Justice – 16 3/4 months, Rayah – 28 weeks

Well, again I am terribly behind on my update for the kiddos, and since my memory is terrible and I’m not very good at recording things, it will be difficult to remember everything I’ve wanted to write here!  Usually, I have to look at the pictures and videos I’ve taken and look at my twitter updates just of find out what has been going on in our lives. 

Seriously, I cannot understand how moms with 12 children find the time to blog regularly when I can hardly manage to do it once a month with only one kid!!

Anywho, Justice is about 16 3/4 months and it has been interesting, to say the least!  He has been loving the outdoors this summer and is a bit of maniac when he runs around, which results in many scrapes, bumps and bruises!  I would guess that he spends about 60% of his time running around and the other 40% falling and getting back up.  Thankfully, his many falls don’t seem to phase him too much and he rarely cries.  But his carelessness means that lately he has injured himself a few times by biting his lip and his tongue, getting a couple bumps on his noggin (and almost a black eye, but it really only got sorta green), cutting his toe by dropping a tin can on it, and nicking his finger with one of daddy’s razors that he managed to find!  Oh the joys of raising an active little boy! 

 

We also have introduced him to the wonderous world of play structures where he has learned the joys of slides and swings!  He will go down the slides almost every way except the conventional way – usually on his stomach, sometimes feet first and sometimes head first.    We also got a swing for him for at home, which we originally hung up in our basement until Joe could get it installed outside on one of the trees in our backyard.  I’m pretty sure Justice likes the swing, but if you watch him, he’s completely mellow and stonefaced the whole time – lol.  Generally though, he LOVES being outside and is especially fond of the patch of dirt next to the deck where he plays with his dump truck, shovels, rakes and pails – we would love to have a sandbox there for him some day!  He’s also become quite good at throwing balls and especially loves the big beach ball we got for him which he will throw and kick around – it’s so cute!

This summer we’ve had the chance to take Justice to the pool a couple times and to the beach and let him play in the little Dollarama inflatable pool on our deck, which has been lots of fun!  It usually takes him a little while to get used to it, but once he gets comfortable, he absolutely loves it!  Plus, he looks so ridiculously cute in his little swim trunks and the wet suit that he got from his Grandma E.  He also got to meet his first frog, which he probably would have tried to eat, had I let him. 

 

He has also begun to develop a love for books, and while he doesn’t yet seem to pay too much attention to what is actually on the pages, he definitely loves turning the pages!  We’ve started to read him a story before bedtime each night, which he seems to really enjoy.  He has also started to dance in the last month or so, which is terribly cute!  He’ll do a sort of river dance with his feet or an awkward, exaggerated bouncing up and down with a couple little hops mixed in.  He’ll occassionally sort of sing, but he basically only sings one or two notes, so it can kind of sound like screaming – lol.

 

In the talking arena he is definitely developing his toddler babble and it’s quite funny when he really gets going, because it seems to be mostly a long string of consonants with very few vowels mixed in.  He is also very expressive and uses a lot of different inflections in his voice and hand gestures when he speaks.  He is learning to associate his word “doggy” correctly with actual dogs, but it is also used for most animals that sort of resemble a dog.  He’ll usually say it in a very excited, shrill and high-pitched squeal, over and over and over.    He also associates his “Vrooom” noise with pretty much anything that has wheels.  He’s also learned to say “hat” and seems to be attempting to say his own name when he points to pictures of himself, but it sort of sounds like “da-da” or “tha-tha” or “ja-ja”.  While watching one of his Baby Einstein videos, he won’t say anything the whole time, except for when they show the whale, at which point he says, “Whale!”  Other than that, he hasn’t actually picked up too many other real words that I can tell, except for his recent absolute favorite, which is “ROAR!!!” (though is sounds a little more like “WOW!!!”)  This kid has an amazing ability to use that gutteral, roaring sound and it comes out often, especially in his laughter, which I love!  It was especially cute the other morning though when he woke up and his first word was a softly whispered “roar” which eventually kept getting louder and louder with each subsequent “roooar…Rooooar…ROOOOOAR!!”  So cute!

Besides speaking actual words, I’m finding that he also understands certain words I say more than I had realized.  I was so proud of him one day when he came walking into my office with only one shoe on and I asked him, “Where’s your other shoe?” and he promptly went and got his other shoe and brought it to me!  There are a lot of things that he is learning, which is exciting as we are able to communicate with him more.  Now if only we could get him to actually obey us when we ask him to do (or not to do) things!!

In the eating department, Justice does quite well with eating most things we give him.  He enjoys eating certain finger foods, but it’s difficult to try and teach him not to throw his food on the floor!  Many times we’ve been able to take what I’ve made for supper and throw it in the food processor for him, which is nice, because it means buying less baby food.  I’ve slowly been sort of trying to teach him how to eat on his own with a spoon, but I’m a little paranoid about just letting him go for it, since I know it would mean him making a huge mess!  I probably just need to let go of my issues and let him learn, but for now, we’re just taking baby steps.  

In the sleeping department, it’s usually SUPER easy to put him down for his naps, but never easy to keep him napping as long as I’d like him to.  He’ll usually wake up around the 1 hour mark and if I’m lucky, I can get him to go back to sleep, but this is often not the case.  Ideally, I’d like him to nap for 2 hours, but it’s hit and miss.  As for night time, we tried the method where we just let him cry himself to sleep, but after a little while, we didn’t want to do that anymore, so now we’re trying to teach him to fall asleep on his own, while staying in the room, but slowly trying to remove his “crutches”.  This often means it takes longer to put him to bed (mostly because we don’t give him his soother at night), but usually he’s asleep by 7:45pm and then sleeps until about 6:00am.  We’d really like for him to sleep until 6:30am at least, but lately this has not been happening and I still don’t know how to get him to sleep longer in the morning!

Other than that, he is just being his usual self and getting into trouble at every opportunity.  Most days my house looks like a disaster area with kitchen utensils in his bedroom, his diapers and clothing in the office, and his toys everywhere else!  I tend to just ignore the chaos and let him wreak havoc as much as he desires, since it is usually the only thing that helps me keep my sanity and get any work done!   He continues to be adventurous and climb up and into anything possible and his reach is extending further and further every day, so it’s getting harder to keep things away from him!

And then there is Rayah.    There’s obviously not as much to tell you about her, but she’s now almost 28 weeks along in this journey in the womb and doing wonderfully!  She kicks and makes her presence known more and more all the time and we are getting more and more excited to meet her!  A couple times I have got to experience the joys of swollen feet and ankles, and then the swelling has gone down and they went back to normal, but they’re kinda swollen right now again and it can actually be rather uncomfortable (besides kinda gross looking), so I hope it goes away again.  For this month’s comparison pictures with my pregnancy with Justice, I finally got the pictures taken for the same week and can see some subtle differences this time.  I think my belly is definitely sticking out a little further this time and it also looks like I’m carrying Rayah higher – Justice sat sort of low in my belly for most of my pregnancy.  So there you have it – less than 3 months to Rayah’s due date – yikes!