William is 10 Months Old

William continues to be a mover and is always on the go…but he does also have a bit of a pause button.  He will pause and watch the big kids play and then he will quickly try to join in on the fun.  He has also discovered the new world of climbing and he has decided that no obstacle is to big or hard for him to scale. He loves to climb on top of Thomas and Elin, the stairs, boxes, toys, the dog, our legs, pretty much everything.  He also likes to play under chairs and navigate the wooden jungle gym.  He is still cruising along furniture and is starting to stand a few seconds alone here or there.  As of right now he is  still a bit unsure about standing too long on his own. He walks behind his walking toys and with his hands held.  What he doesn’t seem to do much is sit still. Stairs are his current obsession, if he sees the baby gate isn’t up he will try to get up the stairs as fast as he can.  He is so quick and it has turned into a pretty silly game with him!  He loves to dance in with the big kids, play with his slide, and chase and throw his balls around.   He also loves being in the swing in the backyard or at the park.    

His laugh is about the cutest thing ever!   Besides laughing at us when we are doing something silly, he is super ticklish, so that always gets a little giggle out of him.  He also sometimes thinks that random things are hilarious and will crack himself and then us up.  Most of the time he thinks that whatever Thomas and Elin are doing is pretty cool and he always has smiles and hugs for them.  The pets also fall into this category and they are a new favorite to crawl to, catch, and snuggle.  William loves to play and be in with Thomas and Elin.  He will try to crash their toys and he gets so excited when they play with him.  It has really been fun watching him become more interactive and seeing them be such great big brother and big sister.  Sometimes their excitement gets the most of them and then we have to remind them to be gentle or careful.  The big kids also have to look out for William and his chompers!

William is eating more independently and continues to vary his intake of solid foods on a daily basis.   He has become very good at getting things into his mouth on his own, and will try everything we give him.   He now eats what we are having just cut up small for him and then he still gets a “squirt” here and there while we are out and about or busy.  He is  past the “baby food” phase and onto the finger foods/table foods.   He also loves to drink water out of a open cup, a sippy cup and straw cups.  He is still nursing both day and waking a few times (maybe once) at night/early morning to nurse.  We did a trial with me back on dairy and it caused William to have a significant setback in his sleep…so back off dairy I went!   In the 3 days of dairy I really lived it up having a few bites of cheesecake, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a few hunks of cheese…It was pretty amazing tasting…but William puking and the upset tummy and wiggling and lack of sleep there after wasn’t worth it.  Poor guy!

William continues to add sounds and “words”  daily.    If he is in the mood to “talk” he will have a back and forth “conversation” of sounds.   He will look for named things and people in our environment (mama/dada/tucker/itzy/stella/thomas/elin/outside/swing…..ect) and will follow simple directions (upup, come here, go outside, time to eat.)  He likes to wave “hi” and “bye” and “give a high 5.”  He also loves playing with his sounds and blowing bubbles/raspberries with his tongue.

Our little guy is still a night owl…he is pretty consistently the last one awake of the littles.  He takes a mid morning and afternoon nap, morning nap about he goes down anywhere between 10 and 11 and then sleeps for 2 ish hours and then his afternoon nap he goes down about 3 or 4 and sleeps for another couple hours.  Then his bedtime is about 9 or 10.  It is actually nice to be able to have just him awake and we can get some quieter one on one playtime with him.  He practices his walking, talking and shows us his silly side.  

He is really so much fun to have around and for the most part rolls with our very busy family.   Everyone that meets him describes him as the “happiest most chill baby” and we agree.  It will be interesting to see how he continues to develop and if this remains. I still can’t believe his first birthday is right  around the corner!

KinderCamp

Thomas had Kindercamp at his Kindergarten tonight. Kindercamp is a place for the incoming kids to see the classrooms, the school to give parents a bit of information and get the kids pictures/registration completed.  Mike was traveling for work so Thomas and William went to Kindercamp and Elin got to stay home with our babysitter. 

Thomas was a bit nervous as he walked into the school, there was a lot of kids and parents and everyone looked  a bit nervous and really excited!  Thomas quickly spotted his buddy Noah and the two of them explored the rooms together.  He was also pretty excited when he found what looked like a teachers permanent marker on their white board.  Thomas loves writing especially with dry erase or permanent markers!  When it was time for the parents to listen to the presentation, Thomas and Noah left with the teachers hand in hand and ready to conquer the world…together of course!  Noah’s mom and I agreed it made us both feel better to see them have one another and go confidently with the Kindy teachers. 

We cannot believe that we are already here and in a few short months we will be sending Thomas to Kindergarten. 

