dear warren

Dear Warren,

You are ten months old now, and I know every parent says it, but I honestly can’t figure out where the time has gone. Not only are you two months shy of your first birthday, you are also still the second born. That means that I’m still trying to document and capture your babyhood just as much as I did my firstborn. That task is proving to be a challenge. I’m keeping this blog as a record book of our family because I like to write and, more than that, I like to remember. When I browse the archives of this blog, there are many posts written about your big brother. Not just the monthly updates, but odes to his baby life. See, before he was a big brother, he was an only. I had a lot more time to sit at the computer and type out those writings I had composed in my head. That’s how these posts come about: I write them in my head and type them out when I can find a moment to sit in front of the screen.

The archives of this blog don’t contain quite as many for you. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t composed them. Oh, I’ve composed so many. When I hold you on my lap and play pat-a-cake with you, I write about how you are the most smiley baby I’ve ever seen. You smile so big that your shoulders touch your ears and my heart is filled with joy. When I give you a bath, I write about how your features are so beautiful with your long lashes and your daddy’s eyes. I wonder if you will be a swimmer the way you kick those legs like crazy. (You’ve been doing that since the very first time I felt you move!) When I watch you play with Henry, I write about the gift that you are to him. You are amazed by everything he does. I bet you always will be. You are just ten months old and already there is so much love between the two of you. When I lift you from your crib in the night to feed you and in the darkness you say, “Ma,” I write about how you are the gift I never knew I needed. And about how my heart bursts with love for you. You made my love multiply. When I rock-a-bye you in the upstairs glider, I write about how I’m in disbelief that you stretch from one arm rest to the other and your legs drape over the edge. You are hardly a baby anymore.

Please know, Sweet Warren, that though the posts about you are a bit scarce, I have written about you and I won’t forget because I hold these moments with you in my heart!

I love you,

Mommy

• has 3 teeth: 2 bottom and 1 top right
• crawls
• pulls up to knees and once in awhile feet
• says: ma-ma, da-da, wha (what's that), uh-uh (uh-oh)
• tricks: high five, so big, peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, waves bye bye, signs 'more' and 'all done', gives kisses
• eats fruit and veggie purees, some finger foods, and breastmilk
• 19 pounds
• two naps per day

Christmas 2013 in review

We had such a great Christmas break this year filled with just the right amount of family time, relaxation, and fun. I'll caption the following string of photos to review some of the festivities and highlights.

Dameon spent a lot of time (and froze his fingers off) trying to transform our home into "our Christmas house" as Henry calls it. He did a GREAT job! (I'll just gloss over the 8 foot blow-up Santa that was a late addition to the yard and just say, "WHY???") We also have a couple Christmas traditions in our little town. The first is driving through City Park any night during the month of December where we have our own mini version of Jolly Holiday Lights. Henry loves it and I'm sure Warren will next year. We made it through twice this year. Also, the day after Thanksgiving the shops on the square host a festival of lights. It culminates with a lighted parade and Santa Claus sprinkling his magic dust and lighting all the buildings/courthouse/trees. This was our first time attending that event and I'm sure we'll be back!

Henry and I all ready for Christmas Eve church service. This year we attended Lutheran Church of Hope with the Place crew. GREAT message. If there's anyway to visit their website and watch that service, I highly recommend it.

Our little cuties all dressed up. Is that tie not the cutest?!

Henry's fourth Christmas:                                                          Baby's first Christmas:

Our little family:

Ready!

Yippee!!!!!!!!

the cousins:

Santa stopped by to check on the boys:

Warren was a fan:

Cute little buddy trying out the shaving kit Santa brought him:

henry turns 3

 The day before his birthday, he helped me bake and decorate cupcakes. He was a big fan of the frosting and, of course, we had to sample our work. (Notice how the only part of the cupcake he ate was the top.)

On December 19, Dameon took the day off work so we could do "Henry stuff" all day. Right away when he woke up in the morning we gave him his gift which was a train table with all the good Thomas stuff. We've been planning this gift since the second Dameon said, "It's a boy!" so there was a great deal of anticipation going on. We were pleased with his reaction and have enjoyed watching his imagination grow over the past few weeks. 

