9 Months of Bea

To be fair, I was warned.

Time would move twice as fast with two little ones around.

And I honestly do not know what happened to the last 9 months.  I looks back at pictures when Bea arrived and I can't remember the tiny baby snuggles, and Tillie looks like she is still a baby herself in those pictures.

And Bea is starting to seem less and less like a baby. 

Perhaps it is because she is like a micro-machine. Tiny, fast, and moves everywhere.

She doesn't quit moving.

It almost makes me long for those newborn days where I was scared to move for fear she would wake up.

Almost.

But we are loving this stage. Bea is taking in more table foods, and is definitely enjoying food more now that she can attempt to put some in her mouth by herself. 

Taking fistfuls of food at one time and hoping at least one piece makes it into her mouth.

Again..a perfect house for a dog right now....anyone want to drop theirs off from 6:45-7:00 PM each night?

But even with her increased interest in food, she remains our little nugget, 

or more accurately our string BEAn. :)

9 Month Stats:

Height: 28.5" (98%)

Weight: 16lbs, 10 ounces (25%)

Perhaps she would be able to pack on the weight easier if she quit moving.

Ever.

I am not kidding you, she climbed up our entire flight of stairs on Friday night. 

Which just boggles our minds...we are used to a child that didn't move until she was 12 months. Period. No moving. Just sitting and bossing.

Where did this girl get her motorin' skills?

And she has such a great little personality emerging.

Daycare has picked up on her maniacal laughter too, which helped Nate and I  ensure we weren't going crazy.

Beatrice will beeline for something she has spotted on the floor. 

And then when she reaches to grab it (with precision I would expect to carry over to actual table eating, but does not), she pops it into her mouth and lets out this devlish little giggle.

She will actually partake in giggle wars with you if she is in the right mood.

And, of course, she always wins.

We love our little Baby Bea. She is quite the catch and continues to steal our hearts day after day. Matilda may feel a little differently now that that also includes stealing her toys..but I think she is pretty jazzed by her baby sister...

**Fun game--of the weekly pictures listed above, Nate took one. Can anyone guess which one it is??

The Growing Bond

As Beatrice gets more mobile and interactive, Matilda vacillates between adoring her younger sister and staging a turf war to ensure that Bea in no way touches, or comes near, whatever toy she is currently playing with.

She loves seeing her face first thing in the moring, happily exclaiming "Good Morning, Bea!"

And in the next breath will make sure that Bea knows that those are her baby dolls.

Bea, on the other hand, 100% of the time love love loves Matilda.

Cracks up at her. With her. Crawls for her (and of course, all of her toys all of the time....you can see our dilemma here)

And now that Beatrice is starting to walk/cruise it gets a little dicey because it feels like the damage of pushing down a standing baby vs. a baby that is just sitting up is much more signifcant.

So it's kind of full court press all of the time.

Most of the time, Bea surprises me with what she will tolerate and what she can endure without crying.

And now that she is an expert crawler, she can at least hatch her own escape route.

But most of all, we are seeing glimmers of a sister bond that I know will be unique. Unreplicable for anyone but the two of them. And I know that will also mean fighting about clothes. Friends. Boys. And probably things I can't even imagine at this point.

But I am excited for them. For the adventures they will have, and the memories they will create. Just the two of them, together.

Tillie Talks

Oh, the hilarious things that come out of a two-year old's mouth. She is really starting to talk and my favorite starting to tell stories. Like if you ask her "what did you do today?"...she will legit answer us.

And she gets a super serious look on her face like she is concentrating so hard, and most of the times that involves bringing her hands up close to her face with both of her pointer fingers out. Because apparently that helps her concentrate more. :)

Anyway, with this new-found ability to answer questions we have been having lots of fun with it. Here are a few of my favorite excerpts from the last few weeks...

Us: "Matilda, what do you want to plant in our new garden?"
Tillie: (without skipping a beat). Watermelon.
Us: "Anything else?"
Tillie: "Pizza"
Us: Is that it?
Tillie: Broccoli!

Hey...at least the girl has her priorities straight, and technically I think all of the food groups are represented.
_____    __   _____


If she sees us doing ANYTHING that she wants to do, she immediately yells: "That's my job!!".

