Esther at Seven Months!

Because I forgot to take six month pictures!!!

While we were at Massanutten with my parent, my grandmother passed away, and so the children and I drove north with my parents. It was a long drive! They did great though, and we had a good visit.

Elias loves everything living. Including little pill bugs. He loved finding them while we were at my parents house in June. 

Addeedators!!!

At least that's what Rebecca calls them! We went to Florida last week with my parents, sister, and niece, and everyone had a good time. Rebecca LOVES reptiles of all sorts, and has been asking to visit alligators for a while, so one of the things we did was went to Gatorland. She got to pet a baby alligator, and I think that pretty much made her day (and maybe her vacation-- she still is talking about the alligators!).

Cool "did you know" fact: Alligators can close and retract their eyes so far into their skulls that they can have holes in place of their eyes. This helps protect their eyes from objects as they swim through brush in water.

Yes, they feed the alligators chicken.

We went and fed the giant tortoises after seeing them hand feed the alligators. I think both girls really enjoyed seeing and touching them.

We took a train ride around the park.

Then we took a walk down a boardwalk through the breeding marsh. The trees are COVERED in birds nests, and there are alligator nests on the ground by the water.

The bird was hitching a ride!

WHITE Alligator!

We let the little ones play in the water and on the playground before getting back into the cars to go back to the rooms. :)

Our First Week 'Alone': Soap, X-rays, a Tick, and TOILET TRAINING?!

Well, I do have some pictures to put up here, but that requires getting more than 10 minutes without a little one demanding some time, so I thought I would at least put something on here.

Mum left on the 4th. Unfortunately she left after the Canadian fireworks, and before the American ones. I took pictures though... :) This left us on our own with the two little ones, which we hadn't been until that point. We've survived the first week with no casualties (despite the x-ray in the title of this post).

Monday... Rebecca decided to throw a huge tantrum, and got into a brand new bottle of baby wash. Justin was outside working on fencing, and I'm very thankful he was home, because that bottle of baby wash ended up all over Rebecca's bed, floor, half her clothing, and her... plus we're pretty sure she drank about half of it. The bottle was empty (had been an 8 or 10 oz bottle full). Know what consumption of baby wash does? It causes diarrhea. Yeah... that was GREAT. She spent the rest of last week in disposable diapers instead of cloth.

Tuesday morning, Elias didn't seem to be acting quite right, and then about two hours after he got up, he started spitting up really bright yellow. It actually looked about the colour of a breast milk bowel movement, just it was coming out his mouth... and he hadn't had a poopy diaper in a couple of days...so we got him a doctor's appointment. The doctor agreed the colour was rather odd, and sent us for x-rays to be sure there were no bowel/intestinal obstructions. The children's hospital clinic on this side of the water actually kept their radiology lab open a little late so we would be able to get him in that afternoon. He didn't have any blockages, so we're just hoping that he doesn't start spitting 'funny' colours again! If he does, I believe we'll be following up with either a pediatric neurologist or a pediatric gastroenterologist (or however that's spelled) for further investigation into the issue.

Wednesday was our 3rd anniversary. Hard to believe it's already been three years. Even harder to believe that we had two kids in less than three years! Anyway, we spent the day at home, and in the evening we took everyone to the beach for a walk. Wow are things ever dry around here right now! Places that are almost always FULL of water are so dried out right now that the ground underneath is cracking! Anyway, the beach we went to has a bit of a walk through a marsh where there are some bushes and such as well as lots of loooong grass... and somehow I picked up a tick. We found it on my back less than two hours after we got home... and so we went looking for how to remove a tick correctly (especially when you don't own the correct sort of tweezers!), and discovered the best method, aside from tweezers, is actually a little piece of thread tied in a knot around the tick's head, and then you just pull with gentle pressure and the thing backs out on its own! We're pretty sure it didn't even get through all the layers of my skin, but regardless, research is showing that it seems pathogens don't transfer from the tick to the new host until at least 24 hours after they've embedded, so there shouldn't be any issues whatsoever. :)

And then... Rebecca decided on Thursday to initiate some form of toilet training. She's been asking a few times every day for the last five days to use the toilet (though she hasn't actually used it yet). I felt she was feeling a little insecure on our big seat, so we picked up a toilet training seat for her this morning. I wasn't expecting to have a 20 month old training... I was expecting to wait until after the new year, lol! She LOVES the seat... it might mean she spends a lot of time in the bathroom in the next few days. We'll see how it goes... I think I'd prefer she train herself, and I don't think it would be far off-- she will tell us when she needs her diaper changed, when she needs to go (so she still has a dry/clean diaper on), and she is waking up dry most times from naps and often from nights as well... all big signs of readiness. Maybe we'll be diaper free by the time her birthday comes? Or maybe not, hehe.