We ate a breakfast consisting of Casey's donuts (with sprinkles) and then hit the road to Des Moines. First stop: Build A Bear Workshop. Henry had never been! He chose a little dog and named him Sammy.

 We also saw Santa at the mall and made the dumb decision to pay the $500 it costs to have someone else take the picture. Live and Learn. Our second stop was to what Henry calls "the marble store." Also known as The Learning Post. I can't remember why I didn't take any pictures there but Henry and Dameon had lots of fun playing with the marble ramp and other toys they have out for display. Third stop: Lunch at our favorite pizza place, Sam and Louie's! (Again, no pictures. Sheesh! Fail.) Fourth stop: Monkey Joe's. Henry loves that place and Dameon only had to use his teacher voice once with some rowdy kid, so it was a total success! I did a little bouncing, but mostly kept Warren content in the Ergo carrier.

 Henry hugged Sammy the whole way home, even after falling asleep about 2 minutes outside Monkey Joe's parking lot.

When we got back to our house, we had a birthday dinner of meatloaf and potatoes with cupcakes for dessert.

On December 28, we celebrated with our families. It was a Thomas the Tank Engine party!

 (Kudos to my mom for cutting out and gluing wheels on all 13 of our train cars!)

Decorating the cake turned out to be a bit of an intense process.

Happy 3rd Birthday to our sweetie pie!!!

nine (and a half) months

Teething. Oh, teething. That pretty much sums up Warren at this age. Well, I guess that's not totally true but teething seems to be at the forefront. He's having a bit of a tough time but I did discover these great little things called Hyland's Teething Tablets. WELL WORTH THE $10. Actually, it's kinda good that this is a belated post because in the past few days it seems like he has changed a lot. All the sudden he is really taking off on some new skills. He waves bye-bye (always with his right hand), is starting to handle finger food, gets up on hands and knees/rocks back and forth, sometimes does "So Big", and pretty consistently puts himself to sleep for naps without any crying. I missed the well-check this time because I didn't want to take the boys into the doctor's office right before Christmas, so I don't have any percentiles. Here's what I do know:

• size 4 diapers
• size 12-18 month clothes
• no teeth yet but getting very close. The top two and bottom two are right there!
• no crawling or forward scooting yet
• says Ma-Ma and Da-Da often
• plays peek-a-boo with a blankie
• spends less time in his baby swing than ever before
• still likes his binky
• loves to spend time in Henry's room
• started eating three meals a day in addition to nursing
• still loves his bath
• lets Daddy put him to bed almost every night (sweet freedom!)
• waves bye-bye
• blows the best raspberries I've ever seen

potty training in the trenches

If there's one thing I know about Henry, it's that he's not going to do something unless it's his own idea. What's up with that??
So, when it came to potty training, we were in agreement that we would do our best to let it be his idea. Or at least trick him into thinking it was. We bought him a potty chair a year ago and let it sit in our bathroom as an experiment. He drug it around the house a little, filled it with toys, figured out how to take it apart, but had zero interest in sitting on it. Fine with me. I didn't want to try to train him right before Baby #2 anyway. I had heard from several credible sources that you shouldn't try to train a boy before age 3, so that was always in the back of my mind. Every now and then I would feel a little bad for him because he is so verbal that I think people assume he is older than he is, so to them it seemed strange that he was still in diapers. And every now and then he would suddenly be in the mood to sit on the potty chair. But that's all that he would do. Just sit. Nothing would happen. No positive reinforcement. We bought him underwear but they just sat, too. Sat in his drawer.
Then one day about three weeks ago, we had an unexpected playdate pop up. We told him his friend would be coming in about 20 minutes. The next thing we know he's silent and when we went looking for him we found him in his room trying to hurriedly put on his underwear over his diaper. Didn't want to look like a baby in front of his friend, I guess :) We jumped on the opportunity and introduced the idea of pottying and earning a treat. That was a game changer for the little guy. The treats started out big. A choice of one piece of candy from the Halloween bucket. And suddenly he was able to go a little trickle every time he sat down. Which just so happened to be every six minutes. No joke! How can he go that often? He must be holding in just a little each time so he can up the number of treats he earns. So, the treats quickly turned from a trip to the Halloween bucket to a single M&M.
But because of this need-to-go-every-six-minutes issue, potty-training takes over our entire life. We can't do anything else besides potty, clean out the potty, flush (big deal), wash hands, get M&M, and do it again. Ughhhhhh...turns out I have little patience for this routine. How will we ever leave the house??  
And potty training is messy! Our little do-it-yourselfer has decided to try dumping the potty on his own a few times and that doesn't go well. And then there was the time that I turned my back for two seconds and the dog was DRINKING the potty. Ahhh!! After that little incident, I grabbed my phone to text about it to my mommy friend, but just as I started in with the story a text popped up from her telling me that her CHILD had just drank the potty. Her exact words were: What.the.actual.heck?
Yup, I got trumped.
All this is to say, this potty training business has me secretly wishing he stays in diapers for another year. It's just so much easier.

