Everett at 5 Months

Our little boy is growing and growing!

I love his juicy face and his beautiful blue eyes. This kid gets kissed. A lot.

He is getting really close to being able to sit up on his own. Usually if I just hold on to a hand to give him a little support, he sits really well. He is figuring out his balance and has learned not to throw his body backwards. At least, most of the time!

My favorite picture of the bunch. How can you resist this face??

Our little guy has made some great strides this month in sleeping. He decided that he did NOT like to be rocked to sleep (what kid doesn't like that?), and he would scream and cry and push against us once we did our sleep-time routine of swaddling him and rocking him. It felt like we were keeping him awake, he would calm down and start to drift off and then his eyes would pop open and he would see us and start all over again! So we tried eliminating the rocking and just loosely swaddling him from the waist down and putting him to bed awake. We have been doing that for a few weeks now and he cries much less, believe it or not! Even on the first day we tried it, he cried for a total of 15 minutes and then slept through the entire night. Now it is abnormal for him to get up to eat even once a night and he usually sleeps all the way from 8pm to 6:30/7am in the morning. We didn't mean to get him to sleep through the night, in fact I am kind of sad about it because I loved our once a night cuddles, but it feels like he was ready to sleep longer and just needed us to let him do it on his own. Why do babies have to grow up so quickly????

He is starting to grow out of his 3-6 month size clothes, all of his pants are too short and things are starting to get pretty snug. He seems hungry all the time, but it is hard to tell if he is hungry or if he just wants to chew on things. He might be working on a tooth, I guess we will just have to wait and see!

5 month check up stats:
Weight: 14 lbs (5th percentile) *he was 15th percentile at last appointment*
Height: 26 inches (45th percentile) *he was 21st percentile at last appointment, so big jump!*

Phone Pictures and Videos



 James barely made the cut off for 3 year old soccer at the YMCA, and after much discussion about whether it would be worth it/how difficult it would be on our schedule we decided to go for it! We took our soccer ball to the field next to the Y to play and then we stopped in to register. James was so excited! He wanted to get started right away and he didn't like that he had to wait. He meets his coach next Friday, and then practices start in March with games starting a few weeks after that. The only bummer is that all of the games are held on Friday evenings when Anthony has to work. Hopefully he gets to at least come to some of the practices! If the games weren't Friday nights, Anthony totally would have signed up as a coach. He is just as excited as James! We got him a small sized soccer ball and shin guards at Walmart and I found a pair of cleats his size at a consignment store for $5. He doesn't have to wear cleats and we weren't sure if he would like running in them anyway, but they are so cute we had to try to find a pair!

I washed a bunch of our outside towels and blankets that we use for the garden on cold nights and for the boat and I left them folded on the floor. Bitsy discovered her dream bed! Just enough cushion on the bottom, with a nice layer on the top. All you could see of her was a nose!

 Ever since our breakthrough with going #2 on the potty, James was still a little hit or miss. Thankfully, the past week or so he has been more consistent. One night he wanted me to sit next to him while he went and I couldn't stop laughing at the faces he was making. The next day, he wanted to make me laugh again, so he tried to imitate his pooping face. This is the imitation :)

Anthony has been stalking this flock of parrot-looking birds that roost in a palm tree behind our house. He finally was able to get a video of them to show to a patient of his who owns a bird store. She said that they are conures that probably started out as someone's pet and now they have created their own flock. She said that if we put a birdfeeder up with chunky birdseed that we can probably get them to come to our backyard. The birdfeeder was up the next day!! Anthony is so excited, he and James go out to check the birdfeeder all the time. So far we have only attracted a squirrel :)

While Anthony was in the backyard with the video camera, he got a few videos of James. He was riding his bike earlier and then he wanted to practice his soccer with his cleats, so he is wearing his bike helmet and soccer cleats :) Such a character!

