Little Things: Ada, Eight Months

Ada is eight months old today! Ada is such a happy baby. Her smile lights up the room and she is so easy-going. She rarely cries, and is becoming so much more predictable as she gets a little bit older. She is very friendly, and happy to interact with almost anyone. She is also happy to play on her own much of the time.

Here are some tidbits about Ada at this age...

Eating: Ada is a great eater! She is enthusiastically eating three meals a day and several snacks. She LOVES finger foods, and has tried rice rusks (aka surfboards), Cheerios, cheese, rice, toast, chunks of banana and pear, freeze-dried apples and pear, and noodles. We've also added some meat to her diet in the past month, in the form of Earth's Best Turkey Dinner and the like. She will happily eat fruits, vegetables, cheese, cereal (when mixed with something else) and meat, and seems to have a fairly well-balanced diet at this point. We're still doing a combination of jarred baby food and homemade, and both are accepted well. I think mealtime is one of Ada's favorite parts of the day. She is so happy while she's eating.

Drinking: Ada continues to nurse more-or-less exclusively, although she does have a bottle of formula now and then when I'm at work longer than expected or early in the morning. I didn't expect to be nursing her for this long, but she really loves it. There are times when she REALLY wants to nurse, and nothing else will soothe her. It is also a very convenient way for me to get her to sleep and easier for me than making bottles when I'm the one caring for her. We're going to follow her lead on this, but probably start to cut down on nursing over the next several months. She is already so interested in food that sometimes we can distract her with a meal when she might otherwise take milk. She does fine with bottles when I'm away, but I haven't tried giving her a bottle myself yet. I wonder if she would take one from me...

Sleeping: Ada has been sleeping better lately. We haven't had a really bad night (i.e. three or more wake-ups for a feeding) in a couple of weeks now, and most nights she sleeps from 8pm until 7:30am with one or two short wake-ups for a feeding. We had a week or so where I would nurse her for her first night-time feeding, and she would get a bottle of formula for her second. Apparently she didn't like that much, because she stopped waking up a second time! We're going to try switching to only bottles at night at some point in the next month. I'm crossing my fingers that she'll lose interest once she knows she can't nurse at night and that she might start sleeping through the night as a result. Only time will tell. We still typically rock or nurse her to sleep before laying her down, but I have put her down awake a few times and she's gotten herself to sleep. At night after nursing she also puts herself back to sleep most of the time, so she is learning those self-soothing skills.

Vocalizing: Ada has a lot to say. She often says "Hey, Daddy", although not always when Daddy is around. She shrieks when she wants another bite of food and babbles constantly. Daddy has heard her say "Ju", but I haven't heard that yet.

Moving: Ada is not too interested in moving at this point. She is still happy to sit and play with her toys or observe what's going on around her. She will sometimes pull forward to hands and knees if there's a toy she wants, but then she sits back down to play with it. She'll also do a little bit of scooting around from her belly. Ada can support herself on her feet for a short while, but doesn't pull up yet or stand holding anything other than someone's hands. She'll also bounce up and down from a cross-legged position (it reminds me of Lucia and Magdalena at this age!) and she has started to like the Jolly Jumper, which Jude never liked as a baby.

Appearance: Ada's hair is starting to come in. She's had a long curl on the top of her head for a while now, but no other hair until the past month or so. Now she has a bit of light hair all over her head, although not nearly as much as Jude had at this age! Ada weighed about 17 pounds two weeks ago, so I'd guess she's a bit more than that now.

Tricks: Ada does a cute one-handed clap (one hand moves, the other stays still) and loves to play patty-cake. She is also starting to wave at people.

Here are a couple of photos from the past few weeks. Ada in her holiday dress:

Practicing standing and putting weight on her arms.

Another cute one of the two kids together.

Here is a photo of Ada playing with her toys on Christmas morning.

And practicing standing with Mommy.

We're loving this age, and watching Ada grow up from a tiny newborn to a bouncing baby is a lot of fun these days.

Christmas Spirit

We got a real tree this year. For years, we've had a fake tree made of sticks. Last year, Daddy and Jude got a permit to cut down a tree from the National Forest, and spent a day driving around in the wilderness looking for our Christmas tree. This year, the process took about five minutes. Daddy drove into a tree lot, pointed to the smallest tree he could find, and waited in the car with the kids while the nice old ladies tied it to the top of his car. We decorated it that night, in a fit of Christmas productivity.

The presents (and assorted goodies) have been collecting under the tree for some time now. Every day, Jude carries his box of Z-bars over to me and asks hopefully "Mommy, is it Christmastime yet?". Just a few more days, Jude.

