Five Months Old

Today is Dylan's five month "birthday." Dylan is doing so well. He's really a good and happy kid these days. Although I did take him for his first "sick child" doctors visit last week. He had a running nose and seem to be batting at his ears so I took him in to make sure it wasn't an ear infection. He just had a cold but the doctor said it was good to bring him in since he could have had the same symptons and it could have been a double ear infection and RSV. But he was fine. And his cold cleared up in time for our trip to PA last weekend. My mom had a little post-baby baby shower for me. Apparently these things are called "sip and sees" in the south and I had heard of that from our friend Christine a few months ago so we went with it. It was a lot of fun. Dylan was so good an interactive with all the guests. Then as soon as they left he fell asleep on me while I was holding him. That's rare so he must have been exhausted.

I've been trying to get Dylan to sleep longer at night for about a week now. It's going okay. Some nights we put the pacifier back in around 2 or 3 when he wakes up and then he'll sleep another hour or two but I usually feed him then around 4 or 5. So he's going from 11pm to 4 or 5am. But he has seemed really hungry the last two days so when he woke up at 2 last night I fed him. So we're still trying (by feeding him more during the day and if he doesn't seem hungry to get him to go back to sleep when he wakes in the middle of the night) but I think its going to take longer than I thought.

My plan is to wait 4 more weeks (right before Dylan is 6 mos old) until starting solids. I might move that up by one week. My mom and sister will be in town then and if feeding Dylan more milk doesn't seem to help his recent hunger it would be good to start a little early.

The last of the winter pictures

Dylan in the bumbo with his blue block (not cube as Daddy calls it - I gotta make sure my child isn't as dorky as his dad...:) [We've had this block/cube discussion a few times. Usually goes something like this....here's your cube Dylan/it's a block/yes, but it's a cube/yes, but do you call balls spheres?/no, but maybe we should, that's the correct term/uggggg!] Thanks to JenK for the super cool BLOCKS! And Melissa S for the clothes Dylan is wearing here. Except the "two left socks." Those are hand-me-downs from cousin Steven. The "L"s are for his last name not "left."

Holding the floor down is really hard work.

Tummy Time!

Weeeeee!!!!

Gettysburg Get Together

Here's a picture from a Gettysburg get together we hosted 2 weeks ago. This was the first time a lot of folks got to meet Dylan and Ty (Albert and Angie's baby who is two months older than Dylan). This was also a 30th birthday celebration for Martin and Albert whose birthdays are on April 5th and March 9th, respectively. Albert was in our wedding and was Martin's roommate senior year.

Catching up...

I need to catch up on my picture posting. My idea was to spread them out so that I've have postings with pictures once every few days but alas seems like Fridays are the only day I have time to post so you're getting them all at once. Here's pictures from when Martin and I took Dylan hiking around Accotink Lake three weeks ago.

