Cereal...sort of...

Rice Cereal is gross... seriously gross and I haven't even tasted it... just the smell is enough for me and especially the smell after your kid spits it back up an hour later, Ick.

Eli started "eating" rice cereal this week after his doctor's appointment. I thought he would be totally into solid food and he was the first night when everyone at Mom & Dad's house was cheering for him, smiling at him and clapping for him. Since then when it is just us eating cereal at home he is extremely uninterested and makes some of the most awful faces in the world when we put the cereal in his mouth. I unfortunately haven't gotten the camera out for those feedings yet, but hopefully I will remember soon.

The one feeding that he liked cereal...

I plan to keep trying for a few more days and if he is still very aversive to it giving him a week off and then trying again. He has to come around to the stuff eventually...right?

4 Months!

My sweet precious little boy turned 4 months this week and is so big and fun I can hardly stand it. He smiles and giggles. Dan says his giggle is dorky, but I think it is adorable. He has recently begun to purposefully reach for and grab things, everything that is successfully grabbed heads straight for the mouth. Including the toes... in the last week or so he has mastered the fine art of Toe Eating. The toes made fantastic "built-in" toys during our vacation last week. He has even grown quite a bit. He doesn't have any more "empty skin wrinkles" that made him look like an old man in his early days, and is almost getting a little chunk here and there. He has gotten so long that he doesn't easily fit in my arms to rock which has turned bedtime into a wrestling session of sorts and a much more physically taxing activity for Momma.

All About Eli - Month 4:

ELi Likes: eating his toes, being swaddled, being naked, chewing on EVERYTHING, grabbing things, "helping" momma and daddy, playing in his laboratory, giggling, standing up, Gymboree, being outside

Eli DOES NOT Like: going to sleep, staying asleep, not being able to reach something he wants, being held like a baby, being alone in the backseat of the car,

Eli's 4 month check up went great. He is growing perfectly and appears to be hitting his developmental milestones right on schedule. He chunked up a little bit in the last two months and is still super long! He got 2 shots and has only been a little extra cranky and sleepy, so I can't complain.

Vital Stats - Month 4

Weight: 14.4 lbs (38th percentile)

Length: 25.5 inches (80th percentile)

Great Grandparents

This past weekend Eli got to meet some great- Grandparents that he had never met before! He was a sweet and smiley boy for them and they thought he was pretty special! We are so blessed to have so many Great-Grandparents still with us!

Eli and GB

Great Grandma Bader and Eli

I know that I have been very absent from the blog recently, but I am really hoping to get back into it, now that we are home. I am hoping to do posts about our trip, Eli's 4 Month B-day and his upcoming doctor's appointment this week.

A Sleep Victory!

Our Little Side Sleeper -- No more back sleeping for this guy!

Suddenly, this week our little man has started putting himself to sleep in his crib for naps and sometimes in the middle of the night after a feed! This is so awesome, no fighting and fussying with Momma in the rocking chair and no super careful laying him down so that you don't accidently wake him up and have to start all over!

Ok, so it doesn't happen every time, but if you catch him at just the right moment before he gets too sleepy he puts himself to sleep in 10 minutes or less in his crib with minimal fussying and no screaming or crying! I never thought we would get here!

I have been worrying and fretting (like a crazy new mom) since like the day he was born about how on earth we were going to help him have good sleep habits... like seriously it is my biggest anxiety these days. I had tried a few times in the last month to leave him in his crib and see what happened...it never lasted more than 10-15 mintues and often much less because he would scream like a banshee, but some how this week it finally worked. I think it is all about brain maturity and we finally reached the point where he can soothe himself to sleep!!

The routine is that he gets his diaper changed and swaddled then gets to read 2-3 books with Momma before he goes into his bed. I turn on the white noise machine and wind up his mobile then shut the door and leave. He has also started taking a pacifier again sometimes, which is interesting because for the las tmonth or so he had downright refused to have anything to do with a pacifier.

The New Bedtime Routine

We are working hard to help Eli sleep better at night... for everyones sake! Here is the new plan... 5 days in and I think it is working.

Rule: Eli wakes up from last nap no later than 7:30. ( I am considering moving this up to 7)


8:30 - Go upstairs and change diaper and put on PJs (This is also play time with daddy for a few minutes and his beloved "nakkie" time... this kid sure does like to be naked)


8:45 - Get wrapped up in his Swaddle Me wrap and nurse with momma for a bit.


At this point he hopefully falls asleep while nursing and gets plopped in bed for the night. Sometimes however he isn't so interested in food and instead we rock to sleep... this is sometimes harder for everyone involved but he is generally asleep and in bed before 9:15, which is working well right now. We are also working on slowly moving the bedtime up a little. We know it would probably be best for him to got to bed earlier, but we need to get there slowly, he doesn't take kindly to dramatic changes in his routine.

In the Laboratory

Eli love his Exersaucer, his favorite position these days is standing up so the saucer suits him just fine. He also free to use his hands while he is in there so he has really started interacting with his toys! So fun!

He gets all serious and focused when he is in there and so Dan has started calling it his laboratory. This little mad scientist loves to touch and turn and hit all the "controls" at his finger tips.

I love this kid in hats!!

Watching Daddy work from his new favorite seat!

In other news, the sleeping is getting better. We had one night with 7.5 consecutive hours of sleep and last night he only woke up once! I am excited things are getting better, but we are going out of town again next week and I am afraid all of our hard work is going to get messed up again! We shall see!

