5 months

It seems like we say this with each passing month, but really...5 months already??!? Everyone tells you it will go by quickly and I had no doubt that they were right but still it amazes me how quickly time seems to go. Or maybe it's just that babies grow and change so quickly. I'm surprised that my little baby is already big enough to be doing some of the things that he is.

We borrowed an excersaucer from a friend at the beginning of August and that is now Noah's new hang out. He entertains himself by moving around to each different toy trying to get it in his mouth.



As good as the toys are, I think the feet are almost his favorite thing to grab and try to shove in his mouth.

Our big boy is on the verge of sitting up on his own. As you can see, he's able to pull it off for very short periods of time (long enough for Mommy to snap a few pictures). He does really well just sitting in front of one of us. But definitely still needs help balancing. But he can put his hands down in front of him and stay put for a little bit. He'll have it down in no time.

Wrestling with a teddy bear...


He's also finally mastered the art of rolling over. Last week on the 7th (his 5 month birthday), I put him down on his tummy and he immediately flipped to his back. Tummy time is now a concept of the past...now that he's really gotten the hang of rolling over, as soon as you put him on his stomach he flips over. In fact sometimes it's almost as if he's trying to start turning himself before you even get him all the way down. It's pretty funny. We've gotten some video I just need to figure out how to get it online now.

He's also showing huge interest in eating and drinking lately. Last weekend we were at a shrimp boil with our small group and I had him on my lap while I was trying to eat. Everytime I brought something to my mouth he tried to grab it out of my hand. Finally I let him try my cup of water. With my help he put it up to his mouth and then stuck his tongue in a few times. I think the cold surprised him. Now he just plays with empty plastic cups at home until we are ready to give him some of his own food. He's definitely showing signs of being ready to start solids now so I think we'll start that adventure sometime very soon. It seems like just yesterday I felt like I would be nursing him forever so it's hard to believe he's ready for something new already. I'm excited to see how he'll do...stay tuned!

Just playing around...

Noah always seems to be happiest right after he waskes up.

Chewing on one of his favorite toys. He loves to get the ball part in his mouth and chomp down. We think he's teething...still...we've thought that for weeks now and can feel the bumps on his gums but still nothing poking through.

I decided we needed some cute naked baby pictures. Playing around in his crib after a nap. We were trying to get him to roll over. He'd done it twice earlier in the day, but Mike had missed it again. We weren't successful that afternoon, but he finally did it for Daddy the next day!

Mommy uses this all the time. Must mean it tastes good. Here, let me see...

Tired out from lots of playing.

Noah likes his feet

A couple weeks ago Noah discovered his feet. He'd grab them when lying on his back and roll side to side. It's pretty cute. Now, even cuter, he tries to put them in his mouth. His favorite time to do this is when he's getting his diaper changed. I think as we are lifting his legs up to do the changing part he realized maybe he could get his feet all the way up to his mouth...after a few tries he is now mostly successful!

Our active sleeper

So we still swaddle Noah when he goes to sleep. It really seems to help him settle down. He doesn't fight it (usually) and I think it signals to him that it's sleepy time. This is what he looks like having just been put in his bed all swaddled up and sleeping peacefully...



The funny thing is, most nights (and some naps) he doesn't remain in the same position we put him in. He kicks...He rolls side to side (not turning over, must squirming back and forth)...and often rotates himself around in various positions in the bed. He's been doing the rotating bit for months. It's actually pretty funny because we have a video monitor and sometimes he'll move himself so much that when you go to look at him on the video, you can't see him anymore because he's moved out of position of the camera. The first time he did this was a little scary...you go to check on your baby and all of a sudden you can't see him. But now that we know what he's doing, it's amusing. Anyway, so I finally remembered to take a few pictures of what he looks like when he wakes up having moved around in the bed and squirmed out of his swaddle.

It's been a while...

