Nine and a Half Months

I took Lauren for her 9 month well-check (a couple of weeks late) at Dr. Smoak's office on Monday. Her latest stats are: 28in (75th percentile) and 19lbs, 12 oz (60th percentile). It looks like her height is picking up while her weight is slowing down a little bit. The weight part is a bit of a surprise to me since this girl seems to eat any and everything within reach.

Recently, I showed Mason some of the little videos I took of him as a baby, and then I started to feel bad when I realized that I don't have as many of Lauren. So I've been on a video recording kick lately. Here's one of her walking with her little wagon - the same wagon Mason learned how to walk behind.

Tub Trouble

Saturday night, Mason had a bit of trouble during bath time. He was trying to get both feet into something they shouldn't be in, all while standing up in the water-filled tub. So of course he slipped face first onto the side of the tub which resulted in a gash on the chin.

For the record, Dave was in charge of bath time while I was getting the kids clothes and rooms ready for bedtime. However, I don't blame him for not paying close enough attention. Bath time is usually a bit crazy, especially when you have to watch the baby who is doing everything she can to climb in the tub and the kid who is doing everything he can to empty the contents of the tub onto the floor.

At first, we didn't think much of Mason's injury. It wasn't gushing blood and Mason wasn't complaining too much. Once we did see some blood on the towel, we got Mason out of the tub and took a closer look. Although the cut was probably only a couple centimeters long, it looked pretty deep, so we opted to head to the Urgent Care which was closing in about 20 minutes. Mason became most upset when we tried to cover his injury with a Bandaid.

I stayed home with Lauren while the boys went off for the chin repair, so I don't know details about what happened there. However, Dave said Mason did really well. They wrapped him what looked like a burrito wrapper to keep his hands away from his face while the doctor super glued his gash together. (Thank God the regular stitches weren't required.) Dave tried keeping Mason calm by blowing up latex glove balloons. The doctor said it should heal beautifully with no scarring.

After a quick stop at the Harris Teeter for some blueberries to reward Mason for a job well done (my favorite part of the whole story), they were back. I was expecting Dave to be carrying Mason in the house since by this time it was way past bedtime, but Mason was all keyed up and excited to show me his blueberries and tell me what happened at the doctor's office. He rested well that night and by the next day seemed no worse for the wear.

If I could get Mason to cooperate, I'd take a picture of his chin just to document the occasion, but he's not too keen on showing off his injury.

Back Porch Cafe

This afternoon while Lauren was napping, I decided to treat myself and make a pot of coffee. (I figured I was justified since I skipped having morning coffee.) Mason has recently enjoyed sips of our iced coffee on the rare occasions that we've had it, so he asked if he could have some cold.

Now, I usually don't let him have his own cup of coffee - in fact I've never done that before - but today I was looking for something fun and different to do while Lauren was sleeping. So I made a cup of hot coffee with a little milk for myself and made a cup of cold milk with a little coffee for Mason. Then we took our cups and a game of Chutes and Ladders out on our spiffy new refurbished back porch (more on that later) and pretended we were at Starbucks.

We enjoyed our little game together. Each time I said , "It's your turn", he would say, "Nope, not yet. It's coffee time!" and take a sip, then he would proceed to spin the spinner. I told him he would make his father proud.

Here he is enjoying our game. He was proud that he won.



In this picture you an see a little preview of the redo of the screen porch we've been working on for several weeks. Dave has done a lot of work and we're almost finished. We just love it, and now we spend a lot more time out there. I think we've had all of our meals out there the last couple of days. The last step will be to paint the floor, and as soon as it's done, I'll post a better description and some more pictures.

9 Months!

My little baby isn't such a little baby anymore. It was nine months ago today that Lauren came into the world. Every day with her gets a little easier and definitely more fun. I love that her personally is coming out more and more, and she's showing interest in particular things.

Today she's crawling like crazy all over the place - including up the stairs as of yesterday! (Time to break out the gate for the bottom of the staircase.) She's also pulling herself up very easily and can cruise around the furniture without falling down.