Writer's Workshop - Photos make a home

I have decided to subscribe to Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop as a fun way to come up with more topics for the blog! Each week there will be a list of topics I can choose from and post about on Thursday. So, here it goes!

4.) Photographs can turn a house into a home. Share a photograph that is not on your wall, but should be...if you weren't so lazy about actually putting it there.

My Brother Darren and I at my Wedding

My sister Kim and I at My Wedding

Sucker.

Today while rocking my sweet little boy I noticed a few reddish marks on his little arm.

Cue the new mommy freak out!

I called for Dan and panicked. Despite Dan's reassuring that they were JUST BRUISES. I was upset. Like seriously WHY should my little dude have bruises... Baby Cancer...... Iron Deficiency..... Arm stuck in his crib.... Should I call the doctor?....eeek.....my brain was in hyperdrive.

Then, about an hour or two later, thankfully before any embarrassing calls to the doctor, I put Eli on the floor for his second round of "tummy time" for the day and had a huge AH-HA moment.

My kid was giving himself HICKEYS!!

Seriously, when he gets tired on his tummy he lays his face down and sucks...apparently very hard... on his arms...

Self-inflicted Hickeys... Seriously...Wow. Needless to say we got a good laugh out of this one.

What a SUCKER!

The Process of Going Back to Work - Part 1

I have been exceptionally lucky to be able to spend the first three months of Elijah's life at home with him and have not had to work. We only have 1 more month of that wonderful arrangement before I head back to work and Eli starts at daycare.

While I like my job and I am happy with the daycare center we have chosen for Eli, I am not at all happy about returning to work and leaving my lazy days with my boy. I am very nervous about leaving my boy with others, I know him best and I want to be the one to care for him. I don't want to miss anything, he grows and changes so much, that I don't want to be away from him even for a minute. I can't hardly imagine being away from him for 8 hours a day, but soon enough that will be our norm. It is going to take a lot of adjusting for me emotionally and in our schedule.

All that being said, we like our 2 income lifestyle and I worked really hard to get a Master's degree and become a Speech Pathologist. I never imagined that I would even toy with the idea of not working, I have always been focused on my career, but it is amazing what that little boy has changed in me. I am hoping to find out more details about my work assignment for this year so that I can start getting excited about work instead of dreading or fearing it.

The Montessori school where Eli will be going called the other day to confirm that he has a spot in their infant room and we set his start date as August 9th, my first day back at work. Instead of thinking about leaving my boy, I am instead working on gathering the "supplies" that he will need at daycare and thinking about how we will make the mornings work. One thing is for sure, I will certainly be getting up earlier this year.

Little Fan!

This is a nearly out of date post. I had started it a long time ago and never got around to posting it!

For Father's Day, Dan and I took Eli to his first baseball game. This is big stuff in our family. Cardinal's Baseball is serious business around here and we were totally excited to share it with our boy! Amazingly enough he made it through the entire game... 9 WHOLE INNINGS! I really thought that it was going to be a short0lived experience and that we would be cutting out early because he needed to go home, but nope, he was great. Once I took him and walked around a bit, but for the most part he slept in my arms or played with his Daddy. It was an awesome family outing!

Mississippi Adventures!

I never would have thought that the easiest, least stressful part of a weekend road trip would be my 3 month old. I was super stressed about traveling 480 miles to Madison, MS for a family reunion with Eli. I packed everything in the house that wasn't nailed down, read a million articles on the internet about how to travel with a little guy, and generally braced myself for the worst. Or so I thought.

Elijah did fantastic on the car rides. I sat next to him in the back and we sang, read books, and played with toys. He did a great job putting himself to sleep in the car and it was really a pretty easy journey.

The stressful part of the weekend didn't happen until we were down in Mississippi. Friday evening we went to get Coldstone with our friend Jack. Coldstone was less than a mile away from our hotel, but we never made it there. We were hit in our car by a lady in a white SUV that rear-ended another car (going very fast) and then bounced onto the front end of my car. We were not injured, but it sure was scary. It took over an hour to fill out all the police paperwork and get going back to the hotel, by then we were all exhausted and shaken up. I had an EMT worker check Eli out, but even after she gave him the okay, I worried about him all night and didn't sleep well.

Saturday morning we woke up and went to the Atkins-Whiteside Family Reunion, which was the whole reason we were in Mississippi. It was a fun day of talkin with family, playing games, looking at pictures and eating good food. Elijah had a great time playing with so many new people, events like this are great for him because he always has someone to hold him and play with him. Eli and his new friend Sam were the life of the party and so fun to play with!

Saturday night after the reunion we had made plans to go see Toy Story 3 in 3D with my cousins. Well, I am not going to share all the gory details of that evening, but Dan and I didn't end up seeing the movie at all and instead ended up hanging out in a Jackson ER because I had a reaction to some over the counter medicine I took. Yeah, there was screaming, tears and lots of pain and the worst part was no Woody or Buzz :(. My parents, grandparents and uncle were awesome and took care of the little man for us while we were at the ER.

So, Dan and I are now planning a date night that involves Toy Story and Coldstone to make up for our failed attempts at fun this past weekend. Luckiy for us there is a movie theater with a Coldstone in the same parking lot near our house, less driving = less opportunities for disaster!