Growing

My babies are growing up so quickly. I love to see them grow and learn new things, but it is always a double-edged sword. The song Never Grow Up by Taylor Swift pricks my heart. Rachel is at such a fantastic baby age, and just started to get on a better schedule in the last few days which is a HUGE blessing to me. With Grant, it was so easy getting him on a schedule since I didn't have other demands. Now I'm just trying to incorporate Rachel into our busy life and the poor thing doesn't get a regular morning nap since Grant and I go out lots. With Grant, I stayed home nearly every day so he could have his morning nap, and if we needed to do errands or get groceries we did it in between his morning and afternoon nap. No biggie. But now, we love going to Moms and Tots Tuesday and Thursday mornings, sometimes Wednesday mornings, and doing errands most other days. Before it got so cold, we went to the mall every Friday. Now we might start going regularly to a Stay N Play in Coalhurst - there's no charge, and the kids get an hour of free play, snack, story, and "messy play", which could be anything - playing in cold spaghetti, washing a baby doll... something wet or sticky. And the place has a water table AND a sand table. It also has a little play kitchen which has its own entire corner of the room, books, mats, painting with real paint (!), coloring, etc. More importantly: Sand and water tables! I know, I'm repeating myself. But I knew I had to go when I heard. Grant spend the entire first hour we were there playing at the sand table. He hasn't even seen the water table. He might die of happiness. Hmm... maybe I shouldn't let him see it.

Anyway, as I was saying earlier - Rachel is getting a better schedule, as far as feeding goes. She has little cat naps in the morning and evening, with a pretty good afternoon nap, if I'm lucky. I always tease her that she's the queen of cat naps. She is. But she sleeps at night, so I don't complain. Now she's finally switched to eating three times a day instead of four, which is heavenly. She is totally enamored with Trevor right now; she loves being held by him, especially at bedtime. And she smiles anytime she sees Grant playing. Grant is sweet and thinks about her, but mostly ignores her and plays on his own.

Grant is saying new words and sentences every day. He's getting more and more fun. He really knows what he likes and doesn't like. He still likes Thomas, but he's asking to watch Diego all the time now. The show tells him to say "Freeze bobos" to the naughty monkeys and I love hearing him say "Sees bobo!". Some mornings he refuses to eat anything for breakfast until I make him a "sothee" (smoothie). Trevor's got him hooked. We had cherry pie last night and I had to figure out that he was asking for nutmeg on his pie - haha! We had a lot of pumpkin pie after Halloween, so he figures it's supposed to go on every kind of pie. Then he only ate the crust, not the cherry! Which means more pie for me, if I'm willing to eat his sticky leftovers. Which I am.

Enough typing, you say? Pictures it is then.