Earth Day

Earth day landed on a Wednesday this year so I had everyone home.  I had a few fun ideas planned, but first had to get my daily tasks done.  Once I had the house semi squared away, we got started.I gave the kiddos a Q tip earth and a blob of blue and green paint.  Their paintings were very beautiful and they somewhat resembled Mother Earth, I am going to say Q tip painting for our ages and patience levels was a bust.   Thomas quickly decided that dotting took a lot of time and a skilled hand, he was onto the fact that I had him working on his fine motor skills.  Elin decided from the beginning that a dot would just not work and she was happily gobbling paint on her circle.  Oh well, good in theory guess we will have to try again at a different ages and attention levels!

After cleaning up we headed out for our scavenger hunt.  This was an awesome Pinterest find that you can find here.  I ended up printing off 2 of each and then laminating them.  Both the kids love writing with permanent markers, so we meet in the middle with dry erase markers.  This was a hit and the kiddos had so much fun.  We ended up walking around the neighborhood for about 45 minutes before we stopped for some playtime at the park.  Some of the best days are days where the time and schedule leads itself…this was one of them!   With 3 tired kiddos and a tired giant one, we headed back home for a late lunch and naps. 

American Country Music Awards

Mike was lucky enough to be invited to the ACMA awards that were to be hosted here in Arlington.  He had called me and told me about them but then said “I don’t know if we will be able to go” with us not having family close means finding babysitters and people we trust to watch our 3 very busy kiddos…when we talked about it we figured out that if we were going to be able to go, our neighbor boys would be the only people we would trust to leave the kiddos with.  We asked them and they were up for the challenge.  They were actually excited!  So Mike and I got a fancy date alone to the award show.  We got ready and left to head to the stadium which was about 45 minutes away from our house.  As per we were a little behind with getting out the door and we were a bit nervous we were going to miss the cut off time to our seats.  Luckily we got there, had time to get a drink and then got to our seats. 

The people watching was amazing.  There was attire from street clothes to formal dresses.  Most of the guys were in jeans and boots, you can’t see it in the picture but I was able to rock boots with my dress and be country chic.  It was a fun experience, there were a lot of stars present that we got to “see” from about 100 yards away.  It was very hard to hear anything because the stadium was so loud with everyone cheering, even during the performances it was really loud and hard to hear.  Watching and listening to the behind the scenes stuff was a lot of fun.  The announcer would come on and give everyone a 1 minute warning…then he would count down and just before airtime with “30 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds we need applause 5 seconds.”   There was also a 3 row section of dancing audience members for all the audience shots.  I watched them fascinated as they followed their “dance instructor” as she showed them when to dance, sway their arms, when to sing along, and when to act like they were on camera.  After they had used a section they would rotate everyone around and then after a couple times they would then send them on their way and new people would come in.  It was crazy to watch it on tv after we got home and see what the production looked like.  Also the presenters dresses looked much different in person vs on tv.  In person the sparkles were just really masking and looked like a big disco ball, on tv there was much more definition and honestly everyone looked even thinner…maybe it was hard to look thin on the biggest screen in a stadium.  We were also a part of making the American Flag during Alan Jackson’s song and tribute to our countries heroes.  Honestly that was the quietest the stadium was the whole night as everyone showed their respect and it was a very touching tribute.  I didn’t get to see it on tv as our DVD ran out of recording space and I haven’t had time to look it up.  Everyone said it looked really great.  We ended up leaving just before the end of the show to beat traffic and get home to our littles.  Thomas was already asleep, Elin was close behind and William who had napped off and on was up waiting for us when we got home.  

William is 9 Months Old

William is down right happy to be around and is content to do whatever.  He really rolls with the chaos of our life and doesn’t take a smile off his face with whatever we throw at him, well most of the time! 

William is down right crazy about his brother and sister!  He loves trying to keep up with them and this month with his crawling and standing he is becoming more able to participate in their play.  A couple weeks ago, while I cleaned up from dinner (Mike was on a work vacation) the three of them were sitting outside and Elin said “let’s make a circle” it was about the cutest thing I have seen. William is starting to babble and “talk” more and more.  His play is no longer silent and is filled with strings of vocal play.  The latest favorite is using his bottom lip to blow raspberry sounds. He also still uses a specific sound to for me or to tell us he needs help.  He has a lot of “ahs” and “ab ab abbas.”  He just started to wave “hi” with lots of prompting.  It is fun to hear hi long strings of babble and the stories he tells us.

