Lyra Rose 8 Months

Little Lyra girl; the girl who is just happy to be here. Sel used that phrase, just happy to be here, to describe Lyra's personality way back in October when we went to Florida. It so perfectly captures her! As long as she is around people to watch, she's completely content. She is a stroller and a cart baby. Do you know what that means? It means she sits in both of those things. Happily. Without wriggling and screeching to get out. If I bend down to hug or kiss her, she will reach out to me to get her out. If I don't pick her up, she'll make a little sound of displeasure and then go back to being happy. 

She's also starting to show her crazy more these days. I have a very strong suspicion she is going to be a wild toddler. A different type of wild than Rowan, but no less easy. She is adorably aggressive. She lunges and tackles Rowan with reckless abandon. Both of our sweet neighbor boys (one is 18-months and the other is 1 day younger than Lyra) cry when she tries to touch them. It's a little sad, but I know deep down they will all be BFF's someday. The other day Sel was loading her in the car and she was trying to give him a "love" pat the whole time. After she was finally buckled, he leaned in closer to give her a kiss and she clawed his nose. 

She's an efficient little crawler now and is scary close to walking. I keep hoping she waits at least until Rowan did (10 months). She can stand unassisted for a good chunk of time now and is constantly pulling up on things and exploring. She really is a whole new brand of baby for us. Her favorite thing to play with while I'm making dinner are the drawers. She'll pull them open while standing then teeter around a bit, try and explore the drawer, then slam her finger in it. No tears. Sometimes a small puff of frustration. The other day she had her finger caught in one of the drawers and it left a sad little owie around her tiny finger. No tears again. 

She eats like a champ. Her favorite things are those she can meticulously pick up one-by-one. Rice, peas, green bean. I am constantly wanting to eat Indian food and she loooves it. She'll just sit back and pound curry, tikka masala, channa masala, you name it. We also discovered a delicious marinara sauce that has four ingredients in it (none of them being a sweetener of any form) and I feed it to her as if it was baby food. Tomato's might just be her fav food. She LOVES her bottle. I realized she was only nursing maybe two times a day for awhile and tried to force her to eat more during the day in hopes it would help her sleep better at night. She gets to easily distracted by that fun-loving bro of hers. We found a solution and it's pure bliss. I just hand pump about 5 ounces a day and she'll guzzle her bottle while being able to look at all the fun things instead of my chest. During all of our road trips, I would be able to pass her back a bottle of milk whenever she got fussy and she would down it all by herself. She starts to look drunk near the end and it's hilarious. Her eyes will be closed and her sweet mouth will open wide while she tries to balance the bottle in one hand. 

She is a dream road trip baby still. She power naps for hours on end without a peep. As soon as the car stops moving though, she's wide awake. I started to realize during our trips that times I normally think she is asleep, she is actually just staring out at Rowan until her eyes start to droop closed again. I was so intense about Row's nap schedule. It was a giant world crisis if he didn't get down for his two naps a day around the same time every. single. day. I think I needed him to do that more then. Adjusting to motherhood of two really is a smoother ride. Lyra tends to catch a morning nap in the car on the way to the gym or whatever errand/fun thing we have. I've started to be more insistent that we are back at the house for three hours at least for her to catch a nap. It can happen now since our lives aren't going to be uprooted every other week anymore. The naps do make a GIANT difference for bedtime. Lyra will sleep 5-6 hour stretches if she gets a solid nap in during the day. Otherwise it's a guaranteed awful night. We still don't have her figured out with sleep, but she is doing mostly good at 8 months. Sel went in the other night to comfort her and she. went. back. to. sleep! Miracle! 

I realized the other day she is a third generation L (that skipped a generation)- My grandma L (Linda), then me, and now her. I kind of hope she has a child someday and names it something that starts with L.

She has started to sign a little back. She will sign again when I throw her on the bed because this is her favorite activity in the world. She signed more a few times, but not consistently yet. She'll just whine if I ask her if she wants milk and lunge at my chest. Lyra claps her hands excitedly if you say "yeah!" and she's started to do this really amped up version of waving hi. She pumps her hand up and down and up and down with an extraordinary amount of exuberance. She likes to do it when we Facetime people the most. Rowan exploded in signing two months from now and I think she will be about there in that same time frame. 

She does this awful thing while nursing that is driving me insane. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard, except the chalkboard is my chest. She loves to pinch the skin on my boobs while nursing. While it isn't necessarily painful, it makes me want to rip my hair out. She is so funny when you have her stop doing something. She'll stare you straight in the face and do it over and over agin and then let out a fake cry with the best pouty face I've ever seen. It's impressive. Rowan noticed all the little milk tracks on my chest and tried to find me bandaids for my owies. I'd for sure prefer her biting me (which she has done plenty in the past) than her skin pinching. 

