It’s been too long….

It has been a while since I have posted.  It’s hard to keep up with everything and it’s so easy to post photos on facebook that I tend to do that and post little status updates there instead.  I will try to keep up with this better.  What I miss is documenting what is happening with the kids more specifically.  Here are some updates:

CORA !!!

• Cora is 8 months old already!  She is such a little peanut! She only weighs 15 lbs 7.5 oz.  She’s fairly long, almost 28 inches, and I think that’s the 85th percentile for length, but she’s under the 10th percentile for weight.  But she is healthy, happy, gorgeous, sweet, cuddly, social, and she just adores her big brother (and Mommy and Daddy too!) She is so happy when he is near her and she squeals and laughs and beams the whole time.  Even when he’s not as gentle as he should be, she doesn’t care.  He loves to be the entertainer, so it works out.

Such a happy little thing!

• Cora just got her first tooth and the second one is coming in too. Jeff got teeth at about exactly the same age.
• Cora scoots all over the place, and gets up on her knees and rocks, so I think crawling is not far off.
• She sits up well now and one of her favorite things is to empty the basket full of play kitchen stuff and play food and chew on it. 
• Cora loves music and rocks and smiles and bobs her head. It’s so cute.

• When in the car, Jeff and Cora entertain each other, and Cora shakes her head back and forth to make Jeff laugh, and he does anything he can think of, like pretending to bonk his head with his doggie, or playing peek-a-boo.
• Cora is done breastfeeding. I am not sure what happened exactly, but it must have been just easier for her to eat from a bottle and she just preferred it after I introduced it when I had to go back to work.  She was only going to have to eat a few feedings a day, three days a week, and so I thought I could keep up, but one day she refused to eat with me, and I tried a few more times, and she just wouldn’t.  So, since she was about 6 months old, we have been on formula, and will continue until she’s a year old. 

 

• She is eating solids better now. At first when I tried at around 6 months, she still had the tongue reflex to push things out of her mouth, so it was pretty pointless.  Jeff was bigger at this age (a couple inches longer and about 5 pounds heavier) and at that time he was still breastfeeding and I think my supply was not quite enough (he ended up unexpectedly quitting breastfeeding cold turkey at 8 months and we went to formula, kind of like what Cora did) and when we introduced rice cereal the first time he was in heaven and so excited to eat, and eat everything! Cora didn’t seem to care much at first. But now she is into it, she is eating cereals, vegetables, some fruit, and meat, as well as Cheerios and rice puffs. I use a little hand grinder to grind up food like chicken, green beans, and rice, and that seems to be her favorite.  She’s actually not that into fruit which is funny, it’s like she thinks it’s a little too tart or something. Or maybe she’s more of a savory person instead of sweet.  Probably not a bad thing. :)  She likes a little bit thicker texture, so the grinder works well, and is LOTS cheaper than buying Gerber baby food, that’s for sure!!

 

• Cora is a great sleeper just like Jeff was, she goes to bed usually between 7:30 and 8pm, sometimes a little earlier, and wakes up between 7 and 7:30am usually. There was a 3 week period where it was a bit before 6:30am, and I am glad she’s back to sleeping a little later. That was when we started offering more solids,  so I think she was just getting hungry earlier.  At home she takes a really long morning nap, sometimes 2.5-3 hours, and then a shorter afternoon nap. At daycare, she doesn’t sleep nearly as much, but she comes home happy and often just goes to bed a little earlier or has a short evening nap before bed to make up for it.
• I am so happy that she’s such a happy little thing, she wakes up happy and talking in her crib in the morning, she likes to play and can entertain herself for a while. She loves to cuddle and touch faces, she likes dancing or any rhythmic movement, she loves to hear people sing, she’s just happy and her little dimples are present often. :)  What a blessing!!

Isn’t she gorgeous?

JEFFERSON !!!!

• Jeff is such a big boy in so many ways.  He goes to preschool on my work days, MWF, and loves it.  He’s one of the kids that they have to not call on all the time, because his hand is up and he wants to answer every question and wants to be involved.

