Life with Children

Beth’s first recognizable, non-repeating sound word: “Alex”

Of course, it doesn’t sound exactly right, more like A-ix (soft A & I), but she will say it on command. She first did it for Eric and Alex this morning before I got up, but she did it later for me. And then just now, when I opened Alex’s bedroom door to start waking him up from his nap, she said Alex about 10 times before pushing open his door and crawling in.

 
02/01/2010 Update:
Beth’s second word: “Hi”

Eric came home from dropping Jenna off yesterday and he said “Hello Elizabeth” to Beth when he came in. She said “Hi” back!

Last night Beth was cranky. A combination of no afternoon nap followed by 3 immunization shots, probably. Beth was in Alex’s room with Alex and Eric while I went downstairs to get Alex’s snack. Beth started crying so Alex went over and gave her a hug and a kiss. Too sweet.

A few minutes later, I was taking Beth out to go get her ready for bed. I told her to give Daddy a kiss goodnight, which usually entails Eric chasing down a cheek to kiss. Last night this entailed Beth opening her mouth and leaning in towards Eric! I figured it was a fluke, so I told Beth to give Alex a kiss. She did the same thing. So I told her to give mommy a kiss. Same thing. I don’t think it’s a fluke when it’s repeatable. I don’t remember Alex giving “kisses” at this young an age.

Beth is celebrating her 1st birthday today. How time flies. She’s such a sweet little girl.

She’s still in the cruising stage, but at least once or twice a day she’ll let go and stand for a second or two. She’s so close to taking those first steps! As long as she waited to crawl, I thought it would take longer to get to this stage.

She’s starting to try and talk. So far it’s just gibberish (other than mama and dada), but she will say the same sounds over and over. So it must mean something to her. She’s not really taking to the sign language like I’d hoped, but oh well, what can you do? I keep doing it in the hopes that it will take.

Just this week she’s figured out how to drink from a sippy cup on her own. Alex got it quicker because he used to hold his bottle, but she never showed any interest in holding her own bottle. She’s been getting a sippy cup for a while now, but I always had to hold it up for her. Now that she’s doing it on her own. Of course, I don’t think Alex even got a sippy cup until after he turned a year old because he got nothing but formula to drink until then. Beth’s been getting milk for about 6 weeks now, ever since she started refusing to drink her bottle during the day. Now that she will do it on her own, she can take the milk with her. On Sunday she drank at least 4 cups of milk! Usually we’re lucky if she drinks 1 through the course of the whole day.

I tried on Friday to get rid of Beth’s evening bottle because we were out of formula and not wanting to buy more. Oh boy, that really did not work. I ended up putting milk in the bottle and warming that up. Back to normal. I do want to get her off the bottle, so pretty soon I’ll start decreasing the amount of milk to try and wean her slowly. But for now, she’s happy and we’re done with formula.

Beth’s 1 year doctor’s appointment is tomorrow, so we’ll find out then how much she weighs. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere over 27 pounds since that’s what I got when I weighed her a few weeks ago. Should be interesting. Alex’s appointment is at the same time, so we’ll see how much he weighs as well and compare.

Happy Birthday Beth!

Alex is finally making some progress! On Saturday, he came over to me and said he wanted to poop on the potty. And he did. He got his popsicle reward. Then on Sunday he told Eric he needed to go poopy. Eric got out the potty, but by the time we got him on it, he had some poop in his underwear. But we told him to try and see if there was any more, and there was. So he got another popsicle for recognizing that he had to go and almost making it, even if he waited just a little too long. Progress!

Sunday was the Packers first postseason game in several seasons. It ended in overtime in a heartbreaking sack and fumble that was picked up and ran back for a touchdown. Needless to say, Eric and I were yelling at the TV a bit. And we were in separate rooms at the time, so Alex comes into the kitchen and says “Relax Mama. Take a deep breath”. So I took a deep breath and hear Alex in the parlor saying “Relax Daddy. Take a deep breath.”

We had used that on Alex just the day before when he was all upset and crying over something.

Beth is now up to 8 teeth. I found tooth #8 on Saturday. That makes all of her front teeth, four on top, four on the bottom.

So Beth really started cruising this week. She’s up on everything and moving around as much as she can. Why sit when you can stand? Why crawl when you can cruise? Of course this also means many more bumps and bruises. Often you can see her looking around to see if anyone saw her fall. If someone’s watching, she’ll cry. If not, she won’t cry. Too funny. So most of the time I try to pretend I’m not watching to see if she’ll cry. If she cries anyway, I know she actually did hurt herself.

Alex turns 4 years old today. My how time flies! He’s really grown up in the last year. I don’t know if it’s just the age he is that there’s a lot of maturity between ages 3 & 4 or if it’s because of Beth being around and having to be more self-sufficient, but it’s really quite astonishing. He’s able to dress himself where a year ago he wouldn’t even try. He almost never pees in his underwear anymore, even after 4 or 5 hours. We’re still working on not pooping in his underwear, but I know he’ll get it eventually. And he wants to, and is actually able to, help in the kitchen. He’s sleeping in the big bed finally (with the help of the bed tent!). He’s constantly wanting to “do it myself”, which I almost always let him do. But then there’s the times when he wants someone else to do it, so I still get to help him at least once a day.

So when we went to the grocery store last weekend I asked him what kind of cupcakes he wanted for his birthday. That led into him wanting to help make them. So last night we made his vanilla confetti cupcakes with the vanilla confetti frosting. I had to put the cupcakes in the refrigerator to cool them faster because he was so impatient to frost them (and his bedtime was coming up quick!). I took some pictures of him helping, but I didn’t upload them last night, so I’ll have to add them later.

Happy Birthday, Alex - Don’t grow up to fast!

On Monday night, Eric called me downstairs for some “Show and Tell”. There was Beth, halfway up the first set of steps. Eric said he suddenly started looking around for Beth and didn’t see her. That’s where he found her. When he called me, he was hovering behind her.

Time to get the gate out.

The other day, Eric had both kids on his knees and was bouncing up and down with them. He said to Alex: “Alex, ask Daddy if he can feel the burn” because his muscles were staring to burn from the exertion. Alex hopped off Daddy’s lap and headed over towards the stove. Then he reached up to touch the hot pan on the stove! Eric yelled out and stopped him just in time. We had a conversation about not ever, ever, ever touching the stove, but it is obvious that Alex associated the word “burn” with the stove. Talk about needing to watch what you say - that’s certainly not one that anyone would worry about.

“Empty your mouth”, anyone? (My parents and sister will get this if no one else does.) And for the record: don’t ever use this phrase with Beth, she’s liable to do it. She currently will spit one food out if she sees something else that she wants more!