Enough said. We'll be trying again tomorrow....and yes, he's in his stroller... we need a high chair.
Not a whole lot new happening in our household. Wesley has decided to nap again during the day which makes my life so much easier. I'm actually getting some sculpting done again, which is good since my Christmas orders are backing up. He's so much happier with a little sleep during the day. They say the average five month old needs 14-16 hours of sleep a day, he's right in the middle. He's also learning to entertain himself better than before. He'll babble in his crib in the morning, and just waits for me to come get him. He's so laid back, it's wonderful. I'm once again having fun buying clothes for him since he's outgrowing his 3-6 month stuff. The Christmas outfits out there are just too cute. Uggg, I guess it's good I'm working again to finance his new clothes!
I love the "hand" in all the photos. I can't wait till he can sit up by himself.
Our big boy is four months old and getting bigger every day! He's 15.5 pounds according to my baby scale but we'll get an official weight when he goes in for his appointment next week. I guess they are supposed to double their birth weight by six months and he's almost there at four so he's right on track. Not much to report here. We are back into our regular no napping routine today, so I bumped back his bed time to 8:30....his little grumpy butt is going to get more sleep somehow.
Who knew A four day trip and 600 miles could wear us all out so much! All we did today was sleep. Wesley who never takes a nap during the day took a four hour nap, and I had to wake him up from that...so who knows how long he would have slept. I passed out in the chair with him for a couple hours. Sean was the only one that got anything done today, he was outside tearing up the deck around the pool. He's such a good worker. I'm such a slacker.
I'm sad to write that my beloved grandfather passed away last Wednesday. The funeral would be held in Illinois which is 600 miles away. So Thursday we started loading up the car with everything we could possibly need for four days, you would think we were going to be gone for a month. We've decided that the amount of luggage you need is inversely proportional to your age. For example if Sean needs one pair of jeans then Wesley needs five....you never know when you'll need that cute little pair with the frogs on them. We each had one little suitcase, Wesley had four. It took us three trips to bring everything from the car into the hotel, including his full size swing. He slept the whole night in it in the hotel room. That swing is worth its weight in gold. I was so worried about him traveling eight hours in the car but he is such a little champ. He slept the entire way there. We broke the trip up into two days so he only had to sit in the car seat for four hours each day. After the funeral at the grave site they did a military salute for him with the shooting of the guns and taps. It was a beautiful and moving thing to witness. Wesley slept through it all, even the gun salute. As I write this we are traveling through St. Louis and will get home tomorrow. Grandpa, you will be missed.
Oh that's right I've LOST them! It's days like today that I'm certain Wesley will be an only child. There will have to be a whole lot of forgetting the first several months before I agree to do this again. Don't get me wrong, Wesley is a good, really mellow baby 90% of the time...but that other 10% is rough. Today being a rough day. He woke up at 9am smiling and cooing as usual, fed him and he started screaming. We played on the floor and he screamed. I fed him again he screamed. You get the idea. The only way I could get him to sleep was taking him for a walk in the stroller. We walked for four miles. The backs of my heels are bleeding, but by God he slept. I know it's a growth spurt, this is how he acted at the two and three month marks. I hope this one goes by quickly. And I hope I can find my marbles one day soon.
With the birth of my niece it got me thinking about the first few weeks home with Wesley. You can read every parenting book on the market and you will never be fully ready for that little pink newborn once you bring it through the front door. In fact I remember setting down the car seat and turning to Sean and saying "Now what?" For nine months you build up in your mind what having a baby in the house will be like. The happy cooing baby comes to mind. In reality it's a lot of work! Feeding around the clock, changing countless diapers, dealing with crying. I remember feeling like I was chained to my recliner. Sean had to bring me meals and drinks because Wesley would cluster feed for hours. Going to the store was scary stuff. I was so afraid he would start crying and people would stare. I would make whirl wind trips for the basics like diapers and milk just to get him back in the car. Now at almost four months old, I could CARE LESS! Go ahead and stare if he cries....believe it or not, that's what babies do. I often see Moms with well behaved toddlers and wonder if Wesley will be like that. Then I realize that woman is just a few chapters ahead of me in this child rearing game and was probably just as scared of her newborn wailing in Wal-Mart as I was in the beginning.
When we bought this house three years ago it wasn't because of the in ground pool. That just happened to be an added bonus at the time. I mean if you haven't had a pool before, the thought of owning one is pretty exciting. This would be until the realization of how much work they really are sets in. A couple times a week you have to clean them, add oodles of chemicals like Chlorine and algecide, clean stuff out of the skimmer like dead frogs and lizards and keep the filter clean. This all for something we didn't swim in once this summer. The only thing that was exciting about the pool was the thought of Wesley out there splashing around every summer. Well the straw that broke the camels back is that last week it started leaking. Monday it was down an inch and by Friday it was down 7 inches. It might not sound like much, but in an 18,000 gallon pool, that's a lot of water. We can't pinpoint the leak as it could be anywhere including the underground pipes. So we've decided to fill in the pool. Jackhammer it up and fill it in with dirt. We are so excited to start the process. There are so many "positives" to filling it in: I won't have that nagging feeling once Wesley starts walking that he's going to somehow drown in it, also our homeowners insurance should come down from outer space, water and electric bill will go down and I will have more spare time because I won't be cleaning it. This is an all around good thing. As for Wesley, well a really cool water park with huge slides and waterfalls went in 20 minutes away. We'll go every week in the summer if it means I don't have to have a pool at the house.
