new car seat!

Over Easter weekend, Ellie got a car seat upgrade! Owen moved up to a new seat much earlier that she did, and she’s still not at her weight limit for her bucket seat.  But her little legs are getting a bit long and dang, that thing is heavy.  So up to the big girl seat we go!  In general, I don’t think she loves it as much, but I’m hoping it will grow on her.

Happy 7 Months!

So she’s really almost 7.5 months, but shhh she’ll never know I posted this late. :)  I hate that 7 months means we’re on the downhill slope to being 1.  Not yet, not yet.  It’s going too fast.

No weight stats as we just did a quickie vaccine appointment and Owen was so grumpy that I didn’t have them weigh her.  She’s definitely smaller than Owen who was already 20 lbs at this point!  We had already transitioned him to his bigger car seat.  But even though she’s heavy, the bucket seat is still working for a bit longer.  I like being able to throw blankets over her instead of bundling her up when we go outside.  New Things She's Learning/Doing: We're starting to hear tons more consonant sounds in her talk.   There are times I swear she is saying mama, mama.  Her sweet little girly voice just melts my heart.  Although she still has a very loud screech going on sometimes.  She sits, can get down back onto her belly, and is a rolling machine.  She can get exactly where she needs to go by rolling or scooting backwards and I don’t think it will be but a few more days before she’s crawling!  She’s banging toys together and is clapping her hands so adorably.  She is also starting to let Owen know that she is not happy with him when he takes away a toy from her. Sleep: Well, I think I jinxed myself by thinking she was going to be a better sleeper.  Well, during the day time she is.  She takes 3 naps that are pretty predictable and just jabbers for awhile and puts herself to sleep.  Night time has moved up quite a bit and usually she needs to be in bed by 6 or 6:30.  She does a good stretch until 10 or 11, but then she thinks she’s a newborn and gets up every 2 hours wanting to “eat.”  Uggh, gotta change this somehow!Food:  Well, we took a week or so off of food because the poor thing got sick.  Runny noses and coughs from babies are so awful. So she didn’t have much of an appetite and I wanted to pump her full of breast milk, so just in this last week, she’s started eating “solids” again.  Pretty much loves it all so far and is still the messiest eater I’ve ever seen.Randoms:  Still loves loves loves her brother.  Opens her mouth to give “kisses.”  And still keeps her headbands on.  That’s my girl! Love you so much Ellison Jakeh!!

Happy 7 Months!

7 months! Wow. That means we're on the downhill slope to 1 year. So hard to believe.

MeasuringAt our seven month appointment, he measured 20 pounds even, which puts him in the 76th percentile. He was 27 1/4" which is the 41th percentile. His head is still on the smaller side at 43.6 cm which is the 30th percentile. His bucket seat only goes to 22 pounds so I'm glad we went ahead and bought the bigger car seat. I think he likes being a little higher up and able to see more.


New Things He's Learning/DoingThere's so much I'm sure I'll leave something out. We're starting to hear more consonant sounds in his talk. Won't be long before we hopefully hear those mamas/dadas. He sits up great and loves to reach for toys. He's great at scooping up what he wants and I really have to watch now where I sit him down at, especially when he's hanging out with me in the kitchen in the bumbo. He can switch a toy to the other hand and he's starting to bang toys together (clapping soon?). He loves his puppets, especially the cow one he got for Christmas. He loves to grab his toes and eat them.He loves to touch/pinch people's noses. When he gets excited to see you, he'll burrow into your neck. One of my all time favorite things right now is when he looks at things, he'll tip his head to the right side. We ask him if it's easier to see things when he looks at them sideways. It's adorable.Other tidbits:
When does separation anxiety start? Because I think we're there. I mean, I've always been his favorite, but now he'll cry HARD if he sees me, but then go in a different room. Or for example, I was at church and Pam was holding him while Aubrey and I were visiting. He looked over at me and started crying. But the minute he got in my arms, he broke into a huge smile. Stinker.

