Holly - 8 months

Holly was making noise in her crib this morning so I went in to check on her, and she was standing up.  This is the first time she has fully pulled herself up.  We'll have to drop the crib so she doesn't try to get out.  She's also doing better at crawling on her knees, but still would rather army crawl.  She really wants to walk and will straighten her legs and start walking when you try to set her down to sit.  

Holly is eating solid foods much better now.  She really likes being fed oatmeal and the frozen fruit purees Wendy made last summer.  She also is good at hand-feeding with Mum-Mums (rice biscuit things) and these puffs that look like cereal that dissolve in her mouth.  I'll have to ask Wendy for a weight update, because I think she usually weighs her each month for the blog.

 

Elliott is still very much into Mario, but has also become obsessed with Ninjago.  Ninjago is a type of lego where you put the lego figures onto tops and they spin into each other to battle.  Kai is his favorite Ninjago character:
 

 

Elliott is currently in his second round of swimming lessons and will be starting soccer in a week.  Elliott has gone to two Timbers games with me so far this season, and he likes them for about 1/2 the time he is there.  The other half I let him play Game Boy, eat Reese's Pieces or play around at my feet.  Holly actually fell asleep at the home opener right during a Kris Boyd goal celebration.  If you know how loud it gets after a goal, that should be impossible.

 

Elliott knows what dreaming is now and has talked to me about it a few times.  He has apparently had bad dreams and funny dreams.  He told me that when I tell him stories at night he can picture them on the ceiling like a dream.  I thought that was pretty neat.  He also really likes Shel Silverstein's poems, so poems after books has been added to his nighttime routine.

 

Kitchen Before and After

In other news around here, we decided to do a small renovation to our kitchen. It was fine before, but oh so nice now!! We had possibly the cheapest cabinets ever with shiny laminate on them. It showed every finger print and is impossible to look clean for longer than 5 minutes. The counter top was a light blue/grey laminate, it just looked dated. Over the years that we have lived here we have replaced the fridge and dishwasher. We had moved our microwave to a counter behind our kitchen, which wasn't convenient because we then had a cord going across a doorway to get to a plug to actually use it. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but we microwave bottles probably 5-6 times a day. Well, our tax return came in and somehow Dan decided it was go time to upgrade!!

Here are some before pictures:

Also, the painted area behind the stove was terrible looking. I had taken a magic eraser to it to clean off grease from cooking. I have disliked the pendant lights since we moved into the house. But, they worked. There used to be 3, one broke so we've lived with 2 for a while now. The pendant on the right stopped working recently, so now we are down to one.

We tore down all the upper cabinets and replaced them with something similar from Ikea. Since we decided not to replace the lower cabinets we didn't want two very different door styles. Here is Dan surveying his removal skills.

Dan is installing new upper cabinets.

My Dad came over on the weekend to help us with the electrical work for the new microwave!! It is so nice to know people who can do these things for us, rather than having to hire someone.

Yay, new microwave!!

We had a new granite tile counter installed as well as a tile back splash. We decided to go with mini-slab granite tiles, they are 26" deep and 18" wide. I was going to do a nice white subway tile back splash with a glass tile accent. But, I was obsessing with these penny round tiles. I love them! Dan told me to go with the penny rounds and I'm happy that I listened to him. We also got a new faucet (our 3rd in 5 years!) and new sink. We are planning to paint the lower cabinets and replace the handles to match the round pulls on the uppers and the bin pull on the top drawer (pictured below). I still need to choose a new pendant light and I need to finish replacing the faceplates on the outlets.

If you are reading this and you live in the Portland area we can recommend a great guy to install tile for you...

Excuse us, we've been sick

Please excuse our absence, we have been sick over here. I never got around to Holly's 7 month post because it feels like we have been sick for about a month! Both Elliott and Holly have been trading a cold back and forth. They have both had a terrible hacking cough. Which has meant too many nights with poor sleep from the kids. Thankfully, we have turned a corner and everyone is staring to sleep better and is more healthy.

Holly is 7 months old, going on 8 very shortly. We weighed her at just after 7 months and she was 15 lbs. Recently though I got her at 16 lbs! She is finally gaining some weight and has a few more rolls to prove it. Holly isn't crawling on her hands and knees just yet, though she is experimenting with it. We often see her up on her hands and knees, rocking around. Then she will fall to her tummy and army crawl to whatever has caught her eye. She isn't content to just sit and play with toys I place in front of her anymore. She wants to be doing whatever Elliott is doing...which causes some drama from Elliott.

Teething is in full swing around here. She particularly loves the wii-mote.

I'm so please to report that Elliott has gone an entire month without sucking his thumb!! Dan and I are really proud of him. This also means he is much less attached to his blanket. He is still doing swimming lessons, but we haven't had a ton of progress. He went under one day - for about 5 seconds - and now he is really nervous at lessons. I need to take him more often to open swim to show him that it isn't scary. Elliott tends to be pretty cautious about new things. It took him a long time to feel comfortable getting on Amy's trampoline, he would cry if I tried. Finally one day he decided it was alright and now he's happy to jump with the boys. I think he will be the same with swimming.

Elliott is WAY too into Mario (from Nintendo). It has become a major obsession. We have to play Mario all the time - mostly outside of the Wii (meaning role playing because I won't let him play video games all the time). His boy cousins are in the same obsessive phase right now. Dan showed him the Mario TV show from the 80's (remember that?) and he loves it.

Here are pictures taken from this past month:

Valentines Day:

(yes, that is a heart on Holly's bum)

We stayed late playing at Aunt Sarah's house one night. Elliott went home in Grace's old PJ's. He didn't want to take them off the next day.

