31 lbs, 40.75 inches

That puts Elizabeth in the 50-75th percentile for weight and above the 97th percentile in height!

I haven’t written much about Elizabeth recently, so I’ll try to catch you up.

Elizabeth went through a rough patch when her sister started crawling. Elena was becoming her own person–capable of getting into Elizabeth’s toys. Elizabeth is quite entertaining. It’s so fun hearing her talk about things from her perspective. Yesterday, I heard her telling a girl in the store all about our Labor Day Monday. This is about how it went “Daddy didn’t go to work yesterday because it was a HOLIDAY. I went on a big-girl bike ride with my daddy. We didn’t go anywhere yesterday because my mom was making chutney.” Yes, the conversation was one-sided, and she was referring to Fig Chutney–we’ve been picking pounds and pounds of figs off of our bounteous fig tree again this year

It’s frustrating that someone with such a vocabulary can’t seem to give us the heads-up when she’s getting tired or hungry. We’re left looking for the clues of a pending meltdown. A meltdown for her usually involves doing something she knows she’s not allowed to do, like hit me or throw something, some crying and screaming. So far, her performances have all been at the house. I read somewhere that the “terrible twos” can largely be attributed to hunger. I definitely believe that a well-fed, well-napped toddler is definitely less likely to throw a tantrum.

She loves riding her big-girl bike around the neighborhood and has gotten strong enough to accompany us on long walks which is nice because Elena is in the stroller and I don’t want to buy a double stroller. I wish I could remember some of the hilarious things Elizabeth has come up with recently. Sometimes she’ll think through situations better than I do–oh like the other night when she went to sit on the steps to watch Frank mow she took a hand towel out with her. I said “what’s that for?” and she replied that she didn’t want her feet on the hot bricks.

A lot of her friends are in Mother’s Day Out or Pre-school, but we didn’t want to start school yet. I thought I would give her some lessons at home and see how she does. My first “lesson” was about the letter L. I wasn’t sure if she “got it” until that night she brought a ruler to me that I use for woodworking. “I found an L mommy!” Indeed it was!

To quickly bring you up to speed:
Elena, just shy of 7 months, is belly crawling, pulling herself up to a stand and cut her first tooth.
Elizabeth celebrated her 3rd birthday July 29th. She’s definitely a little girl now with her own ideas of how things should be. She spends a lot of time playing with her dolls, dressing up in tutus, dancing, playing with friends and helping with her baby sister.

Elena amazed us all by learning how to belly crawl as soon as we set her down in Maryland at only 5 months old. I was not prepared for her to go from lying in one place (not even rolling around to get to things) to full-on belly crawl. Two months later, she’s still belly crawling at amazing speeds, slithering along like a curious lizard. We’re going to barricade the steps tomorrow because she’s managed to get her whole body up the bottom step. She sat there oblivious to her precarious position, quite pleased with herself. A few weeks ago, Frank caught her stretched out trying to reach something on the 3rd step.

At 5.5 months I took her in for a well-baby visit. She weighed in at 17 lbs 4 oz and 29 in. long. This puts her into the 97th percentile for height and weight. Since she had already outgrown her 6 month outfits, this was not news to me!

I might have blogged about Elena’s first tooth, that poked through when she was 3 or 4 months. That tooth was a tricky bugger. It disappeared completely, only to reappear this week! She finally decided to sit up on her own 3 weeks ago. I was beginning to think she would never sit up because she had no incentive to sit in one place when she could explore the world. Most babies sit up for awhile before figuring out how to crawl. When I attempted to demo her inability to sit up by herself to a friend, she proceeded to sit up for 30 seconds straight! I guess I learned my lesson on underestimating her. All she needed was that demo, and she went from not sitting at all to sitting all the time. I couldn’t get used to seeing her crawling around and sitting up in various places when she discovered something interesting to put in her mouth. It’s a lot easier to get things into your mouth and look at them when you’re sitting up.

Elena’s personality is so different from her sister’s. She is a very happy laid back baby who I think was born smiling. I didn’t realize how high-maintenance Elizabeth can be until I compare her to Elena. I wonder how this will play out as she gets older?

Her first bite of food was a banana, which she spit back out. We didn’t give her food until after 6 months because she didn’t have her own highchair and wasn’t sitting up on her own yet. She mauled a frozen banana, but I don’t think she ate any of it. Next she tried some avocado with the same result. We now have two Svan highchairs at our table and she likes to paint with bananas, but doesn’t like to eat them.

I can’t wait to see what amazing things she learns next week! At this rate, she’ll be doing the Bella Dancerella DVD with her sister by her first birthday–Elizabeth is counting the days till she gets a dancing partner.

Until last Sunday, Elizabeth was sleeping in her crib beside our king-sized bed with me, Elena and Frank. Now that Elena’s established herself as a permanent member of the family, and we’ve all adjusted to the new addition, we decided it would be ok to move Elizabeth to her own bed.

The first step was getting her a bed. I looked online and decided that I could make a toddler bed based off of one I saw online. So, the McPherson chicks headed off to Lowes for supplies. Elizabeth selected a color I describe as Barbie pink. About a week later, the bed was completed, dry and in the bedroom. Next time I have to remember to make sure that my projects will actually fit through the door, because (to Frank’s amusement) I had to do some last-minute deconstruction to get it into the house.

But would she really sleep in it? Well, after moving out her crib, she didn’t really have a choice if she wanted any room to sleep, but she did sleep through the night in it, and has every night since! A few nights have been a struggle winding her down for bed in general, but last night we read and she hopped right into her bed and went to sleep. This is quite a step for her!

To accompany the new bed, we’ve started a new bedtime routine which starts with dinner at 6:30, books at 8:00ish and bed by 9:00. To get this to work, Frank has committed to being home by 6:30 for dinner if at all possible. If he can’t make it, dinner still goes on. This also means that I need to have dinner on the table at 6:30 is working so far. (Well, there was one night that I forgot to put dinner in the oven when it was done preheating, but we only lost 15 mins.)

As parents there’s always something to worry about. Elizabeth was skinny for her length and Elena is chunking out nicely. In fact Elena is 23.5 inches (same as Elizabeth was), but Elena weighs 13 pounds (Elizabeth was only 10.5.) That puts Elena in the 95th percentile for weight! (Is she getting too plump?!?!) Well, since she’s also in the 90th percentile for height I guess that just means she’s a big healthy girl.

Fast-forward to last night. We were at Frank’s work happy hour attempting to show off Elena. I was sitting next to Elizabeth who was not the least bit interested in eating pizza–very unusual for her. Suddenly she’s throwing up and I’m furiously throwing napkins over her. When we got home I tossed Elizabeth’s clothes in the washing machine.

This morning I went to get the clothes out and swept my hand along the inside of the washing machine. I felt something wet and squishy and pulled it out only to find a totally re-hydrated umbilical cord. It was a thick blue wet noodle. Somehow in the two days it spent in the washing machine, it plumped back up and turned back into the white and blue vein it was when Elena was first born. Eeeewwww!!