Our sweet Elise turns six months old on Friday! Here are a just a few of the many new things that have transpired during Elise's fifth month of life . . .Over the past month, Elise has . . . discovered her feet, started reaching and bringing things to her mouth even more purposefully and carefully, given bigger and bigger kisses, used her hands to bring our cheeks to her so she could kiss us, become more and more mesmerized by her big brother, is able to stay up for longer periods of time in a good mood, found out that she loves chewing on John Harrison's toys, cries when brother takes her toy away, and still doesn't like the car seat.
John Harrison turned 2 1/2 just a few days ago.
Some of the new things he's saying these days include: "this way," "buy that" (hmmm...not sure where he learned that since we aren't parents who allow our kids to beg at the store in order to get what they want), "sorry" (ok, a bit late, right, but you have to understand that used to, he'd say "dadadada" as his word for "sorry"),
Just a few of John Harrison's favorite things to do: go on a boat ride (even though we only did this once in Key West, he still talks about it and lets us know that he would like another boat ride), play with his magnet tiles, play with cars, build with Duplo blocks, eat oranges, eat pistachios "stash stash" (our little boy LOVES nuts....I guess that is in large part due to the fact that we try to get him to eat healthier carbs and proteins and rarely give him typical toddler snacks such as crackers, fruit snacks, cereal, etc.), "walk Starbucks" (when we were in Key West, we walked to Starbucks most days so he keeps asking....), say "no" (see below)
John Harrison has finally reached the "no" stage and also has had a resurgence of fits and disobedience recently. He always requires a lot of consistent guidance and training (daily....well more like minute by minute!!), but over the past few months, his behavior has been especially challenging (last spring through late winter (from the time he was about 15 months until about 20 months) his behavior was very challenging, too, so this round has not taken us by surprise). John Harrison is a very sweet, loving boy and I love spending time with him and Elise each day.
John Harrison and Elise have started to "play" together some. We have worked with John Harrison a lot on not taking toys from Elise and taking Elise's toys to her. Sometimes an overzealous John Harrison has taken Elise's toys and run over to her and thrown them on her (making her cry) so we have worked on gently setting the toy in front of Elise. John Harrison will get his face close to Elise's when she is on the floor or in her pack-n-play and they will both laugh---it is really cute to watch.
David and I stay pretty tired as Elise has not been sleeping well....oh well:). I have discovered that she doesn't tolerate several things in my diet and so I have had to make quite a few dietary changes. Her intolerances are WAY less severe than John Harrison's were (she doesn't fuss and cry most of the day, take an hour+ of rocking, walking, feeding, etc. to go down for the first time at night, or refuse to be left on the floor for even a few minutes like John Harrison did for much of his first year). Before I discovered what some of offending foods were or when I tried adding some offending foods back (bad mistake), she did have quite a few nights when she would wake up every 30 mins to an hour, cry, arch her back, and act really restless. Hopefully, we are on the right track to better sleep, though.
