Crawling

Cecily crawled her first few "steps" today.

 

 

Contrary to what the above photo might imply, I couldn't get any photos or video of it (not for lack of effort, I now have quite a few videos of her NOT crawling), but this is the photo of her "after":

 

She crawled straight for Daddy, this girl is a Daddy's girl.  As soon as she knew I was watching, she stopped, and she hasn't done it again since.

 

If she follows her previous pattern, she won't crawl again for another month, but I don't think I'll be that lucky.

Parker's race car is a 2-seater

Parker's Car

Proving again that Keith is the fun, creative Daddy and I'm the boring Mama, Keith & Parker spent the morning making Parker a race car (while I tidied the office).

Although it took Parker a while to understand that it was HIS race car.  Once it was built I overheard a conversation that went something like this:

Parker: Where the driver?

Keith: You can get in and you'll be the driver.

P: But where the driver?

K: You can be the driver.

P: Who drive the car?

K: It's your car, you can get in and drive the car.

...it continued in this vein for quite some time.  Keith even tried putting Parker IN the car, but eventually gave up and put Bear in the car as the driver.  Now, apparently, Parker & Bear have joint custody of the car.

This is how you do Sunday Afternoon

Jammie Time!

Yogurt + Pancakes =

Cute Baby Girl

Finger painting, attempt #4 (or so)

This was by-far our most successful finger-painting experience yet, Parker had a great time.

Pay no attention to my messy kitchen in the background.

We used the last of our finger paints, so I see a trip to the craft store in our future!

This is why my house is a mess

Ten minutes before these photos were taken, the living room was clean & tidy.

These two do have excellent range.

"You're welcome Mama"

40 Weeks

I think I've officially given up on these weekly photos.  It's nearly impossible to keep Cecily from eating them long enough to take a picture, let alone long enough to take a good picture.

I can't remember what we had for breakfast this morning, but apparently it involved chocolate!

It's my Birthday!

So would it kill you to sit still for two seconds and smile?!?!

...apparently so.

80 pictures later, this is the best one I got:

Sessie Swinging

Cecily got her first ride in the swing, she LOVED it.  Sorry for the not-technically-in-focus quality of the photos, she was a moving target, but check out that little girl's smile!

You ever have one of those days?

Sunday afternoon, I asked Parker what he wanted to do on Monday, he said he wanted to "go to new gym and play basketball".  We haven't been to the gym for, umm, a while, so it seemed like a reasonable idea.  So, Monday morning, after we all got up, ate breakfast, used the potty, cleaned the kitchen, put Cecily down for a nap, cleaned up the living room, nursed the baby, changed the diaper, used the potty again, and got everyone buckled in the car (movin' like a herd of turtles in this family), we were ready to go!

 

Which is when Cecily started puking, over & over, all over herself, her Mama, and the car seat.  Three outfit changes later (for Cecily, I only had to change twice), we had the car seat in the washing machine and she was feeling fine.  (but she won't be taking the iron supplements again since this is her second puke-fest in under a week.)  Her brother, on the other hand, was not so happy, seeing how he'd been promised a trip to play basketball at the gym.  You try explaining to your 2-year-old that he can't go play basketball because his sister is vomiting, believe me, he will be FAR more concerned about the basketball than the comfort of his sister.

 

Finally, I appeased him by saying that we'd go to the park instead.  ...until I realized that we couldn't drive anywhere with the car seat in the washing machine.

 

So, we decided to walk to the park, it's about a 15-20 minute walk.  When we left the house, it was beautiful & sunny, by the time we were half-way there, it was drizzling, by the time we got to the park, it was full-on raining.  We had nearly gone out without a coat on, but at the last minute, Parker decided he needed a coat and took his ski parka for some random reason.  So, he was perfectly happy to play in the rain, but Cecily & I were getting cold & wet.  So, we started to walk home.  But...  I'd been planning to stop at the grocery store on the way home from the gym, so we had to make a "quick" stop at Central Market on the way home or we'd be having Cheerios for dinner.

