5 months old

Today marks 5 months since Ezra was born. At 5 months, Ezra...
-has started eating rice cereal recreationally. We don't give it to him every day, because honestly, it's a lot of trouble at this point. I'm going to wait for a while to make it an every day thing. I'm hoping in a couple more weeks he'll get the hang of eating off of a spoon better.
-sleeps an average of 10-12 hours a night, with the occasional waking up because he has flipped himself on to his belly and can't get back over.
-rolls from back to belly on a regular basis. I've seen him roll from belly to back once or twice, but most of the time he just gets frustrated and starts crying.
-laughs and smiles a lot
-has just started sitting up in the "tripod" position for short periods of time. We're working on sitting up.
-loves the taste of his fingers and hands
-likes to grab on to anything in his sight, which usually means my hair or necklace
-likes to talk to anyone who will listen

The past 5 months have been wonderful. We love our baby boy more and more each day.

A Very Merry Christmas

Giving kisses (and if you think it looks like I just woke up, you'd be right)...Like mother, like son...We are enjoying our first Christmas with our precious baby boy! Hope everyone else has a great day too.

Ezra's first snow

Looking at the snow this morning from the safety of the house...
...and braving it for just a few minutes this afternoon:"If my grandparents were here, they wouldn't make me sit in this stuff."

Brrrr!

The good news: it's snowing on Christmas Eve! The bad news: we were supposed to drive to my mom's house today in the direct path of the snow storm.

Merry Christmas everyone!

I realized today that it's been a couple weeks since I posted any pictures, which I know is all anybody cares about anyway. I haven't taken as many lately so here are a couple of the latest: We are dealing with some chapped cheeks around here, probably because I take Ezra out quite a bit. I just can't stand to sit at home all day long, and he likes to be outside. Anyway, I am slathering on the aquaphor and petroleum jelly, and that seems to help. We are also dealing with a very snotty nosed little boy. Let me just tell you how much he loves it when we get out the bulb syringe.
I just thought it was cute one day when Chad was clipping Ezra's toenails and he was sitting there so compliantly.

Here is a video that I took the other day of Chad making Ezra laugh. When Chad starts to laugh, Ezra gets really straight-faced and serious. Granted, I would be scared of Chad's maniacal laughter too if I was a 4 month old baby. Obviously I thought it was funny because I can't keep the camera still.

Not amused from Lesley Montandon on Vimeo.

Everything else is going well. Ezra is still sleeping better, he is a happy, content baby, and we are excited about our first Christmas as a family of three, even though he doesn't have any clue what's going on. I hope everyone has a good Christmas...I am excited that we will be spending Christmas at my mom's house on the farm, right across the road from my grandparents' old house where we spent so many Thanksgivings and Christmases growing up.

Sleep, glorious sleep

I feel the need to blog about this because my blog is my way of "scrapbooking" and keeping an accurate record of everything, so here it is...for the past 5 nights, Ezra has been sleeping an average of 9-11 hours a night! It has been awesome. I wish I could say that it just happened, but let's just say it has required a little bit of "training" on our part. I'm speaking in euphemisms for my mom's sake. Once I finally knew that he was for sure getting enough to eat, and he was mostly waking out of habit at night, coupled with my complete exhaustion, I decided that enough was enough and that we all needed to start getting more sleep around here. Anyway, I think we are well on our way to him sleeping completely through the night on a regular basis (he slept once for 11 straight hours without a peep, and the other nights were 9 or 10 straight hours, waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning if you can call it morning, and then going back to sleep until 7 or 8). There have been a couple nights that I think he would have gone back to sleep more easily except he has started flipping over to his belly and then getting upset because he can't flip himself back over--one morning I went in and he was asleep on his belly. I don't want to jinx this whole thing, but I did want to keep a record of it. Of course I still feel exhausted most mornings, but I think that has to do with the over 4 months that I was waking up multiple times a night. I think the total time I was awake during Ezra's first four months of life equals about 10 full days of being awake. So it'll take a while to feel normal again. The working out is helping.

