Nine Months Old

Violet is now 9 months old! Eddie and I took her in for her check-up this afternoon. We have all been sick for over a week now (and Violet has an ear infection), so I think that her weight isn't as high as it would've been under normal circumstances, but she still weighed in at 19.9 pounds (71st percentile). She is 28.74 inches tall (87th percentile). Here's some fun stuff about Violet:

Favorites

Eating Out

When Eddie was a baby, he would get totally overstimulated by restaurants, but eating out with Violet is hilarious. She sits in the high chair, dancing like crazy to whatever music is playing, smiling at everyone, and eating everything we put in front of her.

Eyes

Violet loves eyes. She likes to poke the eyes on all her dolls. And if a doll has the type of eyes that close when the doll lays down, those eyes will entertain Violet for a long time. She also likes people's eyes, but we try not to let her play with that kind.

Outlets

We have had most of the outlets in our house covered since Eddie was a baby, and he never really showed any interest in them. Violet, however, finds all the uncovered ones and tries to stick her little fingers in them. Once I can find the rest of our outlet covers, Violet's efforts to electrocute herself will be thwarted for good.

Bathrooms

Violet loves to explore the bathroom at every opportunity. Luckily, we have been able to train Eddie to close the bathroom door most of the time. Every once in a while when things get too quiet, I find Violet in the dark bathroom, patting the stepping stool. She has not yet discovered the wonder of the toilet and I hope it stays that way for a few more months.

New Things

"Momma!"

Yes, Violet said, "Momma" for the very first time this last week. That is the only time I have ever heard her say it. She doesn't even babble "ma ma ma," so that makes me think she said it intentionally. She loves to crawl over to the drawers under our TV and pull out the bottom one. She had pulled it out, but got herself wedged underneath it, so she looked up at me with an anguished look and said, "MOMMA!" It was a lovely word to hear.

"Uh-oh!"

Violet has started to say uh-oh when she "drops" things. When we think she is ready for a nap, we take her into her room, put in her binky, and hand her Dora doll to her. If she is ready to lay down, she will quickly place Dora's hair against her face and lay down without a struggle. If she doesn't want to lay down, she will throw Dora on the floor, then remove her binky and throw that, too. So then I will rock her while she continues to throw the binky and the doll until she gives up. Now when she drops one of them from the rocker, she has to peer over the side at it and say "uh-uh," and continue to look at it until I pick it up so she can drop it again.

Stairs

Violet learned to climb the stairs. Luckily, she started doing this the day after we brought home a gate for the bottom of the stairs. Now her favorite place to play is on the landing, holding onto the gate. Unfortunately, she doesn't understand how to come back down, so she has fallen down a few times and gotten a few bruises. She can no longer be left in the living room alone.

Real Food

We have almost given up on baby food and instead, just feed Violet whatever we are eating. Since she has no teeth, it's a bit complicated, but she eats a lot of bananas and bread. She also likes cheese and grapes. Most meals, she eats more than Eddie does, but that's not really saying much.

Preview of Coming Attractions

I have been getting really excited about Eddie & Violet's Halloween costumes. Eddie is going to be Sheriff Woody and Violet is going to be Little Bo Peep. Eddie's costume has been relatively simple to piece together since he already has boots and a vest (seen here). So all we had to do for him was buy a shirt, a hat, a holster, and a badge.

Violet's costume is a little more complicated. Lucky for us, I found a pink & white polka dot princess costume at Kid-to-Kid. With a few alterations, it is going to work great. The biggest issue was making her bonnet, which I completed today. I was planning to make it solid pink, but then I decided to add a little lacy embellishment that was cut from the sleeves of the dress. I think the final product turned out pretty cute.

Now we just have to figure out how to keep it on her head.

Our Kiddos

Our kids are really cute... most of the time. We have had some fun times over the past week or so. Check it out:

Eddie went on a pony ride at the Thanksgiving Point Farm. He wore his cowboy boots and his Woody vest and insisted that I not walk alongside him the whole time.

I think that pretty soon Violet will be as big as Eddie is. Then he'll get a little taste of his own medicine. For now, Violet adores her brother.

Violet is such a dainty little girl. She holds her hands out like that a lot. I am excited that the weather was finally cool enough yesterday and today for her to wear some of her long sleeve shirts before she grows out of them.

Yesterday, the kids and I took a walk and arrived home just as it started pouring rain. Eddie said he had to get in his cave to be safe from the thunder and the rain.

Violet puts up with a lot from Eddie.

Too Fast

I think as the parent of more than one child, it is impossible to not compare the kids in some respects. While Eddie had low muscle tone and gross motor delays, Violet definitely does not. Since we went through physical therapy with Eddie and he didn't crawl until 11 months and didn't walk until 14 months, we had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for it.

Violet, on the other hand, is giving us no time. She is just ready to go. It has only been a week since we lowered the crib mattress one notch after she learned to sit up by herself. Then yesterday, she surprised us all by learning to pull herself to standing. Since then, we have found her standing in her crib several times, so we had to lower the mattress the rest of the way today so she wouldn't fall out. She hasn't quite figured out how to pull herself up on all the furniture (where she can't get a good grip), but keeps trying to stand unsupported. It won't be long before she starts climbing the stairs and walking, which is a little scary.

Trying to climb into the tub with Eddie

I also suspect that Violet is starting to learn some words. I think that she sometimes says "Eddie," but nobody else has heard it, so I could just be hearing things. She also says "Dada" a lot, and when asked "Where's Dada?" she will look at Dave.  But I'm not sure if she only says it in reference to him. Seriously, she is growing up way too fast.