Our little blogger

Sleeping through the night

I've decided to start some "sleep training" to get Dylan to sleep through the night. First, I want to tell you that I'm not one of those people who expect babies to sleep through the night at a young age and then think there's something that needs to be fixed if they're not. I also am not one of those people who think not sleeping through the night is such a hardship on me. I just figured it goes with the territory. If my baby is hungry in the middle of the night, I need to fee him. And until recently my thinking was that Dylan was still getting hungry in the middle of the night, mostly because he seemed so desparate to eat when I would go to feed him. But now I've been convinced that he's not sleeping throug the night because simply because he's used to eating between 2:30 and 4:30am. He thinks that's a meal time. So if I just get him to go back to sleep instead of feeding him then feed him more later, we will all get longer stretches of sleep which will be good for everyone. Dylan doesn't need to eat at that time. So last night we tried it. I fed him at 10:30 and then went to sleep. At 3am when he woke up (and was wide awake!) I just put the pacifier back in and shhhhed and patted him until he was asleep. An hour an 15 min. later we did the same thing. (This was also part of my rationale for feeding him at 3am in the past - if I feed him then he'll stay asleep longer. Well, if we just get through these first couple days of this, he won't wake up at 3am at all hopefully.) Then 45 minutes later he was up again. It was 5am at this time and I decided that was good enough training for that night and so I fed him then. He went 6.5 hours without eating...and lived to tell about it...:) My goal is 7-8 hours - 10:30/11pm to 5:30/6:30/7am. So I'll keep you updated. Please keep praying....I was thinking about the theological implications of this last night....was me doing the "training" not relying on God to answer the prayer or thinking that he didn't? By no means!!! I really felt like God "laid it on my heart" to do this training through seemingly chance conversations with my sister and friends and through some reading I happened upon on the Internet. I truly believe this is a way that God works to answer prayers. But, so as I shouldn't think it has anything to do with me, I still need God to help the training actually work. So prayers are still warrented. And why am I asking prayer for something seemingly insignificant when there are bigger problems out there for me to pray about and for God to deal with? (A question I have asked myself.) Well, duh, this is God we're talking about, he can handle everything at the same time, not like us humans. God is infinite. But I still should be consistent in my prayers for those "bigger" issues, those outside myself. That was something I was convicted of at our church's recent missions conference. My prayer life had become very self-centered so I'm trying now to pray for more people. So, I think I must be violating blogger etiquette from going so off topic from my title that I'm going to stop there. Bringing this back to topic, here are some pictures of Dylan's crib that we finally put together 3 weeks ago (although not without cracking the wood and needing to use gorilla glue - but it's fine - functional and all) and that I finally took a picture of this morning. The crib is still in our room. My plan is after Dylan starts sleeping through the night somewhat consistently to move the crib into his room and then move the spare bed into a storage unit. Then we're going to get a new sleeper sofa and put the old couch in the storage unit. We've pretty much decide that we won't be moving this year. Too much hassle, not enough need. Maybe we'll be able to save up enough money for a SFH instead of having to buy a townhouse first. We'll see.

Pictures!!

Answered prayer!

Thanks to my Bible Study for praying again - Dylan slept through the night last night! And boy did I need it. I was sooo exhausted yesterday. He slept 9 hours straight and I slept for 7 hours straight - my longest stretch in 4.5 months! Keep praying ladies! I'd like to get him sleeping through the night consistently before we move him into his own room and I'd like to do that soon before he notices.

Dylan with his two best friends...:)

Another milestone!

Dylan starting rolling over from back to tummy this week. We're very excited and I think so is Dylan...he didn't want to sleep the day he did it for the first time. He's going to be crawling before we know it....

You know it's time to take the Christmas wreath off the front door when....

birds start making nests in your wreath! No kidding.

Photos

Dylan rolling over

No four month "birthday"

Since February only has 28 days and Dylan was born on the 30th, he didn't have a four-month "birthday." :) (Another reason that I'm glad Dylan wasn't born on the 31st - this would happen more often.) I guess we are kinda celebrating today. Today Dylan went to the doctors for his four-month check up and shots and today mommy and daddy are having pizza and ice cream for dinner. :)

Dylan got a great report from the doctor. The doctor said he's really "strong" and "alert" and can focus well and has really good head control. The doctor sounded impressed. He is doing all the developmental things that they check for at this age and the doctor even said he's probably going to be ahead of the game developmentally - mommy was really excited about this except when she realized that we're going to have to baby proof the house sooner. On the size stuff, he's a left-tailer (imagine a bell curve...). For height (24.25 inches) and head circumference (16cm) he's in the 25th percentile. For weight (12lbs), he's in the 5th percentile. He's pretty lean for his age. The doctor said it could be that since he's so active already that he's burning a lot of calories and that's why his weight is relatively low. I was a little concerned about his weight since the scale at the hospital last week had him weighing more but 1) I really don't trust the doctor's office scale and 2) the doctor didn't seem to think anything of it. I told him that I went back to work and he wasn't taking the bottles that well and that he even seemed less interested in eating for me. But like I said, he didn't think there was a problem. [Dylan did great on Thursday though - he finished all three of the bottles I left for him. It must have been since we had our whole Bible Study group praying for him!]

Dylan also got his shots. He did a lot better this time than last time. He was even smiling before we left the doctors' office. [Again, thanks to our home fellowship group for praying!]

I got Dylan to roll over for the camera (we have 30 sec video on our digital camera). Now I just need to figure out how to upload it. Dylan also rolled from his back to his side today. So soon he'll be rolling from back to tummy and should also be sitting up soon.

I think we're actually going to get around to putting Dylan's crib together this weekend so I'll post some pics when we're done.