4 whole months??

How is it possible that this little man has been with us for four months already?  How is it possible that it's been ONLY four months?  It truly feels as though he's been here with us all along, but it's so hard to see him growing up so fast already. 

 

At his check-up yesterday he weighed 14 lbs, 13 oz.  He is now my smallest baby.  All along, since his birth, he's been between the other two.  Bigger than Meli but smaller than my chunky-monkey baby Kyler.  He's still between them in height, but he weighs less now than Melissa did at 4 months.  He's 24 3/4 inches long, too, btw. He got his second round of immunizations yesterday, too.  He cried for about 30 seconds after but then he was fine.  Until after his morning nap - then he was cranky, cranky, cranky.  Thankfully, a bottle and some tylenol helped alot and he cheered up again in the afternoon.  Back to my sweet, happy boy.

He has his first little cold right now.  Runny nose, stuffy nose.  He gets so mad at me for cleaning it out, too.  :( Doctor said he looks fine, though, just to keep him comfortable and bring him in if he gets a fever. 

Let's see, what has he learned this month?  He's grabbing toys now and, of course, pulling them right up to his mouth.  He's recognizing his bottle and after you finish feeding him he'll stare at the empty bottle, probably wondering why it's not still in his mouth.  :)  Also, if you pull it out of his mouth while he's drinking, he'll grab your sleeve or finger and pull it back toward him.  He rolled from his tummy to his back this month, too.  He's done it 4 or 5 times but I never get to see him do it because he never does it during tummy time, only while he's in bed.  Rotten boy.  He also had decided that a pacifier is not necessary.  His fingers work quite well, thank you very much.  Not my favorite habit, but what's a mom to do?  He also is chattering more and more.  He tells us all kinds of things.  Just wish I knew what they were.  :)  He actually enjoys getting his diaper changed.  He'll laugh and talk to me.  Unless he thinks he's starving to death and then he'll just scream through the whole experience.

We had a fun Christmas but of course Caedon didn't care much about the toys.  He had a rough time at our first celebration, with my dad's side of the family.  It was in the evening, he was sleepy and there were so many people that he just got overwhelmed and cried for alot of the time that we were there.  Poor baby. :( 

Kyler and Melissa, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed Christmas this year.  They got everything they wanted, I think, plus some and they loved all of the extra family time.  Now they're excited about New Year's Eve.  I told them they can stay up til midnight with us this year so we'll see how that goes.  Melissa says she wants to stay up until it's light outside, though.  Uh....no.

And now, your favorite part of my blog posts, I am sure - PICTURES!

Me and my sweet nephew, Waylon

Aunt Kate and Caedon

Our Christmas picture from Aunt Doris'

My big, huge family.  :)  My parents, me, Brian and the kids, Chris, Nikki and their daughter Hannah, Kate, Travis and their Mr. Waylon, and Zach and Sarah.  Wow.

Hannah holding Caedon

The two cutest little Santas

Caedon snuggling with Granny Jackie and "talking" to Pawpaw Ed.

While Daddy was outside putting together Kyler and Melissa's BIG surprise for Christmas morning, Caedon and I took some pictures.  :)

Melissa got her very own Dr Pepper in her stocking!  And not just ANY Dr Pepper - a Dublin!

Love that adorable boy!  We were looking through his stocking.  He didn't care.  :)

What I believe to be Kyler's favorite gift of the year.....

The BIG surprise!  A trampoline!

Grandma and Grandpa came to have Christmas with us on Monday.

Grandma, Grandpa and Caedon

Babies - the ultimate teachers of flexibility

 I have control issues.  I admit it.  I like things to go my way (aka the RIGHT way) all the time.  I am much better about it now than I used to be, though.  Seriously, I am,  Stop laughing.