She's already showing some signs that she's going to be a much better eater than Mason ever was (and still is.) At this age, Mason still only ate a few baby foods, and absolutely nothing resembling regular food except for Puffs. Lauren seems to like everything I've given her and is starting to even refuse some baby food. The more adventurous things she's eaten lately include cherries, cheese, yogurt, pizza crust, banana slices, pancake, and sweet potato chunks. Plus of course her favorite: mommy's milk. We are still happily nursing several times a day. I'm glad she's showing no signs of stopping that any time soon.

All of that eating is definitely making her grow fast! We're not due to go to her next check up at the doctors office for another few weeks (we split her 9-month appointment into an 8 month and a 10 month just to split up the vaccinations) so I just weighed and measured her myself today: she's 19lbs and 27" long. She's outgrown almost all of her 9 month clothes and is into 12 month sizes. I've almost exhausted all of our lovely baby gifts, and I'm enjoying shopping for her myself for a change.

She's making several sounds now and has said her first word: Dada. (Although, she says Dada all the time, so I'm not certain she's actually assigned that to her actual DaDa.) But she's definitely looking at family members when their name is called, and she knows her own name. She can also recognize "Buzz" (Georgia Tech's mascot) thanks to PoohPa during their last visit. I also hear her say "ya ya" and "ba ba" (but probably not meaning you just yet, Baba) quite a bit.

She's also much improved in the sleep department. She's pretty regular in going to bed around 7:30 each night, up around 4:30 for a quick snack, and then back to sleep until around 6:30. Then she'll take two naps a day, each for 1-2 hours. Occasionally she's up another time during the night, but thankfully I can just go in to give her a quick snuggle, put her back down, and she goes back to sleep on her own without a fuss. Another nice thing is that she usually wakes up happy and just plays a bit in her crib before "calling" for me. Mason woke up crying every time until he was at least 2 years old.

Still only two teeth. I can see a couple more trying to come out, but it just ain't happening yet. I can tell that she's pretty uncomfortable with them sometimes. She often has a rash around her mouth from jamming any and everything in there. Including her entire fist.

Her favorite thing to do these days is pull every book off the shelf and proceed to eat them. She does like to read them with me too though. She's gotten very good at turning pages. Her favorite book is one of her big brother's former favorites called Baby Food. (Thanks Aunt Anna!)

She also likes to crawl around in Mason's living room pillow forts and play with her steering wheel driving game which plays music. She's mesmerized my any sort of music. She loves to watch the opening and closing credits of Mason's favorite TV shows. And her faces just lights up whenever she sees Mickey Mouse.

As Dave put it today, she looks like a mini-human now. My baby certainly is growing up fast. Here is her 9 month Pooh Picture. (My Facebook friends can go to my profile to see her Pooh Pictures from each month.)

Falling Behind

It seems like I'm falling behind on everything these days. None of it is really important, but I still feel like I'm treading water sometimes. For instance, it's been a long time since I've had a chance to update this blog. Even longer since I've had a chance to clean my bathroom. I'm definitely realizing how much easier it was to get things done when Mason was in preschool - even though it was only two mornings a week.

Since my last update, Dave spent a week in Germany for work. I was dreading the trip since I wasn't sure how I could handle two kids by myself for 7 straight days. However, my mom and dad came up for most of the week to visit and help out. It was definitely a big help to me. I was able to get the car inspected and visit the doctors office without having to take the kids. It was also an enormous help to have them come with us to have professional pictures made. (Which was something else I've been behind on... poor second kid has a lot less pictures than the first.)

Now I just need to find the time to go grocery shopping, update Lauren's baby calendar, get my haircut, buy Lauren some new clothes before she outgrows everything, organize closets, figure out what to do with all the outgrown baby toys and clothes, change my sheets, finally finish the ongoing porch re-screening project, stain the new kids' table, scan pictures, and clean the floors.

However it seems like my projects for today are taking a shower, feeding everyone a healthy meal, and dancing with the kids in the living room. If I can get all that done, it will be a pretty good day. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.