Eat, Sleep, Play

Eat
Eating, sleeping and playing is a full-time job for the kiddos these days. (At times it feels like I could add whining to the list for the toddler but that's another story and just another phase - keeps us on our toes!) Miles favorite foods lately include: pancakes, Cheerios, granola bars, any and all fruit and milk. He will also eat chicken and turkey burger. Least favorite foods include: any veggie (especially the green ones). I know he'll come around to eating more foods eventually. We just keep offering a wide variety to him and sometimes he surprises us. His schedule is still 3 meals and 2 snacks a day.

Hadley is still exclusively nursing and is down to 6 feedings a day. She is now eating rice cereal and a fruit or vegetable around noon each day. This week she had prunes and avocado. We also gave her a puff but she just played with it and didn't even try to put it in her mouth.

Sleep
Miles is still a champion sleeper. He naps around 2 hours each afternoon and goes to bed at 7:30 pm and will often sleep until 7 am. He sometimes even goes easy on us on the weekends and will sleep until 7:30-8:00 am!

Hadley's non-sleep schedule was starting to get a bit out of control recently - especially when one night she didn't go to sleep until 11:00 pm! This is way too late for her exhausted parents. I've been trying to be more diligent with keeping her on a schedule and things are going well. She is a cat napper during the day - taking 2-3 half hour-hour long naps. She then goes to sleep usually by 8:00 pm and will sleep through the night until 6:30. Our issue now is that she won't go to sleep unless we put her down in her crib completely asleep. If she's awake she'll just cry. We're thinking of sleeping training her after the holidays so that she learns to self-sooth.

Play
Miles had his Christmas program this week. His toddler class rehearsed to sing two songs at the beginning of the show. When we arrived at the rec center Miles wasn't too sure about the crowd and the noise and didn't want to stay with his class. He ended up crying and sat on Mike's lap during the program.
He very much enjoyed watching the show instead of being in the show. So all of the parents were taking photos of their kids performing at the front of the room and I took pictures of Miles watching the kids and having fun from the audience.
The night ended on a high note when Santa made an appearance. There was a moment of hesitation before Miles joined Hadley on Santa's lap but once Santa pulled out a candy cane Miles was a very happy boy.
Hadley is so active these days. The girl does not sit still for very long! She also can be officially considered a crawler. It's mostly the army crawl - but watch out! If you have something she wants she'll scoot over to grab it from you.
Christmas came a little early this week when Sharon Huse came to visit and made the kids beautiful, handmade gifts. Miles got this construction truck quilt which is tailor-made for him. He lives for seeing rollers and skid steers and backhoes. He will flip a laundry basket on the side and it's his bucket loader. He'll also pretend that the vacuum cord is a fire hose as he fights fires.
Hadley also likes trucks (by default), along with knocking down towers of blocks and stacking cups. She also loves books, cuddling with stuffed animals and playing in her exersaucer.
Miles plays pretend a lot and here he is pretending to pump. Saturday morning we joined the Sievers at the Children's Museum. Hadley liked watching the action and playing in the Habitot area.
Miles and Corey drove a city bus, shopped in a grocery store, played in the water and more. They were exhausted after the morning spent doing some hardcore playing.
Break time at the museum enjoying a snack. Check out Hads trying to get in on the snack action with the big boys. Before long she's going to be running around with them. I'm trying to enjoy every second I can to snuggle my fast growing baby.