Two-Month-Old Esther

• At her two-month checkup this morning Esther was 21 3/4 inches long (yeah, same as last month's measurement, which was probably wrong) and weighed 9 pounds 15 ounces. Some of you have given birth to babies who weighed more than that. I tip my hat to you--I will stick with my six pounders, thankyouverymuch.
• I'm sure it's because she was early, but Esther still looks like a newborn to me. I can tell she's longer and heavier, but she still makes newborn faces and, well, just looks tiny. I love it.
• Esther has long, dark eyelashes. Jealous? I am.
• Her eyes are still dark blue.
• Esther's schedule is unpredictable. One constant is that she is still quite sleepy. She usually takes a couple looooong naps during the day and several catnaps.
• She continues to be a pretty good sleeper at night; she has slept through the night five or six times now. Woo hoo!When Esther is awake, she likes to be held. In a certain way that I often cannot figure out. (Translation: she can be kind of fussy.) She is not often happy to sit in her bouncy seat and watch life go on...I am thinking she needs to get used to it, though, with Daddy going back to work full-time this week.
• I think I got a real smile this week. Maybe. Hard to tell.
• Esther makes cute little cooing sounds when she's happy.
• We started cloth diapering Esther this month. She was too tiny for our diapers the first month and frankly, we wanted to get used to life with her before adding the work of cloth. But we started...and then our washer broke about a week later...so we took a two week break...and as of a few days ago she is a cloth-diapered baby again.
• I can hardly remember what life was like before this little girl was part of it!

The Answers

Just for fun, here are the answers to our little quiz. Jamie, it turns out you speak Austin pretty well. :)

• ice wah-wee, peas=ice water, please
• dup tuck, wok, duht=dump truck, rocks, dirt (because any mention of a dump truck is inevitably followed by a reminder of what one carries)
• doggie=digger
• Bom, Wenny=Bob and Wendy (from Bob the Builder, for those of you without toddlers)
• ba-na-wa=banana (We hear this more than any other word, I think. I bet Austin would eat five bananas a day if we let him.)
• mok=milk
• foffie=flower (Recently he's been using this to mean waffle, too.)
• dup high=jump high (He doesn't jump any other way, of course.)
• Au-tin fwing=Austin swings
• ca-ca=train

Siblings

It seems like about a dozen people have asked me lately if I think Esther looks like Austin did as a baby. I decided to pull out a picture of Austin at two months to compare side by side. No one would mistake them for twins, but I definitely see some sibling resemblances. (And awww, they're both so stinkin' cute!)

Flower Child

Wardrobe styling by Gran :-)

Around Here, We Speak Austin

You might remember that a few months back we were considering having Austin tested for speech delays because his vocabulary was so limited and he didn't seem too interested in trying new words. In the midst of our deliberating, though, he has gone through a language explosion. To the best of my (limited) knowledge, he seems to be speaking like the average two-year-old now.


And like the average two-year-old, probably 75% of what Austin says is only understood by me and Zach. Here are some of the phrases we hear most--can you figure out what he's saying

1. ice wah-wee, peas


2. dup tuck, wok, duht


3. doggie (yes, it can mean a dog, but has a second, completely unrelated meaning as well)


4. Bom, Wenny


5. ba-na-wa


6. mok


7. foffie (hint: these are often "peek" or "yeh-yee")


8. dup high


9. Au-tin fwing


10. ca-ca

Austin also strung together his first four-word sentence this week: "Bah eat bock guhn." Loosely translated, "The sheep is eating the green (Duplo) block." (We were pretending it was grass.)

Nope, we're not worried about this boy's talking any more. :)

"Reading"

Before bedtime and naps we read a book with Austin. He definitely plays favorites--lately The Foot Book is his choice. Obviously he's heard it a few times...

Who Needs Seven?

Austin is learning to count. I just love to hear his little voice going "one, two, fwee..." He is pretty accurate, although not perfect, as the video shows.

The book, by the way, is called Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd. It is a great book for learning numbers and colors. We got it from the library and are enjoying it a lot.

"Masterpiece"

We have had our first crayon-on-the-wall incident.

Austin doesn't really even like to color very much, so we were kind of surprised when he pulled out the crayons and started to color while we made dinner a few days ago. He was happily coloring on paper last time we checked. And then...

Thank you to whoever tipped me off that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are made for stuff like this!

Last Night...

...Esther slept for almost seven hours! I fed her before I went to bed, a little after 10, and she didn't wake up until almost 5! Since I only dozed between then and Austin getting up, it practically counts as sleeping through the night. Woo hoo!

Oh, the irony. I think Austin was about seven months old before he slept seven hours straight, despite my obsessive reading and re-reading of a certain book, looking for clues as to how I might get him to sleep better. I have adopted much more of a laissez-faire attitude with Esther. She eats when she wants and sleeps when she wants and look what happens--I get a Babywise baby without trying!

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