We have attended several fun holiday parties this year. This fantastic photo of Jude was taken at the Miller Christmas party. I was in charge of the game this year, and by all accounts it was a success.

This family shot is from the Holiday Family Friday at the Owl House (i.e. the New Big House, or benannie's house).

Jude and Ada continue to enjoy each others' company. We tried hard to get a great shot of the two of them together to give away as Christmas gifts, but had to settle for individual shots. It is rare to get a photo where they both look their best. But this one is pretty good!

We are enjoying a visit from our East Coast family. We are thankful to not be travelling this year for the holidays. It is nice to be home, nestled all snug in our beds, with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

Where The Wild Things Are

Jude is 28 months old today. Like all Cornett men, he has a knack for memorization. Daddy and Uncle Andy know all of the words to almost every song they've ever heard.

This video is quite long, but we couldn't resist showing off Jude's latest skillz. Perhaps you can let Jude read a bedtime story for your kids tonight!

Salad Nazi

Here is a dinnertime scene from about six weeks ago.

We've been making an effort lately to sit down as a family for meals as often as possible. After a few days of rebellion, Jude has started to take his place at the head of the table, and will actually sit down with us for somewhere between five and fifteen minutes. He has also taken over the job of salad distribution, and he feels the weight of the responsibility. Tonight we sat down for dinner and he said "where's the salad?".

Looking at myself in the video, I feel like I look so ... haggard. It's like I'm low on sleep or something. Oh, wait.

Surfboards

We've come across the first snack that Ada and Jude can share. They're called "surfboards" (thanks to Nini) in our house. Other people might call them "Mum-Mums".

You know, those rice "rusks" (what's a rusk, anyway?) that dissolve in the baby's mouth.

Ada is currently obsessed with gnawing on just about anything that she can grab in her grabby little hands, including surfboards, chunks of pear, Cheerios, freeze-dried fruit, etc.

Plus, it was an irresistible photo-op.

These kids are so cute together.

Wheee!

A common scene in our house these days:

Other things we're doing:

Christmas cards

Christmas tree decoration

Christmas parties

Christmas shopping

You might notice a theme...

Daddy Vacation

E Ben took a much-needed Daddy Vacation to San Francisco this weekend (actually he was gone for 75 hours, but who's counting?), which means that I was on duty while he was away. This is the longest stretch of time that I've been in charge of childcare, um, ever (I never had Jude for this long). I think I did well. I had a lot of help from Terry, who stayed over at our house on Thursday night and took Ada for a sleepover on Saturday night. And I sent Jude to school on Friday morning, so I didn't even have him the whole time. Also, the weather was beautiful here in Portland this weekend, clear and cold, which made it easier. Still, it was a challenge for me. Taking care of the kids 24 hours a day is a lot of work.

Here are some highlights from the weekend (no photos since Daddy had the camera):

• Long walk outside with both kids after picking Jude up from school on Friday afternoon. We hit two parks, and Jude got to practice his "May I Pet Your Dog" script (from his current favorite book).
• Movie Night (with popcorn) on Friday night. We watched Little Bear Movie, which Jude had never seen before and loved.
• Cornett Baking Day on Saturday morning (hosted by Cornett and Company 2). Jude played with his cousins, decorated cookies, and ate quite a few treats as well. Then he came home and took a nice long nap.
• ZooLights on Saturday evening. We met some friends from Jude's school, and walked around in the dark and cold for about two hours. Jude loved the lights and he also loved looking at the elephants. The baby elephant Samudra (born the same weekend as Jude) was sleeping when we got there and it was SO cute.
• Saturday Night Sleep. Everyone slept well Saturday night! Ada slept almost all night long at Nini's house, Jude had his usual good night's sleep, and I slept for almost nine hours uninterrupted! It was my best night's sleep since before Ada was born.
• Sunday Productivity. After a full night's sleep and a pot of strong tea, I was really energized on Sunday. After playing with Jude for a few hours in the morning, I put on a movie for him to watch and cleaned the whole house! Well, as much as I could do in an hour, which turned out to be quite a lot. It felt good to do some of the work around the house that I've been too tired to tackle until now.
• Bonding with Jude. These days, I'm Jude's third favorite person (after Daddy and Nini, not necessarily in that order) and it is hard to spend quality time with him when others are around. We had a great 24 hours together, just the two of us. We played games, read books, had an adventure at the Zoo, and in general had a fun time. I loved spending some time alone with my boy!

The weekend went as well as I could have hoped (actually much better than I expected), and I have to say that, after this, the thought of having the kids for a few hours doesn't seem as daunting. Still, I'm looking forward to my first real Mommy Vacation! I don't know when that will happen (it will be sometime after Ada is weaned, for sure). Maybe in the spring?