Austin Scott: 9-10 Months

Let's talk about how 9-10 months is practically the best baby age ever? Austin is so sweet, funny, active, independent, and darling. He giggles when you catch him doing something he's not supposed to be doing and he loves to cuddle. With each month that goes by this little boy captures our hearts more and more with his happy personality and his contagious sense of humor. 

Stats: 

(We didn't get into the doctor at 9 months so these ten month stats are actually the official stats from the doctor.) 

Weight: 17 lbs 12 oz (10%)

Length: 27.8 in (15%) 

Head Circ: 46 cm (70%)

Size 9 month clothes, size 3 shoes, size 3 diapers. No teeth. A tiny bit of hair coming in (so cute).

Some things to remember this month: 

--He's still a champ in the baby carrier. He seems to love it and so do I. We are splitting the time pretty evenly between front wearing and back wearing. It's so nice that he still likes being worn.  

--He's started clapping and waving hi/bye. It's adorable.

 (I love summer because you get to see those baby legs! Onsies are my best friends)

--Started saying Mom (mah-mmm) followed shortly by Dad (da). It secretly makes my heart happy that he said Mom first. Sometimes it just seems like he's babbling mamamama. But you can tell when he's saying it TO me. Usually when he's tired or upset and he really wants my attention. 

--He's a great eater. I have a hard time keeping up with him. He eats pretty much everything that we eat. His favorites: grapes (cut in half), raisins, frozen mixed vegetables, potatoes of any variety (like his dad), pasta (like his mom), cheese, and fruit-fruit-fruit (like his sister). His least favorite: cheerios. Seriously, every time I put him in his high chair and give him some cheerios (which used to merit lots of happy eating) he yells his displeasure and looks at me like I'm losing my mind. Then he's more likely to push them off the tray than to put them in his mouth. Also, on the feeding front this month- he's figured out how to hold the little fruit pouches and feed himself. I feel like this is a milestone, but mostly because I looooove having them when we are out and about and it's nice that he can manage mostly by himself.

--Also on the topic of food, he's started signing "more" and "all done". It's awesome. Oh, and he will sign "milk", too. He's even figured out that if he signs "more" while he's sitting on the floor playing, that I'll realize he's hungry and give him food, or if he signs "all done" in the bathtub I'll understand that he's ready to get out. Obviously I'm biased, but I think he's so smart.

--He loves balls. His absolute favorite thing to play with is one of our little balls from Target that light up when you bounce them. He will hold it in one hand and hit it on the floor to make it light up. That usually does it. But if it doesn't light up, he'll throw it at the ground to get it to light then crawl over to it.  Again, he's so smart. He loves the light-up balls the most, but he loves all balls. One of the notes that I have in my planner is that he can palm balls the size of a softball. It's impressive! 

-- He's big enough now to really play with Lydia and we all love it. She plays with him in the family room, bounces him on the trampoline (which he can climb up on and loves sitting on), and crawls around with him. My favorite game that they play is hide and seek. Lydia will run into the living room and hide, then yell "Austin - come find me!" As soon as she yells, he'll start crawling as fast as he can and head into the room where she was to find her. It. is. so. darling. He's really good at finding her, and once he does they will both laugh and laugh. 

-Austin's got a little troublemaking streak in him. He loves nothing more than to try to touch the water in the toilet and pull the toilet paper off the roll. He knows that he's not supposed to do it, because if you see him crawling toward the open bathroom and say "Austinnnnnnn", he'll giggle and start crawling faster - trying to get to the bathroom because you can catch him. Also, the stairs. I have to be careful to keep the gate shut all the time. If he sees it open he will head toward it, alternating between crawling as fast as possible and sneakily checking behind him to see if we have noticed where he's headed. He's fast at stairs and can often get up the first half-flight before I can catch him. When I come up behind him and say "Austinnn, what are you doing?" He'll giggle and try to climb faster, often getting so excited/worked up that he can't get his leg over the next stair. It's the funniest thing, ever. I love it, so I sometimes leave the gate open just so I can chase him up the stairs.

 --He's started yelling. Not crying. Not screaming. Yelling. It's mostly when he wants attention, but sometimes it's just because he wants to. Or if he wants something. Or if you've been playing with him and you get distracted. Or if you gave him something to eat and he wants something else. Or if you gave him something to eat and he wants more. Or if he's done eating. Or if he wants to do something other than what he's doing. So. much. yelling.

