Garrett: Eleven Months!

Height/Weight: So far so good on making it through cold season without any doctor's visits (at least for this one). Hoping we make it until our well visit next month before needing to go back in and get updated vitals!

Wearing: Size three diapers and I (finally!) pulled up his tote of twelve month clothes. I probably could have done so weeks ago, but, well, I got busy. Now I just need to find the time to unpack the tote... Or just fish clothes out of the tote every day and put them in the closet after he has worn them. Whatever works.

Eating: Not even sure why I leave this category on here; it gets depressing to think about food and how much our grocery bill is going to be when these boys are teenagers. Since we've switched pretty much exclusively to table food, there hasn't really been anything that Garrett doesn't like--even things he didn't like as purees (asparagus) he gobbles up. We can still get him to eat some purees (which is good because he doesn't have all that many teeth yet), but the compromise always has to be that he also gets a little bit of whatever we are eating. And if you think he can't possibly know the difference, you'd be wrong.

Sleep: Still improving, and aside from a night or two, no consistent set backs. Maybe there is light at the end of this tunnel. For now, I'll take just one feeding a night (with occasionally one other wake up that requires us to go in and settle him down). Plus he goes down really easily for both bed and his naps, so I know things could be much worse there.

Likes: I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet or not, but Garrett definitely likes music more than William. He's already danced more than I think William has in his whole life. And aside from the standard "food" and "pushing Mommy's buttons", I can't really think of any other new or significant likes.

Dislikes: I like to think that he disliked the fact that Mommy was working two days a week, but considering he was always all smiles when we showed up at Grandma and Grandpa's house, I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case. He does tend to wake up slowly, which means he does not like it at all when William goes barreling into his room first thing in the morning to say hi and attempt to climb in his crib. And of course, because he dislikes being told what to do (or--as is more often the case--what not to do), he has already mastered the headshake for "no". Which means I'm already getting sass and he's only eleven months old (you think I'm kidding? He'll walk over to something he knows he isn't supposed to play with, I'll say his name as a warning, he'll look at me and shake his head, and then proceed to play with it anyway. Good times).

Firsts: Not really a first, but he has four teeth--I honestly don't remember when he cut the top two and if I mentioned it, so I'm mentioning it now. He has also started going down the stairs by himself (he mastered going up months ago), although he needs some help getting started. And last but certainly not least, he took his first steps on Christmas Eve! It was something that was a long time coming--I think back in October I predicted that he would take his first steps by Christmas--so I'm glad that he finally mustered up the confidence to take that first step. And he's actually been slower than I would have thought in transitioning from crawling to walking--but I think that's only because he knows he can go way faster if he crawls. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if he's practically running by his first birthday (ahh!!! So soon!!!), because his confidence is growing exponentially. Heaven help me this summer--taking these boys to the park will be an accident waiting to happen. Oh! I almost forgot! If you look at last month's and this month's pictures closely you'll notice a significant difference in his hairline--little man had his first haircut! It was nothing fancy, just Mom with a pair of scissors at home, but it was desperately needed. Of course, he now looks so much more like a toddler and not my baby, which is pretty much the worst thing ever, but I'll live. And as long as he keeps flashing that killer smile, I'll live with more than enough happiness.

A New Normal

A few days after we returned from some of the craziness that was our traveling over Christmas, Darrell made the comment about looking forward to getting back to our "normal" routine. But then William got sick, and "normal" got delayed. And then I found out that I was going to be working for two weeks longer than I thought, delaying "normal" some more. Finally, a few days ago, Darrell had an epiphany: Even once William gets over his cold and FINALLY starts sleeping through the night again, and even once I'm done working, we will never return to the same "normal" we were at before Christmas. Because inevitably, Garrett will start teething (again). And he'll be walking in no time. And sooner or later we're going to have to bite the bullet and start getting serious about potty training William. There will never be a "normal"--at least not one that lasts for more than a week--for a long, long time. And while I was mulling over this concept, and slowly coming to terms with it, I had a realization of my own. The concept of "normal" has been what has made some of Garrett's infancy difficult for me. Even though things have, for the most part, gone more smoothly than they did with William, I still found myself getting unnecessarily stressed and frustrated at times--and I realize in hindsight that most of that stress was self-inflicted. I was stressing over getting our lives back into a "normal" routine--and in my head, the normal routine that I was aiming for was the one that we had before Garrett was born. Sure, I knew that having a second kid would be a huge change and adjustment, but I just assumed that after we settled in to life with two we would settle right back to where we had been. And since that definitely isn't the case, I'd been feeling like we were still unsettled, and feeling unsettled makes me feel stressed. But if I leave behind the notion of "normalcy" that we had pre-Garrett, and let myself focus on just the present, I realize that things actually are going really well. And, arguably, we've settled quite comfortably into life with two kids. There's still a few pieces out of place, and I'm not sure how they will fit into our life as a family of four (this blog being one of them), but I'm giving myself some time and grace to figure that stuff out.

