Doing Great at 48 (weeks) (11 Months).

 Dear Hannah,
Woah, 11 months old already! Just for fun, we took a picture of you next to big baby to see how much you have grown over these short few months. Here's you at 11 months.

And here you were right at about 1 month old.

And then at about 5 months old.

Lately you've been wanting to do things yourself. You are really starting to learn more about how things work around you. When handed a spoon, you know to either feed yourself or in this case, you were feeding big baby.

 

You know when someone holds their hand up, it's your cue to pass a high five.

 And all these social things couldn't have come at a better time since Ama and Auntie Momo came to visit this past weekend. You are a little bit more sensitive than Nathan. We were at this restaurant and the lady next to us was making faces at you. Boy, you did not like it and started to cry.

 When Auntie Momo played a bit too rough with Nathan, you also started to cry. I don't know if you got scared, or you were protesting, but you did not like it and you let us know. On a related note, one of the ladies at the gym told me that when an older kid took a toy away from another baby that you were playing with, you spoke up and when the toy was returned, you stopped fussing. If you really did stand up for the other baby, I am so proud of you! Standing up for others is a great thing to do.

You are also getting a bit more steady on your legs. You can stand and let go for a few seconds.

 Here's a picture of what you do after dinner every night. We release you and you start to crawl around, particularly under the table. Sometimes I ask, where's Hannah, and you pop your head out.

 Oh, and I think you really love music. Anytime, like anytime you hear new music being played, you will dance such a silly wiggle dance as you have this cutest grin on your face. You also like to make music. Playing the xylophone is probably your favorite thing to do.

 You also like to and are able to produce a sound with a harmonica or a whistle. You know to blow to make a sound, and your lips don't cover up the little hole next to the mouth piece.

 And just today, you were able to push the little cart across the room several times. After your first pass, you just wanted to do it over and over again. I could tell that you were very proud of yourself. I am too.

********

Dear Nathan, 

Thank you for letting me feel semi-successful as a parent this week. I am thinking that you finally have brought into the fact that eating green veggies is good for you so you will be a bit less reluctant to try anything green. In fact, I was even able to get you to eat raw, unprocessed spinach. It seems like you eat ANYTHING from the sample ladies at the supermarket, so I decided to try to present dinner like what you would get from the sample lady. I even let you build it. 

 Look at this! Spinach, quinoa, salmon, and sweet potato!

 We tried water painting this week to help review your letters that you seem to not be able to remember. In between, I let you draw things that you wanted to draw. You were really excited about this dinosaur.

 This activity kept you occupied for almost an hour! It looked like so much fun that Hannah even came over to try.

 When Auntie Momo and Ama came to visit, we all went to the Texas Museum of History. You saw one of these minerals and said that it looked like watermelon!

 And we took this picture because I think we have a similar one somewhere...

 After church on Sunday, to celebrate Mommy and Daddy's anniversary, we went to eat at one of my favorite restaurants for brunch. It was a buffet, so you got to try whatever you wanted. You ate an order of silver dollar pancakes, 1 scrambled egg, 1/4 cup of mac and cheese, 1 chicken strip, 4-5 strawberries, 1 cup of oatmeal+yogurt mix, 4 strips of bacon, and a big bite of zucchini bread. This is what you looked like afterwards.

I don't think I've seen you eat this much food ever! You must be going through a growth spurt because after eating your whole dinner last night, you asked for a piece of bread and ate it all. (This was even after having a big bowl of ice cream). You must be getting ready to turn 3.

These past few days we've been focusing on the letter F. You just don't remember letters as well as you do other things. I guess it's hard to remember things that aren't terribly relevant and letters are a pretty abstract concept. Oh well.

Well, we have a pretty busy week ahead of us. Stay cute, sweet and adorable, you two. I love you very much!

