5 months

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Drew is growing up way too fast!  Yesterday marked 5 months since his arrival.  Carly commented yesterday that next month will be huge cause he’ll be able to do so many new things.  Six months seems to be the usual answer I give when the kids ask about a new stage:  When will Drew get teeth?  When can he eat baby food?  When will Drew sit up on his own?  When will he sit with us at the table?

As I prepared his 5 month post I realized I haven’t taken many pictures this month.  I need to get out the camera more!  For now, here’s a bit about Drew at 5 months.

Drew’s long dark wisps of hair have been replaced by a pretty even layer of lighter peach fuzz.

I mentioned in our “nailed it” post that we set up his crib.  So rest assured I’m no longer cramming him in a bassinet that is too small for his growing body.  This is the first time ever that we've set a crib up in our bedroom.  Not sure how long we'll keep him there, but I'm not ready yet to send him across the house to room with Jason.  Jason however is excited and ready to share a room with his little brother.

I've started to be more protective about noise while Drew is sleeping.   There are times it's amazing what he can sleep through, but he's not as unaware as he used to be. 

Typically takes a good 2-3 hour nap in the morning, a few hours after he wakes up for the day.  He needs another nap in the afternoon, but that can be harder to get him down for and not as consistent. 

Drew still sleeps swaddled. 

Last month I mentioned I was hopeful that Drew still took a bottle on occasion.  Turns out he has zero interest.  There have only been a few occasions this past month where we've tried and in the end the only way we got the bottle down was by squirting it in his mouth.   I'm bummed we slacked off with keeping this consistent, but I figure he'll be able to eat baby food here in the next month so it won't be a huge deal. 

Blows bubbles, though it often just resembles spitting.  It's adorable. 

Drew is happy to get his diaper changed and loves getting bathed.

Drew’s eyes are still blue.  As I looked through old pictures of Jason it looks like his eyes didn’t change to brown until he was around five or six months so we’ll see if Drew keeps his baby blues or not.

Reaches out for toys and can grab things on purpose.   If I'm taking him out of his car seat or swing he'll arch his back like he's willing himself to me. 

While I was upstairs getting ready last Friday while Justin was home Drew rolled over for the first time ever.  Justin was excited to witness a "first" and even thought to grab the camera to document the milestone. 

Earlier that morning I took a picture of Drew getting oh so close to rolling over.   He's only rolled over completely just the one time, but we know he'll be all over the place here soon. 

Drew has started to show a strong preference for us to stand while holding him.  It always puzzled me why this makes any difference to a baby because they can be in the exact same position.  This is especially true at church.   Unless he's asleep he'll prefer us on our feet.   So weird and so tiring.

As long as he isn't tired or hungry Drew seems to be totally fine with other people holding him - so long as they are standing most of the time :)

He hasn’t been as chill this past month and seems to want a little more attention.   I guess that’s part of just getting older and more alert.  Good thing he’s so darn cute! 

Pumpkin Patch

With all my complaining about the craziness of fall and how hectic it has been to have three kiddos in soccer once again, I failed to mention that during the past month+ it’s been Justin’s busy season at work.  That little tidbit of information is crucial to accurately portraying my life these past months.  Thankfully, I have superpowers and as a result we’ve emerged virtually unscathed. 

As the end of the year is approaching we realized Justin has a bunch of PTO days he needs to take since he can now only carry forward 5 days into the next year.  Basically he’ll have at least one day off each week.  Pretty sweet, huh?  Though in hindsight it would have been wiser to have him use more days after Drew was born or during the summer when we could have done some fun outdoor outings with the kids.  Oh well, I have no doubt I can keep him plenty busy at home ;)

His first day off was this past Friday.  The kids get out early from school on Fridays and with the beautiful fall weather we’ve been enjoying we thought it would be fun to take them to a pumpkin patch after school.  We wanted to sneak in a nice lunch out before we needed to pick up the kids, but Drew’s been taking such long morning naps that we ended up letting him sleep up until we had to go get Abigail.

We haven’t taken the kids to a pumpkin patch since we moved here.  I spent some time looking for a pumpkin patch nearby and had a hard time finding one that was open on weekdays, had an intricate corn maze, and didn’t cost too much.  In the end we decided to go with the pumpkin patch from years past.

2013:  with baby Drew in a carrier not pictured

2010:  with baby Katie in a carrier not pictured

2009:  with baby Katie in utero

While I quickly fed Drew in the van, Justin took the kids to the biffys and let them race rubber duckies.

I bought this little owl hat from China for $3.59 (shipping included) – I’m pretty happy that it was legit and so cute!

The reason we were willing to drive 45 minutes to a pumpkin patch was because the corn mazes at this location are awesome!  The themes are always so well carried out and it is big.  The maze this year was monster themed and is 2.2 miles if you go straight through without getting lost or turned around.  There were 12 monsters to find throughout the maze.  We totally let the kids be our guides – they actually did awesome, but we definitely logged more than the minimum 2.2 miles.

Getting our tickets

Jason at the maze entrance

With maps in hands we were ready to go!

The walls of entrance tunnel were so fun 

Do you think Justin is checking his GPS for directions? 

One of the bridges 

Trying to figure out where to go next

Hooray!  One of the 12 monsters we found!

Every so often we would run across some sort of fun monster within the maze

Katie didn’t tire at all

After the maze we collected our prizes and walked around the farm a bit before making our way back toward home.  We purchased the most delicious fudge from the gift shop – Chocolate Explosion, chocolate fudge with pecans, brownie and a caramel drizzle on top – yum, yum!

