On September 6, at just over 7 months old, Donovan got his arms and legs coordinated and CRAWLED! What a big boy! What an early crawler! I think we are in such big trouble with him - he is fearless. He is not happy with simply crawling. No way! He is still wants to walk so badly. He's not really cruising around, even though he could. He wants to stand up SO badly. He pushes himself up to his hands and feet, climbs his hands up on whatever is there (my legs, a box, etc.) and tries to push up to standing. And sometimes he does it. The result is usually a fall on the tushie. But tonight it was different. Tonight he stood up for a second before falling! He is working SO HARD!
Too bad he is having such a rough go at life right now. He can't seem to shake these colds he keeps on coming down with! He gets one, and then it goes away, and then he gets another one. And throw in there some teething. He has his bottom two teeth, they just basically popped in overnight. But not without pain. Overall he is a happy-go-lucky guy, though. He smiles when he sees me, he loves to cuddle, etc.
He does love his food, that is for sure. I don't remember where I last left off (and while it would be easy enough to look at the last blog post, I'm not going to). He is eating zucchini, pears, apples, green beans, banana, rice and carrots regularly. He has enjoyed pumpkin and butternut squash as well. He doesn't love sweet potato.
We are working on getting him in his own room. And by 'working on' it, I mean that the crib is mostly built :-P. We are not super motivated.
He is working on 'chatting.' Lots of syllables - ba, ya, ga, sometimes even ma. It's awesome. And he still does his bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb all high pitched and adorable.
There is surely more, but, of course, it's hard to remember when I finally sit down to type. Typical.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Singing in the Rain
Okay, we're not actually singing in the rain. But we are singing quite a lot lately! Jocelyn just loves Loves LOVES to sing! She will come home singing songs she learned at day care. Some I have never heard before, but some are old classics. My favorite is when she sings "Baby Bumble Bee." It brings me back to second grade!
Funny story about that - she had a banana with dinner. Well, she was done eating, but still had some banana left. She started to sing the Baby Bumble Bee song and when she started to 'squish' her bee, she simulated the bee with a chunk of banana. Okay, it was a giant mess. But that was appropriate to the song, so it's all good!
Jocelyn turned 25 and then 26 months without an update. I know. But I'm too busy being an awesome parent to have time to chronicle it. Still, though, I need to do better. Because the days just pass on by and blend together.
We are typically terrible in these 2's. But it's Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde. When Jocelyn is good, she is super, duper sweet. A few days ago, she kept on hugging Donovan and yelling 'Baby Brother!' It was adorable! But then 10 minutes later she snatches a toy from him and tries to push him out of my lap. But the cute and sweet are SO cute and sweet, that it totally overpowers the terrible.
Her vocabulary is getting SO GOOD! The other day I brought home some toy cupcakes. When she saw the box, she said, "I so excited 'bout my new cupcakes!" She also mimics us a whole lot, which is pretty funny. When we ask her to do something, we often hear, "I doing something right now," or "I wanna play wiff toys for a few more minutes." She is also getting really good at figuring out grammar and parts of speech. Sometimes she gets them wrong, but she's always following the same logic. For example, she will say she 'clean upped' or 'taked the toy.' It's pretty clever. She is also working on her gender pronouns. She is starting to get she/he and her/him right, but sometimes she will use she when she meant her or he when she meant him. I don't know if that is normal or if she is advanced, but it's pretty dang good.
It all means that we need to be extra careful. I recently struggled with some task (I don't remember what... opening something, something physical) and I couldn't get it. So I said, "Stupid thing!" Guess what Jocelyn repeated. But that's not as bad as when a Pepsi can got knocked over and Mike yelled, "Oh shit!" You'll never guess what Jocelyn yelled in response. Actually, she repeated it for the next 10 minutes. But we didn't call any attention to it, and she stopped saying it. Phew!
