Celebrity resemblence and reactions…

You  may recall Ashlyn’s celebrity look-a-like pictures and we weren’t sure if James was going to give us the same opportunities.  Sure enough, he gave us his first pose this week.  The winning celebrity was Austin Power’s Mini-Me.

Personally, I thought this was pretty funny when Heather texted me the picture.  We showed it to James.  He disagreed.

Point taken James.  I promise not to compare you to clones of evil masterminds intent on taking over the world.  Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move on to a better look for James:  The smile.  He’s smiling more and more every day, and it’s definitely for real.  We’ve now been able to get a smile out of him by playing with his arms (physical stimulus), making goofy sounds (vocal stimulus), and even from making funny faces (visual stimulus).   He’s a smiley little guy.

Ashlyn is getting older, taller, and is developing her own personality more and more every day.  Being that she’s in the 2-3 year old range, she’ll go from laughing to crying and then back to laughing again within a 10 minute window.  but there’s more laughing than fussiness, and more dancing than crying.

Smiles, pools, and parties…

This week saw the first smile from our baby boy.  It wasn’t a full on smile yet of course, but Mom had the magic touch and was able to coax out the first of what I hope are many, many smiles in his life.  Ashlyn and I did our best to get some pictures, but it’s not as easy as you’d think.

Nina and Papa’s birthdays are back to back, and Ashlyn insisted on making something for the weekend birthday gathering this weekend.  The pastry of choice was a sopaipilla cheesecake.  Ashlyn rolled the dough, spread flour on the floor, put some filling in the pan, put some filling on the floor, and in the oven it went.  It didn’t taste like a cheesecake really, but it wasn’t half bad.

On Sunday we went to Nina and Papa’s for some swimming and cake.  Ashlyn continues to be a little water bug, albeit a hesitant one.  It took us a few minutes to convince her to get into the water, primarily because Uncle Jeff was in there.  He’s always her favorite person to talk about, but for whatever reason she gets really shy around him.  I love her to death, but she can be a strange one sometimes.  Once in the water, she was swimming around like she was born to do it.

She’s still a little young for lessons, but we’ll probably be starting that up next year once taking care of James isn’t a full time job.  At this point James is just an eating/pooping machine, but watching him smile, roll over, and hold his head up makes all the effort worth it.  That’s easy for me to say since I’m not the one doing the feeding.

*yawn*

This is going to be a light week as far as blog posts go.  It was my first week back at work, and between James and a coughing Ashlyn I haven’t had much sleep or time to take a lot of pictures.  So here’s what I have, I’ll just make the best of it.

James had more visitors this week.  One was from Cousin Jeff who was in town for business.  It’s always nice to see him when he comes in town, and we appreciated him making the drive over to our house to meet the new addition to the clan.  Nina babysat for us on Saturday so that I could attend a class and Mom could take Ashlyn to gymnastics.  James was nice to Nina, and Ashlyn was nice to Mom, so it worked out.  Thanks Nina!

If you ever wondered where the term “sleep like a baby” comes from, this is it:

Ashlyn is still doing well with baby James.  He’s a little too squirmy for her taste, so when she wants him to sit on her lap it doesn’t last long.  Below you’ll see Ashlyn trying to comfort James on her lap, but it didn’t work.  Instead she sat on the floor with him and willed some calming vibes into him.  That worked much better.

Now that the cord had fallen off, James is able to get baths.  This is not, as you might expect, his favorite activity.  Mom has figured out a way to get him to be somewhat ok with the bath itself, but the drying part is still not to his liking.

Like I said, this week was light.  Hopefully next week will be a bit more interesting, depending on how that sleep thing goes this week.

Independence, the joy of sharing, and birthdays…

"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."
-Leo J. Burke

The quote on this post is a bit unfair.  As far as babies go, James is a great one when it comes to sleep.  He’s waking up 3 times a night on average, but only when he wants to eat and he goes right back to sleep afterwards.  I used this quote because the past few nights have resulted in little sleep overall thanks to a sick Ashlyn and a hungry James.  Such is the life of a parent.

