Anna is 4 months and Eli writes his name!

Our sweet Anna turns 4 months today! I hope to be able to blog each week that she is such a sweet and easy going little lady....as I feel like I say that a lot! She really is and I'm very thankful for that.

This last week she has loved rolling to her tummy and does so at any moment she can....even in her sleep! This is great, for the most part, as she sleeps better on her tummy so the consensus among my mommy friends is that if she gets herself there, she is just fine sleeping on her tummy. What is funny, though, is she rolls to her tummy during floor time, in her crib watching the mobile, pretty much anytime she is on her back. But, if awake, she doesn't always like it once she is there. Poor girl can't roll herself back yet so she must be helped over and over and OVER again! Anna also enjoys sitting up, being held of course, but is getting closer everyday to sitting up on her own without toppling!

Miss Anna also is quite the hand slapper these days and will hit the table, your hands, arm, whatever over and over. She also grabs and holds things really well....thankfully I got a haircut this week to help with that :) She also has started to not just laugh, but do a high pitched chuckle of sorts. It is really cute. Anna continues to love to stand and hold her weight (no balance, yet, of course) and I predict she will be much faster with crawling and walking than her brother.

Now for some cute pics of our little lady:

In other news, it is really awesome that Eli's name has 3 pretty easy to form letters (capital, that is). He started making an "L" by himself, and we taught him the "I" and "E". It is great because they all start off the same so it took little time for him to be able to write his name! To be sure we are all understanding, he does not just sit down and write his name, we have to tell him each letter as he writes it and of course they are not in a straight line, but we were impressed! He especially likes making the "E" lines extra exaggerated. Take a look!:

The last 3 years we have attended a free event put on our parks & rec department called "Touch-A-Truck". A parking lot full of trucks of all kinds from garbage to fire to cranes to street washers. I had meant to look up the date of this year's and forgot and just happened to drive by and see that it was today!! Sadly, we attended the last 45 minutes, at which point it seemed many of the trucks had already left (we drove by at the beginning but couldn't attend until the end). But, it was fun nonetheless and there happened to be a car and motorcycle show next door, so Eli was happy :) Here are pics!

Eli was a little unsure of everything when we first arrived:

Eli seemed a little timid about the ambulance:

Oooo....popcorn, candy and a hat!:

Posin':

Miss Anna was in her stroller but got scared by the loud horns....poor girl!:

As we started to leave and walk to the car show, Eli just sat himself down and ate his popcorn. He looked like a workin' man just takin' a break! We laughed :)

"Cool race car!":

"Not so cool race car" :)

Just his size!:

Now for the 4 month pictures. Anna is quite the mover these days so I couldn't get her to be still enough for a good smiling shot. Oh well! Here is the link to Eli's 4 month post & pics...Christmastime 2007!:

Eli always has to join in on the fun. He gets pretty jealous of the camera :)

Enjoy your week!

Anna is almost 4 months....and other happenings

Our little lady is almost to the 4 month mark and she continues to be the most awesome baby EVER!! :) I'm not biased or anything....

She is content most of her awake time and shares her smiles and laughs often. She probably weighs around 15 lbs. and a few ounces now since she was 14lbs. 14 oz. a week ago. I just washed all of her fall & winter clothes and her closet will be full again soon (when I hang them up, that is). She wears a few 3 month onesies, but primarily 6-9 month clothes. Anna, along with the rest of our house this week, has been snotty, but thus far has had no other symptoms, which is great....breastmilk rocks!!! :) I had some 24 hour bug yesterday with a fever, sore throat, and achiness and Eli had it earlier this week. His cough is still lingering along with his runny nose, but we hope it will be cleared up in time for preschool this week.

Anna seems to be in the cat nap mode these days, just like her brother. This somewhat saddens me since she was doing so awesome taking her one long afternoon nap. But, those days seem to be gone. She seems to wake up right on the 30 minute mark and gets tired again right at the 2 hour mark. She continues to be easy to get to sleep, though, which is great. She doesn't require mama like her brother did! In addition, she has been going to be earlier, anywhere from 7:30-8:30pm. But, much to my dismay, she also has been waking earlier. It is hit or miss but sometimes she will be up and ready to go at 7:30am and other times she wakes, and then returns to sleep for another hour or so.

