First Steps

Elizabeth took her first steps today!  Apparently she took 5 or 6 steps dozens of times today at daycare.  But of course when we got home I wanted to see for myself.  She isn't super stable and falls as often as she completes her way to you, but she is clearly able to take steps now.  How long until she is running around?!

I apologize for the poor camera placement.  Ignore the orange pumpkin tablecloth in the foreground:

He's Back!

I am knocking on wood as I type this, but old Nicholas is back.  Our responsible, rational, reliable, boy has been around more and more the last month, and the last few weeks he has been SO good!  He's not perfect and still gets in trouble, but even when he hasn't been good recently he hasn't been out of control the way he was for most of 4 and the first part of 5.  It is like he clicked back in.  I have been thinking this for the last couple weeks but was afraid to write it for fear of jinxing it. And it is always possible that it isn't permanent, but oh I have been loving it.

We had hoped that starting kindergarten would help and it seemed to a little from pretty early on, but the changes to his behavior were gradual and not linear and so it is only in the last couple weeks that I've been really able to see it.  Given that this has accompanied another major jump in his reading, as well as a sudden interest in writing, my random theory is that he has been going through a major cognitive growth spurt and is now leveling out.  Okay, so that is completely random, but the things I find myself saying about having my old kid back sounds just like what I used to say when he would come out of growth spurts as a baby.

I have one last batch of applesauce for the fall that is almost ready to strain and finish and wanted to be in bed an hour ago, so I'm going to leave it at that for now.  More later . . . maybe.

At daycare

Elizabeth's daycare provider has a new app she uses to keep track of the kids' meals, naps, etc. that sends us the info and as part of it she can tag the kids in pictures she takes on her phone and it automatically sends us the pictures.  So we get surprises during the day of pictures of Elizabeth at daycare.  Or on a busy day we get them at the end of the day when she has time to tag them.  And they make me smile. :)

This was a picture that she took yesterday:

From 2014 October

And it makes me think two things simultaneously.  First, omg she is getting big!  Secondly, I love her daycare!  I love that she is treated like a big kid and is growing into it and exploring and climbing.  And I love how happy and clearly comfortable she is.  And, of course, I love that I get pictures. :)

64 months

From 2014 October

Nicholas was feeling left out the other day when I was doing Elizabeth's 11 month pictures and wanted me to do his month picture too.  So here it is.  And that gives me a good reason to do an update post on him as well.  So a few updates on Nicholas:

• He loves kindergarten!  He plays school, writes the "morning message" on his dry erase board, "preps" class, and so on.
• His reading is amazing.  He overheard me saying that he reads at around a third grade level and so now tells people that.  I don't actually know what his official reading level is, but he can read books that I remember reading in the middle of elementary school with just a little stumbling.  And what really impresses me is how smoothly he reads, with attention to punctuation and voice, rather than just sounding out each word.
• He has started taking an interest in writing for the first time.  He has always hated writing and we had to force him to do it, but he now is willing to do it.  I think a big part of it is that he is now more willing to make up spellings by sounding out a word and not worry about whether it is correct.  For example, he is currently working on a Magic Treehouse story and he typed the following sentence this morning: "annie sed  Cumon  We   Hafe  to go to  the Tree  Hows  Kuz we Hafe to go on a misn"  Translation: "Annie said, "Come on, we have to go to the treehouse because we have to go on a mission."
• He is going through a phase where he often needs one of us in his room to fall asleep.  He asks for snuggles just about every night and about half of the nights he comes out after 30-45 minutes of trying to go to sleep and says he can't fall asleep and needs us.  If I go in he is out in 5 minutes.
• He cannot sit still.  He literally can't sit in his chair for all of dinner.
• He has very little internal monologue and must narrate everything.  This drives us insane but is probably why his verbal skills are so good.
• His behavior has improved dramatically since he started kindergarten.  He still occasionally has a meltdown, especially if he is exhausted or hungry, but they are much more rare.  And there are many times each week where we are just in awe of how responsible he is.
• He seems to alternate between being 3 and being 10.  Sometimes he wants to watch toddler shows on tv and other times he sits down at the computer to write a novel.
• He loves baseball and is very disappointed that the Os lost.

We have a conference with his teacher tomorrow (nothing bad, just the regular fall conference) so I'm curious to hear about what he is like at school.

