Joel's Milestones at 9 months

Just checking in with a little update on Joel. He's sprouted his first two teeth, lower central incisors. The right one popped through two weeks ago and the left one about 3 days ago. I can see his uppers are on the way, also. He's taken to standing on his own, squating and pressing up to stand. He's quite pleased with himself about this. He frequently picks things up and stands up and says, "Ha!" in his growly little voice.  He's picking up more words lately as well. So far his list includes, Dada, Mama, No-No, Da-Bah (the ball), and uh oh.  I think we hear Da-Bah about 500 times a day. The boy is ball obsessed already. He's also signing Milk still and we are working on Food and All Done as well as signing other words as I remember to do them. He can also say Hi and wave. It's really cute. He has a Rose Parade wave. :)

He's back to sleeping through the night 10-12 hour stretches. Thank goodness. I was struggling for a while there with the teething waking him up frequently.  He's started taking long morning naps and short afternoon ones which is interesting to me. The girls were always the opposite. That's about it. He has his 9 month well visit next week. We're a couple of weeks late, but that's ok. :)

Tracking milestones

I realize I've missed a few milestones for the kids, so here's a few things that have happened recently that I don't want to forget...

-Joel has been rolling like a mad man for about a month. And in the last two weeks has been able to hold himself sitting up.

-Brooke started cutting her eye teeth (finally!) about a month ago. They're about halfway in at this point.

-Joel has been sleeping 8 hours at night pretty consistently for the last month. Now just waiting for those 10-12 hour nights so that I can both get some sleep and get some downtime. :)

-Lainey had another dentist appointment last week and her teeth look great. She's done a great job at the dentist so far and we're hoping she's never afraid of it like a lot of people are. He says she'll need braces someday, probably around age 11. Time to start saving for that bill!

First foods

Joel is really interested in eating with us now. I'm following more of a Baby Led Weaning model this time around. I did the same with the girls to an extent, but they got purees and cereals sometimes. I don't know if I'll do that with Joel or not. It's kind of a pain. ;) So far he's tried and liked, zucchini, broccoli, bell peppers, and carrots!

Bath time!

All clean!

Life as a family of 5

Life has been good with the addition of Joel. We are really blessed by all we have and for our awesome kids. There was once a time when I wasn't sure we'd have our own children. Three years of unexplained infertility that ended with the birth of sweet Lainey. It turns out that God just had better timing than we did. :)

Joel is just about 9 weeks old now. He's such an easy baby. He's sleeping about 5 hours a night with another 2-3 after that. He seems like he'll be sleeping through the night soon, but who knows. One of the things we prayed over him in the womb was that he'd be a good sleeper. Brooke was up every hour for her first weeks of life and didn't sleep through the night until she was 13 months old, so we are really praying for a better sleeper in Joel. He's smiling and cooing a lot now. He loves to sing along with Daddy when he plays his guitar. He's a super snuggle buddy and loves to fall asleep on my shoulder. He had his first shots yesterday. I decided to go with the recommended shots all at once. With the girls, I spaced them out. But with older sisters in preschool and Sunday school, there's so much more risk for him. Plus, the girls are pretty nervous at the doctor's office now because their shots came at every visit with extra ones too. I hope Joel doesn't get that fearful. 

Lainey is in preschool two days a week. She is learning a lot about sharing, making friends, playing, and exploring the world. She's taking an interest in learning to read too and has started sounding out words and spelling. She can add small numbers using her fingers and is pretty proud of herself about that. She loves her dance classes and watching movies. She's very excited about Christmas and still calls Rudolf, "Brudolf." She says some pretty funny stuff. Here's a few recent ones:

"I don't really like Superman, but I guess sometimes he saves the day."

"Brookie thinks his name is Doo-dolf, but it's really BRUdolf."

After I got upset with her for making me tell her to put on her shoes "so many times, I can't even count," she kindly offered, "Mommy, I can teach you to count."

Brooke is cracking us up these days. She's talking a lot and learning how to maneuver through her world. She's learned to pull a chair to counter to reach what she wants and if you don't go where she wants you to go, she'll grab your clothes and drag you there. She's very persistent. She loves to go to "Wham-ma's House" and to dance class. She wants to wear dancey shoes and fancy dresses everyday. She loves chicken and "Ween tandy." (Halloween candy.)  She's loving Christmas season and loves to watch "Doo-dolf" and look for lights on houses at night. One of my favorite things she says right now is asking may I be excused. It sounds like, " May yama le guzed?"

That's where we're at right now. It takes three times longer to go anywhere and a lot more preparation to make sure life runs smoothly, but we have fun. The house is never clean and some days I barely get myself fed. The laundry is piled up, clean but not folded. :) Life is good.

Time to revive the blog

We have a new addition to the family which means we'll have to rename the blog. Joel Michael was born October 7th, 2012. He's two months old! I think I will start using the blog to track the kids' lives and growth. Kind of like a baby book. So here's my first attempt at blogging again... Hopefully I'll do better than I have the last few years. :)