September

September kicked off with a long weekend down in RI over Labor Day. We squeezed in a few last beach days, with Labor Day being a “sweatshirt beach day,” one of your Dad’s favorite kinds. (You still wanted to go in the water even though it was FREEZING.) We started our next round of Isis Explorers classes with Rebecca and made a couple new friends from Charlestown, started a Junior Gym class at Mama & Me in Jamaica Plain and music class again with Krissy. Three classes is the most we’ve taken in a semester but I had a little panic attack about losing all our friends to work/school and wanted to make sure we had enough to keep us busy! We had dinner with Amanda and Josh at Legal Seafood in Harvard Square and got to meet baby Alexander. (It’s hard to believe you were ever that small.) You had your regular clam chowder and kept proclaiming, “Baby!” to Alexander and “Trucks!” to his car blanket. We had some of Dad’s friends over for dinner and you liked all the attention from the grown-ups. We took our first trip up to Storyland in NH and you LOVED it. We broke it up into two half days and you went on TONS of rides. (You liked all but one of them – the spinning turtles that even Dad said went too fast.) Your favorites were the ball popper area, the tractors (where you cried when it was time to get off) and meeting Curious George. Grammie, Pop-pop and Ashlyn came to visit and to paint/decorate your room. It came out GREAT – the owls are in your nursery and the main part of your room is airplanes, which you love. The last weekend in September was Sharon’s wedding and Jen, Craig, Madison and Schuyler came to stay with us. You loved playing on the dock and near the boats and dancing at the end of the wedding. Sharon’s mom let you take home the barrel of wild animals you liked playing with and they have become new favorites. (You also got a little jealous when I played with Madison which is something we probably need to work on before a brother or sister comes along for you…) The next day was the Life is Good music festival. We spent a few hours listening to music, playing on the GIANT parachute and walking around the grounds. It was lots of fun and super kid-friendly – I’m hoping we can make it an annual thing.

You’ve had another bad month of teething plus a cold which have combined to make you sort of miserable. Your bottom right eye tooth finally popped through on 9/13 and the top right followed on 9/26. We’re hoping the left side follows quickly. You’re chattering more and more, repeating phrases now instead of just single words. It started when Ra asked you, “Who am I?” and you started repeating, “Who am I? Who am I?” over and over, especially when you figured it out it made us laugh. That’s the next new thing – you’re a little comedian these days. If you figure out something makes us laugh, you’ll do it again and again. And when something makes YOU laugh, you make us do it again and again. You’ve become very snuggly and into your stuffed animals these days. You sleep with your polar bear and Grinch and carry them all over the house. They are your favorites, but you’re not particular if there is another stuffed animal lying around. You want to take a toy with you everywhere we go and sometimes you freak out a little bit when I won’t let you bring the basketball or the giant electronic cat into the store or class with you. You say, “WOW!” after everything with lots of inflection and astonishment, even when it’s just the same bus we pass every day. Colors are mostly still green but sometimes yellow and letters are either A’s, O’s or Q’s. You are pointing out letters everywhere we go now, like when you see them on the manhole covers on our walks and say, “A! A! …WOW!” It’s pretty darn cute. One day, when you were playing on the floor, both Dad and I heard you clearly say “A-B-C-D-E” and looked at each other completely shocked, but it hasn’t happened again so we think it was just a fluke. The biggest change this month is a new bedtime routine. After you nurse, I kiss you goodnight and leave you awake to fall asleep on your own. This came after a few bedtimes with a lot of tossing and turning and pulling my hair when I realized that maybe you’d do better to fall asleep without me there. Besides making bedtime much faster, I also hoped it would give you the ability to put yourself back to sleep in the middle of the night, making for fewer wakings where you needed me to come in. (You’re at about 50/50 these days, some nights waking at 5am and some nights making it until 7:30am.) When I’d tried this in the past, you immediately cried when I got out of bed, but this time you took to it very easily and we’ve only had a few whimpers and miss-starts. I do miss the cuddle time, but you seem to be making it up in the morning and after your nap, which is ok with me.

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