Brielle at 4 months

Tomorrow, Brielle is 4 months old.  Here's what life is like for her:
-She's in size 2 diapers, but her thighs are really big and I'm considering getting her 3s when this box is over.
-She's happy 90% of the time.  She is content to sit in her chair or lay on her mat and look at her toys.
-She rolled over from her back to her tummy on May 31st and now will never stay still.  When I lay her on her mat, she always rolls right off of it.  The last few days, it seems like she really prefers to be on her belly... whenever I lay her down on her back, she immediately rolls to her tummy.  She likes looking at herself in the mirror, laying with her squishy book and trying to eat her blanket.  Her head gets tired after a few minutes and then she gets a little cranky.
-She has her first big cold right now.  No fever.. just a super runny nose and a bad cough.  No fun.
-She still sleeps 10-11 hours at night.  Bedtime is very, very easy now.  We give her a bottle around 7pm and then swaddle her up and lay her, awake, in her crib.  After a few minutes, she falls asleep.  She rarely fusses or fights it.  She usually sleeps until the boys wake her up in the morning.  The last few nights she has woken up at 3 and 4, but I think that's cause of her cold.
-Naps are not so successful.  She seems to always nap longer for Mike, but for me, she takes 2-3 15-30 min naps a day.  If we are out and about, she usually will sleep more.
-I love hearing her laugh!  She laughs when I kiss her chest or cheeks and it's adorable.
-She loves being raised up in the air and always smiles.
-She loves sticking her tongue out.
-She's been putting her fingers in her mouth a lot lately.
-She loves watching her brothers play.
-She's a big eater.  She drinks about 6 6oz bottles a day.
-She is outgrowing 3 month clothes and is better in 3-6 month clothes.  Depends on the brand, though.
-She still loves bath time.  She likes kicking her legs and splashing them in the water.  She's gotten so much bigger than when we first bathed her in there.
-I've started putting her hair in a little ponytail/pigtails and she looks adorable.  :)
-She outgrew her little travel pack n play and we now have her sleeping in the big one.

Four months old!!!  We go for her 4 month doc appt next week and will find out how much she weighs.

All 3 kids are sick

Ugh.  The kids get sick very infrequently, mostly because they aren't around other kids on a regular basis.  The day before Labor Day, Liam threw up for the first time... six times that night!  The next day, he was fine.  That week, he was fine.  By the end of the week, he started getting a cold... and that cold progressed into a fever.  Monday morning of this week, he had his fever for five days and Mike stayed home so I could take him into the doctor.  His left ear had a little infection, but his right ear was SUPER infected.  She said it was the worst it could possibly be.  So we got his first ever antibiotic for his first ever ear infection (1 week shy of his 2nd birthday) and for the most part, he's been ok ever since.  Whiny at night, congested at night, but ok.

Eli woke up with a fever on Friday and has been getting progressively worse.  He has a SUPER bad cough and it's been keeping him up for most of the night the past few nights.  He's also had a pretty high fever (spiking up to 103.8 a few times).  At night, he's been delirious at times, saying weird things about Spider-Man and Yo Gabba Gabba.  Last night, at 4:30am, he started screaming at me to give him the money. Ha.  He was pretty miserable this morning, but over the last hour or so he has started playing again, so hopefully he's on the road to recovery.

Brielle started with a runny nose on Friday and this morning, poor thing was much worse.  It's just awful to hear a little baby coughing and congested.  No fever yet.. just a runny nose and a bad cough.  Thank goodness she is asleep now.  Last night, she completely busted out of her miracle blanket AND rolled over on her tummy.  Strong girlie!

Let's hope everyone is better in time for Liam's birthday party on Saturday!

Eli's Letters to Santa

I missed the first three... they were pretty good.  I'm sitting next to him as he writes letters to Santa... here's what he's saying:

I'm going to draw funny dinosaurs for you.

Dear Santa,
I hope I love you!  Dear Christmas.  (He was a little confused about the sentence structure of that one).

Dear Santa,
I want a spider man with a spiderman car and I want it for my birthday so i can play with it. And I want it cause I like you.  I want a batman for the batman car.   (now he's cutting it up into little pieces).

(AHH... Liam JUST called me Mama for the first time instead of Daddy!  He always calls me Daddy!  let's see if this lasts!)  (Brielle is sitting in my lap, talking up a storm and laughing!)

Eli's Favorite Things at 4

How old are you?  Four
What makes you happy?  Turning on the TV
What is your favorite animal?  Dinosaurs
What is your favorite thing to eat?  Popcorn
What is your least favorite thing to eat?  Apple cores
What is your favorite thing to do?  Watch (TV)
What is your favorite TV show? Walking with Monsters, Walking with Beasts and Walking with Dinosaurs (BBC documentaries about dinosaurs)
What are you really good at?  Games
What is your favorite movie?  Aladdin
What is your favorite color? Green
What is your favorite song? We are the Dinosaurs (by Laurie Berkner)
Who is your best friend? Grandma
What do you and your mom do together?  Help each other
What do you and your dad do together? Fight (play fighting)
What is your favorite sport? Football
Where is your favorite place to go?  The ice cream store
What is your favorite book?  Dinosaur books
What do you want to be when you grow up? A dinosaur
What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Noodles
What is your favorite place you visited this year?  The dinosaur museum
If you had a lot of money, what would you do with it?  Pay (buy) tires for my own car. And I want my car to be red. 
If you had a whole day to do anything you wanted, what would you do? Climb on the couch
What is your favorite dessert?  Ice cream
What are you scared of? Monsters
What is your favorite thing to do outside?  Play in the sand
What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas and Halloween
What is your favorite snack? Strawberries
What is your favorite cereal? Cheerios
What is your favorite drink?  Milk and water
What is the most important thing you've learned in life so far?  "I have learned about school"

