Grace: 7 months

This month snuck up on me way too fast! She is still wearing mostly 3-6 month clothes with the exception of the full pieces with feet because they are getting too short and her poor legs can't stretch out all the way. Weight wise she fits into all the 3-6 month clothes perfectly but we have started rotating them out to add in some new 6-9 months.

She is sitting by herself a little better every day but still not full on sitting up. She leans forward pretty far and still topples over pretty quickly. But she is on the move. I put her in one spot of the living room and a few minutes later she will have rolled and scooted her way somewhere completely different. I found her stuck in this corner on her knees trying to push off on the table. I'm totally not ready for a crawling baby yet!

She is seriously the most smiley baby -compared to Caiden anyway. It's just so weird how different he was at this age. It took a lot to get him to laugh and smile but you just look at her and she smiles so big. Here is a perfect example. This is both of them at the same age. Caiden loved the swing but he didn't feel the need to express it by smiling -seriously he never smiled on the swing but always wanted to be in it. Grace on the other hand is all smiles the second you put her in there.

I love to see Marc interact with her. I'm so glad we had a girl because it's just the sweetest thing ever seeing them together. I've taken these photos the past few weeks in the middle of the night when we put her in our bed. He is so tolerant of her when she's fussy and kicking and not wanting to sleep. He ALWAYS finds a way to get her to sleep. He says, "She loves when I breathe on her." (the first picture) Hahahaha -annoying to me, not to Grace! In this second photo I woke up to hear him snoring so loud and her sound asleep on his chest...again, annoying to me, not to Grace!

She is not really able to put herself to sleep yet...something we totally had Caiden a champ at right now. She is either being held in the rocker and laid down, falls asleep in the car or takes her naps in the swing. I know the longer I do this the harder it's going to be, but I just don't have it in me yet to let her cry it out until she figures it out on her own. Sigh...a disaster to come for sure.

Still no teeth popping through. I really can't believe it because she's so grabby and has to constantly put things in her mouth. And if I rub my finger along her gum line she just loves it and stops moving entirely.  She is also a tag baby...loves, loves, loves the tags on anything. If she eyes the tag -she's going for it and putting it in her mouth.

I think it's time for the play-mat to be packed away. Today she had it upside down, not sure it's serving the purpose it was intended for anymore.

OH! And this happened last weekend, too!

We found out that Sara and Dustin are having a BOY! That's right, I'm going to be an AUNTIE and Caiden and Grace are going to have a cousin come mid-June! 

We have a new family member!

...no, we didn't get a dog. My sister got married! And now I have a brother! This was our longest road trip we've taken with the kids. We had a four hour drive up to Santa Ynez (of course four hours is with no LA traffic and no pit stops for the kiddos). We left Thursday morning. The plan was to get out of the house by 9:30 but it didn't end up happening until 10:45. We stopped about an hour and half in and had lunch. Then we got back in the car and Grace fell asleep after about 30 minutes and slept the entire rest of the way. Caiden was up for about an hour and then fell asleep. It was really a pretty easy drive -they were both as good as they could be and we didn't hit any traffic!

We were real happy once they were both asleep!

This was the road to the house a couple of miles out. It was so beautiful. Nothing but horse farms and wineries.

The entire weekend was so much fun. We stayed in a huge house where the wedding also took place. There were horses, goats and sheep on the property which kept Caiden busy for many hours of the trip. As you can imagine, my Dad was in heaven too!

On Friday they rented a bus and we went wine tasting in the area. We went to three wineries with the kids in tow. They were great! Marc and Caiden even took a nap on the bus about half way through. I have to say that it's so much better when Caiden takes a nap. He was in such a good mood and able to hang all night long. On Saturday he didn't take a nap and was a pistol about half way through the wedding dinner. Needless to say we missed about an hour of the fun dancing time while putting the kids to bed.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner of sorts. Not really a rehearsal dinner but more just an excuse for whoever was there for the wedding to come hang out. There were only 25 total people coming for the wedding and 20 of them made it for the taco bar Friday night. There were also some awesome margaritas -which, as you can imagine after a full day of wine tasting, made for some very hungover people Saturday morning.

