Monday, November 25, 2013

SEVEN MONTHS!

Porter is seven months old today. I was talking to Jared last night and we realized that Porter is closer to being one than a newborn. We both couldn't believe it. His first few months went by pretty slowly with his Reflux, but warp speed has resumed in the last few months. 
At seven months, Porter is:
-so much happier all the time. The Reflux medicine has made a huge difference in his attitude. He's happy so much more now. Besides sleep, the biggest difference we've noticed is his ability to just be content on the floor. He has always been easy when we are on the go. He loves his car seat and looking at people and being held. It has always been home where we have had trouble with him. With the medicine, he is always pretty easy. 
-sleeping through the night! This is huge because he had not slept through the night once until we started the Reflux medicine. I think the longest he had gone was 6 hours, but more often he went 90 minutes or 2 hours. We also moved him out of our room which helped. Now he eats around 9:00 and goes to sleep and wakes up anywhere from 7:00-9:00. He puts himself to sleep now which never happened before. He usually takes 3 naps a day: 10:00, 1:00 and 7:00. Sometimes the 10:00 nap starts later and kind of merges into a mega-nap with the 1:00 nap with just a short nursing session in between. We are trying to get him to drop the 7:00 nap because it seems counter-productive to bedtime but he is pretty fussy without it. 
-nursing 4.5 times a day. He eats when he wakes up, then between 11 and 1, then around 4, then at 7:00 and then has a short session around 9 right before bed. He doesn't usually seem hungry at the last session, but I want him to keep sleeping through the night so we stick with it. He has baby food for dinner most nights (but not always...) and likes prunes the best. He has mastered the sippy cup and the straw sippy already which is awesome since we had to work with Pax on the straw sippy until he finally got it around 15 months. 
-sitting well on his own and is good at letting himself down gently when he's done sitting instead of collapsing. 
-very close to crawling! He gets his knees under him and pushes but he usually ends up going backwards. This is another exciting one for me since Paxton just army crawled. 
-starting to really like his Daddy. When he hears him, he looks around until he finds him and then just breaks out in the biggest smile. At dinner last night he looked right at Jared and said "dada" but we are definitely counting that as a happy coincidence. 
-wearing 6 and 9 month clothes (and some 12 month because Pax was bigger than him during his first winter so the winter clothes are mostly 12 months). He is in size 3 diapers. 
-very interested in balls, cars, and toys that make noise. He loves his big brother and they already have a game where they shriek back and forth with each other. They both think it's hilarious...
-rolling and scooting all over the rug. Every time I look away and then look back down, he has moved more than I expected. He will do whatever he can to get to a cup or an iPhone. 
-getting in his two top teeth right now. The tip of the right tooth is almost to poke through. He's definitely an early teether. 

He's still so snuggly and loves giving kisses. He always holds onto my shoulder when I pick him up which I think is precious. Nursing is still going well which makes me really proud of both of us. These next few months make up one of my favorite baby stages where he is still tiny and dependent but is also really social and starting to do fun things. I'm excited to see Paxton watch him learn to do new things. Paxton was so excited when Porter started rolling over all the time and I can't wait to see his face as Porter learns to crawl and pull up and walk. 

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Jeepers!

Paxton is obsessed with ringing the doorbell at Grandpa Mark's house every time we get there. A few days ago, he ran up to ring the doorbell and found his Christmas present from Grandpa Mark waiting on the porch!
His find involved lots of jumping up and down and alternating between yelling "beep!" (Jeep) and chanting "car, car, car". He was one very excited little boy. 

He and Grandpa couldn't wait until Christmas and built the Jeep "together" after Pax's nap one afternoon. 
And now he's obsessed with it. He rides it every time we're outside and he drags it in from the garage and rides it all around the house. Luckily enough, the halls and doorways are extra-wide since the house was revamped to accommodate Jared's grandpa's wheelchair so the Jeep can go pretty much anywhere. He still has no idea what the steering wheel is for and prefers to ride around holding onto the windshield and then crashing into everything, but he's getting good at holding the gas pedal down for longer amounts of time. 

It is without a doubt his favorite thing in the world right now.  



Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Walks and Baby Food

Now that Porter is six months old, we've been trying to get serious about feeding him solids. With Pax, we were really into it-we fed him solids twice a day and went by the three days of one food before trying something new rule and the veggies first rule. With Porter we are doing the whole second time parent thing. We feed him maybe once a day, usually once every two days. He refused veggies (like mouth clamped, head turned away refusal) so we moved on to fruits or fruit and veggie combos. He's not really into eating off spoons so we've also gotten him some of the pouches and he loves those. 
Prunes are his favorites. 

We've been hanging out with Gramsy...
And playing trucks...
And working on our cool factor...
Pax was not a cuddly baby. He preferred to be put in his crib and go to sleep on his own. When he woke up, he was too busy playing to spend time cuddling. I always told Jared that I wanted our next one to be a cuddler. He is. Porter loves to be touching me at all times. He only goes to sleep for naps if I lay down with him and cuddle him. When he wakes up, he needs to be cuddled for a few minutes before he's ready to play. 
I love it. 

He has been sitting in high chairs and shopping carts sometimes. Again, we're doing the second time parent thing where we just do it if it's convenient, not all the time. 
Both boys modeled Porter's mustache pacifier: 
And we've started going on long walks at Lake Hefner. 
Paxton's new thing is climbing on the table to entertain Porter while he eats. 