So, that's our big news for now.

Weigh-in

So, it's been a while. My main reason is because the battery in my scale died and I had to go get a new battery. So there's my excuse. But the good news is I lost 3.8 pounds since I last weighed in. So, I'm still getting there slowly but surely! I have been working out more, but I am going to have to get more creative with my workouts because I had to go to the chiropractor yesterday for a (non-workout related) neck injury. It hurts pretty bad, but I think it's getting better. Anyway, you can see on the right side of the blog that I am in the single digits of pounds I still have to lose to get to that "magical" number, although it would be even better if my old clothes actually fit when I get to that number, which I heard doesn't necessarily happen. Anyway, let's not rain on this parade quite yet. It feels great to be less than 10 pounds away when I gained almost 50 pounds with our little bundle of joy!

19 weeks

After today I'm going to stop blogging by Ezra's age in weeks. We're going to start doing months. Hope everyone is okay with that.

Mmmm...food.Baby Einstein Lullaby DVD...works great for 4-month-olds and their 28-year-old dads.

Random

Tired after churchHe's found his feet (very helpful during diaper changes)

Our little foodie

We gave Ezra his first taste of rice cereal yesterday. It was unsuccessful to say the least...we took a video, but he cried the whole time and I seriously felt like the worst mom ever, so I am not going to post that for everyone to see. So today was actually the second time. I thought it would be good to try it when he was really hungry yesterday so he would eat, but that wasn't the best idea because he just wanted his milk and he wanted it NOW. So, we tried again today, and here's what happened:

Rice cereal, take 2 from Lesley Montandon on Vimeo.

He ate his entire helping and was a member of the clean bowl club. I can't believe that in just a few weeks we will be feeding him veggies. What happened to our little newborn?

Here's one more picture that I thought was cute. I love this new outfit:
And a video of Ezra laughing at Chad:

More laughing from Lesley Montandon on Vimeo.

Weigh-in and a couple recipes

So I haven't blogged about my weight loss in a while, probably because I haven't been as diligent about weighing myself (or trying to lose weight for that matter), plus there was Thanksgiving, etc. etc. Anyway, since the last time I updated, I've lost another 1.4 pounds. My goal is to at least stay the same through the holidays. I am still exercising, but since it has gotten cold, I've slowed down a bit. I even went running on Thanksgiving at my mom's house, so I was pretty proud of myself about that.

It's hard to remember what recipes I've made because I haven't cooked much lately. A couple weeks ago I saw Paula Deen make a Bacon, cheddar and apple grilled sandwich, and it was about to be lunch time, so I used her idea and made those for lunch and they were really good. I didn't make the roasted onion mayo that she did but I bet that would be good too. A couple days ago I made Pecan Chicken a la King, minus the pimientos and with onions in place of the celery. Again, just to use up stuff I had around the kitchen. It turned out really good even though I had to serve it over pasta instead of rice because that is what we had. I haven't cooked much else between Thanksgiving and having Emily's family at our house when our menu consisted pretty much of hot dogs and chicken nuggets. Tonight I will be making this (I have a lot of pecans and chicken right now). Sometime this weekend I will make beef stew and cornbread. I never use a recipe for beef stew so it comes out different every time, but it's hard to mess up.

Stay warm!

4 months old

Ezra was 4 months old on November 28. It seems that he has just developed and grown by leaps and bounds in the past few days. Do I say that every month? Anyway, today he started making very obvious consonant sounds, and he is still trying to roll over but hasn't quite gotten it yet. We went for his check-up today and he is 14 lbs. 6 ounces, so he has doubled his birthweight. He is also 25 1/4 inches long. Both of those were around the 50 or 60th percentile. I don't really remember. Also, his doctor said we can start rice cereal, and after a few weeks of that, start him on veggies. We're going to try the cereal tomorrow and of course I'll get some video. Two nights ago Ezra woke up 4 times, so I am hoping that once he starts getting more food during the day his tummy won't feel so empty at night. Here is a video of Ezra talking to me. Hope everyone had a good day...we enjoyed cold weather and snow!

