Totally Normal

Oh, that's just our baby in a huge pile of Valentine's Day bears at Walmart.

Paxton is 8 Months Old

Wow. That last month went by really fast. A lot has happened with Pax in the last month. Here are the highlights...

Paxton has learned to pull himself up to stand. He has even started cruising while pushing objects he is holding onto. And he tries to cruise along a piece of stationary furniture on a daily basis. This also means that he's into everything. He's a very curious little man; just like his brother was at his age.

Paxton absolutely loves apples (pureed into a sauce and whole pieces). We bought a big jar of organic applesauce and we mix some into just about all of his meals. The twins and I have been busy making him all kinds of purees over the last few weeks and freezing it all. he eats about 4-6 ounces of homemade baby food each day. He really loves bananas, cantaloupe, oatmeal, and peaches. He likes other stuff, too, but just not as much (like avocado, carrots, cranberries, and peas). Some of the concoctions we've made include apple-cinnamon-oatmeal (loved it), cran-apple-oatmeal (loved it), and peach-pear-oatmeal (tolerated it). He really enjoys feeding himself, too. Whenever we go to a restaurant, we just bring a few apple, celery, or cantaloupe slices for him and he just goes to town. He's also still nursing and eating 2-3 bottles of formula a week. And he greatly prefers breast milk. In fact, he fights Wes every time he tries to give him formula.

Paxton giggles and laughs a lot. And it's mostly due to his siblings' antics. He watches them intently play for hours on end and squeals in delight when they pay him the littlest amount of attention. Vivi likes singing to Paxton and Gavin likes making silly faces at him. Pax absolutely loves everything about Gavin and Vivian and wants to be with them all of the time. If they're in a different room, he crawls to them. If he's in the room with them and they leave him, he screams in agony until they come back. He definitely loves his siblings and can't wait to be just like them.

This past month, Pax has started to act like a real baby. Let me explain. Although I think that all three instances were due to him being sick or teething problems, they still happened and so I'll discuss. Up until a few weeks ago, Paxton had never woken up and cried in the middle of the night. Okay, he had woken up and cried, but he was able to be consoled in less than a minute. By the first month, we had already experienced several up-for-an-hour-or-more-rocking-or-bouncing-a-screaming-baby nights with the twins. But not with Paxton. Until this past month. The first time (around Christmas when everyone was sick), Pax woke up with a fever, screaming his head off, and completely inconsolable. This lasted for about 30 minutes. Then he went back to sleep (I guess after the Tylenol set in) and I figured it was a fluke. Then, about a week later, Pax woke up around 9:45 screaming and writhing and shedding real tears. It lasted for about 45 minutes. We never figured out what was wrong that night. Then this past Friday night, Paxton woke up around 10:15. Again, I'm not really sure what was wrong. All I know is that he had been drooling a lot that day and had a mild fever the previous night right before bed (maybe teething?). It lasted about 45-60 minutes and then he finally fell asleep on top of me. Craziness. It's not like our little man to be upset at all during the night and especially not for that long. Hoping they were isolated incidents. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of teeth, he doesn't have any. Yet. But I have a feeling that they are on their way.

In growth news, Paxton is officially too big for his infant car seat. The weight goes up to 22lbs and our little man is 22.5lbs (according to our home scale). So, we're getting him a big kid seat this week (we would like it to match the twins' car seats, so we have to order it online and have it shipped). He's also comfortably wearing most 12 month clothes (although some brands are too small) and some 18 month clothes (although some brands are too big).

Pax is still co-sleeping with us after the first wake of the night. He naps in his crib twice a day (morning and mid-day) and then we put him to bed between 7 and 7:30pm in his crib as well. He was only waking up once in the middle of the night, but in the last week or so, he's developed the bad habit of waking up anywhere from 2-4 times each night. I know. What the hell, Pax? The good news is that he just nurses for a few minutes and goes back to sleep. Here's hoping that it's just a phase (I remember the twins going through different sleeping patterns around this age).