My little dessert fiend certainly takes after her mama's sweet tooth, let me tell you. She LOVES dessert. She talks about it all the time. She seeks out clothing with ice cream and cupcakes on it. She is obsessed with birthdays because of birthday cake. When it was Lily's birthday, she kept on talking about going to Lily's birthday party and having birthday cake. She also practiced saying "Happy Birthday Lily." We had dinner with Laura and Joe recently, and she is obsessed with going back to their house. Why? Because we had dessert there! But, as much as she loves it, Jocelyn still usually can't be bought. We can't bargain that she could only have dessert if she eats her real food. She is stubborn enough to forego teh dessert so she doesn't have to eat what she doesn't want. We find ourselves on the side of the adults in the Pink Floyd song - 'If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?' It's funny.
She liked dessert so much that she enjoys watching cupcake decorating videos on YouTube. There is a series called YoYoMax 12 that she loves to watch. There are a few episodes that we have watched a few times. There is a Sesame Street characters one, a flower one, an apple one and a few more that are in the rotation. She loves to play with her play kitchen and make us food and dessert. And now that she has the new cupcake set, she has even more options. It's pretty awesome.
But she also likes birthdays in general. She likes birthday cards a lot. She enjoys coloring in people's birthday cards. She also loves to look at and play with her birthday cards. It's very cute. She knows who got her which ones. Her favorite is the one from Aunt Sarah with the - guess what - ice cream cone on the front!
She still fights bed time like the dickens. And we are still working on potty training, but it has stalled and possibly even back slid some. She is mostly only interested at night, as a bedtime stall tactic. But they are working on it at daycare as well, and they send her to the potty at each diaper change. And she wears Pull-Ups. Of course, I can't send her with the unbleached kind. All the other girls have the pink kind with Minnie Mouse and Cinderella. So those are the ones she wants.
Jocelyn is starting to understand about boys and girls, and that she is a girl. It's cute when she talks about little boys and little girls. But, because she is in daycare, she is learning that boys and girls can interact and play at all of the same activities. So she builds blocks, and climbs and jumps, she plays imagination games with play food, she does arts and crafts... and they all do the activities. They are mostly child-led, but they are fairly balanced so far. So that's nice. If she was home with me all day, she'd surely see more daytime TV (I'd need a break here and there) and she would start to learn expectations of girls and boys from the commercials. This way I can shield her from it long enough that she hopefully chooses her interests based on what she really wants, and not some weird expectation.
But she protests going to daycare in the morning sometimes. She claims that she wants to stay home. Now, more often than not, when I get there to pick her up she wants to 'play for a few more minutes.' So it's not like she hates it there. She just hates transitions. And I think she likes hanging out with us and playing with her own toys. I always feel bad dropping her off. And then I feel sorry for myself when she doesn't want to come home with me at the end of the day. I can't win :-P.
Funny story about that - she had a banana with dinner. Well, she was done eating, but still had some banana left. She started to sing the Baby Bumble Bee song and when she started to 'squish' her bee, she simulated the bee with a chunk of banana. Okay, it was a giant mess. But that was appropriate to the song, so it's all good!
Jocelyn turned 25 and then 26 months without an update. I know. But I'm too busy being an awesome parent to have time to chronicle it. Still, though, I need to do better. Because the days just pass on by and blend together.
We are typically terrible in these 2's. But it's Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde. When Jocelyn is good, she is super, duper sweet. A few days ago, she kept on hugging Donovan and yelling 'Baby Brother!' It was adorable! But then 10 minutes later she snatches a toy from him and tries to push him out of my lap. But the cute and sweet are SO cute and sweet, that it totally overpowers the terrible.
Her vocabulary is getting SO GOOD! The other day I brought home some toy cupcakes. When she saw the box, she said, "I so excited 'bout my new cupcakes!" She also mimics us a whole lot, which is pretty funny. When we ask her to do something, we often hear, "I doing something right now," or "I wanna play wiff toys for a few more minutes." She is also getting really good at figuring out grammar and parts of speech. Sometimes she gets them wrong, but she's always following the same logic. For example, she will say she 'clean upped' or 'taked the toy.' It's pretty clever. She is also working on her gender pronouns. She is starting to get she/he and her/him right, but sometimes she will use she when she meant her or he when she meant him. I don't know if that is normal or if she is advanced, but it's pretty dang good.
