Archive for April, 2011

Time in the swing

Thursday, April 28th, 2011 by Jen

These days I’m trying to get Josie to hang out in the ‘big girl’ swings more often and learn to get herself moving, but it sure is nice to be able to put Celia down at the park in the swing. She loves it. They often share a swing too! [photo from my ipod]

Dinner for two

Thursday, April 28th, 2011 by Jen

Who knew Kaya likes broccoli? not us.

There is no spoon

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 by Jen

Some nights the spoon has held more interest than the food.

Early walkers

Monday, April 25th, 2011 by Jen

I have been accused by my friends of doing something like this to my children to produce such early walkers.

So I figured I might as well do it. My dad and I built it this weekend. They both love it, Josie uses it for gymnastics. Celia uses it to cruise. There is a lot less whiny baby at our house now. Give her another month and maybe we can pass it on to someone else for their calisthenics. I only wish we had this over the winter for Josie to get some climbing in on.

All the stuff on the floor is Josie’s easter loot. We are no-fun parents, she got no candy, just toys and other things. Wooden teething toys (both of them, cause all Josie wants to do is play with Celia’s stuff and wood figures can at least be used creatively in addition to being chewed on), a coloring book, bubbles, headband and underwear.

We spent the rest of Easter at my parents house doing an easter egg hunt and digging in the ground to plant some new raised beds for the plants we’ve been growing. I made a new vegetarian meatloaf (the all-time favorite one) which I highly recommend even though the recipe sounds weird.

Celia’s adventures in eating: Broccoli

Monday, April 25th, 2011 by Jen

Friday night we started broccoli with Celia, it was Josie’s choice (from a finite list of options) which she got. Josie opted not to eat the broccoli herself. After a few days of ho-hum response to the sweet potato her eyes widened and she was eager to grab onto the bright green food with a handle in front of her. Here’s a photo of the end result, plus the video of the event! This morning, a week after starting with food, we got confirmation that she actually swallowed some sweet potato and broccoli last night at dinner.

 

Family Cobra

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 by Jen

Caught a family cobra pose during morning yoga! Don’t get many of Celia on her belly, she does not like it. Horrid lighting, but sometimes that’s all you can get in the moment.

 

Delancey visit

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 by Jen

Last weekend we got a visit from the Delancey family and the Summers family hosted the CMU crowd at their fancy new house. This video isn’t amazing except when I think about how 10+ years ago we were all hanging out at school together and now we’ve produced a pile of children that can run around and play games together (thanks Steve for playing with all our kids while we socialized!).

They are attempting to play duck duck goose, but no one has quite got it down yet. Exhibit A: my daughter constantly running in circles. She has fun. At the end I think they’re all being animals.

Celia’s adventures in eating: sweet potato

Monday, April 18th, 2011 by Jen

Last night Celia got her first chance to eat some real food. Like Josie, we started her off with sweet potato. She was definitely eager to grab the new thing in front of her and shove it in her mouth. She wasn’t so thrilled about the taste and texture, the new bib held a lot of interest. Her entire eating session was barely longer than the video below, which is very long for our standard videos. She enjoyed playing with it and the feeling, but I think she was too tired to do much.

Tonight she was more well rested and got a second chance with the sweet potato and was very enthusiastic. It’s not clear how much she ate, but she did a better job of grabbing the food and putting it in and biting it. She definitely got pieces in her mouth, and many were slowly split out. We’ll find out when we get a diaper if anything was swallowed, I think she ate some. Very minimal gagging and not too many funny faces even. She made a big grab for Jordi’s bread when he served her more sweet potato, so she’s looking out for more. Josie thinks we should do broccoli next. [note all our videos are in HD now so you can improve the quality in the settings on the bottom from where it says 360p]

Celia at 6 months

Sunday, April 17th, 2011 by Jen

Today Celia is six months old and so she got her first eats! She was eager, but not exactly in awe of the food and the excitement was short lived. She didn’t nap a lot today and so she was pretty tired and had limited patience. More about that later though in another post.

This month Celia has continued to strengthen her ability to sit and walk while holding onto our hands. She can stand up for a few seconds before she tilts and she can walk at a decent speed while holding on. She can’t yet walk with only one hand supporting her though, despite her efforts to do so. She just spins around and falls. She can hold herself up to the music table too and cruise along a little bit without any help.

We’ve had some teething this month with her second tooth coming in, lots of drooling and complaining. She really wants to be going and about, days at home are not satisfying for her and thankfully the weather is giving us more opportunities to go out. She fits into our bigger baby hawk carrier now and will sleep on my back and front in that giving us more freedom to move about.

She has thankfully stopped the ear piercing shrieks in exchange for a general whiny attitude unless she is being walked about, fed, or chewing on something she’s not supposed to. It’s been hard to get anything done and her sleep has been terrible too. I just don’t even want to talk about it.

I’ve started doing baby-signing with her, but I’m not that consistent yet. Josie has been re-learning them as she doesn’t remember a thing. Celia has learned one game though with some positive reinforcement, peekaboo! She loves to pull a (clean) diaper over her own face and hide for a second and then hear us yell peek-a-boo when she pulls it down.

While we’re all still in love with her, right now is mostly a time of frustration, while she learns how to walk even though she can’t yet. Josie could take multiple steps on her own at 6.5 months, so maybe we’ll get there soon. She can roll pretty well, it’s too bad she hasn’t figured out that rolling can get her places.

  • Size/weight: 9 and 12 month size, 16 lbs, I’ll save height for when I get Josie’s in two weeks.
  • Favorite food: breastmilk
  • Favorite toy: sophie the giraffe
  • Favorite book: just eating any of them
  • Favorite activity: walking, watching Josie
  • Sleeping: waking all the time, 2 -3 naps, one long one usually, up at 7, in bed at 8.
  • New skill: walking holding on, trying to stand
  • Teeth: 2 bottom center
  • Vocalizations: whining

I didn’t want to buy the sweet potatoes

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 by Jen

Tonight I went to the grocery store and had a long pause in the vegetable aisle. Celia is six months old this Sunday, the age at which we’ve decided to start feeding our babies actual food instead of exclusively nursing, for many reasons. Sweet potatoes are up first. Celia is literally chomping at the bit now to get her hands on some food although an empty cup and a spoon have been very exciting at the dinner table for a few minutes at least.

She’s getting so big and it feels so fast. She can stand on her own two feet now (literally) for a few seconds, she’ll be walking in two months if she continues to match Josie’s rate of mobility. She’s got opinions now on where she’d like to go and what she’d like to do and while they’re nothing compared to Josie’s opinions (often simultaneous and conflicting) about life, she’s only going to have more. She’ll hopefully start using baby signs in a few months to communicate with us even more directly than she does now with her body language. It’s so exciting to watch her discover about her body and the world.

Josie’s in her own big bed in her own big room and I can only imagine Celia will want to move to that room younger than Josie moved out as she just adores Josie. It’s our job to raise them so that they don’t need us and there’s obviously no question whatsoever that they are still totally reliant on us now but the difference between 6 months and three years has gone so fast. Most of Josie’s friends are going to preschool in the fall, we’re keeping Josie home one more year before we send her. Then comes real school.

I didn’t want to buy the sweet potatoes.