Last night was the first night that Spencer slept most of the night in his crib.  We put him down at 7pm, he woke at 10:30pm for a feed, then went back to sleep until 4:30am.  Not only is the sleeping in the crib a big deal, but the amount of sleep without waking or needing a feed is a record.  Needless to say–I was a happy Mommy this morning.  Too bad Spencer doesn’t mimic the sentiment.

2 weeks ago he broke ground on his first tooth, and last week a second one popped up.  Ever since then, my sweet and smiley son has been replaced with a whiney, fussy one.

There has been a lot of practice crawling and pre-crawling activity but nothing that is clearly real crawling.  He can more around the room though by lunging and spinning on his tummy and occasionally rolling over (something he doesn’t prefer).  I have no less than 15 video’s on my phone of him almost crawling.  I am not rushing it since I know that he will be a handful when he does become mobile.  But, I want him to start crawling simply because he is so frustrated by his inability to move!

On the food front, Spencer has started to take a more active interest in eating.  He doesn’t care for fruits as much as savory baby foods.  His favorite jarred food is the organic rice and lentils.  But his top pick is any food he can eat with his own hands–puffs, cheerios, bread pieces, crackers and veggie’s.  He will tolerate banana chunks and raspberries if he is in the right mood.

Elliott celebrated his 3rd birthday!  My little boy is now officially categorized as a Pre-schooler.  Sniffle, sniffle.  We had a small party is his Grandparent’s house the last weekend in June for him.  We also celebrated by taking him to dinner on his official birth date and we celebrate while we were on our staycation with my in-laws July 4th week.

That is Elliott pointing out the fact that I did NOT light all of the candles.  In the midst of singing we had to stop, re-light the candles and start again.  I love that kid.  And of course, eating the enormous cupcake.

Elliott always enjoys spending time with his cousins, who are 6 and 8 years old.  There is a natural bond between them that seems to allow them to play together with very little fighting.  Elliott tries to keep up with the 8 year old, and is always exhausted by the end of the day.  As a result of trying to keep up he has to push himself and his physical limits, lest he be left behind!  By the end of the visit he has increased his independence and his self confidence and I have learned to let go just a wee-bit more–a win-win for everyone!

In other big news, we enrolled Elliott in preschool.  He has been going to the same home-based daycare since he was 6 months old and we now feel he is ready for a change.  It has been a huge decision for us since we LOVE the situation he is in now.  But, there were several factors that influenced our decision.  One was that it was 15 miles from our house.  Another is the space factor.  We wanted him to be able to run around and be more independent.  We also want him to start a small amount of structured learning.  He knows his ABC’s by site, he can count to 15 and knows his numbers by site to ten.  He knows colors, shapes and speaks clearly.  Unless it is the “l” sound which comes out sounding the same as a “w’ sound…  We believe in kids being kids as long as possible, but we also think that learning can be fun.  And since kids are little sponges that now is the perfect time to solidify the fun of discovering new things, ideas and concepts.  Lastly, the preschool we chose is close to our home and is very reasonably priced.

And that brings everyone up to date with the goings on of the wee ones.  As for the grown-ups in the house–the hubby is working and stressing like crazy.  We are both torn between wanting a bigger house and fixing up this one.  We have been house browsing on the weekends, and of course, everyone house I look at that is bigger than ours is ‘the perfect house’.  And then we come home, and talk about our house and fall in love with it all over again.  And so it begins.