Mia Update:
11 Months

So many changes for Mia! 

Walking:  She's just about walking, she takes a few steps at a time and has much better balance lately.  Still prefers to crawl when she wants to get somewhere fast, but she's taking a lot more risks with letting go and seems to have a lot more confidence that she can do it by herself. 

Eating:  She hates all baby food.  She only wants big people food and she will try anything we put on her tray.  We think she's pretty amazing with her chewing ability since she still has ZERO teeth.  Her favorites right now are crackers, pasta, cereal, Nutragrain bars, fruit cups, waffles, yogurt, and mashed potatoes.  She's also been using a sippy cup for most of her liquids and she's getting pretty good with this new method of drinking.  We still do a bottle at night before bed but that is pretty much the extent of the bottle.  We're also weaning her off formula.  She usually only has formula in the nighttime bottle and milk or juice throughout the day.

Other big girl things:  we retired the swing a week or so ago, I was sad to see it go for convenience reasons but it's great to have a huge section of our family room back!  You forget how much room those things take up until you take them down.  We've gotten out all the baby gates and have strategically put them all over the house.  She is everywhere and quicker than you think, she can get half way up the stairs before I can blink sometimes.  We'll also be switching her to forward facing in the car in a few weeks.  I'm sure she'll be happy to look at something other than the back of the seat!  We're also slowly trying to wean her off her pacifier.  This has been her best friend since birth, so we know this will be a rough road for everyone involved.  We try to keep it to nighttime and sometimes during the day, it's a habit we all need to break, it's really easy to slip one in her mouth when she's getting tired or angry. 

Hair:  her hair is growing faster than we can say barrette.  When we get it wet in the bath it is literally half way down her back.  Dave is getting really good at a single ponytail and I've moved on to piggy tails.  It's extremely hard when your subject is constantly moving their head side to side to try and see what the heck you are doing to them.  Hair was never my forte; I could barely do a regular braid on my cabbage patch kids or myself when I was growing up.  When I had gymnastics competitions growing up I just had to have a french braid (which neither my mom or I were good at), but if I held strands of hair while my mom did the braiding, we could pretty much end up with a french braid.  My goal is to someday get good enough to do a french braid on Mia without her holding half her hair.  (I realize that when she's older a french braid will be completely un-cool, but it's still my goal). 

Mom - I loved those french braid days, thanks for always doing what I wanted even though a regular pony tail would have taken a quarter of the time and effort!

Vocabulary to date:  ba (ball), ba-ba (bottle), da (dog),  dada, mama, Ta-Te (Carter), uh-oh (when she throws something across the room on purpose), and buh (book).  She has a lot of other sounds and shrieks but these are the words that actually mean something so far.

While we love the fact that Mia is getting to be such a big girl, we're somewhat sad that she's growing out of the baby stages (well, I am at least).  I will miss the days when I could put her in the swing and put in a load of laundry or take a quick shower, or when I could snuggle with her on the couch without her squirming away.  But I love this new stage where she's becoming more independent and turning into such a fun little girl!  We can't wait to celebrate your birthday in a few weeks Mia!!

Carter Update:
3 1/2 years old

Hard to believe we've already been thinking about school for Carter, it seems like yesterday we were worried about what daycare to pick.  In late January we took a look at a bunch of preschools in the area and decided that the Forest Hills Public School Preschool program was the best option.  He will be going 3 days a week for about 2.5 hours per morning starting in the fall.  They also provide after school daycare called the "Kids Care Program" for kids in preschool through kindergarten.  After his Wednesday morning class he will go to lunch with the other children in the Kids Care Program and then outside recess and more playtime in the child care room until we pick him up after 5pm.  Luckily we only have to do this on Wednesdays because on Monday and Friday Dave or I will be picking him up after the regular class.  I think he's somewhat excited but a little apprehensive, hopefully by the fall he will be ready.

Carter is doing really well with his big brother role.  He LOVES Mia and is always keeping an eye on her and making sure she's having fun and staying out of trouble.  He does a good job of alerting us when Mia puts something small in her mouth or is crawling toward the dog dishes or anything else he deems not safe for her.  Our daycare lady tells me he is a very protective brother at daycare as well.  Making sure other kids aren't taking away her toys (somewhat funny since he often takes her toys away himself).  He also loves to make Mia laugh.  He will do anything to get her to laugh and once he finds something that entertains her, he will do it forever.  They are a fun little duo. 

