Wes is 3 1/2 (quickly approaching 4), and Carissa is almost 10 months. She has two bottom front teeth and is getting a new tooth on top in front.

Wes likes to help Carissa play–mostly by dumping as many toys in her lap as he can find.

Carissa takes it in stride.

Carissa isn’t crawling yet but getting close. She likes to stand. If your fingers are within reach she’ll grab on and pull herself up. Today we found her standing up in her crib for the first time, clinging to the side.

The Parade of Homes is happening, which is a great excuse to walk through multi-million-dollar homes, admire the finery, and think about how much work it’d be to keep it clean. I start looking forward to Parade of Homes every year in January, so not much can keep me away. But it is a lot more effort to go with two little kids.

This year Wes gets to wear the blue booties.

As far as I know, I made this up.

I was baking cookies and decided to put some cookie dough in the bottom of a mini graham cracker pie crust. I baked it and then topped it with ice cream.

Um. Yum.

So here’s the step-by-step.

1. Take mini graham cracker pie crusts (I used Keebler Ready Crust) and press cookie dough into the bottom of each.

(Every time I make cookies I only make part of the batch and store the rest in the freezer. I happened to have whole wheat chocolate chip cookie dough and snickerdoodle cookie dough on hand in the freezer.)

2. Bake the crust and cookie dough at 350 degrees for the approximate time that the cookie is supposed to bake. For my cookies it was about 10 minutes.

Here they are, cooked.

3. Let it cool a smidge, and then top it with ice cream and any other toppings you want.

For the chocolate chip cookie pie I used monster cookie ice cream (from Target). The snickerdoodle pie was amazing with strawberry cheesecake ice cream (also from Target).

This is the snickerdoodle pie cut in half with the monster cookie ice cream.

And here’s Carissa. I was trying to get a shot of her pulling herself up onto her knees to play, but she wouldn’t cooperate.

(This is from our flight to California in April. She was a good girl on the plane.)

Before I forget, I wanted to record some things Carissa has accomplished on her way to Big Girlhood.

1. She is sleeping in a crib. Finally. Gone is her cradle. Which means I got to pull out the sweet pink and green crib bedding I’ve had packed away forever, waiting for this Big Girl moment to arrive!

2. She is feeding herself cereal puffs. She can pick up food between her thumb and index finger and put it to her mouth. She gums the food well (in spite of my constant fear of choking) and is eating baby food so much better and more frequently than she used to. She prefers baby oatmeal, rice cereal, and pureed vegetables to anything sweet like pears or peaches. Strange girl.

3. She is so curious and her fingers are constantly reaching for something to explore. This could be good or it could be a bad omen, suggesting she will get herself into lots of trouble later.

4. She can get herself into a sitting position from lying down. Now when I go into her room after nap time she often greets me sitting up. Looks like we got her out of the cradle in the nick of time.

5. She is so close to crawling. From the sitting position she’ll put her hands down and be almost on all fours (sometimes her back leg is bent under too far), and she’ll rock back and forth. I can’t believe how far she’s come in the last few months. I remember distinctly how she hated tummy time and didn’t push herself up off her tummy with her arms extended, and I would think, “When will she ever crawl?” Well, she’s getting close!

6. She babbles a little. “Da da” and cooing is common. I love to hear her sweet girl voice. Definitely different than Wesley’s little boy voice. She also growls sometimes.

7. Her hair is getting longer! The bald spot in back is nearly grown in. And the hair over her forehead is so long it covers her eyes if it’s not swept to the side. Time to buy more hair clippies!

8. She loves looking outside. If Wes is playing in the sandbox I’ll set her in a chair by the door so she can watch. It is the easiest form of babysitting I know.

9. She’s nine months old, which means she’s nearly one. Which means she’s hardly a baby anymore and soon won’t be one at all. Sad and good, all at once.

Wes and Carissa are getting so big. Wes is 3 1/2, and Carissa just peaked at 6 months.

Wesley’s latest thing is saying “Me!” whenever he wants something or to do something. I think he must have learned that one at school. I think it’s kind of cute and a good thing that he’s learning to express his independence.

I keep paper and crayons in a drawer near the kitchen. Wes discovered this, and he also noticed that when he would scribble a picture I’d put it on the fridge. After the first two pictures went up, he pulled out all the paper (which, thankfully, wasn’t a huge stack) and drew on all of them, each picture less elaborate than the last, and then took them one-by-one to the fridge for me to hang. We now have an art gallery.

Carissa turned 6 months on Tuesday. Once she got past the newborn stage, she was in that “little baby” stage for a long time. But lately I’ve been thinking she’s looking older, and I can kind of start to envision how she’ll look and be as a one-year-old. No, I’m not ready to think about that yet.

She is great at holding her head up. She’ll roll from her back onto her side to play with toys, but she hasn’t made it a habit to roll all the way over to her tummy. She smiles a lot and I like to make her laugh. She loves her brother, and he loves her. He likes it when we tickle her because he likes it when she smiles and laughs. And then he tries to tickle her, but he’s not really effective yet.

It was warm enough one day this month that I could think of no reason to keep Wes out of the backyard. He bee-lined for the sandbox.

Wes likes to look at books. We cleared off an entire shelf on our bookcase in the living room and devoted it to his books only. But, of course, what do I find him looking at most often? My Harry Potter collection. I think he likes the feel of the pages in his hands and likes to flip through them. However, my HP books are wearing out pretty fast.

Here he is browsing a magazine while eating a snack.

He likes to do this:

He is also getting closer to climbing out of this crib, so we’re trying him again in the big boy bed. As long as we lie right next to him until he falls asleep, and he doesn’t wake up and wander out prematurely, and he doesn’t fall out of bed, it’s fine. We’ve sandwiched the toddler bed between the walls and a higher twin mattress to keep him from rolling out. We tried him in the bed overnight last night. I heard the door open at 4:15 a.m., and out he padded in his Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas. I put him in the crib after that, because I was so tired myself (Carissa didn’t sleep through the night) that I couldn’t handle any more loss of sleep.

Carissa usually does sleep through the night, and has been since about the four-month mark (she’s five months now). But lately she has woken now and again at night needing attention. I assume it’s because she’s growing and needing more nutrition.

I took her to the doctor for her well-child check last week. She’s about a foot long and weighs 12 lbs 15 oz. She’s growing, but the doctor expressed concern about her weight. She’s never been a giant, but she’s not gaining weight at a steady rate. At two weeks she was in the 41st percentile for weight, at two months she was in the 30’s somewhere, and now she’s 11th percentile. He suggested starting solid foods.

So I stocked up on some rice cereal and basic baby foods. Oh boy, it’s time to start that all over again.

When Wes saw Carissa wearing a bib, he led me to the pantry where the bibs are and gestured that he wanted one too. So they were matchy matchy during lunchtime.

It’ll be good for her to get some meat on her bones. Here she is in pants size 3-6 months. She’s five months, so you’d think they’d fit. But they look like mom pants.

She looked a little better once I added the jacket.

She is strong holding her head up now, and likes to sit in this chair we borrowed from my sister. I like it, too, because it keeps her entertained.

I saw her roll from her back onto her tummy today for the first time. I’m not sure if it was on purpose or not, but it was the first time she’s done it, regardless!

She sometimes gets super giggly when she’s tired. Like she’s really happy and loving to laugh and then suddenly she’ll turn the corner and she’s totally cranky and ready for a nap. It’s fun to make her laugh.

I just discovered she likes peek-a-boo.

Here we are at snack time.

She’s not super keen on eating real food, yet.