Rodrick Royal is ONE

One year ago today I had the most beautiful baby boy. Oh how my heart jumps when it sees Rocky boy. I am completely besotted with him. He is pure joy in a tiny, squishy body. I'm addicted to him and his sweet personality. 

I'm not sure what his one-year stats are because corona virus means our appointment is pushed back until the craziness is over. He's our smallest still at this point though. He is in 12 months onesies, but the pants are usually too long so he has to wear 9 month pants. It's so strange having a baby so small. Both of the older two just tore through sizes. Despite starting crawling, climbing and standing so insanely early, he only just started constantly using walking as his main mode of transport this month. Honestly, this week has been big for him walking. I love watching those wobbly, chubby legs move his smiley self around. 

He can say a few words right now, mostly ones that start with the letter B. Ball (oh how he loves balls), baby, bye-bye, balloon, binky, Dada, Momma, Lyra and he calls Rowan Dada too. He can kind of say dog and gets SO excited when he sees any and every dog. He was signing a whole bunch last month, but once he started making more clear sounds, we both got lax with signing. He still uses all done, milk, open, drink, bird, dog and cold. All animals that are not a bird/chicken/dug, are dogs to him. I really should brush up more so I can expand his vocabulary for him.

He loves to go in Rowan and Lyra's room. They both have this little kid chairs that he sits on like a little King. It's pretty cute. He also loves to be part of the action with his sibs. His favorite game is still chase. I'll chase the big kids and hold Rocky facing-forward so he feels like he's running with them. He breathily giggles and kicks his legs back and forth a whole bunch. He's probably bonded with Lyra more over the last few months and spends more time playing with her than Row. I hope he'll jump right in their little pack as he gets older since it's mostly the Rowan and Lyra club right now. 

He has a highly nutritious palate (not). His favorite entrees include suckers, Cheeto puffs, applesauce, oranges, apples, cucumbers, blueberries, pizza bananas, Chick-fil-a nuggets, broccoli, water, suckers and suckers. We have not pushed vegetables enough with him and now, he just doesn't really want them. He'll eat the occasional green bean or sweet potato, but he really, really hates things that are squishy. He'll just drop them disgustedly out of his hand. In terms of nursing, he will either go a good portion of the day without it with the exception of nap time OR he'll kind of snack a bunch where he'll latch for a few seconds at a time then become distracted. This mostly happens when he was recently hurt. He likes to have me trace his hand when he nurses and he'll trace mine. He loves his binky so much. When I get him out of his crib in the morning or after nap, he'll have one in his mouth and one to two in each tiny fist. He arches and freaks out when I try and put them back in the crib even if I'm not taking the one out of his mouth. he also does this super cute lip smacking things when he wants a binky or to nurse. 

The kid is social. I see a lot of similarities in his personality to Lyra. He'll smile and chat with anyone that looks his way and has recently started to maneuver himself toward them now that he's more mobile. He loves other kids, babies and animals. He does this funny thing where he will ask for a drink, but then stick his hand in my cup to steal my ice. He also does this cute things where he lays his head down on the ground and just lays facedown for a minute or two. He'll also eat like that too if he drops something. No hands, just face. He will throw his head back when he laughs and it kills me. He loves being chased and will squeal with delight when I say "I'm going to get you!"

He sleeps pretty well right now. He sleeps through the night about 70 percent of the time, so I count him passing with a solid C+. We are still in the two nap cycle for the most part, but we just sort of take it as it comes. We don't follow a super rigid schedule which has it's pluses and minuses. Plus being less stress if things don't go according to plan, minuses include getting overtired.

