GRADUATING FROM AN INFANT CARRIER

Somebody had to graduate from the infant car-seat carrier to a big boy rear facing car-seat!

(waking up from a nap in your new seat)

I don't feel as though you are much bigger than your brother at 7 months, but even after loosening the straps as much as we could, in order to buckle your car-seat  we had to pinch your chubby thighs. So, you have been upgraded. I think you like that you can see Gage more, but you hate that you are not as reclined. The first two days were awful. You have since learned how to fall asleep with your head dangling to the side and you seem much happier!

7 MONTHS

You are the best eater. You eat rice cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, and fruit and veggies for lunch and dinner with bottles in between if necessary. You love all food. And when I say "love" I mean "LOVE." Its not uncommon for you to start crying and grab the spoon yourself and shove it in your mouth. Apparently mom and dad are just too slow! You have even started eating finger foods and snacking off mom's plate. The other night we went to a pizzeria for dinner and you contently sat in a high chair chewing on crust for the entire dinner.

Your favorite toy in whole wide world is a blue plastic hammer. Dad calls it your Thor Hammer. You push it around and suck on it, occasionally hit yourself during the course of the whole day.

Remember how I said you were sleeping 8pm-8am? Well, that lasted approximately two weeks. Then we went through a period you started to wake up at 4am yelling until we put your pacifier back in. A few weeks later you were making it til 6am before crying, I would put your pacifier in and you would sleep til 9am. I felt like we were finally making some serious progress, until last week. You started waking up at 3am and again at 5am, never to eat, you just needed attention. The more often I had to go down to get you the more I noticed that it wasn't the pacifier at all. If I was near your bedside you fell back asleep, and if you noticed I had left, you burst into tears. Time for another round of sleep training?

You are always on the move, in a very non traditional way. You can get absolutely anything you want by simply hopping onto your knees and throwing your body out as far as you can and getting back up to start it over. We now have to keep pants on you because your knees got such bad rug burn one day that they started to bleed. You hate being left along, so when I am in the kitchen cooking, its only a matter of minutes before I feel you tugging at my pants for attention.

You fake cry for attention, it sounds kinda like "ya, ya, ya, ya ya!" You fake laugh to be a part of the conversation, it sounds kinda like a miner's cough. And you yell when you are mad, it sounds a lot like "ma, ma, ma, ma ma!"

You no longer use a pacifier during the day, but you like to have it go go to sleep.

You are getting really great at playing by yourself. I sit/stand you in front of your activity table and you bang away for a good 20-30mins unattended. You have not yet figured out how to get from a sitting position to your knees without falling over first, so once you feel your independent playing time is over you start to yell at me to turn you over.

You love electronics. You have even figured out how to do a 4 finger swipe on the iPad and switch to the previous app we were using. This interference causes a lot of problems when you and Gage are watching a show on the iPad. But if I switch the iPad out for a remote controller you seem just fine. You even managed to kill momma's phone by drooling. How you got it in the first place I have no idea. Guess momma better get better at keeping valuable away from you.

Your spitting up has slowed! I say that with excitement. I can't contribute it to baby food, because when we first started you on baby food you were spitting that up too. You still need a bib during most of the day, but I don't need extra outfits for you and me for every outing. I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

You get shy when anyone comes close and you like to bury your face in my neck. You have started crying when you see me leave the room, but as long as I leave without your eagle eyes on me you will go to anyone and play without noticing I'm gone.

We are loving your sweet personality. You have the roundest cutest head, and these puffy kissable cheeks. You carry all your fat in your thighs, your dad tells you often that you get that from me. Momma and Daddy lie awake at night thinking about how fun you have become and it takes everything we have to not go pick you up out of bed and cuddle you.

CHRISTMAS

(A Christmas sneak peak)

We always start Christmas off on the 24th with your Grandma and Grandpa. Its like your cousins hadn't seen you in years, they wanted nothing more than to make you laugh. Gavin think that squishing your cheeks together is the trick. Following a ham dinner is a Christmas themed message. This year as Grandpa read excerpts from Luke, all the cousins got to open little presents. Each present was a part of the nativity. Next we attempted to do a little musical number with pipes. I say "attempted" because I think everyone in attendance would agree we failed. Next we opened jammies. This is  momma's favorite part, I love new warm jammies on my soft sweet babies. Lastly, we open ornaments. You got your very first snowman ornament to add to your special Christmas tree.

Once we finish our festivities upstairs all the cousins line up and head down stairs to see their stocking and open presents. Its a wild experience, and it becomes more wild the bigger this family gets. You cried a few times because you have a hard time with loud noises, just like momma. Your favorite gift byfar was not even a gift, but the ribbon with a bell on it used to wrap your gift. Go figure!

As expected, you fell asleep on the drive home. You slept surprisingly well despite being very much off your schedule, you made it to 8:30am. You got lots of loves from your daddy while we waited for Gage to get up at 11am. We spent Christmas morning with Nana and Papa. Santa brought you a sit to stand activity table. You and Gage fight for it on a regular basis. Its the one toy you can spend 20 minutes playing without interruption.

We had a yummy omelet bar for brunch and hung out drinking WAY too much juice until it was time to drive North to Great Gma's house. You were welcomed by lots of mommy's cousins who just couldn't believe what a happy baby you were. On the occasion you got tired, Papa was there to bounce you. By midnight you finally were ready to turn in and were over all the excitement.

It was a successful Christmas with lots of food, fun and family.

FESTIVITIES

A lot of wild sledding, gingerbread making, temple light seeing, and Christmas tree decorating went down last month. Tis' the season for festivities, and we certainly made the most of it.

