Nicholas is 3 months!

So the "little guy" is 3 months today!!! I say little guy in quotes because he's SO BIG!!! I bet he's pushing 15 pounds! He's really long too. He's still in a few 0-3 clothes, but mostly moving into 3-6 stuff.

He's doing great for the most part. We have seemed to regress a little with the crib sleeping at night. Last week, he had been doing pretty well and the one night slept there until 5 am. Since the storm night last week, it's been pretty much downhill. He's starting every night in his crib. I usually feed him around 9-10:00 and then hold him until he falls asleep. As soon as I put him down in his crib, he wakes up. I can usually comfort him back to sleep pretty easily, but it doesn't seem to last very long. If he has his binky, he wakes as soon as it falls out, unless he's in a relatively deep sleep. So I spend 10 minutes or so putting him down. Lately, he's only been staying asleep for about an hour or two and then wakes up crying again. We go in and do the routine again and sometimes we get another hour. Other times, it's a struggle for up to 30 minutes and he doesn't go back to sleep on his own. We eventually give up and bring him to bed or spend the night on the couch with him. Bringing him to bed is not the habit I wanted to start by any means, but we all sleep. And it's actually quite annoying because I don't hold him there – he sleeps on one side of the bed and I sleep on the other (and Tony gets kicked out to the couch). So I'm not sure why our bed is so much better than his own, but he stays asleep all night. He still wants to eat between 4-4:30 and we've got that down to about 10-15 minutes and then back to sleep.

I know we'll get this eventually and I'm sure he won't still be sleeping in our bed when he's 10, but I just want to get this night time thing down! It gets frustrating sometimes. I guess we were really lucky with Hannah not to have had to deal with this. Oh, well!

So he's getting more and more vocal – lots of cooing, lots of raspberries, LOTS of great smiles and even maybe a few laughs. He is still on 100% breastmilk, eating about 7 times a day, between 4-7 ounces each feeding. He still loves to be in his swing and also likes to play with the toys on his bouncy seat and activity mat, but not for too long before he starts to cry. He's grabbing at toys, pulls my hair and prefers to be upright rather than cradled in my arms.

Here are a couple pictures of him at 3 months. And also of Hannah for comparison fun

Nicholas

Hannah

Nicholas

Hannah

I'll post our professional pics when I get them in a couple weeks.

Complete

It's official, our family is complete. We have two beautiful, wonderful children and are so very blessed with them, but we've made the decision that Hannah and Nicholas will be our only children. Tony's big day was this past Friday - snip, snip and we're done! He was really nervous about going, but overall, he said it wasn't that big of a deal. He was a bit flushed when he came out of the office and had to sit for a few minutes to gather himself, but then he was OK. I dropped him back off at home and went back to work. I had expected him to be resting for the afternoon, but instead, he had vacuumed and other stuff around the house, so I guess his recovery wasn't so bad. We hung out at home Friday night though, no one felt like doing much.

It was a long week. By Friday's, I'm wiped out and exhausted! Nicholas didn't do so well at night the latter part of the week. He was having a hard time going down for the night and then was waking up by 2. Thursday night, we had some pretty major storms roll through. Hannah got up around 1 in the morning, scared of the storm. She saw the TV was still on since Tony fell asleep on the couch, so she finished the night on the couch with him. This is how I found her after I got up - Tony had gone back up to bed to lay with Nicholas while I got ready since he was so restless too.

Nicholas has been trying to suck his fingers. It makes me crazy and I'm doing everything I can to try to stop him! Everytime he puts them in his mouth, I try to take them out and replace them with his binky. I just know that I can eventually take a binky away, but not so much with his fingers! I'm hoping it's just his recent discovery of his hands and not a true habit. He really likes to cuddle with burp clothes and blankets too. It's hard at bedtime because he wants one by his face, but of course, we can't leave one with him.

Little Mommy mimmicks all the things I do with him. This was Hannah doing a little yoga with Nicholas before leaving in the morning Friday. It was cute!

Hannah said something funny Friday morning. She was eating breakfast and I was feeding Nicholas and was talking to her about which movie she wanted to take to daycare. I suggested taking her new Barbie and the Mermaid Tale that she had just gotten last Sunday. We were having this discussion about it that she obviously didn't know which movie I was talking about - she had it mixed up with another one. Then all of a sudden, she said, "Oh, Barbie and the Mermaid Tale!" and I said, "yes, that's what I said". She laughed and told me, "Mommy, my brain was still sleeping and I forgot". It was cute!

Saturday morning, I woke up to breakfast made for me by Tony - it was very nice! He was going to bring it to me in bed, but I got up just as he was finishing. I probably wouldnt' have eaten it there anyway - too messy! I took Hannah to swimming lessons and Tony stayed home with Nicholas. This is what happens when I leave him alone to pick out his outfit!