Mommy

Clapping @47 Weeks

Dear Hannah and Nathan, 

These summer days are passing by so quickly. I'm finding it easier to fill our days with fun stuff, and I think back to about 2 years ago, some days seemed to just drag on and on. I'm really loving the more mature versions of you two because we can now do more cool things. For example, just yesterday, we all dressed up like cows and went to chick-fil-a for their cow appreciation day. Nathan is at an age where you got totally excited about wearing a cow costume and you along with your friend, Abigail, were moo-ing here and there and singing the Old McDonald song. Hannah is still too young to understand what is going on, but you definitely reaped the benefits of this day and finished an entire kids meal by yourself. (Grilled chicken nuggets + fruit cup). 

Amy and I weren't quite sure how crazy things would be at the restaurant and for the level of business they had that day, things went really smoothly. We were all impressed by their efficiency and customer service. All the kiddos ate their meals happily and we all had a great time. Both Nathan and Abi did NOT like it when the cow mascot came around to give everyone hugs. As you finished up the last remains of your waffle fries, both of you cautiously tracked the cow out of the corner of your eye as it moved from table to table. 

Because it was so crowded, we didn't get a chance to take a really great photo, so we did it after we got home. 

Thank You, Chick-fil-a!

This past weekend we had another baby toddler big kid party. While there were a few tantrums thrown due to the coveting of certain toys, we tried to make these instances learning moments. 

 Hannah also go to play with someone her own age. In fact, Gus is only 2 day older than Hannah and wears a lot of his big sister's clothes.

 Gus is actually wearing shorts that Nathan wore...last summer. Wow, both of you younger siblings have chunky thighs.

 We are missing one of the kids in this picture, but every party, we try to get a picture of everyone together. This is the best we could do that day.

 After naps, we decided to go outside and play. We've been pretty lucky this summer in that temperatures have not gone up past 95. In the shade, it's absolutely wonderful. I decided to let Nathan try playing lacrosse. You were pretty excited and enjoyed throwing the ball. You are slowly getting the hang of it.

 Hannah has started to clap this week on command. You get so happy when you do it. I even caught you practicing in your crib after nap. One afternoon, I hear these little squeals coming from your room and so I turn on the monitor and there you were, clapping your hands together.

The second part of the video is better, but you know to clap your hands after I say or sing"Pie, Pie Shou."

A few days ago, we met up with some neighbors at the Wildflower center. Nathan had a blast playing with boys a bit older than he is.

 They had so much fun playing together, the boys even came over after naps to play some more.

 One of the reasons we became friends was so that Nathan could have other kids to speak Chinese with, but when they get together, they all just speak English. Oh well.

 One day this week Hannah had a really rough day. I still don't know what was wrong, but you were in some sort of pain and wanted to be near me all day. You took 2 short, 30 minute naps that day on a day where I needed you to take your normal 2 hour nap. Nevertheless, I ended just wearing you while I got what I needed to do done. Grapes seamed to be the only thing that would stop you from crying so I gave some to you in a little teether and you were for the most part happy. At one point, you reached up and surprised me when you stuck the teether in my mouth. I thought it was hilarious so I had to take a picture.

 When Nathan woke up, you two did so good, keeping each other company: Nathan cut some grapes in half for Hannah and both of you just sat and ate grapes happily for about 15 minutes.

 Nathan has started to practice your scissor skills. Right now your are really only capable of making haphazard cuts, but we've been cutting little pieces of paper to make various crafts. It's actually easier and more accurate if you just rip the paper, but you just want to use the scissors...just because they are scissors. I made sure to have a good talk with you about how we only use scissors to cut paper and not other things. We'll see how well you follow these directions.

 I am just so shocked at how mobile and mature Hannah is getting. You are really starting to explore and try to understand how things work. While Nathan and I are working on crafts, you are totally happy exploring the play room and trying new things out.

We've gone swimming a few times this week and Nathan is reluctant to jump in the water if the floaties are available. But I always make you jump at least 2 times before we leave and after you make your first jump, you just wants to do it over and over again, like you forgot how fun it is to jump. I'm actually still not 100% sure that if you fell in the pool you would be able to save yourself. Whenever you jump in, you forget to kick your feet back up so that your body is more horizontal. When you are vertical, you can't swim very well and it worries me that I have to push your head a bit forward to get you into a good swimming position. We'll keep practicing. 