And it was finally cold enough for this baby to wear a hat! I just love baby hats. 

Speech Update

The beginning of the journey: http://littlebabymiller.blogspot.com/2013/07/speech-day-1.html?m=0

Paxton has been going to speech once a week for about four months now and we are seeing some improvements. For the most part I can't tell which improvements are directly from speech and which improvements are from getting older and just trying a little harder, but Paxton has definitely improved. At this point (31 months), Paxton is talking in two-word sentences and communicating what he wants with words instead of pointing or whining for the most part. He is getting good at putting words he knows together to make a "sentence" instead of just using stock phrases. A lot of his older words are still mainly recognizable by the inflection or by the context (for example purple and balloon sound the same but when he squeals excitedly while we're passing the car dealerships, it's balloon), but words he is learning now are pronounced much more clearly. 

In the past couple of weeks, he has started putting even more than two words together. Yesterday he said "purple car Mommy's car" to let me know that his purple car was in my car. He has also started being interested in whose things are whose. He will point to Porter's food pouch and say "Porter's applesauce" and when we are running bath water in Porter's tub, he will say "Porter's bath, Porter stinky". 

He made his first joke a few days ago and I thought it was really neat. Porter had a blow out on our bed and I hadn't had a chance to change the sheets yet. Paxton climbed up to play while I was wiping Porter down and I pointed at the poop and told him to stay away from it and that it was yucky. He pointed at it and said "yellow poop stinky, P.U." and I agreed with him. Then he got a big smile and said "yum" and cracked up. I thought it was pretty cool that he realized that saying the opposite was funny. And now he has made it our little inside joke. He comes up to me all the time and says "yellow poop...yum" and we both crack up every time. 

Anna (his speech therapist) has started on a Cycles approach now which is where his problem areas are broken down by weeks and each week she gives him 5 index cards that target one area. All week we repeat those 5 cards and by the end of the week he should get the concept. We have only done one week so far, but Paxton does well with repetition so I think it's a good tactic. I appreciate that she has taken these months to get to know Paxton and figure out a plan that fits with his learning style. 

On the other hand, I am a little stressed that he is more than halfway to three and we aren't where we need to be. He has made progress, but he is still about 6 months behind where he should be. It definitely helps me to know that this is probably just a speech issue and not developmental delays or a behavioral issue, but it's still hard to see our friends' kids learn to talk without trouble and to know that the word "delayed" is being used to label your child. Nothing will change how much I love him or how proud I am of him. I hate to think that this might cause other kids to make fun of him in the future, but if it does I know that it will ultimately make him stronger. I know that I am his advocate and I will do whatever I can to help him learn what he needs to learn and to get the help that he needs. 

Friday, November 1, 2013

Halloween!

This year was my favorite Halloween so far. I loved that Paxton was old enough to (somewhat) get what was going on. He got excited when he saw pumpkins anywhere and always asked to go look at the lights at Target. 

We kept the pumpkin carving tradition alive this year and Paxton got his own pumpkin to paint. 
I love this side-by-side comparison picture of Paxton and Porter both in the same onesie at 6 months. They don't even look like brothers!
And then here they both are for their first Halloween in the puppy costume. 

Paxton was Mickey this year which he thought was pretty cool. He got excited and yelled Mickey every time I got the costume out. He would NOT wear the gloves though. I was expecting to have to fight him to wear the hat but he kept it on. 

And of course they had to have matching monster jammies!
(Pax found these socks in my sock drawer and was immediately obsessed with them. He asked to put them on pretty much every night with his pajamas.)

On Halloween morning I made Pax a pumpkin waffle with apple butter and a mandarin orange face. It wasn't Pinterest-worthy...
...but he asked for seconds and thought it was the coolest thing ever. 
I mourned a little bit that this could be my last Halloween to see this onesie...
...I'm sure I'll be a mess when I have to pack away the first Christmas outfits. 

Jared always has to dress up for work and we always get a picture of him in his costume. This year there were two little costumed boys to pose with Jared. 

And I had to get one of just Jared and Porter with Porter's face actually showing. 
Last year we only really let Pax trick or treat at a few houses and they happened to all be people we knew because he didn't understand the whole standing on the porch and waiting for candy part and would just walk in the house when the door was opened. So this year I had a talk with him about the process and we were so proud when he got it! He trick or treated about 10 houses and by the last few he was saying "tick teet" and thank you! Then he would say "more candy, more tick teet" and run to the next house. I have never loved trick or treating as much as I did last night. 
We had gotten the boys dressed up for pictures at home before we left but then took Porter's off because it was too fluffy to fit in his car seat. Apparently we both thought the other person had grabbed it and ended up in Edmond without it! So poor Porter spent his first Halloween in his dirty white onesie without a costume. Poor second child. 
He was in the wrap anyway...but it still made me sad!

We went to Whataburger after trick or treating with Granny and Papaw and Granny V and Aunt Maddy to get some ice cream. Porter was sound asleep and Pax laid down on the filthy restaurant floor too. I think they had a long day. 
Then the sugar from the few pieces of candy we let Pax have hit him and he was crazy!
Despite forgetting Porter's costume and the event we tried to go to in Downtown Edmond being way too crowded, we had a great Halloween! These two boys are so lucky to have two grandmas who get them special Halloween treats and plan their nights around seeing their grandsons.