Combo Update (Months 6-9)

I’m so late with Grace’s 6, 7 and 8 month update that I’ve combined them into one glorious 9-month update.

Grace weighed in at 18 lbs.,  at her 6 month appointment and then 19 pounds at her 9 month update. Her growth is slowing down as she has become super active. She’s still got those cheeks though! She doesn’t crawl yet, but she can spin herself in a circle and roll over and over and over to get across the room, especially if there is one of Noah’s toys that she is after.

Just after turing 6 months she had her first taste of pureed food. So far, she enjoys most things, but at the top of her list are sweet potatoes, pear, peas, applesauce, black beans and puffs… sista loves some puffs!

Grace also popped her first two teeth just after her 6 month birthday. Her two bottom teeth came in the same week and she had a rough few days, but even on a rough day, Grace is still a pretty easy baby. She just wanted to be held or carried in the baby bjorn and chewing on toys constantly.

With Noah in pre-school Grace’s immune system is getting plenty of practice; she has fought off several colds like a champ, but needed some medicine to kick a nasty croup out of her system. Dave got to go to San Francisco for work and sleep in a king-sized bed by himself during the teething and part of the croup fiasco. Lucky him! 🙂

Noah and Grace are becoming even more like buddies these days. Grace loves to observe Noah and cracks up at his antics, I mean he is pretty funny; I’m pretty sure Noah is Grace’s favorite person. So far the feelings go both ways, after Noah’s afternoon nap he regularly asks to play with Grace or asks for her to lay in bed with him. Nearly every day Noah asks, “Can Grace play with cars?” Sorry Noah, they are still too small for her! Dave and I love seeing the spontaneous hugs he gives her and their little friendship forming… Now that he doesn’t hit her anymore. 🙂

We can’t wait to celebrate Christmas next week with these two best buds. Check out our flickr.com/photos/harttersinc for the latest pics!

 

Five Fantastic Months

 

Here’s our little lady at five months…The months seem to be flying by, especially when I always write the monthly blog late. I did take the pic on her five-month “birthday” though. Grace is doing awesome! Her sweet personality shines every day. She sleeps all night and plays, eats and sleeps all day. We are truly blessed with an easy, happy and healthy little girl.

This month Grace was promoted to the back seat of the stroller. Noah has trouble keeping his hands out of the wheels, but Grace’s little arms stay safely by her side.

Just hanging out in the kitchen while everyone else eats breakfast.

4 Fun Months

Each month seems to come and go faster than the next. Grace is so full of chatter and smiles that it makes the rest of us smile more too. Her cheerful disposition is clear, but I still wonder how it will manifest itself as she grows up! Grace got a thumbs up for perfection from the pediatrician at her four month appointment. She’s gaining on her brother and already tipping the scales at nearly 16 pounds. It seems like she practically skipped over the 3-6 month clothes and is now comfortably wearing mostly 6-9 month styles and size two diapers.

Grace sleeps about as much as Greylock used to! We can count on her for 12 hours every night and a couple of three hour naps during the day. We left her and Noah with a babysitter the other night–after nursing and drinking a two ounce bottle before we left, she still downed a five ounce bottle from the babysitter before going off to bed.  The girl loves to eat! She is very close to rolling over and can get up on her side… I know she will be doing it soon. Grace still isn’t much of a fan of tummy time and generally prefers to lay on her back or sit in the bouncy seat or bumbo.

Noah and Grace are super cute together. Noah has been asking to “play with Grace” or “hug baby Grace” a lot more lately. She’s going to have her work cut out for her keeping up with him… but I have no doubt she will be up for it.

One Month

One month down for sweet Grace. She is growing like a champ and weighed in a 9 lbs., 5 oz. at her one month appointment — two pounds over her birth weight. I wasn’t too surprised given how much she likes to eat. During the day she eats every 2-3 hours and even closer together in the evenings. During the night she is up every three hours ON THE DOT — you could set a clock by it. We experienced one four and a half hour stretch a few nights ago and it was glorious! The great news is that she is sleeping in her crib at night. Most nights she goes right down around 9 pm … we all agree it’s much better than sharing our bed with her! During the day she takes a couple of long naps in the swing … and once we get Noah down, her and I usually take a cat nap on the couch together.

