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| Henry clapping for mommy! |
Ten months old...and it's been another big month! We survived our first family vacation, and enjoyed some really hot weather! I was working most evenings, so it's weird for me to not put them to bed or feed them dinner. But Daddy does a great job! And Grandma Suttner did a lot of babysitting since I was working more.
The boys gained some weight this month, and anyone who's seen them lately says they look older and chubbier! Henry weighed 16 pounds, 12 ounces, and Holden was 17 pounds, 13 ounces. They're getting a little more hair, but are still pretty bald! They both got a few new teeth in Atlanta, and Henry just got his 6th, so they both have 6 teeth at the moment.
Not sure if we hit any other big milestones this month. We finally made it down to two naps, so their afternoon nap is roughly 2-4, which is nice. We started giving them a bottle before they went down, so that helped us stretch the time in between naps and get them to sleep a little longer. They go down around 7:30 and get up around 7:30. (Sometimes they wake earlier when they hear Alex in the morning, but I don't usually go get them till right around 7:30!) We've got a pretty consistent routine down most days. It's still hard to fit in anything in our narrow window of time. They're up from their first nap by 10:30 or 11, but by the time they eat, get changed and cleaned up and I get stuff ready and get them in the car, it still feels like we only have an hour to an hour and a half of time to go to lunch/playdate/shop etc. So I guess that's just the way it is right now!
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| OUT TAKE! Lunging for the camera |
They're enjoying their solid food a lot. It's hard for me to know how much to give them, if they're still hungry or if I'm letting them snack too much. I really need to work on my diet and eating habits, because the stuff I eat is too unhealthy for me to share with them! Holden is always trying to climb my leg and into my lap when I'm eating, but I'm not usually eating something healthy. (Side note: I have been trying to cook a little more and store some meals in the freezer, so I might try to post a few recipes I've enjoyed! Go me!)
We have eaten out a few times this month, which is cute to see them both sitting in their high chairs. They will eat puffs from the table or whatever bits and pieces we give them. They love gram crackers (which are a big mess), Cheerios, toast, puffs, yeah pretty much all carbs. I give them cut up fruit in the morning, so they like watermelon and cantaloupe, too. We try to give them veggies with dinner, and we need to start some more proteins and meats. They've had egg once, so we'll try that some more, too. (I think it's kind of gross without the white part, since you're supposed to start with only the yolk for possible allergies...we might just ignore that.)
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| Henry "cheesin'" for the camera |
They're still crawling like crazy and pulling up on everything. They're just starting to "cruise" or walk around the furniture. They seem to balance pretty well, but I don't think they're that close to walking yet. I'm really trying to get them to clap and to wave, so hopefully by next month they'll have mastered those! Henry definitely claps, but doesn't do it "on purpose". If I say, "Yay, Henry, clap!" when I see him do it, he looks at me like I'm crazy. We've gone swimming a few times and it's so cute to see them in their baby floats. Hopefully next summer we'll get out to more splash parks and the zoo, etc, but it's just hard with the limited time in our schedule and me being alone. I wish we'd been walking more, but it's been SO hot and dry here it's miserable, even early in the morning. Hopefully as we get into the fall we'll get more in the habit of a morning walk before their nap.
Overall, it's been a good month! I'm sad that a lot of my friends will be going back to work/school soon, but I'm glad we to hang out over the summer. And in a way, getting back to the routine of the school year will be good. (Especially for me with teaching, since my students have been all over the place and my schedule will start to stay the same each week now.) I'm looking forward to their first birthday party and all the fun stuff ahead! I'll try to pick an official party date soon. :)
(PS, it gets harder and harder to take these pictures each month! Henry is such a good little poser for me, but Holden was being WILD this time! :) He was all over the bear and lunging at the camera and now that they notice the paper they can't leave it alone...lol. It's still totally worth it, I can't wait to put the whole year together and look back at each month. But enjoy the "outtakes"!)
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| The End... |
Well, we have some changes coming around here! The first is a little bit old news, we traded in my car and got a minivan!! I think I'm the first of my mom friends to do so...I was not thrilled about it at first. We'd talked for a long time about what we'd need in a bigger car and I wanted to hold off for a while. I wanted an SUV like a Traverse or something. Alex wanted a third row (in case we had more kids or in case our kids actually wanted to bring a friend somewhere!) and he just wasn't impressed with any of the third rows in any SUVs. He eventually wore me down, since he was right about the third rows being really small. And we have several family members with minivans that highly recommended them. We were still making payments on my Kia, so it made sense to go look at the Kia dealer first! We pretty much saw this one on the lot (2012 Sedona, slightly used, Alex thought for a good price), drove it, and brought it home that day. Our payment worked out to be pretty much the same, so it really did make sense to trade for a better family car. It makes it really nice to be able to keep both strollers (our City Mini and the double snap and go) in the back. And Alex loves to play with the configurations of seats and fold them down, stow them, etc. It's working great for us so far! The gas mileage isn't great, but we don't drive this one as much, since I just take the boys on errands and to playdates. :)
The second piece of news is that I'm starting to teach again. I'm going to be teaching private violin and viola lessons at a music store in town, starting today. I was really hoping to have more students at my house, since that offers the best flexibility, but this seems like a good place to teach. I'm a little nervous, but hopefully it'll be great. My hours will be 3-8 in the evenings on Mon/Tues/Wed, so that'll be a big change. My mom will cover Mon/Tues till Alex gets home, and we'll eventually need a sitter on Wed. For the summer I don't have students on Wed. yet and if I get some, my friends who are teachers can babysit. I was hoping to have a pretty full schedule, but right now it doesn't seem like I have a lot. I guess a lot of people drop lessons over the summer, so we'll see how it picks up. I guess it's a good thing to start slow and build up. I'm nervous about being away from them all evenings and Alex having to do everything himself all evening, including dinner and bottles and bed. But it means that we don't have to use much daycare or babysitters, so we'll give it a try! So wish me luck...hopefully it'll be a great fit. Right now I'm just nervous until I've met all my students and until we get our new routine down. It's depressing to think all of my evenings are busy when most of my friends are free in the evenings, but that's the gig, I guess! :)