But enough about lack of sleep, let’s talk about more interesting things like the celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  Our neighborhood celebrates this day with a “parade”.  The parade consisted of a red VW bug playing Aggie marching music (whoop!) with a line of kids on bikes and parents with strollers following behind.  We went high class with the wagon and decked it out with an American flag, a 4th of July bear, and an appropriately themed child.  Ashlyn had fun, and Heather got a lot of credit from the other mothers for being out and about so soon after the birth of James.

Even though James did nothing but sleep during the parade, it still wore him out enough to need a nap once we got back home.  Ashlyn laid down next to him and rubbed is back.  She’s a good sister.

As promised last week, here are some pictures of Ashlyn putting “Baby Ashlyn” in various seats around the house.  She calls the doll “Baby Ashlyn” because it has her crazy.. I mean curly, hair.

While the 4th of July could be considered America’s birthday, there are a bunch of other birthdays to talk about this week.  The first one, not from importance but from when I took the pictures, was Dynamo the Dinosaur's birthday at the museum.  Ashlyn and I took a father/daughter trip for some cake, water, and a birthday hat which she refused to take off until we got home.

While we were there we had a moment of sharing that I felt was worth discussing.  Ashlyn was given a piece of cake and we sat at a table outside so she could gobble it down.  I asked her for a piece of the cake, and she initially said “no Daddy”.  We had a brief but earnest discussion on the merits of sharing, complete with a promise to share the cake with the trash can if she wasn’t willing to share it with me.  Ashlyn, always the quick student, took the hint.  Below you will see my finger in the picture with a crumb of cake.  That is what she gave me, and the look on her face says she knew what she was doing.  She won that battle, so I let her eat the rest of the cake.

On Saturday we got together with the Wolfe clan to celebrate Grandpa’s birthday.  As always we had a great time, and Ashlyn was run ragged once again by Heidi.  Happy birthday Grandpa!

And today (Monday, depending on when you read this) it’s Nina's birthday!  Happy birthday Nina!  We’ll get together for her and Pa-Pa’s birthday soon, as his is coming up as well.

 

Home, then not home, then home again!

"A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankrolls smaller, homes happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for."
-Author unknown

I realize that I’m behind on the blog this week, but I have a good reason.  More on that shortly.  We left the hospital with James last Wednesday, and it was great to get back home.  We settled in pretty quickly, and Ashlyn was happy to have her baby brother in the house.  Really, she was!  We weren’t sure how she would react to the new addition, but she’s been awesome about it. 

And now to the reason for the late blog post.  We went back to the hospital on Saturday for a routine checkup which included a jaundice check.  Later Saturday afternoon we received a call from James’ Doctor with the unfortunate news that his jaundice levels had risen and that we needed to go back to the hospital for phototherapy.  This shouldn’t have been a surprise since Ashlyn had it, but with Ashlyn it spiked and was treated before we left the hospital.  So back to the hospital we went, and James was put under the lights.  They were much better than the lights that Ashlyn had, and James seemed to enjoy it.  We were there for 30 hours, and James slept the entire time other than feedings.  We’re grateful for that.

With the jaundice levels under control, we were given the green light to go back home again on Tuesday.  With Ashlyn returned (a big thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Wolfe for watching Ashlyn while we were at the hospital), we were finally re-united as a family.  Ashlyn went right into big sister mode and began comparing hand and feet sizes with her little brother.  Ashlyn won.

On an un-related note, here’s a quick video of James throwing the curve for the rest of the class.  The average baby will turn over from belly to back at around 4 months.  Here’s James doing it at 4 days.  He did it twice in a 15 minute period, and I was able to capture the second time on video.  It may have been luck, but at any rate it’s a good reminder that you can’t leave them on the couch by themselves.  We’ll be giving more tummy time from here on out.

Now that we’re back home, people have been coming by to see James and Ashlyn.  Well, mostly they sat on the couch talking to Ashlyn while a baby slept on them.  There really is no feeling like a baby sleeping on you.

Even the pets are settling in with the baby!  Rusty is indifferent, Nala is jealous, and Kitty still doesn’t want to be near children.

I should be back on the same blog schedule starting this Sunday, where you’ll get to see some pictures of Ashlyn taking part in her first parade as well as Ashlyn putting her doll in all the places that baby brother likes to sleep.

Thank you everyone for your support through the delivery and hospital stays.  We’re incredibly fortunate to have such a wonderful family.