Owl Blanket Project: Month Ten

This 20 pounder is officially ten months old... in lieu of the usually wordy monthly update, I will give you a movie instead... this is a preview of the final project I have been working towards.

My mini me

I always post comparisons of the three girls on here. Here is another look alike contest...

Me and my middlest! Yes, middlest, that is what she fondly calls herself!!!!





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Riddle me this

Brady is at such a neat place in her intellectual development. She is attempting to write sentences completely unassisted. One night she started writing a book, here are the first two pages...







Can you guess what her book says?

Here is a 'reminder' post it note she gave me tonight... I cracked up when I read it!



Leave a comment with your translation...

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from my iPhone

Scrunchy Face Revisited

I recently posted about Elli's love for the scrunchy face, which has only increased since that post. It never fails to cheer me up and make me smile! I love that scrunchy face!!!

I came across some of my other favorite scrunchy faces...

Brady at 13 months old

Reese at varying ages, shy of 12 months.

Now you can't beat the Popeye scrunchy face!

Elli's Lovie

Lovies, every baby has one, right? The something they are attached to. The something they fall asleep with.The something every parent fears losing at the airport or the mall. The something that every parent buys a duplicate of and hides in an emergency. What was yours? Mine was a hand puppet made from a baby's blanket. 

It looked a lot like this...

I remember my sister and her waffle knit pink blanket. Like I said, every baby has something. 

Well, my sweet Brady BOO never had that something, I was actually kinda sad, I thought it was always neat to have a object to comfort. She was content with just sucking her thumb, which in hindsight was quite easy for me. 

Reese, now I knew there wasn't a necessity now for Lovies, but I still was expecting one. But I wasn't prepared for the lovie she would choose. She was my only paci girl and I would go bonkers at night when she woke and couldn't find a paci on her own so I kept about 5-6 pacis in her crib at night...see where this is going?

Reese would fall asleep with a paci in her mouth and a paci in each hand. The pacis in her hand she would shake so that the ring on it would make noise. Oh boy, was it tough to break her of the paci since I had to break her of her lovie at the same time. 

Well, now on to Elli's lovie. I thought for months her comfort was the muslin blankets, and for month is was. This is how you would find her. I stocked up on these babies...

Then her dexterity caught up with her and she has a new lovie. I have posted about her love of hair, but it has gone to a new extreme!

As soon as she is in my arms, her left arm reaches straight up into my hair and her right hand goes straight into her mouth. EVERY TIME! 

As you can see she is very gentle and just plays and twirls, never pulls. But when she goes to suck her thumb, she left arm reaches straight up for hair. So I never imagined her lovie would be part of a human.

Will be interesting to try and break this habit! Maybe she will outgrow it or just grow her own hair, but for now I love it!

Oh, and no pixie hair dos in my near future.

Right before your eyes

Kids bud and grow so quickly...

How do you measure it?

By inches? by lost teeth? by milestones met? by hugs shared? by shoes size? by new skills mastered?

So many ways to watch them grow, one of my favorite ways is observing their art. I am almost always wowed by what new creation they have for me. They get to tell a story before they can read and you get to have a glimpse into their amazing little minds.

Yesterday Reese drew Rapunzel's tower. "There are two Mother Gothels at the bottom and Rapunzel drew those lines so that she could have a door to get in and out of the tower and there is an elevator inside."

I love the concentration and the genius of creating a door, like "duh, Rapunzel make a door to get in and out of that thing!"

Teaching a new dog old tricks

So you may know that Brady's first word was "Dewy Dog" when she was a baby. They were barking at us while we were on a wagon ride in the neighborhood and when when passed our house she pointed and said "Dewy Dog." I always thought that was a neat first word.

Fast forward five years, same two dogs but two more daughters. New house, a house that the dogs are constantly being told not to stop barking... "No barking, Dewy" "Stop it, Pace" "Stop dogs, stop" come from my mouth several times a day!

Today we decided to enjoy the nice weather with an McDonald's picnic in our backyard.

Our fence isn't a privacy fence so the dogs can see every car that drives by or each person that walks by...so barking about every minute or two is common when they are outside. At one barking spell, I swore I heard Elli say Pace or "Ace"!!! I was pretty pumped, so I listened to her the next couple of barking spells, but then I swore I heard her say "barking" on more then one occasion. Okay, people time to get the camera out to try and catch her second and third word! So every time the dogs started barking I hit record...

Warning: Turn your volume down if you have dogs that will get worked up by barking because my dogs bark throughout all these videos. 

Tell me what you hear around 20 seconds. 

I think I hear it again right at the beginning of this video...

Do you think she is saying "Stop dogs" over and over again?

Now for the final video I shot... she is just flat out telling the dogs off, she has had enough of the barking! I am with you Elli, ENOUGH!

So Elli had her second word, Pace, third word, barking, and first sentence, Stop dogs, all within a matter of 15 minutes. Maybe this girl has been speaking all sorts of words to me and I just am not listening carefully enough!

Owl blanket Project: Nine Months

Have a really held my baby girl in my arms as many months as I grew her in my belly?!?! WOW

Soon, she will be bigger than the blanket.

You know I wish this kid would smile and be happy for once! She is such a grump...KIDDING!

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Habits:

-Her hair fetish is in full force these days. Plays with my and her hair while nursing. Can be found lightly touching her eyes to feel her eyelashes. Even likes the feel of dog hair. The most amazing part about it is, she does not pull hair, she is as gentle as can be.

-Since she broke a top tooth and working on the second top tooth, she has been smacking her lips a lot. I guessing it makes her gums feel better. I do however laugh she she does it right after nursing, makes me feel like I make some good tasting milk ;)

-When she wants attention...SCRUNCHY FACE!

Percentiles:

Well, the life of the mom of three has caused me, to my dismay, to not always be on top of this "baby book" info. I didn't realize until the day was almost gone that today was her 9 month birthday. I was quite pleased with myself that I remembered to get the pictures in before bed time. Well, now that I sit down to write this post, I realize I forgot to measure her. But you know what, she was fed, changed, cleaned, napped, cuddled with and loved on today. In case you were wondering ;)

And, look at those legs... She has chunk to spare!

Milestones:This has been the month of fine motor skill development

-Clapping! YAH!
-How big is Elli? SO BIG!

-mimicking Sign Language.
-Tossing toys from one side to the next:

The toy tossing game can keep her attention for quite some time. This video was caught about 5 minutes into the game.

-FIRST SNOW!!!

-The first top tooth came it...Check it out

Now for some of my favorite pictures from the month

Scrunchy Face

Elli has a new favorite face... SCRUNCHY FACE (look at that top tooth coming in!)

 Dang, I make cute babies!

 Hear me roar! (actually see isn't making a sound in this pic)

The older girls wanted to show off their scrunchy faces too

Valentine's Through the Years

2008

 

2009

 

2010

2011

 

 

 

 

2012

 

 

 

2013