You would think (you know, before you actually have any of your own) that babies are easy to deal with in this respect.  I mean, they're BABIES.  They can't walk or talk or anything. They have to do whatever you want them to do, right?  Um, no.  Babies eat and sleep and poop.  That's pretty much all for the first few months.  And a little bit of playing.  But guess what?  They do it all when THEY want to!  They do typically get into a routine but just when you get used to them being on one schedule something changes.  They grow a little, they learn something new, they just decide they're annoyed with you ;).  And all of a sudden they're not eating when you think they will, they're definitely not sleeping when or as long as you think they should.  It's just chaos. 

But it's a chaos that I wouldn't trade for anything.  When I went and got my crying boy out of his bed at 6:45 this morning, after he didn't go to bed until 11:30 last night, he grinned at me and his tears dried right up.  I love that little man.

My favorite of his 3 month pictures.  His little expression is so mischievous!

He's precious, yes?  :)

Recap of the past month

Didn't mean to let a whole month pass before blogging again but these kiddos keep me busy and life just speeds ahead!  We had a fun Halloween.....

My kids - a ballerina, The Flash, and a cute, cute cow!

Love these two!

The babies of the family - my nephew Waylon (aka Superman :D) and my sweet Caedon

Kyler (and the rest of us) decorated a pumpkin for his contest at school.  Isn't Pikachu cute?  And Kyler won 3rd place!

Caedon has been smiling more and giggling some, too.  He's so adorable and the kids get so excited to make him smile.  They count up the number of times he smiles at them every day!  :)

How adorable are these three little munchkins?

Melissa is so funny!

We had a great Thanksgiving, too!  It's always so much fun to spend time with our whole big family and watch the kiddos play together!  We now have 9 great-granchildren at our family gatherings so it gets quite crazy!  :)

Caedon snuggling with Gran

Caedon is now enchanting Aunt Doris and Amy with his adorable smiles.  :)

Kids - Kyler, Heath, Kyleigh, Christopher, Stormy, Hannah, Caleb, Melissa, Waylon and Caedon.  Whew.  This year we actually had 10 since Stormy, my brother's niece, was with us.

My dad's grandkids - Kyler, Melissa, Caedon, Hannah and Waylon

Caedon hanging out with his Grammy.

My little finger-sucker says Happy Thanksgiving!

This month Kyler also lost his first two teeth!  My baby is way too grown up!

We also have decorated for Christmas and we've already gone to visit Santa!  The kids are SO excited about Christmas!  (Well, 2 of them.  Caedon doesn't care one little bit.  :D)

Caedon checking out the cool lights!

Kyler putting on an ornament

Melissa decorating the tree

Showing us some of the ornaments

Kyler thought he was supposed to decorate himself!

Look how excited they are!

Melissa putting the star on the tree.

Our pretty Christmasy house!

Visiting Santa at Bass Pro

Caedon is now 3 months old!  No doctor appt this month but according to my scale he's about 14 lbs.  (He was only 12.5 at his 2 month check-up)  It's so hard to believe we've already had him here with us for 3 whole months!  He's still such a calm baby and we just love him to pieces.  It's really hard to imagine life without him now - he adds so much to our lives.

2 months

Caedon is two months old today!  I really can't believe he's been with us so long already!  He's growing and getting stronger every day.  He hasn't been to the doctor yet (appt's on Wednesday) so I don't know his 2 month stats yet, but I'm guessing he's almost doubled his weight.  Probably around 14 lbs right now.  He's outgrown alot of his 0-3 month clothes already and is fitting pretty well in 3-6 month stuff.  Except pants.  His 0-3 month pants still don't fit very well.  He's getting chubby but apparently not chubby enough for pants.  :)

He's really good at pushing up on his arms and holding his cute little head up straight.  I'm wondering how much longer we'll have before he's rolling over!  He's such a relaxed baby and when he's awake he's mostly happy just hanging out in our arms or sitting in his swing or bouncy seat.  He smiles alot but we're still waiting for that first sweet little laugh.  He likes bath time but only if I get in our big tub with him and hold him while I bathe him.  His sister was the same way.  :)  I enjoy it but it doesn't require more work and preparation since I'm usually doing it on my own!

