Another Set of Shots

Today Nathaniel had his 6 month check-up.

The stats.

9/30 - He was born and was 21 inches tall and 8 lbs 7 oz
10/11 - He was 11 days old and was 21 inches tall and 8 lbs 9 oz
10/24 - He was 3 and 3/7 wks old and was 21 3/4 inches tall and 9 lbs 9 oz
12/1 - He is 2 months old and 24 inches tall and 11 lbs 10 oz

1/20 - He is 3 1/2 months old and 25 3/4 inches tall and 14 lbs 8 oz

3/30 - He is 6 months old and 27 inches tall and 17 lbs 4 oz

Dr. Townsend said everything looks good. We talked about his feeding schedule and what to do next. Now that he is 6 months old we need to make sure he does eat a cereal each day since that is how he will get iron. We weren't giving him the cereal very often. Have you tasted that rice cereal? Blah. Seriously, Blah! We made him a rice cereal/pear mix tonight - it tasted a little more interesting :)

The shots were as dreadful as ever. He was a little crankier than normal at the appt today anyway so the shots made him VERY sad. His face was as RED as ever. Poor little guy. He still gets this sad pucker face when he is unhappy. It is so cute and sad at the same time.

To celebrate us keeping the kid alive for 6 months we bought a few lotto tickets... haha...if we win we'll share, I promise ($640 million would be nice). We should have had a glass of wine. Unfortunately, a glass of wine on Friday nights puts Kevin to sleep before he can finish it... long work weeks plus kid duties will do that to you.

Nate Note: As of today he has had rice cereal, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, pears and bananas. I thought he'd like the bananas the best, but I think it took a bit to get used to the texture. Once he got used to the texture down the hatch they went. So far he hasn't rejected anything. I know he will go through phases of liking and disliking stuff, but as of right now everything is a 'go'.

Here are a few pictures to WELCOME SPRING... even though i don't really feel that way... while pretty, spring is bringing with it a zillion bugs! Boo!

Upstairs

Well, it happened last Friday March 23rd. We officially moved Nathaniel upstairs to sleep in his big boy room. This will be his third sleeping arrangement in 6 months. First he slept in his little baby hammock thing next to me on the bed so that I could reach him without too much trouble with my c-section. Second, we moved him to the bassinet level of the pack n play in the corner of our room where he has been until now. Now he is in his room. It was a very hard and sad night for me. He feels a million miles away. I miss waking up and seeing him looking over at us from his pack n play. He usually wakes up and babbles something that sounds like..'Hey' while he reaches up real high to look over the rail. It feels so weird to have the four of us downstairs in one bed and Nate all alone.

Now while it was sad and hard for me, Nate could care less. He hasn't skipped a beat moving up to his crib. He is taking full advantage of all the extra room to move around and MOVE around he does. Kevin has already had to reposition him when he was sleeping because his leg was sticking through the crib railing. We left his crib piano toy up thinking it would be ok, but we were awakened to melodies on the monitor at 2am in the morning. He managed to roll over to it and push the buttons to get it playing. He was all proud of himself. Needless to say, we turn it off at night now :) (actually that reminds me I put him to bed tonight and I'm not sure I turned it off...hhhmmm... I better go check)

One cute thing I've noticed since moving him up there is how much he enjoys the big tree sticker we put on the wall. Remember? It was a really big tree with squirrels, an owl, etc in it, plus the bear above the crib and fox on the wall. He smiles every time you hold him in front of it. He just stares at it in awe. I just think it is cool that it actually garners a reaction from him because I never really had any expectations.

I'll admit that not having him in our room at night has made our lives a little more flexible. We don't have to be as quiet now. We'd tip toe around once we went to bed, keeping the lights low, etc.. The dogs are really enjoying not being 'shooshed' as much. They can flop their ears and chew their toys. As of right now the flexibility isn't as great as having him right by me... I need a little more time :)

To make the separation worse our monitor stopped getting a signal so basically by the 3rd night I didn't have a monitor. I had no idea what was going on up there all night. This drove me crazy. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep all night, but I could. Surprisingly, Kevin heard him one time that I didn't. That NEVER happens... I mean NEVER. I must have been very tired or perhaps Kevin was as traumatized by not having the monitor as me and couldn't sleep himself. The monitor is on its way back to the company to be returned and they are shipping us a new one. Hopefully, ours was just a lemon. In the meantime, I went and bought a cheap audio only monitor. I know ... laugh all you want... somehow our parents survived without monitors, but I can't, I just can't ...lol

I've included a picture of Nate in his crib. He does enjoy having his head touch the top. He did that in his pack n play too. The bumpers are the breathable kind. They are necessary since he likes to ram his head into the sides to sleep and the bumper seems a lot softer than the wood slats.

