Two Months Old

At two months old, Henry:

• Weighs 11lb 10oz (30th percentile) and is 23 inches long (50th percentile).  He's not quite the little chunk that his siblings were, but he's gaining weight and thriving.
• SMILES!!!!  Talk about a charmer. This boy loves to smile and it melts his mommy's heart.  He is already mastering the art of flirting; we may be in trouble with this one...
• COOS!!  I feel like he's going to be a talker.  He'll look at you, smile and start "talking."  He is especially fond of chatting with his brother and sister.
• Is doing a great job of holding his head up.  Tummy time is challenging with a reflux baby.  On several occasions he has spit up while laying on his tummy and then face-planted in it before I've had a chance to move him.  Poor guy.  Bless his heart, he doesn't seem to mind too much.
• Is proving to be a sweet, patient little guy.  He's exactly what our family needed.
• Still has a yucky case of reflux :(  We had him on Zantac starting at 2 weeks but still seemed to be having symptoms (lots of spitting up, looking uncomfortable when he did spit up), so we made a move to Prevacid (Delia's miracle drug) at 6 weeks.  What a mistake!  Poor guy was miserable.  He went from our mellow, content baby to one who had to be held all the time and was fussy when he was awake.  Definitely not worth the $53 price tag!  We gave it about a week and then switched back to the Zantac.  It's not perfect, but so much better.  Since he sleeps well most of the time and seems content, we'll stick with it and just tweak the dosage when we can (as he gains weight).  Thank goodness for a pediatrician who is willing to work with us as we try and figure out what is best for our sweet Henry!
• Is an amazing sleeper!  Oh what a dream it is to have a baby who will sleep, especially at night.  Most nights Henry will give me a stretch of 5-6 hours!  Best of all, it doesn't require visits to replace his pacifier!  Mommy is getting some great nighttime sleep for having a 2 month old in the house, which is such a relief since neither of the big kids takes a nap anymore.  His typical schedule goes something like this.  He eats every 3 hours during the day (I'll actually wake him up if I need to).  He eats at 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 7:30pm (right after the big kids are in bed), and he gets a "dream feed" bottle from Daddy around 11pm.  Then we let him sleep, and most nights he goes until somewhere between 4am and 5am.  I'll feed him and he immediately goes back to sleep and will dose until 8am (although some days I have to wake him up).  He takes a great morning nap too!  Between 45 minutes and 1 hour after waking up, he's ready for a nap.  He almost always puts himself to sleep (yay!) and he'll nap until his 11am feeding.  Honestly, he'd take great naps most of the day if I let him, but that would mean that we would never leave the house.  His mid-day nap is usually on the go (in his car seat), but then I try to get him back in his crib after the 2pm feeding.  Some days (if we have an activity or need to run an errand), then I'll have to cut that nap short, but he will put himself back to sleep in the car seat.  We let him nap in the swing (downstairs) after his 5pm feeding, although sometimes he doesn't sleep and wants to be "in the mix" with everybody.  He tends to give us some trouble going "to bed" after the 7:30pm feeding.  Not sure if it's his reflux or just a bad time of day for him, but we have a hard time getting him asleep for the night.  We try to put him in his crib, and he goes down okay initially but then wakes up frequently.  It starts an "up-down-up-down" game for us for about 1 hour - 1.5 hours and then he's asleep for the night.  Makes it hard to get chores done, but we know this "trouble" is so minor and will be only last for a brief time.  Give him a few more months and then we'll introduce "tough love" if we need to :)
• Celebrated his first Thanksgiving.  We went to MaMa and Pop's house for Thanksgiving lunch, and our sweet Henry slept through the entire thing!  He basically slept the entire time we were there, but this Mommy knows better than to complain about a sleeping baby!
• Went in his Ergo carrier without the infant insert for the first time!  He wasn't a huge fan of it, but I'm sure he'll learn to love it.  It will give us our snuggle time (yay!) but still let Mommy have my hands free to be involved with the big kids.  I see lots of Ergo use in our future this spring and summer!

Oh, how we love this sweet, sweet boy!  He's exactly what our family needed.  We're treasuring each baby moment with him as we know time passes way too quickly!

