I did my rounds checking on the kids and thought I’d just snap a fairly typical scene about an hour after formal bedtime.
Isaac read a LOT, and had come out to tell Kathleen all about the book:
Charlotte was asleep. Often she’s awake with her cat or just thinking, but sometimes she falls asleep quickly. Usually her bed is a mess; I fixed her blankets for her so she’d be warm.
Nicole almost always falls asleep looking at books. This is a huge Curious George book from the library.
Ila is often in a very silly mood when she ought to be asleep.
Ila is finally big enough for a riding toy. She can only go forward and in a straight line and her little feet barely touch the ground. She pushes her riding toy backwards and then sits on it and rides towards me. Sometimes she likes to stop and put her feet up:
She also likes to climb up on her toy and as soon as she does she says “get down, Ila†until I tell her to get down. Then she smiles real big and sits down.
Zach has made some good arguments in favor of switching our online photo storage from Flickr to Picasa. I have not uploaded any pictures to Flickr since he has made this recommendation and now I’m woefully behind. I thought I’d share some recent shots here with commentary as I mentally prepare for the switchover.
So I’ve taken a few fun videos recently, but neglected to share them, so here they are:
This video of Ila saying the word dancing and dancing was taken before the first step videos that I posted yesterday:
This is a fun one of Nicole falling asleep at the table:
At the end where it looks like she bumps her head and wakes up, she actually stayed asleep and I carried her over to the couch where she had a proper nap.
Here’s some of Charlotte’s dancing (and some singing):
Here is one of Nicole spelling her name:
This one features Ila spelling her name:
Here’s the longer version so you can see it in context:
Ok, I think I got that out of my system. I promise that next post will not be full of videos!
Age = +6 months, weight = +1 lb 11 oz, length = +1 1/2 inches, head = +2.5 cm
Her length and weight were so low that they were well below the line (they don’t have a specific percentile for her). The doctor said it was normal for kids to dip and wished we were sticking around so that he could see where she was on the Chart next time. After testing her blood for iron content, he wrote her a prescription for Iron supplements.
What can I say, I adore my little Ila. Her sweet smiling face melts my heart and I love that she’ll let me hug and cuddle her almost any time I want. There’s nothing better than cuddling a sweet baby in your arms.
She says “ma ma,†“da da,†“iya†(Ila), “uh, oh†and “no, no, no.†The last one I think she picked up from Nicole because she sounds just like Nicole when she says it. She also makes a “meow†when she sees a kitty. She loves to play games where I make a noise and she repeats it or I repeat a noise or sound that she makes.
She crawls with ease and can walk along furniture. She likes to stand in a squat sometimes and can balance for a few seconds while standing straight. She also recently learned how to stand up in the middle of the room from her squatting position. She does not walk and I’m predicting that she’ll be my slowest walker.
She likes music and when she hears it she often dances by shaking her hands up and down or nodding her head. She likes to splash and play in the water, but is scared of the bath. I think it’s because I tried bathing her with Nicole one day and Nicole would not stop pouring water on her head.
Ila is unique from my other children in several ways. She’s more resistant to other people than my other children were. Most of the time if I’m holding her and someone reaches out their arms to hold her she will cry, bury her head in my shoulder and cling to my clothing. At one point she’d do that to people who just talked to her. If another adult is visiting the house, she acts as if the visitor’s presence is a threat of me leaving and becomes grumpier and clingier. When I sit on the floor and play with her, she often holds onto my clothing with one hand as she plays.
She loves the gals in the childcare at my gym and it astounds me that she accepts them so willingly. She usually doesn’t cry when I drop her off and she doesn’t cry and reach out for me when I pick her up. She will even wait contentedly in someone else’s arms while I finish signing her out.
Ila is also my pickiest eater to date. While all of my girls refused to take a bottle at some point, the other two girls accepted sippy cups. Ila is content to only drink milk from her mom. I have tried a variety of sippy cups holding my milk, formula, and cow’s milk and after weeks of setting them out for her and offering them to her, she finally took one sip yesterday. That was a huge improvement from crying at the sight of a sippy cup (which she did do seveal times). I’m still waiting to see if she’ll take a second sip.
Her favorite finger foods are Cheerios and Ritz crackers and she will only eat a few other things. She refuses to even taste any new food that I place on her tray. I’ve come to appreciate that stage where babies put everything in their mouth because it means that they actually taste new foods. She even rejected her birthday cupcake. She does like baby food, but has become very particular about which food. If she sees me try to feed her from a jar, she rejects the food before I get it to her mouth. Her favorite foods come in a little round plastic container. So if I want to fool her into tasting a new baby food, I have to put it in a plastic container or risk getting the spoon knocked out of my hand.
