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9 months, and 33 months

Vivienne will turn 9 months old tomorrow. On Tuesday, Jonathan will be oh, lemme do some math here…33 months. I still just say he’s “two” when people ask how old he is. I suppose I could throw on that “three quarters”!

Vivienne is growing so well. She goes in to the doctor at the end of the month for a checkup, so I don’t know her stats. She’s filling out her 18m clothing and some 24m clothing works, but she can also cram into some 12m sweaters and things.

I’m starting up with cloth diapers part-time again just for the cost savings. I don’t *love* cloth diapers. I don’t love any type of diaper. I’m over diapers. Go in the potty already, kids! But she has a long way to go before that happens, so we might as well save whatever money we can.

She’s now in size 6 diapers, as the 5s were getting to be a really tight squeeze and I’d often break tabs when trying to stretch it around her :/. So bummer, because there are fewer diapers as you go up in size, but for the same price. Johnny moved up to size 6 as well, though I think he could probably stay in 5s for awhile actually. Good grief.

She crawl-runs sometimes. I can’t believe the speed she has. She keeps on cruising around furniture and sometimes she lets go and just stands there. Last week or so, she let go of the ottoman and lifted both arms above her head, like “look at me!”. Couldn’t believe it. Did it right in front of my grandma.

She can stand on her own for 5-10 seconds with pretty good balance, but she doesn’t seem to feel comfortable with that right now. She realizes she’s not being supported by anything, and then she slowly lowers herself to the ground. She’s anti-bonk, I guess. She’s starting to push around Johnny’s big ride-on train and walking behind it.

I don’t know if we’ll see her start to walk on her own soon or not. She may wait until she has more confidence. I don’t know. What’s the rush, anyway? It will be nice for her to be able to stand and walk along though, rather than carrying her everywhere. Heavy lil thing.

She’s eating solids much better now. I know there are some really young babies who can handle solids fine, but for her it took quite awhile. She still gags sometimes but it’s less common. She doesn’t seem to like being fed mush, though. She starts yelling. I think she likes to do it herself, so we’ve been giving her soft things and she just gets what she can in her mouth.

Still no teeth yet, so it’s pretty funny to watch her mush things around with her little jaw.

She’s such a smiley, happy baby and when she meets someone new, she’s often happy to see them — that is, unless they try to hold her right away. Viv is now at the separation anxiety stage and she may not want to be in unfamiliar arms. It’ll pass.

I’m working on the “nurse” baby sign with her. She’s starting to get the motion so when she does it, I nurse immediately to help her make that connection. I do the sign just before and right when I begin to feed her and maybe soon enough it’ll be a lasting connection. Once she gets that, I’ll probably add a few others, such as “eat” and “drink” (other than nursing) and who knows what else.

She’s been waking up a lot in the past few nights. I think it might be a growth spurt or something, maybe teething? Seems like she usually sleeps most of the night, but I’m not really sure because it seems like at least one kid is up during the night. Hopefully we’ll start to get into a new routine in our house and everyone will sleep better.

Mr. Johnny is just a hoot. The other day, out of nowhere, he tells Shane, “I am a sweetheart.” Yep! He’s enjoying new opportunities to play with other little kids. We’ve been going to park meetups, and there are kids at my Bible study and we might join MOPS.

He’s been having a hard time following directions lately. It’s pure disobedience, I think, rather than a lack of hearing or lack of understanding. Gotta nip that one in the bud.

We aren’t working really hard on the potty-training stuff right now, but we are sort of. He understands peeing in the potty and needs reminders to go, and that’s great! Still working up the confidence to do the other thing on the potty. He goes and hides to do that instead. Ugh. I really hope we can get him to do that on the toilet soon. Gross.

He seems to have a pretty good sense of direction when we’re out driving and can recognize the routes I usually take. If I turn somewhere else, he immediately wants to know what’s up. He recognizes our street from a little ways away and knows where his house is (that’s important!) and his great-grandma’s house, and various stores and where Shane works and Trader Joe’s and on and on. I hope that later, it’ll translate to a good sense of direction in general.

He’d been giving up his nap lately, but that usually meant bad behavior later in the evening. I decided that I can’t just have him up all the ding dong day without a quiet time. I need a little break too. So we’re having an enforced quiet hour where he can be in his room and reading books or playing quietly. I don’t care if he falls asleep, though he certainly can. He just has to be in there, and quiet. Vivienne is napping now in her room, which is why I finally have time to do a little blogging.

And now, I’m on to other things while it’s quiet hour. Adios!