We're ready for Halloween - I know he won't care AT ALL but I'm excited to celebrate holidays with him this year!  He's going to be a cow this year.  :)  Now....here are his 2 month pictures.  All take by me here at our house.  I love taking pictures!

My favorite of the pictures I took of him today

I love his little tongue sticking out in this one. :)

My sweet boy!

I got more smiles from him inside because outside the sun was bothering him

Such a precious little smile!

How adorable is he???

My kids

Caedon will be 7 weeks old on Monday!  Crazy!  He's such a sweet baby and we're so blessed and grateful to have him in our family.  He's growing growing growing.  Tonight he wore his first 3-6 months pjs to bed.  He's just getting too long for his 0-3 month ones.  And he's outgrown his newborn onesies.  Now if he would just grow into his pants that would be good.... :)   He's getting more smiley all the time and we can't wait to hear him laughing.  There's a picture of our family (BC - before Caedon) that hangs over the couch and Caedon LOVES it.  I think it's because of the contrast - there's a big contrast of black on white.  We sit on the couch with him and he just stares at that picture.  When I change his diaper there's a ribbon that hangs right above the changing table and he adores that ribbon.  It's the best place to get pictures of him smiling because he just stares at the ribbon and grins like crazy!  He's sleeping well at night.  He wakes up once to eat and then goes right back to sleep. He's sleeping a stretch of 6-7 hours, which is lovely.

Kyler is such a wonderful little man.  I had a parent/teacher conference this week and his teacher told me that he's reading on a 4th grade level!  He's so smart!  They're going to test him so that he can start checking out harder books from the library and start taking AR tests.  He got all A's on his first report card and he's started reading chapter books the last week or so.  He's a sweet big brother and loves to give Caedon hugs and help him with his pacifier.  :)  He also says that Melissa is his favorite friend.  I love that they love each other so much!  We've been having some problems with Kyler in the behavior area - mostly because he's very much like his Daddy and he tunes things out.  He'll hear us talking but doesn't always tune into what we're actually saying which gets him in trouble quite often.  He still loves Mario but he's branched out and has been learning alot about animals from Wild Kratts and learning to love some of the shows Mommy and Daddy used to watch, like Heathcliff and Garfield!

Melissa is my girl.  I love having a daughter!  She's a dramatic mess much of the time but I still just adore her.  She loves to have me paint her nails (although she hates sitting still to let them dry...) and she loves trying on clothes.  She is very curious and asks all kinds of interesting questions like, "When I was 2 did my voice still sound like this?" and "Do all the people know that God is really there?"  Obviously some of them are much more philosophical than others.  :)  She loves animals and has recently told us that she wants to be an animal doctor when she grows up.  When we went to the fair last week and visited the ag barns she was very interested in the cows and sheep.  Maybe she'll be like her mommy and raise sheep in high school.  Although we watched a pig show and she said she wanted to do that when she gets bigger- except she said she wants a horse!  (Yeah, sorry, chica, Mommy can't afford a horse....)  She has days when she's very helpful and sweet all day long (like today.  Yea!) and other days when she tries my patience nonstop. 

Anyway, there's my kids.  I've been talking SO much about the new little one I thought maybe I should add some interesting tidbits about the other two as well.  :)

Let's see if I have some fun pictures to share this time.....

Me and my two big kiddos walking through the midway at the State Fair of Texas

 

 

Amanda and the kids at the petting zoo.  It was Amanda's first time at the fair!

We had fun!  So glad Amanda could join us for the day!

My handsome boy with his blanket from Ms. Jennie!

Sleeping - so sweet!

He can finally fit in this cute outfit!  (Outgrowing some 0-3 month and barely fitting in others...)

He's precious!

Caedon and Daddy!

Melissa with Daddy while he opens his birthday presents and eats his birthday donuts!

Kyler and Daddy while we were at Brian's birthday lunch

Lest you believe he's ALWAYS happy.....

My sweet family :)

Love my baby boy!

Mommy, Daddy and Caedon

Sitting in his Bumbo seat (yeah, it's purple...hand-me-downs, you know...)  :)