Olivia and Madelyn's Tit for Tat

-Just a little note: This blog entry has been in the works for three months now.  It is amazing how much can change in the life of a baby in just a few weeks.  So as you read this understand that I had to cut it off at some point, or I would be constantly revising! 

A January afternoon we took this picture in their new shirts!

I can hardly believe how much our family has changed since our last update!  Olivia is now 28 months (almost 2.5 years) and Madelyn is almost 7.5 months!  Lil Miss Madelyn has come so far in the past two months.  The combination of starting daycare, the RSV virus, Christmas and New Year, plus the adjustment to the crib, another ear infection and her feeding schedule all out of whack, she was at her limit by the end of January!  We have really worked with Miss Sharon to get her eating and sleeping habits balanced. She is now a much happier and adjusted baby.  Olivia continues to thrive, speak more clearly and in complete sentences, and is developing quite an imagination.   So here are the highlights of the fun new things the girls are doing based on a game we play, "Tit for Tat."

Eating

Loving the cereal! 

Madelyn has started solid foods.  She had her first taste of cereal around her five month birthday, and at six months we started introducing Gerber foods.  We started with green beans, and she hated them!  I thought her awful face was due to the fact she had never eaten them before, but as we tried other foods, I realized that she does not like green beans.  So far she has tasted, bananas, apples, carrots, sweet potatoes, and pears.  We have also tried peas, but she really hates all food that is green!  However, she wants whatever is in our hands, so she will eat green beans and peas.  I guess she hates that baby food; can't blame her! 

Prunes all over her face!

It has taken quite a bit of adjustment to get her bottle schedule set during the day.  It seems she is not really into nursing before we leave in the morning, but will be starving by 8:45/9:00.  So I nurse her a little bit at 7:00, and then she will have a six ounce bottle around 9:00 along with her cereal.  She eats a Gerber food around 11:30 and takes another six ounce bottle at 12:15ish.  Miss Sharon gives her a last six ounce bottle around 3:00.  We had to play with the timing on her second Gerber food at night because she LOVES the food and would eat and then not want to nurse at 6:00.  Lately, it works best to give cereal at 5:00/5:15 and then nurse at 6:00/6:15.  Naturally, we compare what Olivia did to what Madelyn is doing.  We tried to force Madelyn into a schedule of eating that Olivia fell into and that was part of the problem with the food.  We always have to remember they are individuals, and they have their own unique schedules.  Lesson leaned, and Madelyn is more like her mother, who needs little meals all day long!

Olivia eating some cereal, just like Madelyn

Olivia on the other hand, continues to be a great eater, happily eating  just about anything we give to her.  Her recent favorites include, mac and cheese, rice and black beans, and hot dogs (we give her the turkey ones).   If she had her way, she would eat lollipops all day long.  In her head, lollipops include the actual lollipop, and any other candy or chocolate!  Miss Sharon has a candy bowl and when I come to pick up Olivia the first thing she says to me is, "Mommy, I want a lollipop!"  Miss Sharon just laughs!  It is fun to give her treats every now and then, but we continue to give her a healthy diet of protein, fruits and veggies.  Of course we really cannot sneak any food or snacks anymore.  As soon as she sees us eating something, she will say, "I want some of that."  If you ignore her, then she will repeat herself and open her mouth wide, indicating she wants to see what is in our mouths! So she is really helping out the diet because she is always watching!

She can use a cup and we usually give her one to use at home, but she is two and loves to play games, putting her utensils in the cup and stirring her milk, or her favorite is to put food in the milk.  There are days I can't deal and I know that we should not, but we give her a sippy cup to drink from. Just last week we decided that we are over the sippy cups, and we got Miss Sharon on board, so as of the end of March, she is totally drinking out of cups.  

Sleeping

Every morning the girls cuddle in one of their cribs! It is such a cute routine!

