks seem to coincide with the bad sleep weeks.  We seem to be going in cycles of 3-4 weeks at a time, Lucy will be sleeping really well and then suddenly it's like she forgets how to fall asleep and we go into a bad sleep period.  She started getting out of her bed more and more during naps and night time (before falling asleep) so we finally started locking her door to keep her in bed.  This didn't seem to upset her, and kept her in her room, so that solved our problem for the time being.  After a few nights of doing this, one night when I was tucking her in she asked "are you going to lock the door?" and I asked her if she wanted me to, she said no (of course) so I told her as long she stayed in her room I wouldn't lock it, and that worked! So now I don't lock the door unless she comes out of her room right away at the beginning.  We seem to currently be in a good sleep phase - I was just thinking that I had intended to get this post up last month and I would have had a totally different outlook because she was going through a bad sleep phase and was in rare form most days.  There were a couple when she had such bad tantrums that Ben started becoming concerned.  I reassured him that she was totally normal and that crazy behavior is actually what most toddlers are supposed to act like, we just don't typically see that from Lucy. 

 In terms of potty progress - I could probably write a separate post on how frustrated I am with her progress, but for now I will just update that she is pretty much in the same place that she was 2 months ago.  We are now 5 months into this whole potty thing and Lucy still continues to let a little bit out before telling me she has to go pee (I am constantly telling her that she needs to have "dry underware", but so far that has not clicked with her), she still has pee accidents, and just today she actually just was sitting right next to me and pooped on the floor... awesome.  She does not have accidents most days, but that's mostly because I make her go every hour.  I would not consider her potty trained at all, I would basically consider myself trained because I now know when I need to force her to go sit.  I'm pretty frustrated with this, but I'm not sure what else to do at this point. 

 On a more fun note, Lucy has been playing so well independently lately! I took a few pictures here - our neighbor gave us this play house they weren't using anymore and Lucy loves it.  I store in the closet most of the time and then whenever I need to get something done I just bring it out and she will literally play by herself for at least 30 minutes - talking and playing with all of the little dolls.  It's pretty adorable.

Here she said she was working on her email :)

I love watching her imagination come alive.  She is often talking with her dolls and to herself and will make up stories about what they are doing.  One day she set up a crib and bed for her duckie and said time to go to bed (I was watching this whole thing) and then she walked out of the room and reached her hand up towards the top of the doorway and said "I'm locking the door" and then closed it. (what's funny about this is we often check for the key before locking her door - I'm guessing she saw this motion and assumed it had something to do with locking the door).  Then she proceeded to walk in and out of the room because duckie kept movie and she kept having to tell him to go to sleep (ha! wonder where she learned that!).  It was absolutely adorable.

Other than that she continues to love coloring, playing with play dough, doing puzzles, and as of recently jumping on our trampoline (more pictures to come on that!) She also loves playing in the pool or bath... we spend a lot of time in the water.  And when I'm not reading to her, she loves sitting and looking through her books on her own.  She continues to talk up a storm and I am amazed at the words she picks up- today she pulled out some breast pads I had tucked away from when I was first nursing Hank and she said "these are humongous!"... I laughed, and then realized how cool it was that she used that word and used it in the right context. 

And now - a recent video I took one morning.  Please excuse the blue mouth - we were having blueberries for breakfast.  She started singing a veggie tale song one day and I just couldn't resist taping it.  There is nothing sweeter than hearing your baby girl sing "Praise be the Lord"!

Happy 4th of July!

Here's a few highlights from our 4th of July...

what's more american than eating mcdonald's on the 4th?

scratch that - what's more american than dressing your baby boy in all pink while at mcdonalds?

a bike ride with uncle nick

jammin to some tunes

a little cookout with friends... complete with a gourmet hot dog bar