Wow…we’ve been busy lately. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post. Let’s see, what have we been up to??? (warning: this is really long…there are pictures at the bottom…please feel free to scroll down)

Noah is 4 1/2 months old!! He’s learned all kinds of new tricks. He’s changed from the passive little (ok, not so little) baby we brought home from the hospital to this active boy who is constantly cracking us up! He’s so much more interactive these days. It’s gotten harder to feed him lately because he’s so interested in looking at whatever else is going on around him at the time. He’s laughing more and more. He squeals often at the top of his lungs. Last month he was starting to grab at things but in a very uncoordinated way. Now, he quickly grabs anything that gets within his reach and it immediately goes to his mouth! He’s starting to enjoy looking at and reading books with me. He loves checking out the world around him.

Mike and I were talking the other night about how he is now compared to what our expectations of him were before he was born. We both agreed that he has so much more personality of his own than we expected at this age. He has a very strong personality-he’s very social and loves playing with people. And if you aren’t paying ate
ntion to him, he lets you know he’s not happy about that! He’s active and curious and wants to be part of whatever is going on around him. Can you tell we are having so much fun with him??

We had a great check up with him on the 11th and all went well. He’s still so big for his age. He weighed 18 lbs 6 oz and was 27 inches long-95th percentile for both weight and length. He got shots again…I told Mike I think he’s my payback for all the shots I’ve given to small children. Remember I was saying he had a strong personality. Holy cow was he ticked that we were holding his legs down and giving him shots. Oh how I dread what it may be like when he is older…

Everyone always likes to ask how he’s sleeping and what he’s eating so I thought I’d answer those questions. Eating- we haven’t started solids yet so he’s still exclusively breastfed. I feel so blessed to have been able to do that for this long and hope to continue even once we start solids till he’s a year old. We’ll probably introduce rice cereal sometime next month. We’re not really in a hurry to do solids but will start slowly just to give him a chance to play with it some and figure out this new concept! We won’t do any fruits/vegs or anything besides cereal until he’s 6 months old. At least that’s the plan for now…we’ll see how it goes.

Sleeping is better than it was a month ago. He mostly sleeps through the night. It’s been probably 6 weeks or more since he stopped regularly getting up to eat in the middle of the night. Typically we put him to bed around 7ish, get him up to feed him right before we go to bed around 1030 or 11 and then he’ll sleep till 7ish on a good night. Several nights a week he’ll still wake once or twice…sometimes he just fusses for a while and puts himself back to sleep…sometimes he needs one of us to soothe him a bit to get back to sleep…and sometimes he won’t go back down unless he eats. I would say sleeping is probably one of the things that stresses me out the most…mostly because if he’s not sleeping well that means I’m not sleeping well and I don’t do well when I don’t get enough sleep. Thankfully we probably have more good nights than bad nights.

I’ve been back at work now for almost 2 months…still part-time only 2 days a week. It was hard to go back first, and I definitely miss Noah when I’m not with him, but overall it’s been good to be back at work. I think it makes me feel good to feel like I’m accomplishing other things there and I really enjoy being back with my co-workers. The nice thing is that by the time I’m really ready to be back home with him, my work week is over and I have 5 days off! Noah’s done great at day care. Unfortunately I think we’ll be losing our current day care situation but may have already found something else with someone at church…we’ll still be praying about that though. One of the reasons I’m able to enjoy work is because I know Noah is ok during the day so a good day care situation is really vital.

Mike’s job at Point of Grace is going great also. At first it took some adjustment moving from the structured business world to the more laid back and flexible world of full time ministry but I think he’s pretty used to it now. He’s almost done with his internship so we’ll be anxiously waiting to make sure all will work out well for him to receive a call in a permanent full time position at PoG. At the end of the month we’ll be taking the youth group on a summer trip…this year is to South Padre for “Beach Bash”- a gathering of other local Lutheran churches for speakers, worship, and fellowship. Noah and I are both going also. I’m glad to be able to get to spend some good time with our youth again since I’ve been less involved since Noah was born (this has been really hard for me). I’m also excited to take Noah to the beach for the first time. But also a little anxious to see how it will be with him there with the kids. Hopefully we won’t be too much of a distraction.

