Eleven Month Old Esther

• UPDATED: The Wii says Esther is 19 pounds.  Zach and I have been noticing that she feels heavier lately so that sounds reasonable to us.  How tall is she?  Tall enough to make 12 month clothes fit nicely.  And we have such cute clothes. (Thanks, Grandma!)
• Esther has been crawling for two days now and what a change that makes in our life!  We are not used to walking into a room and having to look around for her.
• Crawling gives Esther increased access to some of her favorite not-baby-friendly items: shoes (yuck, why do babies like to chew on shoes?), little puzzle pieces, plastic bags (that the little puzzle pieces are supposed to be in).
• Good thing for me, Esther seems to understand the word no.  She usually stops moving toward something if I say "Esther, no."  Of course maybe she's just stopping because she hears her name.  But whatever, it works.
• Esther likes books.  Especially Austin's books.  She can totally tell the difference between paper books and board books and she prefers the former.
• Esther likes to hand things back and forth to Mommy or Daddy.  She also likes to take things out of baskets or boxes and put them back.
• Esther cries if you take something away from her that she wants.  Like shoes, little puzzle pieces, and plastic bags.
• Esther still has no teeth.  Surely soon, right?  She has been gnawing on my shoulder a lot lately and it feels like something is in there.
• When Esther knows she's about to be picked up, she lifts her arms up toward you.  I love it love it love it.
• Esther is Mommy's girl.  She loves her daddy, sure, but I think she prefers me to all others.  Sorry, Zach, I love this too.
• Except I don't love it so much when I'd like Esther to go to childcare.  I tried putting her in the baby room at MOPS this week for the first time.  (She has typically been napping at that time in the past.)  She was crying inconsolably within three minutes.  Took her out, nursed her, played a bit, tried again.  Same thing.  Sigh.  This is new territory for us.  Austin has never fussed about being left with someone.
• We have been trying to move Esther's bedtime to 8:00 (which is Austin's bedtime, too) so that we can do family stuff in the evenings like go to parks or go for walks.  Staying up a bit later has not been a big deal for Esther, but she and Austin are having a terrible time falling asleep in the same room.  Typical sibling stuff, laughing at each other and playing around.
• Esther is still napping well.  Her naps are generally starting later, which means they often don't overlap with Austin's nap at all.  Oh well, he seems about ready to give up his nap.
• Esther continues to be a joyful baby who lights up our life.  I can't believe it's been almost a year!

Little Mover

We have a crawler!  About time, huh?  For eleven months Esther has seemed pretty content to sit still, no rolling from place to place for her.  But now she's on the move.  Her crawling is such a cute little scoot right now, don't you think?  Let the fun begin!

Night at the Ballpark

We went to an Altoona Curve baseball game last night.  (They're the Pittsburgh Pirates' AA team.)  What a great evening!  After seemingly endless days of rain, it was mostly sunny and in the 70s at gametime.  It was "Two-for-Tuesday," which meant that you got two-for-the-price-of-one tickets, hot dogs, and popcorn.  Dinner and entertainment for the whole family for a hair under $25--what a deal!  Austin sat and watched the game for a few innings, then we busied ourselves with eating hot dogs, visiting the Fun Zone, and running up and down the mostly empty aisles.  It was a late night for the kids but we had a wonderful time and are really glad to have such a family-friendly sports team within easy driving distance.

In Austin's own words, "I was tyin to wun away."  He sure was.  But I tickled him and got a smile. :)

While we were eating our hot dogs an elderly gentleman who was part of the security staff came up and asked Austin for a french fry.  Austin wordlessly offered up the half-eaten one in his hand.  The man liked Austin's willingness to share so he gave him a baseball!  It hardly left Austin's hand the rest of the evening.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a Christmas song, but I have been singing that song (at least the first line) in my head a lot the last two weeks.  Because Zach is off work for the summer and that makes it the best time of our year!  When we have those weeks in October or February where he has to work loooong hours or is gone every night at rehearsals and concerts, I look ahead at the reward to come, and here it is!

So with Zach being home so much now and sweetly sharing the responsibilities of children and household, I have no excuse for not blogging...oops.  So what have we been up to?

Lots of snuggle time and playtime with Daddy:

Ironically, as Zach is done with school for awhile, Austin and I have started doing a bit of preschool each day.    A couple of month ago I would have said that just-barely-three is too young to start doing school but it's really working for where we are right now.  Austin is a rather needy child; he wants Mommy and Daddy's attention all the time.  Playing on his own is difficult for him.  So while of course we try to encourage him to be independent sometimes, our school time is one-on-one time (while Esther naps) that Austin loves.

Austin loves our "a-tivities."  I'm using Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week curriculum.  Although Austin already knows his letters and sounds, I think he is getting a lot out of it, especially fine motor development and increasing his attention span.  And there's a memory verse to go along with each letter, which is good discipline for both of us.

Doing a letter I "poke page" with a toothpick.

This is the kind of smile on demand you get these days.  This is a number matching activity made extra fun because the pieces have velcro.  The tree on the right is our letter tree that we add to each week.  I'm kinda proud of that thing.  Not my idea, but I managed to make one that is cute if I do say so.

Zach and I are tossing around ideas for home projects we could do in the next three months.  One that is already in progress is painting our basement.  We have done one coat but I didn't take a picture of that yet so you'll just have to wait until it is finished.  It will be a medium blue ("Valor") with white trim.  This will be our schoolroom someday, FYI.  We also have plans to paint Zach's music room (which is through the doorway on the left) this summer.

The official "before" picture.  See how low the ceiling is?  No ladder required for this project.

Just one more picture of the kids, in a rare moment of playing together in which Austin is not climbing on Esther or taking a toy from her.  Hope for the future. :)

Afternoon Fun

I think watching Esther wave her arms in the air like this is one of my favorite things right now.  She did it about a dozen times at dinner tonight, clearly because she got such a response out of Mommy and Daddy each time.  Even Austin started going "yay!" each time.  Fun stuff.