I felt before he was born that he would be a happy, fun kind of person and he most certainly is. I couldn't love him more 

3.75 Lyra

My sweet Lyra is almost 4! Oh how I love my girl. She's so helpful and caring, wild and fun. Lyra has really turned a corner in listening and helpfully helping. She seems to enjoy having a baby brother a lot more these days and will play with him more often. She still will carry him to the other side of the room when he tries to play with her dollhouses, but she's gentle about it. She wants so desperately to help and I'm trying to give her more opportunities to do this without stressing so much about her accidentally strangling Rodrick or laying a wake of destruction. Lyra has always adored having an older brother and still does. She and Rowan are inseparable most days. They play together super well most of the time and are little side-kicks to one another. They're almost always better as a pair than separately. Rowan adds some reason and honesty to the mix so they aren't constantly getting into things they shouldn't. They do fight and WOOF, it kills me sometimes. I've discovered physically pulling them apart is an instant tempering of emotions whereas my previous method of shouting "STOP" a whole bunch was wildly ineffective.

She still has her wild side for sure. She gets more berserk and hyper the tireder she is and then she'll turn super violent once she passes over the hyper-stage of exhaustion. Like a cat violent. She'll suddenly slap you across the face and then hide away. When she gets really upset, she'll run out of the room to go find a place to calm down. It's actually pretty emotionally mature of her to do this without prompting and I'm grateful so came to it naturally. Speaking of things coming naturally, she really is easy in so many ways. Lyra can self-play with toys for HOURS. Uninterrupted hours of her just playing contentedly by herself. I'll join her sometimes, but she seems to enjoy her own creative time. 

Lyra is so social! It's just amazing to me how drawn to people she is and how much she enjoys being around them. The other day on our way in to church she saw a little friend of hers and started running after her in her little Elsa heels "Sunday! It's me! It's Lyra! You know me!" and then caught up with her. She also has a razor sharp memory for names of friends. We saw another friend on our way into a playgroup before the world ended, someone she sees every month or so and yelled out the window "Lydia! It's so nice to see you again!" She has ZERO fear of talking to people and often will beeline it anywhere there are people. We went to the park today and some older teenage boy were playing basketball. She zoomed off that direction, walked up to them and said "I want to play, friends!" I hustled her out of there real quick. She can be so incredibly endearing because of her friendliness, amiability, humor and kind-heart, but PLEASE exhibit some caution in life, child. 

Lyra is so smart and so busy. I bought a book from The Good and The Beautiful to do with her when I'm doing homeschool with Rowan. It's really cute and focuses on just learning the alphabet and numbers. She has a lot of trouble sitting still and simply doing the book for the sake of doing the book. I've had to be way more creative to get her to start to recognize letters. She's improving, but still has plenty of learning to do (don't we all). It's been a real learning experience for me to see how different my kids are in the way they absorb information. Rowan's always loved a good educational-geared game, but he also really thrives on check-boxes and prizes. He wants to go exactly in order in his book and do everything on the page to perfection. Lyra wants to color on whatever page she wants and if she doesn't care much for a game, walks away to play with something else. She's young, but Row was already getting into star charts and such at this age. A good illustration of their differences are the way they run and use their money. Whenever Lyra has even a little money in her money jar, she would like to go shopping at Target. Immediately. Rowan will hoard that money in there for years to fill it up to the top. When they run on the treadmill, Lyra will set it to 10 and sprint until she can't anymore. Rowan sets it to a 4 or 5 and makes sure he finishes exactly when he completes whatever number of laps he decided to do. Lyra also is a really gifted little singer. I hope to help her with this as she grows since I'm not. I'd also love to put her in gymnastics, but we've worried before about her spina bifida occlude. If she were to land on her back in a bad/weird way, it could be crippling for her potentially. It's hard to brush it off and let her pursue it (Because I think she could be SO good) when I know I'd just worry the further she went in the sport. 

Speaking of Target, this girl was born to shop. She LOVES it. She'll just throw any toy, purse, dress, make-up, shiny thing in the cart and ask me relentlessly for everything in the store. She has a really good eye for fashion too. I'm always a little impressed with how she owns her little style. Lyra is the girliest girl out there. She already has a multi-stage outing routine. She wants to put on all the make-up, paint her nails, wear high-heels, put some fancy shades on, accessorize. The only thing she really hates doing is her hair. It makes me sad because her hair is finally getting long enough to do more styles with, but she'll stare at me defiantly and pull it out the second I'm done. I think it hurts her a little so I can't really blame her. Her hair is still super fine and doesn't grow much on the top of her head. 