First Birthday... and a little of the week following

These first two pictures from from Rebecca's actual birthday on the 11th. She ended up getting a fat lip that day by flipping forward off Justin's legs before he could catch her... so she got her first freezie that day. :)


Rebecca's frog-themed cupcakes and birthday cake! We discovered we think she may not tolerate red colouring very well, as she kept everything except the red icing she had down. Hmm... odd that she's fine with red candies though! I'll have to see if I can figure out which number of red it is that does it!


Birthday cake! She very much enjoyed it! However... she didn't eat the whole thing, lol. Sorry, I haven't any more pictures of her birthday party... I was kind of IN all the pictures instead of taking them! Hopefully some certain other people who had cameras will give me the pictures BEFORE Christmas of this year (HINT, HINT!!). I meant to take a picture of her in her little dress, and it totally slipped my mind until she wasn't wearing it anymore! I'm going to have to do that despite the fact that it isn't her birthday. She still looks relatively the same, so I don't think it will matter too much...

My parents, sister, and niece were visiting from the day after Rebecca's birthday, until this past Saturday, so we went out to various places while they were here. One of the days we went to the SPCA's petting zoo, where Rebecca had a GREAT time chasing the deer around, trying to pet them, and then we took them to Sandy Bottom, a park in our area. We had a good time, and got to see something that if Justin's eyes hadn't taken note, we would have been entirely oblivious to! (See the two pictures at the bottom of this post to see what that was!)

At the petting farm, they have a number of otters, who were very active and playful.
The said deer that Rebecca kept chasing around! It was a little big for her, I think!
Rebecca loves chickens. There's a little petting farm near our house, and every time I go there with her she'll stand and stare at them until I drag her away!

Now, this little goat is much more Rebecca's size!


Below is what Justin spotted...

Although Shannon insisted that it was a northern pine snake, I have since done some research on the snakes in our part of Virginia, and discovered that this is called an Eastern Milk Snake. It is non-venomous, and this one mostly just sat and stared at us as we photographed it... until I shook the branch a little too much, and then it lifted its head a little, as seen in the picture below. :)

While Rebecca Plays

Currently, Rebecca is taking books off her little shelf... and picking them up and putting them back... incorrectly! I guess, at least she's putting them back!

I spent the morning yesterday getting out the next size of clothing for Rebecca. It's very odd... there's not a huge difference in the size of the sleepers (just a little more length in the legs), but the clothing is actually very large on her! She's starting to fill out some of the clothing in the 3-6m size range (though most still fits her well), so we decided we would get out the next stuff so it can be put to use as well. :-)

Justin has decided to keep a tiny tree frog as a pet... I'm not sure I like this idea yet. I may ask him to get rid of it. Nothing wrong with the creature, I just don't see us as having anywhere really to keep the thing, and it's existence seems a little boring in a container that is about a 1/2 gallon size, I think!

This afternoon we have knitting group, which Rebecca really enjoys. Of course, when it's a room full of grandmothers (aside from your own mother) how could you help but enjoy yourself?! They spoil her rotten, one day a week, hehe. :-) They even bring little toys, clothing, and books, for her on occasion! She spends the couple of hours chatting with them all, sitting on laps, and entertaining everyone, especially now that she is extremely mobile, because you never know where she's going to pop up next! :-)

And, last of all, I picked up a book I heard about from the library yesterday. (Oh, and Rebecca walked, holding my finger, from the car to the library, through the library, and all the way back to the car... you wouldn't believe the stares a kid that small gets when they walk, hehe!!) The book is called "The No-Cry Sleep Solution", and I have to say, it was quite reassuring! Now, it affirmed my suspicion, that Rebecca is definitely lacking in the sleep department. it said that a baby the age on the chart they give should at least come close to the number of hours given, and if they're not the baby is probably chronically over tired, which is why they don't generally tired! I'd been thinking for a while that she had to be lacking, and this book confirmed it for me-- she's about 3 hours off from their low end of the average sleep needs of a baby her age! So... I'm aiming for the "minimum" number of hours right now. We actually accomplished the night time sleep, for the most part, last night, so we'll see about day time sleep today! It also told me that all these people who tell me that by 9/10 months my baby needs to be sleeping through the night every night(!!), so I must be doing something wrong, are actually incorrect! According to the book, first of all, many babies actually need a mid-sleep feeding, even all the way up to two years old! WOW! It also said that 1-2 night time wakings, one of which requires a feeding, and one of which simply requires comfort in some other way, is perfectly normal for a baby up to age 2 (and sometimes beyond... and then it said that even a lot of parents of 2 year olds are up every night at least once with the child because they need something or other! The book states that a "through the night sleep" is actually about 5 hours... even though people try to tell you that it is 8-12! Apparently it is a social construction that babies should sleep for 8-12 hours straight, not a biological fact. I feel so much better knowing that!