Time Flies

Look at this guy - he is growing like a weed. I thought it would be fun to compare the two bath pictures we had taken. He goes in for his 6 month appt (MORE SHOTS ... BOO) on the 30th. 6 months already! I'm not even sure we've figured out what we are suppose to do with a baby yet. Things like using a rectal thermometer are still above our knowledge level (THANK goodness we haven't had to use one for a multitude of reasons).

We've decided we are making him in to an introvert like us since he hasn't seen any other babies. 6 months and not one other baby...hhhmm. I do play videos of him on my iphone and he loves watching himself. I figure he doesn't have a sense of self yet so this is his other baby interaction. He loves listening to the *other* baby. I was going to start going to a place called gymboree after 6 months, but they just moved the one by me so now I have to find some other mom/baby type place. As he interacts more and more with the dogs I get worried he will turn into the little boy from Jungle story ;) When he watches his baby Einstein cd he is most distracted/bored when pictures of babies are on the screen. However, he has intense concentration during the lava lamp, shapes, fish type sections - haha. He really is our kid!

How to stick your foot in your mouth

1 - Start out on a flat surface laying down

2 - Get an audience

3 - Grab the foot you'd like to use

4 - Stick foot in mouth

Squash and Sweet Potatoes...check

The little dude has now eaten veggies for over a week. He has only eaten 2 kinds of veggies, squash and sweet potatoes, but he seems to enjoy them both. I do think playing with the spoon is still the best part for him.


*Knowledgeable* sources always recommend a short list of first foods and it seems like half of them are bright orange. I think they want you to start with the most staining, messy color first so everything else seems like a cake walk. Seriously, the high chair straps, the steam basket, Nathaniel's baby fingernails, the dog's head, wash cloths, bibs... you name it they have all been *ORANGED*. So many of the high chairs have white or beige straps - what were those engineers thinking?!? Already in the works for my sewing to-do list is two velcro covers for the high chair straps. These covers will be easily removable and washable. 

I think it is funny that Nate's nails are stained. I was looking at them and I was thinking to myself why are your nails turning colors and then the light bulb went off...'oh yeah the orange food'... I haven't even gotten to carrots yet. If I don't watch out Nathaniel himself will turn orange from eating so many orange foods. (If I remember the story correctly, Kevin's mom turned him a little orange when he was a baby - haha)
 

In light of this and Nate's ever so slight constipation I believe I am switching to *GREEN*. Yep, peas are next. I have used my Baby Baeba to make both the sweet potatoes and peas. It is so easy to make his food. The machine steams it, I then just dump the steam basket in the lower bowl and then puree it. I add a bit more water and pour into ice cube trays. Wa La. A quick 20-30 seconds in the microwave to melt the cube and his meal is served.

You might of noticed I mentioned a high chair above. We did indeed buy a high chair. After some reading and asking for advice from other moms we decided on a Fisher-Price Space Saver. It is a chair that attaches to your dining room chair. It reclines, cleans up pretty easy (minus the beige straps) and doesn't take up hardly any room. We figured it worked for his and our needs for this stage. I had hurt my rib leaning over the tub the other day while giving Nathaniel a bath (insert *old* joke here). This was making it hard for me to hold Nate in certain ways so if I was going to feed him at all we needed a high chair and quick. The Fisher-Price one was easy to find locally and got good reviews.

Update: Peas went down the hatch fine too. He looked like he had been slimed, but happy nonetheless. Remember that show 'You can't do that on television'? If you said something like, 'I don't know' you would get green slime dumped on your head. He kind of looked like that ;)

Where's Aunt Krista

Missing my sister - enough said :)

*read the shirt* :)

Pretzels to Peanut Butter

Pretzels and peanut butter may be one of your favorite snacks. If so, you may want to stop reading here. Ok.... if you are still reading don't blame me for ruining your snack ;) I have always thought that Nathaniel's doody diapers smell like soft baked pretzels. Like those ones at the mall. Like the ones that I love to eat on the rare occasions I decide to treat myself to fattening mall food. Poop pretzels haven't been ttthhhaatt bad to have to smell....

