I've learned how to post videos!!! So here is one of Zeke doing his tummy time. Josh and I swear it looks like he is trying to crawl. He kicks his legs and moves his arms with all of his might but his poor little body doesn't lift off the ground at all, its so funny. It will be MONTHS before he is crawling and Thank God because I love him immobile.

And there are two pictures this week. The first is Zeke on his way to his first doctor's appointment, coincidentally also his first even semi-chilly day. It was about 70....I might have gone a little overboard, I was in shorts and a tank top. The second is Zeke's patty-cake face. Of course only daddy gets THIS face. Evidently daddy is his favorite artist, mommy's patty-cake is a poor remake...

2 month appointment

Ezekiel had his 2 month appointment on Tuesday and I wanted to update his new stats before I forgot them. He is 14 pounds and 2 ounces, and a little over 25 inches long! He is in the 95th percentile in both weight and height, although Dr. Morgan said "they don't even have a percentile for how tall he is." I guess he is well over the 95th percentile but the chart only goes so high for 2 month olds. His head circumference is in the 70th percentile. Yes, he inherited my pin sized head. So I guess my son is officially gigantic. I had my suspicions...

We also finalized his immunization schedule with the doctor. Man, was THAT hours and hours of work. We are doing the DTaP, the Hib, the PCV, and the Polio vaccines, 2 shots at a time. It was the 2 shots at a time that was hard to figure out. I mean, figuring out which I wanted took quite a bit of research and thinking but then figuring out how to fit them all in, properly spaced, 2 at a time really took some thinking. My friend Annali manages this by going in every month, instead of every other. My mind evidently doesn't work with the obvious because I never thought of that. But I did figure it out finally and the only "downside" is I wont start the Polio rounds until he is 1. But since a Polio outbreak hasn't occurred in this country in almost 15 years, I'm not too worried about it happening in the next 10 months...if it does I will hurry and do it, trust me, 2 shots at a time be damned.

Hmmm...what else did we talk about at the appointment? I guess when I should start solids a little. I was worried that because of his size I'd have to start them early. I didn't think this was true but I'd been informed by well meaning people that it worked that way. But Dr Morgan says I should start between 4-6 months like everyone else...size doesn't affect. So I will start solids at 5 months right before Thanksgiving like I always planned. I know my family well enough to know that at that time he will get some food whether I like it or not ;)

So I guess the main story is my son is healthy. In 2 months we will do it all again for his 4 month check up. Hoorah?

An aside: I am starting to fall behind on his baby book. Not to mention the family scrapbook, which I was at least smart enough to be sure to be caught up on before he was born...its really only missing 2 pages right now. But all that's in Zeke's baby book is pregnancy and birth..nothing since then. So I'm gonna have a scrapbooking get together soon I think. Maybe that crafty craft party I've been talking about since forever. Crafts for girls upstairs and Starcraft for boys downstairs. We arent sexist around here are we?

"3" month portraits

I decided to do Zeke's 3 month portraits a month early. Who says it has to be 3/6/12 right? I'd been enjoying photoshop too much and couldn't wait. Anyways, Ezekiel and I taped up a sheet and let rip. I think they turned out well...well enough that I think I'll do 6 and 12 myself as well honestly. I'll buy him an adorable outfit to wear with the money I save ;).







PS. Zeke learned how to roll over.....during our photo shoot. As soon as I'd lay him on his stomach, over he would go giggling to himself. It was hilarious. Suddenly he loves tummy time, and his swing too, now that I mention it. Its as if all of a sudden he's decided he needs his space and to be left alone. Its terribly freeing and terribly depressing. My baby is growing up :(

photoshop

I love photoshop.

LOTS of pictures

We took LOTS of great pictures with Grandma Mel this week. She is an experienced expert at capturing baby smiles, her and daddy caught quite a few. So anyways, here you are.

PS When you click on a pictures it brings it up in a new page REALLY big. If you want to make it small enough to see more than, say, one eyeball at a time all you have to do is hold down ctrl and then click the minus key (next to zero).

The family.

Grandma and Zeke.

Oh no!

Smiles!

Look what he is doing! Yes, this is real. I am not that talented at photoshop.

MORE smiles!

Big cheeks.

Sleepy boy.

Grandparents Galore!

My parents came up on Saturday...I never thought to take pictures because he was crabby all day! Seriously he is never as crabby as he was that day! And then of course on Sunday he was happy happy happy and playing and smiling, and it didn't even matter because they had left. I never did figure out what was making him so mad. Maybe he was tired or had tummy cramps or he was bored because we never really went anywhere, who knows. Oh well, I guess, that's how babies are. We will be in Boise for a good couple of days over labor day weekend and he cant possibly be mad the whole time we are there....or at least I hope not.

Josh's mom arrives tomorrow. If he is crabby all day then I will know he just officially hates visitors ;)

Not much else to say, so here are some pics.


Ezekiel loves his baths.