Well, that's about it for now. Stay cute and as Nathan always says to us before bed, "I love you forever. I don't want you to get burnt. I want to keep you forever." 

Love, 

Mommy 

Felt Stocking Project Completed!

I started this project maybe October 2012 and gave myself a realistic 3 year time frame to complete it. Well, time was slowly running out (and with the addition of a new family member) I felt like I needed to complete this project before I forget about it and the kids graduated from college. (Plus, Steve agreed to put up some crown molding if when I completed it. So with some added motivation, past the achy arms, carpel tunnel, and calloused fingers, I completed 70% of this project in about 2 weeks.

I am including this post in the blog because most of my readers are either family members, or people who also have young children. To the latter group, maybe one day (if you haven't already) you may want to make one of these as  torture to yourself a gesture of love towards your kids.

When I opened up the package, I was immediately overwhelmed by the instructions. Upon reading it, I slowly got the gist of what I needed to do and just followed the instructions. Here are a few tips that I picked up along the way.

1. The "strands" info is not listed to tell you how many strands of floss are in your kit. Each string of floss is comprised of 6 strands and you need to separate them and follow the directions to figure out how many strands you need for each step of sewing. I pretty much used the whole string for the first few steps and ended up having to go back to the store to buy more floss.

2. Big time saver alert! Break out your pack of 25 assorted needles.

 The kit comes with 2 needles. One tiny one for beading, and one for stitching. I found it VERY time consuming to change thread, knot, repeat for each color. After I whipped out other needles, It was nice to not have to re-thread (which is way more difficult at night, which is when I would work on this project) every 3 minutes and simply grab a different needle with the color needed already threaded on.

3. Bead all the pieces before you applique them on to the stocking. The only thing you need to be careful is when you cut the pieces with beading, you need to make sure you don't cut the thread on the backside.

4. Cut inside the stamped edges using sharp scissors. I was using the sharpest scissors that I own until I thought of using my little rag quilting scissors to cut the felt. OMG! Game changer!

5. Give yourself more than enough time to finish these stockings and I found that the time just flew by when I was working on this with a movie in the background. It was a win-win situation. I got my chick flick time in while working on a craft! Score. 

In the end, I think I would do it again. Well, I actually have to make another one since I now have 2 children, but I think after I figured out the tricks, it has become less of a chore and more fun. I'm actually looking forward to picking out a new stocking and working on it for Hannah. If I keep up with the pace that I've been working at for the past couple of weeks, I may have it completed by Christmas! 

BTW, Mom, I made sure to point out to Steve how painstaking this process was while I was making this first stocking. He admitted that he never really knew to appreciate the stocking you made for him. Now he does and so do I. Thank you. 

Week 46 and Fourth of July

Dear Hannah, 

You are quite the angelic baby. You are just so chill and happy and when you aren't it's so easy for me to tell that something is wrong. For example, the past 2 nights you have been waking up in the middle of the night, whimpering. It turns out that your upper right tooth was finally breaking through the gums. You didn't cry hysterically, inconsolably, multiple times (like Nathan did) and went back to sleep so easily after a few minutes of cuddling to let the advil kick in. 

You are getting quite interactive and you are working on clapping your hands. Your arms still just flap around a lot, but when they actually clap, I can tell that you get really excited.You know you just did something extraordinary. 

You are working on transitioning to one nap. In the morning, you are totally fine with taking a short cat nap on the road. This will sustain you until about 1:30 when you go down for a longer 2 hourish nap until 3:30 or 4. I like this too because I can get some stuff done while both of you are napping. You are still a super light sleeper as the slightest noise will wake you up, so I try my best to keep quiet when you are napping. 

I can tell that you've been watching us. You now know what to do with lots of objects. For example, in the picture above, you know to put the sunglasses near your face when I hand it to you. When you play with Nathan's cars, you make a really cute sound sometimes as you push the car back and forth. 

The festivities of the fourth didn't seem to bother you so much. You slept right through all of the hootin' and boomin'. Nathan, on the other hand, a different story. 