He has spent this month perfecting his crawling  and has started to cruise along furniture and loves his ability to get around and go where he wants.  He also loves to play in a kneeling or semi kneeling/bum siting position or with her legs off to the side.  He's still getting the hang of walking behind toys, but when he is up and moving he is as happy as can be.  He loves to go to the back windows watch outside…with the grass finally growing in a bit better he is now able to go outside and crawl around too. 
He is able to get down from standing without just needing to let go and plop.  Such a relief and make makes his standing and cruising along furniture much less dangerous.  Another big step in the movement world has been him mastering the stairs and going up them.  This makes it a little more difficult around here and sooner than later we have to get the baby gate installed!

This month William really took off with eating.   He has even started to get mad when the spoon is not in his mouth fast enough!  He likes a few of the baby food pouch blends we have tried and will eat the whole pouch if you let him.  I would say that he gets about 75% in his mouth and the rest is a big mess as he likes to help with his spoon!  We have started to give him soft finger foods and he thinks they are ok.  Most of what we are eating I am able to cut smaller and try to give to him, he seems to think being like us in this respect, is the best!   William continues to have a rash or pimple like spots around his mouth, nose and sometimes eyes.  I had tried to put a little dairy back into my diet (to my stomachs dismay) and started to notice that his face also got worse.  Nothing I tried topically to put on it helped and I thought that maybe it was his teeth that were affecting his skin…so we will see if taking dairy out again will be the trick we need and if it comes back when he starts cutting more teeth.  He now has 6 teeth his four top middle and his 2 bottom.

William is still taking between 2 and 3 naps a day. Which are pretty flexible depending on how the day is working out. He takes the longest naps when he is in our bed and typically sleeps 2-3.5 hours. He has gotten into the habit of taking his 3rd nap when we put the kids to sleep, and then wakes up when the big kids are asleep and comes to get some alone play and Daddy and Mommy time. This happens a few nights a week and then a few nights a week he goes to sleep and stays asleep, needing to be snuggled after his initial 45 minutes-1 hour nap alone.  If he doesn’t do that mini nap he happily hangs out with Mike and I until he if ready to go to sleep, about 9 or sometimes, gasp, even later.  It is a lot of fun for us to have our littlest guy to play with.  He doesn’t mind the extra mom and dad only attention!  After he goes to sleep he then wakes for the day between 7 and 8 a.m.   He still wakes at night to nurse and sometimes there is a “bad night” with a lot of wake ups, but for the most part he grunts “awake” nurses and is asleep after his belly is full. 

William had his 9 month doctor appointment a few weeks early, so that he and Thomas could both be booked at the same time!   We saw the doctor on the 7th and William was 27 inches long (25%) and was 17.1 lbs (20%). 

William is 8 Months Old…

Once again I am writing and wondering how the time has gone so quickly and we have moved on to the next month with William.  With the addition of time, William’s personality continues to develop and we enjoy learning more about who he is every day.   William is a charmer and loves to flash big grins at anyone and everyone.  Every once in awhile he will meet someone who he is unsure of and then he will let you know it with the cutest sad face we have ever seen.  The most recent time this happened was at Elin’s ENT visit, the doctor was obviously too close, and William wanted nothing to do with it.  He screamed something fierce and then would tuck his head away hoping that the doctor, who was extremely enduring and pleasant, would quickly disappear.  When he hadn’t the screaming and crying would continue and the cycle continued until the said doctor was across the room.   Otherwise he is really a pretty chill little dude.   He really just loves being around and with us.  He is very good about vocalizing his needs and his fuse is a bit longer than we remember with Thomas and Elin.  He also looks at the for their cues, so as long as they are ok, he knows he should be too. 

William loves his big brother and sister so much!  He lights up when they are in the room and always wants to be doing what they are doing.  They get so excited any time William is doing something “for the first time.”  Helping him out is something they both love doing.  Honestly trying to keep them from smothering him with too much love and attention and “giving him space” is a big thing right now. 

William is a mover just like Thomas and Elin were.  After several weeks of being able to rock on his hands and knees and take a single arm forward he is crawling away.  We are all so proud of him and this has allowed him to get where he wants to go much quicker!  He is so close to pulling himself up and tries to do so on the couch or ottoman.  The kid has a twinkle in his eye saying I need to keep up with Thomas and Elin!  

