Jesse Tyler, 9 Months and Gloucester Christmas Parade

Another month post for Jesse.  He is already 9 months – hard to believe!  Here is his latest news:

He’s been an excellent through-the-night sleeper for a long time but recently he started waking up anywhere from 3 am to 5 am.  Finally I realized that by this time I had been giving Esther more protein-rich food than Jesse had been getting.  I had only been feeding him organic baby food, which has some meat mixed in but still only a max of 3 grams per jar.  Not enough for this growing boy!  I added some jars of baby meet (not organic) and some organic yogurt and egg yolks.  Problem solved!  He is now back to sleeping soundly through the night.  Although if you make any noise at all after about 6:30 am, he will wake up and be ready for the day.  A slight bummer in a little camper when Tyler has to get up for work… (next post will be about our new living situation – promise!).

Jesse is pulling up and cruising using two hands but not close to walking yet.  Esther was just about walking by now, so I’m also encouraged to work with him a little more to get him to step – and put shoes on him more often to help with that right foot that still turns out.

He is probably also ready to learn some baby signs, but we haven’t started that yet.  He has recently started clapping his hands on his own.  He does it often, and it does seem to be when he’s excited.  It’s super cute. 

And, he has become a food beggar in the last few days!  We started giving him a few little pieces of our food and now if anyone is eating, he crawls to them and makes lots of happy noises until he gets some.  Uh-oh, we started something!

You can tell he wants to keep up with Esther.  That will get more interesting in the next few months, I’m sure.  We love him lots, and I can’t wait to see how much fun he has with Christmas.  : )

 

Here are pictures from the Gloucester Christmas parade.  It was actually on Jesse's nine months birthday so I decided to put the posts together.  Esther enjoyed the parade.  Jesse fell asleep before it was over.  Although, check out the last picture ... I've never seen Santa on a boat before!  I guess we are close to the coast.  ; )

Our Esther Jo

Finally here is an update on our beautiful Esther ...

She is 2 years and almost 9 months.  And talking ... and talking ... and talking!!  Whole conversations.  She continues to amaze me!!  And she really will repeat everything now.  The other day she said "do-do head."  I won't tell you where she heard that one.  ;)  So we are trying to be extra careful.   Other phrases I've heard include "That's right.  You got it."  "Don't worry.  Be happy."  And so many more.  I'll have to start writing them down.
She has done pretty well with all of the moving craziness.  A little whiny that sometimes I attribute to all the change and lack of schedule.  But overall, very well.

Here she is in the van, loaded down with stuff!

Although starting in the days since we moved from San Angelo, she's been watching more TV.  A lot more.  I thought it was just a season, but it hasn't ended.  And she loves it, way too much.  It started with Veggie Tales and then moved on to TinkerBell.  She loves TinkerBell and talks all the time about having wings on her back and learning how to fly.  (See fairy shirt below.)  And in the hotel we were in, we watched Curious George every morning.  She loved that! 

During our brief stop in West Virginia.  At Dairy Queen with Mimi and Deda.

Four generation picture with Nana, Mom, me and Esther.

At Taco Bell, Papa's favorite place to eat!

Here in Gloucester is a McDonald's with a playplace built like a big tree house. Esther loves it and points it out when we drive by.  Another tribute to the craziness of late ... Esther recongizes and even greets fast food places when we drive by, especially Wendy's.  "There's Wendy's.  Hi Wendy's!"

Look at the hair in this one!!  Still no haircut.  Ever.  She and Jesse will now probably get their first ones at the same time!

Sleeping.  So beautiful!

Life in the hotel...

Adorable child sized grocery cart.  She LOVED getting to push Jesse.

And now a picture in our camper.  That's right, we are now living in a camper.  More on that to come. 

So there are some recent photos of Esther.  Here are a couple of stories to record for our memories...

When we lived in Conroe, we had a townhouse with an upstairs.  Almost immediately Esther was scared to walk up the stairs by herself because a "cow" was in her way.  At first, I would go with her and we'd ask the cow to move.  Finally Tyler told her cows don't live inside, they live outside.  After that, she would often start up the stairs by saying "Oh, cows outside."  Don't have any idea where that came from.

One of her Veggie Tales videos has a little girl character named Emma.  The mom says to the dad "Go talk to Emma, she had a bad day at school."  Then they sing her a song.  Well, Esther has a baby doll named Emma so she started telling me to go talk to Emma.  Then she asked me to sing her the same song.  This progressed to leaving out the baby doll altogether, so often Esther will go off by herself to "talk to Emma."  In West Virginia, she left to talk to Emma.  When she came back, some one asked her how Emma was and Esther said that Emma was "sick and tired."  Don't know where that came from either!  I guess this qualifies as an imaginary friend.

Esther has a phenomenal memory.  She remembers lots of events and people, even from San Angelo.  However, everything that happened in the past is still "yesterday." 

She gets along well with her brother, and likes to make him laugh and smile.  "Jesse smile at me!" She does not like it, though, if he tries to take her toys or her food.  She is still sucking her thumb.  Pretty much only at night.  She tries to do it at other times but we tell her to stop.  She usually does, with occasional fits. 

One more funny story, even though I feel like I am telling this at my own expense.  We were talking to a lady (who happened to be a retired kindergarten teacher and clearly loved kids).  She and Esther were talking about Esther's baby dolls.  The lady asked if Esther fed her babies with a bottle.  Esther said that Jesse had a bottle.  The lady asked if Jesse drank milk in his bottle (I cringed inside) and Esther replied, "Yes, and from Mama's boobies."  That lady, bless her, kept right on going with the conversation.  A memorable moment, for sure!

Also, Esther can sing her ABC's and recognize capital letters.  She can write a mean "A" but that's about all. She just about counts from 1-20.  She learns songs very quickly and loves to sing them.  She is super excited about Christmas right now, which is very fun for me.  And we are totally done with Pull-Ups!!  Accidents are very rare now. 

So much else has happened but that's all for now.  Hopefully more soon!