The Frenches: November 2011

The first weekend of October, Jason and I took the boys to their first pumpkin patch. We were able to take the boys in the petting zoo part and walk up to the horses, as well as take a hay ride. They soaked it all in. These past several weeks, it's been so hard to get them to take pictures looking at the camera when outside somewhere new; they just love to look around, observe and soak it in. You can see the wheels turning as they look around.

Wyatt loved the hay and kept rubbing it on his face for some reason.

Gavin seemed to enjoy the pumpkins.

The boys kept standing up from this seat in between pictures, and of course falling forward. Just imagine Jason on the side catching them in between the shots!

The week before Halloween, I took the boys to another pumpkin patch with our friend Natalie and her son. The boys were much more into it this time and standing and walking from one pumpkin to another. Here are the pictures below.

More Halloween picture fun:

The Saturday before Halloween, we went to Bridgeland's Howl-o-ween fest and our church's trunk-o-treat. The boys were wide eyed the whole day watching all the people, dogs and festivities. By the end of the day, they were pooped!

Halloween was on a Monday this year. We decided not to take the boys trick-or-treating because their dinner is typically around 6:30pm and they go to bed around 7:30. So after dinner, we put their Halloween shirts and sweat pants on them for pjs, put their costume hats on and passed out candy. They boys enjoyed watching all the kidos come up with their costumes. Gavin enjoyed taking the candy out of the box and chewing it. We have to admit, I think we passed out some slobbery pieces ;)

The past few weeks, Gavin and Wyatt have truly enjoyed and been very enthusiastic about getting to get out and socialize in different environments. The Thursday before Halloween, we had a party with our playgroup. The boys spent for the first 45 minutes with their mouths open in awe as they watched all the children dressed in their costumes run around and play. Before long, the boys were crawling everywhere and grabbing my fingers trying to ‘chase’/walk after the kids. They laughed and lit up when the kids would play with them. Wyatt so enjoyed one of them playing tug-o-war with him, hehe. Later that day when we got home, Gavin started to ‘talk’ up a storm. His brother soon joined him. Now the boys talk all the time.

As time goes, they are interacting more and more with each other as well. They’ll make each other laugh and talk to each other sometimes. They are forever trying to touch each other’s face, etc… but… they just don’t understand how to be gentle yet. I’m forever trying to explain to them that they can’t poke their brother’s eye or yank on his ears or lips! It does warm my heart to see their interactions increase though!

Last week we joined Gymboree; the boys had a blast!! They were nothing but smiles and giggles and EVERYWHERE! They loved to interact with the other children as well. They enjoyed crawling and climbing on everything, walking from one thing to another, and work on balancing their bodies as they went up and down inclines. Their abilities forever amaze us. We found out it’s not just us though, even the teachers there were amazed that they weren’t even 8 months yet. I LOVE to watch the pure joy and wonderment in their eyes and they try new things, explore the world and their abilities, and then watch them master what they set out to do!

They continue to win records with their crawling speed, and often go in different directions ;) They both love to climb and pull up on everything and anything in every sort of position. Gavin is getting braver and braver about walking from one thing another, even things that require bigger steps, turns and perhaps a step on his own or fall towards it. Both boys are excellent at lowering themselves softer and softer these days instead of a big bang sit… They both are getting great at bending over and picking up a toy while standing as well.

They are trying to stand up on their own as well (feet and hands on the on the floor, legs straight...) Gavin practices this the most these days. They still have a ways to go, but in just a week’s time, I’ve seen big improvements.

Wyatt’s new thing is to be a ‘rollie pollie’! He loves to roll around the floor by himself or with mama. He loves to go from the standing position to an awkward position with his hinny in the air and head/shoulders on the floor, then flop as in a roll. Then away he goes rolling this way and that.

The boys love to use the ‘push walker’ these days! They are great at learning to walk and balance on their own as they push it straight and turn it. Even when it starts to get away from them, they learn how to adjust their bodies to keep from falling. They are so proud of themselves.