William has 4 teeth now!  His top left middle and 2nd incisors came in and his right side doesn’t seem far behind.  He has still been trying different foods although he is not quite sure they are suppose to be in his mouth.  He still likes nursing and is happily doing so. Sleep is still something he is good at, unless his teeth are bothering him.  Most nights he takes a quick cat nap while the big kids go to sleep and then when the house is quiet he gets his own time with Mommy and Daddy.  He then goes back to sleep between 9-10.  His schedule is pretty flexible and really depends on what is happening that day.  If we are out and about he will try to take a quick morning nap, so he doesn’t miss the action.  If we are home he will usually get a 2 hour morning nap in.  In the afternoon he typically has a long 2-3.5 hour nap, which if we are home is nice for me to get stuff done and the big kids to get some mama only time. 

Things he really likes are: baths, crawling, swinging, his brother and sister, the cats, snuggling and getting kisses. 

William is 7 Months

Hard to believe that seven months have already passes with William in our lives.  I have a hard time remembering what life was like before William was born, although I know it was far less chaotic.  Nonetheless, it has been a wonderfully chaotic 7 months that have flown by.  The lack of sleep, busy schedules, and constant movement of at least one of the kids makes the days fly by.  As much as I will time to slow down, and give me more time with my baby baby (and last baby baby) it isn’t happening, so I am savoring every single second, every middle of the night feed, every day as he learns something new and changes.  As excited as I am to see him gain new things, it means he is leaving his babyhood quickly behind, and with a few more blinks we will be celebrating his 8, 9 and then 1 year “birthdays.” 

William is a happy go lucky guy with a really chill and content disposition.  He rolls along with our family and the busy lives we lead.  If we have had a busy morning or day he will get frustrated with the in and out of the car seat, but that is about the only thing that makes him really mad.  Overall his car seat isn’t a torcher chamber any longer, he will even joining us here and there singing our favorite songs!

William is learning new things everyday and he’s really becoming more engaged with all of us.  He knows where his brother and sister are all the time and lights up when they are playing with him.  He has giggles and smiles for them and if they get to close he will open mouth bite kiss them or grab their hair.  You can see in his eyes that he cannot wait to be running around and playing with them.  It is fun to see how they are starting to develop their relationships together.

William is trying to crawl and is getting closer by the day.  He has gotten the back half of his body stronger and the minute you put him down on his tummy, he pops up into a crawling position.  He does downward facing dog and will lift up his legs and knows how to move them forward.  He is now propelling himself forward and can roll and turn in a circle to get to most things.  He is consistently rolling from tummy to back and back to tummy.  When he gets to a couch or obstacle he will try to pull himself up to stand, he has the thought there but needs lots of help to get up.

   

He is a chatter box and in the rare moments that Thomas and Elin are not yelling, screaming or crying playing, through the house he loves to talk to us.  He cracks us up with his stories, bubble blowing, squeals and screams.   Smiles, his smiles are priceless and if there was one thing that I would say is consistent with the guy it is his ability to brighten your mood.  He loves to smile and flirt with others.  He now has his 2 bottom teeth and it looks like the top 4 are not far behind.  Pretty soon his gums will be filled with teeth!  He is not a huge fan of baby food yet. He has had bites here and there of bananas, avocado, sweet potato and has tried some puffs. Takes a few tastes and then he is done.  He does thing that drinking water from a sippy cup is the best big boy thing ever. 

He loves being wrapped on my tummy or back and if he's tired, teething or feeling crummy that is where he spends most of his time.  I can wrap him on my back, hand him a small toy and then we can power through a big kid activity, cooking, or running around.  You learn more with every kiddo, but I wonder where this was when I had Thomas...it would have been fantastic!
William has figured out that the good life is being held a lot.  He still has a pretty flexible schedule but is generally taking 2-4 naps a day.  Most often he takes his morning nap while we are out and about In the car, while wrapped, or if we are home he will lay down sometimes in the bed.  The afternoon nap is typically where it is at and he usually sleeps a good 2-3 hours needing possibly a quick renurse back to sleep in the middle of the nap.  At night he is sleeping next to me or if feeling crummy in our arms for most of the night waking maybe a few times or possibly sleeping through the night.  With him so close I don’t ever really wake up and check to see what is happening with his sleep.  So as long as we both feel rested in the morning, I feel like it was a good night! 

William doesn’t have another doctor appointment until his 9 month well baby.  He did have an appointment this month to receive a vaccine and thought it was about the crummiest thing ever.  Poor guy was in a good amount of pain after and wouldn’t move his leg at all for the first day.  If we accidently bumped it or made it move he would sad face and then whimper or cry a bit.   He wanted lots of snuggles!  We gave him Motrin to help take the edge off and some other homeopathic stuff that was suppose to help deep tissue pain.  That night I took a bath with him and some Epsom salt and helped him wiggle it a bit.  When he woke up all was better and his leg moved again.