____ ___ _____ ____

(overheard while Matilda and Nate were playing)
Tillie: I have your keys dada
Dada: oh, why do you have my keys 
Tillie: because I'm going to work
Dada: where are you going to work?
Tillie: the zoo, to watch owls
Dada: oh, are they going to pay you to so that?
Tillie: yes
Dada: great how much money are they going to pay you?
Tillie: two
Dada:  what are you going to buy with your money?
Tillie: ice cream

______   ___   ____________

If you want to know what word or phrase you say too often, just listen to your two-year-old. We quickly learned what we say all of the time when Matilda coughs as she coughed the other day and after she was done said: Uff-da!

She also said "Uff-da!" as she was trying to carry a milk jug of water in to the living room to help Nate water the tree.

_____________   _______   ________
 
The other day I was letting her go through (a.k.a. destroy) my wallet as it is an activity that keeps her nice and occupied for long enough to get myself and the babe ready. As she pulls out cards, and stamps, she discovered the zipper pocket. Much to my surprise, she figured out how to get it open and found my bills. And as she pulled them out she yelled: "I takin' your money,Mama!"

Yup, you are. And I am guessing this is just the beginning....

______________  ____________  __________

The other night after a nice round of foot rubs (seriously, what two year old is obsessed with giving foot rubs...?!?), Matilda decided to also do backrubs. So she started rubbing my back. Nate walked in and asked her "Are you giving Mama a back rub?" To which Tillie replied...."I rubbing your mole".

I didn't even know she knew what a mole was....

_______  _____________    _____________

She is also going to be a serious tattle tale.

Every night as we are eating dinner and we ask her what she did at school, inevitably it starts with "evan pushed me", "someone bit me", "fall down, cry, ice pack..." so on and so forth.



I can only assume the stories get longer, more elaborate and hilarious as she gets older!

#whatsinBeasmouthnow

Bea is an early mover. Like way early. Like attempting to walk with a walking toy at 8 months early. As in pulling herself onto a chair by herself already early.

 And since Matilda was a late mover, it sort of makes Nate and I feel like we don't know what the hell we are doing sometimes. Namely, because about 3 times a day we realize there is something crazy in Bea's mouth that shouldn't be there.

We really didn't have to baby proof at all for Tillie. She just sat there and whined until we brought her things that made her happy.

This one, not so much.

She moves. Scratch that. She scavenges. 

She will sniff out a dried up crusty kix from a mile away and then she will crawl like the wind is at her back to get it.

We are finding it is very very tricky to babyproof crumbs, and other choking hazards with a toddler also creating her own little hurricane of crumbs every day.

Things we have found in Bea's mouth so far:

Dried up Cheerios

Dried up Kix

An entire unopened packet of Equal

A small wound up strand of string

one of Matilda's band-aids

Unrecognizable fuzz from behind a chair

It's times like these that I suppose I wished we had a dog.... :)

The Day My Childhood Died (a little)

I've gone through the past 10 years of my life wondering when I would finally feel like a 'real' adult.
When I would stop fooling people into thinking I wasn't just a kid who doesn't know anything.

And it never happened. I signed a mortgage. I pay (way too much) every month to the bank to keep my house. Yet, I still fee like maybe I am just playing house.

I had a baby. Scratch that...TWO babies. I literally walked them out of the hospital and no one followed after me saying 'just kidding, you can't be trusted with those babies.' Yet, there is a piece of me that feels closer to 15 than 40 (and to be clear, that is so not the case).

UNTIL, last Friday.

When the whole fam headed out to the annual tradition of dinner at The Viking (think old school WI supperclub) and then to the Twinkle Parade.

The lights came on

the kids were excited (and a little scared)

and then the candy began to rain down. It was the single most candy I think I have ever seen thrown in a parade. Ever. Candy littered the streets. The floats were crunching un-claimed candy. It was bananas. Grandma even had to protect our growing stash from kids that were just straight-up too lazy to run in the middle of the street to get their own.

Now, for anyone that knows me, you know that I love all things sugar and sweet and unadultlike gummy goodness. It was 1000 times better than Halloween.

As I picked through the loot, I was most excited for two things: Christmas Dots and Sugar Babies.

Christmas Dots were first. Scrumptious as always.
Sugar Babies were next. I popped a few. Hmmm...maybe they are just too cold from being outside.

A few more....nope--still am not liking this.

A couple more for good measure because it can't possibly be that I no longer like these.....

Nope. Sugar babies are officially disgusting.

And in that moment, I officially become (a little bit more of) an adult.