Jude's first swimming lessons!

Jude had his first swimming lesson two weeks ago, but alas, I forgot my camera. I remembered to bring it to last Saturday's class. Jude is loving the water. Unfortunately, he has so little body fat, that he gets cold quickly and his feet, hand and lips are purple by the time the class is over. I have not found any swim trunks for him yet, so he swims in a swim diaper, but I did find a swim shirt and put that on him in hopes of keeping him a little warmer. This time Jerrod is doing the class with Jude, since I did the class with Julia.

Wrapped in my coat staying warm while waiting for class to start.


First getting in.


Loving the water!



Yum, rubber ducky....


Floating like an old pro.



As you can see from the last couple of pictures, his feet were turning purple already! I think we have another water baby in the works!

Little teeth

While I was trying to get a picture of Jude's tongue, I got one where you can see his little teeth! Right now, he only has the two on the bottom.

Forked tongue

Since Jude was severely tongue-tied when he was born, he still has a forked tongue, even though his tongue-tie was clipped at 5 days old. Lately, Jude has really been sticking his tongue out a lot, so you can really see just how forked it is. I tried to get a good picture of it, but being that he is Mr. Wiggles, it was hard!

My little pixie!

Julia really does look like a pixie some days, especially when wearing outfits like this:

Word of the day....

Julia is getting to the age where she is starting to make up her own words. Today that word was: Yum-a-licious!

Several times today when she was eating something she really liked she would say, "This is yum-a-licious!".

What a silly girl!

Such a mommy.

Julia is such a little mommy and a complete mimic.

Today she comes up to me and tell me to be quiet because her baby was sleeping. She told me "I fed her, then burped her, then rocked her to sleep, then sang her a lullaby, and now she is asleep in her crib.". When I looked, she had dragged her baby doll playpen into Jude's room and that is were her baby was "sleeping". I guess she thinks Jude's room is where the baby's sleep.

Then tonight she goes into Jude's room (before I put him to bed), and I hear her doing all the same things she told me she did this afternoon with her baby over the baby monitor. I hear her talking to her baby and singing a lullaby to her and everything! As she walks out of the room, I hear her tell her baby the EXACT same thing I tell Julia every night as I leave her room; "Good night, see you in the morning when the sun wakes up."!! OMG! That was so precious!

I then tell Julia what a good mommy she is to her baby and then she turns to me and says "You're a good mommy to me!". Melt my heart! I feel so lucky to be her mommy. She is such a little love.

Family pictures

We had Jude's 6 month pictures and family pictures taken tonight.

After struggling to find something for everyone to wear that would not clash with anyone else (I have NO fashion sense!), it went GREAT!!!

Jude was all smiles and tongue! He was wanting to constantly stick his tongue out every time he smiled. Being typical Jude, he was also CONSTANTLY moving and bouncing. He kept wiggling and bouncing out of the positions the photographer was putting him in. Then during the family pictures, he was trying to bounce off our laps!

Julia was a little hard to control, because she wanted in Jude's pictures. She thinks she should be in EVERY picture ever taken! She is the same way at home. I cannot take a picture of just Jude, she has to be in the picture too. So, while Jude cooperated for his pictures, Julia was constantly running up to be next to him in the pictures.

The family pictures also went great. It is much harder to get two small kids to look at the camera and smile at the same time, but we accomplished it without too much of an issue. I have to say, the photographer was GREAT with the kids. She did a great job getting them to smile and look at the camera.

The whole process was quick and painless. The hardest part was deciding on which pictures to order!

Mis-aligned?

For about a week now, Jude has just been really fussing and not his happy self. He has been waking up several times in the night screaming and struggling to get to sleep. He was also hard to console. Normally, he stops crying as soon as I pick him up, but for the last week, it has been hard to console him. I gave him Motrin and Tylenol thinking it might be teeth, but that really did not help. I fed him prunes to make sure it was not constipation and that was not the problem. He has no fever and was not acting like his ears bothered him. I just could not figure out what was wrong. I was getting ready to take him to the pedi to be checked out.

I had an appointment for him to see my chiropractor since the pediatrician thought he might have slight torticollis (where the head tilts to one side). While there I also explained Jude's extreme fussiness in the last week. The chiro listened to his lungs and checked his ears, both of which were fine. He then adjusted his neck and upper back. He did say that Jude's muscles were tight on the right side of his body (the same side I though Jude's head was tilting). The chiro said Jude still had great range of motion, so if the torticollis was there, it is slight. He really looked Jude over and spend time adjusting him and massaging his muscles.

Every since Jude's appointment with the chiropractor yesterday, he has been a very happy boy again! My guess is that something was mis-aligned or wrenched out of place and it was hurting him. After an adjustment aligned everything back up, Jude felt great again! Julia is always being rough with him; yanking on his arms, manhandling him into her lap, laying on him, etc.. I try to prevent her from being too rough with him and telling her to be gentle, but she loves him so much that she is always wanting to touch him. She just does not realize how strong she is.

He goes back for another adjustment in two weeks. I am glad his fussiness was a simple fix!