Tony took Hannah out to my mom's to spend the night since she hadn't stayed with them for such a long time. While they were there, I went to get my massage from Mother's Day. It was really great. It actually hurt quite a bit and the massage therapist asked me if I was in pain. My hands and back were very tight and full of knots. She tried to work out a lot of it, but said it would take several sessions to get it done. It was nice though. I guess I should go more often and not wait until I'm in pain.

We took Nicholas to get his 3 month pictures taken at 4:00. He did so awesome! He was full of smiles! I was afraid because he was super happy before we left and then he fell asleep in the car on the way to the mall. I thought he might be cranky, but he was so happy! Here's a picture of him before we left.

We went to Whitey's for dinner - great burgers! Then to the store and then to Jack & Dawn's for a little while. It was sort of fun having just Nicholas with us - easy again, but boring too! Tony and I were wondering what to do with ourselves after
dinner last night! We slept in this morning - it was great! Until like 9:00!!! Of course, Nicholas was in bed with me. He slept the first part of the night on the couch with Tony. I got up around 4:30 nervous to not hear Nicholas and found them cuddled up on the couch together. I fed him and then brought him back to bed. I'm probably going to regret letting him sleep in our bed, but it works and he's only little for a short while, so I guess it'll be OK for now.

Here he is again with his cuteness, playing with his rattle. He's really interacting a lot more these past couple weeks. Strong and getting so big! And just stinkin' cute!!!!

Then he wrapped himself up in a blanket on the ottoman and boppy and fell asleep!

We went to Lowes and the grocery store and then came home and took naps for a while. Hannah came home and I made dinner. Tony gave Hannah a bath and we just hung out watching TV. It was a really nice weekend!

Paying his dues

Tony loves to place bets - little bets - not usually worth much. Good thing for me because it wouldn't sit too well for me if large dollars were on the line. Good thing for him too since he often times he's on the losing end! (I'm sure he has his share of wins as well)! He's learned not to bet with me - I'm usually right!!!! I never let him live down the bet he lost about what color his shower curtain was in his house when we first met. You'd think he should know this since he lived there and I didn't, but he was wrong!!!

Anyway, last week, he made a bet with our neighbor, Aaron. Something about sports - I'm not really even sure what it was, but they bet a grass cutting and Aaron was right about whatever it was they were debating.

So today, Tony paid his dues.....I got home from work to see him finishing Aaron's front lawn. It was pretty funny! Aaron sure got a kick out of it I'm sure - watching Tony cut his grass!

Well, he may be wrong sometimes, but at least he's good on his word!

Since Tony was busy cutting the neighborhood grass when I got home, I asked Hannah to help me out by feeding Nicholas for me while I made dinner. She was so excited to do it. It was the first time she's really done something so significant with him. She did a GREAT job! She held him in place with the help of the boppy and a pillow and kept the bottle in his mouth until he finished. She did take it out a few times to tell me "Mom, he's got 3 ounces" "Mom, he has one ounce"! He screamed each time she took it out, but she quickly gave it back to him. Then one time she said, "are you sleeping or eating?" I think she must have heard me say that a time or two! She's a great big sister and a wonderful daughter!

We've Upgraded!

Sunday afternoon, we went to Best Buy to get an external hard drive. I think I forgot to post this (since I hardly post lately), but we thought we lost our computer a couple weeks ago. We had a storm roll through and the power went out for a short while and the computer was on when that happened. After that, the computer would start, but during the start up screen, it just kept restarting. I tried and tried to fuss with it the one night and then gave up. I googled the problem the next day at work and came up with trying to start the computer in safe mode, which it did. While in safe mode, I was able to do a system restore and then it seemed to be working just fine. That's all good, but during this dilema, I freaked about the possibility of losing my pictures. Most of them are backed up on CD's, but when this happened, I realized I hadn't backed up since Nicholas was born, so I faced the possibility of losing his first 2 months of pictures. Good news was "old sparky" (our Dell from 2001) seemed to be working just fine and I didn't lose a thing. The lesson here was get the pictures off of the computer and on to an external hard drive for safety/backup of them and also to help clear the memory off "old sparky".

So anyway, we went to buy the external hard drive Sunday and ended up with this:

Somehow, buying a whole new computer wasn't in the plan, but we got a brand new laptop, the external hard drive, the virus software and CD for the operating system, wireless keyboard and mouse and the service plan for less than $1000 and free financing for 18 months. It was long overdue and we knew we'd be doing it sooner than later, so we broke down and just did it. I think Tony took advantage of me being in a super good Mother's Day mood!!!! Good thing! I love it. It's taking some getting used to working on Windows 7 and trying to figure out where everything is and trying to get all my old stuff off Sparky and on to my external hard drive. But I'm glad we did it!