6 MONTHS

You weigh a whopping 18lbs 13oz. You officially weigh nearly 2 pounds heavier than every other baby we know around your age. Everyone agrees, you are solid.

This month you mastered an army crawl. The moment the Christmas tree went up you were doing laps. I would put you my room, minutes later you were attacking the bows on all of the presents, and then we would start over. I started to regret putting the presents out so early.

You sit up now, but you hate it. You are normally whining or crying because you can't figure out how to get back on your tummy. You like that you are mobile, it means you can reach whatever you want, and momma doesn't normally put you close to anything while you are sitting.

The spitting up has not slowed, and your nana is giving me no sympathy. Dr. Schmidt says that most babies grow out of this by the time they are 8 months so we have to wait before he will even consider medication. I think all of our clothes, and our over worked washing machine are pretty sad about it.

You love to be held more than anything in the world. Papa came to visit and everyone was amazed how long you would stay happy beyond your nap time as he bounced you for hours.

You are eating pureed vegetables. Sweet potatoes are your favorite. 2/3 of the way through a vegetable you start making sour faces, but if I mix in another flavor you can down close to 7 oz. You still prefer to have bottles, because bottles equal cuddles.

You have this special way of really bugging your brother. You seemed to be obsessed with anything he is touching and you maul him until you can touch it too. Cries are inevitable, but never from you, always from Gage who knows he is not allowed to push or shove you, but is struggling with learning how to share.

Your most favorite toy in the whole world a a string, or anything that resembles string, like hair.

I love your little personality. I love that you have developed a little stranger danger and that you need me. I love that you can smile with a binky in, and that you have a fake cry and a fake laugh. I love that you are healthy and strong, so so strong. It is such a joy to watch you grow, but I am ready for you to stop.

SLEEP TRAINING

(snuggling close to your giant teddy)

Remember when I said you were sleeping 10pm-7am? Shortly after writing that, things changed. It became harder and harder for you to stay awake late, sounds great for momma right? Wrong. You did indeed start going to sleep earlier, around 8pm, but would only nap for an hour and want to play for another three before dozing off for the night.

At first it didn't bother me too much. It made putting Gage to bed at 8:30pm a lot easier when you are not pulling at his face or trying to eat the bedtime book. So, for about a week you were sleeping 12am-7am. And then things changed, again. Next thing I know you are waking up at 5am. So we went from 10pm-7am to 12am-5am? I don't think so!

Sleep training an almost 6 month old in the same room as a 2 year old is nearly impossible. For a few night momma and daddy brought you in our room to cry it out. But two nights of absolutely no sleep and a baby that was losing his voice from so much crying seemed worse than having to stay up late and get back up early.

So, we had a sleepover in mom and dad's room and sadly you were not invited. We brought Gage's mattress in our room, turned off the monitors  and three nights later you were sleeping 12 hours straight, 8pm-8am like a champ. On the rare occasion you wake up in the middle of the night you no longer whine and cry, you just talk to yourself back to sleep. Loving that you are a good sleeper.

THE DAY THE CARSEAT SAVED YOUR LIFE

I have always questioned the actual ability a plastic carseat would have to save your life in an accident. I can proudly say our infant carseat did the job in the Smith's parking lot. More than a week later and I still can't shake the nerves that come with recalling the horrific event. And as hard as I try to remember the details, I can't understand for the life of me exactly how it even happened in the first place, but I will do my best.

Costco trips happen every 2 weeks. You see we only ever venture to Costco when you run out of formula, otherwise we find ourselves spending WAY too much money WAY too often on pointless stuff. Lucky for us you are a pretty consistent baby and go through exactly one case of formula every seven days. It was time to restock on 2 more cases but unfortunately daddy was not working a schedule that would allow him to join  us. It was the weekend following Thanksgiving, and you can imagine how ridiculously busy it was with Christmas shopping. After our cart was hit 3 times by aggressive shoppers and Gage ran away once to see a giant train set, Momma decided there was no way we were going to enjoy Costco, so we grabbed your formula and decided to finish up the remainder of our grocery shopping at Smiths. We spent an unnecessarily long time at Smiths because somewhere between Costco and SMiths mom lost the shopping list. Finally, after looking for curry powder for a half hour, making you and Gage both wait for naps, and then realizing they were out of curry powder, I was anxious to just get out of there and finish shopping another day.

Upon exiting Smiths we had a 10 yard walk to the car, it was simply a matter of waiting for the cars to pass, walking across the street to the second parking stall. If only it happened like that, and like every other time we had been to Smiths before that. Instead, I had two cranky babies, and a ton of traffic in this small parking lot. We patiently waited for the cars to pass, then got the ok to go ahead and cross. I  grabbed Gage's hand and began to push you in the cart. At that moment Gage lifted his feet so I was dragging him, we hit a crack in the road with our cart and next thing i know your carseat is no longer in the cart it is rolling the remaining 5 yards to the car. In a panic I ditch the cart, make the polite car wait, drag your brother and scream chasing down your carseat. I couldn't seem to get you unstrapped fast enough. Now that I was holding you my tears begin to stream perfusely, Gage is scraped up and screaming and yet the only one to actually get into a life threatening accident is calm in momma's arms.

A nice lady came running to our rescue and pushed our cart to the car and helped unload it. After getting both of you boys in the car I stayed in that parking lot for another 10 minutes crying and thanking my Heavenly Father. In hindsight the thought of you rolling makes your dad chuckle but all I can think about is the number of times that I have unstrapped you while shopping and if that had been the case today my sweet baby may have had some serious injuries.

SO grateful for carseats, and for babies that can peacefully dose off on the car ride home following a traumatic experience. Here are the battle wounds that followed your first accident.