When it comes to the pacifier, Paxton has a love-hate relationship. Paxton absolutely loves the paci during daylight hours. He would have it in his mouth all day long if we let him. But during the night? No sir. He doesn't want anything to do with it. Weird, right? He will not take the paci at all, under any circumstances at night. Oh well.

Paxton babbles a lot, too. But, he has yet to say any real words or sign anything to us yet (yes, we're trying to do more sign language with him). We have a feeling that he's going to be more like Gavin than Vivian in the talking department.

Happy 8 Months, Pax!

Love those Baby Blues

When Daddy is Away...

... we go to the Children's Museum and Chick Fil-A. A few Friday ago, Wes went out of town for the entire day to go his grandfather's funeral. So it was just me and three kiddos. The twins went to school until noon (like they do 4 days a week) and Pax and I lounged at home. I picked up the twins and everyone took a nap.

Then the fun began. We started at the Children's Museum downtown. They just love this place. And so do I.

Gavin highly enjoyed picking vegetables from the farm, putting them in his wheel-barrel and taking them to the farmer's market. He must have done this 700 times. 

Everyone (but especially Viv) loved the play kitchen and laundry room.

As usual, the auto shop was a hit!

After about an hour and a half, we packed up our stuff and headed to Chick Fil-A for dinner. Pax sat in a high chair pulled up to the table and enjoyed some applesauce while the rest of us shared an order to waffle fries and chicken nuggets. (Funny side note: As you may or may not know, I call Paxton "Nugget." Well, based on the faces of the people around us, I think people thought I was talking in a baby voice to my food. Hilarious.)

Shockingly, it was a great night out with the kids. No tantrums, fighting, or meltdowns. I'm not really sure how we avoided it all, and I'm not complaining- it was great!

Visiting Nicholas

On Wednesday, I was privileged to be able to drive up to MD for the day and visit my most favorite new family, the Richelsens. Baby Nick was only 5 days old on Wednesday and I absolutely loved every freaking second of my visit. From changing Nick and having him pee on me (Wes likes to call me a "pee magnet" because it seems like all babies pee on me. In fact, I was the first person that Nick peed on and I was totally honored), to watching Steph and Tony absolutely adore their new addition (Seriously. They have taken on their new role as parents so gracefully. They are just incredible.), to holding baby Nick as often as Steph would allow me (Which was often, by the way. Thanks, Steph!), to staging a semi-professional photo shoot of this adorably adorable new little person. I attempted a fully-asleep photo shoot only to have him wake up about half way through. But, I got some amazing pictures in the process, so who cares. 

I edited each photo and then put a sepia and black and white filter on each one, too. I usually always love sepia for babies, but some of these color and black and white ones are just precious, too. Here are my favorite color pics:

I can't get over how much I love seeing infants yawn. They yawn with their entire face. It's precious.

My favorite sepia pics:

And, some of my fav black and whites:

I could just eat him up.

Gymnastics

Grandma and GG bought the twins 13 weeks of gymnastics classes for Christmas.

Best. Gift. Ever.

We went to their first class on Monday and the twins LOVED it! When we got there, the parents were sitting on bleaches on the sidelines and several kids were running around waiting for the teachers to get ready. We told them to take off their shoes and go play. Vivi immediately slipped out of her tennies and ran towards the teacher. She didn't even look back. Gavin took his shoes off, followed Vivian, and looked back at us a few times for support before finding a place on the mat.

They both seemed comfortable, interested, and happy out there with the other kids. They stretched and jumped and called out "here" when their names were called. Well, Gavin wasn't totally into it at first. I love how he just stood still while everyone else was stretching.

But shortly after class began, he made a turn around, got the hang of it, and started doing it all. And he seemed to really enjoy himself. After a bit of stretching, they moved into small groups and went from station to station (there were three). The first one was a hanging, swinging, and then jumping station.

Paxton HIGHLY enjoyed watching all of the kids from the sidelines in his Adidas jumpsuit.

Then they walked on a beam.

The last part was a somersault and jumping station.

They had SO much fun and were actually really sad when it was over. When we asked them if they wanted to do it again, they screamed in delight. Can't wait til next week...