all about me (x20)

A few weeks ago I saw these things going around on facebook where people would write a list of random facts about themselves and pass it on. I enjoyed reading some of them and learning new things about my friends. I didn't get around to doing the facebook thing, but I thought just for fun I'd do a list here on my blog.

1. I really hate to fly. Hate it. I haven't flown since my honeymoon in 2007. It's not a fear of being up in the air as much as it's the motion sickness and confined space and HEAT. Oh, the heat. It's always soooo hot on those things. And, yes, I have utilized the barf bag. Just once on a flight from Des Moines to St. Louis.

2. I enjoy a good jigsaw puzzle. Always have. And I really want my kids to be good at puzzles!

3. I say, "We don't bounce on the couch," at least 11 times a day. Been saying this for about a year.

4. I think I would have 8 or 9 kids if I could skip over the being pregnant for many months part.

5. I once got fired from a job. Well, not fired so much as asked to quit. Same thing, right? It was a job I had in college that I thought I was pretty good at. I even had a customer bring me a plant once and thank me for doing such a great job. About a week later one of the managers led me to the office and told me I need to learn how to multi-task and I should reconsider majoring in education. Oh, and I was a senior. Sheesh. That was a bad day.

6. Mischa Barton, Amy Adams, Sarah Michelle Gellar. These are the celebrities I have been told I look like at various points in my life. The Mischa Barton call-out was definitely the most random. It was the very end of one of my college semesters and I stopped in my professor's office to pick up my final project. When I opened the binder to check my grade there was a giant picture of Mischa Barton that had been ripped out a magazine. She had stuck a post-it note to it and written about how she was on a flight and was reading this magazine. When she saw the picture she stared at it for a long time wondering if it was me. So she did the next most logical thing: rip it out, stuff it in her carry-on, and bring it to work to put in my project. Random!?!

7. Speaking of Mischa Barton, during our first Christmas break as a married couple, Dameon and I watched the entire series of The O.C. Ah, free time. Pretty sure nothing like that will happen again until we're empty-nesters.

8. The following is a list of shows of which I have seen every episode: Full House, Felicity, The O.C., Elmo's World (unfortunately), The Hills, Teen Mom, Parenthood

9. I have never seen or read Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. And I don't want to.

10. I didn't learn to swim until I was 10 years old. I have very vivid memories of my mom bribing me with ice cream cones if I would jump off the edge and let her catch me. I'm still not much of a risk taker.

11. There are no amusement park rides that I enjoy. There are a few that I will tolerate, but I don't enjoy any.

12. I think it would be fun to go to cosmetology school. I'm not sure I would enjoy working in a salon, but I think it would be a fun thing to know how to do.

13. I was a teacher for five years. In those five years, I had four jobs in four school districts. I taught preschool for two years in Deep River-Millersburg, kindergarten for one year in Williamsburg, kindergarten for one year in Waterloo, and preschool for one year in Winterset. That was a lot of classrooms to set up and tear down. It was a good career, but I don't miss it. I'd much rather be home with my kids.

14. I saw Titanic in the theater five times.

15. When I was in sixth grade I got my first CD player for Christmas along with my first CD. Jock Jams! ("Everybody dance now...")