I plan to write more about her later, but for now you’ll have to settle for a short video. In this video you’ll see how she makes kissy noises (fish face) and hear her say her name:
Charlotte’s favorite book lately is The Night Before Christmas. She “reads†it to Ila every night and has been teaching Ila all about Christmas. I often hear Charlotte in her room singing or talking to Ila.
Ila seems to really like her big sister, Charlotte and Charlotte seems to like having such a sweet adoring sister.
Ila has learned to pull herself up to standing position, she has not learned to lower herself back to the ground after standing up. So she pulls herself up, is happy for a moment or two, then starts to cry for help. In the picture below, her little feet started to slide and soon she was almost doing the splits. She keeps having this problem in her crib at night. She pulls herself up to look at Charlotte, then gets stuck standing up.
I just thought these pictures were too cute not to post. This is Ila and her second cousin, Sam. Ila is 7 weeks older than Sam, but obviously the smaller of the two, just look at those arms and legs!They were delivered by the same Doctor at the same hospital (their mothers were scheduled to be induced on a Friday and they came naturally on the preceding Tuesday). They each have a first name composed only of three letters. They also each have a darker spot of pigment (birthmark) in a similar spot.
This is completely unrelated, but I absolutely love Ila’s smile in this picture:
I wrote about Ila’s feet awhile ago, but she continues to amuse me with the way she manipulates objects with her feet so hopefully you’ll excuse a second post (third if you count mentioning them in a post about my mother’s visit) on the same topic. I imagine myself telling her about her silly feet antics when she’s older, maybe I’ll show her these videos too.
In this one you can hear Nicole singing in the background:
A lady at the gym commented on her talent this week and said that several of the other gals at the gym found her skills amusing. This woman has also started telling me each time I pick the kids up that she’d be willing to take Ila home with her. It brings me much joy to know that the people who take care of my kids while I exercise actually like them.
My mom came down to Tennessee to help while Zach recovered from his surgery. She arrived on Friday night and was able to stay with the kids while I picked up Zach from the hospital and then got his perscriptions. Zach was miserable all week and barely emerged from our room. He ate almost nothing and mostly just wanted to sleep the week away (perhaps he will post more details about his torturous recovery). His reclusive recovery meant that my mother and I spent the entire week taking care of the kids together.
Charlotte really enjoyed lots of one-one time with her grandmother. They played games and read together and Charlotte invented several new kinds of hugs just for Grandma. On Thursday when I asked her if she wanted to go to the library with me for some one-on-one time she said “no, I like grandma Bunny more than you, mom.†Charlotte is generally always eager for time with me, so I could tell that she was loving every minute with her Grandma (and I wasn’t worried, I know deep down she loves me more).Nicole was charming and cute, as always, and she took to her grandma right away. Nicole gave her Grandma great hugs and Grandma enjoyed hearing her cute funny vocabulary. When I took Isaac to school in the morning, Nicole came with me a few mornings and was very worried when Grandma didn’t get in the car too. She’d start to cry and call out “Grandma, where are you?†On Friday Grandma followed us to the gym in her car instead of riding with us. Nicole fell to pieces when she saw Grandma get into her own car. She screamed and cried and called out “Grandma, where are you?†and didn’t calm down the whole drive. Ila is still mostly a mommas girl, but on Thursday when I went to Isaac’s school, Ila finally let Grandma hold her and play with her without crying and was good the whole time I was gone. She even ate the green beans that Grandma fed her. Grandma was especially impressed with Ila’s great skill in playing with toys with her feet.Isaac really enjoyed reading with Grandma. He read some books to her and listened as she read to him. Grandma remarked on how neat it was to read with him because he asked such thoughtful and intelligent questions and he really seemed to be enthralled with every topic they read about. Grandma’s visit also gave me the opportunity to spend some time with Isaac at school which he was very excited about.
Ila does this funny thing where she transfers items back and forth between her hands and her feet. Sometimes she just transfers them to her feet and then holds them with her feet while her hands play with them. She does it with every toy she picks up. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this here before, but it continues to amuse and astound me at times. All of the following pictures were taken over the course of about a half an hour, but she does this all day long.
So she pulls herself up, is happy for a moment or two, then starts to cry for help. In the picture below, her little feet started to slide and soon she was almost doing the splits. 
She keeps having this problem in her crib at night. She pulls herself up to look at Charlotte, then gets stuck standing up. 