 

The one area we're struggling with right now is sleeping.  For the past month or so, Carter has been waking up 2, 3, even 4 times a night.  He wakes up crying and scared, either yelling for us to come upstairs or he sprints downstairs to find us.  We're not sure if he's having bad dreams or wakes up to sounds in the house, but he is extremely afraid that "bad woofs" (wolves) are going to get him.  He tells us they come from the guest bedroom and nothing seems to ease his mind.  We've tried to be reasonable, we tell him that wolves can't work door knobs (we remind him that we always have to let Shady and Maisy in and out of the house because they can't open doors, hoping this makes it easier to picture in his head), we also tell him that Shady and Maisy bark like crazy if any animal comes close to our house, or that Daddy and Mommy will always protect him.  We've tried other approaches, telling him wolves are nice or that they only live in woods, or they are scared of people.  Nothing really eases his mind.  Ever since he told us the wolves come from the guest bedroom, we've been closing that door AND putting the baby gate up.  Seems in his mind wolves can't jump over baby gates and this makes him feel a little better.  We also brought up his big cardboard box and put it right next to his bed.  We told him if he's scared, he could hide in his box (he loves hiding in it even when he's not scared).  Those things have been helping, but he still gets up about 1-2 times a night.  We're hoping this phase is done very soon.  Someday we'll look back on this blog post and laugh about the scary wolves...we hope.

Trip to the Sunshine State

Notice in the title I didn't mention anything about temperature.  Yes, on our trip to Florida we had some GREAT sunshine, warm temperatures on the other hand, not so much.  Despite the fridged for Florida temps, we had a wonderful vacation down in Fort Myers to visit Grandma and Grandpa B and see their new house and to visit with Aunt Lee, Uncle Bob, Elsa and Claire.  This was both of the kids' first "real" trip and we loved every barely luke warm second of it. 

Here are the kids in the airport, pretty happy for 5am.  Carter was so excited to get on his first plane ride, he didn't care what time of day it was.

Yes, we let Carter push all the buttons he could find EXCEPT the red one.

The first thing you want to do when you get to Florida is throw on your bathing suit and head for the pool.  Especially when you're coming from Michigan in January.  Grandma and Grandpa live in a great golf/tennis community with not only their own private pool, but also a pool and hot tub off the main club house.  So we did what any Michigan tourist would do, we threw on our suits and headed for the pool.  The good news was that the public pool area was completely empty, we had the place to ourselves!  The bad news was that the pool temp was about like Lake Michigan's temp this time of year. 

Gorgeous from a distance

So we opted for the "hot pool" as Carter called it.  Again, we had the place to ourselves, nobody who lived in Florida was crazy enough to put on a bathing suit I guess.

Carter enjoyed his first Harley ride with Grandpa on the way home from the hot pool. 

Don and Dave enjoyed a few rounds of golf on their beautiful golf course.  Their house backs up to the 3rd tee, so us non-golfers ran out to see them when we saw their cart headed our way.

Nice swing!

Grandma and Mia enjoying the sunshine.

On day two of our stay, Uncle Bob, Aunt Lee, Elsa, and Claire arrived!  Carter was SO excited to play with Elsa and see baby Claire.  We had so much fun hanging out with everyone for a lazy week of playing with the kids, celebrating a late Christmas, and eating what seemed like an endless buffet of snacks and meals.

Here we are celebrating Christmas.  The kids had so many toys to play with afterwards they didn't know what to do with themselves.  Thank you for all the wonderful gifts everyone!!

Mia is reading to her new Andy, homemade by Grandma B.  Ann was so happy to see him when we got home!

Other fun things:  the kids did a lot of coloring and drawing, we visted the manatees and a cool playground, we played around Grandpa and Grandma's pool a lot, we went for fun walks in the neighborhood, and we played with a lot of lincoln logs and puzzles.  

Claire is always full of smiles!

Fun in Grandma's big tub.

Carter and Elsa especially loved to throw Grandpa's balls into the pool and watch him fish them back out with the skimmer.

Visiting the manatees...

Claire is showing her enthusiasm after spotting a manatee.

Croc attack!

More hot pool fun with Elsa and Uncle Bob

 

One of the highlights of the manatee park was when Grandpa bought Carter and Elsa some adorable stuffed manatees.  Carter named his Frank and Elsa named her's Spot.  Here are Frank and Spot on this walk with us.

Dining by the pool

We were very sad to leave the sunshine state.  Chilly temps and all.  Next time we hope to actually get in their gorgeous pool and maybe even spot the neighborhood croc who apparently was hiding somewhere in the bogs due to the cold temps.  We want to send huge thank yous to Grandma and Grandpa for putting up with us and all our gear.  We miss everyone!!

Our Sledding Hill

We have a great sledding hill directly across the street from our house.  It sits back from the road in an undeveloped neighborhood and it's perfect for sledding!  Right after Christmas we tested it out and Carter loved it!  Mia and I went mainly to take a few pictures and then we headed inside and let the boys sled for a while.

There are some other little hills around the big one, so we started with the little ones to warm up. 

Braving the big hill...there they are at the bottom, trecking up the hill.  I think the amount of times they went down the hill depended on how long Dave's legs could hold out!

Here they are mid-slide.  Dave told me later that they were both yelling all the way down the hill.  Dave was yelling because it was fun, Carter was yelling because he was getting all the snow kicked up in his face.

Despite the face wash, he loved it.

The photographers... 

Mia was not so amused with our snow day. I think the fact that she couldn't move in her snowsuit made her especially mad.

After the sledding, the boys were not done with the snow.  They decided to build this huge snowman in our yard.  Complete with goofy hat.

 Mia and I can't wait for spring!!