Week 33: Easter and Baby Nathan

Dear Nathan and Hannah, 

I really wanted to start things off right and try to explain to you two (at least Nathan) why we celebrate Easter, but then I tried to figure out how to explain death, and dying for our sins and the best I could do went something like this: You know Jesus, who we pray to before we eat and sometimes before we go to sleep? Well, Easter is to help us remember how he went to time out for a long, long, time for us because He loves us, just like Mommy and Daddy love you very much.  

For a kid who cries when he sees a balloon fly away on TV, this is about as graphic as I wanted to go, but we have many more years to come and with each year, we will learn a bit more about His sacrifice for us, together. 

Nonetheless, we did partake in some of the pagan traditions which included making cookies, which Nathan did a great job with rolling out the dough and cutting out the shapes, 

Nathan wanted to make sheep cookies to bring to school! #ProudMama

 and dying Easter eggs.

 This activity couldn't have been planned better to coincide with our lesson from a few days ago about light colors and dark colors. We even did a little experiment to figure out how to make the blue on the eggs become darker.

 And then there was the Easter celebration at our church. Nathan went with Daddy because the oak pollen was pretty bad and I am super allergic to it.

Nathan really enjoyed riding the "fire truck."

 And looking for Easter eggs. Nathan now knows what candy is, and it is very yummy.

 Oh, and Nathan was not afraid to go into a jumpy house. When you got home, I asked if you were scared and you replied matter of factly, "No, Nathan not afraid anymore."

 After being sick last week, both of your appetites have been quite good. One day Nathan ate 5 pancakes (usual average 1.5)! You are slowly eating more veggies too! Some days you'll try a few bites and a few bites more to make us happy. You really want to please us and make sure we are happy. A day doesn't go by when you don't ask us if we are happy or not.

 Hannah is also a really good eater. In fact, Hannah loves food and will demand it! If we let her wait too long in her high chair, she starts to protest. We've tried lots of foods so far and Hannah loves tomatoes (which I was surprised),

 and chicken,

 peas, beans, zucchini, pear, plums, and pasta, but her 2 absolute favorite foods are strawberry and yogurt.

I'm still sticking with the no purees method and so far it's been working really well. She loves to just gum the foods in her mouth and taste all the different flavors and textures. If she drops something that she really likes, Hannah will start to protest...it's kind of cute, but we don't want it to become a habit, so I have to try really hard not to encourage it.

 With all this solid food, Hannah has started to sleep for longer stretches at night as well. I'm still trying to figure out whether or not to phase out the dream feed... I feel bad waking Hannah up to eat, but I also don't want to wake up 2 hours after I go to sleep. When I don't give the dream feed, she will sleep from 8pm to about 1:30, nurse for about 20 minutes, and then sleep until 7:30ish. When I do give her the dream feed, she will wake up at around 5 am, nurse for 15 minutes and sleep until 8. A few times she slept from 11:00 until 7:30! I have a feeling that Hannah will be sleeping through the night before Nathan. I'm nervous about how the jet lag will affect her sleep, but there's no use worrying about it if I can't really do anything about it.

Hannah is starting to get a bit more friendly around others. She will smile at strangers, but she still sometimes gets cautious if someone else tries to hold her. Hannah loves to explore different things with her hands and her mouth. Hannah is able to push herself up and rock a bit on her knees. Sometimes she falls asleep with her butt sticking in the air. Hannah prefers to sit up and is working on trying to sit up herself from laying down. 

Ever since Nathan found a stash of pacifiers in Hannah's room, he's insisted on being called baby Nathan. When he sees a pacifier, he will stick it in his mouth and act like a baby. This is a perfect example: 

 I think this is actually a milestone. He's pretending to be someone else and insists that we call him a different name. Oh, another character that he resumes is baby bird (Daddy is a cheeto and I am chicken, or rooster). Nathan will talk in a squeaky voice and start a conversation that pretty much doesn't go too much beyond "How are you doing?" or "What are you doing?"

Another new thing that Nathan has started to do is to use play-doh as play food. In the past when we played kitchen or play-doh, they were both different, isolated activities. This past week Nathan had an idea to cook things like noodles, pancakes and chicken for me in his play kitchen. He even got the knife out and cut up "peas" for me.

Well, that's about it for now. This week has been pretty calm, but next week will be quite busy. I'm sure I'll have lots to write about then. Toodles!

Love,
Mommy