Buddy Boy at 8 Months

Sweet babykins is 8 months old.

 And, wow, is he ever busy!  Between log rolls and lurchy crawls, he can flat travel a room.  And as of yesterday, he can pull himself up to a standing position.  He is so very ready to chase his brother around!

Still no teeth, but Buddy Boy is a great eater!  He nurses 5-6 times a day, drinks two supplemental bottles, chows down on solids at lunchtime, and has a snack at suppertime.  Whenever he figures out that food is coming his way (the nursing cover, the bottle, the highchair tray, etc.), he pumps his legs and squeals and swings his fists around.  Currently, he is loving cooked apple slices and steamed asparagus stalks.  And I think he'd eat a whole jar of sweet potato puffs, if I let him.

I love watching his ever-changing eyes turn different colors.  I think they're headed toward the Mister's chocolate brown, but right now, they're a mix of navy blue, green, gold, and caramel.

He is such a good sport about changes in his routine, just going with the flow, napping in the stroller or Ergo, if need be, enjoying all our activities on his own little level.  As long as he's with us, he's happy!  Now, if he gets left in a room alone, that's a different story...  :)

He's a good little baby and he's our sweet Buddy Boy.

Happy 3/4 of a year, babypie!

Buddy Boy at 7 Months

Well, hello, 7 months!

This month, Buddy Boy really became his own little person, with a whole set of desires and interests.

He absolutely adores his big brother, and wants to be a part of whatever he is doing.  This means that he is often playing with Legos and puzzle pieces and little toy men.  Thankfully, Little Guy is delighted to share his toys with Buddy Boy and enjoys seeing him play with them.

He's still a great sleeper, and has recently started sleeping at least 13 hours a night without waking to nurse.  Woohoo!  Happy baby, happy mama.

We've been progressing with our solid foods introduction.  Buddy Boy has a solids session at lunchtime everyday and exclusively feeds himself. Thus far, he has enjoyed sucking and gnawing on apple slices, bell pepper strips, and celery stalks.  He also eats Gerber yogurt melts and loves Baby Mum-Mum rice crackers.

At 7 months, Buddy Boy can sit for ages without tumbling, but shows no signs of crawling just yet.  His hair is filling in and his eyes are changing color.  I fully expected to see some teeth by now, but we're still waiting.

He's perfectly happy playing on the floor, as long as I'm in sight, but has started crying when I leave the room, so we've been working on having a little bit of solo playtime.  I think I'm also going to institute some playpen time now, before he's crawling, so we won't run into too much resistance.

He's such a sweet and easy baby.  We have been so blessed with our boys' dispositions!

And it makes me so happy to see the relationship blooming between the two of them.  Last night, we were on a drive and they were both craning their necks around the edges of their carseats to see one another.  Little Guy was sing-songing, "Heybabyheybabyheybaby," and Buddy Boy was just dying out laughing, which then made Little Guy get the giggles.  Listening, for minutes on end, to your little boys laughing at each other laughing...that's pretty good stuff.

Happy 7 months, darling boy!  You are such a joy and we love you so!

Buddy Boy at 5 Months

Big, huge month for our little Buddy Boy.  First of all, literally: by the end of our extended visit down south, he was popping out of all the clothes I packed.  So we pulled out the box of 6-12 month clothes as soon as we got home.

 But a little less literally, he made all kinds of fun developments.  He now has a set of sounds that are distinctively his, most notably a long, croaky gasp of an inhale that he thinks is really hilarious. 

 And he is proficient in rolling front-to-back and back-to-front.

 One morning in Alabama, he woke up with flecks of green in his eyes.  Some days, they look most decidely hazel, while other days they still seem to be dark blue.  Only time will tell, I guess.

He made a new friend.  Remember Sophie?  If his brother's experience is any indication, it will be an undying love affair.

But biggest of all...after learning how to jump out of his Bumbo seat, he learned to sit up unassisted!  As the Little Guy would say, TA DAAAA!

Wohoo...bring on one of the best stages of babyhood: the happily seated baby!

His feats of strength scored him a new ride.

And he's never been happier!

John Fletcher at 4 Months

 And suddenly...he's four months old!

 At four months, John Fletcher weighs 13 pounds, 2 ounces (25th percentile).

 And is 25 1/4 inches long (50th percentile).

This month has been an especially intense bonding time for baby and me. I find my heart actively being knitted more closely to his each day. What sweetness!

 John Fletcher is still a very happy little munchkin, even keeping good spirits through his recent illnesses.  When he's well, he is a great sleeper...sleeping at night from about 8 PM to 8 AM, with a dreamfeed and a 6 AM feed thrown in, and taking either two or three naps a day.

He enjoys watching his Baby Mozart mobile, sitting in his Bumbo seat, being entertained by his brother, and listening to music.

He is very ticklish and erupts in giggles whenever I lotion his chest or button clothes up to his chin.  He also giggles at deep voices and loves being talked to.

He finds his mother too slow with the passy (the plight of the second child!), and has learned that he's quite happy to make do with his thumb.

Your father, your brother, and I love you so much, buddy boy!  Happy four months!

John Fletcher at 3 Months

Hello, you beautiful quarter-year-old!

 You light up our lives with your giggly smile.  It makes us feel so loved.

