Eleven Months

Milestones:

-He learned to wave

-He says "hi"

-Standing unassisted

Here we are at 11 months! Benjamin is crawling faster than I could ever imagine and is cruising around like crazy. No walking yet, but he can now stand for extended periods of time without holding on to anything. His 3 1/2 year old friend, Eva, also taught him how to wave. We'd been trying for weeks to get him to wave, to no avail, and we were hanging out with our friends and Benjamin was playing and copying Eva all evening. She waved at him and he just waved right back like it was nothing!

Benjamin and I took a trip to the pumpkin patch with some of Rob's family but he had to work so he missed out! :( We had a great time though and got some fun pics.

We had a church event for "Halloween" and Benjamin was a football and he was so cute! We dressed up too and Rob was a football player and I was a cheerleader. :)

This last month was the girl's 2nd birthday and the three of us went to the lake by our house and had cupcakes and let Benjamin play at the park. We had a really nice time with just the three of us. I can't believe it's been two years already! Benjamin wasn't allowed to have any cupcakes but he did try to eat the candles.

We had  a few weird gas episodes with Benjamin this month, but it hasn't happened since, which is a relief. He would basically wake up in the middle of the night (earlier than he normally does anyway) and scream his head off. I could hear his stomach making all kinds of weird rumblings and after a ton of gas drops and tylenol, he was finally able to get back to sleep. A week later, it happened again only nothing was helping this time. After hours of this, we finally took him to the ER, where they determined he had a bad gas pocket.  Right after we got there, he seemed to be a little better though and it hasn't happened since then. The icing on the cake is the insurance letter I just got this week saying it wasn't covered because it wasn't a real "emergency" and that we now owe the hospital $15oo. Nice! :(

We're having Thanksgiving at our house again this year and are super excited to hang out with the family and meet Benjamin's new cousin, who is a few months old.  I'm also planning Benjamin's 1st birthday and I can't believe it's almost here.

Ten Months

Milestones:

-He now has four teeth!

Wow, I think his fourth tooth coming in is the only new thing this month! He's still cruising along while he holds on to things but no walking on his own yet. I seriously can't even believe another month has gone by...it feels like I was just on here posting. He has become a little ham for the camera though, which is new. Lately, every time I put the camera in front of him, he gives the funniest little cheesy smile, so he already knows how to work the camera. I'm starting to think about planning Benjamin's 1st birthday and I think we're going to do a sports theme. I just can't believe he's going to be 1 soon!!!

So an opportunity came up for Rob to go on a trip to Israel next spring with a group from church and we're super excited about him going. I was thinking and praying about going as well but Benjamin would be 16 months and we just weren't sure how that would work. I talked to people from church that said it was doable but then I spoke to the president of the travel agency planning the trip and she very highly advised against it, so sadly we are going to pass.  I know it will be an amazing experience for Rob though! :)

After some major ups and downs, God has really been blessing our business and we are super thankful! Owning a business is so incredibly stressful and hard but we feel like it is finally paying off after being in business for about 3 years.

Other than that, I'm really not sure what else is new with us. I guess no news is good news. :)

P.S. Does anyone even read this thing anymore or am I just posting to myself? Just curious... :)

Nine Months

Milestones:

-His 3rd tooth is here (front)

-Crawls EVERYWHERE nonstop

-Takes steps while supported

-Stood without support for about 10 seconds

-Said "I love you, dada" (Ok, so he didn't REALLY say this but we have 4 witnesses that swear that is what he said, right after Rob gave him a bite of food!)

Benjamin has come a long way in the last month! He went from almost crawling to literally crawling across the house in seconds! It just happened so fast a week after crawling he started taking steps and then a week later he stood on his own with no support. I seriously feel like he's going to be running in no time at all. He also finally got his first front tooth last week so sleep has still been pretty bad. He usually sleeps good up until 1am or 2am and I feed him once and then he just keeps waking up every few hours until it's time to get up for the day. I wonder if he will ever sleep through the night???

So it turns out his nanny didn't start her daycare and decided to stay with us, which I'm really happy about. I was seriously dreading having to start from scratch with a new person and having Benjamin have to get used to someone else.

