Haven's 6 month well-check!

Haven is a big, tall, healthy 6 month old! :)


Her stats:


Height: 28.5 inches (97+ percentile)
Weight: 19 pounds, 1 ounce (95th percentile)
Head Circumference: 44.5cm

(Venily was 16lbs, 13oz and 27.25in long)


The doctor had a student doctor with her today so Haven had to get checked up twice!  She was super smiley and happy until she had to lay down.  She is not a fan of laying down to get checked out, lol, I think she remembers what usually happens in the past while laying down at the doctor's!  She was way more upset about laying down and getting looked at than getting her shots, lol!  Other than that, everything is GREAT and she is on target or ahead for all her developmental stuff!  Her doctor said that those bottom two teeth should be coming in soon.  And both doctors and the nurse loved how she sucks on her fingers, lol!  Her doctor even said that like the thumb guard for kids who suck their thumb, they actually have a guard for those 2 middle fingers as well, but we won't have to worry about that for awhile! ;)  I am anticipating that she is going to need it though, haha, she sure does love those fingers!!!

Next check up is at 9 months and no immunizations for that one!

Sleepy girl!

The last couple of nights Haven has been going to bed super early, sleeping through the night AND taking 4 naps a day!!  I think she may be going through a growth spurt!  Also, Venily decided that naps aren't so bad and is back to taking one every day, and waking up around 6:00-6:15am again!

Haven has her 6 month doctor appointment tomorrow!


Also, Haven is getting her bottom two teeth!!!!!  They haven't cut through yet, but I can definitely feel them coming!!! She was biting down after nursing yesterday and it hurt so bad!  I hope she's not as naughty as Venily was when she cut her first teeth!!

Spaghetti! :)

Wouldn't you know, my little vegetarian LOVES spaghetti! :)  LOL, it's a good thing too since we eat a lot of pasta!!  I gave her some and she devoured it all by herself!  Then I gave her more and some broccoli and she ate all of that too!  She fits in our family quite nicely! ♥

♥ ♥ Haven is 6 months! ♥ ♥

Happy 1/2 birthday to my little Haven Araya Young!!!  These 6 months have gone ENTIRELY too fast, I can NOT believe it!  I was reading over all of Venily's 6 month posts and if Haven is anything like her sister, we are in for a fun-filled month with lots of milestones, I can't wait!!  Though if we could please hold off on the crawling... that's the only one I'd like to wait a little on because I know once she gets that one down, my job is going to get Sooooo much harder!  Funner, but definitely harder! ;)

Here are her 6 month stats:

Weight: 19 pounds, 1 ounce


Length: 28.5 inches

(Venily was 16lbs, 13oz and 27.25in!)


Haven's updated growth charts:

(coming soon)

Clothes size: Mostly 12m, even a few 18m now too.  I took out her spring/summer stuff and I'm so excited for warmer weather!  

Diaper size: 3

Shoe size: 2 

SLEEPING: Hit or miss still.  Sometimes sleeps through the night, sometimes waking up once or occasionally twice.  I think it would be more consistent if she had her own room (she's sleeping in her crib in our room b/c being in Venily's room would be even worse, haha).  She usually goes to bed around 7 or 8pm and she sleeps until around 7-7:30am.  She is now taking 2-3 naps a day.  We're usually running around in the morning so sometimes she'll sleep in the car for 10 minutes or so and think that's her morning nap, lol!

EATING: Still breastfeeding!!!  I feel good about making it to the 6m milestone mark, but fully intend to go the full 12m! :)  She is also still eating 3 solid food meals a day.  A little less baby food though then she was last month.  She goes through about 2 jars of baby food and a bowl of cereal a day.  She is also eating quite a bit of finger food now!  And can do it all by herself!!  She can make it into her mouth about 80% of the time, in only a week she's improved considerably!!  She is still racking it up in her hand and then putting it in her mouth, no pincher grasp yet...


New foods from the last half month (though it's getting harder to keep track of them all): harvest vegetables, various mixed fruits, mixed fruit and yogurt, macaroni and cheese, cinnamon raisin granola, mandarin oranges, steamed broccoli (LOVED it!), and other bites of whatever we're having (as long as it's healthy!).  I still haven't found anything she doesn't like! 