14 Days In...

Remember back when it was so cute when Elliott would suck his thumb? Not so much anymore. I'm not sure if you can always tell in the pictures I post, but he has a pretty terrible overbite. The poor guy has some very bad dental genetics that were passed down to him from me. The last time we were at the dentist (August) our dentist said we needed to have him stop sucking his thumb by age 3. If he was able to there is a good chance his teeth will go back to a more "normal" position.

Two weeks ago, 1/25/12, we decided to quit for good . We have been encouraging him for months to stop on his own. We went to Build A Bear and built a very cute monkey, it helped, but didn't get the job done. So, I put some gross tasting nail polish on his thumb and then we bribed him. He will get a prize every day for a week and if he can go for an entire month we can go to Great Wolf Lodge.

Elliott told me that he was "okay" with not sucking it anymore. For the first few nights I would see him bring his thumb up to his mouth, hover around, then bring it back down again. It has now been two weeks and he is doing great.

On the other hand, Holly, who has been totally hooked on her pacifiers is starting to munch her thumb when the paci isn't around...let's hope it's teething.

6 Months!

Last week Holly officially turned 6 months old! We went to the doctor that day for her 6 month check up and shots. She weighs 14lbs, 9 oz (24th%), 26" in length (62%) and her head is 41.5cm (24%). She is just a little thing, especially compared to Elliott at the same age.

Holly's biggest accomplishment is her crawling!! On Friday, 12/30, Dan called me to say that she was crawling. I'll have him post a video, I'm not sure how to do it. She is a fast army crawler, especially if there is something naughty to get to.

We started to sleep train Holly last week. She was getting into a bad schedule where I was the only one who could put her to sleep and some nights it would take over an hour. She would scream for Dan if I wasn't home. We decided enough was enough one night when it took me 2 hours to finally get her to sleep and she then woke up again. Holly cried for about 45 minutes the first night (we went in a comforted her every 5 minutes or so). The next time we tried her cries only lasted 30 minutes. Dan tried her a third time the other night and it only took 3 minutes!! We have started to put her down for her naps while she is awake, but sleepy. I'm so happy it is working well and quickly.

Happy 6 Months, Holly!!

Dan set up our playroom to have a baby zone (something we saw from Elliott's daycare). This will allow Elliott to play with whatever he wants and keeps Holly away from all those tiny pieces. Elliott calls it "the baby trap". She isn't big enough to crawl out just yet.

Elliott playing with slime. Once again, green:

Posing with his completed puzzle - Elliott did the entire inside himself.

Hanging out:

Jenga for kids, he loves it:

This one is just too sweet, I love it.

Elliott had his very first swimming lesson today. It was so cute. I took some pictures, but I didn't want to be a creeper taking pictures of other peoples kids, so they aren't that great. Here is Elliott showing his teacher the rings he got from the bottom of the pool:

E was a little wild, we'll have to talk to him about staying a bit closer to the wall area. The pool is a foot deep, maybe 1 1/2 feet. So, he feels pretty comfortable wandering around. Still, I remember all too well what it was like to teach those 3 year olds. He put his ears in, I think his eyes and instead of blowing bubbles he took drinks of pool water. He did a great back float and had fun kicking on the wall. His teacher was great. This was Elliott's first organized class without me and I was really happy with how well Elliott listened and how excited he was to get in. Dan and I both cried (a lot) when we started swimming lessons. Elliott was excited to hear that we are going back again on Wednesday for another lesson.

December come and gone...

As the title says, December has come and gone. We seemed to be very busy in December. Also, Dan got a new computer and it was hard for him to give up time playing on it to allow me to blog.

Right before Thanksgiving we purchased a new car! We are now truly parents - we drive a minivan. It's pretty fancy though and is much nicer than our previous car. Because of the new car Dan and I had said we weren't giving presents to each other for Christmas. When Dan went to Seattle to visit his work he came back with a present for me. I got a new digital SLR camera!! I'm so excited about it! I took a lot of pictures and am trying to learn the tricks of the camera. I'm on prednisone again and my hands tend to be a bit shaky, therefore I have a lot of fuzzy pictures (when I'm trying out not using the flash). I'm also getting used to using Picasa, not iPhoto to edit pictures. Here are some pictures from December:

Getting our Christmas Tree:

Posing - before our tree got too crispy (we were bad at watering it this year)

An attempted picture before we went to see Santa:

Dan, posing for my new camera:

Holly in her crib:

Elliott and all his cars:

Elliott was teaching Holly to crawl on this day. I think here he is telling her some story. She loves it when he pays any attention to her:

Holly, practicing sitting. She is a pro now:

Christmas was busy! We spent Christmas Eve in Wilsonville with Dan's family. We do a gift exchange and open presents then. On Christmas day were able to stay home until about 1pm before heading out to visit family. It was really nice to have that time in the morning to open presents and relax before having to start getting ready and rushing around. Holly got in a good nap, which I was very happy about. We went back to Wilsonville for a few hours to open stockings and eat an early dinner before heading out to Beaverton for dessert with my family.

Santa came and filled the kids stockings on Christmas eve:

Elliott woke us up at about 8:30 on Christmas morning (thanks, Elliott, I liked that extra sleep time!). I could hear him running around upstairs; he was super excited about everything.

Holly checking out her glow worm from Santa.

Holly and Cora:

Porter Cousins:

Christmas at Sarah's house:

Dan, reading to Elliott and Holly:

In case you didn't know, Elliott's favorite color is green. He'll tell you all about it. Apparently when given the option he prefers to paint in monochrome.