"I did it"

Alyna showed a new smile yesterday. She was on her stomach in the playpen outside, and pushed herself to a sitting position. I said, "Good job Alyna." She looked up and gave a big smile with her eyebrows fully arched, and you could just tell she was thinking, "I did it." I was so proud.

Night before last, when I was putting them to bed, I came in the room and she had pulled to her knees on the crib railing. I thought, "Uh oh. We need to lower the matress right away." Barry didn't come home until they were asleep, so at the 10 o'clock feeding, I held Alyna while he lowered the matress. It's not a fun job to crawl under there, and it was even worse because he had just worked a 12 hour shift. Halfway through, we were both saying we probably could have waited a few days for this anyway. We were wrong about that, and right to spend the time to move it down then. Last night during the bedtime put down she pulled up to her knees, and then to her feet. I picked her up and said a hushed, "Good job Alyna, but now it's time to go to sleep." I laid her down, and she went to sleep.

Alyna still scoots most places where she wants to go, but she often gets up on her hands and knees and rocks. Sometimes she'll even move an arm or a leg before plopping onto her belly. She doesn't go very far or fast yet.

Ryan is a little bullet. We can put up a baby gate at one entrance to the living room, and have a sliding pocket door at the other. If we don't close off one of the entrances, he takes off for it, trying to get to the dog's water bowl in the kitchen. Yesterday, I would leave just enough room in the door for Henrey to come in and out, but Ryan saw it and took off. It only takes him about 10 seconds to cross the entire room on his hands and knees, and it's a large room.

The upside of his crawling achievements is that I can pick up Alyna to go to the other room and say, "Come on Ryan", and he will follow us. He's usually almost out of the room when I get back to get him. If I'm going all the way out to the van I have to be sure to close that pocket door, or he could find his way to the dog bowls before I get back. We are working on a way to secure the pocket door closed by the time he figures out how to slide it open.

One of the differences between them is that as Alyna is learning to sit up, crawl, and stand, she is more cautious of not getting hurt. Ryan just stood up, and then fell down or cried for Mommy to come help him. Alyna has already figured out that if she twists her hips and bends one leg under when she's going down, she'll fall on her bottom which doesn't hurt as much. Most of her hard falls have been because Ryan bumps into her while trying to play with the same toy she is.

They both say "Mum" a lot now when they are tired or want something. It's a precious thing to hear, but they always sound so sad when they say it. Alyna often says "Ha" when you say "Hi" to her, and we've been working on waving when she does it for hi and bye bye. She waves her arms all the time anyway, so I been saying the words when she does it. I think she's catching on. We say hi and bye to the stuffed animals in her room at almost every diaper change.

Their new favorite song is "Where is thumbkin?". Sometimes they'll even look at their hands when I'm singing it to them.

Life isn't dull in this house, nor would we want it to be.

First Big Bath

Last night was Ryan and Alyna's first bath in the big bathtub. They are getting too big and mobile to do all the undressing and redressing on the kitchen counter. They had fun, and did very well playing in the water. The bath mat on the floor of the tub is clear with pictures of fish and Elmo, and Ryan was a little upset that he couldn't grab the fish. We had other toys for them to chew on though.


Getting them out of the tub was the hard part because they don't stand up yet without holding on something so it was a challenge to wrap them in a towel. I worried about losing site of the one still in the tub too, but they did fine. Barry was there helping as well, and I think I won't do it alone for a while. Until they can stand on their own, it will be difficult to bathe them both like this on my own.

moving along

"Good Job Alyna!" She sat up from a lying down position for the first time today. She's also started flipping one leg behind her when she sits which is what Ryan started doing just before he started crawling everywhere. It makes it a lot easier to go from sitting to the crawling position. She is talking a lot more too, and it sounds like she's saying words not just making noises. She is still very much a people person.


Ryan is just going everywhere. If I don't shut off the living room he ends up at the far end of the next room. He's had some fussy days from teething and getting tired from crawling, and he wants to be held a lot. Then he wants to play, but he still wants to be held. I felt like a human jungle gym as he pulls on my shirt and arms to stand up. Yes, he is pulling up on everything. He can walk slowly along holding onto the couch or my fingers. He's starting to figure out how to get down from standing too, but he has fallen and hit his head a lot this week. Wood floors hurt, and then Mommy has to hold him again.


Henrey is such a good dog around them. They get really excited when he comes around. He lets them pet him because it usually means I'm petting him too. He just doesn't like it when Alyna grabs his ears or flails her arms around. Ryan chased him around the room yesterday. He would crawl to Henrey and sit next to him. As he reached out to touch Henrey, Henrey would move. Ryan would crawl over again... and again... for about 5 minutes, until Ryan got upset and I had to find him another toy to play with.

Their favorite food is Yogurt which we have for breakfast every day, and they love Cheerios. They can't quite get them in the mouth by their own hands yet, but they're working on it. We have to hide the Cheerios container until they've eaten at least most of their baby food for that meal, or all they will eat is the Cheerios.