Our neighbors decided to practice their fireworks shooting skills up to 2 days before the actual holiday. These booming noises absolutely terrified Nathan. After a few hours of sitting with you and showing you a few videos of fireworks shows, you were able to be a bit more at ease. On July 3rd, the golf course by our neighborhood has a pretty good fireworks show that we could see right from our street. We let you stay up extra late that night and then you and Daddy walked over to the school to view the fireworks from the fields. Who wants to go watch fireworks?!

I do, I do!

 There were a few other families out there and one of them offered you a sparkler to hold. You were a bit afraid of the sparkler so you didn't accept. Daddy said that you seemed a bit indifferent while watching the fireworks show, but when you came home that night and the next few nights following, you were no longer afraid of the loud firework booms. Your favorite fireworks were the happy face design and blue fireworks.

The next morning, we all participated in our neighborhood 4th of July parade. We decorated and then joined our neighbors on a short walk, followed by snow cones afterwards.

 Nathan, you are such a show-off. As you whizzed down the street, you weaved in and out of the crowd, flying down on your scooter with one leg sticking out or behind you. Many of the other walkers would stop and comment on how adorable you are. You loved it!

If I were to walk outside right now without knowing the date, I would not know that it was July in Texas. We've had such a mild summer, with temperatures hovering around low 90's. A few years ago, we had 100+ days of 100 degrees! Anyways, the mild temperatures have brought us to play outside more. Your friend, baby Lucas let us borrow a water table over the summer and you two have really enjoyed playing outside with it. Nathan really likes to make water falls and scoop up things with different kitchen gadgets and Hannah likes to put whatever she can get in her mouth. Both of you like to splash. A lot. 

Nathan is still being funny by doing the opposite of what he is saying or saying things that are false and then shouting, "not true!" He knows when other people are joking, because he will say, "Hey, that's funny." 

This past weekend, I subbed in to teach sunday school crafts, so I got a chance to be with Nathan during Sunday school. During story time, the teacher was telling you guys about the story where King Solomon, who was so wise, figured out a way to solve the dispute between two women who claimed that a particular baby was indeed, theirs. You really became fixated on the fact that the king wanted to cut the baby in half and for the rest of the day, you would just randomly say, "The king wanted to cut the baby in half!" After trying multiple ways of explaining to you how the king wasn't really going to cut the baby (he was just kidding), and when the real mommy told him to "stop." He stopped and didn't cut the baby. He knew that the baby belonged to that lady and returned the baby back to his mommy. After you finally understood, you were repeating, "The king was just kidding. He not cut baby in half." 

Remember last week when you ripped the pages out of a library book because you wanted to color the pages? Well, this week we brought your piggy bank to the library, emptied out all of your coins ($1.50 worth) and paid for the book. While I was dumping the money on the counter, I could tell that you were sad, but you didn't throw a tantrum because you accepted that you were responsible to help pay for the library to get a new book. You walked up to the lady and said, "I not rip pages anymore. Sorry." I am so proud of your maturity. 

Well, today's Daddy's birthday. Someone is really excited to put the candles on the cake that we made this morning. Nathan's counted out the candles and we are just waiting for Daddy to come home and eat dinner. We may have pictures of this next week. 

Well, that's about it for now. 

Love, 

Mommy

Week 45 and Nathan Takes a Dive

Dear Children, 

I can probably safely say that I have both the world's fastest eater and slowest eater. First you have Nathan, who eats each bite like he's eating a piece of salt water taffy, and then you have Hannah, who will devour her whole meal as you take one bite of your own. Meal times are a mad rush for me. 

 Before I continue, I need to set the record straight. Nathan, Daddy does NOT play skee ball at work all day. I apologize for getting this notion in your head as I had forgotten about you being only 2 years old and not fully understanding sarcasm. Whenever we go visit Daddy at work for lunch, we usually stop by their game room to play skee ball. Last time, I made a comment on how Daddy plays skee ball at work and now you think that he's a professional skee-ball player at AMD. Not true. He solves puzzles on his computer.

