Memorial Day Fun

We stayed in town over Memorial Day weekend and spent some time with family.  Jason and I celebrated our 11 year anniversary with a trip to the Fox on Saturday to see Jersey Boys (a great show) and a nice dinner afterwards downtown.  Also, our nephew, Kameron, was turning 7, so Jason's brother and family came into town to visit, and we had a small birthday party on Sunday.  The kids had a great time playing together, like they always do.  Ellie, Kameron, and Paige run around wild, and Max just tries to keep up.  Will and Cole hung out with the adults, but I kept thinking how it won't be long before the little boys are right there with the bigger kids...I'm sure they'll be driving Max crazy next year trying to do whatever he's doing, and all Max will want to do is play with the older kids....oh, the pain of being a middle child.

Bryan and Valerie tied up water balloons till their fingers hurt, but the balloons lasted all of about 20 seconds.  So next up was the sprinkler.  I love to watch my kiddos running around in bathing suits, playing in the water, on a hot, summer day.  I love to hear their squeals and giggles from the cold, sprinkler water....Pure Joy!

3 Months Old

Will is already 3 months old!  He is growing like a weed, and is already outgrowing some of his 6 months clothing.  One evening he was particularly fussy and nothing seemed to calm him.  Then I noticed that he kept trying to stretch his legs out, but never could quite get a full stretch in the sleeper he was wearing.  So I stripped him down and put him into a 9 month sleeper, and he was 100% better.  We're happy that it is getting warmer outside so he can start wearing shorts, and length won't be quite so much of a concern.

Will is really starting to want to be in the middle of all the action.  He still loves his swing and is usually fairly content swinging by himself, but if he starts to fuss it's usually just that he wants someone to come over and talk to him.  He'll usually stop fussing right away, and switch over to big smiles if someone talks to him and pays him the attention that he needs.  He's giving us some good smiles in the pics above.  Ellie loves to sit by him and have little conversations with him.  She'll raise her voice up into the higher baby talk and say, "Hi, Sweet Boy.  You have something to tell me?" and then Will will "goo" and "gah" back to her.  It's adorable.  Ellie was even the first to really get the big giggles out of Will, though we've all learned how to get him to laugh now.  Jason is great at finding his tickle spots, and there is nothing sweeter than hearing little baby giggles.  Unfortunately, Will inherited the same hiccup response to laughter that Ellie has...whenever they start laughing too hard they always get the hiccups.  Bummer.

Will has also improved in the sleep department.  He goes down around 8pm and will usually wake only once during the night between 1:30 and 2:30 to eat, then goes back to sleep till about 6am.  Sometimes he'll wake a little earlier at 5:00am, which sounds terrible, but is actually not too bad because then he'll go back to sleep till after 7am, whereas if he sleeps till 6am he's usually up for the morning at that point.  Both of the other kids had their first, random, sleep-through-the-night by this age, but Will has yet to grace us with that event.  He did however give me the first gift of Mother's Day and slept till 4:30am on that Sunday morning (at just shy of 10 weeks old).  That was the longest stretch he had ever slept (8 hours), and I suppose that probably counts as sleeping through the night.  Unfortunately he only did that a couple of nights, then went back to waking between 1:30 and 2:30.

Will is filling out all over and is starting to get some chub.  I just love little, squishy, baby legs, and I could smooch on his sweet cheeks all the live long day.  Love him bunches.

The Big Boy Room

Max has graduated to his own big boy room.  We started setting up his new room in January in anticipation of eventually needing to free up the crib for Will's arrival.  But we weren't overly anxious to move Max into a big boy bed for a number of reasons.  1) He has always been such a great sleeper in the crib.  2) There wasn't a real hurry since we knew Will would be in the bassinet in our bedroom for the first few months anyway.  and 3) Max was still my baby too - he wasn't even 2-years-old yet and deserved to still get to sleep in his crib.  But then things changed. 

After Will arrived, Max started waking up every night and refusing to go back to sleep in his crib.  He would only go back to sleep if we brought him into our room.  We weren't too happy about bringing him into our bed because we didn't want to mess up his sleep routine and create problems down the road (like we did with Ellie).  But since we were only getting 1 or 2 hours of sleep at a time with Will, we did not have the extra energy to fight Max back into the crib...so into our bed he went.  This lasted for about 6 weeks.  Max started to improve a little and would sleep through the night in the crib a few nights a week, but he was still coming into our bed the other nights.  I started putting him in his big boy bed for naps and he actually did really well, so we decided to try it out at night too, and he has done amazingly well.  He rarely comes into our room during the night, but if he does we'll let him into our bed for 20 minutes or so, then we take him back to his own bed and he goes right back to sleep. 

I think bringing home Will had more of an effect on Max than we thought it would.  Max had always been the baby, and then suddenly there was a new little guy taking our attention.  He didn't act jealous or try to hurt Will, but I think he just needed extra mommy and daddy attention at night.  Now Max is back to being our best sleeper.  He can get himself out of bed after naps (an extra perk for Mommy to not have to walk upstairs to lift him out of the crib) and in the morning.  He'll come into our room in the morning very quietly (so as not to wake Will) and peek into the bathroom where one of us is getting ready and give us a little, "Hi."  Then he is ready to go downstairs and have eggs with Dad (their morning routine).

And Max's new bed is pretty cool.  We got him bunk beds with the full size bed on the bottom.  We've moved the ladder away from the bed for now, because I'm still too nervous to let him climb up by himself, since he definitely can't climb down by himself yet.  The full size bottom bunk is great at bed time for cuddling and reading stories.  There have been many nights where Jason will have both Max and Ellie in there reading bedtime stories while I finish up feeding Will and getting him to sleep, and it's a lot more comfortable than everyone trying to squeeze onto Ellie's little twin bed.  Ellie also tells us that some day she'll just go into Max's room and sleep on his top bunk if she gets scared in her own room...we'll see about that.

Little Look-A-Likes

When Will was first born I thought he looked more like Max as a baby.  However, as he has been growing and changing, I started to think he looked a lot more like Ellie as a baby.  So I was totally surprised when I put these pictures together.  Now I see both Ellie and Max in Will.  They definitely look like siblings.  

What do you think?

Of course, I must caveat this and tell you I picked the pictures that looked the most alike.  There are also tons of shots of each of them where they look totally different from one another.  Each baby is certainly unique, but I also love how much alike they are.

Cuteness

Are you ready for it?  I wanted to capture a little bit of Will's smiles and sounds, and Max wanted to be a photographer too. This is just a small taste of happy, little Will.

And here's a little brotherly love!