We just got back from a trip to Utah for business and then to visit some great friends that we hadn't seen in awhile and Benjamin had fun playing with his new buddies. Our friend's kids are 8 and 4 and he really loved them. He really just loves kids! :) That was his second plane trip and he did pretty good. It's great when people leave the plane and tell you how good your baby is. A woman at the hotel came over to meet him at one point during our trip and she thought he was 18 months! I really think it's his height that makes him look so old. Speaking of height, he just had his 9 month appointment and was 20lbs. 2oz. (50%) and 29.5" (85%). 

He just loves to laugh and is such a happy baby...as long as he's gotten his nap. :)

I'll leave you with a picture when Benjamin was 8 weeks, where we captured his first smile and about 8 1/2 months. What a difference!

Eight Months

Milestones:

-His 2nd tooth is here

-Says "mama"

-Gets on hands and kness, lunges forward once and then falls flat
-Crawls backwards
-Pulls himself to standing


Here we are at 8 months. I can't believe he is this old...time really had flown by like everyone said it would! This month we went on another trip to Tahoe and had a great time. It was a big family trip and we basically hung out at the beach the whole time! Benjamin has already been there twice now...he's so spoiled. :)

This month hasn't been the greatest sleep wise because I think he's teething again. His 2nd tooth came through a week after the 1st tooth and no teeth since but you can tell it bothers him sometimes. He's been pretty gassy lately too and sometimes actually wakes himself up from the gas. I'm hoping we can get back to the days of him only waking up once a night but those nights are long gone right now. 

Benjamin is so close to crawling forward but isn't quite there yet. He gets on his hands and knees and then even lifts his knees like he's going to do a push up so he's super strong. He crawls backwards now but still can't quite get it going forward yet. I'm guessing it will be any day now and he'll be a little tornado all over our house. Good thing I just started baby proofing!

The nanny we've had for months now is great but is now leaving to re-open her own home daycare. So we had to start shopping for nannies again! Benjamin is going to be sad because he was so used to her being around and really liked her. I already interviewed a woman and she starts the week after next. She's a retired nanny and has 2 kids and 4 grandkids and was a nanny for the last 14 years. Benjamin seemed to like her and I did too and the cool thing is she literally lives around the corner from us. How crazy is that? Hopefully it works out!

Seven Months

Milestones:
-His 1st tooth poked through the gums
-Getting on hands and knees
-Says "dada" & "baba"
-Screaming for fun :)

Here we are at 7 months. I feel like I need to start planning his 1st birthday soon...crazy! He's just getting so big so fast, it's amazing. Aside from the last week, which I am attributing to his tooth coming through, he was been sleeping pretty good still. I'm still just feeding him once a night, which feels so good. Now we just need to teach him to sleep past 6am!


I decided to let Benjamin feed himself an entire meal of sweet potatoes one night and it was pretty funny. He had a good time and food went flying everywhere. :)




Benjamin has finally mastered sitting up on his own without falling over and he is very proud of himself. It's a whole new world to discover sitting up. And yes, he is wearing a necklace...it's a baltic amber teething necklace. :)


Rob and I celebrated our 8th anniversary this last month. I can't believe it has been that long. We went out to dinner (with Benjamin) and I have to say I don't think we'll be doing that again for an anniversary :) Anyway, here are Rob and Benjamin in cute matching plaid shirts.


For 4th of July last year I was just a few months pregnant with Benjamin and couldn't leave the house, so I watched the fireworks from our backyard and tried to get a peek over the roof and in between the trees. This year we had a BBQ at our house and walked down to the lake by our house where they had a huge fireworks show. It was a really nice show and was SO loud and I can't believe Benjamin slept through the entire thing!


We decided to be brave and go on our first camping trip this year. We ended up at a spot with a little more people there than we would have liked but we still got a nice spot close to the water and the weather was beautiful! We had fun during the day just hanging out on the water and swimming. Benjamin did great during the day but the evenings and sleeping were not fun at all. I'm honestly not sure if it was the camping and being in a different place with lots of noise or if it was his teething (or maybe a combination of the two) but he just refused to sleep unless I was holding him. The two nights we stayed were definitely challenging since I froze and only got about 2 hours of sleep each night but it was still a nice trip. It is still up for debate if we will try again this year or wait until next year when he's older.






Benjamin has also started screaming...very loudly. He thinks it's pretty funny and loves it when we scream back.

