Similarities/differences: 7.5 month edition

Skills/acquisitions:

• Theo: FOUR teeth (two down, two up--new as of today!), curly eyelashes, gets up on hands and knees and scoots forward, rolls back to front, says "dada" (not to Jeff, but still), consistently sleeps 8+ hours in a row at night, sits up for long periods of time without support.
  
• Beckett: two teeth (two down), gets up on hands and knees, rolls from front to back and back to front, a full head of hair, eats consistently and variedly, jumps like a crazy fool in the jumper for HOURS, can drink out of a sippy cup, sits up for short periods without support.
  

Beck will almost always eat what is put in front of him, whereas Theo is a picky and temperamental eater. Theo ate a bunch of vanilla greek yogurt with Mindy today, but many times when we sit him down to a meal, he refuses anything except the cup of water. Beck slogs through just about anything we put in front of him. Tonight the Lovebo family dinner was fresh mozzarella from the Pags and yummy garlic tuscan bread from Wegmans. Both babies enjoyed some of the cheese and bread--it felt like our first real family dinner!

Beck's legs are getting VERY strong because he jumps ALL THE TIME. He would probably tolerate being in the jumper for hours every day. Even when he is kind of bored of being in it, or has a dirty diaper, or is hungry, he starts whining to get picked up but continues to jump. When you hold him in front of you, he drops his knees and pushes off from your lap. As a result, Mama Lovebo's arms are getting quite strong!

Books are starting to hold the babies' interest more. Sometimes when they are grumpy I pull out one of their favorites (e.g. Little Blue Truck, Corduroy, Llama Llama Red Pajama, Moo Baa La La La, Mr Brown Can Moo Can You) and they calm right down and start talking back at the book.

As for sleep, the babies seem to be inching toward a more manageable routine. They have gone to bed at 7pm for a few months now, but have woken up as many as three times in the night before 7am. For the last several weeks they have been waking up between 3-4 am to eat, then going back to sleep until sometime between 6-8am. I find that the later they wake to eat, the later they wake for the day. Sometimes Beck wakes up before 3 or 4 and we have been letting him cry or fuss for a little while (he doesn't wake Theo up). Sometimes when Beck wakes up he is so upset that Jeff has to go in to calm him down, and a few times I have nursed him to get him back to sleep. But generally we are moving toward a pretty good night's sleep!

I am beginning to identify with my friend Megan K who used to tell me, when her son Ben was very little, that she had to stop herself from gnawing on his little feet and knees and ears because they were just so perfect and delicious. I often go into their bedroom before we go to sleep, or pick them both up, and just gaze at how wonderful and perfect they are! I just want to eat them up!