Caitlin wins cry-it-out, daycare ends, Cesi gets both kiddos!

So Caitlin had her 6 month doctor's appointment last week -- she weighed in at 16.9 pounds (in the 56th percentile!!) which made me VERY happy! She is still all smiles and sunshine - this picture of her in the crib is how she greets me in the morning, she pulls down the bumper so she can watch the door and grins when I walk in. Well...I should say this is how she greets me the second time I get her in the morning -- crying it out didn't go so well (well, not from my perspective, I imagine she's pretty happy with the results). We tried it for a whole week and while we had one or two good nights, the rest involved HOURS of crying with no sign at all that she was backing down by the end of the week. On the other hand, Bill and I were EXHAUSTED and waving the white flag. So... I'm just going to go in and feed her ONCE in the middle of the night for now (a 10 minute feeding is easier to stomach than hours of crying) and we'll try again in a few weeks.

On a brighter note, we took advantage of a sunny day to put her on the swings at the park and she loved it. She and Isaac are still having fun hanging out, she sits and giggles at him, no matter what he does, and she loves hanging out with him and watching Thomas. He still wants to help do everything for her -- including cheering her on when she crawled for the first time (yay!) and grabbing my pump because "I need to make milk for baby Caitlin too Mommy" :)

Isaac is busy not progressing on the potty training thing. He still loves to go once a day and get an m&m, and lately he has taken to hanging out on there to catch up on his reading (can't imagine where he learned that). The other picture is of him taking a modern version of Flat Stanley around DC for a friend's kid's school project.

Since I've now been back at work for 8 weeks, Caitlin's time at the daycare in my office has come to an end. I'll be sad not to have her in my office for mid-day visits, but Cesi and Isaac are excited that she's going to hang with them from here on out. Here are some pics from her last day downstairs.

Finally, Cesi sent lots of pictures yesterday to reassure me that all was well on the first day with both kids at home. Her mom came over with the two kids she watches (Lusa and a baby a month or so older than Caitlin) which works out perfectly because now both Isaac and Caitlin have friends their own age to hang out with! Here's Caitlin and Marcela crawling (!!) and laughing, and a cute picture of Isaac and Caitlin smiling for Cesi (no clue how she gets them to do that!!).

Snow, Gymnastics and 6 months!

DC got about 5 inches of snow this week - enough to create a winter wonderland for Isaac, who couldn't get enough of shoveling, jumping, eating (??) and making snowmen. Here he is with "oliver" - the snowman he and Cesi created - and helping Bill clean up the front walk at the beginning of the storm.

I was looking for a fun activity to take Isaac to on Mondays and learned of a new gymnastics class called "power tots". I figured it would be perfect since Isaac loves nothing more than jumping and tumbling. We practiced his somersault all week and he couldn't stop talking about going to "my nastics class" but when we finally got there, he wasn't too enthused about participating. He did a few of the activities, but spent the majority of the class on my lap and begging to go out into the bigger play area outside of the classroom. Oh well, hopefully he'll like it more in one of the 8 upcoming sessions we prepaid for!! I did manage to snap a few pics of him though --(in the blurry one he is in midair jumping off the springboard).

Caitlin has been busy too. She turned 6 months old this week (wow!!) and while we're not sure how much she weighs (her doctor's appointment was cancelled due to the snow), she is definitely getting bigger. She is eating two meals now-- either cereal or oatmeal mixed with a fruit or veggie, we've tried apples, pears, bananas, squash, sweet potatoes, avocados and peas -- and we haven't found anything she doesn't like yet. She is also doing better at sleeping - going to sleep between 6 and 7, waking up to eat around 10:30 or 11, and then she only wakes up once, at some point between 1 and 3:30, and sleeps until the morning. It's not perfect, but it's a LOT better, and I don't really mind getting up once to feed her, it's quick, and she's still so cute and cuddly :) She's getting more and more sturdy when sitting by herself, and she's also starting to move around a lot more on her own -- here are some pictures of Isaac trying to show her how to crawl (before tackling her).

Finally, she has officially outgrown the infant bath, so we have moved onto the wonderful "duck tub". She took to it right away, but hilariously, this, as with all the other baby items we have brought out for Caitlin, has caused Isaac to regress, and he has decided he "needs" to be bathed in the duck tub too. Hopefully this will be short lived...

Christmas in NJ

We had a wonderful (almost) week in NJ to celebrate Christmas with the Andersons. I'm posting this backwards because even though I've been "blogging" for almost 3 years, I still forget that I have to post pictures in reverse order to present them in accurate chronological order. So...let's start with Christmas morning. As you can see, there was no shortage of gifts :) Isaac and Caitlin (and all of the rest of our family too!) were spoiled rotten and got everything on our lists - and then some! We opened the gifts in stages this year, because Evan and Adrienne didn't arrive in NJ until mid-morning on Christmas (now that they are married they have to split the holidays between families - a benefit of interfaith marriages (just saying)), but it worked out really well for Isaac because while they were all fun gifts, he still has the attention span of a 2 year old, and it took a few sittings to get him to stay still and open all of them! By the final sitting, if you can believe it, Isaac cried and said "I don't want to open any more presents" -- I'm posting that here only to remind him that he actually said that when he is a little older! He is a very lucky boy and loved all of his gifts, even the ones we have packed away to re-give him at a later date :)

Continuing reverse order - this is Christmas Eve, where both kids were dressed adorably in outfits that Grandma picked out for them and got to visit with the rest of the family. It was a great night with lots of good food and wine and homemade cookies (an Isaac and Aunt Ray-Ray special) - Isaac's favorite part was Grandma Jo's Shrimp Bisque (?!).

After dinner, Isaac put out milk and his homemade cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer and slept soundly until almost 8:30 when re ran to the plate and was amazed that they were gone in the morning and replaced by more gifts than he has ever seen!

The next pictures are just fun pictures from the week in NJ with the kids hanging and having a blast with their grandparents, Uncle Evan, Aunt Adrienne, and Aunt Ray-Ray. It was a great week, and we were all sad to leave, so it was fortuitous that NJ had a huge snow storm that gave us an excuse to stay an extra day, and gave Bill and Evan an excuse to play outside with Isaac and a sled.

Isaac was especially sad to leave his awesome new train set that he wouldn't leave alone all week. He couldn't get over the fact that he could make it go fast and make noises, and really loved making the "isaac tunnel" for the train to go through -- although the tunnel had a funny way of derailing the train more often than not!!

Finally, the Andersons came to DC for a couple of days to visit friends and hang out with the kids again before New Years. They had a great time taking Isaac on a fieldtrip for a day of metro and bus rides and feeding Caitlin, who is still loving the food thing - especially now that we are doing fruit and veggies too!