We sit on our back porch a lot rotating amongst the playpen, exer-saucer, and a blanket on the grass. They like to feel the grass, leaves, and flowers in their hands.

As always, we feel very blessed to have two happy, healthy, and beautiful babies.

a big Mommy thanks

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms I know.

I have to send a big thank you to my friend Nicole. We were in the same club at Harding quite a few years ago, and it has been so good to be in touch with her through Facebook and blogs. She has given me lots of advice the past year (she has a 2 year old boy), and recently her advice has really shown me what a great mom, and friend, she is.

Ryan, Mr. Roly Poly Oly, can once again be changed on the changing table in his room. Nicole told me to use my "mean mommy voice", so I tried it. When he starts to flip over, I lift his arms from the rail, lay him on his back again, and sternly say, "No." He actually gets upset for about 20 seconds when I do this, but then he will lay still for most of the diaper change. I usually have to do it again if we are also changing his clothes. I'm amazed at how a 7 month old can respond to this kind of correction. I've started using the same voice when he starts taking things from his sister and climbing on top of her.

The naptime/bedtime routine has been better too. We are back down to 15-20 mintues for them to go to sleep. Nicole gave me advice I'd heard before in regards to older children, but I didn't realize it would work with 7 month olds so well. When we put them in their cribs for nap or bedtime, I turn the mobiles on and let them roll around and play for 5-10 minutes. Then I go in, lay them down, give them their cuddlie (half stuffed animal, half blanket), and say, "It's time to go to sleep now." They usually get into the sleep position and close their eyes and try to go to sleep. If/When they are fussing again and I go in reposition them, I don't say anything or make eye contact. I just lay them on thier side again, and repostion the cuddlie and their blanket.

Using the next size up diaper is mostly helping with the leaking at night. Last night I forgot to put Ryan in the bigger diaper at bedtime thinking he would make it to the 10:30 feeding fine, but he woke up at 9 having leaked through. The boy must have a really large bladder. He did fine in the bigger diapers the rest of the night with a diaper change at 4:30 am. The worst part about last nights wetting was that it got on his cuddlie, and we didn't have another cuddlie that had been washed yet. I had extras in the top of the closet, but hadn't gotten them out yet. So this morning they are all in the wash so he will have one next time. We gave him a burp rag to snuggle with, but we could tell he knew it was different.

This afternoon I'm going over to be with a friend who just had a baby a few weeks ago. It's amazing to see this newborn and think that my babies were actually smaller than that just 7 months ago. I don't even remember it really. Time passes swiftly, and I am blessed to have each moment.

Tips and tricks

My new nickname for Ryan is "Roly Poly Oly". He rolls, twists, and bends whenever we try to change his diaper, change his clothes, or put him to bed/nap.

The odd thing is that he'll be still longer when we're changing him on the floor or in the crib than if he's on the changing table. So we no longer put him up there because he automatically flips over and pulls himself to the railing. The bad thing about that is that it is more up and down off the floor for me and my bad knees.

Naptime and bedtime have been a real issue this week. It used to take about 15 minutes of wiggling and rolling around before he would settle down enough to go to sleep. The past 2 days/nights it has been 30-40 minutes each time for him to fall asleep. I gave up at 40 minutes at Saturday's afternoon nap and put him in the swing where he only slept for 30 minutes. He no longer takes hours and hours of naps in the swing. It's usually something I use after he's woken up in the crib after 45 minutes.

Our bedtime routine hasn't changed, but maybe it needs to. We do a bottle, change clothes, the same 2 books, and then bed. We even tried keeping them up 30 minutes longer, and it still took 30 minutes for him to go to sleep.

The real change is his mobility. He will start to settle down, but then he'll roll over on his knees and move to a sit up position. He doesn't know what to do to go to sleep once he's sitting up, so he starts to fuss. And last night he actually pulled up on the side rail of the crib. Thankfully Barry had lowered it down the night before.

Any tips would be appreciated. 40 minutes is a long time to be in and out of the room at bedtime.

progressing

The teeth still haven't popped through, and they're still fussy and sometimes feverish.

Ryan now can go from crawling to the sitting position and has pulled up to standing a couple times. It's time to lower the crib mattress.

Alyna is just starting to realize she can go from sitting to crawling without doing a faceplant and hurting herself. For the last week she would just play with what's around her if she was sitting up. Then she would fuss when she got bored. If I put her on her back she'd roll over and crawl all over the place.

No one told me that if a baby chewed on a cardboard book long enough it would disentigrate in his mouth. I guess I should have known. Well, we definitely won't leave the books down in Ryan's reach anymore. He chewed off half the back page of the Brown Bear book yesterday. He was really upset that I took it away.

They are both eating well, and we've used sippy cups a couple times. Alyna doesn't seem to mind the cup, but she sometimes gags on the amount of liquid that comes out at once. Ryan doesn't want to mess with learning how to drink from it right now.

We had our first playdate with some neighbors yesterday. She's the youth minister's wife at another local church and has a 4 year old girl and 1 year old son. It will be good to have friends in the neighborhood.

I hear the nap time fussiness starting.... gotta go start the routine.