August 16, 2010

Lauren is officially mobile now. She doesn't exactly crawl, but she scoots herself around well enough. She uses her hands and toes to pull and push while her belly slides across the floor. She is still so happy and smiley so much and loves to eat.

She seems to like lumpy mashed up fruits more than smooth purees. The way she eats is interesting - she curls her tongue and sort of squeezes it back to her throat. Hard to explain, but she looses some of it out the front of her curled tongue a lot. It's funny to watch. She's getting better though. She can sit up pretty well on her own now. She'll do it anywhere from a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes. She doesn't really seem to understand why she falls over though. But she doesn't mind - just rolls over and looks for something else to play with. She just had her 6 month check up and she's doing great. She's 26 3/4" long (75-90th percentile) and weighs 16lbs, 12oz (50-75th percentile). You'd never know she was thin for her size - especially after you take a look at the rolls on her legs!

Dylan really likes draw pictures - mostly of people. She's getting better all the time ("I'm soooo good" she says) and likes to give them as gifts to people she sees. Every scrap paper around here has a picture of a multi-colored person. I've attached a picture of a rainbow she drew with glitter.

Here is her description of it, "There is a bird under the rainbow. There's rain coming down. The thing on top is a handle with strings coming down to hold the bucket. And there is a cake in the bucket for the judges." All of her pictures are accompanied by a story. She's a great story-teller. And she loves to make different sorts of made up crafts with paper, tape, googlie eyes, a hole-punch and staples. She even make a purse for herself.

Dylan's a great swimmer - she dives down all the way to the bottom of our 6' deep pool to get toys. Peyton is getting better at diving down, but he's still pretty floaty. He takes a deep breath and goes under, flapping and thrashing around, all while his butt is still at the surface. Now he can dive down to the 3' deep section to get things and loves to do it, so he'll be in the deep part in no time. They both like to jump in and do Canon Balls and Jack knives.



Peyton is ... well, he keeps me on my toes. I just checked out some new discipline books from the library. But when he's alone (no siblings around) he's well behaved and gives lots of love. Unfortunately he's not an only child.

Todd brought home a Nintendo Wii video game system and Peyton is awesome! At first when we'd play against each other I'd play gently, not trying to win too fast. But soon I realized that I had to fight HARD because he beats me every time! He is very patient and learns quickly which buttons to push and how to hold the controller for different games. He can maneuver his way around the whole system with relative ease. Dylan, on the other hand, does not. She gets very frustrated very fast. One wrong move and she's done. She throws her own little tantrum while everybody else finishes their game, mistake after mistake.

July 10, 2010

Lauren can roll over both ways now. About a week ago she rolled over onto her tummy in her crib, then back over the other way onto her back again. Now she seems to be able to do it whenever she wants. She loves to play Pat-a-Cake with her friend in the mirror. They squeal together and do lots of wet, sloppy kisses.

July 1, 2010

Lauren is the proud owner of two brand new, shiny white TEETH! This morning Todd found one and this evening I found another. With very minimal fussiness, too! She's got the bottom two front teeth just poking through. It's hard to see them, but you can feel their sharpness - that's for sure!

June 24, 2010

Lauren decided that she wants to roll over now. Last night she rolled over for the first time in her crib. Today each time I’ve laid her down, she’s rolled over to her tummy. She is such a sweet and happy baby; full of smiles and little giggles. She is just starting to be ticklish. She laughs most in response to Dylan, who loves to get right in her face to talk to her. She doesn’t mind so much when her hair gets yanked.

At Lauren’s 4-month check up she was 24 7/8” long (75^th percentile) and weighed 13lb 8oz (50^th). She’s grown some rolls on her legs and is outgrowing her clothes. The combination of nursing and giving her bottles of baby formula is working well. She reaches out and grabs things now and wants to put everything in her mouth. She’s very aware of what’s going on around her and turns to look at sounds (especially Dylan’s and Peyton’s sounds). She likes to babble and make noises – generally with her hands in her mouth. A few days ago she discovered her feet and loves to chew her toes.

Dylan & Peyton are doing swim classes and both can swim unassisted now. They’re both the smallest kids in their classes but they’re doing great. They can jump off of the diving board at the Udall pool, come up on their own and swim to the edge. There’s no diving board at our pool, but they love to jump in off the side! Peyton likes to swim on his back. He’s either wild and jumping over and over again or calm and floating on his back. Dylan is very competitive and wants to race him all the time. They swim the same speed so we have lots of ties and “two winners!”

Dylan knows her letters and can count to 20 (we haven’t really gone up from there by ones) and by 10s up to 100. She asks me a lot, “How many is fifteen?” I don’t really know how to respond, “One more than fourteen.” We started introducing adding and subtracting and she’s very interested, but doesn’t do it on her own yet.

I can confidently say that Peyton is done potty training now. There were accidents here and there for a long time, but I think he’s done. He especially likes to pee outside. He strips down as soon as we walk in the door, or before he goes to the bathroom and generally remains that way until we’re going to leave the house again. He’s got a tan bum now.

Dylan and Peyton are at each other’s throats all day long. I don’t know how kids can be so mean to each other. When I separate them they miss each other.