--He is like a little candy-detector. I don't know how, but he manages to find all sorts of sweet things to eat. Once I was holding him and he managed to grab a handful of peanut m&ms that I had  in a cup with my other hand without me noticing until I saw his shirt which had bright orange drool all over it.  We don't keep a lot of candy in the house, but if there is a piece of forgotten candy somewhere, he'll find it. His score: 1 rootbeer barrel (in wrapper, but still more than half gone), 1 skittle, 1 half-eaten otter pop, and the above mentioned m&ms.

-He looooooves music. And dancing. Each night we do a little routine called scripture-song-prayer and I think the song is one of his favorite times of the day. He loves when I turn on the children's station on pandora. Whenever he hears music that he likes he starts bouncing and waving his arms with a huge smile. This last Sunday he crawled away from me in Primary, headed across the front of the room toward the Piano, just as singing time was starting. As the piano started playing and the kids started singing he sat up, right on center stage and proceeded to bounce, wave his arms, and smile at all of the kids looking at him. This kid's got a future in the musical theatre.

--He is SO good at just going with the flow. We haven't had much of a schedule this summer and this little guy is so good to just come around with us wherever we need/want to go. Our nap schedule is so sporadic. If we are home all day, he still takes 3 naps: 9, 12, & 3ish. But we are almost never home all day. Most days he gets his first nap at 9. But he might only get one nap at 1-2 or maybe no real afternoon naps- just crashing in the car or baby carrier. I feel bad for his poor unstructured nap schedule, but he's still so happy everywhere we go - I feel better because he seems good with it.

--He loves playing with our cell phones. No games. Just looking at the lock screen. It's basically his favorite thing ever. 

--He plays with trains and cars by pushing them back and forth on their wheels. He can even line the little toy trains on the train tracks and push them back and forth. He likes them. 

--He loves exploring water. He doesn't like when I wash his face after dinner anymore, but he does like reaching out to touch the stream of water coming from the spout. He loves the bath! He loves splashing and kicking (and trying to stand up).  When Lydia is in the bath, he'll crawl over, stand at the edge and reach his little hands down to try to touch the water. He doesn't love love love the swimming pool, but he is always super interested in the water. 

--I love this stage of physical development. It's so fun. Some examples: 

-Pulls himself to a stand everywhere he can.

-Climbs stairs like he's getting paid for it. 

-Constantly has dirty toes and knees from all the places he crawls. 

-When he's sitting up and he wants to look in a different direction, he uses his legs to turn in a complete circle - bringing one ankle to the other, then pushing off to spread his legs apart to turn the way he wants, then repeating the process. It's hard to explain but it's so cute. He just pivots right around on his bum. I love it. 

--He does this cute thing what we call "speed crawling". At first we thought that it was an accident, but he totally does it on purpose. He will find something hard and fairly small like a cell phone or a small book and carefully put one hand on it, test it out and readjust if needed, then start crawling by sliding the hand on the phone/book and pushing off with the other. The result is that he slide/crawls super-fast all over the carpet. He loves it and it's so funny to watch him set himself up and then slide/crawl as long as he can keep control of it.

--He adores his big sister and no one can get as many laughs out of him as she can. Sometimes this is a problem because she'll do things like pull on his hand/arm and he'll laugh and laugh. And when I tell her not to, and that she needs to be soft, she'll say "but he likes it!" Which, he does - until it really is too hard and then he doesn't like it. It's so bad but funny, too.

--We super, super love this boy. Happy 10 months, baby!

Yard Progression: Front/side yard.

We've been putting in some work on our front yard and we are excited about the way things have turned out. It doesn't look like we've done much, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit just how long it has taken us (like weeks and weeks of a few hours here and there). This past Saturday we finally buckled down and spent all day just.finishing.the.thing. But we are super pleased with the results! 

Please ignore the dying plant on the left. It was big and beautiful, but I didn't realize that I needed to water it every single day and it is suffering. I'm trying to nurse it back to health. Instead focus on the pretty new cushions (from Target on super clearance), our little moss-friends finally filling in between our flagstones, and the brown mulch that made more of a difference than I even expected! 

 

The biggest part of the project was the side of our house. I don't have any before pictures, mostly because it was a mess of grass and dirt and rocks and weeds the size of Texas with great big prickles on them. It took us weeks to tear up the grass, move the rocks. weed the area, level the dirt, and just clean things up. Also, note our new, slightly crooked, fence. Yeah. We finished fencing off our backyard, which was a hit of $3,000. Not kidding. Just one side of the yard and two gates. Excuse me while I go cry for a minute. 

