Be prepared for some serious cuteness!

I'm so very happy to report that Nicholas has slept peacefully in his own bed for a full week!!! Each night since last Friday, he has gone to sleep easily between 9:30-10:00 and woke up once during the night to eat and then went right back down with no fussing! Laying him down both at the beginning of the night and after his feeding now takes about 2 minutes and he's fast asleep. We don't have to worry about his binky falling out and screaming...it just falls out and doesn't really phase him. He still sort of flinches and jerks a little, but he's content and easily falls back to sleep.

I'm so proud of you, little guy!!!! We've waited a LONG 3 months for this! I hope you keep it up and don't regress at all. We'll keep working toward not needing to wake up to eat during the night....that will be fantastic!

So if anyone else out there is facing this difficulty, go ahead and try putting a blanket under the crib sheet to soften the bed a little....worked for us!

And now for the cuteness!!

Here are Nicholas' 3-month pictures!! He was so smiley and happy! It was really great getting a good photographer at JC Penney. We've had good ones, so-so ones and a bad one....we were vey happy with Nicole this time!

What a Weekend!

We had such a busy weekend, but it was great!

It started with Tony picking Hannah up early from daycare for a date. They went to see "Shrek, the Final Chapter". Nicholas and I met them at the mall after work and we had dinner and walked around a little and then headed home.

In my last blog post, I mentioned that the bedtime trials with Nicholas had gone from bad to worse. Well, since that post, we hit rock bottom, so bad in fact that by last Thursday, he wouldn't even lay in his crib. Once again, that put Tony on the couch and Nicholas slept all night on Tony's side of the bed. I was so aggravated and thought I have to crack this baby code somehow! I wondered what it was about our bed that made this baby sleep….was it the sounds, the smells, the pillow-top mattress? So I figured I would spend the weekend trying to figure it out. I also read some tips and theories on "how to get your infant to sleep in their crib" stuff online. I was ready to try something until it worked. So my first attempt was to give Nicholas a pillow-top mattress. I put his comforter underneath his sheet. It gave it a little cushion, but not an unsafe level of fluff. So bedtime came and I nursed him to sleepiness and then laid him down while he was still awake, but sleepy. It didn't take him long, but he fell asleep around 9:00. I was so exhausted from the week, that I went to bed at 9:15. The next thing I remember was waking up around 1:00 and listening to the monitor – and hearing him sleeping peacefully!!! He woke up around 2 to eat. I fed him and put him right back to bed with no issue and he slept there until around 6:30!!! I was so excited, but didn't want to make too much of a deal over one good night. We did bring him back to our bed in the morning until around 8:30 and we all got up and had breakfast and then got ready to take Hannah to swimming lessons.

After swimming lessons, we took the kids over to my sister-in-law's. She was going to watch them while Tony and I went out for a lunchtime date to celebrate our 6th Anniversary! Oh, yeah, before that Tony gave me some very thoughtful gifts:

He said they were two of the three 6-year anniversary gifts of candy, wood and iron was the other one. He said he didn't know what to do for iron. I told him he could have gotten me a Rowenta iron – he said he thought about that, but was afraid to buy an appliance!! So anyway, the other two were nice – very thoughtful of him to look into this and find things that were appropriate – it was great! He sure has a sweet side when he wants to!!! The flowers were from my dad & Julia….thanks again, they were beautiful!

So anyway, Tony had lunch planned for us at Lucky's in Tremont. It was one of the places Guy went to from Diners, Drive-in's and Dives. They have a unique brunch menu and we had a great meal and a nice time together.

We went back to Dawn's to get the kids and then headed home and cleaned up a little and then got ready to go to my boss' daughter's wedding. Mom and Randy came to stay with the kids. We went to the wedding and had a nice time. It was nice to get to go out for our anniversary, even if it was for a wedding we may not have really wanted to go to – sort of obligated. But it was good and we danced and had a good time.

We fully expected Grandma to be holding Nicholas when we got home, but instead, we were pleasantly surprised to see him sleeping soundly in his bed again!!! He did wake up around midnight and since I was already in bed, Tony fed him a bottle. I found them both asleep on the couch around 3:00, so I put Nicholas to bed (with no problem) and he slept there again until almost 7:00. This meant I essentially got a full night sleep on this second successful night of sleeping in his crib!

We got up Sunday morning, ate breakfast and then got ready for church. Here are Hannah and Nicholas before we left – don't' they look so cute and summery?!?

I took both kids and they were so good. Church was packed as it was Confirmation Sunday. It was an inspiring service to hear 8^th graders speaking of their life with Christ and professing their faith in front of the Congregation. I really enjoyed being there. I got home and really wanted to take a nap, but instead, I had to make a grocery list and get groceries. I got home in time to put groceries away and then get ready to take Hannah to the Princess Ball. The Rec Center held the Ball.

Hannah was so excited to go and see and dance with all the Princesses.

It was cute – lots of little girls (and a few boys) dressed up and dancing on the dancefloor of the ballroom with a DJ. They had pizza, pop and cookies. It was fun, but may have been a little better had there been some sort of other organized activities. Hannah danced a lot and hurt Tony's feelings a little because she really didn't want to dance with him! They did get one in right before we left. Hannah sort of hit a wall, so we headed home.

Both of the kids got baths and got ready for bed. Nicholas went down again around 9:30 again and slept soundly until around 2. I got up to feed him and he went right back down. Here he is still sleeping soundly at 7 Monday morning…..I think we have a sleeper!!!!!

So Hannah is on the verge of learning to read. It's really cool. She reads books with Tony a lot and they work on sounding out the words. She knows all the sounds to the letters but still has difficulty putting the sounds together to say the whole word by herself. She's really into spelling things though. We pick a few words on the way home from daycare in the car and I tell her how to spell them and then she puts it into her memory bank somewhere. So far today, she can spell rainbow, sun, star, moon, flag, school, kitty and tonight she learned pillow…yes, very random words, but it's so very cool that she can remember them all. She's been able to spell and write out all the names of the kids at daycare and her family for a while now with no help from me. She's so smart!

So tonight is now Wednesday night and Nicholas has slept every night since Friday all night long – no fussing, no waking except to eat, which has been between 2-3:30. He eats and goes right back to sleep within 15-20 minutes. I'm so very glad we seem to be over this hump. Now I just need to work on getting the nighttime feeding to go away and being able to sleep straight through the whole night….I guess one victory at a time!

So anyway, lots of good stuff this weekend. Celebrating 6 years of marriage with my husband – a lunchtime date to a new place and a night out together. A sleeping 3 month old adorable son. And a spelling Princess of an awesome 4-year old daughter! My life is so good!

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!