The Dog and the Monster

We came up with these affectionate nicknames for our boys when we went camping a few months ago. It was inspired by them wearing these pajamas:

Dallin, the monster and Connor, the dog

We didn't realize at the time how appropriate those nicknames are to the stage of life they are currently in.

Connor is very much like a dog. Right now he just wants to crawl around and get into everything. He is learning and exploring with his mouth. He tries to play in the garbage and toilet. I always catch him eating shoes or paper.

He will eat pretty much anything you give him. Even if it's a new food, he just opens his mouth and eats it. He likes to crawl around in the kitchen and pick up the scraps of food that Dallin has dropped for him.

He recently discovered he loves french fries.

He bites with his 3 teeth. 

(The best picture I have of the bottom 2 teeth.)

Especially with it being summer and everyone wears shorts with bare legs exposed, he loves to crawl around and bite legs. He drools a lot. When you pick him up he squirms like crazy, he does not want to sit still. One time in the bath he was hitting the water gently with his hand, very much the same way a dog paws at a bowl of water. Do you see the resemblance?

As far as non-dog-related development goes, Connor amazes me. At 9 months, Connor now weighs 19.5 lbs and has been coasting along at the 50th percentile for months now. He crawls with amazing speed and pulls himself up to stand on everything. He is now discovering he can stand up and hold onto a support with just one hand, while the other is free to fly about as he bounces up and down on his knees. He gets a big smile on his face when he does that.

He mimics what we do. He saw Dallin playing with sidewalk chalk, so he picked up a piece and made little strokes on the ground, completely by himself!

He watches what we do with our hands and mimics it. He will copy facial expressions. Yesterday at church he sat there in Sunday school with me, and he lifted one arm up for a good 10 seconds, as if he had a question and waiting for the teacher to call on him. It made me laugh.

I know it's late, but here is an 8 month growth comparison of the boys. First try:

I learned to take the picture faster with this one:

 

 Dallin is a monster. He has quite the temper and will yell if he does not get his way. When he is mad, he will run to his room and slam the door closed. Once it closes, he screams even louder because he realizes he can't open doors and just locked himself in there. I usually give him some time to calm down before opening the door for him.

He has very strong emotions. Most of the time he is happy, but he can also get very sad. He says "Go away." when he is sad and Connor is trying to climb on him.

Along with his strong emotions comes a great empathy and understanding of other's emotion. Often, when Connor is crying, Dallin will bring him a toy, or his water cup or a burp cloth; all things that bring Dallin comfort and he hopes will help Connor calm down as well. When I hit my head or foot on something and yell out in pain, Dallin comes running over. I explain that I got "hurt." Then later, if I yell in frustration (rather than pain) at something like the dumb computer, he comes to me and says, "Hurt?"

Dallin's language is improving. He will put together mostly complete sentences, like "I want cracker too" or "I want bath too." (He thinks everything needs "too" at the end. I think it started when we would offer things to Connor and then ask him, "Do you want a cracker too?") He says "No Connor" a lot when Connor is getting into things he shouldn't. He still asks for pancakes 2 or 3 times daily and often refers to all food as pancakes. Example: one day at dinner, I was spoon feeding Connor some puree and he kept turning his head away. So Dallin said to him, "No Connor, eat your pancakes." I LOVED that moment.

Dallin likes to organize and sort things. I stocked up on some baby food and Dallin helped me unload the grocery bags.

 He put the jars in a circle, grouping all the applesauce together on one side of the circle, with all the sweet potatoes together on the other side. He is amazing.

Dallin may be a monster, but he's a very sweet amazing monster.

July

July has been HOT. We're talking triple digits and no rain for weeks. So we've mostly been inside for the past few weeks. We've tried to keep busy with fun things like hide and seek.

Dallin can squeeze into the best hiding spots.

 But still, Dallin is getting bored from being inside all day, which makes him grumpy, which makes ME grumpy, plus being hot all day equals me not in the mood to take pictures or blog. Hence the lack of posts. 

We did venture outdoors a few times:

Staying cool by dipping feet in water and wearing no pants (at least for Dallin).

The weekend before the 4th of July, a church just behind our house does a big fireworks celebration. So we ate our dinner out on the back patio.

Connor had pureed peas... He loved them for some reason. (I hate peas, FYI.)

As part of the celebration, a parachuter flew in with a flag.

The view from our backyard.

We brought one of our couches outside so we could sit and enjoy the fireworks.

We had to wait a while for it to get dark though. 

It was a pretty good show. It was definitely a perk to be able to watch it from our own home. Tons of people come to watch every year and our neighborhood streets were lined with cars. People were parked right in front of our house watching from inside their cars. I think we had a better view. And we didn't have to deal with traffic after the show.

On the actual Independence Day, we went to a BBQ at a friends house, ate lots of yummy food and then went home. We didn't feel like staying out late to see the city's fireworks display.

We went to a church picnic and there was a dessert contest. I made a Peach Cobbler. It was amazingly delicious, the best peach cobbler I've ever had. I thought for sure I would win. The dessert that did win? It had a fudgy brownie like layer, chocolate pudding on that, and topped with cool whip. Are you kidding me? That beat my peach cobbler?! I do have to admit the winning dessert was very tasty (especially if the maker of the dessert reads this blog) and I can see why people liked it. But really?! Maybe I watch too many Food Network competitions. It's about more than just taste (and I still think mine had superior taste). You should get points for originality (buttermilk in the topping gave just the right tang paired with the sweet peaches, and almond extract gave the filling more depth and flavor), skill and effort (all from scratch! It took 30 minutes just to peel and cut the fresh peaches) and presentation (an egg wash and sugar sprinkled on top made the cobbler look perfectly golden brown and shiny. Mmmmmm...).  The same thing happened last year at the picnic/dessert competition. I made lemon bars (again from scratch, fresh lemons) and they lost out to brownies. BROWNIES!! I'm not sharing my delicious desserts anymore.

Moral of the story: I am bad at losing.