Hannah is getting more adorable as each week goes by. You loves giving kisses and imitating us. Sometimes you like to imitate us as we all are coughing this week. You cough a fake cough and then you giggle like it's the most hilarious thing in the world.

 This past weekend we went to the pool so that Nathan can practice his kicks. Hannah, you got yourself into a pretty interesting position on our walk there. Stroller splits?

 Nathan is doing pretty well at swimming. His butt sinks a bit when he is trying to kick, but he slowly moves forward. I think once he starts to use his hands, things will move along a bit better. We only have one more day of swim lessons and then it will all be finished.

Swimming Video

Daddy also braved the humid weather to go play hockey. We went to go cheer him on! Nathan even tried out your "new" hockey stick. You really wanted to go in the court to play with the adults, but honey, you are way too small right now. Keep eating your chicken and one day you will grow up to be big and tall (Like Ethan, the high school-er in the church Nursery who you are oddly afraid of).  

Put me in, Mommy!

 Since Blue Bell has shut down their ice-cream productions for awhile, we've been making our own ice cream. So far we've made black sesame flavor (which tastes like peanut butter) and strawberry lemonade with animal cookies inside. This was Nathan's invention. You helped zest the lemon and squeeze out the juice to make the flavoring.

 You also just had to try some spices to see what else would go nicely with the lemon. In this picture, you are trying garlic powder and cinnamon. I'm glad that they both got the boot.

Waiting is the toughest part. 

 As each day flies by, I am desperate to capture as many of the cute baby moments with Hannah. I really treasure our time together right before bedtime. It's calm, quiet and just us two. Daddy seems to think that you really like your crib. There was a time when he was holding you and you were just fussing. As soon as he sets you down in your crib, you stopped. Also, this week when I would sing you a lullaby before I put you in your crib, you would start to lean towards the crib, push me away as if you were telling me, "Just put me to bed already!" Even though I've sung our lullaby song thousands of time, I'm still a bit sad that you don't want to hear it. (I know, I don't have the greatest singing voice, but I try my best).

 Hannah loves to explore. When we are eating dinner, you will pretty much let us know when you are finished by trying to stand up in your high chair. Since you are such a speedy eater, I just place you down on the ground and we finish our meal. You just love to crawl around. One moment you are under the table, touching all of our feet, the next moment, you are standing by the back door, looking outside. You've even started to attempt to climb stairs. Oh dear.

 During story time, Hannah also likes to point at things. I guess you are asking me what these things are. When we stop at a page with something that you are familiar with, for example, grapes, you will keep turning back to that page and point out the grape over and over again. Maybe you want some to eat...

 I am loving how both of you are learning to play (and I stress "learning") with each other more. Nathan still throws tantrums if I take away a toy that she stole from Hannah; just because you want to "switch" doesn't mean it's ok to take Hannah's toy. And Hannah is still trying to learn how you can't just walk up and grab or knock down what Nathan is playing.

But there are lots of moments where you can see their little bond grow stronger.

Jumping on the bed with big brother is FUN!

Daddy and I were both cleaning, and looked over to find you two playing next to each other. 

I let Nathan have a couple of animal crackers while I gather things for swim class. I come down, both kids are chomping on crackers and Nathan says, "Look Mommy, I share with Hannah. She likes it!"

A few things I just remembered: 

• Nathan loves saying "I love [doing something]." to exert his independent will. Some things he "loves" to do are make sandwiches, pumping up balloons, turning on the lights and making smoothies. 
• Nathan's making lots of life connections to his books. He continues to love books. 
• Potty training is going so well since Nathan is now able to stand up to use the potty and we throw a couple of pieces of cereal in the bowl for target practice. Getting him onto the potty is no longer a battle. This is also something that he "loves" to do now. 
• Hannah loves to dance to music. Her version of dancing is a violent giggle while bouncing up and down. 
• Hannah has started to go back to taking longer afternoon naps. Yay! 

Well, that's it for now. We have an exciting 4th of July Weekend coming up. More updates next week. 

Love, 

Mommy