My days are a good bit busier than they were when your brother was this age, so I have to make sure I get enough time each day to just hold you.  Your brother's naptime is our special time...whether asleep or awake, we almost always spend those hours snuggled up to one another.  Sometimes we do photoshoots!

 You are an easy baby.  You sleep through the night (as long as we keep that passy in) and take at least 3 good naps each day.  You eat well--and quickly!  You're still pretty quiet.  And usually you only fuss if you're cold or overtired.  Yesterday, I pulled out the mobile for your bassinette and you LOVED it!  You just kicked and stretched and cooed as it spun overhead.

We love you, sweet one!  These three months have been wonderful!

John Fletcher at 2 Months

This little slice of pumpkin pie is 2 months old now!  He weighs 10 pounds, 13 ounces (75th percentile!) and is 23 1/4 inches long (50th percentile). 

John Fletcher is such a sweet baby and beginning to reach that more interactive stage, where it seems like he knows who we are and is glad when we're around.  Such fun!  Our big task this month has been sleep training. He now goes from his dreamfeed (around 10:30 PM) to his next feeding at about 5:30 AM. Sometimes there's a good bit of passy work to be done from 3-5 AM, but we're making it. He's taking a good, structured nap in the afternoon during Andrew's nap, but in the mornings, we are always on the move, so he just falls asleep as he pleases in the stroller or Moby wrap. I hate that he's not getting the structured mornings like Andrew had (and which I know have paid off in Andrew being a fabulous sleeper now), but there is no way we can stay home all day long to have crib naps on schedule this time around. Moms of more than one, how do you deal with this???

John Fletcher's eyes look so dark in pictures, but they are blue as can be...deep, navy blue. 

 And he's good and strong.  Loves to bounce across the floor on his toes with a little assistance.  Big brother loves this, too, because he thinks baby's up and learned to walk.

 He's also getting to be quite the smiley face!  Sometimes, he'll just coo away and almost giggle at us.  It's pretty fantastic.

What a delight you are, my baby boy!  I thank the Lord for giving us you!



Andrew at 21 Months

We're rounding the bend toward Andrew's second birthday and, my, how he has been a-changin'!

He's grown up a good bit over the last few months, but especially once we brought the baby home.  I've been so proud of him for assuming the big brother role so gracefully.  He loves to hold John Fletcher several times a day, find his passy when he cries (or just suggest that JF needs "mo' milk"), and put his diapers in the trash.  He always asks to kiss baby goodnight, includes him in all rounds of high-five's, and bends deeply at the waist to hug and kiss John Fletcher in his bouncy seat.  Makes me smile!

He's actually allowing us to read books to him now, rather than just flip frantically through the pages.  He especially loves books about animals, and ever since he received Curious George from our cousins, he's been pretty much obsessed with that little 'monk.'  I think it's fitting.

He plays in his toy kitchen a lot and builds many a Lego tower.  He also makes frequent requests to watch videos on youtube...among his favorites are baby sign language and nursery rhyme videos, as well as one 9 minute video of garbage trucks.  Just real garbage trucks doing real stuff...you know, driving down the road, stopping at dumpsters, dumping trash and the like.  No music, no words, no great cinematic effects.  Just garbage trucks.  I have to cut it off at about 3 minutes, but he loves it.

Andrew's vocabulary has skyrocketed.  All the time now, he just picks up new words without our teaching them to him and will try to repeat almost anything.  Still not really stringing words together in sentence-fashion, but talking all the time.  He's started to tell stories.  His favorite right now is about an apparently life-changing moment when he was accompanying Jacob to the trash chute and a paper cup fell out of the trash bag, so Jacob picked it up.  Andrew says many, many times a day, "trash...hup (cup)...uh-oh...up...Dada."  He says it when we leave the apartment, when he talks on the phone with Gr'mama, when the doorman asks how he's doing, when he sees a paper cup, or just any other ol' time it strikes him as a good story to tell.

He refers to all letters as "B" and all numbers as "2," but if pressed, he can identify A,B,C, and sometimes O and S, and...um...not a single number.  He loves to ride the Metro ("choo-choo") and as we stroll the city, he points to all the elevators and escalators to the underground and asks to go down them.  He continues to be intrigued by anything on wheels--taxis, firetrucks, motorcycles, Segways (herds of Segways tour the city each day), bikes, tractors--each one is exclaimed over.  And we do not leave the house without a ball of some sort.

The little guy wants to be just like his daddy.  In the mornings, he'll drag Jacob's briefacse up the stairs and tell us he's going to work.  He wants to talk on Jacob's cell phone and type on his BlackBerry and listen to his music.  He asks all day long where Daddy is and squeals with delight when he gets home.  His favorite activity is going on weekend morning runs with Daddy, but anything done with Daddy is done gleefully (except maybe diaper changes--he hates those, no matter what).

He's pretty good with colors.  Blue's his favorite, but red, green, yellow, orange, gold, peach, pink, brown, and white are also in his repertoire.  And, no, I didn't teach him to identify things as gold or peach.  He just started doing it (based on the color of Goldfish and peaches, I think?).  Guess he likes that part of the spectrum.

Coloring has also become a happy pastime. And when we've colored a page all up, we fold it into a paper airplane and he tries to fly it into the (vaulted) ceiling.  Not much success on that front.

It's been so much fun to see Andrew begin to grow into a little boy. While I'm still holding on tight to his "littleness," I now realize that each of his developments mean I get to know him more fully, and that is something to cherish!