This is Us: 9

In terms of Grant, this month was a big month for our family. Grant just got big...

-He now has 4 teeth

-He's gotten better at crawling, can go for a bit on all fours but still prefers army crawling. But really, he's just ready to forget crawling altogether and move on to walking. He pulls himself up on EVERYTHING, and just wants to be standing.

-I believe that his first word is "Mama." He's said it for awhile, but I'm now at the point that I think he knows what it means.

-Just this last week he started going up the stairs. I know what everyone says: "When they start going up the stairs life gets so much harder," and "You really don't want them to walk because then they're just in to everything." I disagree. For the last couple months, Grant just cries when I leave him at the bottom of the stairs. So, yes, for the next month or so, the stairs make life scarier, but I'm so glad that now he can get where he wants to go and doesn't feel so helpless. And, yes, I could basically skip crawling. It grosses me out for them to be on the floor so much, and so frustrated that they can't do what they want. I'd take "getting in to stuff" over that any day. (I'll let you know in the next 6 months or so if I'm eating my words.) My bet at this point is that Grant will be walking by Christmas.

-And most exciting in my book is that on September 17th, Grant slept through the night for the first time EVER!!! That was A. Big. Deal. Before that point the longest he had ever slept was like 6 hours and that had only happened a handful of times. I have no idea what happened to put him over the edge. I would like to believe that it was something we did, but, let's face it, I have no control in my life. Around 6 months, I tried to do some type of "sleep training" for about 3 weeks straight: whether it was just giving him his binky when he started crying, just re-swaddling him, and eventually letting him cry it out for 4 or 5 nights straight. For those 3 weeks, I vowed that whatever I tried, that I just wouldn't feed him between the hours of 11 and 5. (6 hours for a 20 lb. 6-month old is absolutely feasible.) But eventually, life happened and it just got easier to go back to feeding him whenever he woke up. At about 7 months, I started to slowly wean him from breastfeeding. I just felt like he was getting distracted from eating and it was easier to chase him around with a bottle than chase him down with (the alternative.) But then, when he was finally solely being formula-fed, I was so bummed that it hadn't made a difference in him sleeping. Now I wonder if that did eventually help, or if he just finally got old enough to figure out sleeping. Anyway, we finally got to the point that Josh and I slept on the couches downstairs because I was sick of hearing his every move. So magically, on the 17th, he slept for 9 hours, and 11 hours a couple nights later. Since then, he's only waken up to eat before 6 probably 2 or 3 times. The only problem was that he was still in our room because he does sometimes still wake up in the middle of the night and cry for 2 or 3 minutes but he puts himself back to sleep. However, because of that I was still nervous about having him in the same room with Meili. However, as I said, we were sleeping downstairs, our lives weren't working anymore, and I was at my breaking point. So we had Grant try sleeping in his crib for 3 nights without Meili (he always sleeps in his crib for naps, but at night he was in a Pack-n-Play in our room) and Meili slept in our bed. So last week, it was time. Grant got his eviction notice from our room, I finally decided that Meili has always been such a good sleeper that I couldn't see Grant disrupting her that much, and we tried it out for a night. Ah.... we are never going back. It has been an awesome transition, and I can't say how much I love being able to go in my room at night, turn the light on, make as much noise as I want, read in bed if I want. Ah....

Enough of that. Here's pictures...

I took Grant and Meili to visit Josh's niece at UVU for her birthday. A couple of us went to dinner together, and Liz loved the mess that my family made at Golden Corral. Yep, that's pretty much what it always looks like after dinner with the two kiddos.

The picture isn't great but our stake did a night family fun run, and Meili and Grant both fell asleep in the stroller. I thought they were so cute all cuddled up together.

I went to Black Island Farms cornmaze/pumpkin patch with Josh's brother and sister-in-law. Both Grant and Meili loved this big corn kernel sandbox.

Hours later I was still finding corn in Grant's shorts.

My nephew Winslow with my sister-in-law Kami, and Meili.

We even got to go on a little hayride out to the pumpkin patch to pick our very own pumpkins.

Brayden was all tuckered out.

On Saturday, I took Meili to Willow Park's "Boo at the Zoo." Her costume is currently in the mail, so she dressed up as "miscellaneous princess," not to be confused with Elsa which was every single other girl her age at the zoo.

There are a lot of these pictures, but I thought it was hilarious that I took 30 pictures of Meili and didn't get any really great ones. I sat Grant down on the haystacks and...