PLAYING: Really loves all of her toys that make sounds!  Also LOVES bead toys (you know, the kind that are on a wire and you move them around). Loves blocks!  LOVES the bathtime duck that goes over the faucet, it never fails to excite her, haha!  Doesn't really go in her excersaucer much anymore unless I'm taking a shower, I'll put her in the doorway in it.  Loves playing outside.  And loves to bang on everything, she thinks it's so fun (she bangs on my hand too for 'high fives')!  Also splashing even more in the bathtub, so much so that I get soaked sometimes while bathing her!  She is so different from Venily, in the fact that water on her face and eyes doesn't bother her at all!

APPEARANCE: Same.  Hair is filling in a little more though and seems to be getting a little darker! :)

TEETH: Still none! Though the biting and drooling continues...

SPEECH: lots of vowels and consonants she now has: "h", "g", ♥b♥, m, and I've gotten a few "d"'s now as well!  I love when she gets a good story going, I could listen to her forever!!!


-signs: still just waving, though she waves all the time now!  she is just starting to try to mimic me for "so big" and is starting to try and clap


MOVEMENT: Rolling is her favorite means of moving.  She makes it across our living room in a matter of minutes!  I always put her on a blanket on the floor (so if when she spits up, I don't have to bust out the carpet cleaner, I can just throw the blanket in the laundry) and she refuses to stay on it! lol

  I put her on that pink blanket back there and she kept rolling until she got into the kitchen! :)

Loves to sit independently and can go from sitting to laying down with no problems.  Still no crawling, but likes to schooch around.  When I put a toy in front of her that she wants but can't reach she gets so excited trying to get it.  Lol, she usually bobs up and down, banging her face into the ground and then rolls side to side trying to figure out a way to move forward!

I will be more than happy though if she decides to take her time on the crawling thing!  I know how much harder my job is going to get once she starts!  Also, she shares a fondness for "icks" (crumbs, pieces of dirt, grass, etc.) just like Venily, and I have caught her trying to put them in her mouth several times!  Venily was OBSESSED with putting any and every little thing in her mouth, including bugs, haha!


OTHER:  I don't think that I've mentioned lately that she still spits up every 5 minutes... but she does!  I hope she skips crawling and goes straight to walking, b/c I know that walking is the only way to get it to stop! :)

*********

I can't believe how fast she is learning new things!  A baby's first year is probably always going to be my favorite!  Every single day she is learning new things and improving on other things she has learned, it's the most amazing thing to watch her grow and change.  I feel so blessed to be a Mommy!  ♥  I love you so much Haven, I can't wait for the next 6 months!!  You are and always will be my little sunshine!  ♥

AT 6 MONTHS...

Haven's LIKES:
* Mommy, Daddy, and especially Venily

* Getting her face washed after eating, goofy girl!


*Finger foods, especially when she can do it herself!

*Strings!  On toys or sweatshirts, etc., she loves them! 

*Obsessed with the remote and wires, just like Daddy!

*Taking off her socks (I don't know why I even bother putting them on) and sucking on her toes, haha, she's always got her toes in her mouth now!


*Splashing in the bathtub


*Flirting with people with her giant super-sweet smile! :)

* Still loves to "rock out"! :)

*Being tickled!  ♥

* ♥ Smiling, smiling's her favorite!!!!  ♥ (For real though, I was actually worried there might be something wrong with her!  Back in college I took a "Psychology for the Exceptional Child" class and we had a guest speaker come in and it was a mom and her little girl.  The girl had a disorder where she was constantly happy all the time, I don't remember what it was called, but the little girl couldn't stop smiling!  I even looked it up 'just to be sure' and I know Haven doesn't have it...she is just blessed (or we all are actually) with a VERY happy little personality!)  I tell you, that smile is going to do AMAZING things! :)

*Playing outside



Haven's DISLIKES:
* Being tired when she can't be in bed


HAVEN/ VENILY COMPARISON: (Venily's 6 month Update)



Pics: Venily at 6 months! 

