Oh, September, How I Love You!

My favorite month is already halfway over!  How did that happen?  This is what we've been up to this month....

Jon and I celebrated our SEVENTH wedding anniversary!  We took this picture that day.  Hah!  Just kidding.  This photo was taken the day we got married at a very casual bonfire with our closest friends and families that night after the ceremony.  I was such a happy girl and he still makes me a very happy girl on a daily basis.

Whitt is a full-time, non-swaddling crib sleeper now.  Yay!  The only thing is, he likes to push his face and/or head up against the bumpers (just like his sisters did) which makes me a nervous wreck.  However, I just keep telling myself his sisters did the same thing and he's so mobile now, I know he could roll away if he needed to.

His sisters had fun decorating or tormenting him while he was in his exersaucer one day.

Jon told me not to put this picture on social media, so I didn't.  My blog doesn't count because it's my scrapbook, right?  I was cooking dinner one night and the girls were laughing hysterically.  I walked around the island to see what the commotion was all about.  I laughed hysterically, too.  Jon did not.

We've had a lot of rainy days this month.  One morning all three of my babies piled in bed with me.  I wanted to stay there all day, but in reality it only lasted about 15 minutes.

Adeline started tap this year.  We are so excited!  She's done ballet for about three years now, and this year she was finally old enough to add tap.  She calls it "tap tap."

My girls one Friday morning before we took Adeline to school.

And when you can't carry the baby AND the laundry back to the bedroom, you put the baby in the laundry basket.  Problem solved!

Adeline's been taking piano since this summer, but we aren't always so good about practicing.  So, when we do practice, I like to document it..hah!  She loves that piano sometimes involves coloring sheets.  When I had the grand idea of enrolling her in piano, I didn't really think it through.  I was imagining it to be like dance.  Something I can take her to once a week and she can learn something.  Duh!  I took piano once, too.  I just forgot about all the practice it involves.  However, she loves it and is doing so well.  She knows where Middle C & G is.  She can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in its entirety, and she's learning all about rhythm and other musical aspects.  She really has a knack for music so I think this is something she will excel at.  If only her parents will remember to help her practice!

One of the rainy days we've had this month has fallen on a Saturday.  We spent all day in our pjs.

Adeline was supposed to be napping one Sunday afternoon.  She snuck out of her room and cuddled on the couch with her daddy.

Our friend Katie Lane had a birthday swimming party and look who came to visit!  There were a lot of excited little girls there!

Jon had his company picnic that same day.  All that partying wore Little Brother out.

 We had a big giant harvest blood moon last week.  It messed with my kids' heads.  Annabel and Adeline were up for over an hour in the middle of the night two different nights that week.  Crazy!  They never do that.  This little stinker was proud of herself the next morning.

Typical September weather...some days it's cold and rainy, some days hot and sunny.  We spent one of the hot and sunny afternoons outside.  Whitt can sit up in the grass, but not inside on the hard floor.  I guess the grass gives him a little extra support.

Love this girl's sense of style.

And Annabel finally got to start "school" or Kids Day Out.  She was ecstatic to finally get to go.

Whitt got a runny nose, cough, and low-grade fever last week.  I was so worried about him, but the doctor checked him all out and couldn't find anything wrong other than two tiny little bottom teeth trying to come through.  We've done lots of snuggling in between nose suctions and tylenol administrations.

This little Goldilocks said about her oatmeal one morning: I don't like it too hot or too cold, I like it just right.

Getting so big!

But still likes to sleep in Mommy's arms.  :)

Annabel got a princess greenhouse for her birthday from a friend.  Jon and the girls got it all set up yesterday.  They can't wait for the flowers to grow.

She said, "put this 'stamp' on my forehead, please!"  She keeps us laughing.

Up next...Annabel's birthday party!

Whitt - 4 Months

Whitt is four months old now!  Can't believe it!

His stats today are:
Weight: 14lb 5oz - 50%
Height: 26in - 85%
Head circumference: 17 1/4in - 75%

He's a growing boy! I'm so proud of him because he's finally transitioned out of the rock & play and into his crib and he's no longer being swaddled.  It's still a work in progress, but he's doing better every day.  Woohoo!

His routine:

7am: wake up & nurse

8:45-10:30: nap

10:30am: nurse

11:30: rice cereal

12pm-2: nap

2:00pm: nurse

4-4:45pm: nap

5pm: nurse

6:00: rice cereal

6:30: nurse

7:15: nurse

7:30: bath

8:00: pumped bottle & bed

I'm a lot more flexible with him than I was with the girls, because I have to be when there's three kiddos, so that routine is just a general time frame of things.

He's trying to sit up on his own.  He's rolling from back to tummy, but not very frequently.  The pediatrician told me today that his verbal skills are really advanced.  He's making several consonant sounds and inflections like he's trying to make sentences.  He says "momma" a lot, but I think he's just practicing that "m" sound.  I don't really think he's calling me that. He also has the "g" sound down.  