Anna also decided to roll from her back to tummy today for the first time....twice! She has been able to roll almost all the way but her arm continually got in the way. She figured it out today, though, and didn't seem quite sure what to do then! You can hear the determination in her voice in this video:

Anna can also use her bumbo chair, but just really wants to lean forward in it, even though she can sit up straight:

And just some cute pictures of our little Anna:

As for Eli, he sadly had to miss his 2nd day of preschool last week due to his cough. He had a fever for just 12 hours but his cough is still lingering on. Despite this, we started our Parent and Tot yoga class this Saturday and had fun! Eli wasn't sure about it at first, but got into it as the class went on. It is a small class and the instructor is really great with kids. She uses stuffed animals to demonstrate and represent the main poses (dog, seal, lion, cat, & monkey), played games like picking up soft balls with our toes, and taught relaxation by laying down and looking up at the "rainbow" in the sky. I even feel sore after this first session so that's great! Looking forward to next week!

In addition, our teen age neighbor girl, Delise, has been coming over 2 afternoons a week for a couple hours to play with Eli so my mom can focus on Anna. Eli loves being engaged by pretty much anyone who will play with him, so this is working out great. Delise loves art, so she has been doing many art activities with him as seen below:

She also takes him outside, plays with his racetrack in the basement, and just overall is his little buddy. One of the projects they did was a spider. As you can see, Eli's drawings are getting more & more detailed. See the spider's eyes & mouth?:

In closing, we had an entire night of severe thunderstorms last night ALL of which produced some form of hail. They started in the early evening and literally went on all night. The first round of storms produced the largest hail with golfball and even some BASEBALL sized hail and was quite interesting, yet scary to watch. Eric ran out and got one as you can see below:

And here is video proof of the event:

Oh midwest storms....gotta love em'!! Enjoy your week!

Anna is 16 weeks!

Miss Anna is 16 weeks today and in 11 days will be 4 months! She continues to be our happy little girl and we are so grateful! Some things Anna are doing now:

1) "Standing": she can bear her weight and likes to stand when on your lap (while holding her arms, of course!)
2) She ALMOST rolls from back to tummy EXCEPT for her arm gets in the way...almost there, though!
3) She is more distracted while nursing these days. Unlike Eli, if she doesn't want to nurse for whatever reason, she won't! With Eli it seemed he would nurse anytime, any place.
4) I can hold her more on my hip these days...love it!!

5) Anna really enjoys playing on the floor with her toys. In fact while she loves to be held, I've noticed that she'll kinda fuss to be put down to play! She grabs her toys and even looks around for them once placed on the floor. She knows they are there somewhere and will reach out to grab them...and then eat them, of course!:


6) She continues to drool A LOT and I've noticed a little fussiness sometimes while nursing...all signs of teething! Eli drooled at this age too, though, and his first tooth wasn't until 7 months. So, we'll see!
7) Another similarity to Eli at this age is Anna has been a little snotty and in Eli's posts I wrote about him being snotty at this age, too! She is handling it well and has no other symptoms so maybe it is part of teething for her?
8) Anna now weighs 14 lbs. 14 oz. Eli weighed almost 17 lbs. at her age! Maintaining about 2 lbs. apart!
9) Anna has really started to watch Eli while in the car. I look back in the mirror and she is watching him very intently. She also likes to talk to herself and the outside world while in the car. She is so great in the car now and hasn't had a meltdown in quite awhile....yay!
10) Anna tries to sit up and will lift her shoulders and neck up while laying on the boppy or against your chest:

11) She continues to enjoy her swing and playing with the toys. She just bats at them over and over:


Now just a couple cute pictures:

And for the finale, a cute laughing video:

Eli is officially a PRESCHOOLER!!

Today was Eli's 1st day of preschool and it went great!! We had been counting down the days and have talking about preschool all.summer.long. so it was awesome to actually get this party started! I know he'll continue to love going every week (twice a week) to learn and be with his buddies and teacher, Ms. Stacey!

As I knew he would, Eli was just fine with us leaving him at school. I've grown accustomed to Eli being an independent kiddo and being okay without his mama :) It is so interesting how he was a pretty high needs baby and very attached to me, and now as a preschooler, he just enjoys being engaged, is super social, and loves learning! I guess all the sleep less nights and clingy days were worth it! I only could hope my attachment parenting would pay off some day!! :) Preschool will be great for him! Now granted he'll have THREE years of preschool prior to kindergarten, so hopefully he'll stay as excited as was today!

The preschool we chose is a Christian based school that has been in the community a long time. In fact, the center also has a daycare and it is the one we had Eli signed up to attend when I was planning on returning to work after maternity leave, but never did due to me staying home for a year. They follow state guidelines and have even lower ratio than required with Eli's class having 8 kids to 1 teacher. Eli is in the 2-3 year old class and just missed the cut off for the 3-4 year old class of August 1st. This month his class will learn about themselves in comparison to fall leaves and how everyone is different! They will have special themed days throughout the year and each month has a theme, specific letters, numbers, colors, shapes, songs and bible verses. The school seems really organized and gave parents a schedule of what each day looks like including center time, circle time, snack time, large motor play, and school time.