 

Valentine's Activites and Shelly the Turtle

We had a fun valentine's week! We started out by decorating these cute little mailboxes that I picked up at target so that we could send each other valentines. James loved checking his whenever the flag was up! I tried to get him to leave some for Anthony in his, but James couldn't resist the candy and he would sneak over to "look at it" after a few minutes and then all of a sudden, Anthony's candy would be gone. I wonder how that happened? :)

We had a Valentine's day play date with some friends from church and I made these valentines for James to give out. They also did a bunch of other cute crafts and activities, although all James wanted to do was to go out and play in their backyard. Boys!

While we were weeding out our garden, I found a small box turtle. We decided to surprise James with it after naptime and let it visit us for a few days. Here he is discovering it: 

Her vacation home for the next few days. We decided to call her "Shelly":

 

When we decided to let her go, I told James that she had to go back outside so that she could find a Daddy turtle and have baby turtles. He was totally fine with that, thank goodness! I put her in our backyard and then a few hours later went outside to play with James. I didn't see her anywhere, so I let the dogs come out with us. When we came back inside, James started yelling, "Brownie has Shelly!". Uh oh. Somehow Brownie found her while we were outside and was chewing on her! I picked her up and her entire front side was chewed up and it looked like the underside of her shell was caved in. James gave me a sad face and said, "Brownie chew her face off?". It was traumatizing! I put her back outside on the other side of the fence so that the dogs couldn't reach her and when checked later she was gone. Sooooo maybe she survived and crawled away? Or maybe another animal got to her? Either way, I felt really bad :(

Rolling along

We have a roller! Rett rolled over for the first time on February 4th. He had been soooo close for a few days, so every chance we got we put him on the floor to see if he would do it. That morning I put him down and went into James' room to get him out of bed and dressed. While I was changing him I heard the xbox turn on in the family room...which was unoccupied except for Rett! When I checked on him, not only had he rolled from his back to his front but his foot hit the controller and turned on the xbox. If I didn't get to see the exact moment that he rolled, at least I got to hear it :)

Success!

He is definitely moving towards being more mobile. He loves to grab his toes and wiggle his body out of his bouncy seat. I've started having to remind myself to strap him into everything! 

We officially moved the crib out of James' room since he hasn't had to go back into it for sleeping for almost 2 weeks. He hasn't liked the idea of Rett sleeping in his crib whenever we have mentioned it, so I wasn't sure how he would react. Luckily, he didn't have any problems with it! As soon as I asked him to help me with the tools to take it apart and put it in Rett's room, he was excited to get the tools. It seems like to him it is still his crib, but he doesn't mind Rett sleeping in it because it is for babies. I also bought brand new sheets for it, so that it would look a little bit different and help him not think of it as his. Of course, once we got everything set up, we had to let Rett try it out. He looked so cute! (You can sort of see some baby feet in the crib in the first picture)

 Anthony thinks he looks a little bit like our niece Teya in this picture, and I totally see it. Don't you love it when you can see family resemblances?

He is still sleeping in a bassinet in his room, but we are hoping to start to transition him to the crib. I am going to try one nap a day in the crib and try to work my way up. He loves the cozy bassinet and it has an incline so it is pretty different from the crib. Hopefully it won't take too long :) As you can see he is working his way towards growing out of it pretty quickly! This kid gets bigger by the day!

Visiting Great Grandma

This past Sunday we drove down to Cocoa to visit Anthony's grandmother to celebrate her 92nd birthday! The last time we saw her was Thanksgiving 2011, so it was definitely an overdue visit. She loved seeing Rett, and even though she wasn't very sure of who we were (she didn't even really recognize Anthony), she was definitely happy we were there.

She kept saying how she loved Rett's blue eyes and how she always wanted a blue eyed baby :) I told her I loved his eyes too!