Here are some photos of our lil' man at 2 months:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We usually try to decorate our Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving, and this year was no exception. The kids were very excited to help and had strong opinions about where the ornaments should go.  They also liked to hear stories about where the ornaments came from.  The generic ornaments needed to decorate the tree are becoming less and less as the number of special ornaments grows.  Pretty soon (especially with the addition of Henry's ornaments each year), we'll need a second tree!

Henry slept through most of the decorating (I'm sensing a theme this holiday season in which Henry sleeps through most family events.  I suppose that's a million times better than the alternative, which is screaming through them!)  Even though he missed the decorating, he absolutely loves the tree!  He's quite content sitting in the bouncy seat staring at the twinkling lights.  Little baby strobe lights :-)

On two wheels!

It's amazing what a little "motivation" from a younger sibling can do.  Up until now, JGray has shown very little interest in learning to ride his bike without training wheels.  Okay, let's be honest, he flat out told us that he didn't want to learn.  Well, Delia has decided she's asking Santa for a big girl bike without training wheels.  Emphasis on the without.  She has been telling everyone that she wants to ride her bike on two wheels.  Of course no big brother can be shown up by his little sister (no matter how spunky she is).  Today Delia left to spend the night with MaMa and Pop, so we used the opportunity to encourage JGray to give two wheelin' a shot.  "Because I can't let Delia do it before me, right Mommy?" he said on our way to the high school fields.  Exactly!

Check out our big boy on two wheels!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Delia is an amazing big sister.  She loves to help with Henry (most of the time) and loves to sing to him.      She has also started becoming more interested in her dolls and likes to pretend like she's a mom and the dolls are her babies.  Recently, she asked to borrow my boppy (nursing pillow).  She was sitting quietly on the couch and when I looked over, this is what I saw:

Yes, Delia is nursing her doll.  Awww, right?  I guess as long as she doesn't bust out her mommy impersonation in public, then we're okay.  I should add that JGray also was fascinated with feeding the baby after Delia was born, except he tried to do it with my breast pump :)

Like I mentioned, Delia also loves to sing to "Baby Henry."  Here's a video of one of her serenades:

Marathon Madness

What do you do when your wife is pregnant and you want to take advantage of the fact that she's not training for a fall race?  Sign up for a marathon, of course!  Before the baby comes, it's easy to ignore that there will be a newborn in the house for the last 6 weeks of training (including those nasty 20 mile runs).  John had an amazing season training for the Richmond marathon.  His speed improved dramatically and he managed to avoid serious injuries.  He did tweak his hip during the last 20 mile run but was confident going into the race.

John wasn't the only one with marathon madness.  It's hard not to get excited about a race when you have so many friends running it!  So I decided to take all the kids (a huge thank you to MaMa for tagging along to help make sure I didn't lose anybody!) downtown to cheer for Daddy and all of our friends.  We had to park farther away than I would have liked, but we got to our cheering spot (well, close enough to our spot) in plenty of time.  Note to self, it is better to park downhill from the finish because walking uphill with a jogging stroller (carrying an infant seat) is quite the workout!  The kids were awesome cheerleaders and came prepared with handmade posters, pom poms, cow bells and lots of high fives for the runners.

John's minor hip issue became more of a major issue and made for a really really tough race.  He still finished with a great time and we all couldn't be prouder of him!!

GOOOAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!

Soccer season just finished and WOW!  What a HUGE improvement from last year!  JGray and his buddy T are on the same team this fall, and the dads are coaching.  John and Coach G are proving to be quite the dynamic duo and the boys are exceeding expectations!  Surprisingly, the team is comprised mostly of kids that JGray knows from preschool.  We decided to bump the boys up to the next age category (6 year olds) even though they'd be playing against older kids.  We thought that having the dads coach would help ease the transition to "real" soccer.  They were prepared to get slaughtered but have been winning most of their games!  JGray has discovered a love for all things defense and is showing some serious hustle.  That boy can RUN!  He'll sprint from one end of the field to the other to try and get a ball.  He also made some great goals this season too, and we couldn't be prouder of his enthusiasm, positive attitude and great teamwork.  We think most of the team is going to try and be together again next season, so watch out for more rumbling from Team THUNDER!!!