Ivy is 5 months!

Well, it's been a month since my last post, and I don't have any pictures that I can upload right now for this one, but I wanted to post real quick about Ivy at 5 months.

Ivy is still super happy and laid back. She will smile at anyone who will talk to her and shows no stranger anxiety. She is happy in her bumbo, her beco carrier, on her play mat, and in her swing. Of course she loves to be held and is much more cuddly than Ezra was. She doesn't like tummy time. As a result, no rolling over yet.

She is not sleeping near as well since we got to camp. She wakes up at least twice a night. No fun...but not much I can do about it since we are all essentially sleeping in the same room. I get up and feed her every time, just so she'll be quiet and go back to sleep. Naptime is okay. She will take a good morning nap, but right now she is in my lap kind of cranky because she woke up early from her afternoon nap. I think it's because it's too hot in her little "room" in the afternoon. Anyway, I'm taking advantage of the night wakings/feedings by getting some reading done. I have finished two books on my kindle since we have been here.

She still is a good eater. She must be really good because I had to go to Target last week and buy her some 9 month clothes to get us through until we can go home and get her some of the ones in her closet. She nurses about 3 times during the day, take a bottle usually once, and nurse twice at night. We have not started solids yet. Too much trouble. When we get home, she'll be a little over 6 months, and we'll start her on them then. She does watch us eat with GREAT interest though.

She is on about a 3 1/2 to 4 hour schedule during the day. Wakes up around 7, eats, sleeps from 9-11, eats, sleeps from 1-3, eats, sleeps from 5-6, eats, goes to bed around 7. Her night waking times vary, but it's usually around midnight and 4.

I am thankful that Ivy is super easy. It makes this year at camp pretty doable for me. Ezra is old enough that he doesn't require me carrying him everywhere, and he has some independence, and Ivy is content to go where I go, strapped to the front of me.

That's about it for month #5.

4 months

Our pretty girl is 4 months old! 

 She smiles a lot, and that makes us smile a lot. (photo below not typical)

 She loves her daddy. I think he likes her pretty well too.

At 4 months, Ivy is...
-Sleeping through the night sometimes but not every night. I'll take what I can get. Other nights she wakes up around 3.
-Eating 5-6 times a day (depending on if she eats in the middle of the night)
-Taking 3 or 4 naps a day usually lasting between 1 and 2 hours
-Smiling a lot, babbling a lot
-Laughing! I love this stage.
-Holding her head up well. We are working on tummy time and rolling over.
-15 lbs (70th percentile), 24 inches long (50th percentile), and her head is 75th percentile. 

Ezra 34 months

I'm posting this a bit early since I won't be able to post much once we get to camp. 

Whew. This month has been full of so many ups and downs. We are still working on getting Ezra fully potty trained and it has been frustrating and emotional but also a great time for him. It's so fun to see the pride in his face when he acts like a big boy. 

Ezra is extremely independent these days. Basically, if he doesn't think something is his idea, he doesn't want to do it, so we have to make him think everything we want him to do is his idea. It's an artform, really. :) He is so cute, quirky, and funny. He is getting much better at expressing himself. He repeats everything we say. Sometimes it's cute and sometimes not so much. 

Some things I want to remember...
This afternoon Ezra and I were playing catch outside when he turned his hat backwards, put his hand on his hip, looked at me smiling, and said, "How I look?"

Things he's saying these days...
When he goes to bed at night, we say I love you, then he says "I love you more" and we say "I love you most."
"Leave me alone!"
"I love you. Have a good day." (at night)
"I see you in the morning too."
"Are there any cars coming?"
"Does that sound like fun?"

Here is Ezra with his superkids teacher, Ms. Lyneil. He loved her and she was a wonderful teacher and an Aggie...even better! (also, she is the mom of three boys so she just did a great job with Ezra and always gave me great advice). Thursday was his last day and I was really sad about the end of his first year at "school." It just feels like he is getting so big and I know I will be dropping him off at kindergarten before I know it.

 Ezra and his best buds Aiden and Trevyn

Big boy!

As of yesterday morning, Ezra is diaper-free! We are so proud of our big boy and we can tell he is proud of himself too. Good job Ezra!

To granny's house we go

We went to visit my mom for a few days, and as always had a great time there. What's not to love about hanging out in the country? 

 Ezra and Ivy with cousins Bonnie, Kellen, and Noelle

 My mom keeps Noelle during the week so she and Ezra played a lot together. One day we all went on a walk on the road behind my mom's house. Ezra and Noelle ran ahead most of the time and had lots of fun.

