Growing up too fast!

Over the last few weeks Margaret and I have seen a dramatic increase in Josh's cognitive skills.  His problem solving has gotten more advanced, his language has increased and we can just tell he is understanding more and more.

A few days ago he found my old iPod (5th generation video from many years ago) in our car.  It had been in there for a few years and Josh wanted to use it.  He brought it inside and told me it needed new batteries.  I charged it for and him and now he is enjoying sitting on the couch listening to his music.  He's already ignoring his parents and becoming a teenager!

Josh has been able to count to ten for a while now (and higher with some accuracy) although I didn't really think he understood what the numbers meant.  Now he can count things and when we say to get a number of things he usually gets it right.

The same is true for letters. He can identify a letter and can spell many names (although this is just memorization).  He does understand that names contain letters (although the concept of starts with is not quite there).

A few weeks ago Sam was using a toy phone that was a gift to Josh (from Aunt J).  Josh came home from daycare and saw it and asked what it was.  Margaret said Sam had been using it.  Josh looked at it and said, "J-O-S-H, that says Josh, that's my name!"  He has now declared the phone is his, but sometimes will share it with Sam.

Last night we were having soup for dinner, Josh had a bowl of soup and a bowl that had cheddar cheese to put on the soup (that he already dumped on his soup).  We told Josh he had to finish what was in his bowl before he could have a cookie.  He looked at his bowl and then the empty cheese bowl next to his, then pointed to the empty bowl and said, "This one?!" with a smirk. Margaret and I could not help but burst out laughing, because he totally outsmarted us. We did make him eat some more soup, but he got his cookie.  It's getting harder and harder to outsmart him :-P

Over the weekend we were having lunch, and Josh spilled a little on his pants. He then said to us, "my pants are a little bit wet, I need to change into my crab shorts!  That would be a good idea" (crab shorts are his FAVORITE pajamas).

Here is a video of Josh listening to music, can you guess what he is listening to (I missed the beginning of the song)

Helping to make pizza for dinner

Helping make pancakes

Getting ready for daycare

Finding the right song

Six Months

We can't believe it but Sam is six months old now!  We will have official stats at his doctors appointment in a few weeks.  We believe he will be around 17 pounds which makes him 2 pounds lighter than Josh was at six months.  Recently Sam started to babble and he now does it all the time.  He still scootches around, not quite crawling although he does get into a crawl position but he can't quite get his arms right to properly crawl.  He is very mobile and never where you leave him.  His sitting is getting better and he doesn't fall over as much.  He isn't quite stable but he is getting there.
We started feeding him more food in the last few weeks and he has been loving them!  Margaret made lots of baby foods and we have been sending them to daycare and he has been loving them.  We can tell he really wants to be eating more foods but we've been careful not to give him too much since he doesn't have any teeth and we want to watch for any allergic reactions.

We shifted Sam's bedtime earlier than Josh's, which means he has been waking up a bit earlier. He is too tired to stay up any later at night....so hopefully he will start sleeping in a bit more at some point. Otherwise, he sleeps well at night and is a pretty good napper :-)  He gets pretty distracted from napping or eating when Josh is around, so we have been trying to do a better job of taking him out of the room to feed him or make sure he has a quiet time for a nap.

Also in the last week he started sticking his tongue out, often when I stick my tongue out at him.  Just a reminder that you can only get away with some things when you are a baby :-P

Sam is still very easy going although his moving around does mean we have to watch him more closely.  He is quieter than Josh so have to pay extra attention to him or he will sneak away!

I guess we have to sit in the car seats now...

Ready for a run with mommy

"Haha, I knocked over the blocks!"

Fun with Solid Food

Sam has been loving solid food! We have been starting mostly with purees. Occasionally we have given him something he can hold and chew on, and he has LOVED them.  Here are a few cute pictures :-)

I will never get a better picture of Sam eating than this :-)

Mmmmmm spoon

Mmmm apple!

Brothers Playing

Josh and Sam were playing together at dinner tonight :-)

Videos!

Here are some recent videos of Sam scooching, and Josh playing outside in the rain :-)

Sam is 5 months!

We were away last weekend so we are behind on posting about Sam being 5 months! It has been a pretty big month for him, so we wanted to be sure to post about it. He started daycare at the beginning of September, and so far it is going well. He is there 3 days a week while I am at work, and then home with me for 2 days. He adjusted very well to daycare, started taking a bottle and napping there. He started in the same room as Josh did, which makes us feel more comfortable with the transition. He doesn't eat as much at daycare as Josh did, so makes up for it by nursing extra the days he is home with me.

In bigger news, he has been scooching a lot! He is trying really hard to crawl but can't figure out what to do with his arms. He will get on his hands and knees and just look around and sort of "fall" forward. He is SO interested in whatever Josh is playing with. He scooches over and tries to grab Josh's toys. Josh gets a little frustrated when Sam knocks over his toys, but we have been teaching him to give Sam something to play with too. He seems to really like giving Sam something, and understands the concept of trying to keep Sam from eating his toys :-P  It is very cute to watch them interacting.

We also just started some solid foods with Sam. We were planning to start at 6 months, but the pediatrician was recommending starting earlier. I made a ton of food over the summer, so we figured we would just start with a few things slowly. I gave him a lick of my pear to start, which he LOVED. Then we fed him pureed squash, which he was a little more unsure of.

There are no official stats from 5 months, but unofficially he is around 16.5 lbs. which keeps him right around the 50th percentile for weight. He doesn't have any teeth yet (yay), but he has been chewing on everything.

Overall he is such a happy little kid. He loves watching what is going on around him. It is so cute to watch him exploring and growing every day.

I have feet!

what are these??

Ooo I can hit them!

Humm, where did it go??

Josh (Left) at 7 months, Sam (Right) at 5 months

National Zoo

Josh was home with a fever Monday, even though he was feeling much better and had no fever today we decided he should stay home again. If he spiked a fever and got sent home today, then he wouldn't be able to go to daycare tomorrow so we wanted to play it safe. I decided to take a last minute trip to the National Zoo! It was a perfect fall day, but looked like rain in the morning, so it was not crowded at all. Josh, Sam and I met up with our friends and had a great time there!  We took the metro down there, mostly because I knew Josh would really like taking a train. I was a bit nervous about the Pope visit throwing things off, but we had no problems. I was very proud to manage to do a last minute outing with both kids!  I will say, that while the Zoo was very nice--it is really not as stroller and kid friendly as you might expect. All of the doors were very hard to manage, and there were several places that were not stroller accessible. I had to carry the stroller up and down a small flight of steps to get to the bathroom.  Here are some pictures from our day!

Metro Selfie!

"I'm taking a selfie Mommy!"-j

Checkin out the bison

Cheetah!

Panda playing with a box