Happy Eight Months, Oliver!

Crazy crazy crazy how fast our year has flown by with our two monkeys.  I can't believe this one is 8 months old already.

Oliver has mastered pulling himself up to a solid stand on ANY piece of furniture, toy, or tree (yep) that he can get his hands on.  He can change position easily and has started to scoot across the couch and from one thing to another.  We've even had him try out the push toys a time or two and he struggles to move his feet but eventually does it.  He definitely prefers to be standing and protecting him from falling over and bonking his head has become a full-time job.


















He's still sleeping through the night.  Terrible at going down for naps.  He's in his crib now for all three naps a day but it takes a while to get him down and I have to repeatedly go in and put the pacifier back into his mouth.  It's nice that he only requires it to fall asleep but, man, he requires it to fall asleep.


















Oliver has the most charming smile and lights up when he sees people he knows.  Every time I see him looking at me and smiling my heart completely melts.

He just popped his 6th tooth through on Wednesday night (Z had only 4 on her first birthday!) and eats like a champ.  My goodness, the kid will eat anything we put in front of him.  We've gotten to the point where he can have whatever we can cut up into small enough pieces.  He had chicken nuggets the other day and devoured them.  His favorites are still Kix cereal and the Harvest Snap Pea Crisps.

Oooh, also, he's started to wave!  He full on waved at Baba the other day and surprised us both!


















































































Zoë has become, er, a little bit more of a near-three-year-old lately.  The tantrums have escalated and so has the amount of time it takes her to do ANYTHING that I request her to do.  On the other hand, she's also been extremely lovely during the times she's not peeing on the carpet or screaming at us from her bedroom at bedtime.  She's been trying to drop her naps completely, and only naps about 40% of the time now.  Many times when she falls asleep it's after talking to her "friends" for an hour in her room, which is fine with me.

Zoë is in love with Alice, the Elf.

Her newest endearments are the fact that she'll run up to one of us spontaneously and say "I love you" with a big hug and maybe a kiss.  I LOVE it.  It helps especially on the days when she's being an extra special pill.  She also responds to almost every command or question with the word, "Sure." followed by "sure, sure, sure".  I have no idea where it came from but it's hilarious.  AND, she's also started creating her own secret language.  She'll start singing a song with the normal words and it'll morph into a complete string of made-up words that she so convincingly says that we'll wonder if we heard her wrong.  She makes up names for everything and everyone.  She is the most imaginative and creative 2 year old girl I've been around (I haven't been around very many, but I think she's something special!).

Zoë's first workshop at the Home Depot with Dad.  :)

Decorating the tree with Daddy.

Very proud that she put all of the ornaments on about five branches.  Sometimes, 8 ornaments per tiny branch.

We've been doing so many fun things this Christmas season.  I created an activity advent calendar, we started the Elf on the Shelf tradition, and open a new Christmas book every night.  There have been so many fun events so far.  We decorated the tree together (Zoë put all of her ornaments on about three branches on the very bottom of the tree), attended the Des Moines tree lighting event, went and listened to the choir on the Christmas Ship down at the marina where they had a huge toasty bonfire burning, went to story time with Mrs. Claus and visited Santa.  OH!  Santa!  Let's talk about that for a minute.

We walked by Santa with the intention of just waving but I asked Zoë if she wanted to go talk to him and she said YES!  And then she waved at Santa when he waved at her after which I practically peed my pants I was so excited.  Santa noticed and said to me across the line, "There's a long walk between you and me...right about here (gestures about five feet in front of him) there's a magic line that transforms kids into scaredy cats".  But, believe it or not, she walked up with me, gave him a high five, and then CLIMBED RIGHT UP NEXT TO HIM AND STARTED TALKING TO HIM.  What.  He did have to ask me what she said she wanted for Christmas because he couldn't understand or hear her, but I was pretty pumped.  Oliver didn't know what was happening.  He kept looking at me, then up at Santa, and back and forth.  I wanted another picture of him looking at Santa, but didn't want to drop a million dollars to buy it.

Looking forward to Angela, Jed, and Mason being here in a week and a half, and Uncle Connor will be here in just a week!  What a fun Christmas to look forward to!