Well, on Sunday we introduced squash to Nate's diet. I was going to go with sweet potatoes, but I didn't get the ice cube trays I wanted yet and ended up buying a stage one organic squash to start him on. Squash was the one vegetable I probably wouldn't make myself so I just decided to just do it. I already have some peas and sweet potatoes so that I can make the next few solids from scratch. He gave a bit of a weird face on the first spoonful. I imagine it is so much more flavorful than the rice cereal. Kevin fed him and only had a little bit of squash on his shirt by the end! I'm pretty sure that Nate enjoys chewing on the spoon way more than actually eating the squash. I figure at least he is getting used to the whole idea. We feed him half of a 2.5 oz jar around lunch and half around dinner. As I have mentioned before I am so amazed how such a tiny amount of food can get in so many places. Also, when nate gets a hold of that spoon good luck getting it back - that boy is strong for such a little squirt. I figure one down (allergy wise) and 100 more to go - haha. I am hoping I'll have a smooth road when it comes to allergies (cross your fingers), but I am a little worried about avocados. Avocados are a favorite first food and I'm allergic to them so we'll see. 

Back to the doody diaries.... something else I think is amazing about such a tiny amount of food is how much it changes the doody. It now is a peanut butter looking concoction. Seriously, how does such a small change make such a big difference. It is crazy. The dirty diaper the other day actually got a 'Whoa' out of Kevin. Ha ha... I figured people were making up stories about how stinky diapers were since we hadn't really experienced it ;) AAaahhh the joys of babies. I do love that he smiles the biggest grin if you ask him if he pooped his diaper.

Now go enjoy your peanut butter pretzels ... go ahead... try to without thinking about little Nate Nate

Nate Note: It has happened. Nathaniel has officially sucked his toe. Over the last few days he has become VERY interested in his feet. I guess he officially realized they belong to him. He grabs them and goofs around. Just like everything else once he has something in his hand it goes right in the mouth. It is a good thing his feet aren't dirty yet. It does make for a great picture. We will have to get some cute ones soon.

Nate was really enjoying trying to reach Mocha

Waaaasssup

I heard that 'Waaaasssup' referenced in a repeat episode of 'How I Met your Mother' and it kind of fit my blog for the day. I know I'm sporadic at best at blogging so I thought I'd give an update on several items in this random blog.

Let's see where should I start... I'm still losing my hair - EECK! Seriously, is this hair loss ever going to stop, I'm getting increasingly more paranoid and self conscious. Otherwise, I think I'm back to normal besides needing to start putting on some sort of scar cream on my scar. I need to research that some more.

Nathaniel is now feeding 5 times a day at about every 3 hours from when he wakes up. I'm still nursing (Can you believe it?) 4 of the 5 times. He bottle feeds for the late feeding of the day usually around 7:30pm. This allows me to have nights off because Kevin feeds him.  An added bonus is that we get to easily sneak Vitamin D into the formula. Trying to give him vitamins from the dropper was a mess. Plus, he'd spit part out and then smell like vitamins for the rest of the day (that was something I hated). I keep planning on weaning, especially now that teeth are on the horizon. I just can't ever decide which feeding to make a bottle feeding next so I do what I do best and procrastinate making the decision.

Nathaniel now LOVES to be on his tummy. He sleeps ONLY on his stomach. You lay him down on his back and *flip* he is right over and ready to sleep. He sleeps with his butt in the air. He also always squiggles his way completely to the edge with his head pushed in to the side. It looks uncomfortable, but maybe not for a baby. He has always been a good night sleeper and has been sleeping all night for awhile. All night being (7-9pm thru 7-8am) We still have him in his pack and play downstairs with us >> whoops << eventually we will move him upstairs. We are going to have to move him since he seems to be growing out of the pack and play. He isn't growing out of it literally, but he likes to kick and squirm and move and the crib would allow him some more freedom to stretch his limbs. Upstairs is so far away from us though :) Actually, another procrastination thing is that I haven't figured out how to change crib sheets easily. It just seems like such a pain so I keep putting off moving him up to his crib. He does still nap in his crib once a day to remind him that it is ok to sleep there. Nate has a lot of slobber/spit up so changing sheets (sheet savers, blanket, whatever) is necessary once maybe twice a day. We will move him soon so stay tuned for the big announcement that he is sleeping in his crib full time. His nap schedule is roughly one cat nap between every feeding. He is still working on a nap schedule since he sometimes will have a long nap and sometimes none at all between feedings.  At least he sleeps a bit more than he used to, which itself was an improvement.