She loves to rip glasses off of people's faces. I know most baby's do, but it's her speciality. She is also an earring-puller savant. Row would pull any dangly earrings I wore, but I was always safe to stick with studs. Lyra can, in one swift movement, rip out my stud and put it in her mouth. ONE movement. While talking with some ladies about Birmingham in the nursing lounge the other day, Lyra just reached up and grabbed both earrings with both hands and popped them in her mouth. She is always trying out new ways to die. 

We love our sweet Lyra Rose! 

Eating sticks at the art museum during playgroup

At the top of the science museum in Nashville. 

Papa and Lyra at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. She loves her grandparents SO much! She'll freak out when she sees them on Facetime and start laughing. 

Her and her beloved bottle 

My favorite picture from Month 8. She is SOOOOO happy in this picture.  We were at the Pittsburg science museum and it was one of the coolest we've been to this year! 

Water bear

Throwin some shade during lunch with my family 

Rowan 2.5

( I have started and added to this multiple times since Jan 25th, but it's DONE! yaya!)
I didn't think Rowan had changed much since his 2nd birthday, but then I went back to look at his pictures and realized how much bigger he's gotten! His face has become less round as have his little limbs. 

2 1/2 is FUN! I would take 2.5 over 18 months any day. I think I have a little bit of PTSD from 16 months-18 months with Row. Don't get me wrong, we still have plenty of difficult things happening at this age, but they are so much easier to deal with. When Rowan punches Sel or I in the face, I can exact a punishment that he understands. When I ask him why he's in timeout, he can tell me why. Reasoning with him and distracting him are amazing tactics at deflating tantrums. If I can usually calm myself down and employ imagination of any sort, the crisis is generally averted. It's when I continue to stay on the same train of disaster that things get hairy. 

Rowan is POTTY TRAINED! He did it completely and utterly by himself. It blew us away. The day I packed up the car to drive to my parents (the launching pad to our 4 months away from home) he straight up refused to put on a diaper. I was fairly exasperated since Sel was gone on the interview trail, packing stresses me out like no other, and we were about to drive for two hours. I had already decided we would attack potty-training, saying goodbye to the binky, and moving to a big-boy bed AFTER our trip. I relented to his dictator demands and we headed out. He announced an hour in that he needed to pee so we stopped at  a rest stop. Ten minutes later, he said he needed to go again. I assumed he just wanted to get out of the car and told him he didn't. Never tell Rowan how he feels or what he is experiencing. He peed a teeny-tiny bit and impressively held it until I pulled off so he could finish emptying his bladder. Since then we've maybe had 6 accidents total...over 2.5 months! His pull-up is consistently dry in the mornings too! He got a reward for going #2 for four days in the beginning, but I don't think he really needed the motivation. Rowan has been like this his entire little life. When he decides to do something, he does it. Until then, good freaking luck. 

Imaginative play has taken off the last month for Rowan. It is so much easier these days for him to entertain himself. I love hearing him have his toys talk to one another.

Rowan is somehow getting sweeter everyday. Today at the zoo, without me asking him to, he started pushing open all the doors for me so I could push the stroller through. My heart was pretty close to exploding as I watched him huff and puff to open the heavier doors while announcing "It's okay mommy! I'm strong!" I also told him the other day he was melting my heart and he bent down to kiss my chest "so my heart feel better". He prays regularly for one of the women I visit who is currently in a nursing home that her hip will get better. Gah. He is such a tender, lovable little guy.

We don't take naps anymore. 😥 He started to cut them off while we were in Idaho and hasn't picked them up again since we got back. It will happen once every 6-7 days where he will just announce he is "going to go a short rest". It still isn't easy though. Everyday around 3 or 4pm he is SO tired. If I try for a nap before that, he doesn't go for it because he can now get out of his crib. If I let him nap at 3 or 4pm, he's up until midnight. It sometimes feels like a lose-lose situation, but there are some positives. (Update). Rowan now sleeps in a big boy bed! He also got a roommate this week! Rowan sleeps in a bunk bed and Lyra got the crib. Sel insisted we buy Row a poster to hang above his bunk bed and I joked that he should pick out one of a girl in a bikini. Rowan picked out a Moana poster... who is a beautiful animated person in a sort of bikini.