Miss Olivia goes to bed around 7:00 and sleeps until 6:30/7:00 each morning.  We have our little bedtime routine of books, songs, and prayers.  We really enjoy this time of day with her because she is cuddly and usually calm.  Since the time change it has been lighter out when she goes to bed.  Often we hear her singing to herself before she settles down.   

Olivia pretending she is asleep with her bottle!

Olivia still takes a two hour nap starting between 12:00 and 1:00, depending on the day.  Every once in a while at Miss Sharon's house we arrive and learn she has not napped because she has climbed out of the pack 'n play, or she slept an hour before calling out to Miss Sharon and singing.  The best nap story at Miss Sharon's is when Olivia completely stripped down to her diaper and then climbed out, calling out to Miss Sharon, "I'm a naked baby!"  When we arrived to pick her up at the end of the day she was running around with no shirt on!  Miss Sharon just laughed at her.  Needless to say she went to bed early that night!  She is still not ready to drop that nap. 

Waking up after her morning nap!

Madelyn, Madelyn!  We learned with Olivia that "sleep promotes sleep" and we followed the same pattern.  Madelyn nurses around 6:15 and lately she has been falling asleep while nursing.  If she does not fall asleep while nursing, then we do books and prayers before we put her down in the crib.  She is a good sleeper and sleeps until about 6:30/6:45.  We usually do not go in and get her until 7:00ish, and she is happy to roll around in the crib and coo to herself.   I enjoy the extra sleep on the weekends :).  She also takes a morning nap around 9:15/9:30 and it can range from 45 minutes to 2 hours, depending.  We have worked it so that she also goes down about the same time as Olivia.  We will hold one of them up so they can go down together.  Having them on the same schedule for the nap is great to get things done on the weekend! 

Madelyn is a restless sleeper though.  She is all over the crib and is rolling onto her stomach in the middle of the night.  She will wake herself up and cry out for a few minutes while she tries to get comfortable.  She loves to sleep on her side, and it is so cute to see her  cuddle peacefully with her blanket!  Overall, she has followed in her sister’s footsteps and is a good little sleeper!

Playing

Madelyn started sitting around six months and she is a much happier kid! She really likes to see what is going on around her. She loved laying on her playmat and would lay there content for quite a while, but Dan and I were happy to put that away (it was a hard toy to store in our house)!  At seven months her favorite toys include any of the Lamaze toys, especially her Puppy, the Sophie Teething Giraffe, her jumper, the ring stacker, and a colorful elephant stacker toy with crunchy textures. She is very content to sit with toys around her and watch Olivia, Hurley, and the other people in the room. When she is tired of sitting, she will fall forward and lay on her belly.  Overall, she is content with a few toys and watching the world go by! 

Rocking out with Elmo!

Olivia on the other hand is a typical toddler, who is constantly running, singing, dancing, and playing!  She has two speeds, fast and faster!  Her most favorite toy is her play kitchen.  The kitchen will keep her busy for quite a bit.  It is fun to hear her “talk” in the kitchen, she makes food, coffee, and bakes cupcakes!  She also loves her little play table and baby high chair, so she will set the table and feed the baby at the same time!  So adorable.  Her other favorites include books and puzzles.  We have quite a few wooden puzzles, and we have one actual puzzle with 24 pieces.  She likes us to sit with her, but she can almost do that puzzle on her own! It is a Minnie and Mickey puzzle, so she will start with Mickey’s body and move to Minnie.  Dan has really taught her how to do the puzzle and it is funny to hear her talk it out!  She continues to love watching her shows.  Miss Sharon checked out The Curious George Movie from the library and she enjoys that so much.  She will laugh out loud at several places.  Of course the only time she watches TV is when we are putting Madelyn to bed and that is about 20 minutes, so she watches the same 20/25 minutes of the movie every night!  Finally, she is enthusiastic about playing outside too!  She has a tricycle and has begun to understand how to pedal it!  She can go down our little sidewalk and just needs a push to get going up it.  The first time she actually pedaled was a few weeks ago, and she was so excited, arms waving, cheering, “Hooray I did it!”  It was a memory I will keep with me!

