Wordless Wednesday

Not sleeping--just your run-of-the-mill toddler tantrum

Garrett: Six Months!

Height/Weight: 27 inches and 17 pounds, 3 ounces. His stats indicate that he is a little taller than he is heavy (based on percentages), but I feel like his pictures saw otherwise--he has rolls aplenty!

Wearing: I finally switched out the majority of his closet to 6-9 month clothing, something I probably should have done a while ago. Some of the clothes I'm putting him in for the first time are already fitting him pretty perfectly--which means they won't fit him for long with the way he grows. Thankfully he's still pretty much exclusively wearing hand-me-downs from William so it's not like I'm at any financial loss for having him only wear clothes once or twice before he outgrows them (and let's he honest--as child number two, hand-me-downs are going to be the story of this kid's life. Sorry buddy). Still going strong in the size three diapers--only one blowout that I can think of since we made the switch!

Eating: We're all set to start solids in the next few days, but up to now it has been nothing but breast milk (woot!). The past few months have been, I daresay, worse than the first few months. Anything and everything has been a distraction from nursing, and if something interrupts him partway into a feeding it's game over and he's done. All the traveling and crazy schedules over the past few weeks didn't exactly help matters any. And I don't know if it was the distractions or the traveling or what, but for a while he was super particular about the conditions under which he would nurse. I'm still not exactly sure what those ideal conditions were (because of course they seemed to change feeding to feeding), but in addition to trying to find a quiet environment, it was occasionally an act of contortionism to figure out what angle/hold he wanted in order to nurse. Good times. Thankfully, in spite of somewhat poor nursing during the day, he is still generally well-tempered and (clearly) having no issue putting on weight--although I attribute the latter to the fact that he has been making up for those feedings at night. But--knock on wood--things seem to be improving, and hopefully adding solid foods into the mix will help as well.

Sleep: I'm just convinced that I'll never get to be one of those mothers who gets to brag about how well her kid sleeps. The poor daytime eating has meant continued--and fairly frequent--night feedings. Although aside from a few bouts of being inconsolable in the middle of the night (thanks to traveling, I'm pretty sure), he generally goes to sleep easily and stays asleep well between feedings, so that's nice. We recently starting offering him his pacifier more at night instead of nursing, and while we were getting up more frequently for a few nights (the pacifier would calm him for an hour or so before he started fussing again to eat), he's actually starting to sleep a few longer stretches, plus he's been hungrier and eating better during the day (win win!). And I don't want to get too ahead of myself, but naps also seem to be going much better as well. The timing of them still isn't super consistent and I won't even begin to pretend like we have a schedule, but he's knocked out a few two hour naps (sometimes at the same time as William's nap!), which is glorious.

Likes: Oh man, this kid loves him some bath time. He's sitting up well enough that we've been bathing him and William together and it's awesome. It's also super unbelievably messy--we end up pretty wet more nights than not--but there are worse problems to have. He also really enjoys giving big slobbery kisses--although I think this is usually because he's just so glad to have someone give him some attention :-) And while he hasn't really shown any strong favoritism to a particular toy, he'll let you know if the one he wants at that moment is out of reach (actually, he'll try to lunge after it himself first, and then fuss at you when he can't get it). For the most part, though, as long as he can hold it, make noise with it, and put it in his mouth, he's happy with it (at least for a few minutes). And the less of an actual "toy" it is, the better (don't ask how I know this, but sandpaper is apparently a very entertaining toy). Oh, and is this boy ever a talker! So different from William. He is constantly making noise--babbling, blowing bubbles, playing with his tongue, the whole nine yards. It's really fun and pretty darn cute, but sometimes he can be loud!

Dislikes: He still always needs to be where the action is and typically dislikes being left alone, although he is getting better at doing some independent play. Although it's usually short-lived, because he very much dislikes being on his belly or otherwise falling away from his toys and not being able to get back to them. I'm not so sure I'm ready for him to start crawling (although I fear it's coming soon!), but it will be nice once he can get himself back to a sitting position after he falls over.

Firsts: Lots of firsts this month! It was a busy one. Started with his first trip to the beach, which included his first airplane ride, and all the token beach firsts (first time in the ocean, first time in the sand, first time eating the sand, etc). Less than a week after we got back he attended his first wedding--after surviving his first massive road trip (6.5 hour drive for adults... Pretty sure it took us nearly nine on the way there and close to ten on the way back). Then he survived my first major bout of single parenting when Darrell went out of town for three days.

Wordless Wednesday

Garrett: 5 months!

Well, it was bound to happen. Second child + busy schedule = monthly updates slipping through the cracks. I'm still get it up before he turns six months old, but not by much. And consequently it probably won't be a very long update because, well, I don't exactly remember much from fifth month since it was a while ago. But at least I'm still doing it, right?

Height/Weight: No official stats, and I'm not even going to attempt to guess where he was a few weeks ago.

Wearing: Primarily 3-6 and 6 month clothes. I've had to start pulling some 9 month stuff out though. And we're completely into size 3 diapers; I think we made that switch sometime at the beginning of the month.

Eating: Still all breastmilk, but not exactly doing the best job of eating it during the times I would like him to (ie during the day). And since this carried over into six months (yay), I'll just delve into details then.

Sleep: Well, the good news is that he goes to sleep wonderfully. We can put him down drowsy with a pacifier and a taggie blanket and he'll put himself to sleep. The bad news is that he is waking up every two to three hours during the night to eat. Good times.

Likes: Being part of the action. There is no more sitting this child down and walking to another room. It doesn't matter what toys you give him--if you leave the room, he just knows that he is missing out on something and will fuss until you come back. Thankfully, if William is in the room that is enough "action" for him to be a part of, and I can usually sneak away for a few minutes to get something done (and a few minutes is usually all I get before William starts to play too rough with Garrett and makes him angry).

Dislikes: Being left alone. See above :-)

Firsts: Garrett had his first bus trip--a two hour(ish) drive to Lake Okoboji. Although he wasn't really interested in napping on the bus (or at any point during the day), he still did really well. He also had his first overnight at the lake for the 4th of July (and--I suppose--his first 4th of July), although he didn't really do much to celebrate the occasion (besides wear red, white, and blue). I'm sure I'm missing others, but seeing how I'm three weeks late and all, what can you expect? #secondchildproblems

Rest for the Weary

A miraculous thing happened yesterday morning (no, Garrett didn't sleep through the night. I wish). For only the second time in six weeks, we woke up in our own house on a Sunday morning. Even more exciting was the fact that for the first time in seven weeks, we had a Saturday with absolutely nothing going on. No traveling, no being out of town, nothing. Of course, being gone and busy that many weekends in a row meant that we had some majorly neglected projects to work on at the house, so we stayed plenty busy, but it was still nice to be home. And I even got to go grocery shopping by myself!

I'd like to say things are starting to slow down, but that just doesn't seem to be the case. Thankfully, most of our busyness in the next few months is local, so I'm done worrying about embarking on massive trips with two little ones. Which will (hopefully) mean that I'll be less busy during the week (hello no more packing or ridiculous amount of laundry) and I should be able to actually get a few posts up here. You know, maybe fill in some details of all the crazy traveling we've been doing. But that's probably just a pipe dream since I've very nearly got two mobile boys to worry about. Sigh. Such is life.

Wordless Wednesday