Speaking of Saturday morning -they coordinated one of their friends (also the officiant) who is a cross fit coach to do a session at 9am. Then, another friend who's a yoga instructor did a session after that. I'm not sure what I was thinking doing the cross fit session...I'm still so flippin sore I can barely walk down the stairs, then during the yoga session my down dog turned to this pretty early:

Saturday afternoon was the wedding. Here are some photos:

So let me explain this photo. Sara and Dustin didn't have anyone standing up with them. However, a few minutes into the ceremony Caiden got off his chair and went up there to stand next to/in front of Dustin. He did this all on his own. Just stood up there with his hands behind his back, smiling and looking at the crowd and then back to Sara and Dustin...just like he knew he was supposed to be there. It was so cute.

The weekend was so, so great. There was such a good group of people and everyone had a blast. Welcome to the family Uncle Dustin!

Grace's 6-month check-up

She weighed 14 lbs. 5 oz. (16th percentile), 26.2 inches long (63rd percentile) and her head is in the 52nd percentile. She received three shot vaccines and one oral vaccine. We'll go back for her 9-month appointment in May. 

Grace: 6 months

She has discovered the tag on her blanket and it's her favorite part. She will fiddle with it in her hand until she gets to the tag and then she will just suck on it.

She is so close to sitting up on her own but she's just not quite there yet. She leans really far forward and usually falls over after a few seconds. But she's still my little rolling queen and is even trying to scoot her little butt up in the air and push off on her legs when she's on her belly. Oy vey!

Her morning nap still isn't great. She seems to be in a pattern as of late where she takes just a short 30-40 minute nap around 10am and then her longer nap in the afternoon, around 1pm. And then I had been putting her down for another short cat nap around 5:30 but the past few days she's refusing to take it so I think we can nix that one and just put her to bed early. We were putting her to bed around 7:30 or 8pm (the same time as Caiden), but there's no way she can last that long if she doesn't take that third nap. So now we're trying to re-work our evening schedule. I forget how things change so much in the first year and you've really got to be open to change all the time.

There are no teeth popping through yet but I think they are oh so very close. She is constantly chewing and biting on anything she can get her hands on...including her hands.

She has said, "mama" once. It was a few nights ago in the middle of the night and she was having a coughing episode and kind of crying. Out of his slumber Marc immediately pops up and says, "She just said mama!" Again -trying not to compare- but Caiden was saying it all the time by now so she better get on the ball!

She's been sleeping in our bed and she just loves it. It's going to be so hard to break this. We try to put her down in her own bed but she always ends up in our bed by the morning. Part of the issue is that we've had a nasty cold going around our house. We all had it really bad about a month ago and then last week we got it again. Not as harsh, but still no fun. Caiden now is just trying to get rid of this gnarly cough that will probably stick around for another week or so and poor Grace has it too, she even wakes herself up in the middle of night and starts crying because she's uncomfortable -which is why she ends up in our bed. She seems to sleep so much better and hopefully the more sleep she gets the faster she'll recover.

I can't believe it's been 6 months. We are starting to see her personality come out more every day. She loves kisses and hugs and would be totally happy if you just held her all day long. She's obsessed with Caiden and sometimes he is the only one that can make her happy...and she just makes us so, so happy!

Caiden: 2 and a half

I was really on the fence about doing this post. Mainly just because of the time it goes in to writing it and taking the pictures but I feel like he has changed SO much since his 2 year post and he'll be a completely different person by the time 3 rolls around...so here it is.

He talks and talks and talks some more. He asks me one hundred questions every day. "What's this, Mommy?" is his favorite of all time. Seriously, I'm not joking. I get asked this question probably 100 times a day. He speaks in full sentences most of the time and it's so cute when he's trying to put words together that he's never done before. He'll stop and repeat the sentence a couple of times until it comes out correctly.