Moving

Olivia climbing our fence out back.  It makes me so nervous!

Olivia has two speeds, fast and faster!  She loves to run and be chased. She runs around the island at Miss Sharon’s, she runs around our dining room table, she runs up and down the hill in the back of our house, she runs away from us (this new development is NOT our favorite), and she runs all around the neighborhood on our “walks.”  The amount of energy this child has is unbelievable! 

When I first caught her starting to move!

At 7.5 moths, Madelyn is a rolling, scooting, rocking lil thing!  We realize we should not compare kids, but we figured since Olivia was content sitting, surrounded by toys, we would be on easy street with Madelyn until this summer.  Boy, were we ever wrong! She has started by rolling all over the place.  We first noticed that at night she would end up on her stomach, sleeping.   We soon realized that we cannot leave her on anything with out watching her!  A few weeks ago, she rolled off the dresser/changing table.  She fell pretty hard, but luckily did not have any marks!  It was my fault, I bent down to answer a question from Olivia, and then I see Madelyn falling, in slow motion, out of the corner of my eye.   My heart broke that day and I felt awful, but hopefully no permanent damage was caused!  We have learned to be cautious of our bed too.  No falls from that yet! On a funnier note, Olivia was laughing so hard at Madelyn a few weeks ago!  I was changing Olivia’s diaper and Madelyn was on the floor playing around.  Suddenly she let out a screech and we looked, she had moved herself backwards under her dresser!  The only thing sticking out from the dresser was her head. Olivia and I were cracking up so hard.  She was stuck under the dresser and could not move.  Of course, Olivia had to reenact it and crawl under the dresser too.  We laughed so hard that night! 

Talking

 Olivia is talking non-stop now a days!  She has been talking in complete sentences for a few months now.  It is amazing how suddenly she is a little parrot and will often repeat things.  We have learned to filter what we say.

Here are the most recent top five sayings

1. “Look at me, I am…” (dancing, running, signing, jumping-you name it we are looking)!
2. “I can’t do...”  As in she wants to do something.  She will want you to sit and play with her and she says, “I can’t play with you.”
3. “Hi buddy” (to Hurley) “Hi Sweetie” (to Madelyn) and That's my ..." (Hurley, Madelyn, pooh, mommy, daddy, anything and everything is hers)!
4. "That's better."  She will be playing, putting toys in the bathtub, cleaning up her toys, giving Madelyn a toy, fixing the carpet that Hurley messed up, the list is endless... she'll say, “that’s better.” 
5. "Are you sad?  You happy now?"  She is really big on emotions.  She understands what being sad is and understands happy.  She is struggling to understand frustrating and mad.  Everything to her is funny.  Especially when she does something we don’t want her to.   When she does something to make us upset, like throwing her plate down at dinner because she did not want that plate(that is not a typical night though), she will look at us a few minutes later and ask, "Are you happy now?"  It is adorable and is hard not to laugh! 

My newest favorite is "Guys"  If Dan and I are doing something together or we are all in the same room she will say something to use like, "Guys, who put this here?"   It makes Dan and I crack up!  Then she will start laughing with us and I know she does not understand what we are laughing at!

Madelyn on the other hand is probably going to give Olivia a run for her money!  Madelyn is a screecher!  She will be playing, get excited, and just let out this scream!  She sees one of us, especially Olivia, and her face lights up as she screams and giggles.  She is babbling away too.  She says, mamamama, dadada, lalalalala, etc.  It is very fun.  My most favorite noise of her's is her giggle.  Playing in her car seat, she will let out this little giggle that melts your heart.  It is just so adorable! 

Our life is insanely busy with the two of these beautiful, lovable girls, and it is apparent by our lack of dedication to this blog update.  However, we are able to smile each day, give endless hugs and kisses, and enjoy the love of these girls!  As the school year comes to a close, we will certainly have more time to write more this summer.  So keep checking back for updates!