This fall Venily will officially be a...

PRESCHOOLER!!!!  I'm so excited!  Turned in her paperwork and deposit this morning!  After freaking out about the decision, I tried to calm down and I realized that it was all going to be alright.  Then I spoke with the director today and knew that I had without a doubt made the right choice!  She assured me that each child's education is highly individualized and that about half the students right now are onto reading sight words!!!

Also, I found out that my father-in-law's girlfriend who also happens to be (see if you can follow this, lol) my step-father's brother's ex-wife (LOL! so I basically considered her my aunt for a number of years) works in the kitchen there and has for many years, so I have someone I know working there that can perhaps keep an eye on her!

I'm not going to lie, I thought that I was going to handle leaving her pretty easily but when I was there for the tour and I imagined her playing with the kids and me leaving, I got quite choked up!  haha!  It's only for 3 hours a day, twice a week: Mondays & Wednesdays (I got to pick which days)!  She is going to have so much fun though and learn so much, I can't wait!!!!!

Little Miss Haven has an important 1/2 birthday tomorrow and I am working on her update, I'll post it tomorrow!  I can't believe how fast my children are growing up!!

Random Kid Updates, while I remember...

BABY FOOD
Haven is finally eating a bit less baby food.  She had me worried there for a while, eating 3 entire jars a day and a large bowl of cereal! lol.  Recently she has started eating about 2 jars a day and a bowl of cereal now.  And bites of real food here and there. 

at the rate she was going before, all this food would only have lasted me a little over a week, lol!

SMILEY GIRL

Also, I had said she had some stranger anxiety, well that was short lived!  She loves EVERYONE again, lol!!  She is such a little flirt too with cute boys/men!  Actually anyone really!  Everyone and everything makes her smile, she is such a smiley little girl! That is the number one comment I get from people, how smiley she is and what a cute smile she has!  Some others comments I usually get include "I love her earrings", "She has such pretty eyes" and of course "She is so cute!".  ♥

WE ♥ GIBBY!
We met GIBBY from iCarly today!!  AMAZING!  lol!  I've never met anyone very famous before.  Some football players, basketball players, and a guy from Sesame street when I was younger... no one that I actually knew their name until today! :)  iCarly is Venily's FAVORITE show (her dad and I love it too, lol, it really fits our dorky sense of humor) and Gibby is one of our FAVORITE characters!  Venily ALWAYS takes off her shirt just like Gibby and dances around just like Gibby.  She and I were both star struck today, lol!  She got an autographed picture of him as well and we got our picture taken with him.  We hung up his picture in her room and after I put her to bed I noticed her light was on.  I went in there to see why she had it on and she said "I wanted to be able to see Gibby".  LOL! :)

NO MORE NAP?!
Venily is trying to get rid of her nap!!!!!  Today was the third day this week that she DIDN'T take a nap!  She always takes a nap usually!  Ever since the time change she has been waking up an hour later even though she goes to bed at the same time (totally awesome!) BUT she doesn't want to nap now!  I am mean and make her stay in her room for that time anyway (she usually doesn't mind and just plays quietly), but I'm not ready for no naps!

VENILY "READING"
 I don't think I've written this down yet, but Venily has an AMAZING memory that absolutely astounds me!  Like tonight when we were reading our bedtime books... she has a book called Corduroy.  It's about a 725 word book (I counted) with NO repetition and is has a 3.2 reading grade level.  Not easy by any means.  She has the ENTIRE thing memorized word-for-word and can recite the entire thing!  It's a little creepy! lol.  Sometimes I'll be reading it and mess up a word or two or accidentally say "she said" instead of "she wondered" or something like that and Venily will correct me!!  And I can just turn to a page and she'll tell me every word on the page... if you showed me any picture in that book and told me you'd give me a million dollars if I could say every word that's on the page without looking at the words, I wouldn't be able to do it... but she can!


And it's like that for a lot of her books.  She has them memorized after only hearing them a couple of times!

