7 months & 3y3m

 jackson! 17 lbs, 2 oz, about 1.5 lbs heavier than mya at this age!
he is keeping our hands full. might be going through a sleep regression/mental leap, but the last few days, he's been hard to put down for sleep (will cry immediately once set in bed) and requires someone to carry him for 5-10m before he actually goes down. we do see that he IS learning a lot these few days, it's very apparent - so it could be a mental leap. fingers crossed! as of now i guess you could say, he's needing some assistance when he sleeps. hopefully we don't have to do sleep training again, but at least it should be a little easier when they're a little older.
unfortunately he still wakes up about 2-3x a night. i'm not quite sure if it's to nurse or out of habit, but most of the time he does eat. i'm a little worried that sleeping through the night may affect my milk supply negatively (as it did with mya) so i'm continuing to nurse in the middle of the night for now, even though i think all the books say that if they're over 15 lbs or so, they should be able to go through the night without milk. i'm gonna at least continue for the next month and see what happens.

some of these milestones are just from the last few days (hence me thinking he's going thru a mental leap)!:
- twists a lot more now to his side and SOMETIMES can go from both back to belly, as well as belly to back. most of the time he still complains while he's on his tummy though so he doesn't QUITE know how to roll around fluidly just yet
- LOVES to grab his feet and eat his toes. so funny because mya never did that, at least not as much as he does!
- can start sitting with a bit of assistance for a few secs on his own, when grabbing his toes or putting his hands to his side
- can transfer items from hand to hand and can def tell his hand control is much better when holding toys or grabbing foods
- still loves to stare at Mya
- got his first ear infection (Mya never had any) and pink-eye so was on antibiotics for 10 days. overall at least his mood didn't seem affected but it caused a lot of diarrhea
- discovered his arms/hands near the beginning of the month.. as of the last few days, he also loves looking down at his feet lol

Mya!
tells us now when we make her sad or just expresses/is more in-tune of her feelings, though i think she also now knows to use it to her advantage. she does this LITERAL sad face that looks like quivering anime eyes and it's so hard to reject! sometimes when we tell her not to do something, she immediately does a big pout and runs away
we visited the Harford County library for the first time and it had a lot of activities! think we went there 2x in the last 3 weeks and she really loves it! gets more and more brave with trying out new toys every time, even when people are around.
said outright that she missed po po and wanted to see po po. i think she misses her when it's just me for the weekend and she's down one companion and notices the void :(
finally watches new shows!! new semi-fav is chip and potato. she's also watched a few new episodes of a bread show and trolls, we'll see if anything sticks.
helps grabs pjs + diapers for jackson after bathtime
finally over roasted chicken skin (sometimes doesn't eat it at all!) but surprisingly still likes chicken skin from poached chicken
fav recently is 'bouncy noodles' (ramen -- we cook it in chicken broth with none of the seasoning so she at least gets SOME nutrition..)
LOVES cauliflower (most times it's offered) and still loves all of her fruit.
loves sucking juices out of fruit lol (to carlo's dismay)
tells us when her tummy hurts (most usually it's constipation -- her poops are really big!)
she got kid-safe scissors from this set i got her, and she caught on to using it fairly quickly!
can climb in and out of her car seat pretty well now
asks for things to buy at the store now and she has really good memory. right now she's keeping tabs on a train, some books, and a guitar lol. also at the end of a lot of children's books, they have pics of other books the author wrote and she looks/asks for those
keeps talking about going strawberry/blueberry picking after we were talking about it this time around last year.. but we have to keep explaining that it's not quite in season yet (it's not warm enough yet and it has to be sunny!... "but it IS warm today..!").. ahh reasoning with a toddler gets even harder when they get smarter..
- started possibly being scared of the dark. might be a 3yo sleep regression in being more aware of their surroundings.
- loves to recognize and randomly recite letters that she sees

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OTHER THINGS
went to the DC zoo! i don't think we've been to the zoo since we left NY and she was 18m old, so i don't know if she remembers it at all, but she loved this trip!
we bought an ice cream sundae to share while in dc and she was thankfully really gracious about sharing. she REALLY wanted to hold on to it so we were scared she was gonna eat it all by herself.
got to see randy + kathy (and his mom + sister!) of course, mya was shy and wanted to hide behind the book that they got her almost the entire time >_> lol