The butt up sleep pose

Nathaniel is eating rice cereal still.  We are inconsistent, but try and feed him this every night. He does pretty well. He is a total mess at the end, but seems to be swallowing like a champ. I never would have guessed how sticky rice cereal is - wow is it sticky.  This has led us to start researching high chairs. We need to buy one soon. I just want something simple and cleanable. I think we are ready to move on to solid #2 so I am going to try sweet potatoes this week YAY. I can't wait to have orange puree everywhere. I hope he likes it. This will allow me to feed him earlier in the day so that I can get him on a more consistent solid schedule. The kink has been that we use some of the formula from the last feeding of the day to make the rice cereal. Because it is the last feeding of the day he sometimes is too tired to do both a bottle and a solid feeding so we needed another approach to solids.

Nathaniel is giggling and making all kinds of noises. He is working hard on trying to sit up by himself, but he is quite wobbly. He only occasionally rolls from his stomach to his back - 98% of the time is still back to stomach. The stomach to back roll is usually done with no witnesses. It happens on his play mat when I look away or during naptime. I"ll show up and he is looking at me saying, 'yep I can do it' He has really mastered the baby push up. He gets his head real high up in the air. In the morning from our bed you can look over and see his smiling face trying to look over the pack and play at us.

Here is his huge baby push up or baby yoga

Let's see what else... any questions?? what am I forgetting, email me.

Oh, he drives in the car great now. No more crying at stop lights. Sometimes he even just babbles to himself back there and puts himself to sleep. Nate and I have definitely been getting out more. I try once a day to take a car ride somewhere and then stroll around a store (or our neighborhood). I enjoy watching him watch all the people and surroundings. This picture isn't at a store but perfectly captures the 'Whoa' look he usually has when we are somewhere.

HHhhhmm ... what else...he loves to be held up like an airplane by Kevin. He giggles and smiles the whole time. Another thing I love is to watch him react to Kevin when he comes home from work. Once he sees Kevin he gets all excited and smiles and moves around in my arms - he knows and loves to see his dad! Also, he is a bit of a kicker/banger. He loves to just kick the pillow or diaper changing pad over and over or just hit something with his hand.... bang bang bang. I think that is part of the Y chromosome coming out already.

That is probably enough updates before I bore everyone. Here is a 5 month picture.

Super Tuesday

Tennessee is a part of Super Tuesday so of course I went and voted. Tennessee has an open primary so anyone can come and vote. I figure lots of women fought for my right to vote and I like to think that I celebrate them every time I go to the booth. It is easy nowadays to take that right for granted because we could never imagine not voting. I try to remind myself on the walk to the voting booth about women's suffrage. Now everyone that knows me knows that history is one of my worst subjects, but I do know about the *exclamation points in history* like women's suffrage. I'd like to think I'd be a suffragette.

This election year could prove to be quite an exciting one. While I have my opinions, shocking I know ;) I will only mention this one thing for right now. This is something that has bothered me for years. I hate when either side says be open minded and then condemns you for taking a different approach to an issue. Apparently open minded is open minded as long as you agree with whomever is talking. Urgh. That is one thing that really gets me going. If there is anything about democracy that we should celebrate is the ability to agree to disagree and work towards making America better in our own way. Now I'm talking about the normal realm of issues, nothing obviously crazy (or clearly just wrong). While I disagree with some people's stances on the issues; I always learn something through listening with respect. To be educated about issues the complete 360 degrees is the way to make good decisions or even possibly change some minds. I am tortured inside sometimes when I hear someone rattling off what they think are facts on facebook or wherever and they just don't even come close to factual. Ok enough of my soapbox.

It was Nate's first trip to vote. I almost wrote his name in as a potential candidate. I figured he'd have at least one vote to be President of the United States. Ha! There were two older gentlemen at the voting center that were making over him. It was cute. The one guy put an 'I voted' sticker on Nate. Nate was a good boy while I voted. Not a peep out of him - I'm certain he understood the importance ;)

Below is a picture of him with his sticker. I figure the serious/sad look on his face was because who he really wants to win isn't even on the ballot....

First Road Trip

The ominous first road trip is now behind us. I say ominous because the thought of bringing an almost 5 month old on a 10ish hour road trip is filled with uncertainty. What do I need to pack? Will he cry the entire trip? Is it safe to have a baby in a car seat for that long? Will he sleep in a new place? These are just a few of the questions that crossed my mind as we prepared to hit the road.


So where did we go? We visited Grandma and Grandpa Hahm in The Villages, Florida. This was a perfect first trip to make and begin to learn about how to travel with a baby. There were no airports involved and we could pack whatever we wanted. It fell on the lower side of the travel stress spectrum.