 

• POTTY. Ugh. Rough. Well, we’re still working on it. He goes #1 pretty much just fine, and very rarely has accidents, although he kind of likes to wait until the last minute. #2, well, for a while he refused to even try to sit. We are at least getting back to him being interested and willing to try. We realized after his major setback after doing pretty well way back in May/June (Kirby being gone so much for work, then suddenly being gone from home for so long this summer and during that another absence from Daddy, and yet ANOTHER extended absence in September after we got back) that we were expecting too much and trying to force it.  It is frustrating for us, but we feel bad for pushing it if he was not ready. I’ve read that when that happens, often it takes longer than it would have had we just waited to start. We would not have started potty training, or we would have just let him tell us if he wanted to, had we known all of that was going to happen….. Anyway, so now we really just want him to be comfortable going #2, whether he decides to put it in the potty, or in his pants.  He holds it for SO long that he feels sick and his behavior and ability to listen or to concentrate are terrible. I think we are progressing at this point, but it’s slow and of course we just wish he could be comfortable with pooping. We’ll hope for more progress and good news soon.

 

• One thing that has progressed so fast is Jeff’s interest in letters/phonics/reading.  He knows all his letters, uppercase solidly and lowercase pretty well (sometimes he has trouble remembering the differences between b, p, and d).  He knows all the sounds and he can sound out words pretty amazingly. We can give him spellings of simple 3-5 letter words (and more if they are written down) and ask him what the word is and he can figure it out most the time, especially if it is a simple pronunciation that is mostly phonetic, without some of the strange English rules. He already knows some of the harder things that happen in the English language like the silent “e,” and he’s learning some of the combination consonants that make one sound like “ck” makes the sound [k], “ch” makes the sound [tʃ] and “th” makes the sound [ð] or [θ].
• Music. It is Jeff’s favorite thing for sure.  He seriously sings constantly, either songs he knows (he knows words to songs better than I do) or he’s making up lyrics to his own melodies, and often has titles for them too.  He can identify instruments in songs, and always wants us to pretend we’re the musicians, and he assigns us each an instrument to pretend to play. He has good rhythm and pitch, and is so passionate in his singing. His favorite band right now is the Avett Brothers. We love how he loves music.  This past term, I was a featured guest on the students’ opera workshop production, playing Carmen in a scene, and singing the Lakme’ duet.  The kids often came with me to rehearsals since they were on my days “off” and often they would play in the hall with one of the students, but sometimes they were in the room and would watch, since Jeff does really well just watching and staying quiet. One day our conductor was gone, so Jeff sat up in the maestro’s tall chair, and I told him he could watch from there.  Well, he started conducting, and he was doing so well staying on the beat, and adding emotion and getting bigger when it was loud and smaller when it was soft, and shaking his head and just getting so into it that the students, director, pianist, and myself were almost unable to stay on task.  It brought tears to my eyes and at the same time made me smile and laugh. After the first scene, the pianist asked him to conduct and give her the downbeat for the next scene, and without hesitation, he seriously did a perfect upbeat and downbeat. Everyone about died. 

 

• Jeff is so so tall and grown up looking that when most people guess his age, they think he’s 5. It’s crazy to think that we may be advised to not start kindergarten when he has just turned 5, since he doesn’t turn until the middle of August. I can hardly imagine waiting, but thinking of later on how young he would be, graduating from high school at 17, and not knowing what his development will be like when he’s getting into high school, I don’t know. From what I’ve read, for boys it’s often that if they’ve been born before June and turn 5 then they are probably ok, but after that it’s probably a good idea to wait…..we’ll have to see.
• Quotes:
  • From when Kirby was gone on his last big trip: Jeff: “I don’t want just three, Mommy.” Me: “What do you mean, Jeff?” Jeff: “I don’t want just three, just me, you, and Cora. I want Four. Four people. I want Daddy.” 
  • When I was leaving for my opera performances: “Mommy, you look so beautiful!”
  • When we asked him what he most wants to be when he grows up:  “I mostly want to be a Daddy.”
  • Jeff one day in the car: “Daddy, when I’m older will you be a Grampa and Mommy will be a Gramma?” Kirby: “Yes, we will Jeff when you have kids!” Jeff: “Then do you think I could borrow some of your underwear?” :) 
  • This is bad, but unfortunately Kirby said a bad word in front of Jeff a couple times. One day, he pooped his pants and he came out and said, “Um, I pooped in my pants,” and Kirb responded, “That’s ok Jeff. We’ll get you changed.” And then Jeff said, “Oh, thank you, Daddy!  Thank you for not saying damn it!”  Bad Daddy. Not happy about it, but I guess it’s kind of a funny story now. :)

Well we have lots more to blog about, and I’ll try to catch up with some more of the things that have been going on.  We are so excited for Christmas and seeing family and friends! Blessings to you all in this holiday season and all your days!