Here are a few other highlights from the last 6 weeks:

June 14-15: Kristi’s best friend from forever got married in Galveston. We made the trip down and the whole family was there. Not enough time to go to take Noah to the beach but was fun to spend time with Grandma and Granddad.

June 28: Visited Great-Grandma for her 86th birthday! Later that night we left Noah with a babysitter and went on our first date since he was born! A good friend of ours proposed to his girlfriend at Coupland Dance Hall so we went out for that. It was good to be out as a couple and we hope to do it again soon!

July 3: Noah rolled from his tummy to his back twice in a row...I was so excited. He has yet to do that again…we keep trying but no luck. We put him on his belly and he just looks at us like “What do you want from me??”. It’s pretty funny.

July 4th: We went to Kyle and spent the day with Aunt Dayna, Uncle Brian, and cousins. Lots of fun!

July 5th: Great Grandma (my Grandma) passed away. We were so glad to have spent her birthday with her the weekend before and glad that she got a chance to spend some time with Noah.

July 14-16: Noah and I went to College Station to visit Aunt Kristi. This was his first trip to Aggieland. I actually caught Kristi putting an A&M hat on him and taking a picture when I was supposed to be in the shower…Mike’s threatened to not let us visit her anymore! J We had a lot of fun just hanging out. The funniest part was watching Noah watch Kristi’s dog Nobs…he’s never really seen a dog before (at least not one he’s paid attention to) and he was absolutely transfixed on Nobs, especially when he’d run and chase after balls. It was so cute.

Well, I think that covers the highlights of the recent weeks. Thanks for reading if you stuck it out to the end! Here are some pics of our big boy!

Family pictures at the wedding


Mmmm..Mommy's arm tastes good...


This bee is pretty good too

Mommy, can I eat the camera?
Tired out after an afternoon of errands

Who's this handsome guy in the mirror?

Seriously Mom, I'm not going to roll over again so stop trying to make me!

Showing off his funny onsie from Grandpa
Getting Daddy's face

Hanging out at Aunt Kristi's

Tummy Time

Tummy time is something Noah and I have been fighting each other on for some time now. For the longest time I could only put him on his tummy for like one minute. Pretty much as soon as I put him down, he'd cry and get really mad. It's taken some persistence (and me actually remembering to put him on his tummy more often) but he's finally starting to get the hang of it. We can only do it for little bits of time (maybe 5-10 minutes here and there) before he gets upset, but that's some major progress from where we were before. So, this morning was the first time I really saw him put himself up on his arms well and really turn his head and start looking around...it was great! Here's the evidence:

3 months

Noah is 3 months old now! Time sure has gone by fast. The last couple of days Mike swears that Noah all of a sudden looks bigger and "more grown up". Bigger for sure! We haven't weighed him in a couple weeks but the last time we did he was around 16.5 lbs. Crazy.

He's keeping us highly entertained these days...lots of smiles, lots of yelling and squealing and just trying to talk back to Mommy and Daddy. He can sort of reach for things (although still lacks enough coordination to always get what he wants), grasps well (as evidenced by the frequent pulling of my hair!), can sit propped up and with help (also in the Bumbo seat) and is really getting into looking at the world around him. He gets quite upset somtimes if we have him facing the wall or back of the couch for too long.

I went back to work last week (sigh). It actually went ok...I'm only working part time now, just two days a week so knowing that makes it a lot easier. We're using a great lady that we know through another church in town (her husband is a DCE there, like Mike is at our church) and she takes care of kids in her home. It's really been a blessing to find her and so far Noah seems to be fine with it. She's gone this week so he'll get to hang out with Grandma Tilton instead, which I know she is thrilled about!

Anyway, here are some recent pictures of our not-so-little guy

Sitting and playing in the Bumbo seat

He happend to grab onto this ring when I was laying him down. I don't think

he meant to do it and actually seemed pretty confused as to what this thing

in his hand was...it was pretty funny.

Swimming for the first time!