Steelers family!

tummy time

brotherly love

I think I keep posting basically the same blog entry: Sebastian loves Liesl! It's not news at this point, and yet he keeps amazing me with his utter devotion to his little sister. At least she's smiling at him now. :)

He participates in every bath I give her - I get an extra washcloth for him, and he splashes it in the water and all over her. He still likes to watch her diaper changes, but only if poop is involved. He asks to cuddle and kiss her all the time. He sings and reads books to her, and creates little dramas with stuffed animals for her amusement (as in the pics above). When Steve and Seb and I were hugging, and Steve said, "a whole-family hug!", Sebastian said, "where's Liesl?". And on Monday, when he was having a total meltdown in the car on the way home from a playdate at Nathan's house, I reprimanded him for behaving badly and waking up Liesl with his screams. He quieted down immediately and said, "I don't want my baby sister to be upset."

We are so lucky that he's such a sweet boy.

a girly girl

We have recently discovered that Liesl loves dolls and stuffed animals - anything with eyes and a mouth. She'll stare, fascinated and intent, and smile very sweetly, when we dance stuffed animals in front of her. She coos at Sebastian's hipster boy doll, Pip. (Despite my best attempts, Sebastian really never paid much attention to Pip and has been unmoved by Liesl's usurpation of his doll.)

And Liesl smiles at people - not just us and extended family members, but at perfect strangers in the grocery store. Big, happy smiles, and the occasional gurgle. Sebastian never ever smiled at anyone he didn't know. He still doesn't either smile or talk to most people. But Liesl - our girl - is so very interested in people. It's so stereotypically female, and yet so obviously innate and not learned.

What fun to have both a boy and a girl.

coyness

Liesl has developed this very funny habit with Steve - when he smiles at her, she gives him her very best grin, and then turns her head away from him. And then turns back, still smiling. It's very coy - like she's doing her best hair-flipping flirting with him. She rarely does it with me, and never to Sebastian. (When she looks at Sebastian, she stares at him very intently, and watches everything he does. And smiles. She's going to be his little shadow, I think.) Steve and I can't figure out why she's doing it, but it's really funny.

We were skype-chatting with Popo and Grandpa the other day, and Liesl gave me the biggest pout before she started fussing a bit. I thought my parents were going to cry from laughter, and glee, as they claimed to recognize that overly dramatic pout from my babyhood and thanked the gods of karma for blessing me with a daughter who would take after me. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

And in other news, Liesl figured out how to hold things and grasp things just yesterday and today. We've been giving her a little shaker toy, and various brightly colored noisemaking things, and she's been moving the toys around and investigating them.

big step: sleeping in the real bed!

Sebastian moved out of his crib a long time ago - almost a year ago - after we caught him climbing over the railing. We put his crib mattress on the floor for a long while, and then finally over the summer picked out and bought a twin-size bed and frame. He refused to use the bed. Nothing would convince him to get on it, or sleep in it. We took away the crib mattress and he started sleeping on the floor - on the hardwood floor - with nothing but his pillow, his duckies, and a thin blanket. After a little while, we decided to humor him and provided him with a mat. He put the mat as close to the door of his room as possible, with his head in the doorway, and bedded down on it every naptime and nighttime.

We've tried to figure out why he doesn't like the bed, but he hasn't been able to articulate his objections. We decided that maybe he's just afraid of falling out. So today we borrowed a bed rail from our friends, the Krapfs, and installed it, and Sebastian informed me that he was going to sleep in his big boy bed. Steve set it up, with stuffed animals lining the bed rail and Seb's favorite objects all around, and our boy curled up to read himself to sleep. But then, when the actual moment of going to sleep arrived, he had second thoughts. He told us he would sleep in the big bed when he was as tall as us. He asked very sweetly to have his mat back. We cajoled him to just try it for one night, telling him how proud we would be. He still looked anxious, so I crawled in beside him and cuddled with my boy until he drifted off.

We'll see if he makes it through the night, or if he's willing to try again tomorrow night. But for tonight, success! He looks so long and lean to me - growing up so fast. Sigh.

Hana Jane

We are delighted to welcome our new niece, Hana Jane Cuthbertson! She was born to Tricia and Jeff just after midnight, January 12. A snow baby. She's lovely. We drove to the hospital in Hoboken yesterday afternoon so we could meet her and see Trish. Sebastian was extremely excited to see his new cousin. (Really, he was. He kept asking "are we there yet?" all the way to the hospital, and when we initially told him he couldn't come in with us, his face fell and he looked crushed. So we had to sneak him in.)

Of course, now Sebastian has four girl cousins, and nary a boy cousin in sight. Poor thing.

January snows

Two month checkup

We took Liesl to the doctor today for her 2-month checkup. Sebastian was a very well-behaved and concerned big brother ("Why are they hurting her?"). Liesl weighed in at 12 lbs, and measured 22 1/2 inches. She's about 50th percentile for height and 75th for weight, so she's clearly eating enough. :)

letters to Santa

As I blogged earlier, Sebastian wrote a letter to Santa requesting a new school bus, and Santa showed up in person and delivered one at his daycare holiday party. Apparently this made a deep impression. A couple of nights ago, as he was lying in bed trying to go to sleep, he asked Steve if he could write another letter to Santa and ask for more Cars movie characters (the Sheriff and Ramone). He was extremely excited about his brilliant idea. Steve explained that Santa only comes once a year, and that a year was a really long time, and so the two of them decided that they would instead write a letter to mommy asking for the cars.

This is the letter that was awaiting me at the breakfast table:
Dear Mommy,
I want Sheriff and Ramone, Mama. Please can I have them? Please Mama? I'm going to clean up my dishes when I am done eating and I will not fuss when Mommy tells me to go and I'll clean up my toys.
Thank you.
Love,
Sebastian

Steve had to prompt him re. the promises of good behavior, of course. But Seb insisted on trying to write his own name at the end. I love it.