Look, mom, one hand!

8 months old and already a show off.

Okay, make a liar out of me then!

Andrew has slept straight through the night in 10-12 hour stretches for the past four nights.

And in the words of Forrest Gump: "That's all I have to say about that."


More to come if there's more to talk about in the future. For now I'm crossing my fingers, holding my breath, and knocking on wood that I won't look back at this post and laugh.

Andrew: Months 6-8!

Okay, so I kind of slacked off since Andrew's six month update. We're almost at his 8 month milestone and I totally forgot to talk about his 7th. Whoops! I blame being so busy with two kids, especially our toddler-almost-preschooler who has been going through one change after another in the past two months, from learning to sleep without a sleep aid, to climbing out of his crib and moving to a "big boy bed," and don't forget potty-training. We've been busy, to say the least. But so has Andrew!

He's changed so much in the last two months!

• He now has two teeth. The first one he got right around 6 months. The second right around 7.
• He can now go from being on his belly to pushing up into a sitting position. He's been doing this for a couple of weeks now.
• Within the past week, he's decided he's no longer content with the view from the floor, and he's started pulling himself up into a standing position. This one I can't even believe as Philip was not doing that at this age. But so far Andrew is doing everything sooner so I guess it just goes along with the territory of being the little brother!
• He's eating all kinds of purees now and we just started giving him little Gerber Puffs to give self-feeding a try. He loves to eat from a spoon, but his fine motor skills still need some work when it comes to getting the Puffs from the high chair tray into his mouth.
• Sleeping... yeah. Some nights are good. He might do as much as an eight hour stretch on a rare night, say 8 PM to 4 AM. Other nights maybe six. But those nights are not as frequent as the nights where he's up every 3-4 hours or sometimes even more often than that. I am so desperate for the sleep through the night milestone. I was patient up until the 6 month mark because that's when Philip started doing 10-12 hour stretches. Now I'm just panicked and a wee bit pissed off that we're not there yet. 
• Favorite things: 
• He loves to crawl. He's still pulling himself around on the floor mostly, or doing a modified frog kinda hop. Not totally up on his knees yet. He's not so interested in being confined, but he will tolerate jumping in the Jumperoo for a small stretch of time. Anything that helps build up his strength!
• He loves his big brother and his big brother's toys! Philip has become less enthused about the latter, especially when everything Andrew finds goes straight into his mouth. For the most part, Philip is good about sharing, but we definitely have to remind him. A lot.
• He loves playing with balls.
• He loves the vacuum cleaner. When I get it out while he's on the floor, he all but attacks it, moving as fast as he can to try to catch it. So funny!
• He loves to eat. It's so funny how he opens his mouth wide in anticipation of a spoonful of baby food now. Or other things! We went out for ice cream at the Carousel over the weekend and decided to let him try a couple of bits of vanilla ice cream. The look of anticipation on his face was hilarious!
• He loves to hear his own voice. He's loud, that's for sure. He'll babble  "ah-ba-ba-ba-ba!" forever. He also does a funny noise where he sucks in his breath and makes an "eeeheeeeeee!" sound over and over again.
• The stroller and sitting in the grocery cart seat. He loves going for rides in both!
• Not-so-favorite Things:
• Sleep. LOL. Well, he is on a better nap pattern now, taking two approximately one hour naps per day and a half hour in the evening if we let him.
• The car. He's getting better about car rides, thank goodness, but it's still not his favorite thing. Not by a long shot.
• Having his nose wiped. Both boys have had one runny nose after another and Andrew absolutely hates it when I come after him with a tissue.
• Having something taken away from him that he was playing with but that he wasn't supposed to have. He's already throwing a fit when that happens. It's hilarious and kind of scary at the same time. I thought babies at this age were mostly still oblivious to that kind of thing!

 He's definitely a hands-on, physical baby. His name Andrew means "strong and manly" and it's definitely a good fit. While he may not be manly yet, oh my gosh is this kid strong. His legs are like solid baby muscle under a layer of baby blubber and sometimes getting things away from him takes a little more effort than one would think, things like, oh, my hair, which he's constantly grabbing. Ouch.

I'm sure there are things I'm missing, but that's all that comes to mind right now. In short, he's changing every day and doing everything sooner than Philip did. He won't be a baby for much longer at this rate which kind of breaks my heart, although I'm looking forward to seeing the toddler he becomes and watching how his relationship with Philip develops and changes. I can't wait until the day when they are really able to play together like little buddies!

Standing?!

