I’m so tired.

Alan sent me a movie today at
work. I open it up and watch Lex laying on the couch holding
his own bottle! I watched it like three times. It’s exciting,
but I feel like he’s growing up too fast. < begin tired talk > Sometimes I get so sad because I feel like I’m missing so
much of his growing up. Alan is seeing all of the first and I
only get to hear about them. Or I’ll say “wow, Lex just did…”
and Alan will say “yeah, he’s been doing that for a few days
now” :( On top of that I’m so stressed because we’re not
sleeping through the night yet, I’m worried about missing him
growing up, worried about getting everything done at work,
worried about actually seeing my husband on occasion, still
carrying far too much baby weight, and not
able to pump enough milk for Lex these days. Gah! If we weren’t
so completely buried in debt I’d quit my job and be home with
him. That would be nice. Sigh…

This week was our last with
Jan, our Good Beginnings volunteer. I’ll miss
her. We took her out to dinner instead of going grocery
shopping. When the food came Lex grabbed at her plate. We
laughed and moved it out of his reach. Later she was holding
him and he spit up, so she grabbed a cloth to clean it up, and
he grabbed a cucumber off her plate!! It was great little ploy.
We got it away before he stuck it in his mouth, but he did get
his salad dressing covered hand in there :)

Jan’s mom knit Lex the cutest
matching hat and booties. She has great timing because it’s
starting to get cold and I’ve been debating making him a winter
hat myself. The one she made fits perfectly and the colors
bring out the blues in his eyes. It looks awesome.

PS> My friend Amy is building a
house. Check out her blog for
details.

Things went well at the doctor’s today.
Lex is now weight 16lbs 5oz, which is the 78th percentile for
weight, and he’s 24 1/2″ long. She said that he seemed like a
very healthy and happy baby (he “talked” to her almost the
whole time) and that his sitting and standing skills were onpar
with that of a 6 month old. He’s such a strong baby. We have to
start giving him vitamin D supplements, because they recommend
that all babies take them. The supplement is called ACD, named,
aptly so, for the vitamins it includes. He took his shots like
a champ, though I think he got suspicious when Alan and I each
held and arm and started talking to him while two nurses each
held down a leg. He was crying before the needle was out of its
sheath. Poor boy. He’s sleeping it off now. We go back in
November for a 6 month check up, and we’ll discuss solids then.
She recommends waiting until then, and Alan and I were both
fine with that. He’s doing just fine on milk.

My little man is 4 months old
today! Yay!

And what a day it was. I
made blueberry muffins this morning (nice thing to do on a
Sunday morning, right?) and ended up setting off both(!) smoke
dectectors at 7:30 in the morning – and that’s before the
muffins were even in the oven. Usually the oven sets off one of
them, but this morning I got both.

We
spent most of the day out shopping with my Grandma. Alan was
helping her buy new computer parts and a printer and stuff. I
was just along for the ride. Lex was very fussy all day. He is
definitely teething these days. The only way he was happy was
when I was holding and walking with him. He wanted no part of
sitting down, napping, car seats, or anything like that. Just
wanted to be held. Sweet (loud) baby. It was a chilly today
though, so I dressed him in a cute little outfit with jeans and
a fleece jacket that Alan’s mom made. He was cranky, but
adorable :)

After shopping we went back
to the grandparent’s house and Alan set stuff up while I helped
unpack a bit (with the boy in my other arm – I’m gonna be sore
tomorrow). For some reason Lex got very happy towards the end
of the evening, so he layed on the floor playing and cooing and
kicking while we had dinner. That was a nice way to end things.
And he fell asleep (finally!!) in the car seat on the way home.
Tonight is either going to be a great night of sleep, or he’ll
be up fussing all night. I’m hoping for sleep :)

Tomorrow we have his 4-month checkup. I’ll
write again with the offical stats. A few developmental
updates… he’s started drooling a lot and talking a lot (new
sounds all the time), which combined result in slobbery
rasberries :) He has also figured out how to pass toys from one
hand to the other. He has a rattle that he likes and he can
pass it back and forth from one hand to the other. We’re still
waiting on more rolling over and more sleeping through the
night, but I’m sure that will come.

Anyway, he is asleep now so I will be off as well. I’m
looking forward to working from home tomorrow. Hopefully Lex
does ok with his shots tomorrow and gets lots of rest. More
later….

Sometimes I feel like I must
be missing something. Almost since the beginning we’ve been
bathing Lex by taking him in the shower with one of us. Seems
to work well. We tried the baby bath once or twice when he was
real small, but the shower is just easier. I tried the bath
again today, because I thought he might have fun splashing
around. He seemed to like it for a bit. But the problem is, how
do you actually get a kid (or anyone, for that matter) clean in
just the bath? As I see it, by the end of the bath he’s sitting
in dirty, soapy bath water. I don’t bath much, but when I do I
like to end with a shower to get all of the soapy water off.
What are you supposed to do with kids??? Like I said, sometimes
I feel like I must be missing something. What I did was turn on
the tap and rinse him under that. He didn’t like that much :) I
think we’ll go back to the shower for now, but I’m gonna have
to figure it out sometime because I don’t think we want to be
showering with him until he’s old enough to shower himself!
Those of you with kids, help me out here…

Lex has the neatest head of hair right
now. He’s loosing his long, silky dark newborn hair and it’s
being replaced by short, light colored baby hair. Except he
didn’t loose it all and then start growing, instead he’s got
new baby hair growing underneath and through his longer, darker
newborn hair… which is slowly coming out. It’s makes for a
neat looking head of hair.

