Christmas 2011

Christmas this year was absolutely wonderful!  It was so special because it was Luke's first Christmas and we got to spend it with all of our loved ones.  It was a 3 day 6day celebration and we have loved every minute of it.  The festivities kicked off on Thursday night when my parents came into town and gave John and I a much needed date night and they got Luke all to themselves.  I honestly think that if we lived in the same town, I would have to ask my mom if I could see my child because she would constantly want him at her house.  It is so sweet how much my parents love Luke and I know he just eats up all the extra attention!!  Friday night, we all got dressed up and headed over to the Taylor's house to Celebrate Christmas Eve with 23 of our closest friends/relatives.  It was all the Taylors plus all of the daughters-in-laws families plus Aunt Joan, Uncle John, Maddie and Grammy.  Needless to say, it was a full house. We had a wonderful time eating good food, having tons of different conversations and opening a few presents! 

 Taking a few pics before heading to Christmas Eve dinner!

 The next morning, Luke snuggled in our bed for a little while and then it was off to open presents at the Taylors with all the siblings and little ones!  The more babies we add to the mix, the more fun Christmas is to watch!  It is so fun watching the little boys get so excited when they open their presents!  I cant wait till Luke can really appreciate Christmas and get involved!

 Luke and Lynn smiling for the camera!

 Kelly, Luke and Lynn

 Hank and Luke in their matching PJ's!

Luke opening his stocking!

 Hudson modeling his new hat from Uncle Matt and Aunt Kelly

 Mark gave Kelly 12 cupcakes because she LOVES cupcakes!

 This is where Luke spent the majority of his first Christmas, just taking in all the action!  I cant believe he sat there as long as he did.  He would look around, play a little and then take a little cat nap and then repeat! ha

 John showing off some of Luke's new presents!

Annie and Kelly got new purses

Hankie got a drum!

And even Vivi got in on the action!  We cant wait to meet her and watch her open all her gifts in person next Christmas!

Daddy and Luke 

By about One we finally finished with breakfast and opening presents so it was time for everyone to head home, relax and play with their new toys!

Papa loved feeding Luke his bananas and rice and Luke loved the delivery!  Papa makes eating fun!

Next it was time for Luke to check out his new toys with Nana!

He wore himself out from all the excitement!

The next morning, we said goodbye to Papa and Nana and then headed back over to the Taylors to see Earls brother and sister and all their kids.

We got to spend some more quality time with the family and eat some delicious Chili!

Luke got two adorable books that I cant wait to read with him!

And Hank ate his first ever Popsicle!  He loved it!

It was a wonderful week spending time with family and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior. We have truly enjoyed every minute of our first Christmas as a family and are so thankful for the gift of our precious son this year!  It was by far the best Christmas present we could have hoped for!  It makes me so excited for the future and seeing our wonderful family grow bigger and bigger!  The time we get to all spend together is so sweet and I just cherish every minute of it!   Cant wait till next year! xoxo!

Santa with the Taylor Cousins!

Being that it was Luke's first Christmas and I absolutely love everything Christmas, I was bound and determined to get everyone to go see Santa sometime this holiday week!  Thank goodness I have two sister-in-laws who go along with my craziness and were up for the challenge! So a couple of days ago, we packed up the kids and headed to the beautiful West Town Mall (ha).  I did not have high expectations considering it normally takes a small miracle to get every child to cooperate let alone look in the same direction while taking pictures of them. To My surprise, it went much better than expected.  Hudson and Brody are old Pros by now at taking pictures and Hank wants to do everything they do, so those three were great.  Luke however hasn't mastered the art of smiling on cue.  He was determined to have his mean mugging face on for every picture but overall they did great! I cant wait to see how these pictures will continue to look over the years because little do they know, if I have it my way they will continue to do this till they leave for college! ha!  Here they are! Enjoy!

 Luke sleeping on Santa and Hank checking him out!

Brody (4), Luke (4 1/2 months), Hank (1), Hudson (6)

 Mean Mugging

Taylor Cousins!

John's 28th Birthday!

Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

We Love you!!!

4 Months Old!

Wow, time really does fly when you are having fun!  You are already 4 months old and so much fun to be around.  Your personality is really starting to show and you have so much fun interacting with others now!  You love to be around people and play for hours!  Here is what you have been up to this month.....

You went to the doctor today to get your four month shots, which you didnt like too much but you had a great check up besides that.  You are such a big boy! 

Your Weight: 16lbs 9.5 oz (85%)

Your length: 25 1/4 inches (55%)

Your Head Circumference: 17.3 cm (90%)

*Dont worry, that just means you have lots of brains in that big head of yours!  ;)*

*You are sleeping like a champ! We put you to bed every night between 8-8:30pm and you sleep 12 hours! You normally wake up between 8-8:30am somethimes even making it till 8:45am. You love your sleep just like your Momma!