What else is great is Eli already knows 3 of his classmates from our playgroup. Yay!

Eli wore his Hot Wheels shirt that my friend Tori made for his first day since it had his name on the front along with his race car socks and Hot Wheels back pack! He was set!:

In the parking lot of the preschool:

Walking in:

Looking around the halls:

Entering the room (he knew where to go due to open house last week):

Hanging his backpack:

Joining friends to play:

Anna watching her brother's big day:

Kissing mommy bye-bye!:

But with all this great fun, learning, socializing, etc., comes exposure to more germs. Eli came down with a fever this afternoon which thankfully has gone no higher than 100.5 degrees. I think he probably was exposed somewhere else other than preschool since it came on so fast, so I hope he didn't expose any of his classmates! Regardless, I know he will probably be sick more often this winter due to school and I think we'll boost his vitamin and probiotic intake to help counteract sickness as much as we can.

Sick Eli watching Toy Story 2:

We are excited for our big boy and I'm sure you'll be hearing much more about it throughout the school year!!

Anna's 14th week & Almost-preschool-boy Eli!

This Thursday we attend Eli's preschool open house. We are very excited to meet his teacher & see his classroom! We have all his supplies, except his backpack, which we are having a hard time locating what we want. Hopefully we'll find a race car backpack soon!

In preparation for preschool, Eli got a cool haircut! Yes, our 3 year old is wearing hair gel! This haircut is partly due to a bald spot that has mysteriously come about near the front/middle of Eli's head. At his 3 year appointment we talked to the nurse practitioner about it and she made a referral for us to a dermatologist. She said it could be from all the hair twirling he is doing or it could be that he will always have this bald spot. The dermatologist will make a diagnosis and we'll go from there. We took Eli to Great Clips and the stylist was great and she thought it was a stress spot which she said she sees a lot. She said if it is, it could take about 6 months to fully grow back. She worked great with his hair and you can't even see the spot so that is awesome. He looks so grown up with his new do' and loves it because he gets to wear hair product like his daddy! Too cute!

At Eli's 3 year well check he checked out great! He weighs 36 lbs. and is 37 3/4 in. tall! This fall we need to make dentist appointments for all of us and I can only hope it will go better than it did at age 2. I think it will as he brushes his teeth okay and gets haircuts just fine now, which last year were quite the struggle.

A couple funny Eli lines lately have been:

"I love you girls" while giving Anna and mommy a hug :)

While driving by a garage sale that he wanted to stop and play at, I reminded him that mommy had no money. His response was "You got that right!" HA!!

As for Miss Anna, she is getting to be quite the conversationalist and growing so LONG!! She now can only wear 6-9 month clothes (besides a few 3 month Carter onesies which always seem to be more accurately sized anyway) and I've already pulled out her fall/winter clothes just to make sure we have what she needs due to her length. I recently attended a consignment sale and got Eli some great outfits (4T, I might add!) and got Anna just a couple items as we are pretty well set. At the next consignment sale next weekend I may get her some long sleeve onesies since the shirts that are hand-me-downs are more single shirts and not oneies...but my cousin's girls were smaller than Anna so therefore really WERE 6-9 months when they wore those clothes and were sitting up and even crawling. I like onesies because then their shirts don't ride up all day long when you carry and hold them. Just my preference :)

Anna has also discovered her feet and holds them while lying her back and even puts them in her mouth. She hits and grabs her toys well now and loves to have my hair brushed over her face. When doing things like blowing raspberries on her tummy or brushing hair over her face, she really anticipates the next time you do it by making her eyes big and breathing in fast. She talks so much to us and her toys and is starting to use "n" and "m" consonants. She's quite social like her brother was! At the same time, she is thankfully pretty mellow most of the time. She's pretty content and loves to be held over the shoulder and just rests her head there. Cuddle bug! Facing out is still her preferred position, though :)

Thankfully, Anna decided to finally take the bottle a little over a week ago with perfect timing as I started my full 4 hour daily shifts last week. She is taking anywhere from 4-6 oz. while I am gone with no issue, which is such a relief for me! Woohoo!

Now for some pics of our little girl.

Changing table is still a wonderful place to have conversations with her....she loves it!:

She LOVES her feet!:

Changing table videos: