Another Week Zips By

Warning – It’s a long post. It's been a crazy week, full of freelance work, Ben being out of town for two days, and my deciding to paint the basement on a whim (it's not done yet, but hopefully we can work on it at night this week and get it done - I'll post pictures eventually).

My current phase of life has lots of highlights and lowlights, as I have mentioned before. I love my little boys and have so much fun with them, but the ups and downs require a lot of energy!

Some of the recent highlights:

1. Charlie is getting better about sleeping at night. Though he was on this weird schedule this week where he would wake up at 5 a.m., eat, and go back to sleep until 8 a.m. Eli was sleeping until 7:30 or 8 a.m. too, which is a little later than normal. I’ll take the extra sleep though!

2. Charlie’s sitting up better means he can sit in the front of the cart without too many problems, and Eli sits in the back. This means more room for the groceries, since I don’t have to lug Charlie’s car seat into the cart.

3. Eli says the cutest things. He pretends to cook and will share his food with me, usually in a very serious, hushed tone, “It’s pasta. It’s very, very hot.” We have conversations and sometimes I’ll ask him a question and he’ll say, “I don’t remember?” which sounds funny out of his little mouth. He was playing with his toy dinosaur today and said, “I saw a big dinosaur one day – it was crazy!” Eli says new and funny things every day and it’s neat to see his vocabulary explode.

4. Eli watched the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD over and over while we were driving around Yellowstone/Idaho last month, and now knows the letter sounds. He constantly walks around the houses singing the song for various letters: “The N says nnnnnnnnn. The N says nnnnnnnn. Every letter makes a sound, the N says NNNNN!” I give all credit to the video.

Some of the recent lowlights:

1. Every day from 5 to 6 p.m., my kids turn into their worst selves (and I probably do too) and it is the LONGEST hour. I often have a kid holding each of my legs, crying, whining, etc. and wanting different things at the same time (and it’s usually when I’m trying to make dinner).

2. We’re still in the “one store” phase. We can only go to one place in between Charlie’s naps, because he gets tired again after just a few hours of being awake. If we’re going to Target, I have to feed him as soon as he wakes up, then we zip out to the store, then zip back home before he melts down. There is no room for stopping at one other place, even if it’s really close.

3. Charlie crawls all over and gets into everything. He is constantly trying to chew things he shouldn’t – cords, paper, etc.

4. Eli is more daring now. And gets into more trouble than he used to. His little attitude has emerged and he can throw a pretty major tantrum when he’s in the mood. Once he’s in “NOOOOOOOO” mode, it’s hard to snap him out of it.

My mom came over this week while my dad went in the city to pick up his custom suit from the Father’s Day contest. It was a warm day, so he didn’t try it on, but the suit looked very nice! I’ll have to get a picture of him in it sometime soon.

Eli was playing peekaboo -

Funny brothers -

Charlie with his hot pink/green sippy cup :)

Crawling around -

And sitting up!

Here’s Eli, very grouchy on Saturday morning. He threw a HUGE tantrum after breakfast and it was a miserable couple of hours trying to snap him out of his bad mood. Ben was on a fishing trip on Friday and Saturday, so I was on my own.

And a happier scene – Charlie and Eli took their first bath together! It was really cute seeing them play and splash in there.

I love that Charlie is big enough to sit in this seat! It makes bath time a lot easier (though I’m paranoid about it not suctioning well to the bottom, so I stay really close to the tub just in case).

Charlie chewing one of his favorite things – paper:

Sippy cup boys on the couch, watching a show after Eli took a nap one day last week. I can’t believe how big Charlie looks in this picture!

And finally, Charlie’s first haircut -

He was VERY wiggly/squirmy. Ben had to be super fast and he used scissors and the clippers.

I have more pictures from today to post, but I’ll post another tomorrow or the next day. I figure this is enough for one day :)

Charlie at 7 Months

I can’t get enough of my squishy, cuddly, lovable baby boy. It makes me a little sad that he’s already 7 months! Just in the last few days, I’ve noticed that he can sit up on his own a little more steadily. He’s making more progress with crawling and is almost to the point where he can arch his back enough to wiggle out of the bumbo seat when I’m feeding him solid foods (we feed him on the floor in the bumbo now just in case). He is VERY distracted if there is any sort of noise around while he is nursing (which is almost all the time since Eli isn’t quiet). Charlie knows his name and is a social, happy little guy. He was sleeping through the night before our vacation, and ever since then has gotten up at least once in the night. It's been a tiring couple of weeks trying to get him sleep trained again.

Always curious…

And I have to include some photos of Eli from the other day. He is an emotional, articulate, sensitive little boy. I’ve noticed lately that he is vocalizing his emotions more – and reminds me of times when he was crying or sad. Eli can be SO much fun, but he can also be very draining when he is in one of his moods. He is very rule-abiding and will freak out if something is out of place, especially when we put him to bed at night. A few nights ago, he still had his little teeth flosser thing in his hand (in his crib) and he started crying because he isn’t supposed to take that to bed with him (we had already shut the door and gone downstairs, but we went back in to see what was wrong – he was fine once we took the flosser back). I think Eli tries to inflict rules on Charlie because he likes rules and boundaries, which Charlie knows nothing of yet and loves to get in Eli’s personal space.

And some more pictures of Charlie -

This is not for my germ-a-phobic friends – sorry, it’s gross. As my friend Erin said when I told her Charlie was eating the play-doh crumbs that Eli kept dropping while playing, two words - “Second child.” Here he is, licking the phone:

The phone is a good teething toy as well. We were talking to my mom on the phone.

This didn’t have a happy ending. Charlie was not pleased when I took the phone away.

Summertime

This spider was outside our front door last week, wrapping up a bug:

The next collection of pictures is one I’d like to call, “Oh Brother” – Eli was not keen on Charlie sitting next to him and it was pretty funny. Charlie adores him, despite the grouchy glares.

“Get away from me!!”

On Tuesday I walked to the beach with Khania and her kids, Grant and Evelyn. I was not having the best morning (both of my kids were WHINY from the moment they woke up) and it felt good to get some fresh air. However, Charlie was ready for his second nap and we had only been at the beach for about 45 minutes, so Khania offered to keep Eli there with them and she would walk him back to my place when they were done.

This is what she looked like when she arrived:

On Wednesday, we went to a park on the lake with our playgroup. It was a BEAUTIFUL day – so not typical for August, but it’s been such a cool summer for the most part. I can’t believe we’re heading into the end of August already. Here are some shots from that morning outside:

Elijah and Eli had a fun time running around together:

And after playgroup, we drove home and as we walked from the garage toward our house, Eli wanted to play outside for a little while longer, so the boys enjoyed swinging for a bit. Charlie puts his mouth on anything and everything in his path…

I cleaned out our coat closet tonight. Seeing the cold-weather items in there made me cringe… I’m not looking forward to the need for boots, coats, gloves, hats, etc. Thank goodness snow is still a few months away!