Sometimes Zeke doesn't act cranky and tired and so then mommy loses track of time and doesn't start the bath/pajamas/nursing/songs routine early enough and Zeke just passes out and gets put to bed in his clothes and without any bath. This may or may not make me a bad mother.



Sometimes mommy asks daddy to put Zeke to sleep so she can get a few things done and when she comes upstairs she finds them looking a little something like this.

The sad part is, it worked...so much for being important. ;)

Told you so

Zeke at 7 days /Zeke at 7 weeks

Zeke is getting so big!

It's blurry but its adorable if you ask me.

In other news, Zeke is getting so soo big! Now even most of his 0-3 outfits wont fit him, and he's onto 3-6 month clothes. He's growing much faster then I can get sick of his outfits, it seems he's barely worn most of them. And we have about a billion in this size. Honestly I could go 3 weeks without doing his laundry if I wanted to, I've gotten so many hand me downs and gifts. I'm hoping his growth slows down a bit now though. All of his 6-9 month clothes are wintery. He's got to last at least until mid September before moving up into that size. If he's still in this size when it gets cold I can always layer but if he gets too big before it cools off I'll have to finally buy something ;) Thankfully I don't see how he can possibly keep this growth up, if he's in 6-9 months clothes at 3 months we've got problems.

Speaking of, I think pretty soon I'll have to buy diapers too. I just opened my last box. It amazes me that I've gone 7 weeks off of gift diapers. You people must sure love us!

Ezekiel is growing in more ways than one. He's getting so much more vocal and interactive. Its amazing. He's so expressive, Josh and I can sit and talk to him for hours, the things that kid does with his eyebrows crack me up.

He's also getting much better at controlling his hands. He can even manage to get his thumb in his mouth now after a few minutes of trying. I have the example below :)

See? This is both a blessing and a curse to me. Its nice because playing with his hands will keep him amused sometimes, and he's starting to self-soothe a bit at night. Unlike the binky, when his finger falls out of his mouth he can usually get it back in without me. Its the usually that sometimes makes me curse this habit. Zeke tends to get frustrated if he tries too long and continues to fail to make the thumb-mouth connection. And then, oh no, the bink is NOT good enough. He spits it right out and keeps yelling and trying to get his thumb in. Then I try to help him get his thumb in but he's too mad to keep it in when I do.

We also go through a similar routine when he's too tired to lift his head anymore. Or too tired in general. He just keeps trying to lift his head and stay awake and look around. But his head keeps falling or his eyes closing. He gets so mad! He just wants to see everything.

That's why the Mei-Tai carrier Annali made me is such a blessing. He is upright and he can look around. I've heard a lot of people say they walk their babies to sleep but Zeke loves his way too much to close his eyes when he is in it. He's all wide eyed and looking around. I've used it at the grocery store and on a walk now. Thanks Annali, we love our Mei-Tai!

I better go upstairs and see if my boys are ok, though. I bathed and fed Zeke and left him to daddy to put to sleep.

look what my boy can do!!

Look at my big boy holding himself up! I cant even believe how good he is at this!!!!


This one is all the farther he could get last week. I was impressed even then but now my goodness!



This is the only smile I could capture. A half smile at best. After all, daddy is only so amusing. And more cute pictures....


The only real news is that he IS allergic to milk. Or more accurately he has a milk protein intolerance. The bad news is I'm off dairy for a while, the good news is that almost all kids outgrow this. A lot of them by one year and the rest by 3.

Oh yeah, and as of his doc appointment on Thursday he is 12 pounds and 5 ounces!

No pics but plenty to say

This week had quite a few highlights yet no pictures...sorry. I sort of forgot my mission to capture a smile...too frustrating. You can never get him to when you want him to. A good long meal and some cuddling provide decently dependable results however so maybe Ill keep the camera with my breastfeeding supplies for a few days. Mornings can get smiley too when I put him in our bed, which I'm still doing between 4-6 am every morning and probably will the next few years. He's so soo soooo good until then that I dont see the harm. Sometimes it gets us a few more hours sleep. Im not complaining though, he's doing 8-5 almost every night with two feedings and while 11-8 would fit my circadian rhythm better I enjoy the couple hours of peace every night and have a husband who's willing to go dance with my son in the livingroom at 5 am while I sleep. God Bless Josh.

For more than 1 reason too. He also bought Zeke and I an air conditioner after one tearful evening in which I broke down (quite literally) from the heat. Being a stay at home mom loses its luster when your home is 95 degrees....plus Zeke had a heat rash and was cranky cranky cranky. Ill admit I lost control for a bit there. Crying baby all day+ temperatures that make spit up curdle even FASTER= a husband that buys an air conditioner THAT NIGHT.

