11 Weeks- My little social butterfly

Okay, I'm finally posting again.....it is SO hard to find time to actually do it! And I'm always behind on getting pictures uploaded....I think that will be the story of my life for at least the next 18 years!

Drew is eleven weeks old today! He has been so precious lately; he loves attention and will smile at us when we look at him and smile (as long as he's not tired or hungry!). He's got the cutest little smile, although it's really hard to capture in pictures! And he's sleeping pretty well now.....the last four mornings, he's slept until past 5am (three of those days he didn't wake up until after 6am). Until now, he hasn't been as good a sleeper as Grant, but he's finally catching up!

We're still not on any type of schedule yet, but I'm really okay with that for now. He usually takes one good nap per day, and the rest are short naps scattered throughout. And he's doing a little better in the carseat; for the past few weeks, he'd been crying pretty much nonstop in the car. But he's been doing a lot better (at least not crying the entire time!). Hearing your baby cry in the car is one of the worst things in the world! I feel like I drive like a maniac trying to get to my destination so I can take him out and rescue him!!

I just look at my two little boys and feel so blessed. Some days I am VERY frustrated, but then I remember that this time will pass in a flash, and I try to keep from getting irritated when things don't go the way I plan. I am a work in progress!

Some pictures.....

Bathtime! Drew LOVES his bath.....now we've actually started bathing the boys at the same time in their bathroom. Dean bathes Grant in the tub while I bathe Drew in his little tub on the counter.
My chubby little man!

We tried to take a picture of Dean and the boys in their Alabama clothes, but Grant wasn't overly excited....I don't think he liked seeing Drew sitting this close to his Daddy!
Hearing Grant scream made Drew cry too!

Sleepy little boy.....he still sleeps on me a lot, which I love. Some days I don't get much done, but it's worth it!

Drew is a master at spitting up (just like his brother), so I try to keep bibs on him as much as possible. This was is from Elizabeth....I think it is so cute!

Daddy worked late one night last week so Drew, Grant and I had fun hanging out and watching SuperWhy. Margaret and Doug gave this to Grant when he was little.....now Drew gets to wear it on cold days!
Here's a good smile!

Handsome

These pictures are over a month old, but I love them and have been wanting to post them for a while. This was Grant's picture day at school, and we dressed him in this cute little outfit (a hand-me-down from his friend Andrew). These pictures that Dean took were much better than the ones from school!


This was taken that same afternoon, when Grant and I took a walk down the street. He had fun making stops to play in the water and examine the acorns! We ended up walking all the way to the park, then Dean came to pick us up a while later. It was fun spending a little bit of time alone with Grant (which doesn't happen as much as it used to!).The reason for the title of the post: a few weeks ago, Dean's laptop was sitting on the kitchen table. His desktop picture is one of Grant (go figure!). Grant looked at his picture, and said "Grant. Handsome." It was so funny! Whenever we see pictures of him (usually playing on our screen saver), I say "look, there's Grant! Isn't he handsome?" So I guess Grant has learned that he's handsome and decided he would use the word to describe himself!

Every day he makes me laugh by the phrases he puts together and the vocabulary he picks up without anyone specifically teaching him. He still doesn't use prepositions, but he can get across what he's trying to say. Here are just a few examples:

- "I fall down- grass."
- "I fall down- knee" (meaning that he hurt his knee).
- The other day he said "No sir. Sit down. Table. Now!" (I often say "no sir" to correct him when he's doing something wrong. That little stinker already knows how to mock!).
- He tells the kitty, "No! Outside, Amminadab!" and he'll chase the cat around the house yelling at him until he goes back out (this is our cat that was banished outside for spraying).
- He also now says "I like ___" and "I need ___" quite a bit. And he likes to describe things as "cool!" or "awesome!"

And Dean recently read that between ages 2-4, kids will make up innane words and will begin to use words in ways that they know aren't correct (because they know it sounds funny). Grant has started doing this. He holds up anything to his mouth and says "apple juice" as he pretends to drink it (even if it's one of his toys) because he's seen that it makes us laugh. And he'll take anything that's flat, put it under his arm and call it a Bible (yesterday it was one of our trivets!). Again, he has learned to be creative because he knows it will draw a laugh!

With Grant, we're always either having a wonderful time or a horrible time. He'll be sweet, charming, and hilarious one minute. Then the next minute something doesn't happen the way he wants it to, and he turns into a terror! This was particularly true the week of his birthday.....I have never seen him act so insane and out of control during his fits. He's been better in the past 10 days, but he can turn from Dr. Jeckyll to Mr. Hyde in no time. I get so frustrated and angry at him, then I feel bad because I remind myself that he's two and I can't expect him to act like an adult!

The next chance I get, it's Drew's turn to be the subject of a post!

Grant's Birthday

A week late, here are finally some pictures from Grant's 2nd birthday.

That morning, he ate a waffle for breakfast and I put a candle in it. He tried and tried to blow it out but never could. Finally I got too nervous having a lit candle sitting on his tray, and I blew it out for him!


For a while I figured we'd have a birthday party for him, and about a month ago I went out and bought all the supplies. But the more I thought about it and tried to plan, it stressed me out more and more! So we didn't have a party this year.....I figured Grant wouldn't even know what everyone was doing at our house anyway! My parents came down on his birthday, though. Here Grant is helping them put together his birthday present from them.....a shopping cart!
A few hours later, here he is putting his Spider Friend into the shopping cart for a ride! Notice he's wearing a sweatsuit......I would have put something nicer on for his birthday, but he had a fever that came and went throughout the day. He wore his pajamas until about 5pm, when we finally put this sweatsuit on him!
This was my first attempt at making and decorating a shaped cake....I saw the football cake mold at Hobby Lobby and thought it would be a perfect one to start with, since it looked pretty easy to decorate. It was fun! I'll have to try something a little harder next time......