Garrett: Ten Months!

So apparently my last post was Garrett's nine month update. And considering I'm good two weeks late with this update, that means it has been well over a month since I've posted. Whoops. Turns out working and traveling and the holidays (and general life with two under three) is a bit chaotic and busy. And while blogging is usually what I do during my "me" time to recover and reset from the busyness of life, any "me" time I had in the past month was pretty much exclusively dedicated to baking. Which, really, I'm not complaining about. But I digress. Here it is--double digits and less than two months away from a one-year old!

We tried to get a picture without his hand in his mouth, but that wasn't happening. #Teethingproblems

Height/Weight: We made it through the first part of cold and flu season without any sick visits to the doctor, so no updated stats. Knock on wood that luck continues.

Wearing: Still size three--I was way overly optimistic last month when I thought I could move him up to fours. Definitely bought myself a few more boxes of threes (thank you very much Target deals and free delivery). He's slowly starting to fit into his twelve month clothing, but he's still mostly in nine month.

Eating: Have I mentioned before that this kid loves food? We started incorporating meats and dairy this past month, and both have been big hits. Safe to say I'm not raising a vegetarian.

Sleep: Still not great. Not as bad as it had been, so I'm really not complaining too much, but I'm also not happy (yet). Especially when friends/family tell me about their infants sleeping nine hour (or longer!) stretches at night. But, if these sleep battles have taught us anything, it's that Garrett takes being stubborn to a whole new level--which is definitely going to require some new parenting strategies. I think I will retract any time I called William stubborn because I'm realizing now that whatever he did was nothing compared to what Garrett does.

Likes: Clapping! He thinks this is just the greatest thing ever and lights up in the biggest smile whenever he does it. He's also starting to wave on command, which is pretty adorable too. He also likes being a raccoon, which is why we've named his alter ego "Meeko" (from Pocahontas). His favorite pastime is getting into EVERYTHING, including the toilets (so, so gross--and no, closing the lid doesn't help) and trash cans (while he usually likes to take things out, we have seen him put things in on occasion. So that's fun). He also puts EVERYTHING in his mouth--and 90% of the time I don't even know where he is finding the stuff that ends up in his mouth.

Dislikes: Oh, you know, he pretty much dislikes it whenever he doesn't get what he wants immediately when he wants it. Pretty standard, right? (Heaven help me when this child is a toddler)

Firsts: First Thanksgiving and first snow! Actually, that probably isn't true--I have to imagined it snowed sometime after he was born since he was born in February--but I guess this was the first snow we took him out in? It counts for something, right? And really, all he did was get bundled up and stand in the driveway with me while Daddy cleared the snow off the driveway--it was a pretty substantial snowfall so I didn't exactly want to sit him in it because it probably would have been over his head. And William (for whatever reason) is kind of freaked out by the snow, so we've never really gone out to play in it. Which I'm kind of okay with. I suspect I'll have plenty of snow-covered, freezing cold, and soaking wet boys in my future, so I'll take the indoor play while I can.

Garrett: Nine Months!

Height/Weight: 28 inches and 19 pounds, 1 ounce. Relatively speaking, he's leaning out a little bit, but he's still plenty big. He's a pound heavier than William was at this age, and half an inch longer.

Wearing: Still rocking the size three diaper, although we're running out of those so I may try moving him up instead of buying more. We'll see. For the most part, he is fitting perfectly in nine month clothing. Some pants are a little on the short side, which exposes his poor little legs while I'm carrying him around outside in this cold weather. I've pulled out a few twelve month pants, but most of those are super long. Go figure. We might just be rotating the same four pairs of pants that fit well for the next few weeks--and I may be doing laundry a little more frequently as a result.

Eating: No issues with this one and food. Sometimes he'll turn his nose up at purees, but usually only if I give him finger foods first. We're still nursing, and he's actually doing better nursing during the day (yay!), although making that transition wasn't exactly easy. He consistently eats three meals a day, and nurses first thing in the morning, once or twice in the afternoon, and once before bed. Usually he'll have at least one snack as well, but only because I'm pretty sure food is this kid's love language and it's the easiest way to buy myself five minutes to get something done.