Grace is turing into a bit of a spit-up queen. I don’t think it’s quite as severe as Noah’s spit-up was though… Maybe I’m just more used to it this time. But I don’t seem to be changing my clothes or hers quite as much this time around. Grace loves to be outside and go for rides in the stroller, usually finding it quite relaxing. She rides up top, while Noah rides in the “special-big-brother seat” on our neighborhood walks and many trips to the bakery and grocery store.

Noah is a super big brother, bringing Grace her blanket or a diaper when he thinks she needs them. We still need to remind him to be gentle and he gets a bit frustrated when he can’t have exactly what he needs or all the attention he is used to, but in general he is very sweet to “baby.”

p.s. We’re keeping the tradition of the monthly pics alive with Jules the Bernese Mountain Dog. 

 

Noah is ONE!

Happy Birthday to our little buddy Noah! (A little late with this post…) In June we had an amazing weekend celebrating his birthday, baby dedication at our church and Dave’s second Father’s Day.

We were fortunate to have Noah’s Uncle Steve and his girlfriend Cynthia join us for some birthday festivities. We also had 30+ friends an neighbors over to celebrate. Looking around at all of our new friends and neighbors, along with those who we have remained close with through all of our moves was really heartwarming.

On Sunday Noah was dedicated at our church, Watershed, along with several other babies. We just love Watershed and we hope that as he gets older, Noah will too. Every week he goes to “Greenhouse” where he gets to play with the other babies and always gets a great report from the volunteers there! We were blessed to be able to have him dedicated at such a wonderful church.

Uncle Steve, Cynthia and Noah at the spray ground on his birthday.

Noah was very excited when everyone sang him Happy Birthday

Carrot cake… his favorite!

Me, Dave and Noah at church.

On stage with all of the families at the Baby Dedication.

11 Months! (or 11.5)

Well the timing of this post makes it more like an “11 and a half month update”… but I took the picture at 11 months! Only two weeks until the little guy turns ONE! We have seen a ton of changes in Noah, in just the last two to three weeks. He is saying “lock” for Greylock and “out” for outside. He also babbles dadada, but definitely doesn’t say it with any recognition of Dave. He recognizes and responds to doggie, clap, stick out your tongue, say Hi or Bye, and book. Noah is pulling up to standing on shorter furniture and a small toy box in his room. He is very proud of himself once he gets up there!

We had a good two-month run with no sickness! But all good things must come to an end. Noah is battling the ear infection-teething combo and it is impacting his sleeping and eating. Luckily he still sleeps well at night (although is waking up closer to 5:30 than 7 these days), but his naps are leaving much to be desired. He will inhale any pureed foods but throws all other “finger” foods on the floor… besides cheese. Apparently he can endure some chewing pain for the glorious taste of extra sharp cheddar.

We had a really nice visit with Noah’s Grandma and Grandpa from Michigan a couple of weeks ago. They even took Noah on a “date night” to their favorite Charlotte restaurant…while Dave and I went on our own date to another restaurant! 🙂

In two days we are headed to NY for Uncle Danny and Aunt Rita’s wedding! Can’t wait to see our family and celebrate.

The Hartter boys on my mom’s favorite hike. Only 300 stairs to the top!

Why so serious Noah? And mess up that hair a little!

Uh Oh! Looks like the photo shoot lasted a little too long for Noah!

Ten Months

Noah rang in 10 months as cute and happy as ever! He is now on-the-move with his own version of scooting/crawling.  I guess he doesn’t feel like he needs to use his knees or legs because he does an inch-worm/army-crawl method … it seems to get him from one location to another though! He likes to mix in several baby-yoga poses in the middle of his crawling as well. He’s got a mean downward dog and plank.