16. Things that I've learned to like since marrying Dameon: the hawkeyes, diy projects (okay maybe I don't like them all the way, but I like them more than I used to. I remember the first project he ever did was to replace our sink in our old house. I had never heard of such a thing and just kept insisting we do things the traditional way and CALL SOMEONE.), old houses, biscuits and gravy

17. Things I still don't like, much to Dameon's dismay: frosting by the spoonful, boating, antiques, Grimm

18. I could probably eat pasta for every meal.

19. The last movie I saw in the theater was Les Miserables. I was super pregnant and missed a decent chunk of the movie due to frequent trips to the bathroom.

20. I've never broken a bone but I have dislocated my right knee three times. Once in high school, once in college, and once in May.

eight months

HOW?? How is he eight months old already? For some reason eight months feels like a major milestone. It did with Henry, too. Maybe it's because of the feeling that we're on the cusp of some big changes: crawling, teeth, new car seat, and finger foods just to name a few. I just want to savor it. Savor every second. But then I also look forward to the next stage and feel badly for wishing time away. It's true what they say, I guess. The days are long but the years are short. Here's what's happening with baby Warren:

• TEETH. His top two teeth and bottom two teeth are all about ready to pop through. It seems like the top ones might be first. And they look to be huge and far apart, which is completely adorable, if you ask me. Up until now, he really hasn't been too difficult with the teething thing. But he's also not drooling much at all so maybe we're farther away than I think.
• EYES. It's settled. He's got Daddy's eyes. A beautiful mixture of green, brown, and flecks of gold and blue. Did I mention beautiful? Beautiful! This is probably the most frequent comment we get from strangers with both the kids. "Oh, they both have such big eyes!" (Is it ok to go on and on about how beautiful you think your own kids are? I'm going to. :) )
• FOOD. We recently realized that Warren's baby oatmeal was causing him some constipation issues so we pulled him all the way off that, increased the breast milk, and still give him fruit in the morning and vegetables in the evening. Dameon gave me a VitaMix a few months ago and it is awesome for making baby food. So much better than the Baby Bullet I used for Henry. He seems to like any kind of puree so far. He's tried banana, pear, apple, avocado, butternut squash, sweet potato, carrot, broccoli, and the Gerber puffs (which he's not quite ready for yet).
• BROTHER. Oh, how Warren loves Henry. The way he watches him is just the most precious thing. Like his wheels are just turning thinking how he can't wait to follow Henry around and copy everything he does. And the feeling is incredibly mutual. Henry checks in on Warren, wants to know what he's doing, wants to show off for him, wants to give him hugs, and has recently discovered his ability to make Warren laugh. Seeing them interact as brothers is so amazing!
• PUPPY. Warren is really noticing Rufus more lately. He likes to grab his ears or his tail, which Rufus doesn't mind at all. I guess he figures he'll take any attention he can get.
• SLEEP. I don't want to jinx it, but he has been sleeping so well for the past five nights in a row. Prior to this five-night streak, he hadn't been spending much time in his crib because he would wake up within five minutes of laying him down pretty much every time. But now he is sleeping all night in his crib and only waking up once to eat. WOO!! He goes to bed around 8:00 and gets up for the day around 7 or 8. I hesitate to brag about Warren's sleeping because I know I have some sleep-deprived friends out there whose babies don't sleep. But I paid my dues with Henry, so it's only fair that my second baby sleep, right?? And, Warren is NOT a good napper, so it all evens out I think :)
• DIAPERS. Turns out cloth diapers are far less novel the second time around. Shoot. They are stretched out, leaky and stinky, so I don't use them nearly as much as I should. Warren wears cloth about 30% of the time and paper the rest of the time. He's in size 4.
• CRAWLING AND SITTING. He is definitely a sitter now. He tips sometimes but we trust him to be left alone for a few minutes at a time. As for crawling, he tolerates being on his tummy a little better now. Once in awhile he gets his knees under him a little and he can scoot backward sort of inadvertently. 
• BINKY. This boy loves his binky. End of story.
• TALKING. So far, he's a man of few words. He doesn't babble too much, so I'm not sure if that's an indicator that he'll be less verbal than Henry or not. I guess time will tell. It's probably going to be hard for him to get a word in edgewise anyway.
• PERSONALITY. Happy and content. That pretty much sums up Warren. Oh, and super smiley. He always has been! He smiles so big that his shoulders touch his ears :)