Sleep: I think (fingers crossed!) that we're finally seeing some improvement here. I could write a novel about this, but the long and the short of it is that we finally accepted that Garrett's night feedings were not necessary for his health, but rather happening out of habit and routine. So, much to his dismay, we decided that it was time to break him of the habit. Doing so resulted in a few nights of way worse sleep for all of us (nursing and putting him back to bed was way faster than trying to soothe him without letting him eat), but he will now pretty consistently give us at least one five or six hour stretch at night. We still let him nurse once in the middle of the night, and sometimes his "morning" feeding is at five am, after which he typically goes back to sleep (thankfully!). Most nights he still wakes up more frequently than that--and he would certainly nurse if we let him--but we're slowly teaching him that night is for sleeping, not eating, which has caused many a tear (both his and mine). Thankfully, he's still pretty consistent with his naps, although he tends to take his longer nap in the morning, which I would love to change so that the boys are napping together for longer in the afternoon.

Likes: I already mentioned his love of food, but I'm pretty sure his other love language is climbing. He's already climbing on things that William never did, and trying to climb higher on shelves/toys than William ever did. So that's fun. He's already given himself at least two bloody lips as a result of his monkey-ness. He's also seems to enjoy music and dancing a lot more than William did at this age, so that's fun. I'm excited to start him in Kindermusik after Christmas. And while I'm not quite positive I can move these into the "like" column, he is definitely starting to show a lot more interest in books, which I am thrilled with. Granted, he'd usually still rather play with other toys than read a story, and the only time he shows interest in them on his own is when he's pulling them off the shelves, but whatever. It's an improvement.

Dislikes: This isn't exactly a new one, but I don't think I've mentioned it before--this kid hates getting his diaper changed. It requires entirely too much time lying still on his back, and he just isn't okay with that. Which means this mama dislikes diaper changes probably as much as he does.

Firsts: Aside from his first Halloween, I can't really think of any other milestones. Is that bad? I'm sure he had plenty, but oh well. #secondchildproblems

Wordless Wednesday

SoDak Life

Fact: When you live in South Dakota in the late fall/early winter, "nice" days can be hard to come by. So when you have a day where the sun is shining and the winds are mild, you get outside. Even if the air temperature is only around forty degrees. Because low temperature is nothing a few extra layers can't fix.

Admittedly, we've had a really, really mild fall so far, and we may even have a few more days with temps near sixty--and you can bet we'll be outside on those days as well. Because I know the days are coming where good ol' Vitamin D will be hard to come by. So for the boys' sake as much as my own, we're going to soak up as much of it now as we can.

On a totally unrelated note, I figured out why I couldn't access photos from my phone for blog posts, and I got the issue resolved (yay!). So hopefully I'll be back with a Wordless Wednesday post next week--which is fortunate, because with the schedule we have for the next few weeks, it might be all I can manage to slap a few pictures on a post and hit publish.

Halloween 2015

Happy November! Hope everyone had a safe and wonderful Halloween. I can't believe we're in the homestretch to the end of the year--between Thanksgiving and Christmas the last two months always fly by--but thankfully the weather around here hasn't quite gotten the winter memo yet. Not only was I able to take the boys out for a walk (without blankets, hats, mittens, and coats), but after we got home William and I played with some bubbles outside for at least half an hour while Garrett was napping. And I even had to take my jacket off because I was getting too warm. It was wonderful.

And thankfully, we had the same nice weather over the weekend for Halloween. Granted, the costumes for the boys were probably better suited for cold weather (just playing the odds!), but there was just enough of a breeze that I wasn't terribly worried about them getting too hot. Instead of "traditional" trick-or-treating this year, our church hosted a "Trunk-or-Treat" event that we attended--as well as decorated our car for! It was a little last minute because these past few weeks have been crazy with sleep deprivation, sickness, and busy schedules, but I think it came together pretty well. I wish I would have been able to throw coordinating costumes together for Darrell and me, but oh well. Such is life. At least I remembered to take some pictures!

Our Zoo/Jungle-themed car

Close up of our fierce little lion. He was probably the hit of the event; it was pretty fun to see people's reactions when they realized we had an actual baby in our trunk

Our little monkey collecting his goodies with Grandma and Grandpa

It didn't take him long to figure out that people would put candy in his bag if he walked up to them with it. The whole saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank You" was a little bit more challenging of a concept

Hanging out with his buddy the Minion!

And this last picture isn't technically from Halloween; we had a little photo shoot with the boys in their costumes a few weeks prior so we could put together some cards to send to the grandparents and great-grandparents, but I love this picture too much not to share it here!