Thursday, September 24, 2009

More about Emily

Emily is using a little bit of sign language but it is sometimes confusing because bye-bye and milk look just about the same with her. She is able to get from laying to crawling position to sitting and back to crawling/laying now.
She loves to pull up to standing position and will even bend down to pick something up and stand up again while holding on with one hand. Her fine motor skills seem to be improving all the time too. She is very interested in opening velcro tabs, picking up puzzle pieces by their little knobs, turning pages and opening flaps in books. Emily's looks are changing with her two front teeth growing bigger. Her fuzzy hair is starting to come in a little thicker now too.

I'm feeling a bit better today. But Emily is not quite herself. thankfully she had a 2.5 hour morning nap and is pretty cheerful at the moment. Mark stayed home to take care of our energetic Claire since I am low on energy.

I just got done reading F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I don't recommend it. too depressing.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Emily crawls

Emily is crawling now. I tried unsuccessfully to video her crawling today...maybe tomorrow. She doesn't enjoy it much yet because it is still a lot of work.

Emily and I are both under the weather... cold or sinus infection or the like.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Claire's health

Claire is feeling much better today, just a bit congested and she napped longer than usual but she was pretty perky. I always dread when Claire gets sick because we never know if it is going to turn into pneumonia of a bad bronchitis like it tendds to for her. She seems to be developing asthma. Most of the time when she gets sick it goes straight to the lungs. She gets wheasy and coughs a lot at random times.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

About Claire

The past few weeks Claire had been driving me crazy with getting into things and making messes and refusing to help clean up.
Since we started doing "preschool activities" she has been much more cooperative about cleaning up and less likely to get into things. I also made a messy tray one day so she could experience gooey stuff in a contained environment and I gave her her own roll of toilet paper to unroll and shred when she was done playing with it, we stuffed it into a mesh onion bag to make a ball.

Claire woke up sick this morning with a fever and cough and later vomiting. Please pray for her.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

stringing pasta

Just to clarify... the crib is not in Claire's room. I moved it to the middle bedroom where Emily has always slept. It is taking Emily longer to fall asleep but so far she is still sleeping all night.

Claire has had a good time stringing pasta the past couple days. She is more interested in this activity than
I though she would be and this is before I've had a chance to dye it different colors.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

New bed and new words

Emily is sleeping in the full sized crib for the first time tonight. This is because she learned to stand up in the co-sleeper and it is no longer safe for her to use it.
she learned this trick a few nights ago and spent the past two nights on a small mattress on the floor because I had to get the crib ready. It took Emily a while to settle down and goto sleep. Hopefully she will get used to it soon.
Emily is also saying a few more words and is understanding a lot more of what
I say. In addition to "mama", and "num num", she says "bye bye" spontaneously and appropriately. She like to say "uh-oh" but I don't know if she knows what it means, she will sometimes say "baby" or "bebe", and she says "ball". I have heard her say "hi" a few times but she won't do it on demand. She will follow some commands sometimes like shake shake-- for a rattle or other noise maker, wave, and clap.
It is so much fun to see her develop and communicate.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

new teeth

As of Sunday Emily has 4 teeth. The two top front teeth came it without too much fuss.

Both girls have been waking at night several time a week the past couple of weeks. and on top of that I haven't been sleeping well because I have a lower back ache--only at night. This morning I got up at 6 AM and did 30 minutes of Pilates with a video and hope it will help my sleep. This was not too long after Claire came in and Mark had to put her back to bed, so he didn't sleep well either.

Claire has been talking about school lately so yesterday we started doing some pre-school activities at home. Stringing beads, matching colors, making playdough numbers, playing catch...

Mark and I enjoyed reading aloud to each other a children's book entitled Lunch Money about a 6th grader who is obsessed with earning money and starts a comic business. He makes some important discoveries about himself and about life along the way.

Friday, September 04, 2009

the girls

The girls are playing side by side in the dining room play area so I decided to blog. Of course this means Claire is now pestering me to sit on my lap and look at baby Luke's blog.

Emily can now pivot 360 degrees either sitting or lying on her tummy. Still no crawling. Her hip muscles seem to be very tight. She doesn't like to get into crawling position. We have been trying yo help her by putting her on her tummy over our leg or over a small ball. She is teething again. Working on the top two front teeth and it a little fussy and not sleeping as well as usual. Emily is getting quite good at throwing things... this is mostly tossing aside things she is finished with.
She has developed some new interests. She is particularly interested in balls of all sizes and playing peek-a-boo especially if someone puts a cloth on her head and she pulls it down. Emily also loves dolls and has for some time. She really perks up and listnes and kicks her feet or moves her hands to the rhythm when we play music too. She learned how to clap just recently. Very cute.

Claire is still interested in trying on any shoes she sees that belong to someone else. She is also having fun painting with a brush...before she always chose to use her fingers even when she had brushes to work with. She has shown more interest in making collages too. Claire is quite itchy with this hot weather. I think she feels itchy when she sweats.