Sitting & Sleeping

Over the last week, Violet learned to sit up on her own! I went in to get her up from her nap last Tuesday and she was sitting in her crib with a big smile. Since then she has practiced a lot and is becoming more and more mobile by the day. She likes to get onto her hands and knees and bounce, and we suspect she will start crawling soon.


We also started sleep training last week. I had just started reading Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Dr. Richard Ferber and the very first example he gave described our problems with Violet perfectly. Apparently she had some less than ideal sleep associations we needed to break, like being held by her momma in order to get to sleep. So we are working on teaching her to fall asleep on her own. The first night, she cried for 25 minutes before going to sleep. The second night, she only cried for 7 minutes. Some nights she'll go to sleep without crying at all. One of the other associations we had to break was how she liked to hold my hair while she fell asleep. We found her a small doll with yarn hair to replace me and now she sleeps holding Dora's hair. And when she wakes up in the night, we just give her Dora, pull her blanket back up, and she generally goes back to sleep on her own. I was amazed at how quickly her sleep improved, which makes life easier for all the rest of us, too.

Seven Months Old

Today, Violet is seven months old!

She has started eating more baby food (probably because I am making it a point to remember to give it to her). She loves bananas, pears, peaches, and sweet potatoes. She is not too keen on the cereal, though. I had to start buying the baby food that already has a grain mixed in. We even gave her formula for the first time the other day, just to see how she handled it. She drank it just fine, which makes me less anxious about leaving her for longer periods of time in the future.

Violet's personality gets funnier every day. She has started making the occasional fishy face. Sometimes she will bust up laughing about nothing at all. She loves most other kids and loves to watch Eddie and the neighbor kids play outside. She loves to be outside, so in the evenings when she is tired and fussy, but we're not ready for her to go to bed, we go out on the lawn for a while.

One of Violet's favorite things is my hair. She loves to hold it and pull it and run her fingers through it while she's falling asleep. She likes when I have pigtails because it gives her a big chunk of hair on one side to hold while I carry her around.

Violet still has no teeth and hasn't started crawling, but we imagine both those things could change any day. She still does not sleep through the night and I have big plans to start sleep training as soon as I know we'll be home for at least a solid week to establish a routine. I am setting myself up for the worst case scenario: that she will scream for 2+ hours each night before falling asleep and keep that up for at least 2 weeks. Then if it works faster, we'll be pleasantly surprised.


As far as I can tell, Violet's growth hasn't leveled off yet. I keep waiting for it to, but I'm afraid to buy any clothes for the future because she might be wearing toddler sizes before too long. Right now she fits in 12-18 month sizes and I've started buying 24 month stuff for fall and winter. Hopefully as soon as she starts moving, she'll stop growing so much for a little while.

Riding in Style

As you may recall, we gave Eddie a tricycle for his second birthday. We tried to teach him how to ride it, but no matter how much we tried, he didn't seem to get it before the winter came. I was starting to wonder if he was a little too uncoordinated. Then when I took him in for his three year well-check this year, the doctor told me that he should now be developmentally ready to learn to pedal. I wish I'd known that a year ago.

So Eddie spent this summer actually learning to ride his trike, despite looking like he could barely fit on it any more. Once he got the hang of the pedaling and could ride it without one of us behind him to push him every three feet, I got thinking about upgrading him to a real bike. Lucky for us, our friends Steve & Melissa just upgraded their son to the next size of bike, so they let us have his old 12-inch one (thanks guys). They brought it over last week, much to Eddie's delight.

After a couple of trips outside to practice, Eddie has gotten really good at riding. His biggest problems are his shoes having no traction on the bottom (so his feet slide off the pedals), the back tire having no traction (completely expected in a three year old's bike with pedal brakes), and learning to pedal without engaging the brakes. Dave patiently walked around and around the courtyard with Eddie as he learned to pedal and showed his "brand newer than yours" bike off to all the other kids. Every time he'd accidentally pedal backward and hit the brakes, Eddie would angrily say, "Hey! Who did do that?"

Now we've gotten him some new shoes and a new back tire, so he should be able to ride with ease. And we bought him a stylish new Batman helmet and bell that match his bike beautifully. He really is riding in style.

Lagoon

Last week, we went with some friends to Lagoon. It had been almost two years since the last time we went and we had high hopes that Eddie would be more adventurous this time around. He was and it was fun to see him go on rides by himself. He said they were fun, but it was difficult to judge based on his facial expressions, which looked like a mixture of fear and concentration.

He told us later that Bulgy the Whale was his favorite.

Luckily, he had some friends to ride with. Here he is with Lucy on Moonraker.

Violet spent the time lounging in the stroller looking hot and sleepy.

A First

Today Violet experienced a first: being stung by a wasp. She was stung twice on her hand and it took me a few minutes to realize that she was shrieking with good reason. At first, her whole hand turned red and swelled up, but after about an hour, the redness and swelling started to go away. I take this to mean that she is not allergic.

Motor Mouth

These days, Eddie asks a lot of questions. And I mean A LOT of questions. This makes watching a movie with him a little ridiculous -- even movies he has seen 800 times already. To let you experience this first-hand, I decided to make a list of everything Eddie said during the first ten minutes of his first viewing of Despicable Me.

"What happened?"
"Dere he is."
"There he is."
"What's wrong wif her?"
"What happened?"
"Where is he driving?"
"Where is he driving?"
"Where is he in?"
"What was he in?"
"His giant car!"
"What's in his house?"
"What's wrong with him?"
"What is he doin'?"
"Where is he going?"
"Where is he going?"
"What are those kids doin'?"
"What are they going to do in this movie?"
"Where they at?"
"What is he doin'?"
"They're at the movie theater."
"Where's he going?"
"He's gonna steal the moon!"

By my calculations, Eddie said something every 27.2 seconds. Now I understand why parents learn selective listening.