Preschool

Okay, so I'm freaking out about preschool.  I'm going crazy researching and trying to find one!!


There was one that I was SUPER, SUPER excited about!  A lot of the people in my play group have had children go through the program.  It's a Montessori school and at first when I kept hearing people talk about it I assumed it was a religious school so I just ignored everything they were saying, but it turns out it's absolutely not!  It's a really different program that emphasizes a lot on hands-on learning, learning through play,  and real-life situations.  They don't have any "toys" there, just things you'd find in every day life.  (which makes sense, why would I pay money for my child to play with toys?! especially since we have a TON of toys at our own house and I bring Venily to a play group/story time/ library classes, etc. already!)  The one woman I talked to who had a daughter go through the program told me that almost all the students that leave their preschool leave already knowing how to read!  So I was really psyched about it!


Venily, Haven, and I took a tour of it this week and we really liked it, but it didn't quite live up to my INCREDIBLY high standards... so I'm really at a loss as to what to do!


Things I loved about it:
*small class size, only 7 in a class!
*the teachers are really experienced and most have their bachelor's degrees! (important to me since I have an education degree)
*academic focused, a lot more so than any other preschools in the area
*thorough weekly lesson plans that are posted so I can see what is going on each day
*great atmosphere


Things I didn't love:
*we are on a Very tight budget and though it's comparable to any other preschool, we are only going to be able to afford 2 days a week (you can send your child 1-5 days a week) and even that's going to be pushing it for us!
*it's at a church... there is absolutely no religious component to their teaching but like as I walked in there was a poster that said "God loves all children."  I'm fine with that, but it's not the ideal situation for me.
*Okay, and here's the biggest thing- I read through the parent handbook and all the handouts and things they gave me and their curriculum goals weren't as high as I was anticipating.  Specifically it says that
-'depending on interest, children will be introduced to the letters and sounds of the alphabet' and 'children are introduced to counting 1-20'. And this is for the 3 and 4 year old class.  Venily already knows how to do all these things!


So what do I do?!  There are other curriculum goals of course, but nothing that I don't do with her already or that aren't covered by the various other classes and things we go to.


I WANT to send her to preschool.  I WANT someone else to teach her 6 hours a week.  But I'm not sure if it's worth the financial strain that it will put on us!  I'm thinking with such a small class they'll be able to work with her at her level, but I'm not certain of it.  I am going so crazy over this decision!


Venily's a smart girl and I want her to have some experience in a 'school setting' because I'm hoping to skip her a grade and put her right into kindergarten the following year instead of 4K.  I'd put her into 4K in the fall, but she's technically still only going to be 2 years old at the start of the year and I doubt they'd take her that early.


I could always send her to the preschool and continue to supplement her education at home.  Then I'd basically be paying to get her used to school.  She's never been away from me for any length of time (only close family ever watches her and that's not very often) and I've NEVER just dropped her off somewhere where she didn't know anybody, so that'll probably be quite an adjustment.  Hmmm.... I just don't know!


I have her paperwork all filled out and ready to hand in along with her deposit, but I'm so on the fence as to whether or not to send her!  What do you think?!  I need to come up with a decision quick b/c they are already almost booked for fall!

Up North

We went a couple of hours up north this weekend for my Grandma's 70th birthday!  We had a lot of fun!  We took our new car and it worked out fine (though I still prefer my old van).  I forgot just how GORGEOUS that part of Wisconsin is!  It was so pretty!  The girls were very well-behaved and Venily was CRAZY as usual!  I didn't know if she'd be shy or not... she WASN'T!  haha.  She was even crazy in front of people she didn't even know!  Like at breakfast at the hotel she was standing on a chair and singing and dancing in front of a mirror in front of a group of old people and one of them gave her a dirty look and another shushed her!  LOL!  I couldn't even believe it!  Old people usually LOVE my kids!  haha.  When I told Jason he was ready to go back down there and tell the man off! :)  Oh well, you can't please everyone!  There was a scary trench-coated man who thought she was hilarious... as well as me and the rest of my family!

Haven's 5.5 month updates!

