30 Months Old

Noah loves cookies.

Noah is 2.5 years old today.  Sometimes I look at him lying in his crib and I just can't believe how big he is!  Where did my little baby go?  Every day his personality develops more and more...and he is clearly a little rascal!!  A couple of weeks ago, he started talking about his teacher, Ms. Jeannie, how she "kept saying stop" so I asked him what he was doing at school that she was telling him to "stop." He said "I keep running in classroom...Ms. Jeannie say stop." So I asked him if he listened to Ms. Jeannie and stopped running, and he said, with a big smile on his face, "Noooooooo..."  What a rascal! I was worried that he was causing a lot of trouble in the classroom so I mentioned this exchange to his teachers, and one of them just said, "Oh, Noah is such a lover [I'm not sure why she always describes him as a "lover"].  He's very sneaky, but he's so good natured and happy that you just can't be mad at him!"  Sigh.  I'm glad that he's good natured and happy, but it seems like he's just going to keep trying to smile his way out of trouble.  I have to admit that when he flashes those rascally smiles at me, I just can't help but laugh.  So sneaky.  He is also super whiny.  If a toy falls on the ground, or you close a door that he wanted to close, or if you turn the page of a book that he wanted to turn, he often goes into crying and whining mode right away.  Kind of annoying.  But again, it's so hard to keep a straight face and tell him to stop whining when he says, "I need a hug..." or "I need a kiss..." through his tears.  Terrible two's, we have arrived.  Or at least I hope it's the terrible two's...because then at least this phase will pass.

In other news, potty training is....progressing.  In general, Noah still doesn't like to stop play to use the potty, but he's used the potty successfully many times now, and has even initiated visits to the potty a few times.  And even though he still hates diaper changes, every once in a while he will ask that I change his diaper.  I've heard of those potty training in one day books, but I think Noah is going to have to be converted slowly.  I am convinced that he will eventually get used to using the potty over time and then maybe with a little push from me, it'll all just work out.  Haha!  I am also not interested in putting underpants on him and letting him pee all over the house until he learns....that will be the last strategy, if we are a week before school starts in the fall and I'm desperate.  I just hope it doesn't come to that.

Napping has become an issue this month.  Noah still takes naps in the afternoons, at around 2:00.  He naps until 4:00, sometimes 4:30, but then doesn't fall asleep at night until 10:00 sometimes!  We put him down for night night between 8:30 and 9:00, and he doesn't protest, but soon after we leave the room, we hear, "Where are you Mommy....where are you...Mommy where are you...."  The past few nights we've had to go back into his room multiple times to read more bed time stories before he finally fell asleep....and then he still wakes up at 7:30 the next morning!  Yesterday I tried waking him up a bit early from his nap so that maybe he wouldn't have such a hard time going down at night, but he was dead asleep.  I went in there, turned on the lights, nudged him, Sarah was in there being noisy, and he would not wake up!  This is going to be a serious problem when we move in a couple of weeks and transition him to the big boy bed.  At least right now he's still in his crib and doesn't try to escape.

Noah doesn't like to go to sleep, but once he's sleeping, he doesn't like waking up.........kind of like me.  Hahaha..

Finally, the most exciting thing that's happened this month: chopsticks.  Yesterday, he kept asking me for "chock siks" around lunch time, and I kept thinking he was asking me for chocolate, because he had just been talking about chocolate milk.  He kept saying, "I want hold my chock siks" and I just kept saying no, no chocolate.  Hahaah... Finally I realized what he was saying, so I figured why not, let's give it a try again.  So I gave him his chopsticks, briefly demonstrated the motion by opening and closing the chopsticks while he was holding them, and then he did it!  I ended up tearing up his grilled cheese sandwich up into pieces for him to eat using chopsticks, and then he ate some blackberries too... I'm pretty sure he picked up those blackberries faster than when he uses a fork.  Here's a video:



Yay!