 Our neighbors had some extra pavers from a project and said we could have them. We decided to build some steps down from the driveway to the path. We used gravel and paver sand to get them exactly the way we wanted them, then decided to change it - so we had to basically start all over. This easily was the longest part of the project. Measuring, making sure each step was perfectly level/slanting away from the house, pulling the rocks back out and adding more sand, etc... We finished it off with some sand that turns into concrete to secure everything and it actually looks awesome! Go us. David keeps saying things about how we are pros now and could totally do this again. I keep thinking about how I never want to see another paver again. 

We kept jumping around about what we wanted to do with the side area. We knew we didn't want any plants/grass. (We put down weed paper and plan to keep spraying it with weed kill to keep the weeds at bay.) We initially wanted to just fill it with gravel and put in flagstone stepping stones back to the garage man door. But we are keeping our garbage can behind the fence gate and we started worrying about pulling it out over the gravel. We jumped around on a bunch of different options, but finally decided that we were going to do the flagstone path with some nice mulch in between. Then we were at Home Depot buying the rest of the supplies for our paver steps and we saw these pretty little rock path steps. They come with nine rocks together and sit snugly so it's pretty easy to create a path. We bought 12 of them to bring home to see if they would work and we fell in love with them. They solve the "pulling the garbage can" problem and they look really great! We'd already put down the weed paper along with a layer of topsoil. This whole path only took a couple of hours to put together, then cover with this fine mulch. After the steps taking way longer than planned, the easiness of the path was very welcome! 

 We still have a bunch of projects to work on in our yard, but I feel so relieved with the things that we've done so far. I finally feel like we aren't the sore thumb of the neighborhood. We certainly aren't the best - but our yard looks pretty darn nice, if I do say so myself. 

Staycation 2015

Rather going somewhere for a vacation this year, we decided that we would stay home and do some of the fun things around here that we don't normally get to do. We had some big plans for our stay-cation but halfway through we ended up getting sick. It was super lame. No one should get sick on their vacation. David and I got the worst of it. Austin had some goopy eyes a couple of days but seemed fine otherwise and Lydia seemed to avoid the bug altogether. I'm glad that they didn't get sick, but I felt bad that we weren't able to do all the fun things we had planned for them. Not that Lydia was complaining; we let her watch videos on our phone and play puzzles on the ipad, both of which are usually strictly off limits when we are at home. 

Manti Pageant

Saturday afternoon we headed down to good ole' Sanpete County. On our way down we stopped at Maple Canyon and hiked a little way up Box Canyon. It was so beautiful and I'm super excited to go camping there in a couple of weeks! Michael and Susan Barclay had a 40th Wedding Anniversary/Missionary Farewell Party that evening and we didn't want to miss out on wishing them the best. They are so wonderful and have been such an example of goodness to me in my life. I love their whole family, and they hold a special place in my heart. We were grateful to be able to spend the evening with them before they leave to be Mission Presidents in the Sofia Bulgaria Mission. 

Afterwards we went to watch the Mormon Miracle Pageant. I have special feelings towards the pageant from my years participating as a cast member and I can't watch the production without having the feelings of the testimony that I gained while participating continually wash over me. I was excited to be there with David (we've only been once before) and especially to be there with Lydia and Austin for their first time. We wondered if we might have to leave early if the kids weren't able to handle it, but they both stayed awake the whole time and did fabulously! Lydia alternated between watching "the show on the hill" and playing on the ground and Austin was content the entire time to sit on the ground and play with our frisbee, then stand by the chair and play with the seat, then sit back down and play with the frisbee. It was amazing and I'm SO glad that we went! We drove home afterwards, and although it was a late (late, late, late) night - it was definitely worth it.   

Family Movie Night

I already blogged about this HERE. But, after planning the rest of our vacation in the morning, going grocery stopping and then stopping at the library, we had a special movie-night before bed. We picked up Paddington from the Redbox (it was the best choice available for Lydia), pulled our couch up close to the TV, made popcorn, and let her eat dinner while we watched. It was fun to make it different and special by pulling up the couch and even though we didn't finish the movie that night, it was still a great kick-off to our Staycation week. 

Enter Sickness, stage left. 

Tuesday David, Austin, and I woke up with sore throats and goopy eyes. We didn't feel well and basically spent the whole day laying around the house while we let Lydia watch TV on my phone and play puzzles on the iPad. Fail. 

Wednesday, Lagoon Day! 

