Rowan 35 weeks/8 months

Rowan turned 8 months on July 26th, and she is a whole new baby now...it started when she learned how to sit up on her own from her tummy, and now she is crawling EVERYWHERE!  It took her about a week from the time she started to crawl to the time she got fast!  Now that she is mobile she hates to be confined...which means time in her jumper, chair or playpen is very short, so it makes for getting things done so much harder now!  She insists that she is entertained to be happy now...the same thing happened with Liam when he got mobile too!  She will be standing soon...she will get up to something, and will look up and put her arms up...it's just a matter of time and a little more strength.  She babbles a lot, and screams too!  She interacts with Liam, and we are convinced that he is her favorite person on this earth.  She is eating a TON still!  She likes her fruits and veggies, and yogurt...and of coarse still loves her mommy's milk.  We had pictures taken on July 23rd, and are anxious to get those back...She is getting pretty big too...it will be interesting to see what she weighs at her next appointment.  Her hair is getting thicker, and is a light brown/blondish color.  It's hard to say if will stay that color or get lighter? darker? as she gets older...but either way she is just so CUTE!

Rowan: 33 Weeks (7.5 mo)

Rowan is now 33 weeks!  And a few days after I wrote her last update, she made some huge changes...for one around the 4th of July she started sitting like a champ!  She is also eating a TON!  At first I guess I was just catching her at bad times or something, because she would just purse her lips closed, and I had a hard time getting her to eat, but lately she has been very good about eating, and she isn't making faces as much either.  She also has started to hold her own bottle.  She can take it out of her mouth, and get it back in with no problem!  Her schedule is harder to predict now because her tired cry is very similar to her bored cry.  Sometimes I think she is ready for a nap, but then she just cries in her crib which is unlike her, so I take her out again, and try to entertain her and she is fine.  Her naps have been shorter than usual, and we think it's because she is sleeping like a log at night time.  She usually goes to bed around 5 or 6 pm, and doesn't wake till we get up at 6am the next day.  It has been very nice, and we hope she keeps that up!  In fact this morning I went in her room, and she was still asleep...I had to wake her for the first time.  She is really pushing up on her hands and knees and we know she is so close to crawling, but we hope she waits till at least after her pictures next week!  Once she starts to crawl, we know life as we know it will change all over again...we will have 2 fully mobile kidlets!  Anyway, she is such a delight in our lives and we can't imagine life without her.

Liam: 2 yrs, 7 mo.

OH my goodness the list of things that Liam has done this past month is sooo long!  He is just constantly changing and coming up with new things everyday!  He is really starting to put ideas and concepts together.  He will see something, and talk about it, and ask questions...lately his most common phrase is 'What's that?'.  He will say it for everything, even though we know he knows what it is.  We suppose this is a 2 yr old phase that is part of learning and developing.  We always try to teach him manners, so we will ask him to say please and thank you.  We will say 'Say Please' , then he will say 'Say Please' back , or we will say 'What is the magic word?', and he will say 'Magic word Please'...it's pretty funny.  He loves singing, and loves to dance with the drum.  He is starting to listen more to us, whether he follows our direction is another story though.  It certainly is nice when we have to do something for Rowan, like give her a bath, and he will 'help' out.  And by help out, I mean he will stick by, and not get into too much trouble.  Although the first time we had her in her sit up tub upstairs he decided it would be fun to get in her tub when she was done with his clothes on, it was pretty funny!  He will hand me diapers when I ask him, which is very nice!  He is really good on the stairs now too!  Although, he still needs a spotter, he can go up and down all by himself now.  He has been a lot better hanging out with us on the main floor lately, and generally will listen to what we ask him, although he still does not understand 'Don't run in the house' !  We can even leave him for brief moments without worrying too much that he will get into too much trouble.  He loves to ride his trike around, and is starting to peddle better, although he gets really distracted by all the bugs and small things on the ground.  He has to stop and check each one out!  He is really into bugs too, and his favorite movie this month has been 'Bugs Life'.  I got him a book about ladybugs, and snails, and he also has a book on different bugs, and can identify them all.  He has been loving summer, and has some new sandals, a new hat, and new sunglasses...he loves running around in the back yard and getting into the garden and picking strawberries.  We have not been pushing the whole potty thing, but if he asks to go we will let him try.  He has gone pee a few times in the Elmo toilet.  He generally likes to go in the bath tub.  He is starting to get a few fears.  He is now scared to ride the pony at Thanksgiving Point, and he also is scared to go down the slide at the park...Both we think will be short lived phases, hopefully!  We just can't believe that he will be starting preschool in a month!  Our little guy is just growing up so fast!

Rowan: 7 Months

Happy 7 Months to Rowan, she turned 7 months on June 26th.  She is growing and changing so quickly too.  Her bottom 2 teeth are coming in...she was sore for a few days, so we needed to give her a little Motrin, that seemed to help.  She is more expressive with her face now.  She likes to scrunch up her face, it is so cute! It seems she just wants to skip sitting all together, and start crawling! She is pushing up with her knees and arms, and she is pivoting and scooting all over to get things she wants. She has really quick and grabby hands too, we really need to be careful what we leave out around her now, especially with a toddler in the home too!  We are scheduled for professional pictures mid July, and she needs some more help with sitting.  She does OK for a minute or so, but then she topples over...I ended up getting her a Bumbo to help get her stomach muscles in shape.  It seems to be helping so far. 

 

She is talking a lot more now!  She is now saying 'Dada' and all sorts of other sounds.  She also gets more bored, and likes to play more now.  She just loves everyone, and will smile and be happy with a perfect stranger.  She is pretty much on a predictable schedule now too which is nice so we can plan more around her naps, and when she cries we pretty much know what to do for her.  She was really starting to dislike her bassinet that we had in our bedroom, so when she turned 7 months about a week ago, we moved her upstairs, and she will sleep right through the night now, close to 12 hrs.?!  We can't believe it, we have been so lucky so far...I'm sure that will change when she starts teething more, but for now we are quite enjoying it, although we do miss having her near us!  But it's nice because we don't disrupt her sleep in the evening.

 

At around 6 months something changed with her eyes because she started to squint with the camera flash.  We had been thinking about getting a new camera anyway, so with this new development we decided to go ahead and do it.  It would be sad if all your baby pictures after 6 months were squinty, so we are glad the new camera is super fast, so her eyes are nice and wide open. 

 

Another big change this past month is we started to feed her some food!  We started out with some Rice cereal, and she did pretty good.  Then we had some left over jars from Liam that were still good, so I gave her a taste of Mangoes...it was a little too tart to start with, but the faces she made were priceless!  Mike got some more tame flavors at the store, and so far she has tried; bananas, carrots, peas, pears and butternut squash.  Usually she takes 2-3 feedings to finish a jar, but she plowed her first jar of butternut squash the other day, we were so proud of her.  She is kinda funny still about eating though.  She even makes faces eating rice cereal...Liam was more of a gagger, but Rowan is more of face maker!

 

I just can not believe how fast this last month flew by!  Most of the month I was healing from having a mole taken off of my foot, so we really didn't do much, but the kids managed to grow and change regardless!

 

Oh, and one last thing...I was just looking over Liam's 30 week post, which is how old Rowan was this past week, and ironically 'Auntie' Heidi came to visit him the same exact week!  We got some really cute pictures, and will have to post them together to compare sizes : )  He seems so much bigger!!