Nine Months!

You can tell when I am sick of summer because then I stop going swimming with the kids every other day.  It has been two weeks since I took the kids to the pool, and Kylie is still bringing me her swimming suit (and mine) and saying 'swimming? swimming?'  It's so cute and so on Monday I set up the little kiddie pool and let the kids play in the water.

Usually by the end of the day both of the kids are just in their diapers.  I am sure every day when Brandon gets home he is thinking "Why are the kids naked?" Haha but I do my best to keep them decent!  Kylie just naturally strips throughout the day, because she can.  Hayden is usually is already a mess from breakfast and then he always manages to find the cats water dish before I remember to put it up so he gets all wet.  Then comes the second outfit which gets dirty during lunch and snack time (he likes to play with his bib so the food gets everywhere...), and by then I am so worn out that I just don't care to dress him again.  Besides, the kiddos love being naked.

There was an instance for the first time ever where Hayden was just sooo messy after dinner that he got an immediate bath in the sink.  He loved it and had so much fun!

Hayden has started falling asleep without being fed for his naps sometimes.  Usually I just hold him in my lap and he watches a show and falls asleep that way, but once this week he fed himself his bottle and fell asleep that way!

As I mentioned last week Kylie has a little friend that comes over practically every evening to play with her.  Those two have lots of fun together, and it is so funny because Brighton comes to the door and says, "I want to play with Kylie.  And I want her to ride her bike.  And I want her to wear her helmet because that is what you are supposed to do."  Haha I just laugh because I have never enforced Kylie to wear a helmet, though she does have one.  So now she has been wearing it when she plays with Brighton sometimes.

Hayden has started insisting on feeding himself with a spoon now.  Sometimes I feed him yogurt or oatmeal or jello and in the past he has let me spoon feed him, but now he is grabbing the spoon and insisting on doing it himself.

He has also suddenly learned to clap!  I remember when Kylie learned she associated it with the word "Yay!", but Hayden likes to do it when he gets really excited.

Kylie likes to change her own diapers now!  She will get a new diaper and take off her old one, wipe, and then she asks for help to put her new diaper on.  Yay!  I feel like this is one step closer to her wanting to use the potty.  THOUGH! She did put up a fight with me this week about putting her diaper on, so I left her naked and badgered her every five minutes about using the potty.  At first she threw a fit and brought me her diaper but I stood firm and after five minutes she was a happy naked girl.  Then she barricaded herself in my room and when I went in a few minutes later I found her on the potty!  All by herself!!  She did this twice this week and I am soooo happy!  Although she still takes it as a threat when I ask her if she wants to sit on the potty.

Kylie is becoming the best helper and it is so fun to watch her grow up.  She loves to learn her ABC's, numbers, colors, and shapes and gets so excited finding things around the house that are all the same color or shape.  She also just assumes she is going to help me cook ALL the time which can be quite annoying sometimes, but I am learning to accommodate her.  She helped Saturday night to make our breakfast-dinner and was in charge of the eggs and did a fabulous job!

On Saturday Hayden turned nine months old!  I can't believe it!!  Sadly, it was not a good day.  Friday Kylie had a small cold, and Hayden caught it so he didn't sleep at all that night (therefore I didn't sleep either), and he didn't sleep at all on Saturday as well and had a constantly runny nose.  He was pretty miserable and insisted on being held most of the day and pretty much drove me crazy.  Luckily this cold is a tiny one and both kids are practically like new already.

Oh!  And Hayden's new favorite thing to do is have me help him walk all over the house.  For hours at a time.  He will throw a fit if I stop and let me just say: my back kills.  Hopefully he starts walking on his own soon so I no longer have to help him!

Playing Together!

Kylie and Hayden are getting really cute playing together now.  Hayden just loves to follow Kylie around, and Kylie can play nicely with him when she's not trying to boss him around.  Every night at bedtime while we are reading stories, Hayden and Kylie play on the little tramp in Kylie's room.  Kylie is a little acrobat and is always turning upside down.

Hayden is now tall enough that he can pull himself up and start bouncing.  He has so much fun!

We got a lot of thunderstorms at the beginning of the week.  On Monday we had a huge one during the day (most of them come at night), and we all had fun watching the rain torrents and huge flashes of lightning.  Kylie even took a gazillion pictures of the rain.

The storm only lasted about an hour, but in that time a ton of flooding occurred all around town and even brought the traffic on the freeway to a standstill.

During the storm there was a really cute moment when I was changing the kids diapers and playing peek-a-boo with them.  Hayden has learned to pull his shirt up and play that way, so Kylie imitated him and they were both pulling up their shirts to play peek-a-boo together.