  

*You take 2 naps a day. The first one is normally about 1 1/2 to 2 hours after you wake up, so it is normally somewhere around 9:30 to 10am. You sleep anywhere from an hour to two hours during your morning nap. You next nap is in the afternoon and you usually go down somewhere around 1:30 give or take 30 minutes. Your afternoon nap normally lasts for about 3 hours.

 

 * This month you started eating a little solid food, and you LOVE IT!  At first you were not too sure about what I was putting in your mouth, but now you love it.  So far you have tried baby rice, oatmeal, banannas, sweet potatoes and prunes.  Banannas and rice mixed is by far your favorite.

 *You make such a mess while eating that we have to change your clothes and give you a sponge bath after every meal. You have it all over your face, arms, and clothes!

  * You are wearing 6 month clothes all the time now and could possibly grow out of the ones with feet pretty soon!  It is crazy how much you are growing and how fast! You are such a big guy!

 * You wear size 3 diapers and have moved up to the Pampers Cruisers.  Your dad and I laughed about this because you really arent cruising anywhere yet but you are just too big for the swaddlers now!

 *You absolutely obsessed with your fingers and seem to be liking your paci a whole lot more again now too!  You really just love to suck on anything that goes in your mouth.  Hopefully we still have a while before teething but I guess we will see.

 * Your favorite toy by far is your jumparoo!  You could jump for hours on end in it and you have even been known to jump yourself to sleep a time or two( or ten). ha. 

 *You are still pretty stubborn when it comes to tummy time and dont like it at all!  You are nowhere near rolling over because you hate being on your tummy that much.  You would be perfectly happy if you never layed on your stomach a day in your life. ha. Oh well I guess we will get there one day!

 *You melted our hearts this month when you laughed for the first time.  You have only done it a few times but so far you seem to think your Mommy is much funnier than your Daddy (6-2) and I agree!

 *You can sit up when being assisted by a person or proped up with pillows.  You are not quite ready to do it on your own but you are getting closer and closer each day. You love to stand up while holding our hands and love to show your new skill off to people. Also this month you have gained full control of your hands.  You can grab anything you want to instead of just batting at things.

*You have become such a fun baby and your daddy and I are loving every second we get to spend with you.  We are enjoying watching you learn new things and love seeing your new personality as each day passes! You are so precious and truly are such a blessing in our lives! We love you little man!

The Things You Love!

So lately I have been thinking about how I need to keep better track of Luke's likes and dislikes as well as his different preferences as he grows and gets older each month.  I want to remember which month he liked certain things so with our next baby I can see how similar they are to Luke.

Here is a list of things that you have loved  over the past 4 months......

You Love

*Hairdryers! The one thing you love most in life is the sound of a hairdryer. It has been a calming mechanism since the day you were born. If you are upset, we turn it on to calm you. If you cant sleep, we turn it on to relax you. If you are cold, we turn it on after your bath to warm you. It is definitely a little high maintenance tendency that you have developed but hey, It works!

*Being Swaddled! There are a few things you must have in order to fall asleep and stay asleep.  One being your nap nanny ( we are working on breaking that habit as we speak) and the other being you must be swaddled!  You love being tightly swaddled and can not sleep for more than 15 min unless you are.  Your little arms and lets still flail around so much that if you aren't swaddle, you will wake yourself up. 

When you were first born till about 3 months old, we loved the Halo sleep saks.  They had a v-neck so the material didn't come up to high around your face and they also had a zipper at the bottom that made diaper changes easier in the middle of the night.  The only problem with these was, once you turned about 3 months old you were able to break out of them and then you had a hard time going back to sleep.

Once you broke out of the Halo sleep saks, we tried the swaddle me sleep sak.  It worked like a charm!  It allows us to swaddle you tighter and it is much harder for you to try and wiggle out of.  So far, you have not broken out of it yet! wahoo!

*Bath Time! You absolutely love bath time!  You love the warm water and kicking your feet and making a mess.  You have honestly loved the bath since the first time we gave you one.  There is something so calming about the bath to you and you don't even mind when we wash your hair anymore. We gave you the nickname "Michael Phelps" because you love to kick and splash us so much!

*Your Fingers! At first you were a total Paci baby.  You loved your wubbanubs and they made you totally content and happy as long as you had one.  Then one day around 3 months old, you found your fingers!  At first it was not so much your fingers but your whole fist.  You loved to suck on you hand and occasionally you would happen to get a finger or two in there by chance.  Not you have found your fingers and you LOVE them! We tried to let you sleep without your swaddle because you love them so much but we aren't quite there yet.  For now, you just get your fingers during the day time!  Guess that means I get to wash your hands a whole lot more now!