Another reason I was in need of more memory was that I am working on turning my blog into a book. I have wanted to do this for some time and I found this website called blurb where you can do just this! I can't wait to get it done to perserve the memories of our life in a book!!! I'm so excited to be able to have that for our family and the kids to look back on. It's also very fun to go back through all of my old blog posts and see what we were doing 2 years ago! Hannah was so cute, learning to talk and becoming a toddler! I've decided to do the books by year (at least that's what I think I'm doing for now). It'll probably take me a while to get one done with all my spare time, but it'll be worth it!

Last night, Hannah was playing with her baby dolls in the evening and I found her doing this.

When I asked her what she was doing, she answered, "I'm pumping"!!! Too funny!!!! She had that bottle right on her booby!!!

Bad news....we found mice again last week. There were two baby mice in the basement and where there are babies, there's a mama. Tony was able to scoop up the babies and take them back outside. So far, there's been no other sign of any more, but I'm sure they're here somewhere. I bought the snap traps this time and some decon....hope to get them soon.

Good news....Nicholas slept until 5:00 straight through the night last night. Didn't wake up once!!!! Of course, I still didn't sleep that great waking up to listen for him. I got up to feed him at 5 and then he went back to sleep for the rest of the morning IN HIS CRIB!!!! He was there until I woke him up at 7! YAY, Nicholas! We're really working towards a full night sleep - I'm so excited!

Had a District Review at work today - it went pretty well. Things are going so well for us right now! I love my life!

Big, busy week recap

Wow, what a busy week for us! As usual.

I've now got a third week back at work under my belt and it's been so busy. I had an audit this week, which went pretty well, but it made the first part of my week fly by. Then the rest of the week went equally as fast playing catch up from missing time the first part! So in summary - work is going really well, very busy, but it's good!

We've had lots happening at home this week too. Last weekend, Tony left for a weekend golf trip. He left early Friday morning and ended up coming home earlier than planned Sunday due to the rainy weather and a nasty cold brewing. It was my first few nights alone with two kids, which would have been just fine, but it was made even easier because my mom came to spend Saturday with us. This allowed me to go grocery shopping alone. We went to the park and then to dinner. It was a good day!

Hannah mastered her bridge this week! That was exciting. All along, her arms didn't seem quite long enough and she didn't have the strength to get her head off the ground, but she was doing it one night and it finally was perfect! She was so excited!

Nicholas has seemed to have a real good week with major improvement on his eye contact issue. He's been looking at us a lot more this week when we talk to him and he enjoys playing with the toy bar on his bouncy seat, batting at the toys and watching them move. I'm now convinced that he can see just fine. As to why he hasn't been focusing that well up to now, well my theory is that he slept the first three weeks away, so his brain didn't have a chance to learn how to make his eyes work all that time. Perhaps it caused a slight delay in his vision and focus. I'm just glad now to see that it appears to be greatly improving so I don't have to stress over it so much!

He's growing, growing like crazy still! He's so cute though!!! He's starting to go into his 3-6 month stuff and has such chubby cheeks with no neck!

We made a big move this week with him out of his basinette and into his crib! He was pretty much outgrowing the basinette and neither of us were sleeping all that well with each other in the room. So we started Sunday night. He made it most nights until between 2:00-4:00 and of course the night he went until 4, I didn't sleep wondering why he wasn't fussing....I can't win! So anyway, it was an overall successful week in his crib. He started every night there and stayed there until I fed him around 4. I did give in though and brought him back to our bed after that feeding until he wakes up around 7. Friday night, he stayed ALL night!!!! It was such a feeling of accomplishment - we're on our way to a full night sleep (I hope!)

(bye-bye for good!) It's packed up and going away!

Tuesday was Bible Study. We had a good meeting this month, finally! We listened to a pod cast and then had a good discussion afterwards! It was night to not talk church politics for once! Nicholas loved being held by Karil!

Thursday, I had a NAWIC meeting after work, so Tony took the kids to gymnastics and made dinner. I was home around 9:00. We went to the mall after work Friday and to swimming lessons yesterday and then came home to clean and do laundry. We went to dinner last night and then over to friend's house to play cards for a while.

We were getting ready to leave for work Friday morning and looked out in our backyard to find this:

Cody went out to go potty and scared them all away! Wonder where they came from and why they were waddling around in our back yard?

Today is Mother's Day - my absolute favorite day of the year! I woke up this morning with my two babies cuddling with me in bed! That's the best thing ever! They gave me cards and a gift certificate to get an hour and a half massage!!! That is so needed! The muscles in my neck and back feel like they're ready to snap!

We got dressed and went to breakfast! It was perfect!

Then we went grocery shopping together and just hung out for the afternoon! I absolutely love being Hannah and Nicholas' mother and am so truly blessed to have them! I love you guys!