Friday, March 30, 2012

Hudsontastic

The past couple of posts have had a lot of pictures of Sara Beth and not quite as many of Hudson. This post will rectify that situation. Sara Beth is still up to her regular antics however. The other day, Sara Beth spontaneously broke out in song at the dinner table. It began with the words "I love you, but I don't love scorpions, because they hate me and they pinch"
Summer has come early this year. I'm hoping that means all the heat to be used this summer will be spread across more months making each individual day less hot. In reality, I think we are headed for a summer that will break the records set last year. The upside is that, for right now, going to the park is a pleasant experience. Hudson is chilling in the swing with his fishin' hat on.
We have also introduced Hudson to the "jump-a-roo".  He can now use both hands together to coordinate grabbing onto things and the fancy seat provides many opportunities for him to practice this newfound skill. He gets really excited on the thing and will bounce back and forth since when he focuses so much on the hands that he forgets to use his feet to hold himself up.
When Sara Beth used the "jump-a-roo", we had disabled all its annoying sounds, but this time, Sara Beth likes to help and turns them on for Hudson to listen to. Hudson definitely prefers it when Sara Beth helps, and will stare at the flashing lights that are activated with the "music." 
I know I have said this already, but Sara Beth really has been a good help. She loves to feed Hudson, and Hudson will just stair at her with a smile on his face whenever she starts talking to him.
Hudson can nearly roll over. He got really close and Heather was working with him on it, but then he got distracted by his toy and decided to practice his "putting things in his mouth" skill instead.
Sunday morning, Hudson was once again drooling as he watched me eat breakfast. I was eating a banana, and decided I would share it with him. He absolutely loved it. I think that bananas are his new favorite food. I fed him a combination of milk, rice cereal and banana for dinner one night. He recognized that the spoon brought food to his mouth, but didn't realize that I needed to take it out of his mouth to get the next spoonful. So, every time I took the spoon out of his mouth, he would begin to cry, which made my job eaiser. His mouth was wide open in the middle of his cry by the time I had the next spoon full of food ready to put in.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Big Person Food

Hudson had his 4 month checkup this week. He weighed in at  and was  inches tall. That puts him in the 50th and 75th percentile respectively. The pediatrician mentioned that we could start introducing him to food, which is always fun. Here is his first meal of rice cereal. Sara Beth has eagerly jumped into the role of big sister, helping to feed him, however, she wants to stop as soon as we give her tips on how to improve her feeding technique.
Hudson was definitely ready to begin eating big person food. Whenever we sit him in our lap at the table for dinner, he will always look wistfully at the food sitting just out of reach.
Sara Beth has always been a good eater, though the dessert is quickly becoming a more important part of her complete meal. We make her finish her plate before she can eat dessert, and she always ends up doing it.
Here, Hudson is trying out a "mum-mum" (rice puff thing) while the rest of us eat yogurt. He didn't know what to make of it, but I'm pretty sure he noticed it was not as colorful as our dessert.
Sara Beth's books are, of course, children's books. Some are well written, but others use much more basic words and have a very simplistic story line. Since I read books to Sara Beth on a near daily basis, I amuse myself by exchanging some of the basic verbs with more a more descriptive one, and, occasionally, add extra plot-lines. Sara Beth has caught on now that she has most of the books memorized. Every time we sit down she asks me to "read it normal and don't add any extra words." I comply, but under duress. Picture is unrelated.
Hudson loves to smile. He will flirt with all the ladies, cooing and laughing at them. Whenever we take him out, at some point he will be surrounded by a some random group of women and be the center of attention. I worry about that facet once he gets a little older.
Sara Beth and I were going out into the front yard to do some cleaning. I wanted to bring Hudson along with us, but since I needed full use of both hands, Heather strapped Hudson to me using the baby wrap. Hudson didn't really fuss too much about it, but I think he was not all that excited about it either.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

New Abilities

Phew. Another busy two weeks! The time seems to fly by faster and faster. 

Sara Beth has decided that she is old enough, and she doesn't want to be an adult. I tell her not to worry and that she isn't going to be an adult for a very long time. That is not enough reassurance for her, so for the past couple nights, she has prayed to God that she stop growing.

She collects empty food containers from our kitchen and adds them to her kitchen. When we finished off the bottle of syrup, she said she needed it because she was going to cook pancakes for us.
A little later that week, we were enjoying the 70 degree Texas winter weather outside, and she decided she was going to bake a fairy cake with Heather.  So they gathered the ingredients from around the yard and "cooked" them in front of her play house.
Sara Beth's school singing performances are still enjoyable for me, but I think that Sara Beth does not enjoy them as much. She has told us that school is boring and that she would rather stay home with Heather. We have repeatedly explained that both Heather and I were sometimes bored in school too. Sara Beth has decided that she would have more fun if Heather home schooled her, which would be fine except that Sara Beth just wants to things once, and gets frustrated with Heather whenever Heather asks her to practice something again. Sara Beth figures that after writing one letter "A" that she now has mastered that skill and no longer needs to practice that letter.
Though she gets bored repeatedly writing the same character more than once, she never tires of repeatedly taking pictures with our camera. The camera has become unreliable lately. I suspect that these two facts may be related.
Up till now, this post has mostly been about Sara Beth, but Hudson wanted to be mentioned as well. Not content to merely lay around, he had a pony ride with Sara Beth.
He has become a lot more interactive as well, and his little personality is really starting to grow. Now that he is getting older, he will entertain himself in the bouncy seat for at least minutes at a time. When we initially put him in there, it would only be seconds before he began crying to be picked up again. Now he will grab (or at least try to grab) the butterfly shapes and the rings that are within his reach for up to 10 minutes.
He also wants to eat adult food really really badly. Now that he can use his hands, he takes every opportunity to try to put things in his mouth. Especially when we are at the dinner table. We went out to eat breakfast Saturday, and he successfully grabbed a plate, knocking it onto the floor and breaking it. We have to be careful with him while eating dinner as he is eager to repeat that trick with our plates as well. No matter where you move the plate, his head tracks to keep it in the center of his vision. He is so ready to eat like us
"big people", and doesn't care when we explain that he needs teeth first.