Sesame

We're going to Sesame Place in a couple weeks and so I decided it was time to introduce Elizabeth to the characters to maximize her enjoyment. (I think Joe may have put on Sesame Street for a few minutes a couple times with her, but she hasn't watched much. Chalk it up to the fact that, unlike Nicholas, she has not been an early bird baby and so we haven't put on tv to hold her attention while we were in a pre-dawn fog. Also, she has a big brother so if the tv is on the shows are not Sesame Street.) Anyway, I was wondering if she is old enough for the Elmo obsession that seems to grip every child in the 1-2 age range. And . . .

Hey, Elmo, you're pretty funny looking, but interesting.

From 2014 July

Wait, what is this? I must get closer!  Warp speed ahead.

From 2014 July

Pausing to make sure Grover is still there.

From 2014 July

Grover, hold on, I'm coming.

From 2014 July

Made it!

From 2014 July

Enthralled.

From 2014 July

she definitely likes Elmo. But she LOVES Grover.  And what you can't see in these pictures is the shrieks and pants.  Apparently we've been holding out on the kid.

Cute as a Button

From 2014 July

Math is Next

Nicholas' reading may be awesome, but his math skills leave something to be desired. Today at lunch I told him he needed to take 15 bites of his lunch if we wanted to go swimming. "But, Mommy, that's too many." "Okay, then take 10 bites of grilled cheese and 5 bites of tater tots." "Okay."

Good Day

Nicholas had a good day today.  Like a really good day.  He doesn't have many of those these days.  But he was awesome the entire day and I wanted to note it to look back at on one of the days we are at our wit's end.  He got up and got ready with no problems, was angelic at the dentist's office, got 3 green lights at school (itself a rarity most weeks), came home and gave me absolutely 0 problems as I got dinner ready, was perfect in the bath, and then sat and entertained himself while I got Elizabeth in bed.  So he and I then read a couple chapters of Charlotte's Web (he reads the pages with pictures, I read the other pages) while eating ice cream and I let him read himself his Ranger Rick Jr. magazine while I did dishes before tucking him in.  And it was adorable because he kept coming in to tell me something cool he had read.

There were a couple brief moments of whining, but that was it all day.  It was like going back in time a year.  I'm trying to figure out what happened.  He took a nap at school for the first time in forever, which could explain the good evening, but that doesn't explain the great morning.  Joe is out of town and he does tend to rise to the occasion when I most need his help. Or maybe it was random chance.  If he can keep this up for the next 2 1/2 days until Joe gets home I will be so happy!

From 2014 July

Smile!

I don't know about you, but I could definitely use something to brighten up my week.  So how about these:

From 2014 July

From 2014 July

From 2014 July

Time

I absolutely love this picture and yet it makes me sad:

From 2014 July

They are just growing up so fast and you can see it so clearly here!  I've actually really enjoyed the baby phase with Elizabeth and I feel like it is already over.  I blinked.  It really feels like it was just a few weeks ago that she was two weeks old.  And here she is standing confidently, her pudgy legs sturdy and eager to walk, and her face so full of personality and spunk.  And Nicholas is the protective big brother with LONG legs.  My babies!

8 Months

It is amazing what changes the last month has brought.  Well, in so many areas of life, but for now I'm just talking about with Elizabeth.  All of the sudden she seems so much closer to a toddler than a baby.  It takes my breath away.  So here are some of the things Elizabeth is doing at 8 months:

• She crawls with ease and speed.  She mixes up regular crawling with using her right foot.  We have had to take most of her cute dresses out of use because her knees get caught in them when she crawls.
• She pulls her self up on everything, even if it isn't stable.  When she wants to sit back down or reach something on the floor she very carefully lowers herself back down.
• She can cruise along the edges of furniture, although this is not super-common.
• She suddenly is interested in looking at books, especially if they have flaps.  Just 2 weeks ago she only wanted to eat them and now she turns the pages and does the flaps over and over again.  (Okay, and occasionally she still eats them.)
• Similar to the above, while she does still chew on toys, she also is interested in playing with them in other ways now.  Her favorite way is to bang them.
• She has suddenly started babbling A LOT.  Sometimes it really sounds like she is saying words.  She hardly babbled at all before the last few weeks.
• She gets up once or twice a night.
• She still prefers finger foods to all else.  What she really wants is to eat off our plates.
• Her hair is getting so long that we have started trying to tie it back in various ways.  These are adorable but so far we haven't had much luck keeping them in.
• She is going through a Mommy clingy phase.  If she sees me or hears me she must be held.  Or she will scream.  End of story.  And if I walk away she will follow me and climb up my leg.  No sitting passively waiting for me to pick her up.
• She is a pacifier kid.  She has never had any interest in her thumb and she now locates pacifiers if they are within reach and puts them in her mouth.  So far we have kept them to the crib and the carseat so this isn't too bad. But if a stray one ends up in the living room she will find it and put it in her mouth. We need to be careful.

And since the girl does NOT sit still, it was incredibly difficult to get a good 8 month block picture.  But I guess that makes these pictures representative of what she is like at this age.

From 2014 July

From 2014 July

From 2014 July

From 2014 July

And my favorite:

From 2014 July

News from these parts

Random list of things that have been going on with the kids:

• Nicholas' reading is amazing!  I think he's made a HUGE leap in the last week.  Then again, maybe it is just because I have hardly heard him read in months.  But he has gone from reading individual words to reading whole sentences at full speed.  He sits down and reads a book out loud and it actually sounds like a book!  And that includes proper intonation for periods and quotation marks!  The first few books he read to me like this were ones I had previously read to him and so I figured he had just memorized my intonations but this weekend he read me two full Henry and Mudge books and he had never even heard of the characters before this!
• Elizabeth is crawling like a speed demon and pulling up on everything.  She has even started a little bit of cruising, but she doesn't get very far that way yet.
• Nicholas and I decorated one of Elizabeth's walls with the animal removable sticker things she got for Christmas.  He is SO good when he has a project he is into.  And SO not good when he is bored or hungry.  (Church this morning was a complete disaster.)
• Elizabeth has been snuggly at night the last couple nights.  The last time she snuggled into me like that was when she was a few weeks old.  I absolutely LOVE it.
• Nicholas went to his first game at Fenway last night.  Joe was given tickets by a friend who won them and couldn't use them, the Orioles were in town, and we couldn't find a sitter.  There will be pictures once we get around to uploading them.

From 2014 July

From 2014 July

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

Tent

They're just about ready to start really playing together.

From 2014 July

Nicholas was pretty frustrated that Elizabeth wouldn't stay in the tent long, though. He had brought toys in for her and everything.

Library Card

Nicholas got his very own library card last weekend:

From 2014 June

And he can actually read the books he checked out by himself. How is it possible that he is this old already?

Photo Dump

We've been crazy busy but we are finally in the house and able to function.  We are nowhere near unpacked, but at this point I'll take what I can get.  And I'm taking the evening off from house stuff because I need a break from it.  But I've got the first 3 units of my online course up and set to auto-launch at the right times, so I figured I could finally check in on this blog of ours.

The short version of the last couple weeks is that we got a lot done, we're very happy with the results of each of the things we did, there were tons of projects we didn't get to, every single thing we've done (including those things we've paid contractors to come in and do for us) has had a problem or a final step that couldn't be resolved, and there is absolutely no way we could have managed to do this without my mom's help.

There are stories behind many of these pictures, but I am in need of a bowl of ice cream and an hour of tv, so you get a photo dump:

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

From 2014 June

From 2014 June