We chose to leave in the evening so that we could take advantage of Nathaniel's sleep schedule. This meant we left around 5:30ish. This allowed for us to just have one feeding on the road and hopefully he'd sleep the rest of the way. We decided that one of us should always be sitting in the back seat *just in case* the crankies hit. That way we wouldn't have to pull over unnecessarily. That worked really well, plus if the baby was sleeping you could sleep too. The one thing I learned was how super BuMpY the road was. Wow! I mean you notice it normally, but when you have a little guy that almost wakes up at every bump you REALLY notice it. I would cringe at every bridge since those are the worst. You drop and rise with every one. He never would wake up completely, but it was a restless sleep. It was cute to see his little hands raise into the air and then slowly lower all the while his eyes being shut. It was a sleepy surprise type of look.

 

 

We had a few things prepared to make things easier. We put these things in the backseat and made sure they were readily accessible, which worked since we never had to grab anything from anywhere else Yay. A premeasured bottle that could easily be mixed in a parking lot in the backseat. Diapers and wipes (plus we always parked near a trashcan to dispose of the dirty diaper). PJs for after his last feeding. A few different toys for variety. There were of course a couple of things we learned along the way. Make sure the overhead lighting doesn't switch on when you open the door - this is important on a stop where he is actually sleeping so that you don't wake him up. Open your snack while he is awake (my bag of chips I opened at 1am to keep me awake while I was driving sounded like a 100 people were crinkling paper inside the car)

Once we arrived 4:30amish we weren't sure if Nate would go back to sleep or be ready for the day. Luckily for us he chose to fall back asleep. This was especially helpful since Kevin and I drove those late hours. We were pretty well rested by the morning and it made for a better first day of the visit. We had brought his pack and play and he didn't seem to care that he was in a different room. He slept perfect the whole time we were there. Napping on the other hand was a bit of a mess. He has been consistently napping, well *cat napping* between feedings. It is always hard regardless if we are the visitors or someone is visiting us (even on the weekends when Kevin is home) since we go do stuff. This means he is up more than normal and doesn't quite get his routine amount of napping. This makes for a cranky baby here and there, but overall he did pretty good with that too. He is generally in a good mood.

Nathaniel seemed to really enjoy being out in the fresh air in the lanai. He also enjoyed the stroller ride around the neighborhood in the nice FL sun. One funny thing was at church. Nate was sleeping when we headed in to church. He continued sleeping until the organ played. The first time the organ played he sort of wiggled so I thought maybe it is ok and he'll sleep through it. NOPE, by the next time he was wide eyed and wondering what the heck that loud noise was that kept playing. We have a piano at our church so it isn't quite the same volume. Then he started to babble a bit so Kevin walked him around in the back- of course everyone afterwards thought his babbling was cute.

This brings me to a Nate Note:

Nate Note - He is definitly trying out new sounds. His new favorite thing is to just make an, 'aaaahhhhhhaaahhhhaaaahhhh' sound. It is low and kind of vibratey We think he likes how it feels. Me and Kevin of course always quote Jim Carrey and say, 'Want to hear the most annoying noise?'....'aaaaaahhhhhaaahhhaaahh' Sometimes he makes this sound so long that he puts himself to sleep. Sometimes this sound is punctuated with the raspberries. I did see in some book that this sound is called 'razzing' haha. I guess he is razzing. We especially like when he razzes while he is eating. I figure rice cereal spit in my face is good for my complexion. There is an occasional baby squeal too. He really cracks himself up when he does that. It is all quite cute.

Ok, back to the trip. There isn't too much more other than Nate had a great time being held and spoiled by his grandma Hahm and and seeing the sites with grandpa Hahm. I especially liked taking the stroller to the lake right by the starbucks :) Their house and neighborhood was really nice. TONS of golf courses. The trip home went pretty good too. Overall, I'd say it was a great first road trip. No crying for 20 hours in a car is something to celebrate! Oh yay and I had one of the best laughs I have had in a really long time. That happened while Kevin's dad gave us his password to use the wireless.... he mentioned it was like 25 characters and hard because somehow it got coded differently than he had put it in there (some sort of computer language translation thing I don't know)... anyway I thought he was exaggerating, but after the 12th letter/# I started to giggle and then Kevin couldn't hold back and we were both laughing so hard that I messed the whole thing up and had to start over... (echo, bravo, 2, tango, 8, echo... on and on for 25 characters) it was hilarious...

I can't wait until we take another trip and I start learning more about the craziness of travelling with a little guy. It is exciting. It sure does change how you do a lot of things, but it is fun to kind of figure out and plan - like a logic puzzle. Maybe soon we will tackle the airport (yikes).

I'll post some pictures soon. I need to download from my phone and camera. FYI - I added some new pictures to the shutterfly website.