Six Months

Milestones:
-Sleeping through the night (finally!!)
-Sitting without support for a minute or so
-Standing with support

I'm a little late with this post but Benjamin is 6 months! I can't believe we are half way to the one year mark. It's so crazy to think about where we are and how far we've come. We are just enjoying our little guy (well, not so little really)! It's so fun to see him learn new things and grow.

We just had our check up and he's 17lbs 11ozs (50th percentile) and 27.5" (85th percentile). He is just getting so tall, when he stands up, he looks like a one year old! He actually stood up supported for the first time at 5 1/2 months and I couldn't believe it.


His legs are just so darn strong. He now sits up unsupported for a few minutes but does still topple over eventually. He hasn't quite learned how to catch himself yet.


He is getting really coordinated now and it's fun to see him play with toys and figure out how they work. He also can now drink from a sippy cup when he feels like it. He's eating solids a lot more now and is loving food! I've been trying to make his food but right now I'm making about half and buying the rest. He is so interested in watching us eat and wants to eat whatever we eat really and follows the fork from the plate to our mouths with his mouth open. It's really cute!


He still has beautiful big blue eyes and long curly eyelashes that I can't get enough of and I hope they stay that way.

Most importantly, we have finally made some progress on the sleep front! After trying every trick in the book, which didn't work at all, I just gave up and figured he'd sleep eventually...and he did! He now sleeps from about 6:30pm to 6:30am with 1 night time feeding anywhere from 1-4am. Although I'm still not getting 8 hours straight, this is such a huge improvement and it feels great to actually get some sleep again after 6 months of sleep deprivation. Woo hoo! It's so funny to see his personality regarding sleep though because when I was pregnant I used to joke that this boy never slept because I felt him CONSTANTLY kicking me, which actually was a relief, given the circumstances. He seriously fights sleep every nap and every night and will do everything he can to stay awake. He is just not a sleeper.

We took Benjamin down to the river to hang out for the first time and he had fun. The water was freezing but we dipped his little feet in and he didn't even seem to mind. He just lounged around on the blanket for most of the day.

We finally worked out the nanny situation too. We found a replacement for our first nanny and she was really great...until she quit after the second day because the previous family she worked for offered her more money and more hours. Do people not understand what notice is anymore?! Anyway, I finally found a great woman who is a licensed daycare provider but doesn't currently have it open. My schedule worked perfect for her so we hired her and she is working out great! I think it's been about 4 weeks now and Benjamin is really getting used to her since she's here 4 days a week. She is great with him, finally knows his schedule really well and she even does the laundry and dishes! Benjamin still refuses to take the bottle, so we just finally gave up. We even tried the playtex drop in...which he did seem to like better than some of the others, but it was still a no go. Thank goodness I have the flexibility to go feed him through out the day, so I just take little breaks from work and breastfeed him and that works out really well. Plus then I get some time with him during the day, which is nice. :)

We also finally decided to have Benjamin dedicated at our church. It was a really special day and we had a lot of friends and family join us to celebrate. We felt it was really important to show that we know our son is a gift from God and we wanted to dedicate his life to Him. We pray that we can raise him to have a relationship God and that we can be godly parents to him. The video is a little far away but you can see it below.

Five Months

Milestones:

-Rolled over all the way (back to stomach & stomach to back)
-Ate his first solid food
-Sitting with support

Wow, my little boy is five months already. Benjamin had a big month! He just recently tried his first solids and also went on his first big trip, which included his first plane ride, boat ride, and bus ride! We went on a trip to Chicago to visit my sister and had a great time. Ben was such a trooper and did great on the plane.





Ben and Aunt Star


Rob, me, my mom, sister & Ben at the Navy Pier

He has also been rolling over a ton, but I still haven't been able to get it on video. He can sit up unsupported now, but only for about 5 seconds before he topples over. He is getting so big and just keeps changing...and getting cuter!

I've gone back and forth one whether to introduce solids before 6 months or not. My ped said I could start at 4 months, but I thought that was a little too early, so I waited until 5 months as a compromise. He has been acting interested in food for awhile now anyway and he is definitely loving food! He does make some strange faces when he first gets the flavor but soon after he is leaning forward, mouth open, waiting for his next bite. He even grabs the spoon from me and tries to feed himself! It's really quite cute.

