THE BLAND FAMILY: August 2012

Seems like a lot to catch up on. I've been attempting this post for about 3 weeks now. :)

Avery Update:

Sleeping: Well, in the time it's taken me to continue writing this post, her sleeping habits have seemed to keep changing. Fairly drastically. And for the better! I was going to complain about how horrible it was. It was getting really bad. She was hard to put down and then waking up 2-3 times a night. We'd seem to be up for an hour each time. I was completely exhausted. The really bad part seemed to only last about a week or two though. We decided since she wasn't sleeping great anyway, that we'd go ahead and try to stop swaddling her. July 27th was our first night without the swaddle and - success! She seemed to love it. She slept no worse than she did with it at least. I think she's at least warmer in her sleep sack now, compared to her swaddle. She'd bust out and her little arms would be cold. Now we just do a onesie and sleep sack and she seems to like it. Her sleep has gradually kept improving since then. Last week, she even had 3 nights where she slept completely through the night! Woo hoo! Last weekend, she even slept for 12 hours! Love it! Signs of improvement at least are all I need for now. :) We need to continue working on napping.....but that may be for another day. I think I've kind of accepted that she's a cat napper. At least on the weekends. And I'm just going to stop fighting her to get these long naps and let her do her 45 minute ones. Hopefully, that will come in time too. We've had a few long ones at daycare, but it's definitely not consistent. I'm hoping that as her night sleep improves, her naps will eventually as well.

No more swaddle!

On the move: She hasn't rolled over any more, but she IS scooting! It's pretty cute. She can pretty much scoot all the way across the room on her back. She just get those feet and that butt moving and can go straight backwards. She's always wiggling and bucking when you hold her. She's THIS close to sitting up on her own!! She can stop growing up so quickly at any time. She tries to hold her bottle for her night-time feeding. And just in general while she's eating, she grabs at my face or hold her feet. She grabs my face constantly actually. She's always grabbing my lips and just holding on. She's so adorable.

First crush: My baby has Bieber fever! I thought I'd at least have a few years before worrying about her and boys! ;) Miss April discovered that she likes Justin Bieber though. They spent one day at daycare holding up his poster to her and watching her coo and giggle at it. She'd stop as soon as they took it away and start up again when they held it back up. She took a video of it - so cute. :)

Jump, jump, jump: We finally broke out the jumperoo a couple of weeks ago. She loves it! At first, she just sat there. Carson was ADORABLE and made sure to show her each and every toy on the jumperoo. Then he tried to bounce her. :) She jumped once and looked shocked. It was on after that. :) We get the best smiles when she's jumping.

Giggles: We're finally getting giggles! Those adorable baby belly laughs. Completely contagious! They almost always come from watching Carson! She loves just staring at him! He doesn't even have to do much and she's all smiles. I also discovered that she's ticklish! So that gets some pretty good giggles too. Love that she's a happy girl!

Getting bigger!: ~~She's now in 9 mo. clothes!~~ She's now in 12 mo. clothes!! Seriously, it happened that fast. I think we were in 9 mos. for maybe a week?? Crazy! Guess we're just skipping that size. She's growing like a weed. I actually just finally accepted it and put away all of her 6 mo. outfits. So sad. There were some that she never even wore! Not once. :( I bought a few 12 mo. outfits the other day and just placed an order for more tonight. Hopefully, she slows down just a bit and these can last for a little while. It'd be at least nice if she could wear everything more than once! ;)

First bite: UGH! Yep, she got bit already! They combined the two infant rooms for a couple of days and she was assaulted! :) The teachers didn't see it happen but had a guess as to who it was. She was able to identify her attacker though on her own - the next morning, he made a beeline right to her and she looked at him and immediately started crying. He looked up at me and smiled with 6 teeth. :) I can't blame him entirely as those thighs are nom, nom, nom'able. BUT, back away from my baby little dude!! He's back in his room now and no more incidents. Carson got bit a lot when he was little. :( Not until that second room though. So hopefully, she's got some time before we have to deal with that with her. Poor baby.

3 top teeth, 3 bottom.

Carson Update:

Mr. Independent: Carson plays independently all of a sudden. I love watching him grow up. It's seriously the cutest thing watching him playing by himself and having his cars or toys talk to each other and have little conversations! He has such a little imagination now. Lucas feels guilty - like maybe we don't play enough with him. But I see it as a huge milestone developmentally. I love it. :) It's fun to watch him. And he even tells us that he wants to play "all by myself" sometimes. I think it's good for him.