* Your Jumparoo! What a lifesaver this fun contraption has been!  You absolutely love to jump up and down for hours on end.  It lights up and plays music, which you love, but more than anything it gives you the freedom to stand up like a big boy and bounce around on your own.  It has been the best tool when I need to get things done because I can just pop you in it and it will keep you occupied for at least 30 min. 

The Morning After!

Here is a picture the morning after this big boy slept through the night for the first time! Yay Lukey!!! (November 12,2011)

3 Months old already!

Hooray! We are three months old today!!
(Well actually on November 9th..I was a little late posting this)

Wow, what a crazy, exciting and blessed three months we have had! I can not believe my little boy is already 3 months old . It has been the month of changes and firsts. We have truly seen a little personality in our sweet baby and life with him just keeps getting better with each passing day! He is such a happy baby and loves to be held and interact with people. He will smile and talk to you and melt your heart while doing so. I will say that at the beginning of the month, he was stingy with his smiles but with each passing day he smiles more and more. His newest development is babbing. He is not longer cooing. He is having a full blown conversation with you in his words. Most of the time it sounds Chinese but non the less, he will talk to you for hours. I only wish I knew what he was saying because the look on his face lets me know that he knows exactly what he is saying. I have a feeling he might take after his mom in this department because most of the time I can barely get a word in! ha. Our biggest and most exciting development of the month is.......WE FINALLY LOVE EATING AGAIN!!!! For those of you who didnt know, we have had a MAJOR struggle with eating the past few weeks. Well actually since he was about a month and a half old. Since I am using this blog for a refrence to track Luke's stages in life, I will give a brief summery of our food ordeal. Here it goes....When Luke was first born, he had Jaundice so we had to supplement with formula to help push out the Billy Ruben through his bowel moments. The more we fed him, the more bowel moments he would have and the lower his Billy Ruben levels would be. In the hospital the gave us Similac Advanced formula and he seemed to love it. He was interchanging formula and BM perfectly so we continued with this when we went home. Around the 3rd week of Lukes life, he began to get extremely fussy late at night (by extremely I mean dirivng around town in the middle of the night and not coming down from about 1am-5am) so we heard from a lot of people that Soy was supposed to help with fussiness so we decided to give it a shot. It worked like a charm! He was loving his new formula and it also fixed the middle of the night colic. He used Soy for several weeks and then started eating a lot slower (1+ hours to feed) as we neared his 6 week mark. This continued till he was about 2 1/2 months and then he decided he didnt want to eat much at all. So it went from fussing to eating slow to not wanting to eat at all. Each time we would feed him, he would scream bloody murder and thrash around and refuse to take the bottle. He would use his tongue and push the bottle out of his mouth and only eat if he was extremely hungry. So this began the serch to figure out what in the world was going on! We decided to change bottles (Tommy Tepee to Dr. Browns.). That didnt work! We changes reflux medicines (Zantac to prilosec) and that didnt work. We had numerour Doctors appointments and they too were scratching their heads in confusion. What baby didnt like eating?!?!? Then we saw one doctor who had a daughter who did the same thing and he suggested that since we changed both the bottles and the medicine it was time to try changing his formula to one that was for infants with a milk protien allery so we changed to Nutramigen. Bust again! He hated it! At this point, I was at the end of my rope. Luke was only eating barely 13-15 oz a day and was supposed to be eating anywhere from 24 oz to 32 oz a day. Back to the doctor we went. This time we saw a woman doctor and she thought that he may have a slow emptying (underdeveloped) digestive system and refered us to a pediatric gastroenterologist. Ok, we were finally getting somewhere. Maybe he could figure out what was going on. We were on week 2 of barely eating and some or something had to figure this out! We had to wait three days to get an appointment and on the 2nd day Luke decided he didnt want to eat at ALL! He only at one oz in twelve hours and just as we were getting ready to head to Childrens hospital, God answered our prayers! John tried one last time to give him a bottle of BM and HE TOOK IT! He ate it like it was ice cream! It was the single most wonderful sight I have ever seen! I can not explain how frustrating it is for your child to have a food adversion at such a young age. I have honestly never been more frustrated or scared in my life. I had a problem that was effecting my childs health and I could not fix it and neither could any of my family members, friends or doctors. It was hell! So when I saw Luke finally drink the bottle, I cried tears of JOY! Since that bottle, Luke has eatten like a champ! He takes every feeding and is polishing off bottles of 4-5 oz routinely! He drinks both BM and Similac Sensitive and loves to eat! I dont know what took so long to figure out that we had a picky eater on our hands but I am sure gald we did! Needless to say, If my 3 month old will starve himself for 2 weeks because he doesnt like the taste of the formula, how much trouble am I when it come to introducing him to peas or broccoli! I am going to be the parent bribeing him with toys to eat his veggies! ha. Needless to say, it has been smooth sailing since we have figured his eating out! I am loving every minute of being his mommy and enjoying all of our time together! Above is a collage of all our pictures from his third month! Enjoy!