Andrew started pulling up into a standing position on his own last week. Waaayyyyy sooner than Philip ever did! I blame having a big brother to model after. This baby is fast on his way to toddlerhood. :-(

"Do the Potty Dance!"

Last weekend I woke up Saturday morning and decided I was not interested in changing diapers on two boys that day. So I told Philip we were going bottomless and using the potty instead of going potty in the diaper. I brought hiw green frog potty down into the living room and stripped him of his pants and diaper. Within a few minutes, he peed all over the end table. But the next time he had to pee, he went and sat on the potty. And he went. And he did it every time after that. Even going number 2 on the potty, twice! And it was really that easy.

Okay, so I wouldn't go so far as saying he's potty trained. Not quite completely. But he has done SO GREAT this past week with going on the potty. When we're at home and he's bare-bottomed, he gets up from whatever he's doing and goes, without so much as an announcement. He's only had two accidents in the house since we started the whole process. Adding underwear into the mix made things more complicated. I think that's where we had problems in the first place when we attempted potty training last month. The underwear gave him a false sense of protection and he would just go in them. Now that he has an understanding of what needing to go feels like and what happens when he doesn't make it to the potty, he's learning how to hold it until he can get to a potty. When he has the underwear on, we make him take potty breaks or ask him if he needs to go. Just today he told us for the first time he had to go while he was wearing his underwear so we could help him get them off. We were so proud!

Going out is trickier. He's afraid of public toilets so we take a potty everywhere we go and he sits on it in the car and goes before we go in anywhere and before we get back in the car. So far this is working well but getting used to going on a big potty is something we'll need to conquer before too long as traveling with a potty in the trunk is kinda... gross. When we go out he wears his cloth training pants or underwear with a pull-up over them to contain any messes. I like the underwear under the pull-up because it still allows him the sensation of being wet and doesn't feel like a diaper. At home he wears his training pants or underwear and he's still wearing a diaper for naps and bedtime. We have him use the potty right before his nap and he's been waking up dry pretty consistently. Yay!

All in all, so far potty training hasn't been nearly as terrifying as I had thought it would be. Of all things parenting related, this has been the one thing I've been most worried about and fearful of. But Philip's really making it easier on us that I could have imagined! We're so proud of our big boy and so excited that he will be potty-trained and ready for pre-school in the fall!

Two and a Half

Philip is now two and a half years old. And the difference between Philip as a new two year old and now is astounding. He is steadily leaving toddlerhood behind for life in the fast lane as an up and coming preschooler. In fact, he's registered and ready to go to preschool this fall at St. James' Episcopal School this fall. He'll be going two days a week for three hours both days. He's already so excited and I'm so excited for him.

The past month kick-started a lot of changes for our big boy. With the deadline for being successfully potty trained as of the start of preschool looming over heads, I decided it was time to be rid once and for all of Philip's best bedtime buddy: the bottle. Since his first birthday, he had been going to bed every night with a small bottle of warm water. He was completely reliant on it for going to sleep. I didn't want to take it from him before Andrew was born as I was feeling guilty about all of the upcoming changes with the birth of his brother so I figured we'd deal with it after things had settled down for a while at home. This was the same train of thought that I had about not moving him to a big boy bed yet, too.

Well, if I had it to do over again I would.have made the changes prior to Big D's arrival because boy, oh, boy has it been interesting handling a ticked off two year old while also dealing with an almost seven month old.

The first step was taking away the bottle. I had been putting off doing the dirty deed, second-guessing myself, and pondering whether or not it was really as bad of a habit as parenting magazines would have me to believe. Philip used to be content to hand over the "ba-ba" after getting out of bed in the morning or after nap time. It was no big deal. But within the past few weeks leading up to operation Bye-bye Ba-ba he had become increasingly dependent on it, pitching a fit when I tried to get it off of him in the mornings and all out demanding it at random times throughout the day. This was definitely a step in the wrong direction. It was time to take action.

Surprisingly, it wasn't as traumatic for either of us as I had been fearing. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a cake walk, and he didn't willingly and without fuss hand it over, never to ask for it again. We went cold-turkey after explaining to him that after such and such time, there would be no more bottles, because bottles were for babies and he didn't need one anymore, etc, etc. Oh there were definitely tears. The first night was the worst. But we stuck to our guns and the next morning he only asked for it once. Another fit ensued at nap time, but he quieted down faster this time, and didn't ask for it when he got up. In fact, he only asked for the bottle a few times after we took it away. He even started telling us that "ba-bas were for babies" and that he was a big boy. So, in the end, he got with the program pretty quickly, all things considered, and he's been bottle-free for well over a month now!

