With the weather so nice lately, and the sun setting no earlier than 7:30 pm, we’ve been spending a lot of our afternoons outdoors, often taking our dinners outside in the form of a picnic.  We lay out our blankets, eat simple food, while watching the kids play at the park.

ADVERTISEMENT
Jaren – 6 Months

Stats: none at the time of this update because we couldn’t get a 6 month appointment until 2 weeks after his half birthday.  All I know is that at 5.5 months he was 21.7 pounds.  Big boy is an understatement.  Wearing 9 month onesies and Size 4 Pampers now too.

Eating and Solids

Jaren started solids on a casual basis a week before he turned 6 months.  I started by giving him one “meal” a day, really only just 2-3 spoonfuls of banana.  Then we moved onto pureed squash, and now we’ve begun to introduce green beans.  He makes a funny face when he eats the greens, so I don’t think he’s a fan!  So far, most of it just dribbles out of his mouth.

Our plan is to start with one meal a day of just purees (dinner), then incorporate two meals a day with one meal purees (lunch), and one meal BLW (dinner).  By month 7, I’d like to fully transition him to BLW.  BLW is sooo messy, and I hate the cleanup and food waste, but I do think it helps them catch onto how to eat on their own a lot faster.

Sleeping

He is a great night sleeper, but his naps are hit or miss.  Some days he gets in really solid 1.5-3 hour naps, and other days it’s just catnaps all day long.  I definitely need to spend some time nap training him.  He goes down pretty easily for sleep at night, so there hasn’t been a need to really sleep train him.  He’s sleeping from 8 pm – 6 am for the most part, though there were a few nights this past month where he was waking up at around 4:30 am.  On average, he gets about 10 hours of night sleep, and 3 hours worth of naps.  Not enough for his age – I’ll be working on pushing up his bedtime earlier in the coming month.

Play

I don’t get it, but he is NOT a fan of the Jumperoo.  What in the what!!  What kid isn’t a fan of bouncing up and down and having easy access to toys coming at you from every direction?  He doesn’t mind just hanging on the floor on his tummy though.  He has really strong neck control and loves to reach for stuff to put in his mouth.  His favorite thing to gnaw on these days is my thumb and his board books.  He also LOVES playing “peek-a-boo”… it is the most surefire way to get him to endlessly laugh!

Development

He can roll over both ways, but still primarily rolls from back to front.  When on his belly, he often manages to turn himself 180 degrees, ending in the opposite direction of where he started.  He can also sit up for short periods of time before slumping over, and has really strong legs that he likes to stand on, with my support.  He also sprouted his 2 bottom teeth this month!  They’re not fully in yet, but they broke through his gums so the worst of the teething is over (for now).

Noelle – 32 Months

First Movie

Some friends with kids Noelle’s age invited us to watch Planes this past month.  I was hesitant because she can hardly even sit through a 20 minute episode of Dora, but my mom friends said their kiddos did great with some popcorn in front of them so I decided to give it a shot.  The dads ended up taking the toddlers while the moms hung out at a coffee shop nearby for some girl time.  Mr. Heels later told me that he didn’t think she was ready for the movies yet.  The kids got bored pretty quickly, but I think they’re smart enough to know a good from a bad movie, and I heard Planes is a snoozefest.


The popcorn kept her busy for a good 10-15 min before she got restless (L); Mad scientist at work with magnatiles.  Engineer in the making? (R)

Toddler Speak

“No no no, mama.  I do it.” – very matter-of-factly
“I (emphasis on the I) got it.”
“Jaren, my boy!” – just like how her dad says it.
“SAAAAAAM” – when her dad doesn’t respond the first time, she resorts to using his first name.
“Come heeeeereeeee Coco. Where areeee youuuu???” – Coco is our pet dog.

She talks like a little adult.  It is hilarious.  You should listen to the way she says things.  It’s just as important as what she’s saying.


“C’mon Mama!  Let’s go shopping!”

Toddler Sleep

Let me just say that I hate this phrase, “It gets better.”  It’s not quite as simple and linear as that.  I think the 1-2 year mark was the ideal “sleep” period for my girl, then toddlerhood hit.  Toddlerhood comes with its own set of issues.  Ever since Noelle turned two, it’s become increasingly more difficult to put her to bed.  We used to be able to do her bedtime routine in 15-20 minutes.  These days, it takes us about 45 min to an hour to get her down.

We try to get her into her room by 7:30 pm.  We start by reading 1-2 books.  She’ll want to draw.  She’ll insist that she’s not tired, and that she doesn’t want to sleep.  We go back and forth on this for a bit.  I insist.  She whines, cries, throws herself on the floor, and attempts to run away.  Then she needs this or that so we go fetch it for her.  I’m climbing in and out and in and out of her bed.  I finally get the room dark and start singing her a lullabye.  She declares that she needs to go potty.  I help her out of bed yet once again.  We get back in bed.  I tell her I’m going to tell her a story and then it’s night night.  I finish the story.  She begs me to stay ONE MORE MINUTE.  That minute turns to 10.  Enough is enough so I get up to leave.  She whines, she cries.  I come back in, and hold her hand.  Then I’m finally finally finally able to sneak away.  I actually count myself lucky that she’s down by 8:30 pm, and that it’s “just” an hour.  I’ve read and heard some awful toddler sleep stories.

For a while, she was waking us up at the buttcrack of dawn at 5:30 am too!  Thankfully, that seems to have passed and she is back to waking at 6:30 am on most mornings.  Since she’s in a twin bed now, we don’t do anything to prevent her from leaving her bed or room when she wants.  She knows she has the freedom to climb in and out of bed, so gone are the days when she was restricted to her crib until we were ready to get her in the mornings.


While trying to get J’s weekly picture, N wanted in on it too!

Worst Illness Yet

Right when I finished this update, Noelle started running a 103 degree fever!  She had a fever for 4 days when it finally broke, but those were probably 4 of THE toughest days/nights we’ve experienced in a LONG time.  She has never had a fever over 101 before, and never for more than a day.  There wasn’t much we could do except make her as comfortable as possible and hope that it would go away soon.  We gave her Children’s Advil to bring her temp down, had her drink as much liquids as possible, and snuggled with her as much as we could.  I also tried the onion in the sock trick (thanks Erwoo!), which successfully brought down her fever the following morning!   We ended up co-sleeping all week because she refused her own bed.  The sleep was awful for all of us – we are just not a co-sleeping family… perhaps she’s just not used to it because we’ve never really done it.

We kept her home from school for an entire week.  Luckily, Mr. Heels and I both work from home on Mondays so we were able to tag team watch her that day, on Tuesday I took the day off to be with her, and Mr. Heels took Wednesday off.  Gone are the days when we used PTO just to relax and enjoy our time off, haha.  I stayed home with her on Thursday, and Mr. Heels worked from home on Friday… so we somehow managed to survive this week.  We hardly got any sleep though with all the crying and fussing every hour in the middle of the night, not to mention the limbs in my face all night long.  Not sure how we’re both still functioning.  Caffeine must be a miracle drug.  Let’s hope next month is a MUCH smoother month.

Alrighty, that’s it for now.  Catch ya later, gators!