So you might be aware of the Go Green movement in our country. This is where you remove the chemicals and toxins in your life, thus removing them from your body. This can be as easy as buying organic produce where no pesticides where used to as complex as replacing your sheets with organic cotton sheets. I have been researching this for the past several weeks in an effort to keep Wesley shielded from some of the worse chemicals. We've replaced our regular household cleaners with the Method brand of cleaners from Target, I'm buying organic food when I have a choice and I just ordered some chemical free baby shampoo. I don't think I've gone overboard just yet (although Sean thinks I'm getting there). Overboard is buying the chlorine free, dye free, gel free diapers for $40 a package, found those last night during my midnight internet pumping. It's also interesting how I have to watch what I do while breastfeeding because it is shown that chemicals are stored in your body fat, which is used to make your milk supply during breastfeeding. Maybe I have too much time on my hands.
Let me start out by saying I love that I can be a stay at home mom for Wesley. Ok, with that said, if I stay in this house another day I am going to go bonkers. And it isn't even winter yet. We get out everyday and go for a 2 mile "power" walk down the dirt road but it doesn't feel like I get away from the house. Sometimes I envy the Mom that gets to go to work and actually have human interaction, but then I think about leaving Wesley with someone and I just couldn't do it. It's not that my life is much different than before Wesley came, now instead of sculpting all day, I'm a baby watcher. I'm sure as he gets older and starts crawling and walking the rewards of being home will present themselves, this I'm sure of. But for now I will have to make it a point to get out more, or I fear I might go looney.
Yes, my life boring enough that I am writing about bath time. The kid LOVES bath time. I usually only give him a bath every three days, I mean how is he getting dirty? He usually will start smelling like cheese on the third day and that means a bath is eminent. I then have to find the source of the cheese smell, which is usually the rolls under his chin or thigh rolls. It's amazing the amount of "stuff" that can hide in the rolls. When he starts solids at six months I'm sure the bath schedule will have to be moved up. I'm picturing pureed carrots in the fat rolls, oh what fun that will be.
Wesley went to his meeting with the physical therapist today. I'm happy to report that whatever problems he had with is neck have worked themselves out. The physical therapist couldn't detect any tightness in the neck, so all is well. Over the past two weeks we've really been working on his neck, doing all sorts of exercises...stretching and such. I guess that's all it took. She also told me some new fun things I can do to strengthen those neck muscles. So she spent about 5 minutes talking about the neck exercises and the other 25 minutes cooing and trying to make him smile at her. So, anyways just wanted to share the good news.
Once again I am sitting here wondering where the past three months went. I imagine myself typing out "Happy 10th Birthday" wondering the same thing. It is scary how time flies by. Wesley is changing so much. He has started laughing more regularly. I can make him laugh if I act really silly and kiss his belly. It's way cute. He also has started drooling like a drunken sailor. There is a line of saliva coming out of his mouth at all times. I wish I had more to write but our lives have fallen into a nice routine where not much new happens. I do enjoy writing in the blog. It has given me a place to keep track of all the small milestones Wesley achieves. One person said "Won't it be wonderful when Wesley wants to bring in his blog for Kindergarten show and tell?" That would be neat. We are going to our little towns Fall Festival tomorrow. Wesley will be strapped in the Baby Bjorn and we will watch all the entertaining festival events. Should be fun, I'm looking forward to getting out of the house. This will end my ramblings for now.
When I was pregnant I never realized how much I would worry about this little human I created. It started soon after he arrived with wet diapers, I had to count to make sure he was getting enough to eat. Then it was worrying about other drivers on the road when he's in the car with me. The list goes on and on....I worry about him being around sick people, dropping him, autism, the dogs stepping on him, SIDS, being too hot/cold....etc. Well the latest worry is his neck. The poor kid has had a crocked head since he was born. He tends to keep it crooked to the left side. I keep thinking he will fix it by getting better neck control, but it hasn't changed. So I did the bad thing of looking online (bad idea) and sure enough there is a condition where the muscles on either side of the neck are different lengths with one being tighter than the other. It says tummy time is very important to help strengthen and stretch the muscles. Of course he HATES tummy time still, although he is tolerating it better now than in the beginning. I'll have to talk to the pediatrician about it. Poor Wesley with the crooked head. I'm sure this is just one more thing in a long list of items I will worry about through out his life. Oh the joys of Motherhood!
It's so easy to take certain things for granted, such as a sleeping baby. Wesley has always had such a wonderful routine, goes to bed at 9:30, takes a three hour nap two hours after getting up in the morning. Well the past three days he hasn't taken an afternoon nap and he doesn't go to bed until after 11pm. It sucks. I can't get anything done. No sculpting, laundry, nothing. So now he takes these little 20 minute naps all day long. I'll put him down under his play gym and he passes out for little sessions, not long enough for me to do much of anything other than take a picture of him (see picture to the right). I know this is typical baby behavior but I've been spoiled for so long. Well, I am going to go and try and get him to sleep again. I'm so tired, wish me luck.
Wesley slept the whole night last night in his CRIB! You might ask "Why is this so important?" I'm ashamed to say he's been sleeping in his swing since he came home from the hospital. He LOVES his swing. It is the papasan swing that has a soft little pod that his lays in. I always said that if Fisher Price would only make one for adults I would be in it all the time. Anyways, I would place him in it and turn it on for 10 minutes until he was asleep and then I would turn it off and he would sleep 10+ hours. I thought if it aint broke don't fix it. Well I then started to think about his little back all curled up in his swing and how that can't be very good for him, so I decided to bite the bullet and move him to his crib last night. I thought this would be a battle, I prepared myself to be up all night with a crying baby....nope, he slept all night long. When I went in to check on him at 8:30 he was just in there smiling up at his mobile. He is such a good baby, I'm quite lucky.
