Elliott: 3/4 stats and a movie

Nory and I took Elliott to visit Dr. Irwin this morning for his 9 month check up. He is now in the... drum roll please... 5-10th percentile! What an amazing comeback!

Here are his official stats:

Weight: 17lb 7oz (5-10%)

Height: 27 inches (10%)

Head: 17.2 inches (10%)

This is such a relief to me. Yes, he's still small... but he is on the charts again! Way to grow Elliott! Mama is so proud!

Here is a video of his cute mostly naked (he had just completely soaked through his outfit with spit up) little self not crawling - but getting closer and closer. Our days are certainly numbered.

Piano

Someone new is at our house... can you guess who it is?
(That's the first line in this book which we all have memorized)

Watch out world, I can play some mean chopsticks on this monster!

In case it isn't obvious, Dan is the pianist. This is the piano he grew up with, his amazing parents shipped it out here from Wisconsin for us. Maybe it's time for me to learn how to play!

Elliott: 3/4

Elliott turned 9 months old this week! Here are some fun facts about him.

He is still very small (more on that after his checkup on Tuesday).

He still spits up so much and so often that if you met him for the first time, you would be forgiven for thinking he had food poisoning.

He eats everything we've ever fed him with delight. This is a nice change from Nory, who hated baby food. (However, peas, squash, yams, green beans, cheerios, applesauce, pears, chicken, rice, and avocado do not look particularly appetizing when they are spit back up.)

He still can't crawl with his tummy off the ground, but is getting close. He definitely manages to get where he's going with a combination of army crawling/spinning/flipping/rolling.

He has six teeth: four up top, two on the bottom.

He takes two good naps a day and sleeps for about 12 hours at night (I nurse him at least twice in the middle of the night still, and am hesitant to give it up because this is the only time of the day when he eats and doesn't spit up afterward.).

He can pull himself from a sit to standing if he's got a good handle on something - like the edge of the bathtub.

Here are some of his favorite things (besides Nory, who is his all time everywhere favorite thing):

Nory's pink potty (ew).

The dog food container.

Books.

Boxes (or paper of any kind).

His play mat.

And of course... his mommy.

I sure love this little man! So much that sometimes I look at him and think my heart will burst. 

(But if you didn't get the hint... I'm ready for him to outgrow this spitting up "phase"! It is definitely getting grosser with his increased mobility.)

And if you haven't read this article explaining why I love being a parent even in the drudgery of parenting, you should. Beautifully written and wonderfully refreshing.

Christmas 2011: In Which The Klein Family Crawls Their Way Out Of The Pit Of Despair

This, by the way, is the pit of despair. 

The Internets pretty much agree: wait to potty train until your child is ready, interested, and has a positive attitude about trying. They will do it in their own time. Well the people who wrote that have never met our daughter, who does .NOT. .LIKE. .CHANGE.

I have a much longer, more detailed version of this story, where I chronicled every terrible detail. I felt like it was important to write down because these things have a really survival-of-the-species way of fading from our memories, the same way pregnancy and graduate school have faded. I wrote it down because I wanted to remember what we have survived as a family. But I'm not going to share it on the blog.

The short, public version is this: over Christmas we potty trained Nory. It was the worst 10 days of our lives. She had been physically ready for over 6 months (able to hold it when she wanted), but had a lot of fear associated with using a potty. We couldn't wait any longer because she was throwing (loud, brother-waking) tantrums with every diaper change, as well as getting terrible rashes. We took her diapers away overnight on December 23rd and by New Years she was potty trained. She has never had an accident, not ever. We discovered the hard way that she can hold it in for over 10 hours. We waited around the house all day every day until she just couldn't hold it any longer and would finally use the potty. It took about 7 days of this before she started peeing throughout the day instead of holding it all day. Having the entire family stuck at home made us all completely stir crazy (I think this might be when Dan's requirement of a ping pong table was born). Watching our stubborn daughter dance around in circles all day trying to hold her pee in made us despair. But in the end, Nory was potty trained.

By the way... she loves using her potty now. She says things like "when I was a baby, I used to wear diapers! That was really silly!" We don't ever even have to remind her, she just stops whatever she is in the middle of and runs over and uses her little potty, puts a sticker on her chart, occasionally remembers to ask for an M&M, and then we help her clean up and we get back to whatever activity we were working on.

Parenting. Sometimes you shine, sometimes you survive. This time, we survived.

Ping Pong: The Movie

It's a little long, but if you have kids who enjoy watching videos of other kids, it might be fun. Plus, you can get the idea in the first 30 seconds.

Ping Pong

A while ago Dan decided that we NEEDED a ping pong table. Over the past month or so he has spent every free moment researching ping pong tables. He is probably the west coast's leading authority on ping pong tables now. This week he found a deal on a good table in Portland. So yesterday after work he drove to portland to buy an Olympic quality "Double Happiness" brand ping pong table at a bargain price.

I know what you are thinking. Well I can guess, because this is what I was thinking:

• Ping pong is an olympic sport?
• Why do we need a ping pong table?
• How could you possibly get a good enough deal on a ping pong table to make it worth driving to Portland to pick it up?
• How could you get a 300+ pound ping pong table from Portland to Seattle in a Subaru?

It's a long story. But here is one of the answers: You tie it on top.

Thanks to a good friend (thanks, Jon Clarke) we got the table off the car and up into the play room today. And now... let the games begin!

Just be careful not to step on these while you play:

Snow Day!

There is nothing quite as fun as looking out the window on a Saturday morning (in January) and seeing snow!

We even let the dog out to play for a while... nobody is brave enough to drive on these steep streets on snow days! (Okay one neighbor was brave/crazy enough, thus the tracks).

Bathtime

Ever since Elliott could sit up in the bathtub, I've been enjoying bathing the kids together. They love it and it takes about half the time. No matter how far apart they start off in the tub, Elliott always manages to scoot his way over for a sneak attack!

Elliott's Sweater

Thank you for knitting this cute sweater for me, nana!