We started Lex on solids a few weeks ago
and I don’t think I ever documented it anywhere. We started him
on rice cereal and he didn’t have any problem with it. I think
his belly was grumbly for the first day or two, but he loves
the cereal and gobbles it up. Today I gave him some oatmeal
(baby oatmeal, not Quaker Oats :) ). He likes that even more. I
can’t say I blame him, it certainly looks and smells better to
me. It’s fun introducing new foods to him. He seems to like
eating (and playing with the food and smearing it all over).

We also started giving him a sippy cup
with water in it. He like to play with the cup and gum it, and
sometimes he even manages to suck on it enough to get water
out. He doesn’t seem to like water much though :) He always
makes a yucky face and spits it out. He keeps it down better
when I give him water with a straw. I still don’t think he
likes it, but at least he keeps it down.

As Lex gets older it’s fun watching his personality start
to come out. He’s starting to develop preferences for toys, he
is an attention hog (which I think is common of babies) and he
loves to laugh. He has the most contagious laughter. Sometimes
we know what he’s laughing at (like if I’m making funny faces
at him) and sometimes we don’t. He thinks Alan is the funniest
person in the world though and loves to laugh at Alan – even
when he isn’t doing anything at all. Alan can walk into the
room and Lex will look up at him and start laughing with big
belly laughs. For no apparent reason. Only 4 months old and
already idolizing his daddy :)

Anyway,
not much going on, just a quick update.

I LOVE MY BABY
He makes me
happy every time I see him or even just think about him. I’m
such a lucky mommy.

About a year ago I decided to give this
whole blogging thing a try as a means to keep family and
friends updated on my pregnancy and impending baby. Now, I
think I like it :) Recently I started thinking about a career
change so today I decided to start another blog as I explore
this new path and see where it may lead. Check it out!

Lex has been talking up a storm last night
and this morning. A few weeks ago he was chatting like crazy,
but then it seemed to subside a bit… now he’s right back to
it. Last night I tried to get it on video, but he quieted right
down as soon as I turned on the camera. I got some other fun
footage, but very little talking. This morning he woke up at
5:30am with a story to tell and hasn’t stopped since. :) What a
fun baby!

I’m not doing very good at
keep track of firsts here. We started Lex on rice cereal last
weekend and he seems to like it. He gobbles it up when I feed
him, and likes playing with it when he can. We also started
putting him face forward in his stroller (instead of lying in
the infant carrier facing backwards). He really likes that
because he can sit upright and see what’s going on. He’s so
cute too. A week or two ago Lex discovered his feet and is now
able to put them in his mouth (all of his toes at once!). We
try to expose his feet for him sometimes, but it’s starting to
get cold now so he can’t go barefoot too often. He takes full
advantage of his “toys” when they are bare :)

This weekend we had lots of family in town. The last few
times there has been a crowd Lex has been pretty calm, but this
weekend he was just a mess. He cried and fussed the whole time
– except when we were home. He was very happy when it was just
a few people at our house. It’s interesting to see the
different stages he’s going through, mentally, physically, and
emotionally. Lately he’s started crying with tears and hiccups
– sounding more and more like a grownup cry instead of an
infant.

Along the lines of crying,
we’ve been having a heck of a time putting him down lately.
He’ll fall asleep in our arms, but soon after we put him down
he wakes up crying. Not just fussy crying, but real, loud,
almost scared crying. Makes me wonder if babies have
nightmares. Alan is in the living room with him right now
trying to soothe him back to sleep. It’s really a heartbreaking
cry :/

I haven’t posted photos in
awhile, so here are a few from the past few weeks. We had a
really nice day last weekend (or the weekend before???) and we
went for a walk down Quechee Gorge. It was great weather and
Lex enjoyed the outdoors. Carrying him up and down was good
exercise for me too!

Alan’s parents
brought us a highchair this weekend. Lex is so cute and small
in it :) He loves the toys on the tray, but only likes the
highchair for about 3 minutes. Then he starts hollering. I
think he just likes hollering :) Sometimes I confuse him by
sticking a spoonful of cereal in his big mouth. That typically
quiets him for a few minutes.

Anyway,
enough of my random spew of thoughts. Lex is in bed, so I’m
outta here. More later.

The (well, one) interesting thing about
being a new parent is that I keep getting random lines of
children’s songs poppping into my head and then I spend days
trying to remember the whole song. Take me several hours just
to remember the “mark it with a B” part of patty cake :)
Yesterday I got “little bunny fufu hopping through the forest,
picking up the field mice and bopping them on the head”. Anyone
know that song? I can’t remember much more than that :) I think
someone comes down and says “i don’t like your attitude…” but
that’s all I got :)

Just a quick update as Lex falls back to
sleep… On the advice of both sets of parents (thanks!!) we
started him on solids this week – though it’s hard to consider
soupy rice cereal as a solid :) He still isn’t sleeping through
the night (as you can tell), but he’s getting better. I’m sure
he was ready for solids because he gobbles up his cereal really
well. He actually teased us by sleeping for 8 hours the first
night we gave him cereal (sadly I wasn’t so smart and went to
bed much later than him, resulting in NOT 8 hours of sleep for
me), but hasn’t since. For a minute there (or a full day) I
thought cereal was our magic solution – but alas, I guess not.
And on that note, back to bed for me. Busy weekend coming up
:)

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….