6 Months Old

Sarah is 6 months old today!  And she is a happy, happy baby who makes this mommy very happy.  Our checkup with the doctor isn't for another few weeks, but I think it's safe to say that Sarah is a healthy size.  Haha!  She weights about 17.5 lbs, and is filling out her 6-12 month size clothing pretty well.  She seems to be following a similar growth trajectory to Noah's: very fast growth in the first few months, then slowing down around the 6 month mark.  Although I guess this is similar to most kids since the clothing is 6-12 month size, instead of the 3 month intervals...duh.

I'm not as on top of the milestones with Sarah, but she's getting close to sitting up on her own, rolls easily from tummy to back, and can support herself with her legs.  She still can't roll from back to tummy; she can only make it half way, and needs a little help the rest of the way.  Sarah is also very grabby and is always putting things in her mouth.  I guess she's a very eager little explorer!  It's time to teach her the scientific method.  Once she stops using her mouth as her primary method of observation.

Sarah also started eating some solids this month.  I know some people start as early as 4 months, some as late as 6 months, so I just started giving her a little here and there at around 5 months.  In the past couple of weeks I've been more consistent in giving her solids and letting her practice eating, and I think she's starting to get the hang of it....instead of pushing all the food out of her mouth with her tongue, she's probably ingesting about half of it now.  I also let her try yogurt yesterday for the first time and she seemed to really enjoy that.  I wonder if she'll end up only wanting to eat fruit and yogurt like her brother.

Sarah is still not "sleeping through the night," whatever that means.  I feel like different people have different definitions of this.  I've read in some books that some people define it as sleeping for 6 hours straight.  Well, if that's the case, she has done this.  I define it as me getting to go to sleep and wake up at 7:00/7:30, which hasn't happened yet.  Haha.  She usually only wakes up once or twice though, and then goes back to sleep, so I'll take that.  Her napping is still somewhat irregular, but I think there's nothing that can be done about that since the main issue is that we need to leave the house and can't always accommodate her naps.  Today she had to take a 25 min nap in the Ergo with the Great Zucchini and a roomful of loud, excited preschoolers in the background.  At least Noah had fun.  We were originally going to go to the library - much more conducive to napping - but I forgot that they didn't open until 1:00 today, so we checked out Jammin Java's Great Zucchini show instead.  Sarah didn't seem too upset though...she took her short nap and was in a pretty good mood during the entire outing.  She may not have a regular nap schedule, but at least she's flexible?

Potty Training Begins

A couple of days ago, I decided to really start trying to potty train Noah.  He has to be potty trained before preschool in the fall, and though it's quite far away, I'm already anxious about getting him trained in time.  About a month ago, he started getting pretty good at peeing in the toilet, but it was always me taking him there, rather than him letting me know he had to go.  But then he stopped wanted to go altogether.  He never wants to stop playtime, even for diaper changes.  Whenever it's time for a diaper change, he always spends like 5 minutes collecting toys to bring to the changing table for a diaper change that takes 1 minute.  Every. Time.  A couple of days ago, I decided to try working in some incentives, so I bought some M&M's since he loves chocolate.  I gave him a few pieces, then said that if he wanted more, he'd have to go use the potty.  I'd never seen Noah go to the bathroom and use the potty so fast!  He got his M&M's, he was happy, and I was super excited and thought that it would be smooth sailing from there.  Unfortunately, it only worked that one time.  After that first time, even when we said he'd get chocolate after he used the potty, he just said "I no want chocolate."

A few days have passed since that first day of potty training with M&M's, and it seems like we're back on track!  I bought some Disney Cars pull-ups, and those with the M&M's are getting Noah to the potty with minimal push-back.  He loves Lightning McQueen, so we tell him that he needs to keep Lightning McQueen clean and dry, and that he'll get chocolate if he uses the potty, and he's used the potty many times in the past couple of days!  It all sounds so ridiculous, the special diapers, the chocolate, the coaxing, all to get him to pee...