 Still having fun...

 And then they realized that they had to walk allll the way back the way they came. So Chad carried them a lot of the way.

 This little girl just chilled while the big kids played and the adults relaxed. She got her fair share of being held as well...did I mention Chad's mom was there too? Between two grandmas and an aunt, she got lots of attention.

 Noelle and Ezra hanging out in the playroom.

Superkids program

Ezra had his program at school a couple days ago. The theme was "picnic in the park" and the classes sang a lot of songs about bugs. A few weeks ago Ezra started singing a song with the words "Head, thorax, abdomen" and I found out at his program that this was one of his class's songs. He got up there and got shy this time. 

 He sure did clap when the audience did though.

 Toni and Charlie came to watch Ezra.

From the last few weeks

 Ezra has been obsessed with his easter eggs. The whole easter egg thing caused quite a lot of drama in our house (Ezra wanting all the candy at once, wanting to take his eggs everywhere with him, etc.) Then he figured out he could put egg halves on his fingers. Endless uses for these things.

 Ivy is loving her new perspective.

Ivy is 3 months

Well, it's official, Ivy is no longer a "newborn." And that is perfectly okay with me! I love watching my kids grow and do new things. And I love it when a baby can hold their own head up. :) I am also partial to sleeping, and she is getting better about that all the time.

This little girl is so happy and laid back. People comment all the time about how smiley she is. All you have to do is smile and talk to her and she will give you a crinkle-nosed open-mouth smile. It is so sweet. She loves to talk to anyone who will listen. She likes to just look around and observe. She especially loves it when Ezra gives her attention, unless he is running right over the devil when singing "roll the gospel chariot along" and Ivy's head gets in the way of his fist. Then she is not a happy camper. Totally hypothetical situation.

I would say Ivy is a really good sleeper. She is used to laying down awake and will put herself to sleep most of the time, unless she is overly tired and then she won't have it. But she is also perfectly fine with being held and rocked, so if I wait too long to put her down, I will just hold her for a little catnap. She has also slept all the way through the night about 4 times, and most other nights she wakes up around 4 a.m. so she is almost making it through the night. I really don't mind her waking up, because I can feed her pretty quickly and she goes right back to sleep. I usually wake her up at 8 a.m. because most days we have somewhere we need to be by 9. Her naps vary from one hour to sometimes 3 hours. At this point Ezra took pretty short naps and was still up multiple times a night to eat, so Ivy is a piece of cake compared to Ezra.

She is a good eater. I feed her anywhere from 5 to 7 times a day, depending on if she wakes up at night or not. She goes about 3-4 hours between feedings during the day. She will nurse or take a bottle.

Ivy is also pretty good in the car. Sometimes she gets tired of sitting there, but once again, it's nothing like Ezra. Longtime blog readers will remember that for the first few months of Ezra's life he HATED. HATED being in the carseat. No fun. I avoided going anywhere that I didn't have to go, and if we went grocery shopping it was out of the carseat and into the front carrier. On long car trips, Ivy will sleep most of the time unless she is hungry or just a little restless. 

I don't know how much Ivy weighs but she is a good size. We'll go in a few weeks for her 4 month appointment but my guess is she's somewhere around 13 or 14 pounds. She's wearing size 2 diapers and on the second set of snaps in her cloth diapers. She could stand to move up to size 3 diapers though. She is also in 3-6 month clothes or 6 month size (like Carter's). No shoes fit her yet though...she has tiny, skinny feet and long toes. Sadly, she is losing her hair.

This month Ivy went to Bible class for the first time and has been once since. The teachers have told us that she does great and seems to like all the singing. I pray that she continues to enjoy going to Bible class like her big brother does. We also visited my mom's house for a few days and Ivy enjoyed lots of attention from granny, gramme, her aunt Erin and cousins. I'll blog about that later.

That's about all I can think of for her third month. She is such a sweet joy and we love her so much.

Running through the sprinklers

It's a rare occasion that we turn our sprinklers on (and you can see that from the look of our grass), but Chad has planted some new grass seed that he is trying to get started and Sunday was our day to water, so he turned on the little local sprinkler to water the grass seed. Ezra took this as an opportunity to get soaked and freezing cold. He had a blast but you can tell as he's running through the water that he was sooo cold. 

 And a random picture of Ezra and Trevyn that I took today while Trevyn was playing at our house. That boy looooves to wear those goggles.

