Look who's SIX already?!

Pretend this is written in July 2014, ok?  That's when I started writing it in my head.

July is a BIRTHDAY month around here.  There's America's birthday, a few days later it's Nana's Birthday, late in the month it's JimDad's Birthday, and... hmm... oh, yes:  KADEN'S birthday.  The day around which all others rotate!  You're not going to believe this, but...

He turned SIX YEARS OLD.

But Little Brother isn't about to be upstaged.  He finishes off the month with a HALF birthday... 

so he turned SIX MONTHS OLD!

Each of them is growing in leaps and bounds this summer, so I think I'll just try to summarize what we did in this post, and then give each of them a specific post later.  Er, soon....

But Summer 2014 was the Summer of Family Vacations.  In July, we had a few days at the Outer Banks with (most of) my side of the family.   The very next week was a week in the PA countryside with Jim's family!  Three weeks after that, a family wedding in southern Indiana.  We drove everywhere, of course, and the boys wound up being great travelers together, all things considered.  I wouldn't mind a slightly roomier back seat, but then again, it all worked out fine.

I was sorta off the hook with birthdays this year:  my mom's happened while vacationing with her family, and they took over cake and what not.  Jim's 40th was last year, so this year = low key.  And Kaden's birthday was while vacationing with the cousins, which is sortof like a party everyday anyway.  I have discovered his 3 main ingredients to a great party:  a pinata, a cake with action figures on top, a version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey... all adapted to 'the theme' of course.  Which was Star Wars this year.  I should do a post on that, but I need to wait until I get the pics from my sister in law.  My camera batteries died the 2nd day of vacation.  Fun times.

All the pics here are from a family wedding.  Kaden likes ties, but I bought his from the 'young man' section, which is *vastly* different from the boy section.  Who knew.  I didn't try it on him before getting dressed for the wedding (rookiemom mistake!) and so he wound up with only the vest.  And he was initially perturbed by that, until I told him he looked like Han Solo from Star Wars.  

Then his eyes lit up.  "All I need is a blaster," he said, "and a wookie friend..."

Summertime...

It's been a while!  I'm noticing a trend with this favorite second son of ours.  We had much fun cheering a friend on for her first race- bright and early on the 4th of July.  (Thanks for inviting us!).  And then we hung out at a nearby park for a while.  

Sam is 5 1/2 months now... and not colicky, per se.  He is a bit of a mama's boy, which surprised me because I didn't think that separation anxiety kicked in just yet.  But there are days (or nights!) when all he wants is for me to hold him. If only that 'power' could last...

He is doing all sorts of  things lately, rolling over, grabbing stuff, laughing at his brother.  He has re-started his newborn habit of smacking his lips, and it's quite possibly the cutest thing he does.

 And while he likes to sleep- he's got no discernible pattern. Some days it's a quick 30 minutes, and other days it's 2-3 hours of zzzzz's.  But we never know which is coming, so that's fun.

PA is pretty in the summer.  I'm still astonished that I can be cold in the early am or late nite, but the days are great.  Even when they're hot!

4 Months Later...

Well, hey there!  We've survived the 'most brutal winter in a dozen years' or something like that.  The sad part is, the last 'record snows' the state had...is when we were in college here.  Sigh.

But, all winter long, I kept my eyes on Easter.  If we make it to Easter, I thought, life will be good!  The babe will stop crying, and we'll have a bit more of a routine, and we'll be able to go outside again...

Heh.  The babe mostly stopped crying- at least those eternal colic fits.  And we sorta had a routine- which I promptly messed up by working again.  Only part time, but still.

And THEN, the weather played us.  Now- almost a month after Easter? - we're starting to hit 70 degrees more than once a week.  But it's not 70 in the morning, which means layers.  Still.

But I found my favorite fleece vest!  And almost all the crazy work events are over! and it's 70+degrees out - at least part of the day!  And... AND, the babe is LAUGHING.  On purpose.

We're falling in love all over again.  Ah, spring!

Speaking of Spring... though we live in an apartment, the grounds here are nice.  We see all sorts of critters when we're out.  A chipmunk that likes to race across our porch and under the table.  Squirrels that like to bury their nuts in our planters.  Large birds holding small ones in their talons.  The occasional deer (while driving, not in our 'yard').   Oh, and falcons on the highway signs!  Here:  Bunnies, mostly at dusk.  And- the best part- a pair of chickadees nesting in a birdhouse Kaden made last year!  Right on our porch, which is pretty awesome to see and hear each morning.

And, of course, our favorite little groundhog- who may or may not be teething at 4 months.  Drool or no, we'll keep him!

Ten Weeks along...

It's hard to believe that LittleManSam is 10 weeks already.  It feels like forever! In a good way (mostly).  His crying jags have lessened.  We're rarely on the "level 3 alert" - which was eyes scrunched closed, mouth wide open and WAILING at the top of his lungs repeatedly.  Not fun for any of us.  He still cries and fusses, but at (usually) lower levels and (usually) not 3+ hours at a time.

We haven't taken too many photos of the cry jags.  I've been TRYING to get a photo of his smile, which is completely adorable.  But it comes and goes rather quickly.  His first smile was around 8 weeks.

You might think, from the photo above, that we entered him into some sort of old-tyme photo shoot.  Not at all.  He's not pretending to be a founding father (with their white wigs)- this is actually his baptismal outfit.  It was mine, actually, which is kinda cool.  (Kaden used a combination of my 2 brothers' outfits.)  I swear he looked much more normal when he was baptized.  That was around... 6 weeks old.

My thinking brain hasn't fully engaged yet.  It does, for brief spans of time, and then... it doesn't.  Very frustrating on some levels.  A bit worrisome since I ease back into work this week.  But most of the time, with those cute toes, a bit of aspirin and strong coffee- it's all good.

Here's the close up of our founding father.  I love all the expressions on his face here.  All these photos were taken by a (new) friend of mine... she offered to take newborn photos, but she has a toddler and it took us about 7-8 weeks to synchronize :)   She's pretty talented, though, and the day was a lot of fun.

Sam's face seems to be changing day by day this week.  Kinda amazing, watching him grow.  The 2 month doctor visit went fine.  We're still doing both nursing and formula.  Kaden is still over- enthused about his baby brother.  Spring has sprung, Easter's around the corner, and all in all, life is looking better each day :)

OH! and this week, Sam has started focusing more intently on stuff (and people, too).  He really likes patterns and the feel of flannel.  One day he was wearing a footie outfit, where the footies were little bears, and it looked like he was trying to grab them.  He hold his head up really well, and usually prefers to be in a sitting position.  If you try to lay him down, or just recline his head/back a little, he grunts and moves his head up.  It's kinda adorable to see him trying to do stuff, but not having the body control to do it.  I'm sure he'll get there soon.

And, even though it's way too early for him to be teething, we've noticed that sometimes he likes to bite down on stuff.  Interesting, that little boy.  Another fun tidbit- when he sleeps, he'll often still do the moro reflex (where his arms flail out for no reason).  He's almost 12 lbs of fun, that little boy!