So... we're working on a bedtime routine... again. I know, I'm always working on one, lol. But, it worked last night, so we're going to try it again. Rebecca is lacking about 3 hours of night time sleep, and 1 of day time sleep. I'm not going to worry about the day time sleep, we're working on the night time sleep. So, the way to increase the sleep at night, is to make her go to bed earlier. We've been working to move her bed time back for a couple of weeks now, and my goal is to eventually have her in bed between 7 and 7:30 pm. Right now the goal is 8... which we made, and she was quieter settling down than she has been in ages, but the book says that when you find the "right" time, the baby will generally be very peaceful lying down to sleep... so I think perhaps 7:30 is the "key" time for her. We'll get there eventually.

The routine that seemed to work really well last night was this:
6:30 supper
7:00 walk
7:30 run bath
7:35 read story (which she sat still for, amazingly!)
7:40 bath
7:45 massage
7:50 nurse
8:05 bed (she quit nursing and was trying to play so I put her in bed)

Eventually, I want to have supper at 6, and basically shift everything 1/2 an hour earlier, and see how it goes, but they say in the book to go by 15 min increments every 2-3 days, so I guess next week she'll be going down (most nights) at 7:30. We have two nights a week that we are going to be out past that time... which is why I really want to have her going down at 8, but I guess she really needs somewhere in the 7:30-8 range, so we'll have to work around that.

September!

The weather is finally tolerable again! It's been so nice out lately. Rebecca and I have been outdoors a few hours every day for the last week (and I've been putting bug spray to good use... the mosquitoes are terrible!!!). We've moved the location of Rebecca's swing to being under the deck to the FROG, because in one of the storms of this last month the bracket we'd put in the tree fell down. She still loves to go for swings in it! I have dozens (literally) of pictures to get up here... hopefully they'll all be up by the end of the week... hopefully? Depends on how things go around here this week.

Anyway, here are a few of those pictures!

It is so hard to get pictures of Rebecca lately, because she's so interested in everything besides Mummy... so giving her something to keep her hands busy often results in decent...ish... pictures.

Rebecca and Daddy had some fun in the pool a few mornings, and she slept WONDERFULLY for nearly the full afternoon every time they had played in the pool. Rebecca adores playing in water, whether it is in our kiddie pool, the bath tub, or at the beach. I've even had comments from people at the beach about just how comfortable my baby is in the water. She even tries to swim away from me on her own!

This is some sort of spider... I have no idea what kind, but I thought it looked neat. I definitely need to look into a macro lens for my camera to get better pictures of these teeny tiny creatures though!

Rebecca just loves her alphabet blocks! Well, really, blocks of any sort, and balls of any sort as well, but these blocks make a hit any time they're out. Probably because I put them up in a location she can't reach when no one is watching her with them since she likes to take bites out of them (and has actually succeeded at removing little pieces of a couple! YIKES!).

Ah, yes... she's started pointing. She actually started more like 5 or 6 weeks ago, it's just been that long since I posted something with pictures, hehe! She points at everything and either says "at, at, at" or "ut, ut, ut"... we think the words she's saying are "that" and "what", but we're not entirely sure just yet, lol.

We introduced Rebecca to watermelon, which she loves, but the exterior was not particularly interesting to her. That is about as much interest in it as she showed at all!

And... she's getting really good at giving these funny looks. :-)

Other update stuff... Rebecca took her first, very short, walk on Wednesday, September 2. She still prefers crawling. Maybe one of these days she'll decide to get on those feet and stay that way though, hehe!

We were given guinea pigs, one of which was pregnant... she's no longer pregnant... she had two babies! They're very cute, though I haven't taken any pictures of the babies yet. All four creatures are multi-coloured, with black, caramel, and white all over.

We went to Richmond yesterday to do some of the Battlefield Tour thing they have out there (we need to go back to finish it!), and we found a lame turtle. Did you know turtles can limp?! Well, we've now acquired a box turtle who has yet to receive a name... and I have yet to convince it should eat things. I guess I'll have to catch it a worm or something. Anyway, we don't figure that the thing will survive too well in the wild when it is missing a foot, has two chips out of the top shell, a chip out of the bottom shell, and looks like the shell was crushed at some point... so we're going to do our best to keep it happy and healthy, we hope!