On the go

Yes, Holly has turned into a climber. She can now successfully crawl (instead of just dragging herself around) and pull up on things. Usually it's to get at Elliott's Lego's or one of our iPhones. Just outside of her bedroom door is a nightlight. This has been a constant draw for the past month. She's like a moth to the flame and can't keep away from it. But, now she has discovered the stairs - across the hallway from their room. We will have to install the baby gates again.

Holly will do laps around our coffee table. She things it is hysterical.

In other news with Holly, she has been teething. I hope that and a combination of being a bit sick is the reason she has been sleeping so poorly. On Friday night she ate 5 times between 9pm and 5am. Needless to say, I was tired on Saturday morning! Last night she at at midnight and then slept until 7:15am, yay!! She has finally decided that baby food is good. She will happily eat 1/2 a banana in one sitting. She is a big fan of fruits and we are slowly working on vegetables. She has two teeth, you can see them both here.

Elliott started soccer classes this past week. Dan went with him and said that Elliott did pretty well. He listened and participated well, something he had a rough time doing at swimming lessons. Dan took Elliott out for donuts after his class and he was thrilled. Here he is posing for me once they got home.

Elliott doesn't always want to pose nicely for me when I'm taking pictures. Usually he tries to duck his head so that I can't get a good one of his face. Often when I ask him to smile this is what I get.

I decided to let him take some pictures - with the assistance of the tripod. We now have quite a few of his Ninjago legos. It did help him with wanting to pose though. He really wanted me to take these.

Next week is Spring Break and we are excited to play with his Portland cousins. Elliott calls Cameron his "super best friend". Brooke and Grace are only his "best friends". He likes to tell us Monster stories that often involve being at Grandmas house (she has a basement and he was a bit scared of the sewing machine when the lights were off) with Cam, B & G. Dan and are I discussing the possibility of sending him to preschool next year. It seems really early, at age 3. But, I think he would do really well with the structure of it and with learning and trying new things. We'll see what happens there.

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.