Rebekah Joy - 35 Months

It is hard to believe that Rebekah is going to be 3 in just a few weeks! 

Sleep - No real changes here. 

Eating - Still a great eater.  Loving ice, even in her milk!  She has moved out of the highchair and into the bumbo seat at the table.  She is able to get in and out of it by herself, just not to push the chair in :)

Skills - Rebekah has started turning on and off the lights, with the aid of her step stool.  She has been climbing up the bunk bed ladder for a several months but now she is able to climb down on her own. 
This month she has become a self-dresser!  It is super exciting to watch her get dressed on her own.  She tends to put the socks on with the heel on the top of the foot and occasionally her panties are on backwards but she does her shirt and pants all by herself with very minimal issues.  Rebekah has also taught herself how to write the letter R.  One day she called me over to the craft table saying "Mama, look at my R" and I was taken aback at how awesome it was!  It looks great and she learned to do it all on her own. 

Play - Rebekah and her sister have been playing "baptizer" for a few weeks now following several baptisms at the churches we were visiting when we first arrived in Alabama.  She has always loved to read and be read to but she has really taken up with telling stories from a book based on the pictures.  It is really sweet to listen to her telling these stories to her "kids" (AKA stuffed animals).  It is still really really hot here in Alabama.  The pool was closed on Labor Day and unfortunately Fall did not arrive the next day.  Prior to the pool closing, we went everyday.  There is a splash pad next to the pool and Rebekah was never a big fan until one day I brought a couple of plastic cups .  Those gave her a new found love for having water spraying around!  We did some sock puppet snakes for our S week and Rebekah just LOVED it.  She continued to play snakes for weeks after that, just about every time she put a sock on, it ended up on her hands and she was chomping someone!

Education - I am starting to do more independent work with both girls during school.  I've been trying to work with Rebekah on her counting and letter recognition using some Montessori activities I've found on line and she is doing well with it. 

 

 

Pasta Making

The next installment of my Continuing Homemaker Education is pasta making!  My parents got me this awesome pasta maker for my birthday last year which was the day before we had our 3rd child so needless to say, it didn't see daylight for a while.  Following our long vacation and the move to Alabama I decided it was finally time to break it out and attempt some homemade pasta.  Faith helped me with the whole process and we had a great time together.  I don't know how I would have done this with only my two hands!

We had fettuccini alfredo with chicken and broccoli.  I made my own alfredo sauce (which I had to learn to make after my second worst cooking disaster ever (the first being eggplant parmesan)) so this was about as homemade as I can get right now, until I have my own chicken ranch and garden!

Grace AnneMarie - 10 Months

The day Grace turned 9 months she started crawling and got her first tooth.  I had already written her update for that month so they didn't get included.  She currently has 2 teeth on the bottom and the cutest little grin.  Her smile is pure joy when she claps her hands at my singing or Frank's playing the guitar.  I just love it.  She is completely enamored with her sisters (who wouldn't be!) and finds a great deal of fascination in the dog as well. 

Sleeping - Her nighttime sleep is great and she usually wakes up around 7:30/7:45.  We ended naps in the car seat, which was painful for about 2 days and now she is fine in her bed.  They do seem to be sporadic as to whether they last longer than 45 minutes or not but that was happening in the car seat as well during the last month.  If she were my first child I would probably devote an entire spreadsheet to tracking her naps but for now, she is happy even if she wakes up early and that is enough for me!  Toward the end of the month, Grace developed a fever of over 102 and reaching 103.5 for several days.  Thankfully it was not an ear infection and after I finally got the right dosage of medication for her and administered it, the fever broke; however, she developed a rash all over her body and the symptoms show it as roseola.  The rash doesn't seem to bother her but her nighttime sleep has been affected for a few days. 

 

Eating - Wow!  Grace loves to eat.  She loves to feed herself, anything. I have yet to put anything in front of her that she didn't just go crazy over.  She loves meat, beets, veggies, fruit, cheese, everything she can feed herself.  She is not too big a fan of yogurt right now (reminiscent of Rebekah) but she does give the same horrible reaction when presented with some yogurt, she simply takes a few bites and is done.  Nursing is going well.  During my period this month my milk supply dropped and has never fully recovered, I'll probably start supplementing with formula this week. 

Skills - Crawling, everywhere.  She is a mobile baby now and loving it.  She comes pretty consistently when I call to her and responds after only a few corrections to all the "No's" that have suddenly entered her world.  Thankfully for me (but not for her) I have 2 additional helpers to alert her to all the 'No' items in our house.  She is working on pulling herself up on the coffee table.  Grace does enjoy crawling over obstacles to get to the places she wants.  I don't know if this is a skill or just a game she likes to play but if I bring my head close into hers she will bring hers in the rest of the way to head butt me and then she just laughs like its going out of style.  Grace has also discovered books!  If there is one on the floor she wants it (not during solo play though, she is content to just scream then no matter how many books are available).  She enjoys being read to and looking at books on her own.