One of the things I love most about her is how she rubs my arms when I'm cuddling her or sad. She's just so tender and loving. She's had a nurturing soul since she was itty bitty. I try to realize often that all she wants from life is to be with me, play with me, cuddle me, talk with me. Her needing me shouldn't feel burdensome, but a privilege. My heart aches for the day she won't want me first. I don't want to regret not living fully in this precious time of her life with her. I can already feel time slipping  through my fingers like sand. Slow down please!I think often of Lyra's blessing day and how Mike and my Dad said she just smiled up at the ceiling like she was beaming at heaven the whole blessing. She is a special little girl, pleasant and charming and unique. I love that Heavenly Father sent this little spit-fire to me.

Lyra had so much fun at Disney! She loved the roller coasters the most and princesses second. She got this cute little makeover and it was a dream come true. She was being so goofy though and her fairy godmother had to ask for my assistance getting her to sit still more than once. eye roll.
Lyra had gone up to a cute little girl at Disney Springs a few days before our Magic Kingdom trip who had clearly been to the boutique and complimented her on her dress and makeup. The girl was so sweet and gave Lyra the make-up they send them home with. It changed Lyra's whole world to get make-up from someone. I told the girl she was a true princess because she was kind.

I love this picture so much! I know I should crop out the part of it being a screenshot, but I'm lazy and tired. I love how free she seems running barefoot in her cute cream dress with little pom-poms on it

She can love aggressively sometimes. This is her kissing, hugging and licking me a whole bunch the other day 

Rocky Road 10 months

Rodrick Royal is almost 1! It breaks my heart I haven't kept up on my journaling here about him. I've gone back so many times to compare the older two kids at their various stages based on the info I put in my blog and I won't have that with him.

He does so many sweet, adorable, perfect things that I never want to forget. He calls Mike AND Rowan Dada. It's so cute! He's starting to make sounds that are sooo close to the word. I'm pretty sure he said bird the other day and gets really close to saying fish. He signs open for everything under the sun. It's shocking how applicable it really is for so many different things. If you're going to learn one sign as a baby, open is a pretty good one. He signs milk, but sometimes just open (your shirt). All animals are either a bird or a dog right now. He is learning lots of signs everyday and it's so fun to see him get to interact back with us. Right now he consistently and correctly signs, milk, open, dog, bird, baby, book, binky, and sucker. He gets SO excited when he sees animal and whines constantly until he can touch them. We saw a squirrel the other day and he was determined to track that guy down and give him a big squeeze. Rocky loves babies. If he sees them, he needs to be by them and touching them and slobbering and clobbering them.

He's really close to full on walking. He can take a few steps at a time before falling down, but it's not his primary mode of transport yet. He's started to do this funny bear crawl because he doesn't want his knees to touch the floor, but he also can't balance perfectly yet to master walking. He's a pro at climbing and scarily can climb on all sorts of things. The other day, he pulled himself onto the top of the handle bar at chick-fil-a and clung there until I forced him to get down. He used to climb on to the top of our entryway desk until Mike smartly put up some netting to keep him from perching up there with his gift cards. Rocky loves to have a handful of plastic. Give him all the credit cards and gift cards and you've got a happy baby on your hands.

He loves to be part of the action with his siblings. If they're wrestling, he needs to be wrestling them too. He'll just crawl his little baby bum all over them and sit on their heads while they try to "gently" push him off. They honestly do a really good job with him and both usually crack up when he joins their fun. Rocky also looooves when I run with him after them. He'll kick his legs and laugh so hard. Lyra loved that too, but really loved when I'd have her sit on Rowan's shoulders or bop him on the head.

His soft, down-feather hair is so sweet. It grows like Lyra's. Nothing on top and so much on the back. Both could really rock a natural mullet.

I love my 10-month old little boy