It all means that we need to be extra careful. I recently struggled with some task (I don't remember what... opening something, something physical) and I couldn't get it. So I said, "Stupid thing!" Guess what Jocelyn repeated. But that's not as bad as when a Pepsi can got knocked over and Mike yelled, "Oh shit!" You'll never guess what Jocelyn yelled in response. Actually, she repeated it for the next 10 minutes. But we didn't call any attention to it, and she stopped saying it. Phew!
My little dessert fiend certainly takes after her mama's sweet tooth, let me tell you. She LOVES dessert. She talks about it all the time. She seeks out clothing with ice cream and cupcakes on it. She is obsessed with birthdays because of birthday cake. When it was Lily's birthday, she kept on talking about going to Lily's birthday party and having birthday cake. She also practiced saying "Happy Birthday Lily." We had dinner with Laura and Joe recently, and she is obsessed with going back to their house. Why? Because we had dessert there! But, as much as she loves it, Jocelyn still usually can't be bought. We can't bargain that she could only have dessert if she eats her real food. She is stubborn enough to forego teh dessert so she doesn't have to eat what she doesn't want. We find ourselves on the side of the adults in the Pink Floyd song - 'If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?' It's funny.
She liked dessert so much that she enjoys watching cupcake decorating videos on YouTube. There is a series called YoYoMax 12 that she loves to watch. There are a few episodes that we have watched a few times. There is a Sesame Street characters one, a flower one, an apple one and a few more that are in the rotation. She loves to play with her play kitchen and make us food and dessert. And now that she has the new cupcake set, she has even more options. It's pretty awesome.
But she also likes birthdays in general. She likes birthday cards a lot. She enjoys coloring in people's birthday cards. She also loves to look at and play with her birthday cards. It's very cute. She knows who got her which ones. Her favorite is the one from Aunt Sarah with the - guess what - ice cream cone on the front!
She still fights bed time like the dickens. And we are still working on potty training, but it has stalled and possibly even back slid some. She is mostly only interested at night, as a bedtime stall tactic. But they are working on it at daycare as well, and they send her to the potty at each diaper change. And she wears Pull-Ups. Of course, I can't send her with the unbleached kind. All the other girls have the pink kind with Minnie Mouse and Cinderella. So those are the ones she wants.
Jocelyn is starting to understand about boys and girls, and that she is a girl. It's cute when she talks about little boys and little girls. But, because she is in daycare, she is learning that boys and girls can interact and play at all of the same activities. So she builds blocks, and climbs and jumps, she plays imagination games with play food, she does arts and crafts... and they all do the activities. They are mostly child-led, but they are fairly balanced so far. So that's nice. If she was home with me all day, she'd surely see more daytime TV (I'd need a break here and there) and she would start to learn expectations of girls and boys from the commercials. This way I can shield her from it long enough that she hopefully chooses her interests based on what she really wants, and not some weird expectation.
But she protests going to daycare in the morning sometimes. She claims that she wants to stay home. Now, more often than not, when I get there to pick her up she wants to 'play for a few more minutes.' So it's not like she hates it there. She just hates transitions. And I think she likes hanging out with us and playing with her own toys. I always feel bad dropping her off. And then I feel sorry for myself when she doesn't want to come home with me at the end of the day. I can't win :-P.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
So you think you can stand?
Donovan just turned 7 months old. Time flies, I tell you! I know, broken record over here!
He had his 6 month appointment recently. Yeah, a month behind. We had it scheduled, we had to move it, and the back to school rush coupled with our desire for an afternoon appointment did not make it easy to find a new time. But little man is 75% for height and weight, and 90% or so for head circumference. My big boy!
We have graduated to a convertible car seat (and Jocelyn has moved to a harnessed booster in my car!). Which is sort of inconvenient because it was easy to put him into the carrier while we were still inside somewhere, and keep him in there while dropping Jocelyn in her room at day care. Since he can't stand, and wants to crawl and move and squirm when put to sitting, I can't just set him down somewhere. But it's part of the process. He is 28 inches tall, so it was time.