He started eating a lot more finger foods this month, in addition to applesauce and other pureed foods. He loves to feed himself bananas, avocado, cheese, pasta and rice. He makes a terrible face when he tries something new. But he always goes back for more and ends up eating everything on his tray. Maybe he has an aversion to new textures?  Who knows!?

Noah is growing, growing growing! I can’t believe my formerly skinny baby seems to have “pudge” every where now. We love it! He’s not saying any words yet… but he often repeats sounds that Dave and I make. This month he started waving “Hi” and “Bye.” It’s pretty cute.

9 Months

Noah’s ninth month was a big one for our family. We had another scare and visit to the emergency room which revealed his Amoxicillin allergy… but on a much happier note, we closed on our house in Charlotte. Dilworth… here we come!

Noah is “this close” to crawling. He gets up on all fours, rocks back and forth, gives us a big smile and then either lays back down or scoots backwards. We even try to temp him forward with the forbidden “toys” … the AppleTV remote or my cell phone.

He continues to gobble up nearly every food we offer him, but we have discovered two things he will pass on, green beans and plain greek yogurt. Avocados, applesauce, pears, banana yogurt, bananas, pears, peas and sweet potatoes are all in the regular rotation and among his favorites. Noah seems to have way too many distractions to focus on nursing anymore, but honestly neither of us seems to miss it. We upped his formula intake and he happily inhales a few bottles a day from either me or Dave.

Noah on St. Paddy’s Day. Showing his support for the Irish and for Ithaca.

Noah tried on some toddler sunnies at JCrew. What do you think aviators or wayfarers?

8 Months

This picture is pure Noah… Happy and Silly!

This month Noah hit a couple of milestones… first tooth popping through and first stomach virus. EYK! Poor little guy battled the stomach bug with a smile on his face nearly the whole time and I swear he was laughing at Dave and I as we cleaned up the “results” of the bug. The teething just piled right on top of his sickness and we definitely noticed that he was grumpier in the evenings. Ugh, can you imagine what it must feel like to have new teeth coming up through your gums? Not fun.

Noah’s not crawling yet, but he’s thinking about it. 🙂  He is trying to get up on his knees and we’ve caught a couple of glimpses of two hands and one knee in the right position. He is scooting himself around a bit to reach for his toys and Greylock, but I’m sure he has awhile to go before we have a real “crawler” on our hands.

I took two trips this month that forced me to be away for several nights. First a trip to Los Altos, California and Stanford University for a conference on social media for non-profits. It was a great experience and I loved spending time with my peeps from The Kilgoris Project while I was there. The second was a business trip to Charlotte for some client meetings. It was a jam-packed trip to minimize my time away, so I didn’t even get to visit our new house while I was there. Noah was a perfect angel for Dave and Dave was a rockstar taking care of Noah and working full-time I was away.

Does Jules the Bernese Mountain Dog look any different this month?  He took a trip through the washer (and dryer … oops!) after Noah threw up directly into his basket of stuffed animals.  He is looking more like a Berner/Poodle mix these days. The rest of the animals faired better.

7 Months

Another month in the books for our little guy. Every day Noah is doing something new – sitting up, grabbing for his toys, eating new foods, growing out of his clothes… the list goes on and on.  Still no teeth, but I’m sure they will coming in soon, as he’s chewing on everything and putting everything he can get his hands on in his mouth. His favorites include the tags on his bibs and the strings on hoodies that Dave and I wear. Speaking of tags… this kid is obsessed with the silky nature of tags. He hunts them out on every toy, blanket or bib and holds them tight and chews them every chance he gets.

This month we started a new daycare which has made all three of us much happier. It’s closer to our house, more flexible and the teachers are all so sweet to Noah. There are a couple of ~16 month olds in his class as well and when we drop him off or pick him up they come right over to say Hi or Bye-Bye to Noah. So cute!