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have like 1,000 half finished drafts on here, but never finish anything!  Perhaps someday I'll finish posts about preschools, my new car, the start of the 'terrible twos' and other such things...




Haven is 5 1/2 months old today!  Here are some of her updates:


*Haven now sits independently for as long as she wants!!  Sometimes she likes to dive after toys out of reach though, lol, she has no fear! :)


*And she has started to do more consecutive rolling to get to places she wants to go!


*Haven started waving last week!  She does the exact same thing as Venily did when she first learned how to wave- opens and closes her hand as she stares at it.  The first couple of days I thought "is she seriously waving?" and after a while I absolutely knew she was! :)  I was lucky enough to get it on video too!




*I have officially stopped carrying Haven around in her baby car seat!  She is WAY too heavy these days and my hands are all calloused from carrying her in it.  I am just leaving it in the van car (*sad sigh*, lol) for now and am looking for a new carseat for her.  So she now rides in the front seat of the shopping cart and I still carry her in her front carrier as well.  It has simplified my life amazingly, haha, and bonus- one less thing to clutter the house!!


*I had to go through BOTH of the girls clothes AGAIN!!  I took out about half of all of Venily's clothes because they didn't fit her anymore!  Warm weather needs to come quick because we are running out of things to wear!  And Haven requires likes 5 changes a day!  I am trying to organize Venily's closet so that both girls' clothes fit in it.... so far I'm not able to do it though, lol!  I really need a hanging 2nd bar but can't find one in the stores!


*Added to the 'foods that Haven has tried' list includes: prunes, squash, pears, cheerios, peaches, butternut squash & corn.  Every 3 days we try a new food.  She has had ALL of the 1st foods now and is on to 2nd foods!  She is getting really good at chewing her solid finger foods too now instead of just moving it around in her mouth!  She absolutely LOVES cheerios and her puffs and I don't even have to wet them down any more!  I can't wait for summer!  We are really excited about planting a garden this year and Haven can't wait to try all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden!


She is eating 3 solid food meals a day now!  In a typical day she eats 3 complete jars or containers of baby food and a large bowl of cereal!!  haha, she's going to eat us out of house and home!  She also has 2 snacks a day.  Usually puffs, cheerios, or "squishy bananas" (as Venily calls them- bananas in her mesh feeder).  You can tell when she wants real food rather than just to nurse and she refuses to let us eat first, she gets really mad if we are eating and she hasn't eaten yet!  Her meals are usually pretty messy as she now demands her own spoon as well.  She's "Little Miss Independent" just like her big sister!  Oh boy, I know what to now expect later on down the road! :)


She is doing FANTASTIC with her sippy cup now too!  I give her a little bit of breast milk in her cup with each of her meals.  She'll be able to try some juice and water too in a few weeks when she turns 6 months!  She used to mostly bite on the end of it but now understands the concept of sucking it and can do it really well!!!


*Unfortunately Haven now has quite a bit of stranger anxiety at times.  It is always intensified when she is tired!  With people she knows though, she is still as happy and smiley as ever!!  And she still LOVES story time, her library classes, and her playgroup!


*Her hair is filling in nicely!  There's not much, but her bald spot is gone and her whole head is super fuzzy with lots of very fine hair!  I can hardly keep my lips off of it, it's so wonderful!  Well that and her perfectly smooth little chunker cheeks!  Mmmm, I love those cheeks!


*M's and humming have been added to Haven's vocabulary! :) 

*The past 2 weeks have not been good with nighttime sleeping, sometimes waking up 1-3 times at night to nurse! (except last night, she slept through the night!)  She never can make up her mind!  I am nervous about the time change in a few days, especially for Venily!!  Haven is still taking 3 awesome naps a day though and putting herself to sleep, so I guess I can't complain!




We are going up north this weekend!  Staying in a hotel and visiting lots of family for my Grandma's 70th birthday!  Haven and Venily are really excited!

I promise to do better with updates in the future since I rely on them to finish the girls' baby books!  Speaking of that, I haven't touched their baby books in MONTHS... I am really slacking on my new year's resolutions!!