Ezra loves the sound of his voice from Lesley Montandon on Vimeo.

Our Thanksgiving

We've had a great Thanksgiving week! For the first part, Chad's sister Emily, her husband Joey, and their girls drove the 12+ hour trip to Lubbock to visit us and we had so much fun. The girls are in love with their new cousin, who they got to meet for the first time. I think Josey liked him the best.
This picture isn't very good, but Lucy was so cute playing peek-a-boo with Ezra. He would turn his head wherever she peeked at him.
After they left our house, we made our way to my mom's house. Here's Ezra showing off his skills in his new walker. He looks so big in this toy...he loves that he is able to sit up and look around now. Plus, it's great to watch a little Aggie basketball in. Bathtime in granny's kitchen sink...Spending some time outside in the pretty weather...Can you see the resemblance between Ezra and his granny? We looked at some of her baby pictures and they are very similar. He definitely favors my side of the family at this point. Ezra's other cousins enjoyed digging in the dirt pile in granny's yard while Chad built my mom a raised bed for an herb garden. My mom got a metal detector for the big kids to find "treasure." Yesterday they found two nails and some old pipe and had a blast doing it. I think the kids are going to have a lot of fun roaming around out here. Our view from the back porch this lovely Thanksgiving evening. Now, if the Aggies could just win this football game, it would be the perfect Thanksgiving! Hope everyone else had a great holiday.

A year ago today...

And now we have an almost-4-month-old! I love looking back and knowing that we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but that we also had no idea how much this baby would bless our lives and teach us so much about God and his love for us. I am excited to see what the next year brings.

Exciting news

We are about to embark on yet another adventure...Chad has been hired as the new assistant director at Camp Blue Haven! We can't even begin to express how excited we are to once again be a part of the permanent staff at camp. Chad will keep his full-time job during the other 42 weeks of the year. Please keep us in your prayers as we take on this new, awesome responsibility.

I had a little impromptu photo session with Ezra today before his nap. I will be glad when he can sit up on his own because it gets hard to pose a baby that can only lay down without a bunch of props. Maybe I'm just not creative enough. I love this little half-grin and his twinkling eyes.

16 weeks

Ezra is 16 weeks old today. I got some pictures of him spending time with Chad before Chad left for work...
At 16 weeks, Ezra is laughing and smiling a lot, although you wouldn't know it from these pictures. If he sees the camera out, he gets a somber stare on his face. He is getting BIG. I'm not sure how much he weighs, but when I weighed him on our home scale the other day with me, he was over 15 pounds. So we'll see what the accurate scale says the week after next. He is now constantly rolling on his side when he is on the floor, and it's always his right side. Yesterday he'd roll to the side and then return right to his back (I took this video yesterday), and today he would roll and then just stay on his side. I kept thinking he'd roll on to his belly, but that pesky right arm wouldn't move out of the way. Sorry, I know that most of you don't care about Ezra rolling on his side, but it's interesting to me. I guess if you read this blog on a regular basis you are used to all the little details about my child's life. :)

another rolling video from Lesley Montandon on Vimeo.

In the crib

I took a couple of pictures of Ezra in his crib today because I want to remember this cute thing he does right now where he folds his hands across his chest when you go to put his pacifier in.
I took this one tonight after I put Ezra to bed. I could hear him on the monitor just talking and moving around, and then I looked at him on the monitor. He had scooted himself completely perpendicular to how I laid him down in the crib (and how he usually sleeps). A couple days ago Ezra started kicking up his legs and rolling onto his side, and this is how he scoots his body around. I just want to point out that Ezra wasn't actually asleep for either of these pictures. Even I am not interested enough in a photo op of my kid to wake him up.