Zeke's manifold accomplishments this week include growing like a freaking weed. I cant believe it but he is already noticeably bigger, and growing out of clothes that fit him only last week. No wonder he was eating about every hour for a while there. He has also picked up two new sounds, ohh and ahh. I am so glad he does more than grunt and cry at last. He'll spend 20 minutes now just going "ooooahhoooo ahhhh oooo" He can also now lift and hold his head. Its shaky but he's doing it. Josh thinks he rolled over but he didn't really. He was just flailing around and accidentally ended up on his side. So doesn't count.

Lets see...his baby acne faded just in time to usher in some cradle cap. And he now chews on his knuckles all day long. Also all night, providing the most lovely sucking noises. He can never quite get a good suction. I tried showing him how to put his thumb in there and explaining that he cant fit his fist in his mouth, I can only assume that's his goal with the whole knuckle thing, but he didn't listen. Moms dont know anything.

Im also in the middle of an experiment to see if cutting dairy from my diet will help his gas. Its miserable. I miss cheese. I honestly hope he remains gassy, isn't that awful? I don't really think he has a milk protein allergy but he's showing enough symptoms and its common enough that I thought 2 weeks off dairy to see what happens would be worth it. The horrid part is it seems to be working a little....we will see if he's miserable when I re-introduce.

That's it for now. Next week there will be lots of pictures, I promise.

bonus4th of july pics

My camera ran out of batteries after one picture....thankfully I have friends.



PS in case you didnt know, you can always click on a pictures to see it full size. :)

Pictures

Not a whole lot to post this week. Zeke did great on the 4th, he loved being outside and all the live music at the park. At about 9 or 9:30 he started to get pretty overwhelmed and ready to go back home but thankfully I was able to get him to sleep and then he slept thru the entire fireworks show! He was even "babysat" for 15 or so minutes by his Auntie Jen while Josh and I walked to go buy some food...it was scary (for me, not Zeke)...about 20 feet away I realized I'd never been so far from him before. Other than that, a completely boring week.



I tried to get a picture of him smiling for everyone, about all I succeeded in was a good 60 pictures that were all variations of this bored and yet indulgent face.
















That is until this suddenly happened. This is Zeke's "Why do you keep taking pictures? I may be tired of this...I may be about to cry..." face.












And here we see his "I am definitely about to cry" face. Notice the puckering of the lower lip, when the lower lip puckers you are out of luck.











Then he let loose, and mommy finally picked him up. I'm sorry buddy but your just too cute when you are mad.

Keeping on keeping on

Things seem easier this week. Nighttime at least is a lot easier. Zeke has been sleeping most of the night in his moses basket now all by himself, at least the last 3 nights he has. I've been changing and feeding him sometime between 10 and 11 and putting him in his basket right next to my bed and he sleeps till 2, eats and (wait for it, this is the new part) goes BACK in his basket until 5 or so when he gets hungry again. At this point he decides he wants to wake up and he ends up in bed with Josh and I so that we can get another few hours...he'll stay there until 8 usually. Its a huge improvement from sleeping with us almost all night. Last week he only put up with 2 or 3 hours in his basket if I was lucky and I was afraid he'd never sleep alone...now he's more like 6 hours and I have huge confidence that in a few months when he's feeding once a night instead of twice we can start to transition him into his own room. And he's sleeping so deep too. Maybe 1 or 2 times do I have to reach down and put my hand on his tummy to settle him back down, and before I was having to do it constantly when he was in the basket.

Days are easier too. He still wants to be held almost every waking second, the longest I've gotten so far is 15 minutes he sat in his vibrating chair and watched me iron Josh's shirts. But its easier to deal with now that I'm not holding him all night as well. And we're getting a rhythm to our days, not a schedule but at least a rhythm. He eats every 3 hours or so until the evening when he likes to cluster a good 3 or 4 feedings in as many hours sometimes. He usually has a good balance of sleep and alertness, although every few days he still has a day when he almost never wakes up except to eat. And the same events happen everyday, just not necessarily in the same order. Every day we read, we just finished the Great Gatsby (my child will have read more classic literature in his first 6 months than most Americans in their life, I'm willing to bet. After 6 months they say it starts to matter what you read them but right now it doesn't so I don't see why I should suffer Hop on Pop quite yet). Everyday we get out of the house for a little while whether its to the park with my mommy and me group or yoga or MOPS, everyday we dance or sing because Zeke LOVES music. In his bad moments its all that will calm him down and he cries between tracks when it stops to switch songs. He got mad at church this Sunday when the worship stopped, it was so funny.

He lost his cord FINALLY, and we also FINALLY ordered birth announcements so they should get here this week and out there next week. I hope its not too late but hey I've been busy. Anyways they are super cute and totally worth it. Trust me. Also I am totally convinced he giggled yesterday. I was smiling and making faces at him and he was smiling back and then he GIGGLED. He is obviously a genius way above the curve, no matter what Josh says. He's socially doing things he shouldn't for another 6 weeks. He smiles back at you, he will stick his tongue out if you do it, and he laughs.

Not much else is going on, however. I'm just keeping on keeping on. Enjoying my perfect baby and trying not to die in the heat.