On Sunday we celebrated Eden’s second birthday! She is very grown up these days.  She is talking in complete sentences and does a great job explaining herself when we don’t understand her.  She recently started saying while Ben is watching the Colts play on Sunday: “after Dada’s football done, I want watch Elmo.” And she is understanding more and paying attention to what is going on around her.  Last night Eden asked Ben for more juice and Ben said he needed to check with me.  Eden turned to me right away and said, “Say yes Mama!”

She still loves to climb and sing and takes particular pleasure in accomplishing things by herself.  She recently mastered the skill of pulling her pants up and down which has made potty time much easier on Mommy and Daddy.  🙂  Eden really enjoys playing with Andy now, especially tag.  Eden runs to Andy, hits him, then runs the opposite direction so that Andy crawls after her.  We got some great two year pictures, but this one really captured Eden.

On Wednesday Andy finally started crawling like a normal baby! He’s been army crawling for a month or so. We would put him up on all fours but he’d just rock back and forth and then lay on his belly and scoot. However, he finally got the courage (or arm strength) to stay up on his knees as he went forward and he was off! Neither Meghan nor I were forcing it (at the time) either; he just off and crawled. (He probably saw the TV remote sitting all alone and waiting to be chewed on)
Between dragging himself around and rolling he could get anywhere he wanted to. However, now he is really moving. If he sees something across the room he’ll work himself around and just go over there. If we leave him in the living room and go into the kitchen he’ll crawl over and peek around the corner at us with a huge smile on his face!
I delayed writing this post hoping that I could get a nice video of him crawling. Unfortunately he reverts to the army scoot every time I turn the camera on! However, this morning I finally caught him! See the Videos page for the video.
While I was uploading the video I noticed that it had been a few months since I posted some. You’ll be happy to know I’ve rectified that and posted about 15 videos! If you want to watch them in order, this is the first one of that group.

FYI: You can see the crawling video on the blip.tv site in a bigger player: http://wolfes.blip.tv/file/4470255

Note that there were some notable videos in this batch: Eden’s braided hair, Andy’s first teeth, Andy standing, Eden climbing onto the toilet by herself, and Andy feeding himself!

Andy is now 9 months old and he is really on the move! He pulls himself across the room on his belly and rolls when he tires of that. He can scoot himself into a sitting position and can pull himself onto his knees.

He was sick this past week with a double ear infection and was pretty miserable. He’s bounced back and last night ate an entire bread stick after his normal dinner. Andy continues to be easy going and laid back. He thinks Eden is very funny, except when she tries to pick him up or pull him around. He loves watching people play peek-a-boo with him and is babbling a lot.

Andy had his 9 month check-up today and weighed 22 lbs 7 oz and was 29 inches long.  He has 4 top teeth coming in and the doctor said he looked great.  Both kids got a flu shot and Andy didn’t even cry!

We hope that you have many things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and that you are able to spend time with family and friends (and maybe squeeze in a little shopping!).

Yesterday Eden turned 23 months. She is learning things so quickly now and loves to repeat everything that we say. Her new obsession is with VeggieTales.  She walks around the house singing the theme song, and we’re not allowed to listen to any other music in the car. She walks up and down the stairs now instead of crawling and has only rolled down them once. 🙂 My favorite new character trait is the ‘tattle-tale’. She must be related to her mother because she constantly tattles on Andy when she catches him doing something he’s not allowed to do. We often hear her saying, “No, no, no Andy!” as she rips something out of his hands.

She was a good “helper” today while we raked the front yard until she discovered how much fun the piles of leaves are and started playing instead of helping.

Andy is getting so big! He is doing a great job eating baby food now and this week he started eating puffs! He’s not very good at getting them into his mouth yet, but he crunches them with his two little teeth and really likes them! He’s still not crawling, but he rolls everywhere and can travel across the room that way. He pushes himself onto his hands and knees and rocks and he loves to give hugs and big, slobbery kisses.  He had his first ear infection last week but he was still perfectly pleasant even though we’re sure his ear was bothering him.