We had been planning to go to Lagoon for months, and were meeting up with several family members so we realllllllyy wanted to go. Luckily we were feeling better, and with the help of a little ibuprofin and some dayquill - we had a fabulous time. Amy took the day off of work to come with us, and David's parents, Cal & Sue, also came. Matt & Julie were in town from Indiana and were planning to go to Lagoon that day so we coordinated the day we were going with them and we made it a Peaden Family affair. It was fun to be able to go on some rides with Olivia and Ryan and spend some time with Matt and Julie while we were there. And it was great to have Amy, Cal, and Sue there with us because we were able to take turns going on rides and watching Austin. Lydia could actually go on a lot of the bigger rides and she loved them! Our collective favorite ride was Bombora, which was a rollercoaster that Lydia could ride. She loved it, even though she was always a little nervous about it. She'd grab tight to your arm and squeeze while giving a solid "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!" the whole time. She had the roller-coaster-yell down pat. We definitely rode Bombora the most, but we hit all of the rides in the kiddie area and most of the adult rides, too. Austin's favorite was the Log Flume, his least favorite was the Tilt-a-whirl. 

 

 

 

 

Sick Day, Again

Thursday we spent recovering from Lagoon. None of us felt great and all of our fun plans for the day got set aside for just hanging around the house. No hiking, swimming, or museum attending for us. Oh, I guess David did take Lydia to the Alpine splash pad this day. She's the only one who didn't catch the bug that the rest of us did. She felt great and we wanted her to be able to have a good vacation too, and the splash pad and ice cream cones afterwards went a long way there. My dad also came down and visited us for a while in the evening. I love spending time with my dad. He's the best. 

Friday-Fun Day

As I said above, Matt and Julie were in town with their kids. It was Avarie's 8th birthday recently, and they decided to come back to Utah to have a birthday party and to hold her baptism. They were so sweet to invite Lydia to come to Avarie's birthday party even though there is quite an age difference. It's a tradition in Julie's family that when you turn eight, you get to have your birthday party at the Lion House. They do fun pioneer games and other pioneer things and it looked really awesome. I'm almost completely sold on making that a tradition in our family, too. Such a fun and special thing. We picked up Lydia's other cousin Aubrey and took her to the party with Lydia, then dropped them off and went exploring around Temple Square. While they were at the party we went on a tour of the Beehive House, Brigham Young's house, walked around City Creek and got some super yummy ice cream.

After the party, we finally went to do the one thing that Lydia had been looking forward to all week. We went to the "Balance Houses"! When we were planning out our vacation, we asked Lydia what she would like to do if she could do anything and she said that she wanted to go to the bounce houses (which she loves). So we looked to see if there was something like that around and actually found a couple of places. Because we were already in Salt Lake we ended up going to Bounce Around Utah and Lydia was in Heaven. We had an unfortunate incident at the beginning of the summer where we were on a big inflatable slide when it tipped over and it was super scary. I had nightmares for a while about it, and I was worried that it would taint Lydia's love of her "balance houses" - but it doesn't seem to have affected her at all. She was definitely in her element - running, jumping, and sliding. 

We ended the night by going out to dinner with Jeff and Kaylee and then attending Avarie's baptism. The baptism started at seven, which is bedtime for our littles, so I spent most of the time in the hall trying to contain them. Lydia did get to go up to the font to watch the baptism and she was very reverent and interested in what was happening. She's talked about it several times since then. 

Lehi Roundup Parade

We ended our little staycation on Saturday with some of the Lehi Roundup festivities. David was still feeling pretty crummy, so he opted to stay home - but Lydia, Austin, and I joined the Rencher family to watch the parade. We love spending time with the Renchers and we love parades - so it was basically the best of all the worlds (except missing David, of course). 

After the parade, I tried to take the kids to the booths at Wines Park - but Lydia was tired and hungry and wasn't super thrilled about being there. She kept asking to do the bounce houses, but I'm pretty sure you have to pay to get a pass to do the bounce houses there and I couldn't figure out where to buy the pass. There were tears on her part and a smashed finger on my part when I tried to pull out a folding chair by the tables for us to sit on for a minute - so we didn't last long. But, we did convince David to come with us to an Edge Homes grand opening where they had a couple of little bounce houses for Lydia to jump on while David and I ate the free food that they were handing out. (Can't pass that up!) It wasn't the most stellar end of our vacation, but it was nice and we did enjoy spending our time together. 

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It was kind of a bummer to not be able to do all the things that we wanted to do for our vacation. When we reached the end, I was definitely sad that our bit "staycation" involved basically hanging out at home with just a couple of days of fun things and I was dreading having to go back to real life without another break in sight. However, I'm choosing to just be super grateful that we were able to go and do so many fun things and not worry about the things that we weren't able to do. We really did have a nice time. It's always good to be together and even better when there isn't anything that we have to be doing. I love my little family and loved spending time with them.