 

We found our groceries, and as I'm paying I look out the window and we are in the middle of a MONSOON!  It is dark, stormy, & POURING rain outside.  One of the cashiers offered to help me drive my car up to the front of the store so we wouldn't get so wet loading the kids & groceries.  Quite helpful of him, had we driven, not walked.

 

So, all that to say, we had lunch at Central Market yesterday.  Parker is still wandering around saying "We go home when it stops raining"

 

And this is why you should never take your kids for a walk.

THE END

 

 

Nine Months!

Our baby girl is 9 months old!

I can hardly believe it.  She is growing so fast. At her 9-month appointment last week she weighed:

15lbs, 6.5oz (9.5%)

Length: 25.7" (2.62%)

Head Circ: 43.3 (36.45%)

So, she's still pretty tiny, but she's growing, and that's what counts.  People are often surprised that she's as old as she is, because of her size, but she's doing just fine developmentally.

Cecily started sitting a few weeks ago, and now she's old-hat at it.  She's always reaching for what's just outside her reach, so she's often reaching forward until she falls on her head.

She has learned to be very resourceful in finding what she wants, there is very little that is safe from this little one any longer.

Cecily will put absolutely anything and everything in her mouth.  Which means that I am constantly fishing pine needles out of her mouth.  I run the vacuum every day (thank goodness for the Roomba), but I can't seem to keep the stuff out of her mouth.  She is much worse about this than Parker was, so I'm learning to be more vigilant about the state of our carpets.

She's starting to vocalize a little bit more.  We get the occasional "Mamma", but for the most part, she just screeches whenever she's happy, sad, angry, etc.

Cecily will eat just about anything, with the exception of baby food.  (My Mom said the exact thing about me as a baby, so I guess she comes by it naturally)  She'll still eat the store-bought baby food pouches, but for the most part, the only home-made baby food she'll eat is sweet potatoes, but even those, she wants to eat with her hands.

For everything else, Cecily eats whatever we're eating, cut up into tiny pieces.  When I was away at the Women's retreat a few weeks ago, Keith took the kiddos over to Grandma's house for dinner, where Cecily got her first taste of lasagna.  No one technically fed it to her, but she didn't let that get in her way, and she helped herself to a fistful off Denise's plate.  

Now she screams & hollers until she gets a little of everything off my plate.

I was really nervous about leaving her home for the weekend while I went off to the retreat, especially since she wouldn't take a bottle.  But, she did great, she ate enough of the bottles to be happy, AND she slept through the night both nights, for the first time since she was four months old.  It was amazing!  She even held onto it for a week after I got home, but then she got a little cold and it all went down the tubes.  She's back to waking up 2-3 times at night, but now I know that she can do it, we just need to remind her of that.

Cecily is becoming an adorable, happy baby.  I know that all Moms think that their babies are beautiful, but I am constantly getting comments from people/strangers about what a pretty baby I have, so I don't think I'm completely making this up.

...and check out that hair!

Cecily has started getting up on all fours in the past week.  She's not crawling yet, so she often ends up in this position:

Then she flattens down onto her tummy & starts screaming to be picked up.

She doesn't have any teeth yet, but she's often sticking her tongue out like this:

Which Parker did the week or two before his first tooth came out, so I think they're just around the corner.  I think Parker's first tooth came in May sometime also, so she seems to be following his pattern fairly well.

I'm not sure if I'm making this up or not, but I could swear that Cecily has learned the sign for "more", she's not always doing it at the contextually correct time, but it does seem that she's indicating that she wants something.  It would be great if this little one could find a way to communicate that didn't involve screaming her head off.

At her 9-month appointment, Cecily tested slightly anemic, so we have her on prescription iron drops (in addition to the menagerie of other drops we're already giving her).  I think they upset her stomach, since no matter what time of day or night I give them to her, she wakes up four hours later screaming.  I'm not sure how much longer I'm willing to try these out, maybe I can just start feeding her steak for breakfast.

We love our sweet little pixie.  I'm excited to see her continue to grow & develop, but it makes me a little sad that our baby is growing up so fast.