Little gymnast: Ha. Ok, not so much, but he does continue his Tumblebus sessions every week. He gets so excited on Tuesday mornings. Every Tues. night, I ask him what he did/learned. Seems like he's continuing to work on perfecting rolling over. Then last week though, he said to me, "I balance". And proceeded to walk in a line on his tippy-toes. It was so freakin' cute. I cannot wait until their little recital at the end of the session. Or at least I've heard that they've done that in the past, so I have my hopes on it! :)

ABC's/Counting: Carson started "counting" for us a long time ago. But then he just kind of stopped. :) I think he's just stubborn. Well, he finally started back up again and is doing really well. He wants to count everything! His favorite number seems to be the #4. He points it out every time he sees it. He's very observant and sees it in the most random places. He's also finally started his ABC's. I'd always ask him if they did it at school and he'd always say no. I did it for him a couple of times, but that's about it. He finally started singing them on his own one night in the bath. So proud of him. He's singing all kind so stuff lately. Just tonight, he grabbed my necklace (w/ a small diamond) and started singing the entire "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (like a diamond in the sky). His little voice is pretty much the cutest I've ever heard. I get such a kick out of hearing some of the things that he knows - stuff that I know I haven't taught him. He's knows all of his shapes and colors forever. I think he got a double-dose of those here and at daycare. I pretty much think he's brilliant. :)

Tattling?: Carson has started playing Mommy and Daddy against each other. It's actually kind of funny. If one of us tells him no, he immediately goes to the other one with a pout and a "Mommy/Daddy say no to me.....". At least he's honest though and doesn't just simply ask the other one. He rats himself out. ;)

Rules of the road: Carson's kind of obsessed with traffic lights, etc. right now. He's pretty much mastered it though. "Red - stop. Green - go. Yellow - slow down!" He LOVES approaching stop lights and telling me whether it's red or green and to stop or go. He loves the arrows. He even gets that you take turns at stop signs. He'll be driving before we know it!

OCD: I sometimes worry that he's so "particular". Lucas says it's my fault of course. :) I just think he likes routine. ;) His biggest routine is the blankets at night. He absolutely must be covered with them all in order. It's been the same since he moved into his big-boy bed. We've recently added a new blanket to the routine. So now we're up to 6 - "Monkey blanket. Yellow. Blue. Baby blue. Other blue. Big guy."

Memory like an elephant!: We've very quickly learned that Carson remembers EVERYTHING! You cannot say anything to him at all with the hope that it will be forgotten. I really find it amazing because I can't remember anything. He even helps me remember to grab Avery's milk in the morning! (We've had to go back for it a few times.) Well.....right now, all he talks about are his birthday and vacation. It seems like there were a ton of his friends at school that all turned 3 in July. So since then, he keeps asking for his birthday. I told him it was still a couple of months away. So most days he asks, "Mommy, you take me to my birthday today? Oh, a couple of months?" :) Now we're down to one! So now it's, "Mommy, I have a choo-choo train birthday? Almost here Mommy?" He's got it all planned out in his little head it seems. Hope he's not disappointed.
We're now planning a mini-vacation to Wisconsin Dells too. I made the mistake of telling him all about it and showing him the website of the resort. So his requests are alternating now between me "taking him to his birthday" to "going to baycation now". We had a long talk again about both tonight, so I think I'm going to make countdown calendars for both so he'll know how close they both are! :)

Quotes:
- "Could I try something else please?" - This was his repeated phrase at the fair. :)
- "There's still plenty in there." - juice box
- "I want a choo-choo train birthday!
- "Yeah, that's what I saying Mommy!" with that 3 year old exasperation, when I can't understand him and finally say, "ooooh, ok". Haha.
- "I go to school, and you go drive your car to see your friends at work ." I kind of like that he thinks work is a "fun" place to go.

Pictures from the last few weeks:


Carson in Avery's "seat-car"!

He's fascinated by TV. She's fascinated by him. :)

She loves Carson's puppy!

Playing together!

Playing with Daddy!

We took Carson to the fair this year (on 7/21). I know it's kind of dirty, etc., :) but I used to have so much fun there as a kid! We wanted to see if Carson would be interested in any of the rides yet. I secretly can't wait until he's old enough that we can ride some of them together. Heehee. We did start with one together - a little dinosaur one that spun around. Then we headed to all of the stuff he would have to ride alone. He's pretty cautious of just about everything, so I really thought he'd be too scared to go alone. Boy was I wrong! His first solo ride was a choo-choo train and he took off on his own, looking back and waving. It was so cute. I was so proud of how well he did. After that, he wanted to ride everything! He even pointed to the (adult) ferris wheel. Ummm, no. :) He did end up going on just about every kiddie-ride. Then I talked him into riding mommy's favorite - the Tilt-a-Whirl. I was afraid it might be too much for him but he loved it and wanted to go again. We had so much fun watching him enjoying the rides so much! He asked the next day if we could go back, but (thankfully), the day we went was the last day. So we told him about the Pumpkin Festival (in September) and now he keeps talking about that. :) It will be a couple of long months! Haha.