Tuesday morning was still kinda stormy in the morning but not too bad.  Hayden had fun getting rides on Kylie's bike.  He loves trying to do things that he is too little for still.

Later that day we went outside to play in the aftermath of the storm.  Kylie actually has a friend that will come knock on the door and ask for her to play.  His name is Brighton and he lives just across the street and I thought it was just so cute that he did that.  But now he does it ALL the time.  And if we don't answer (one time it was bathtime), he will KEEP knocking and ringing the doorbell (it lasted a half hour...) and that gets pretty annoying.  Kylie does like to go out and play with him, though.

Kylie is so cute with Hayden lately.  Once he got hurt pretty bad and she came and gave him a kiss and then did something silly over and over to make him laugh like crazy for 10 minutes.  Hayden has is top two teeth coming in, so he is pretty cranky lately.  He gets especially cranky when he tries to play with Kylie when she is on the iPad and she won't share with him.  He wants to play with all the electronics, but they all go straight to his mouth, unless he has his pacifier in.

So that was our week basically.  We didn't go swimming because of the storms and cooler weather.  We did take lots of walks and play outside a lot, though.  We have a ton of fun playing together!

A Visit From Grandma Shari!-

The week started off normally... to an extent.  Suddenly I feel like deep cleaning the whole house... like take a whole day cleaning a five square foot section of the house deep cleaning.  The kids were pretty accommodating, and even liked helping.  Well, Kylie was a good helper.  Hayden wasn't so much.  He did enjoy taking everything out of the pantry and fridge with me, but not so much putting it back.

On Wednesday Grandma Shari came to visit for a few days!  The kids were both so excited to see her and Kylie just wanted to sit in her lap the entire time she was here.  Grandma Shari was so awesome and amazing with the kids and they just love her so much.  She even took them on their evening walks!

On Thursday Brandon and I had a meeting to go to, so Grandma Shari took them to the little children's museum and they just had a ball!  Kylie had only been there once before, with Grandma Tess, but that was over 8 months ago.  She has grown so much since then and likes to do a lot more things.  Grandma Shari said she especially liked dressing up in the dresses in the princess room.  Hayden also had a ball in the little baby section.

On Friday we all went swimming in our neighborhood pool.  Kylie is so confident swimming now, probably because we go several times a week, that I decided to take her floatie off and see how she would do.  She absolutely loved it!  She did swallow a bit of water, but she loved practicing kicking and floating with Grandma Shari.

Saturday morning Grandma Shari had to leave and we were sad to see her go!  The kids just love having visitors and it is a nice break for me from having to entertain them all day :)

So our week was fun and Grandma Shari's visit gave us a break from our monstrous job: deep cleaning the house.  Guess we will finish that next week!

Thanks to Grandma Shari for letting us use her pictures!

Getting Messy

Well the evenings have been finally getting cooler down here and we've been able to take some walks before bed.  Sometimes we don't get very far before we are playing with friends - I love how sociable Kylie is!  On Monday Kylie even got to try out her friends bike - one with training wheels!  I had no idea that she was that big and ready for a bike that size!  Who said she could grow up this quick?

A favorite game of Kylie's recently has been to play with Hayden while he is in his highchair.  They both love to play the game where Kylie wheels him back and forth to me.

The past few days while Kylie has been finishing up her bath, Hayden has been playing with the sink.  Normally he just plays with everything around the sink, but sometimes he accidentally turns on the water and then he gets so confused as to what is happening.  It's so cute!

This week Kylie has been completely addicted to technology.  She was constantly on my phone, the iPad or the Android tablet.  I would even try to get her to play with me and Hayden, but she would play for only a few minutes before she was back to playing on the tablet.  If she were just watching shows I would be more concerned, but she is playing all of her learning games so at least it is interactive.  But... I think I need to start implementing technology-free days (even though it is so nice to have her distracted so I can actually get some things done...).

Hayden is still slowly trying to stand on his own, and Kylie has been saying many more real words, though she is still fluent in gibberish.  She is at the age where she will say something a million times until you say it and acknowledge that she said the word.  It gets pretty tiring sometimes...

Another Summer Week

Nothing too crazy has happened this past week with the kids.  Hayden is starting to try and stand on his own, but he doesn't do it very often.

On Wednesday Hayden turned 8 months!!  Time is really flying by.

This week we set up the tent, like we do once a month-ish, only this time as soon as it was set up Hayden would just barrel in and not stop.  He would just keep on crawling up the wall until the whole tent fell over.

One day I opened up my phone to find 116 Kylie selfies.  This was usually nothing new, only this time it was just her playing with her tongue...

We did our usual swimming this week, but on Saturday night I took the kids to a park for a change of pace.  Normally we stay away from parks in the height of summer because of the heat, but we had some nice overcast weather this weekend.