It turns out that it was a good thing that we decided to wean him off the bottle when we did because the next little wrench he decided to throw in our hands would have made dealing with taking the bottle away much, much more difficult... but that's a story for another post!

Andrew: 6 Months Old!

My baby boy is halfway to his first birthday!  How the heck did that happen already?

In many ways it's been a loooong six months, but at the same time it's gone by in the blink of a sleep-deprived eye. Andrew has not been as easy baby by any means and the past six months have pushed and challenged me as a mother more than any time in the past two and a half years of my parenting history. Truthfully, I can't really remember the first three of them. Not sure if that's a product of how little sleep I was getting or the incessant screaming Andrew was doing. Probably both. Either way, they've just about been erased from my memory.

It's been a hard six months. Damn hard. And I'm sure as heck hoping the next six months are easier. So far, signs are pointing to that being the case. But it's also been six months full of love, laughter, and happiness. Andrew has made us, what I feel to be, a more "complete" family. There's something about having two of them. Sitting at the dinner table at night, Philip in his booster seat and Andrew in the high chair, while Philip engages us in one of his endlessly entertaining toddler conversations and Andrew grins his big baby grin at him and laughs when Philip smiles back. The adoration on Andrew's face for his big brother... ugh. It just gets me every time. These two boys love each other so much already and they have such a sweet relationship with one another. Watching them interact melts my heart. I'm so grateful every day that God chose to send us another little boy to love. I couldn't have asked for a better gift for Philip than the gift of a little brother to grow up with. A built-in best friend. I pray every day that they will always be so close; that they will always look out for one another.

Andrew was the piece to the puzzle that made up our family that we didn't know we were missing. He's the perfect fit, even if he is the "blonde sheep" amidst his dark-haired, dark-eyed counterparts. He's mommy's little boy and the snuggle bug I missed out on with Philip, who has never been the cuddly type. He's rolly-poly and pudgy with the perfect amount of baby fat, so different from Philip who has been a string bean since the day we brought him home! He's got a deeper, raspier voice than Philip had but the same hilarious nasal laugh. When Andrew and Philip get engaged in a laughing fit you can't help but laugh along with them! He's big and strong at six months old and already trying to get into everything. True to second child form, he's orally-fixated--everything goes in the mouth. This has to be because he has an older brother who's play things keep getting smaller!

A welcome similarity that's just starting to take shape is his sleep pattern. At six months of age, Andrew is finally sleeping through the night, just like his big brother did. He has recently started going to bed between eight and nine at night and sleeps til anywhere between six and seven in the morning. Sometimes, if it's closer to six, I can give him a bottle and he'll sleep until eight or so. This is absolutely heaven. After months of waking up every one to two hours, I can't even put into words how relieved I am at this change of events in his nightly routine. It has reassured me that, yes, life will go on. Things will return to normal. (And it gives me hope that a couple of his other less-than-fun habits will change with time, ie, screaming in the car, and only wanting mommy to hold him, all the time. We'll get there.)

In other big news this month, our big boy is cutting his first tooth. Two months sooner than his brother did, too! New foods this month include carrots, bananas, and peas. So far he is loving the carrots. Less enthused about the peas. He also loves playing in the pack-n-play, jumperoo, and walker. He's starting to increase the amount of time he is content to entertain himself with a toy which is a nice change of pace for mommy. He's even closer to sitting unassisted. He can sort of tripod himself in a sitting position no problem, but still loses his balance and ends up falling over. He's mastered rolling back to front but doesn't quite understand front to back. Either that or he just doesn't want to be on his back! He's just started "creeping" backwards. I believe within the next two months we will have a crawler on our hands, if not sooner. He likes to blow raspberries and smack his lips together. He practices his vowel sounds and seems to love the sound of his own voice, trying it out often. He has one volume setting: Loud. He thinks it's a laugh riot when we follow Philip up the stairs and cracks up the whole way. He's moving into size nine months clothing which means I am officially screwed on the hand-me-down home front as of right now; Philip was in summer clothes when he was in nine months sizes. So we're having to buy this little booger his own clothes anyway! At the rate Andrew is growing, Philip will be getting his hand-me-downs!

So many other things. I wish I could take every good moment from every day and capture it on camera, take a video of it, put it in a bottle... anything. I feel as though our days are fleeting and time is slipping away from me with each hour that they grow bigger. I am loving this special times in our lives of having a six month old and a two and a half year old. I want to always remember these days, and the chaos, the craziness, the crankiness, the joyfulness, and the love that is filling our lives right now. Blessed doesn't even begin to describe it.