Halloween 2011

We went trick or treating with Mia's best buddy Simon (they go to the same daycare and his mom is my office mate). Dave stayed home and gave out candy because he wasn't feeling well :(

Scary Skeleton the day before his 6 month birthday

Mommy and Gavin, Mia (the cupcake), Simon (monkey), and Sarah (+1)

After an exhaustingly low hit/miss ratio we finally made it home with some candy.

Celebrating with a dum dum first, then whoppers, and pretzels and a Butterfinger (I knew that was a bad egg; don't trust Easter looking candy on Halloween)

NYC with Aunt Cole, Uncle Ben, cousin Alex and baby Chase

Mia and her cousin Alex* in their mamas sunglasses. . . cool kids!

*Alex has a mouth guard in for his flag football game

Mia and her uncle Ben at Alex's football game. He was showing her how to drink from a sip up box, something I don't think she had ever done yet (it was squirting all over her).

Here is Gavin jumping in Chase's jumperoo:

Arboretum

10/3/11

A very early day for it to be this cold in September. Many things are hard when you have control (or lack thereof) over 2 children. Just getting everyone fed and voided of urine is easily a 1 hour ordeal sometimes so it goes without saying that remembering let alone coordinating a family shot is difficult. But with the help of some strangers we got this nice shot of the three of us having a snack at the arboretum. The bottom one is probably why in general I shouldn't try taking pictures of Gavin myself while he is in my pouch.

and here we are finally next to some trees.

5 months of Gavin

In a nutshell this month began as sick and sleepless and ended up with a 12 hr healthy sleeping champion. Gavin went from being a no pacifier baby to fairly dependent on his pacifier for sleeping. He has tried food for the first time this month, is in his own room, his hair is growing, and that's not all that's growing: Gavin is wearing 18 month clothing now! He began this month 21.5 lbs (4 month weight) and we will get another weight check at his 6 month appointment.

In his exersaucer

Here is Gavin with his Albuterol treatment, which didn't end up helping the wheezing from his Bronchiolitis that he developed with a cough/cold. He eventually kicked the sickness though and although at its peak this nasty bug woke him (and us) up 8 times a night, he is now. . .
in his own crib (we moved him out of the cosleeper way later than the weight limit would have had us). Here are Mia and Gavin hanging out in his new crib (Mia's old crib) when it was still in our room but Gavin is now 100% in his own room and thanks to a couple of tricks we installed he is now sleeping from 6:30 or 7pm to 6-6:30am with only 1 waking around 4am for a quick 10 minute feed.

Sleeping trick: we started putting a "lovie" in his arms whenever we fed him and put him down with this and a pacifier for nap and nighttime. He didn't take pacifiers at first (instead preferring to stay on "mommy pacifier" until he was asleep) but quickly learned that if he needed/wanted to suck in his sleep it would be on this or nothing. So we would let him fuss for 5 minutes (if he cried we immediately went to him) and if it continued we picked him up, burped him, kissed him, and put him back down with lovie and paci. Soon enough we had/have a sleeping champ on our hands!!