11 Months

From 2014 October

I get more and more behind with these posts each month.  But this is the second-to-last of the monthly posts, so I guess at least I won't get any further behind.  How is is possible that in less than 4 weeks Elizabeth will be 1?!  It has gone so much more quickly this time around.  I swear she was just 6 weeks old!

Anyway, here is a picture of Elizabeth at 11 months:

• She is in constant motion.  It is possible that she stops moving when she sleeps, but I wouldn't put money on it.  Even while nursing she is doing gymnastics, pulling on her legs, playing with her hair, putting my hand over her ear . . .
• Probably not unrelated to the previous point, she is always hungry and eats ridiculous servings.  On a couple occasions we have even bought her her own kid's meal at restaurants because we knew we couldn't satisfy her with scraps from our plates. And she acts like you haven't fed her in days, vocally demanding more food and shoveling it in her mouth by the fistful.  She also sometimes forgets to chew in her eagerness, leading to some gagging.
• She will eat a wide range of things and there have only been a few things she hasn't been willing to eat.  Neither mushrooms or salmon was a big hit, although she ate both.  She tends to throw Cheerios off her tray, although she'll eat them on occasion.  She adores bananas.  Tonight at dinner we were having tacos and she had the same meal the rest of us did, minus the tortilla.  Taco meat, cheese, corn, and tomatoes.  Seriously, what 11-month old shovels taco meat in and demands more?
• She is still refusing more than an ounce or two of liquid at daycare so we've been supplementing nursing with a bottle of pumped milk at bedtime many nights.  Elizabeth has discovered a sudden love of bottles and prefers that to nursing (I assume because it is faster).  She will look up at the shelf where we keep the bottles, point, and say "ba ba ba."  And if I sit down in her rocking chair to nurse her, she keeps coming off and looking to the shelf where I set the bottle if I have one, clearly looking for a better offer.
• She has a lot of sounds that are clearly trying to be words.  For the most part what it is is that she repeats the first sound of the intended word over and over again.  It is very clear that she is trying to say the word and it is intentional because the first sound is right, but it sounds like babbling because it is just one syllable over and over.  The "words" she says are: Mama, Dada, cat, bottle, banana, yay, and hi.  Yay and hi actually sound like real words since they are only one syllable, although she doesn't really say the first letter of either.  Those also seem more like real words because they are attached to motions and so clearly have meaning.  She says "yay" when she claps and "hi" when she waves.
• She still gets up twice a night on average to eat.  Every once in awhile she will go two nights in a row only getting up once but it has yet to become routine.
• She adores books.  She is interested in having them read to her, but what she really loves is flipping through them herself to look at the pictures.  Left to her own devices in the living room she tends to crawl over to the bookshelf and start taking off her books.  But she takes them off one or two at a time and flips through them before going back for more.  And she carefully points at things in the books as she goes, studying them.  Her favorite books, not surprisingly, have pictures of animals. 
• She can stand on her own for 10 seconds or so, but only if she isn't paying attention.
• She is now steady enough that she can walk only holding one adult hand, although she still thinks she needs 2 and tries to grab the other one.
• She knows that socks and shoes go on her feet and pants go on her legs.  When she sees these, she holds up her foot/leg and tries to put them on.  By tries to put them on I mean sets the sock on top of her foot.  The idea of how to get it ON a foot is way beyond her.
• She knows the things that she is not supposed to do.  It only sometimes stops her, but she does look up at me and shake her head no before she does them.  It would be aggravating if it wasn't so stinking cute.
• She has started playing with toys in a more sophisticated way.  As I was cleaning up the toys this evening I was actually realizing that it is time to put the baby toys away because she has no use for toys you just chew on.  She has even figured out how to get the rings on the post of that classic toy!  

I feel like most of this is pretty similar to what I've been writing for months.  She is stubborn and insistent and gets mad when she doesn't get what she wants but is also smiley and giggly and fun.  She is incredibly engaged with the world and people around her and curious.  While Nicholas was studious she is adventurous.  Nicholas wanted to explore a new place before being willing to play with anything while Elizabeth just dives headfirst (sometimes literally) into whatever she sees.  He was just as strong-willed, however.

And here are some literal pictures of her at 11 months.  There was absolutely no getting her to sit still and pose, so instead we have action shots that have the blocks in the foreground.  But it is an accurate picture of the little girl she is at this moment. 

From 2014 October

From 2014 October

From 2014 October

From 2014 October

From 2014 October