I feel like I've tried everything in the world, but he is still not sleeping any more that last month. He will usually do a 4 hour stretch and then wake up every 2-3 hours after that. I've tried the suggestions in the comments (thank you) and also tips from the book "No Cry Sleep Solution" and it's still not working. I have definitely been shortening his feedings at night each time and it's not making a bit of a difference! He also has a lovey, which isn't really helping either. Sometimes I can even get him back to sleep without feeding him or picking him up even, but he is still waking up every 2-3 hours. I'm just dreaming of the day I will get some sleep again.

Daycare has been a total fiasco, to say the least. Benjamin still hates the bottle no matter who tries, or how they try. Sometimes he will take a few ounces, but mostly he won't. Apparently, he is high maintenance when I'm not around. His Tues/Thur daycare let us know it is very difficult to watch him because he doesn't like to be put down, won't eat and then gets very fussy because he's hungry and she only has him 4 hours. We decided to start looking for new care for those days, but knew it would be difficult since it is only 8 hours a week. The nanny in our home on Mon/Wed was going great until this Monday. She was getting him to take the bottle more and more and he really never cried. He would get a little fussy sometimes, but nothing big. Then this Monday comes around and it was a bad morning. We had just returned from Chicago late Sunday, so I think that may have attributed to it. Anyway, he basically had a little meltdown in the morning and wouldn't take the bottle and cried for about 20 minutes straight. I went out to calm him down, which he did immediately, and the nanny quit!! She said his crying was just too much and she couldn't do it anymore. I honestly don't know how a nanny quits after a baby cries for 20 minutes (for the first time ever)...that's what babies do! I wonder if there was more to the story but I guess I'll never know. She wouldn't even finish out the day, so 3 hours into my first 8 hour workday, I had no daycare. So we're covered for the next 3 weeks between my mom and Rob taking some days off each week to watch him, but after that we are up a creek. If you could pray that the perfect person comes along, I would really appreciate it. I'm trying not to stress, but this has been a little crazy, to say the least.

On a side note for the person that asked, I took Selenium while I was trying to get pregnant and through the entire pregnancy and it was just over-the-counter in the vitamin section, per the perinatologists orders.

Below are some fun videos. :)

Mother's Day

I'm having mixed feelings about Mother's Day and thought I would share. This is my first Mother's Day that most people recognize because I get to celebrate it with Benjamin. I am so excited about that and love that he is here to celebrate it with me. But the fact is, this is actually my third Mother's Day. I was a mother last year and the year before that, but my girls just weren't here to celebrate with me. So this Sunday, while I'll be excited to be with Benjamin, I'll still be missing my girls and wondering what it would be like to have them here. So this Mother's Day, don't forget about all of the moms who are missing their babies.

Four Months

Milestones:

-Started teething

-Rolls 3/4 of the way over

-First overnight trip

-First swim

I can't believe our little guy is four months already...time is seriously flying by! Our chunker is 15 lb 2 oz and 25.5" long. He's already in 6-12 clothes too and he still has my huge cheeks. :)

We went on our first overnight trip as a family to Tahoe on a whim. There was a ton of snow but the weather was beautiful and sunny and we had a great time.

Benjamin seems to be teething now and has random screaming episodes where all he wants to do is chew his hands or his burp cloth. It comes and goes though and otherwise he is still a happy baby. He isn't quite rolling over yet but he'll actually roll 3/4 of the way over and somehow roll all the way back the way he came! He's still nursing a ton at night and getting up every 2-3 hours, so I'm still a super tired mama. I had mentioned last month how happy I was that he was sleeping a 4-5 hour stretch and that was great for the one week that it lasted! After a week, he reverted back to usual and has been up every few hours since then. People have suggested all kinds of tips but nothing seems to work and no, I'm not letting him 'cry it out'. At least I am finally loving breastfeeding though, so that's a plus.

I start back at work on Monday and I have mixed feelings. I'm either going to love it or hate it! The good news is I'm only working 24 hours a week and I get to work from home, which is great. Benjamin absolutely refuses the bottle right now, so it should be interesting. I guess when he gets hungry enough, he'll eat, but hopefully there won't be too many tears. The hard part will be ignoring his cries while I'm in the office working and he's with the nanny. At least I can go spend lunch time with him and, of course, I can take breaks and pop out whenever I want to see his adorable face. :)

We visited with some friends from out of town and Benjamin went swimming for the first time ever! At first he didn't seem to know what to think, but I do think he liked it.

We celebrated Easter at church and then had an awesome brunch with family and friends. Here's Benjamin looking all cute.