Ezra--32 months

Ezra is creeping closer and closer to 3! I have heard that the 3's are pretty difficult, so I am savoring every moment with him as a two-year-old. Other than a couple weeks after Ivy was born, he has been so fun and so easy lately. As he gets older, he says some really funny things, and just cute things I want to remember.

"Whatcha doin', momma?"
"I'm cooking dinner."
"Yeah, you cooking dinner. That's cool."

His favorite thing to ask these days is "Wha happened?" when he is watching a show or a movie. Most of the time I'm not paying attention to whatever he is watching so I guess I need to work on that. He also asks "Where ya going?" and is ready to head out the door well before it's time to leave usually.

He asks "Want to play catch with me?" and "Want to read this with me?" on a regular basis. Of COURSE I do, sweet boy. How can I say no to that?

At bedtime, right as I'm getting up to leave, he says, "I wanna SNUGGLE!" Then, "How bout, scratch back? How bout, scratch belly? Scratch nose? Scratch head?" One stall tactic after another.

He is all about the baby talk jibberish these days. I know it's a phase and it will end soon but it's pretty annoying.

He likes to point out other people's emotions. If Ivy is crying, he'll say, "Ivy's sad. It's okay Ivy." Lately he has enjoyed watching "The Neverending Story." When the horse sinks in the mud, he said, "He's sad."

He still imitates whatever we say to Ivy. Yesterday in his little baby voice he got in her face and said, "Hiiii sweet guhl!" It was so cute. He will tell her "You're so beautiful!" I pray that they always love each other like they do now. It is so special to watch. He really is such a good big brother to her. I can already tell that she loves to watch him, and he can make her smile every time he talks to her. Another thing he imitates is telling me where he is going and what he is doing, and saying, "I'll be RIGHT back." I guess I say that a lot to him...otherwise I hear "Momma, where are you?" over and over again.

He put these on today and said "Momma, do you like my rabbit glasses?" (he got these today from his superkids teacher. A few months ago, you could NEVER have gotten Ezra to wear something on his face like this.)

You can't tell Ezra that something is going to happen in the future without him talking and asking about it constantly. When my mom was visiting a couple weeks ago, she started getting Ezra all ready for Blue Haven and talking to him about mountains, and woods, and butterflies, and hummingbirds, and bears. Ezra has since thought we are going to Blue Haven much sooner than when we are actually going, and he talks about it. A lot. I have learned to prompt him about things we are doing either the night before or the day of the event. He can usually understand when I say "after you wake up" but other than that, he doesn't have the concept of time (days, weeks, months) yet.

This month, it finally happened. Ezra told me he loved me, unprompted. My heart melted. And he always responds now with "I love you too" when we tell him we love him.

He is becoming increasingly independent. He loves his friends, he loves to do things himself, and he loves being a big boy. When he hurts himself, he might cry for a bit, but then he says, "I'm a tough boy." In fact, he just enjoys describing himself in general. "I'm Ezra. I'm silly. I'm goofy. I'm big. I'm cool." Luckily he also has quite the self-esteem.

As far as sleeping goes, we have put an alarm clock into effect. When Ivy was born we were having some issues with Ezra getting up super early (like 5:30 in the morning) and thinking it was time to be up for the day or waking up crying at midnight. So he has this alarm clock that lights green when it's time to be in bed, and turns yellow when it's time to wake up. He got the hang of it really quickly and is now back to sleeping from 8:30-7:30 every night. He still usually takes a nap during the day, but if he misses it he is fine. I just put him to bed earlier on those nights and he is always ready to go. In fact, at night now when we ask him if he is sleepy, he usually says yes.

I wish I kept better track of all the fun things Ezra says and does, but I guess this is better than nothing. I know it will be fun one day to look back and see all of this stuff, even if it's not very interesting to most of you who read this (yes, mom, I know you think it's interesting). Time goes by too fast, and we are enjoying this season in our life with our sweet kids.

Easter egg hunt at superkids

Ezra had an easter egg hunt at school today and I got to be there and watch for the 3.2 minutes it took the kids to find all the eggs. Ezra was so cute. He would pick up an egg, put it in his basket, and say "I got eggs! I got eggs!" It's so fun to watch as he grows and gets excited about stuff like this.

Fun outside

This time of year is the perfect time to spend the afternoons outside. The other day our whole family was hanging out in the backyard and I decided to get my camera out. 

 I love these three...

 Right now our garden is a big dirt square (let's be honest, so is most of our backyard) so Ezra likes to go back there and move the dirt around and dig with the spade. He's a boy, what can I say.