Food:I don't want to jinx myself but as of now, we don't have a picky eater on our hands. Thankfully. He'll eat pretty much every food we give him, although anything with texture he isn't a huge fan of. A few of the foods I made I couldn't get very smooth (carrots, green beans, sweet peas) so I've had to do store bought ones for those. He loves to help hold the spoon and bring it to his mouth. This results in quite the mess but I guess you've gotta learn somehow.

As of now, here's his list of foods he's tried in order of how much he likes them:

prunes
apples, pears, peaches
plums - loved these but holy cow we had some major blow outs, so he won't be getting those again for awhile
carrots
avocado, butternut squash, sweet potato
beans & peas
banana
rice cereal
oatmeal cereal

Sleep
See months 1-6.

Me
I'm doing pretty good. I've had some brutal times with God lately. Just getting really scared about asking him where we're supposed to live at. I've enjoyed knitting and crafting and am even going to speak at our Mom2Mom group about the chapter in our book about hobbies. I hope that someday Owen will take a longer than 30 minute nap so I can actually get some things knit for my Etsy store!

William
Well, William got let go from his job on Friday. Yep, I think he was more upset that he didn't get to quit. Lack of work, blah, blah, blah. He's never liked this job, but it was paying our bills. And getting us cheap rent because we're staying in his boss' condo. So just pray for us that 1) William gets a new job quick and 2) we can find a new place to live quick.

More pictures of month 7:
Mom. . .I'm too big for this thing now!
He loves to play airplane with daddy!

Go Illini!

A few of his 7 month shots

Christmas Week Recap

*warning, mega long post*

Sunday, December 19
The week kicked off by dressing Owen in his Christmas outfit from Grandma Pool for church. For the month of December at church, groups of carolers and instrumentalists have been playing Christmas carols in the commons. I was asked to play my violin, so Owen hung out with daddy while I squeaked out beautifully played some carols.

Tuesday, December 21
I admit, I have no patience. As soon as I start seeing present under the tree, I want to open them. G&G Pool sent a big box full of gifts for Owen, and I convinced William he really needed to open one early. So this was Owen's first Christmas gift - a cute blanket with owls that says Whoo loves me? We also went to All Things Kids and I found this cute hat for $1! I know the kid has lots of hats, but how cute is that thing?
Thursday, December 23
Time for another gift, right? :) This one was a DVD set of all the Christmas classics like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer. We put it in immediately and watched a few of them. Well, Owen didn't really watch.I also finally decided on Owen's new carseat. I've been hemming and hawing over this. I had narrowed it down to the Britax Marathon and the Graco My Ride 65. I hate to admit that it was coming down to the fact that I just didn't love Britax's prints (I love the cowmooflauge, but William said no way) and the fact that it didn't have a cup holder. But then I looked on Amazon and saw that it was $80 less than the list cost. Not only that, but if I ordered that day, it came with a free cup holder that clips onto the seat. And because I bought it through my Amazon Mom account, I now have free 2-day shipping for a whole YEAR!! I couldn't buy it fast enough. Thursday evening, the boys arrived in town, so we headed over to my parent's house for some Monicals thin crust sausage pizza, a family favorite.