His sisters can always make him laugh or smile.  He's enamored with Jon.  He lights up when Jon gets home from work and spends most of the evening in Daddy's arms.  Jon can really get him on a roll laughing.  

Oh, Whitt!  I'm in love with you, sweet boy!

The End of August

Whew!  August has been a busy and exhausting month!  Let me fill you in...

We started putting Whitt in his high-chair at mealtimes so he could feel like a part of the conversation.  He wasn't too impressed at first, but Adeline was excited for him to be sitting near her.

This boy is so strong.  He can already almost sit up by himself.  Crazy!

Annabel has been enjoying getting some time alone with Mommy while Whitt takes his morning nap and Adeline is at school.  She asks to "play a game with me!" about a hundred times a day.

We are so blessed that Jon gets to come home and eat lunch with us almost every day.  We look forward to it all morning and Annabel always asks him, "Why do you have to go back to work?"

Our church has a kickoff Sunday at the end of summer every year and they ask that we wear Razorback red.  We have way too much TCU Horned Frog pride for that!

That leads us to the week from you know where as far as Whitt's sleeping habits.  He'd been napping on a perfect schedule every day and sleeping 11 hours straight at night.  Then last Sunday he decided he wasn't ok with that and refused to nap at all.  He finally fell asleep on my chest late in the afternoon.

At the same time, he also decided he wanted to roll over in his rock & play.  Not cool.  He was about to slip out of the bottom, not to mention smother himself against the side.  What three month old can turn over from back to tummy, while swaddled and in the rock & play?

He was pretty proud of himself, though.  And who can be mad at this cute face?

Adeline colored this horse and said, "I'm going to take this picture to the pumpkin patch and show that man & tell him he needs to get a horse like this so I can ride it."  Hilarious!

I fixed her hair like this for school one morning.  She liked it, but she said, "my hair looks like a nest with a bird in it!"

Back to the sleeping situation...  I knew it was time to get him out of the rock & play and also out of the swaddle since he was turning over onto his face.  It was TORTURE!  He pretty much didn't nap all week long and I would still swaddle him and put him in the rock & play at night because I just had to get some sleep.  I started thinking that maybe he wasn't napping well because he was hungry.  I know, I know.  You go through everything you can think of when your baby isn't happy.  So, we started rice cereal just a tad bit early.  I know a lot of pediatricians these days recommend not starting any solids at all until six months if they're breastfed babies.  However, we started rice cereal at four months with our girls and Jon wanted to do the same with Whitt.  He thinks that maybe our girls are such good eaters because of something we did along the way, so he wants to do everything exactly the same.  Understandable!  So, anyway, Whitt has started eating rice cereal and he loves it!

After a terrible week of trying to get Whitt to sleep in his crib without being swaddled, I was about to pull out my hair and poor little Annabel had had no attention from me all week.  My sweet friend, Mollie, offered to spend the morning with her on Friday and took her and her daughter, Caroline to the pool.  So thankful for her!

 They also got to eat lunch and play dress-up at her house.

We got a bit of a cool front over the weekend, so we went to the park one evening.  Jon put Whitt in the swing.  Cracks me up!

So early on Friday morning, Whitt decided he'd wake up at 6am and try to flip himself out of the rock & play.  I knew then that we had to put that thing away and go to the crib full-time.  He slept all night in his crib for the first time on Friday night.  We celebrated with a crib party Saturday morning!

Jon and Annabel did a little bit of grocery shopping over the weekend.  Annabel likes to play with the stuff in his truck when she rides in it.

I got tired of a cluttered fridge, so we made this to solve that problem.  The girls love it.

Saturday night we got a newlywed couple to keep all three of our kids and we went to a Natural's game with our friends.  It was so much fun!  And the kids and the sitters did great!

And then in the middle of the night on Saturday I woke up to all this racket in Whitt's room.  I went in and he'd turned himself completely around in the bed and was at the opposite end of the crib.  He'd also broken out of the swaddle (I was still swaddling him at night).  So, that had to be the end of the swaddle, too.  Wow!  I didn't break my girls of the swaddle until 5 months, but he's showing me all the time that he's a boy and a whole lot stronger than they were.

So now, I think he's finally gotten it down.  I had to resort to the crying out method, which I hate, but nothing else was working, and trust me, I tried EVERYTHING.  So now, I put him in bed for naps and at night and he cries for maybe five minutes, then he's out.  He's still waking up earlier than normal or once during the night now as he adjusts to not being swaddled, but I expect it to get better every day.  I'm hopeful that he'll be back to sleeping a full, uninterrupted eleven hours soon.

My little man before church on Sunday.

And we went to the lake with friends Sunday afternoon.  I told Adeline to get ready for the lake and she came in like this.  Hah!  Tinkerbell high heels!

So the last week of August was absolutely exhausting, thanks to Whitt, but now I'm glad we did the crib and the swaddle all at once and now we're past that!  Hallelujah!