James was really good and after an hour or so of not being able to run around or touch anything in the assisted living facility, we decided to go outside and play in the front yard. James ran around playing tag and hide and go seek with his cousin Dallas and me. So much fun for a little boy. Then they started catching lizards. Dallas is a champion lizard catcher, but he would also let James take turns trying to catch them. He actually got one! Then we had fun putting the lizard on different parts of James' body. Here is the lizard on his head. James has no fear!

Rett was so tired after skipping his nap at church and then again during the visit, that he passed out in his car seat on the way home. We have some toy links dangling from his car seat handle and he fell asleep holding on to them. He slept like that the entire way home!

It was such a good visit. Happy Birthday Grandma Lagana!

James' 3rd Birthday

James had a great birthday!! This was the first year that he really understood that it was a special day and had been talking about his birthday for weeks. The night before his birthday when I was lying down with him in his bed to tell stories, I told him the story of when he was born. He must have been really excited for his birthday to come, because he woke up extra early the next day at 7:30am (he usually gets up around 9am). I went and got him out of his room and the first thing he said was, "It's my burfday!!". I did a horrible job of hiding his stack of presents that I wrapped, so he knew exactly where they were and ran straight to them. I wanted him to open most of them with the rest of the family so I let him pick out one and open it on our bed with just me and Anthony.

Thank goodness he picked out the big thing that he wanted: a Jolly Roger!

This toy did not leave his side for a minute all day. He was in love! After everyone got up and dressed, we let James decide what we were going to do before Anthony's parents came for lunch around noon. He originally wanted to go to the pirate ship playground, but it was a little rainy and overcast, so I asked him if he wanted to go there or to this indoor playground we recently discovered. He voted for the indoor playground, so off we went. It is a really cool place, you can pay to play for the day, or for a monthly membership. If it weren't so expensive I would do it in a heartbeat! They have every imagination/pretend toy you can think off: play kitchen, washer and dryer, legos, trains, a ball pit, a tool bench, puppet theater, costume corner, etc..

He loved this little mixer, I think because it reminds him of power tools. He was making all kinds of things for us: eggs, pancakes, and pizza:

I got a picture of his concentrating face. He always sticks his tongue out and if he is really focusing, the tongue goes back and forth across his lips :)

 Serving me breakfast:

 Doing some laundry:

They have a little corner for babies and Rett spent about 10 minutes in this little seat. The rest of the two hours he just sat happily on our laps:

It was coming up on lunchtime, so we headed home to get ready for pizza, cupcakes, and presents! I brought his cupcake in the room and we sang happy birthday but he didn't really get that he was supposed to wait until the song was over to blow out the candle. We ended up relighting it and letting him blow it out a couple times in a row. It is hard to hear at the very end but we asked him what he wished for and he said, "A cupcake". Wish granted!

 He loved that cupcake!!

We took a group shot and we all tried to do the "James" face. I think he pulls it off the best :)

After cupcakes it was time for the presents. James was so excited about every single one that he got, it was so cute.

He got quite the haul! From Grandma he got three different sets of Jake and the Neverland pirates figurines.

 I love his face in this one, he gets so excited/surprised that his eyebrows move into his forehead :)

He also got a Hook battle boat that shoots cannons, a Jake the pirates storybook, and a check from Mimi and Papa to play at the indoor playground a few more times.

He has been wanting this telescope for forever since he saw it in Target. He loves the "clock" on the top of it. (It has a compass on the side)

 His last present was a play doctor set. It was a hit! He carries his bag of supplies around the house now and says he is "going work". He loves to fix us up and he will come up to you and say, "Uh oh! Your heart is broken!! Lemme fix you!" It came with a play clipboard and pen and sometimes he will come up to you with it in his hand like he is writing something down and will say, "Whas the prablem?"

 We had such a fun day with our little guy. The next morning he woke up and asked, "Is it my burfday again?" I was sad that I had to tell him that he has to wait an entire year until his next birthday. Maybe we can do a little half birthday celebration. I don't know if I can wait to have so much fun! :)