3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days today :)
He’s come such a long way… (I just flipped through his
newborn hospital pictures… aww… so tiny)

I was looking back through old pictures
(someone’s birthday is coming up…) and I realized that Lex is
loosing his hair! :) Actually it’s common with babies. He’s
loosing the dark hair he was born with, but light blond hair is
growing instead. Maybye we’ll have a little blondie for a few
years. Alan and I were both blond as toddlers.

What’s interesting is that they tell you all
sorts of things to expect after birth, but they never really
give you a timeframe – such as the baby loosing his hair (and
me loosing mine!!) I thought that if they didn’t happen within
a few weeks, they probably wouldn’t. Guess not.
Interesting.

We had a really great
weekend. Didn’t do much of anything, but relaxed and enjoyed
it. I paid bills (never fun) then went shopping (which is why
bill are never fun!) for clothes for Lex. He’s busting out of
his 0-3mo clothes so we bought him some 3-6mo and a few 6-9mo
clothes. One of the outfits came with a cute little denim
baseball cap. It fits him perfectly. I’ll try to get a picture
soon. I want to buy a book of kids songs too. I can remember
little bits and pieces from a bunch of kids songs, but can’t
remember enough to actually sing the song. So now I just make
up songs. He doesn’t seem to mind :) Someday he’ll be like “ma,
what the hell are you saying??” That’s why the tell you to
enjoy them while they’re young. :)

I also posted pictures from
our trip to Franklin last month. There are some great ones of
Lex and my dad sitting in the front yard. It was a really nice
day and my parents live in the country so the colors are
great… photos.datdec.com

Speaking of pictures, if we’re not too poor at the time, I
think I’m going to get a family picture/holiday card this year.
Is that too cheesy? We have some JC
Penney’s coupons and I thought it would be fun to get
a professional pic of the family. I think I’m going to go just
before Thanksgiving because Lex will be 6 months old then.
How’s that for early planning. We’ll see how it goes.

Does being a mom now forever doom me to
being the last one to bed at night and the first one up? I
guess techically Lex is the first one awake, but I’m the first
one up. And then he goes back to sleep an hour later and I’m
still up. They don’t tell you this little tidbit in parenting
books.

Speaking of tidbits, I was
reading an article the other day (Parents
magazine) about pregnancy and babies around the
world. It actually wasn’t an article so much as a series of
photos and bullet points. For example, did you know that in
Norway employers are required by law to give new mothers 46
weeks of time off at full pay! Or 52 weeks at 80% pay. This
country requires 12 weeks and no pay. Go US. Also, Norwegian
mothers are allowed 2 hours off each day for breastfeeding.
Here we try to pump real quick in the bathroom before anyone
notices we’re gone for long. One the other side though, are
countries like Mali where 10% of women die from pregnancy or
childbirth and newborns are often fed sugar water, tea, or
urine because these are believed to have medical benefits. And
in parts of India it is believed that drinking a glass of water
that you’re mother-in-law has dipped her big to into will help
progress labor. Anyway, it’s a very interesting article. And it
got me thinking about misconceptions here in this country.

I find it amazing that with all we know
in this country, you still get tons of conflicting information
from various sources (books, parenting magazines,
pediatricians, etc.) It’s no wonder people stress out about
pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Even basic things seem to be
in dispute. For example, most of what I’ve read says that a
babies eye color can change all the way through their toddler
years. Then I read in a magazine the other day that after 9
months the eye color will not change (yes, they said it quite
matter of factly). It seems silly that there would be conflict
about something that basic. Either there are cases of eye color
changing in toddler years or there aren’t. How hard is this.
Makes me question everything else they say too. Anyway, I guess
the secret to good parenting is to read what you can and make
your own decisions. Heck, that’s probably the secret to a good
life :)

Anyway, Lex is awake now and I
have pay some bills so we can go shopping today. Busy, busy
Saturday.

I wonder at what age does a person start
getting influenced by other people’s yawns. I was noticing
today that when Lex yawns, I usually yawn too. But when I yawn
it seems to have no impact on him. I’ve read that contagious
yawning is a social thing and anthropologists believe it helped
tribes of people maintain similar sleep cycles… so you’d
think that the contagious yawn reflex would kick in pretty
early in life. Hmmm…. another FTI project. Remind me to tell
you all about FTI someday…

Even though techically its still a few
days away, fall has definitely arrived in my neck of the woods
(and what pretty woods they are). I get to work from home today
because Alan had to go do some work not from home. He set
things up for me so I can do 90% of everything I do at work,
from home. Yay! I may work from home more often now :) Lex is
sleeping, there’s a nice breeze, life is good…