We have not attempted potty training. With a new baby it's really the last thing I feel like spending my energy doing and he really doesn't seem ready so I feel like it would be a lot of work right now. He'll always tell us when he poops in his diaper and is usually pretty eager to get out of it, but has only once told me when he's in the act of peeing but doesn't care about it being changed. I figure it's going to be a lot easier when I'm he's ready...which will be sometime this summer...stay tuned!

His sleeping habits are decent I think. He goes to bed around 8pm and wakes up anytime between 7-8am. He still has random nights where he'll wake up crying and he'll need one of us to go in and hold him for a bit. He can never tell us why he's crying, like if he's scared or something so we're not sure why it happens. We even put a night light in his room a few months ago but it still happens. He takes his nap around 1pm everyday and he'll nap anywhere between 1 and a half to 3 hours. It usually depends on how active he was that morning. He's still sleeping in his crib and will probably stay there until he's potty trained. I'm assuming you have to move them to a normal bed in case they need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night? I really like him in a crib though (which is another reason we haven't attempted potty training), he's never tried to get out so I figure there's no need to move him. It's going to be a sad day when he can come and go as he pleases.

We have a 'time-out' spot and it really works. We started this shortly after his second birthday when we watched one of our friends do it to their kid that was younger than Caiden. It was like a light bulb went off and we weren't sure why we didn't think of it sooner. He really gets threatened with it more than he actually has to go sit in it because he immediately follows directions when we ask him if he wants to go to time-out. He mainly has to go there when he is crying for no reason. I'm sure there's a reason in his head -but to us it's really no reason at all and doesn't warrant crying. The funniest thing -last week I was in the kitchen and I heard him saying, "Woody has to go to time-out." So I walk around the corner and I see him putting Woody in time-out and looking around saying that Mickey and Minnie need to go to time-out, too. Once he got them all there he then started counting just like we do when he has to go sit there. It was so funny. I wonder what they did to make them go to time-out ;)

He's a great eater. He will really eat anything you put in front of him. Unfortunately the poor kid still has his dairy, egg, nut and shellfish allergy, He gets exposed to some of them a bit here and there when we are out at a restaurant and it sucks because his voice will get all raspy and he immediately doesn't want to eat anything else because his stomach hurts and he can't breath very well. It's so hard to go to a birthday party, out to restaurants or just "wing it" with his food because everything has something in it he can't eat. We have to constantly be prepared anywhere we go with a meal for Caiden, it makes it almost not enjoyable to go out for meals. Despite all of that he eats what we do give him and usually never complains. He eats a lot proteins, fruits and vegetables.

He was obsessed with Curious George before Christmas so of course that's what I told everyone to get him but then literally on Christmas day he discovered Mickey and now that is up there in the ranks. It's about 50/50 on whether he asks to watch Mickey or George. The great thing about DVR is that I always have something in my back pocket when I need 20 minutes to put Grace down to sleep, make phone calls or respond to emails. I try really hard to only let him watch a few episodes a day but it's so hard now with Grace when I need to put her down. Sometimes that can take 20 minutes and that's a long time to leave a 2 year old by himself. The only way I know he won't be doing something he shouldn't be is if there is a show on.

He loves Grace. The first thing he almost always asks when he wakes up in the morning or from his nap is, "Where's baby Gracie?". He's always looking for her blankie to give her and he always wants to rest his cheek against her cheek. She was crying the other day and he looked at me and said, "What's wrong with baby sister?" I said, "She's tired." He said, "I think baby sister wants her blankie.". He's usually always so sweet her with -Now don't get me wrong, sometimes he'll try to lay on her or throw Sophie at her thinking she can catch it, but mostly he's aware of how to treat her and we couldn't ask for a better big brother.

We are having so much fun with him. Just listening to him talk and watching him do things can make the time go so fast during the day. Watching him sing and dance to all the songs he knows is so sweet and you can't help but smile. Marc and I find ourselves just looking at each other with amazement at all the new and cute things he does each day. It's amazing how these little people can make your heart smile so big!

After I brushed his hair I only had a few minutes to snap some photos before he took his hands and vigorously ran them through his hair to get it all messy.