About to blow out the candles on his cake.....
This time he actually did a great job and blew the candles out in about four tries!Probably the first decent picture of the four of us together since Drew was born! In all the others we've tried before this, Grant hasn't been a very good participant! Gosh, I look tired!!
This was a couple of days before his birthday.....he called this a razor and tried shaving his face like Daddy! It's a mini-windshield washer (I think!). At least this time he didn't try to shave his legs with it like he's done with razors before!

Drew is two months old!

First, thanks to you guys who commented about the sleeping stuff. I've talked to a number of people whose babies actually sleep on their tummies. I know it's much more natural for them to sleep that way. And I've been pretty happy with the Angel Care monitor so far. The only thing is that it's very sensitive.....it picks up the ceiling fan as movement (at least when the pack and play sits right under the fan). So we'll have to experiment and make sure we can turn the fan on in his room as long as his crib isn't sitting right underneath it (he's still sleeping in our room now). But like I said, it gives me so much peace of mind when I lay Drew down to sleep on his belly.

Anyway, Drew turned two months old on Saturday, so I wanted to post a few pictures of him from the past couple of weeks.

My sleepy baby (this is what he looks like probably 85% of the day):
He's been smiling for a couple of weeks, but it's really hard to get a shot of it! Here's probably the closest thing I've gotten.
Laying down and "playing" (as much as they play at this age!) on Grant's Elmo couch.
Sleeping on Daddy. He still spends a lot of time sleeping in our arms. But Dean only holds him after Grant's in bed....Grant is still very possessive of Daddy.


"What are you doing to me??!" Here's Grant giving Drew a kiss or hug.
Our two kids have differed so much on their sleep habits/patterns. Grant slept wonderfully in the swing, Papasan (bouncy chair) and carseat. He slept in his Papasan at night until he was 3 months old! And every time I put him in the car (especially when he was this age), he'd fall right to sleep, and usually sleep the entire time we were out. I didn't realize how nice this was!

Drew is SO much different! He will fall asleep easily if I lay him down on his belly, but he HATES the carseat. And he really doesn't care too much for the swing or Papasan either.....if he's fallen asleep in my arms, he'll often wake up after just a few minutes if I lay him in one of those. The hardest part is listening to him scream when we're in the car. He doesn't do it every time, but many times he'll cry nonstop until I take him out. This laid back baby is turning into a little handful!

But in the past week or so, he's been sleeping really long stretches for us at night. Most nights he wakes up somewhere between 2:30 and 4:30 for the first time, but last night he didn't wake up until 5:45, when Dean was about to get out of bed! Yay!!

Okay, I really am intending to get pictures from Grant's b-day up in the next day or two. Our computer is VERY slow and the software I use to brighten pictures keeps crashing. Fun times with the computer!

Two years and two months

Now that I've written this I realize it's quite long.....unless you're family, you may not care to read all the details about our doctor's appt today! I will try to post pictures tomorrow of Grant's birthday......


Today Dean took the day off and we took the boys for their two year/two month appointments. Grant picked up a virus a couple of days ago and has had a fever off and on since Monday evening. Thankfully, for his birthday yesterday he felt okay for most of the day. But he woke up a lot last night, and this morning was in a very foul mood!

So we went to their appointment at 1pm, and Grant was not happy when we got there. It's been months since he's been to the doctor, but he started freaking out the second we stepped into the examining room! Weird! He's never been scared of the doctor's office before, except maybe for a few seconds at his 18 month checkup. One nurse took Drew's measurements while the other (poor lady) TRIED to measure Grant....he threw a complete fit when she tried to put the measuring tape around his head! We knew we were in for a long appointment at that point. Everything was a struggle....laying him down to measure his length, putting him on the scale to weigh him, etc. The nurse had to prick his finger to draw a sample of blood, and it sounded like he was being tortured!

When our doctor came in, she examined Drew first and Grant was SO interested! I thought he might see that nothing bad happened to Drew and decide it wouldn't be too bad. But nope, he got hysterical again when she got even close to him. Again, very weird. Grant can throw great fits, but I've rarely seen him acting hysterical like this.

So it just felt like a madhouse, trying to get both boys checked while Grant was crying almost nonstop and Drew was fussy for a little bit of it. When we left, Dean wondered why he had taken a vacation day to do this??!!

I don't remember all of their measurements right now, but they are both BIG boys! Grant was in the 100th percentile for height. Dr. Thomas was convinced that he'll be 6'2" or 6'3", although I am a little bit skeptical that you can really make that assumption on a 2-year old. It was weird imagining him as a tall man as she talked about it!

And Drew's height and weight (13 lbs, 3.5 oz) are also both in the 90s, percentile-wise. She was very impressed with the way Drew could hold his head up when laying on his belly, and guessed that I must have already started tummy time with him. I didn't mention to her that he's sleeping on his belly at night and for most of his naps! But.....(and this is a little bit off the topic!).....I am scared to death of SIDS, so I bought an Angel Care monitor that detects motion in the crib. So I don't feel like I'm being reckless by letting him sleep on his belly....it gives me so much peace of mind. And Drew sleeps SO much better on his tummy!

Drew got a few shots today, as well as an oral vaccine for Rotavirus. Of course it was hard to see him grimace and wail, but he drifted off to sleep afterwards as I nursed him. Grant's never had any reaction to shots, so I'm hoping Drew will be the same.