visit to York, PA and Betsy

This trip to York, PA took way longer than I expected (twice as long) and Gavin apparently naps well in cars but has trouble going to sleep sleep in them. Regardless, once we were there it was a calm respite. The days went by slowly and there was lots of time for oogling, coloring, learning to play cards, eating etc. We went on a hayride/pumpkin patch one morning, out to dinner that night and to a playground the next morning.

The whole gang

Mia & Betsy walking the dogs

Next to the tractor tire that pulls the hayride

Our pumpkins!!

Betsy and Gavin at the park

Gavin's first food

Mia helped prepare and deliver Gavin's first taste beyond milk. Following in his big sister's footsteps he also had banana.

Peeling

Pureeing

Feeding

Not so sure (silver spoon provided by Gavin's great aunt Janet)

Unlike Mia, however, Gavin seems to have either a heightened gag reflex or a residual tongue thrust reflex. Even today (at close to 6 months old) although she shows a great interest in eating (watches us eat/drink, opens mouth for spoon) it frequently causes him to gag and spit it out.

Apple picking is so much fun, we pick apples one by one!

9/17/11

In an effort to give Dave time to work on his dissertation, we try to have lots of fun outings just the 3 of us on weekends. This weekend was apple/raspberry picking! It was an organic orchard so the apples aren't beautiful but they were yummy. We had a picnic snack before the drive back to Philly.

Picking

Posing

Sampling

Mia update

A candid picture Dave took of Mia. She likes to put things on her fingers (marker tops too).

Although one would assume that Gavin is doing all of the development right now, Mia has actually been blowing me away lately with some subtle mannerisms, remarks and so forth that remind me that she is really maturing. Here are just a few:

*she sits criss cross apple sauce style now (formerly Indian style); not sure if she started this because of daycare's new yoga lessons on Wednesdays or if it just happened (I sit this way all the time)

*I would like to officially consider Mia potty trained now. I'm sure she'll have accidents still but up until this past week I've felt that Mia was potty training (we started Christmastime 2010) and it seems something finally clicked 9 months later. She runs to the potty on her own now instead of needing us to remind her. She has also (finally) expressed an interest in going for naptime and night time without a pull up. So far so good!

*Mia seems to have a crush on Simon at daycare and Jeremy (her cousin). She mentions and asks about them often and gets very giddy and excited when she sees them, frequently ignoring anyone else in their immediate radius.

*I always wondered how Dave and I would know when to stop talking about Mia as if she wasn't there and the day has come. We were saying something, who knows what, it wasn't necessarily bad but maybe just a matter of fact thing like, "I think she's getting tired, what do you think" and Mia looked at us and asked "are you talking about me?" and she did this several other times after that. We decided at that moment not to talk about her or parenting anymore in her presence.

*This awareness of her surroundings extends to a social awareness at school too. The other day she wouldn't let me fix her hair before I left her at daycare and she had helmet head (we ride to school on the bike/bike seat). I told her it was messy and she didn't seem to care. THEN her friends chimed in and said, "yeah, Mia it looks messy" and she looked at me and I asked her again if she wanted me to fix it and she said, "yes".

*Mia also seems to have honed her reasoning skills a bit. For example, when I asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom after her nap she looked at me and said, "no, I went before my nap" whereas before it would have been "no" without any attempt to convince me of why.

*2 areas Mia still hasn't mastered: (1) at night we sing Mia 3 songs and she has gotten smart at asking for longer songs like "On top of spaghetti" for instance, which has many verses. In order to one up her Dave and I recently cut it to the first and last verses and she hasn't said anything yet. (2) in her memory game, I could put 6 cards (3 matches) upright so she can see the pictures and then I rehearse them with her before turning them over and she still can't consistently remember where the matches are. If I do 4 cards she can do it (or I guess at least the chances of doing it by luck are high too).

*this one isn't really a development but "Mia" (for my birthday) got me a manicure + girl polish gift certificate so we are going to have our "ladies outing" sometime this coming week, which hopefully can become a fun tradition. I love having "just us girls" time. She does too, as is evident when she chants "no boys allowed" with a smile to Dave.

Mia funnies Although we have many more (at least 1 a day) recorded in a composition book we keep at home, here is our recent favorite: I asked Mia, "how did you sleep?" and she responded by putting her hand to the side of her head, closing her eyes and making snoring noises and then said, "like this".

I take Mia to a Saturday gymnastics class now. In October, we are going to a mommy and me music class and maybe when she is 3 we will do art classes to see which large category she likes best before committing to anything.

Mia still loves her brother after 4 months and he, clearly, loves her right back and often tracks her as she walks across the room.

Here is Mia in her dress up clothes having a tantrum. I wanted to get a picture of Mia all dressed up but Mia kept getting too close to the camera so I had to keep backing away and when I finally said sternly to stay put for a minute she completely melted down. But doesn't she look cute anyway?