Friday, December 24
Merry Christmas Eve! The car seat arrived!! You read that correctly, I hit send on Thursday and it arrived on Friday. I love Amazon! We just hung out as our family and helped Owen open some books and a few toys from us. Then we got dressed and ready to head over to my family's big Christmas. Christmas Eve has always been a bigger deal in our house and I must admit it's one of my favorite days of the year!It couldn't have been a more perfect Christmas Eve with the beautiful snow that was coming down all day.We arrived to the Christmas music playing and just as it was time to light the fire. Owen wasn't so sure about the heat coming from the fire, it seemed to enjoy looking at it. The boys played a game of Rummikub, a family favorite. William's doing a little better about enjoying games, although he doesn't have the Hoerr competitive gene. The table was getting set with all the fondue pots with oil. Owen had a quick dinner of butternut squash and pears while all the lights were still on.I'm not sure the year that we started the fondue tradition. But I have a feeling it will be around for a long time and probably even carried into our own individual families. We're up to 3 pots of oil and we cook shrimp, chicken, and steak. Yes, all in the same pot, and yes sometimes the raw meat gets on our plate, and no, no one has even gotten sick. :) We usually do this meal by candle light and it's accompanied by mom's raspberry punch, raspberry jello, veggies, and potatoes. Of course, there's chocolate fondue for dessert. After dinner, we gave Owen a quick bath. He loved the big tub and toy time.
We headed back downstairs to start the evening. Dad read the Christmas story. Then, we went around the room and shared something we were thankful for this year (OWEN!) and something we were anticipating/looking forward to/needed prayer about in the upcoming year. In other words, break out the Kleenex. My dad is kinda writing a book called The Things I Wish Series. Each Christmas, we get a chapter which he reads to us and again usually calls for the box of tissues. After reading that and some prayer, it was time for gifts. Yes, we go one at a time and I love that it draws out the process. Owen had no idea what was going on, but it was fun nonetheless. He loved all the toys he got and especially the hat made by Casey.
After a wonderful time of getting completely spoiled by my parents (see next post for the actual gift recap), we got Owen to bed and ate some great chocolate fondue. Then, we settled in the for the movie Inception. I had seen it yet, and whoa. Good movie, but I hate when movies end that way! Or maybe it didn't end and I was just dreaming. :)

We got home around midnight and got Owen back to sleep. And just as we were headed to bed ourselves, William asked if I wanted to open our gifts. I'll never turn that down! We were supposed to have a VERY limited budget which I stuck to, but my hubby was bad and blew it out of the water. Again, see my next post for details on the awesome things he got me! Then it was finally time for bed.

Saturday, December 25
With the snow coming down all night and my new tires still not on my car, we thought we wouldn't be going to Peoria. So, we took our time lounging around in our pj's in the morning. We Skyped with the Pool's in Texas. They enjoyed seeing him open the rest of his gifts from them and checking out his new car seat.
But then I started feeling like it wouldn't be Christmas without heading to Peoria. So, we scrambled around and got ready and on the road in record time. The roads were perfectly clear, and I'm glad we went. Owen was the only little person there as it was a TINY crowd for us. Great Grandpa snagged Owen right away as we helped ourselves to appetizers and jumped into the game of Bag of Nouns that was in progress. We had fun just hanging out with everyone, even though the dinner was probably the "worst dinner yet." Di summed it up by pointing to the lid which was titled BBQ sauce (with meat).
After dinner and way too much dessert (cut out cookies yum), we headed back downstairs for "gifts." Back in the day, this part of the day consisted of hours around a Christmas tree (there's not a tree to be found these days) with mounds of gifts, lots of yelling, and pretty much chaos. Now that everyone just gets checks, Grandma had to invent a game. So each year we lay the box game. Everyone passes around a box with a die in it. If you roll a 6, you get to go to the middle where a pair of gloves and a gift waits. You have to put on the gloves and then try to unwrap the gift. Sounds pretty easy right? NOT. Grandma wraps that sucker with duct tape and ties the twine really tight. And it's not only one box. Oh, no. . .there's usually around 8. This year, Kaley got the last box open and got the $20 bill.All in all, a great day. And after about 10 minutes of screaming, Owen passed out and slept the whole way home. I am not kidding. This is the first time he's really slept in his car seat (it was still his bucket, not his new one). I hate how quickly Christmas goes each year. I think I'll keep my decorations up for another month at least.

convertible car seat

I know it's a little early to be researching convertible car seats! But the way this little guy is growing, I know I'm going to have to give up my beloved bucket seat earlier than I want to! And we'll need to be stashing away the extra cash for it. :) So I just thought I'd ask out there in mommy-land which seat you got and why. I'm leaning towards the Britax Marathon, but there are SO many options out there. Help!