33 months!

This month was all about getting hyped up for Christmas and boy did it work!  The first day of December we started a Christmas Countdown calendar.  Each day Ryder glued a cotton ball onto Santa's beard and chose a Rudolph sticker to put up on his calendar and he got to take down a bag with a treat in it.  The first treat was a little bag of M&M's.  Ryder was soooo excited and then he kept saying "Santa is so nice!"  He got some candy, some hot cocoa, some popcorn (which he got to eat while watching a Santa movie) and some truck stamps.  They were all huge hits!

While doing this calendar with him, I discovered that he basically can recognize all of the numbers 0-9.  If I showed him the number, he could find it on Santa's beard or if I told him the number (for example, 17 is a 1 and a 7) he could also find it.

He helped with the decorating this year too.  He got to hang up all of the non-breakable items on the tree, which resulted in 4 snowflakes hanging on one branch, in one instance!  It was so cute.  He loves all of the Christmas lights and always asked for them to be turned on.  There is a road near us with loads of outside lights and he loves driving down it.  The second time we went he was literally exclaiming "Woohoo!" as we went and describing all of the things he was seeing.

Vivi's first birthday was this month and Ryder now totally understands what birthday parties are and was all about the cake!  He basically could not wait for the cake and asked almost constantly throughout the day.  He was also into her presents and has enjoyed the fact that she is very good at sharing!

His talking has continued to improve.  He talks a lot and I can almost always understand him.  He is starting to use adverbs more now: better, deeper, faster, higher, etc...  His sentences are definitely much more sophisticated than they were a couple of months ago.  Not bad for a boy who only knew a few dozen words at his second birthday!  His verbal skills have basically been snowballing since this summer.

He was very into stirring his hot cocoa today

No smile, but see that hot cocoa mustache?

"Cheese!" with a hot cocoa mustache

Always willing to ham for the camera if it involves jumpng

He stuck the landing ;)

"OK mom, no more photos!"

1 Year!

And just like that Vivien was one year old.  No more counting milestones in months.  My baby is barely even a baby anymore!

Vivien is back to sleeping through the night most nights, but she still wakes up once or twice a week and needs comfort.  We try to let her cry it out at night, but there are limits to how much baby crying I can take without caving.  Since she has been known to cry for an hour straight, those limits are tested often!  She wakes up between 5 and 6 relatively frequently and wants some company.  I am happy to have her come sleep with us until its time to get up but she wants to be attached to me so it's a little tricky.  She falls back to sleep and is ready to get up for the day around 7.

She is a pretty good eater still.  She's really into feeding herself and loves anything that she can grab and shove into her mouth.  Since it's citrus season now, she has been enjoying clementines most days.  She can eat 2 at a time, easily.  She also found out that she likes pasta this month.  Spaghetti and meatballs, which we make all the time because Ryder love it so much, was a huge hit.  She has been drinking a little bit more volume from the bottle, so it's time to get her to drink milk from it instead of just water.  She has been so stubborn about this bottle thing, so it's hard to say how that will go!

She now is strictly crawling on her knees and she is quite quick.  She has really begun to prefer walking along things and it's sometimes hard to get her to sit because she wants to stand up holding something.  Janda and I got her a walking toy for her birthday and she spent the day going back and forth across the living room.  Although she hasn't seemed too interested lately, she did climb about halfway up the stairs one day.

Vivien is making a lot more sounds, sounds that resemble words.  She clearly says mama and dada.  She can copy other words like all done and hi, but I'm not sure if she knows what they mean.  She has been waving for a while now too.

She loves playing and having fun.  She will play with her toys and entertain herself now, although that leads to some disputes over who should be playing with what, as Ryder has definite opinions on that!  She discovered Ryder's play tunnels and really loves them.  Ryder also taught her all about the chalkboard one day and she loves to go stand next to it and make chalk marks or finger marks and she even tries to erase the board.

A big smile

She sat still for only one second!

Reading her new book

She loves the chalkboard

And pushing her new toy

She matches the tunnel!

32 months!

Two thirds of the year towards three is already done!  Ryder is growing up so quickly!

Ryder has been having a hard time getting going in the morning lately. He sleeps in until 8 on the weekends and I have to get him up at 6:30 on schooldays, so I guess he really does need that extra sleep.  Luckily he goes to my mom's, so I can carry him out the the car in his PJs and then he can eat breakfast over there!

He is still super active, even though we are somewhat cooped up in the house with the early sunsets.  He loves to run around and ride his bike outside whenever we get the chance, but he also loves to do those things inside!  All afternoon and evening it seems like he is jumping.  We have the run and jump, the jump onto the couch and the constant hopping.  Sometimes he just can't contain it!  He is doing very well on his push bike, riding down hills, pushing it up and over rocks, going over ramps and doing endos.  Most of the time when he crashes, which occasionally involves going over the handlebars, he laughs and yells "Endo!"

He has been way into reading lately and sits for longer books now.  He knows a lot of the lines from his favorite books, but only says them on rare occasion.  He knows quite a few more songs now.  The funniest is the "Bus on the driver," otherwise known as the Wheels on the bus.  

Ryder can put on a lot of his own clothes now.  Pants and shoes he has down, socks work out sometimes and the hat gets on, but usually askance a bit!  He also likes to zip up his own PJ's and doesn't need much help to get them going.

Trucks are still Number 1 around here, closely followed by fixing things.  The day that we saw an excavator on a flatbed and a tow truck towing two mail trucks might have been the best day of his life.  He was ecstatic all the way to my mom's!

Semi sitting still

A smile ;)

Not sure about this photo shoot

What a cutie

Sitting up nicely in the purple chair

11 months!

Time is flying by and it is hard to believe that Vivien will be a year old soon!

The road back to a full night's sleep after her ear infection has been slow!  She has still been waking up twice a night quite frequently.  Waking up in the morning and realizing that we didn't get out of bed overnight is still a surprise and not a usual occurrence.  Hopefully she gets back there soon and doesn't do this every time she gets sick.  Her naps have been getting better, especially at my mom's, where her crib is more secluded and quiet.

Vivien really prefers finger foods now.  With the exception of baby cereal and yogurt, everything is finger food now.  I've been roasting fruits and vegetables and giving her small bite size pieces, which she chows down!  She has been known to eat an entire sweet potato!  She has started drinking a little bit more from a bottle, emphasis on the little.  When you offer her the water, she sucks down a few thirsty gulps and then is done for a while.  It's an improvement, but not by much.

She has started to crawl on her knees now, instead of strictly the Marine crawl that she had been doing.  Mostly she does it on the carpet where she gets better traction.  She really would like to get up the stairs, but she hasn't gotten past the first step yet.  

No words yet, just sounds, but she likes to mimic people.  If you make a noise, she will try to imitate it and will do so over and over.  She has a couple of top teeth poking through, so pretty soon they will be making their appearance.

She loves to play next to Ryder and to play with whatever he is playing with, which doesn't always go over so well.  In general though, he is very good with her and very concerned about her doing things right.  He will run over and slam the gate in her face if he sees her trying to sneak into the kitchen!  She is also okay playing on her own at this point too.  If she is left in the living room, she crawls all over investigating things and finding things to play with.

Always smiling!

She's getting good at posing too!

She loves her Ducky friend

She sees something interesting

Just standing, no big deal

Crawling over to check something out

Oh yeah, the bottle is fun, just not to drink from!!!