Sore

I have really been popping the Motrin the last two weeks. My neck, shoulders and back are just so sore. Too much snow shoveling and carrying around increasingly heavy kids!

I had to reschedule my chiro appointment TWICE because of snow storms and finally got there yesterday. Boy, was I ever needing it.

I just don't think my back can take shoveling snow for hours at a time using nothing more than a flat-headed spade. We don't even own a real snow shovel!

Making Jude laugh

I love, LOVE how much Julia and Jude seem to love each other. I really hope they are always this way. Julia can always seem to get a smile out of Jude and is such a mommy to him. He cannot make a peep without her going over to check on him and making him better.

Jude thinks Julia is the funniest person EVER! Julia can get him just a laughing, I mean the big, snorting, belly laughs, kind of laughs. I can rarely get Jude to laugh like that, but Julia has no problem getting him to laugh like that several times a day. So she gets him a laughing, which causes all the rest of us in the house to start laughing. It is a real giggle fest!

Sewing

During Julia's dragon-slaying adventures, she will occasionally wrap her Blankie or another blanket around her neck like a cape. So this weekend we went to the fabric store and bought a pattern for a cape. I let Julia pick out the fabric she wanted for the cape. Of course, she goes for the sparkly purple chiffon stuff that they have out for making prom dresses! She was incessant on getting that fabric. Since it was see-through, I thought we needed something to line in with. She picks a solid purple! That is my girl!

All day Sunday, she kept following me around the bag from the fabric store saying "sew me a cape!". I finally the pieces cut out after supper on Sunday. While I placed the pieces on the fabric, Julia was putting pins in it.

Then today, I started sewing on it together. Julia discovered that pressing on the foot pedal made the sewing machine work. I had her help put thread on the bobbin by pressing the pedal. Then when sewing, I would have her press her foot over my foot on the pedal (I wanted my foot under hers so she would not make it sew at top speed!). Every time we got to a needle, I would tell her to stop. After a few needles, she had the system figured out and I did not have to give her any instructions. It was neat to have Julia helping sew, especially since this is her cape.

I knew I would be teaching Julia to sew one day, I just did not think it would be this early!!

Ice swords

Julia loves playing "slay the dragon" with cardboard tubes as her swords and daddy as the dragon.

With all the snow we have been having lately, huge icicles have formed on the eves of the house. Julia took one look at them and told me that they were "ice swords"! She likes playing with them.

Deer crossing

Julia continues to amaze me with her knowledge of things.

Yesterday we were driving to tumbling class when we passed a deer crossing sign. This is what Julia said:

"Mom, that was a deer sign. It means deer crossing the road and you need to slow down and drive really carefully"!!

WHAT? Where did she learn that from?

And lately when she is trying to do something, I will ask her what she is doing and she will tell me that she is "concentrating".

Where did my little baby girl go? Because, obviously, Julia is all grown up now! I cannot believe she will be starting school in just over 2 years!

Coffee

Julia LOVES helping me make coffee. I am NOT allowed to make coffee without her help. If I try, she hears the coffee grinder and comes running while crying "No making coffee without me!!" and "I have to help you make coffee!".

She sits on the counter, I measure out the beans into the grinder and she grinds them up. She also turns on the coffee maker to start the brewing process.

Band-Aids

Like any kid, Julia loves Band-Aids. She has to put one on every scrap and cut, no matter how small. She even occasionally puts them on boo-boo's only she can see! Every now and then, I will find one on her baby doll too!

She had "Hello Kitty" Band-Aids that she uses. Poor Jerrod has to go to work with a pink "Hello Kitty" Band-Aid on occasionally!

Oh, the last time we were at the store and bought more Band-Aids, she picked out "Scooby Doo" ones instead. She does not even know who Scooby Doo is!

Cho Choooo

Julia got a Thomas The Tank Engine train set for Christmas. I think Jude almost likes it more than her! If I set him down on a blanket next to it while it is running around the track, he will be entertained by it for a LONG time! He just watches it go around and around and around, occasionally trying to grab it as it chugs past.

No candy

I realized this past spring/summer, that if Julia had candy during the day, she is a real pistol a few hours later. I am talking bad behavior, jumping around like a crazy person, etc. Because of this, it is rare that she gets candy during the day. I never bothered telling Jerrod about this because he already thinks I deny Julia to many things because I think they are not good for her.

Well, Jerrod finally figured out why it is bad to give a toddler candy more than just for treats occasionally. He let Julia have a good bit of a chocolate bar on Sunday. By Sunday afternoon Julia's behavior was just terrible! I think she had to stand in the corner at least twice and probably should have been there a few more times. Monday morning she found the rest of the chocolate bar Jerrod had left out before I knew she was out of bed. Monday was just pretty much just as bad. Bad behavior, jumping around, accidentally breaking lots of things with her excess energy, etc.

I explained to Jerrod that this behavior was the result of too much candy. I told him I discovered this almost a year ago already. He is never home during the day, so he never realized the issue it was. He has now agreed that candy for Julia is to be giving in small amounts and as a treat, not an everyday occurrence.

The "why" game

Julia has started the "why" game in earnest lately.

