Sleep, Glorious Sleep

I'm finally getting some sleep!  Mr. Charlie has starting going about 7 hours between feedings at night and even went 8 hours on Monday night.  Of course, that night I woke up after about 6 hours and heard him stirring about every 20 minutes, even getting out of bed a few times to go in there only to have him quiet down before I even got out of our room.  I also have not been great about going to bed right when he does, so the 7-8 hours doesn't necessarily translate to my hours of sleep.  BUT I'm thankful the little man is doing his part, now I just need to do mine - straight to bed and turn the monitor down a bit so his little grunts and squeaks aren't waking me!

Charlie is starting to get much more active.  He's awake a lot more these days, and has really started enjoying laying on his back for stretches of time.  He enjoys his playmat, but is just fine on a blanket on the floor as well. He's starting to "talk," making the sweetest little noises.  Observe:

The big guy also starting issuing his first real smiles last week.  They are still only an infrequent occurrence and we have to really coax them out of him, but hopefully that will change in the coming weeks.

Jack continues to impress us every day with his vocabulary.  We can understand almost everything he says and he is stringing together many words to make sentences.  His pronunciation is constantly improving as well - for example, he used to say "pelp" but now says "help."

He has been counting to 10 since about his birthday, but these last few weeks he's also become really interested in the alphabet.  He's constantly singing his ABCs - well, really only about 1/2 of the song and for now it's his own version. It is adorable.  Observe:

Coo coo S, wee wee wee, W, X Y, Z.  We get to listen to him on the monitor every night and morning singing this part of the song.  Love it!

Parker Rose

Three weeks ago today our new precious niece Parker entered the world.  She is my sister and Greg's first child and my parents' first granddaughter.  We are so excited!  She looks just like Kelly did as a baby, with big blue eyes and thick dark hair.  Unfortunately, she lives 800 miles away so we haven't met her yet (except via Skype).  I thought I'd be able to wait until they come home for Thanksgiving but when she was born I realized that wasn't possible and quickly booked a flight to go visit.  Charlie and I leave in a couple weeks for a quick 3-day visit.  I can't wait to get my hands on this baby girl!!!

Gymnastics

As I mentioned in my last post, I've signed Jack up for yet another trial gymnastics class - I've been taking advantage of lots of Groupon deals.  This one is at GymQuarters, which is a real gymnastics place.  Addi is doing the class with him, which Jack of course loves!  Here they are waiting for class to start.

The first week, Jack was pretty distracted because there are kids everywhere in this gym and just so much activity going on.  Tonight he did much better with staying with our group.  Last week they practiced walking on the balance beam and jumping on the trampoline.  This week they got to jump into the pit, practice somersaults and do different things on the bars.  Fun times.

Addi sliding off the slide:

Jack never tried the slides, but liked jumping into the pit

All by himself!  So strong!!

It also happened to be the end of a session so they each got to pick out a ribbon (Jack picked pink)...

Then they stood on the platform...

And showed off their ribbon while the parents and teachers clapped for them.  Seriously the cutest thing.

 Addison's turn:

Busy Weekend

We are wrapping up a fun-filled weekend!  Friday morning I took the boys to Grandma's work so her friends could meet Charlie and Jack could see the fire trucks.  We were lucky: while we were out in the garage checking out all the trucks, they got a call and all the firemen came and put on their boots, jackets, helmets, etc, boarded the truck and took off with their lights and sirens on.  Jack just stared, unsure what to think!  We told him they were going to help someone, and now the past two days he's been putting on his fireman hat and riding his fire truck around the house saying he's going to help someone.  Love it!

Then Friday afternoon Alison came to visit us and meet Charlie.  Sadly, Giana and Lucia have colds so she had to leave them with her parents during the visit.  So bummed because we don't know when we'll be able to get together again!!  We'll have to schedule lots of skype sessions so our kids don't forget each other!!

 
Saturday we went to watch our niece Paige cheerleading at the junior high football game.  She did great!  She's the third from the left:

We also went to our friend Reghan's 2nd birthday party.  I didn't take my camera, but Jack had a lot of fun playing with his friends Reghan, Addi and Zoey, along with all of Reghan's cousins (she has 10!!).

Today we had family day at the pumpkin patch.  This is the same one we've gone to in previous years and they have lots of activities!  Jack loved the corn maze, the train ride, the train display, corn boxes, toy tractors, etc.  So much to do! 

 Jack holding the pumpkin he picked out and attempting to hold his baby brother:

Not much else is new with us, other than Charlie growing like a weed!!  We've made some progress on the bottle front.  After a few unsuccessful attempts with our Avent bottles, we borrowed a Dr. Brown's bottle from Melissa and the little man took it like a champ!  He took two bottles Tuesday, which allowed me to take Jack to Mommy & me gymnastics (more on that in another post - I didn't get to take any pictures yet). He has taken one or two bottles since then and has done well.  So far we've only bought a couple Dr. Brown's bottles - we're hoping we can get him to take the Avent bottles that we already have a million of once he gets the hang of it.  The interesting thing is both Tuesday after his bottles and yesterday when he took a bottle at Reghan's party, our evenings have been kind of rough.  He's been fussy and seems to continuously want to nurse.  We're not sure if it's a coincidence or if the behavior is resulting from the bottles.   We'll be experimenting to figure that out!!

 

Charlie is also starting to experience some balding - poor guy is sporting a pretty massive receding hair line these days, and I'm constantly finding his little hairs on his face and clothes.  Wish I could glue those puppies to his head so he doesn't end up with a mohawk like Jack had.  :)  Compare below - picture on left is from September 12, picture on right is last night.

 He's still a handsome little devil, so we're not worried about a little hair loss.

Jason discovered that since Charlie is always calm on his changing table, if we bring the changing table mattress out to the living room, he's generally content to lay on it.  Brilliant!  Sleeping peacefully on his mobile mattress:

One Month Old

Our little guy is already one month old! I wish I could freeze time.

Charlie's still doing great in his crib and in the last couple days has made a breakthrough and now enjoys his swing too.  Nice for Mommy & Daddy, especially during mealtimes. 

We gave him his first bottle this morning and I'd say we still have some work to do in this area.  Jason tried it first, and Charlie was having none of it.  We heated the milk a little more (initially we just took the chill off) and then I tried to give it to him and he still wanted nothing to do with it - sucking a little only to let the milk drip right out of his mouth.  I decided to nurse him for a few minutes so he wouldn't be so hungry and then try again.  This time he actually drank a little bit from the bottle.  However that was short-lived and when Jason tried to feed him he was  no longer interested.  I finished out the feeding by nursing him and we'll try the bottle again soon.  We'll get there...