He's super awesome at sitting now. He can put himself up to sitting from lying on his tummy. He hasn't gone from lying on his back to sitting up yet. Also, at some point he learned how to roll over front to back. He doesn't do it often, but he can.
We have had a rough few weeks, though. Poor Donovan had some rough fever / teething / gas stuff. I suspect that the teething caused the gas and contributed to the fever, but it spiked at about 102 a few times, so it was likely a virus too. Poor day care babies. But his bottom two teeth are in! They are super cute. Sure, I love a good toothless baby smile, but the bottom two is also pretty dang adorable. The only problem is that he does tend to nibble once he is done nursing, and that is no good!
We have spent the past few days working on crawling and walking. Crawling is his solo activity. He works on that during his active, solitary play. He usually starts off in sitting as his 'home' position, and then launches himself forward onto all fours. Toys are a great motivator - he likes to have things to reach out and grab. He can inch worm forward a bit, and he can creep on his belly, and he can also balance himself on his hands and knees. I think that crawling is around the corner. He almost has all of the parts down.
He would probably be crawling if he wasn't also working so hard on standing and walking. Yup, my big boy wants to WALK! He pulls up on our hands really well now. He's been working on that for a while, but now it's no big thing. He doesn't need us to pull him up, he just pulls himself up. He can walk if we are holding his hands. And by walk, I mean one foot in front of the other, can get half way across the living room before his legs give out. He's doing great. He is starting to be able to pull up on objects - the bouncy seat worked well for him because he could sort of 'climb' up the side with his hands. The coffee table / wicker crate is still hard for him to pull up on. But once he is up, he will often walk to it and hold on to it. He is even starting to cruise a little bit - but it's more of a crossed feet, one step and trip sort of deal.
It's funny how our attitude stuff with him is so dramatically different than it was for Jocelyn. Part of it is their personalities - Jocelyn demanded a whole lot from us (she still does) where Donovan is more laid back. Part of it is definitely birth order. We figured out what is important with her and what is not. So we are applying it here. We are less likely to run to his rescue when he is figuring out a task or practicing a skill. If he is in danger, that's different. But if he's fine and just working on something, we will let it get to tears and give him a chance to work through the tears (which he usually does). We didn't do that much for Jocelyn - if she cried we usually responded. But then, she wasn't exactly a work through the tears sort of gal. Once Jocelyn hits melt-down stage, it's all over :-P.
He is enjoying being worn in the Baby Bjorn these days. I don't do it often, but it works out well when he is sleepy and wants to rest his face on my chest. It used to be that he was the wrong size for just about every carrier - he was SO big, so he couldn't fit with his legs all curled up (like newborns like to). And having his legs stretched down was not comfortable. But now that's he is bigger, he is more comfortable with his legs stretched out. So he seems to like it. Score!
Donovan is still a champ when it comes to food. He loves his veggies - likes my homemade carrots, zucchini and green beans. He's not the biggest fruit fan. He likes some - like blueberries - a lot. But he could do without peaches. And pears he is still unsure of. He likes prunes just fine. I need to try apples again. Oh, and he love banana! He also did well with jarred butternut squash.
The biggest news is that he has appeared to have outgrown his dairy sensitivities! Since he turned 7 months old, I wanted to try again. I was going to give him a bit of yogurt, but then the timing worked out that I was going to a CPG networking event at a dairy company, and they were hosting an ice cream party, so I figured I would go the mommy consumption route of testing instead. So far, so good! No increase in gassiness. There is some increase in burps after he nurses, but they are just burps. They don't seem to come with any pain or discomfort.
Oh, before I forget, he is working really hard on his sounds, too. He had been doing bbbbb and ppphbbttt for a while now. But now he's working on WA, YA and BA. It's pretty awesome. He also still finds everything really funny - especially his sister :-)
He had his 6 month appointment recently. Yeah, a month behind. We had it scheduled, we had to move it, and the back to school rush coupled with our desire for an afternoon appointment did not make it easy to find a new time. But little man is 75% for height and weight, and 90% or so for head circumference. My big boy!