Speaking of Moana, Row is still enamored with beautiful girls. We watch Princess Sofia because Row thinks she is pretty, but we only ever make it through ten minutes of that show-or any other show for that matter. We do not watch TV- not because we run a tight, educational parenting show over here, but because he loses interest immediately. He could play games on the ipad or my phone for days though. His current loves are Robot Unicorn and some Robot fighting game that Sel downloaded on my phone for him. He often asks me how to play whatever game he pulls up on there and I have NO idea. I will spend ten minutes or more with him trying to figure it out and I am pathetic

He is still a really amazing big brother. He likes to get Lyra toys when she cries and will try to make her life by saying "A booby-booby-booby" when she is really sad. He likes to try and pick her up and tackle her, which she weirdly LOVES. They rough house all day and she takes every accidental kick, punch, and getting rolled on top of with a giggle. It's when the kicks and punches are not accidental that she isn't such a huge fan. I've noticed Row attacks her most when he is craving my attention. When he does accidentally hurt her, he howls as if he is the one injured. It makes diffusing the situation a little crazy, but I ultimately don't mind holding both of my babies at the same time. He notices when she is gone and likes to update me on whether she is awake or asleep when we are driving. The other morning, I went in to their room (isn't that amazing the little pronoun slipped in there? THEIR room) and Lyra was standing in her crib chirping at Rowan and he was leaning over the side of his bed talking back to her. It was a beautiful, sweet scene. He also cried profusely tonight because I told him he couldn't call her a butthead (not sure where he learned that word..). No one is a perfect sibling, right?


He is one smart kid. We have trouble pulling much on him because he is so darn smart and has a memory to rival that of an elephant's. His imagination is exploding these days. He mostly enjoys shooting monsters, fighting dragons, shooting robots, and fighting people. Most of his play (alll of his play) is active. The kid doesn't sit down. At the pediatrician we found out he is 90% for height and 35% for weight. He has been on a fairly sharp downward curve for BMI. The doctor was only mildly concerned and encouraged us to keep feeding him three solid meals plus 1-2 snacks a day. She emphasized that hearing he keeps dropping should not mean we throw empty calories at the kid in hopes he gains weight (he gets too many of those as is). Sel is a PRO at getting Rowan to eat. It isn't that he straight out refuses to eat at meal times, he'll take 4-5 bites and having sat for five minutes, need to be on the move again. Sel came up with a came where Row is a Row-a-saurous and will climb under our kitchen table. When he needs a bite of food, Row will stamp his feet on the ground and Sel will feed him a bite. He also recently started needing "recharge" bites where he is fighting an invisible robot/monster/dragon during dinner and needs to restore health to keep fighting. Even though it is certainly an effort to get him to eat enough to keep that adorable body moving, Row is an amazing eater. He genuinely loves vegetables which is a miracle. Rowan's primary food groups a year ago was cheese, chocolate, and cheese. His current healthy faves are bell peppers (he loves to talk about how crunchy they are), cucumbers, apples, cantaloupe (which I love to hear him say), SALAD. My 2.5 year-old eats salad. Not pasta salad or some other craftily named non-lettuce salad. I would love to take credit for these eating habits, but he developed them all on his lonesome. A lot of times with parenting Rowan, I just feel like a bystander around to admire the naturally amazing person he is. My role is to keep him alive and steer him if he slightly veers off the moral path. He came with a pretty incredible little spirit.

Here is an interview we had with him courtesy of Chick-fil-a's kiddie meal prompt cards.

1. If you were mayor of a town, what would be your first rule everyone would have to follow?
Everyone make cakes. No, tanks. (The Sweet Dictator)
2. If you could invent a new ice-cream flavor, what would it be?
Sprinkles and candy ice-cream. (I've never had one quite like that)
3. If you could have any skill in the world, what would it be?
Jump really high!
4. If you could come up with a new band name, what would it be
The baby one
5. Would you rather climb to the top of a mountain or the bottom of the ocean?
Jump really high! Yeah!
6. What is your favorite show?
Princess Sofia!
7. If you could add a holiday, what would it be?
Celebrate it! Dolphin!

And then we ran away before we could ask more. The three of us surely love our Rowan boy. He is a delight to have in our home and I can't imagine how boring our life would be without his strongly brewed personality and perfect wavy locks. 

Superman ice-cream in Birmingham

Photobombing 

This s one of my faves. Rowan was helping me cut vegetables for dinner with those "adorable baby scissors" as he calls them. Then he started eating all the chopped up veggies 

"I fix her bow for the picture mommy" - oak mountain state park 

Right here is where Rowan swiped a loose screw that I didn't find
until after we'd walked 2 miles and he'd fallen down 3-4 times with it in his hand.  Eek. I spent most of the hike scanning the trail for Alabama's poisonous wildlife. 

Rowan found a boy with twinner hair at Chick-fil-a in Kentucky and they had SO much fun together. 

Playing in the leaves. With a 2-inch rusty screw in his hand...

On his 2.5 birthday we went to the zoo and had the WHOLE place to ourselves. 

Scarring pigeons away in Nashville while we waited for some of the best barbecue I've ever had

Painting at the Toledo Museum of Art

Double fisting chocolate pudding that he was finger painting in for our mommy-son book club

Aunt Sarah has been in Columbus for the past month and we have LOVED it! My parents and her beautiful self went on a fun weekend trip to Cleveland when Sel had is last interview at Case Western

Wild at heart/Wild all of the time