Although most children have gone to Burger King even prenatally, seeing as how we are vegetarian we have never gone with Mia until recently. When we went to get water ice and found that the stand was closed for no apparent reason we had to think quick. In order to fill that sweet spot we went to get hot fudge sundaes from BK. I would venture to say Mia liked hers.

Stacie is 30!

Although we were all a tad under the weather, my birthday was wonderful! It started off with a pancake breakfast (plain and apple/cinnamon) made by Dave and served with honey dew melon and a strawberry smoothie. I went upstairs to find a cute birthday sign and some presents. "Mia" bought me a gift certificate to get a manicure + little girl polish so we can be girly together (I am super excited about this and may make it a regular mommy daughter thing). Dave got me a really nice digital video camera, which can record under water and is totally shock proof so I can drop it all I want (stay tuned for clips of the kids, something I feel this blog has been lacking). By 10:30am or so we went to the Philadelphia art museum for the first time. After a relaxing afternoon at home (during naptime) I was treated to an amazing dinner consisting of portabello wellington with chipotle aioli and brocoli raub with a delicious coffee chocolate cake for dessert.

Gavin is 4 months old

Stats: Gavin started off the month 19 lbs, 3 oz and finished it off 21 lbs, 6 oz. His daddy, who was also a very large baby was 18 lbs at 4 months so Gavin has his dad beat by a landslide! Also, Gavin is in 12 month clothing only by sheer denial that my little baby can't possibly be in 18 month clothing already. 12 months are snug but fit length well, 18 month is comfy but way too long.

In a nutshell, August was:

rashy, clear-eyed, loud, hilarious, interactive, sleepless, splashy, spitty, helpful, heavy

On 9/1 (Gavin's 4 month birthday) we went to the Philly zoo.

Here are Mia and Gavin in the double stroller.

August in more detail:

Gavin developed a rash, like Mia did during her 3rd month, that turned out to be yeasty. Since yeast likes moist/warm we stopped with the cloth diapers for this month because the disposable seem to keep him drier. We will be modifying our cloth diaper regimine and going back to it soon hopefully because the rash is much better (using Nystatin) and I hate the money and pollution aspect of 'sposies. Gavin's blocked tear duct (again like Mia's during her 3rd month) cleared up, which is great for pictures :) Gavin started staring at his hands at the beginning of August and was regularly opening his hands to grasp for toys put near his knuckles by mid-month. He also continues to be a babbler and plays with the volume of his voice a lot. By mid- month our little thumb sucker disappeared. If you had told me this before I had children I would have thought this would be good news but things couldn't be further from the truth. Sucking his thumb was the best thing that had happened to his (and our) sleep (he could put himself to sleep from awake/drowsy to passed out and he could soothe himself when he woke up in the middle of the night). Why he stopped being able to suck his thumb is beyond me (he seems to try still but can't coordinate it). Perhaps as a result of this (or maybe both are due to something else completely) we are now waking up 2-3 times a night just like we were when he was a newborn. What a tease to have been sleeping 9 hr nights and now this! In an attempt to try ANYTHING new to get us out of this sleepless funk, he slept a few nights in his crib starting 8/30 (versus the co-sleeper by the bed) but it didn't really help much. Putting him to sleep for naps isn't as easy as it was either. Sigh, we just have to remember (and hope!) that these infants go through phases like this often and although it feels like it has been months it has really only been 3 weeks or so since he used to sleep through the night. I'm hoping it was an oncoming cold that got him stuffy that made him stop sucking his thumb that made him wake up a lot. He has had a lot of congestion recently (even got baby laryngitis) and so it isn't out of the question though I don't remember congestion preceding the thumb strike. In any case, Dave reports that he can hold his bottle on his own for a little bit now. He also gnaws on his fingers but this could just be body discovery versus teething. Oh and during bath time now (and even in his bouncy chair) he does such body/hip thrashing that he scoots right off of the reclining seat and practically submerges himself in the tub, not to mention splashing everywhere, which Mia thinks is funny. For fun Gavin likes holding rings, spinning a ball around (see picture below, ball by his left arm),

kicking, smacking, grabbing hair, and blowing raspberries and covering everyone with the spit that accompanies said raspberries. Towards the end of the month his reaching definitely became goal-directed as he will reach in a coordinated fashion towards his midline to grab at a ring or Dave's face. Gavin continues to laugh, sometimes now spontaneously (8/26), and will often chuckle when I sing "Don't Worry Be Happy" to him. Beginning 8/29 we hired Francesca as a parent helper to watch Gavin 3 hrs every morning (M-F) while Mia is at daycare so Dave can get some uninterrupted dissertation work in before his fall deadline.