We have graduated to a convertible car seat (and Jocelyn has moved to a harnessed booster in my car!). Which is sort of inconvenient because it was easy to put him into the carrier while we were still inside somewhere, and keep him in there while dropping Jocelyn in her room at day care. Since he can't stand, and wants to crawl and move and squirm when put to sitting, I can't just set him down somewhere. But it's part of the process. He is 28 inches tall, so it was time.
He's super awesome at sitting now. He can put himself up to sitting from lying on his tummy. He hasn't gone from lying on his back to sitting up yet. Also, at some point he learned how to roll over front to back. He doesn't do it often, but he can.
We have had a rough few weeks, though. Poor Donovan had some rough fever / teething / gas stuff. I suspect that the teething caused the gas and contributed to the fever, but it spiked at about 102 a few times, so it was likely a virus too. Poor day care babies. But his bottom two teeth are in! They are super cute. Sure, I love a good toothless baby smile, but the bottom two is also pretty dang adorable. The only problem is that he does tend to nibble once he is done nursing, and that is no good!
We have spent the past few days working on crawling and walking. Crawling is his solo activity. He works on that during his active, solitary play. He usually starts off in sitting as his 'home' position, and then launches himself forward onto all fours. Toys are a great motivator - he likes to have things to reach out and grab. He can inch worm forward a bit, and he can creep on his belly, and he can also balance himself on his hands and knees. I think that crawling is around the corner. He almost has all of the parts down.
He would probably be crawling if he wasn't also working so hard on standing and walking. Yup, my big boy wants to WALK! He pulls up on our hands really well now. He's been working on that for a while, but now it's no big thing. He doesn't need us to pull him up, he just pulls himself up. He can walk if we are holding his hands. And by walk, I mean one foot in front of the other, can get half way across the living room before his legs give out. He's doing great. He is starting to be able to pull up on objects - the bouncy seat worked well for him because he could sort of 'climb' up the side with his hands. The coffee table / wicker crate is still hard for him to pull up on. But once he is up, he will often walk to it and hold on to it. He is even starting to cruise a little bit - but it's more of a crossed feet, one step and trip sort of deal.
It's funny how our attitude stuff with him is so dramatically different than it was for Jocelyn. Part of it is their personalities - Jocelyn demanded a whole lot from us (she still does) where Donovan is more laid back. Part of it is definitely birth order. We figured out what is important with her and what is not. So we are applying it here. We are less likely to run to his rescue when he is figuring out a task or practicing a skill. If he is in danger, that's different. But if he's fine and just working on something, we will let it get to tears and give him a chance to work through the tears (which he usually does). We didn't do that much for Jocelyn - if she cried we usually responded. But then, she wasn't exactly a work through the tears sort of gal. Once Jocelyn hits melt-down stage, it's all over :-P.
He is enjoying being worn in the Baby Bjorn these days. I don't do it often, but it works out well when he is sleepy and wants to rest his face on my chest. It used to be that he was the wrong size for just about every carrier - he was SO big, so he couldn't fit with his legs all curled up (like newborns like to). And having his legs stretched down was not comfortable. But now that's he is bigger, he is more comfortable with his legs stretched out. So he seems to like it. Score!
Donovan is still a champ when it comes to food. He loves his veggies - likes my homemade carrots, zucchini and green beans. He's not the biggest fruit fan. He likes some - like blueberries - a lot. But he could do without peaches. And pears he is still unsure of. He likes prunes just fine. I need to try apples again. Oh, and he love banana! He also did well with jarred butternut squash.
The biggest news is that he has appeared to have outgrown his dairy sensitivities! Since he turned 7 months old, I wanted to try again. I was going to give him a bit of yogurt, but then the timing worked out that I was going to a CPG networking event at a dairy company, and they were hosting an ice cream party, so I figured I would go the mommy consumption route of testing instead. So far, so good! No increase in gassiness. There is some increase in burps after he nurses, but they are just burps. They don't seem to come with any pain or discomfort.
Oh, before I forget, he is working really hard on his sounds, too. He had been doing bbbbb and ppphbbttt for a while now. But now he's working on WA, YA and BA. It's pretty awesome. He also still finds everything really funny - especially his sister :-)
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