Harper 8.5 months Owen 28 months - notes

So I thought I'd just do a quick stream of conscientiousness post about where the kids are with all their "stuff"
Harper is 8.5 months and is crawling, pulling up to stand and sleeping fairly well. She gets up usually only once in the middle of the night, nurses and goes right back to sleep. Occasionally she'll get up one other time and then sometimes get into a bad habit of waking 2-3 times. Recently that happened and she was waking at 11PM, 1AM and 4AM. One night we let her cry herself back to sleep during the 4A wake up (with Mommy at her side for part of the time) but it took her 1.5 hours and she didn't want to be held and I didn't nurse her (I wanted to wait until at least 6AM) and then the next night she was back to waking only once. I love holding sweet Harper when she has just fallen asleep and puts her thumb in her mouth and is on my chest right before I lay her in her crib. It's a very sweet bonding time for us and I know it doesn't last forever. She isn't really into reading stories yet but we've begun trying to read her some before bed from time to tome. She still just wants to put everything in her mouth and eat the books. She has two bottom teeth but that's all and she loves to eat in general. If you leave her alone for two seconds, she'll have a hairball and a bark chip (from the plants) in her mouth. She moves it around in her mouth and spits it out. She is such a sweet baby that I am NOT looking forward to her growing up like I did with Owen. She is at that quintessential baby age where they love rattles, laugh and explore everything. She goes to bed around 7PM and wakes up between 6-7AM and if she is up early, one of us gets up and walks down to the coffee shop while the other one sleeps in. Owen wakes up around 7AM.

Owen: is 28 months (2yrs) and talks and talks and talks. He frequently has 7-9 word sentences and is beginning to tell us how he feels. We are unsure if he really means it or if he's just repeating some memorized phrase but he'll say things like, "Daddy, I don't feel so good." and "I'm not hungry." He had been telling us when he has to poop with more regularity first beginning with "My stomach hurts" and then progressing to actually telling Matt he has to go potty or poop, which is great. Now if he could just recognize the signals for peeing!! He is pooping on the potty very well now but doesn't care about being soaking wet and will wet his "big boy" pants if we put them on him and he doesn't care about being wet. We try about every two months with the big boy underpants to see if he can keep them dry but he's too busy to stop and pee. I'm not pushing it and I'm just glad he doesn't poop in his pants anymore. GROSS! Owen sleeps from 1PM-4PM and often we have to wake him up around 4PM or he doesn't want to go to bed. He goes down around 8PM but could stay up later and often talks to himself in the crib for an hour in the pitch black darkness. He loves the movie Cars and has a lot of the die cast cars -- his favorites at the moment are "Gill" his green 18-wheeler. He has watched the whole movie cars many times at home and has begun to enjoy watching "shows" or TV. We only let him watch actual TV for 30 minutes a day if at all because Mommy hates the commercials. He likes Max and Ruby, Little Bear, Go Diego Go, Dora and some others but we really don't watch a lot of TV. I use it sometimes if I have to go upstairs to put Harper down and it buys me some "safe" time with him sitting mesmerized on the couch. He's a little scared of the scene in Cars where Mater and Lighting McQueen go "tractor tipping." He has had a great summer home with Matt and gotten lots of Daddy time. I dread Matt going back to work but the consistency and schedule are nice. Right now every day is different and that's hard to get used to. He's gotten more into "hiking" and we've taken him to the trail on various occasions and he loves to walk and walk and walk. He's definitely into walking more vs. riding in the stroller but he gets "tired" and then you end up carrying him home.