Everything we now tell her is now followed up with at least 6 or more "why" questions. Even if she knows the reason, she asks why anyway. So, it is part her being inquisitive and partly just being ornery!

I try to be patient with it and answer all her "why"s, but usually after the 6th or 7th why, my answer becomes "that's just the way it is" or "I don't know".

Spelling and numbers

Julia now also knows how to spell "mom" and "dad". She will take her fridge magnets and spell them out without any help from us. I think we will start working on other simple words like cat, hat, bat, sit, etc. now.

I discovered a new way to help teach Julia her numbers the other day. She loves to help me cook and loves to work the microwave. Normally, I would just have her press the start button, but then I thought having her press in the time would be a great way to teach her numbers. She knows her numbers fairly well already, so this is just reinforcing it. I did notice that she struggled with "zero", probably because when we count, we don't include zero.

Giving kisses

Jude will now happily give kisses. If I make the kissing sound (you know the one, smacking your lips together), he will get a big smile on his face and give me a big, sloppy kiss! I just love it!! He knows that sounds means I want a kiss and is more than happy to oblige! I just have to be careful, because he gives big, open mouth kisses, that sometime involve some tongue!!LOL

Clothing sizes

Why must my kids have a major growth spurt in the middle of a season and not at the end? Both Julia and Jude just recently had a growth spurt. Now both of their winter clothes is too small on them. They are just going to have to make due until Spring!

Julia is now completely in size 5 clothes, even some 6's depending on the brand! This makes me very sad. After 6X she moves into big girl clothes! She just turned THREE!! She is such a big girl for her age. She is probably a head taller and a good 15 pounds heavier than all the other kids her age in her tumbling and swimming classes. She is definitely not fat, just really tall and solid. I really hope her size is not going to cause self-image issues as she gets older.

Jude is now completely in 12 month and 12-18 month clothes. He just turned 6 months old. He does not have the baby rolls like Julia did at this age, but he is also just so tall. He definitely takes after my side of the family with that. Lets just hope he has some coordination to go with that height!

Long hair

Julia has never expressed an interest before on how she would like her hair cut. She will tell me how she wants it ties back (pigtails, a ponytail, on top, etc..). A could days ago she started saying "I like long hair" and "I like my hair to be long".

So when we had our hair cut the other day, she made she to tell the stylist that she was her hair long. So, it was left long and the bangs were just trimmed up.

Although, now she is already asking to change her hair color!

Mr. Wiggles!

Jude is the wiggliest baby I have ever know. He has always been that way, even when I was pregnant with him. He is CONSTANTLY moving, especially his arms and legs. My dad held him the other day and commented on just how wiggly he was and said how he had to keep two hands on him at all time otherwise he would be jumping right out of his lap!

The pediatrician also commented on it yesterday and that is why even though he eats like a horse, he is only in the 50th percentile for weight.

Trying to change Jude is the worse. I swear it is like wrestling with a greased pig!!

One of his nicknames is Mr. Wiggles because of just how much he is constantly moving.

6 month check-up

Jude had his six month check-up this afternoon. The pediatrician was very pleased with Jude.

He gained two and a half pounds in two months time! I believe it with all the food he chows down on! He weighed an even 17 pounds, which is right at the 50th percentile for his age. So perfectly average! His length was 27 1/2 inches. Not quite off the charts anymore, but still in the 90th percentile. His head circumference was 17 1/2 inches, which was in the 75th percentile. I commented on how his weight percentile was a bit lower than the other two and she said to just look at how much he moves (even she noticed the CONSTANT wiggling he does). He is just burning through the calories at such a high rate of speed. I guess he is just one long and lean guy!

The pediatrician was amazed that Jude already could say 3 words (Hey, Hi and Mama) and that he is really starting to babble. She was also happy to see he was sitting up. His strength impressed her, but said that his shot sites are going to be really sore because he clenched his leg muscles so tight while they were giving them. He did have to get poked one extra time because one of the syringes had a malfunction and all the vaccine squirted out where the needle attaches to the syringe instead of going into Jude's leg, so they had to give him another one.

She was happy to see that his skin issues were getting resolved and was pleased at how well he has taken to baby food.

I asked about how he still has a rattle in his chest and just cannot seem to completely get rid of this cold, despite me resuming daily breathing treatments. She had me switch the meds I used in the breathing machine to one with a steroid in it. Once the cough and rattle finally go away, she wants me to continue the treatments for a full MONTH afterward. I guess she wants to make sure it gets completely cleared up and does not come back.

No more swaddle

I swaddled Jude every night for bed and most naps. I have been doing it ever since he was born. It really calmed him down and helped him sleep better. He seemed to like it, so I kept doing it.

So when he moved to sleeping in the crib at night several weeks ago, he was still being swaddled. After several mornings of being in the crib and finding him on his belly still all swaddled up, I thought it might be time to get rid of the swaddle. The first couple of days I kept swaddling him at bedtime, but would put him down for his naps without it. The first nap was quite restless, but he soon did well with out one.

After several days, I decided to just put him to bed without the swaddle. He did great and has not been swaddled since!