J’s Day: the good and not-so-good

Jason still continues to struggle some mornings to get out of bed and I’m beginning to think that he will always need someone keeping close tabs on him in the morning to get him ready on time.  Perhaps it’s a boy thing.  This morning was the worst yet.  He came downstairs dressed, but grumpy.  When I realized he never unpacked his lunchbox from yesterday I told him he wouldn’t get lunch unless he took care of it.  Reluctantly he finally got it out so I could get started on his lunch.  Besides a plain cheese sandwich there wasn’t anything healthy that he wanted me to put in his lunch so I threw a go-gurt inside and told him he didn’t have to eat it if he didn’t want to.  He pouted that he wanted to buy lunch at school, which is ridiculously expensive, and with his food allergies difficult to accommodate.  It took him forever to decide what he wanted for breakfast and when he finally settled on a plain (non-blueberry) bagel I popped it in the toaster, slathered it with cream cheese and placed it in front of him.  What a monstrous error on my part to not ask if he wanted cream cheese or butter because of course, he wanted butter because today (and today only) cream cheese is “gross!”   It continued downhill.  I asked if he had socks on and moments later Carly told me he was pulling them off.  At this point we’re just minutes away from needing to leave the house to catch the bus so I pulled the socks on.  When he refused to put on shoes I strapped on the shoes.  When he refused a coat I put that on as well.  I opened the door it was no surprise that he refused to budge.  He wasn’t hysterical, but he had monstrous tears streaming down his face and that look in his eyes that he was off in some other realm where he could not be reached and cooperation and logic didn’t exist.  So what’s a Mom to do?  It’s a 20 minutes drive to school, I had a baby on the family room floor, a three year old eating breakfast… I told him it was either school or bed – he said school but he was walking at snail speed.  When minutes passed and they were just two houses away, I finally told Carly to run off and catch the bus on her own.  Jason stopped moving completely while I stood on the porch calling out for him to either run to the bus or come back to bed.  He wouldn’t run, but he continued walking very slowly.  I knew he’d never make it in time so I ran in the house, threw Katie and Drew in the van and drove around the block to the bus stop.  The bus was loaded and Jason was still 4-5 houses away, still refusing to run, but our saving grace was that another neighborhood kid was running late and the bus driver was waiting for her so Jason made it, barely. 

I was fairly confident that after a few minutes on the bus with friends he’d be fine, but I sent an email to his teacher to let her know that Jason hadn’t eaten breakfast and that he’d a rough morning.  Later that morning I received the following email from her, “Hi Holly- I just wanted to follow up and let you know that Jason is doing great!  He is his normal happy self at school today!”  I sure love that kid, but when he breaks down (thankfully, it’s not often) it is nearly impossible to bring him back – he has to do it on his own time.  Too bad we just didn’t have time on our side this morning.

Jason came home happy, which was great because Wednesday is our most crazy day.  Today was his last soccer game of the season.  I brought my camera along so I could get a few pictures to document the season.

Jason tends to hold up a #1 finger after he scores, he did the same thing in baseball

Jason has improved a lot since last year.  He can run really fast, he has great instincts on where to kick the ball, he does great at passing to teammates, he’s always enthusiastic about playing, and he’s scored in several of the games.  However, he’ll often get to the ball then take a moment to either position himself or consider his next move and as a result lose his advantage.  It’s actually been quite frustrating for me to watch.  I know he’s just thinking about the best move, but it still hard for this competitive mama to watch.

After today’s game trophies were distributed and cupcakes enjoyed.  Hallelujah!  It was a fun season, but I’m looking forward to having one less soccer schedule to juggle.

This team picture perfect depicts the personality of the team – bless anyone willing to coach young kids!

Looking at his cute face it’s hard to imagine this morning even possible

We Nailed It!

I think everybody knows that we move pretty slowly and cautiously when it comes to making most decisions, especially when it comes to decorating our house.  I think people also know that Justin is not a handyman.  The guy can paint, but you won’t find him building anything or repairing something without much stress.  However, this past week I’m quite sure we set an all time record for the number of nails and screws we utilized.

Hanging the girls most recent paintings: 

5 nails for Carly’s painting (only two nails were needed, but to took 5 attempts to get that darn thing level!)

1 nail for Abigail’s painting 

Kids’ Bathroom:

12 screws to hang up a towel hook for each of the kiddos

3 nails to hang up frames above the toilet

1 nail to hang up an old clock

Girl’s Room:

2 screws to convert an old mirror from horizontal to vertical

1 nail to hang said mirror in the girls’ room

Master:

5 screws to install the old towel bar from kids bathroom into our closet

8 screws to set up Drew’s crib 

Downstairs Bathroom:

2 screws to hang a much needed towel ring by the sink

For those of you that are not accountant-minded, that’s a grand total of 40!

Snuggle

When Drew woke up this morning Katie and I headed upstairs to feed him and then get in the shower.  I wasn’t expecting him to fall back to sleep since he’d already slept in later than usual.  

I figured he’d just take a short nap so I didn’t want to risk waking up by trying to lay him down in his crib (yes, I finally relented and set up the crib).  So he and I snuggled in my Grandma’s old lazyboy, the same blue faded lazyboy I’ve snuggled all my babies in, while Katie ran around naked waiting for a shower.

At some point I fell asleep (and Katie put on a pair of underwear) and before I knew it over an hour had passed.  Instead of feeling guilty, I felt so blessed I can stay at home with my babies and snuggle them for hours if I want to.  And so grateful to know I couldn’t have made a better choice this morning.

Ignore the creepy eye – I find it very difficult to take pictures on my phone one-handed