Gavin’s favorite thing is still walking around the house as he holds on to my fingers. He is great at just holding on to one finger now though, and will let go of one finger on his own. You can tell he loves to try to balancing while doing this because he just lights up and grins like crazy! Wyatt enjoys this too, but prefers to try things on his own more often than not. We’ll get several steps and then he sees something he wants to play with or somewhere else he wants to go and gets down and crawls there. It’s fun to see how Gavin loves to practice and think things through and Wyatt just tries things out as he goes. Such precious children!!

Their new favorite game: standing! They LOVE for me to hold their fingers as they stand and then let go! They crack up as they try to balance and then finally fall and I catch them. They often stand straight for a good 4-5 seconds on their own then bend half way with their arms moving as trying to catch their balance and then I catch them as they fall. They can do this forever it seems. They both also are trying to stand up on their own when we aren’t there. The other day Wyatt was at his toy box in the living room, playing with his snuggle bear that was draped over the box, without holding on to anything. Because he was concentration so hard on the bear, he didn’t realize he was standing on his own! He must have done this for a good 15-20 seconds, then grabbed the box, a new toy and took off. It’s amazing watching them do things like this.

Gavin and Wyatt LOVE cords and outlets… sigh… They are learning the word NO. They understand to stop when we say NO, but then try to do it again. There are some days, Wyatt thinks it’s absolutely hilarious when we say NO, DANGER, and HURT/OUCH! Sigh… But, they are learning and we are being consistent which is the important thing in teaching them. We do not smack their hands, but rather hold their hands firmly and have a stern voice to explain the importance of our words.

The boys have wonderful attention spans; I’m actually amazed. They will spend 15-20-30 minutes on one activity. They enjoy their times of movements as I mentioned above which enjoys zero toys or the larger toys like the activity centers or their ‘house’. They enjoy reading time and looking at books. They enjoy playing with blocks, boxes, balls and cups. They enjoy playing with cars, and they enjoy their ‘box of toys’. They also love two Baby Einstein videos we put in every now and then; First Signs and First Movements. As I mentioned before they love the puppets and the children. These two videos capture their attention for 20-30 minutes.
They also enjoy our daily activities like:
-Flash cards (animals, shapes, colors right now which include lots of other fun discussions with this!)
-Music time (using their keyboard, tambourine, drum, rattles, and other instruments in the set)
-Art (playing with dough, writing, finger paints, bubbles, etc)
Sensations (we explore different textures and temperature of things around the house and outside)
-OUTSIDE (The boys LOVE to be outside. Walks, park, art activities, whatever… and their swing set is going up this week! We are so excited, they boys are going to love it!!!)

Just as a brief update, we have started to feed the boys milk when they first wake up in the morning followed by breakfast an hour or so later. This has helped drastically with their daily milk intake; freeing me to not have to stress about it the rest of the day. They continue to eat great.

The boys have gone through a growth spurt the past couple of weeks. They have increased in length drastically (not sure what they are now…) and now weigh 20 ½ lbs.

They now have new carseats! We got them the Graco SmartSeat and love it! The other car seats should have been retired a long time ago because their legs were dangling out for a while… Anyways, getting out and about with the boys just keeps getting easier and easier! They love to be in their strollers and the carts at the store. They are great in the double buggies/cars attached to the carts and look really cute as we shop!

Shortly after the boys recovered from their first cold, they caught a stomach bug which caused about 7-8 bowl movements a day each. This lasted about a week. Then just yesterday, Gavin gave us a very big scare. He had a low grade fever of 99.8 Friday night and Saturday morning. Then between 2:30 and 3:30 it rose quickly and drastically to 103.4 and he was very very lethargic. We took him to the pediatric emergency clinic. It took over 2 hours to get it to come down slightly. All tests came back fine. He went to bed with smiles and fever free, woke up fever free, but it has started to rise again to 100.3 by his first nap. I am praying it stabilized and goes away so he can feel much better. I am thankful he is playing and happy today though. I will write more on this later.

There are a million other things (and pictures, I promise…) I’ll have to write more about. For now, this is a good glimpse at our precious blessings at 8 months (tomorrow!)