Liam at 23 months

Liam.  Oh Liam, Liam, Liam.  My little drama king/whiny monster/cuddlebug.  He's getting more and more verbal, adding new words to his vocabulary all the time, but his only "sentence" is "There it is!"  I still think his limited speech is the main reason he's so whiny/cranky all the time.... he wants things and can't always get across what he wants.  Though, I must say, I'm very good at knowing what he wants, even in the way he points or direction he points in.  I've spent the last few weeks writing down all of the words he says because I think it will be fun to look back on this one day and see.  So here goes.  Here are the words he can say that you would be able to recognize:

Up, no, uh oh, yes, hi, help, Daddy, poo poo, this, hat, out, eye, yeah, whoa, ball, blue, baa, go, house, lolo.  (20 words)

And here are the words that he continues to only pronounce the second half of.  He leaves the first syllable off or first few letters off...it's so peculiar and fascinating to me.  These are the words he has consistently, but I'm the only one who knows what he's saying:

gross, Hulk, The End, "There it is!", mouth, nose, toes, down, milk, Bert, cat, dog, shoe, sock, done, wash, splash, bath, truck, hurt, foot, horse, bike, oink, duck, moo, wet, please, cheese, applesauce, want, shark, duck, quack, look, surprise, off, sit, bite, catch, ghost, hello, stop.  (43 words)

I'm sure there are several I'm leaving off.  I try to catch them all, but I know there are more I haven't added.  So he's pretty much right on par with he "should" be at this age.  He calls Eli "I" and that is super cute to me. He also continues to call me Daddy, but he pronounces it differently than when he's talking about Mike.  Crazy.  I tell him over and over that he should say Mommy and he just looks at me with a devilish smirk and says Daddy again.  Sigh.

His comprehension is far ahead of where his speech is.  He can understand so many things... I'm often quite surprised by it.  If we're reading a book and I ask him to identify certain objects ("where is...."), he gets it right 90% of the time.  He is good at following simple commands and really understands a lot.  Thank Goodness, or we'd all be VERY frustrated.

He poops a LOT.  Yesterday, he pooped 5 times. He still continues to deny when I ask him if he has a poopy diaper.

He's getting better about coloring.... though he still ALWAYS colors on himself and the table when we are coloring.

He is a sticker addict.  ADDICT.  It's crazy.  If his sticker loses its stickiness, he comes over screaming "ACCCCK" (his word for sticker) until I give him one.  He's had many an unconsolable tantrum because I have refused to give him one.  He's just super comforted by them and likes to be holding them all the time.  He is much better about not putting them in his mouth now.

He LOVES talking toys, like the Optimus Prime that Eli got for his birthday.

He loves bothering his brother... Eli has certain toys that are off limits to everyone else, and Liam loves to find those toys and then run off.....Eli in tow, whining and crying.... and he throws them in one of two places.... in the sink, where Eli can't reach it, or in the crack of the couch, where Eli can't reach it.

He's SUPER destructive with books.  Pop up books? Forget about it... he always rips those pop up structures right off.  He dismembered a library book a few days ago.  Sigh.

He loves running and putting things (toys, the dishtowels) in the kitty litter.

He continues to love climbing and jumping.  I found him standing next to the TV a few days ago.

On days when he refuses to take a nap, he usually falls asleep on the couch around 4pm.

He's still a good eater but refuses to eat any vegetables.  He loves fruit, but not as much as Eli does.  He surprises me sometimes... his favorite breakfast for the last few days is an English Muffin with cottage cheese on top.  He ate an entire bag of snap pea crisps yesterday for a snack.  He is an applesauce in the tube ADDICT and asks for "saaaaauuuuuuce" at least 50 times a day.  Cue BIIIG ta ntrum when he doesn't get one.  He could literally eat 6 in a row if I let him.  He likes to dismember/squish muffins. He continues to LOVE yogurt.  His new favorite thing to do is rip off his bib (which I make him wear when he's eating messy things) halfway through and then have a fit when he gets some on his shirt.  He sits there pulling his shirt, yelling OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF until I take it off.

His favorite books right now are Blue Hat, Green Hat (we're working on colors... if you ask him what any color is, he'll say BLUEEEEEEEE, but if you show him a bunch and ask him where the red, orange, etc is, he'll get it right most of the time), a book about the Avengers, and his old favorite, The Five Little Pumpkins.

Poor guy never gets control of the TV because Eli FREAKS OUT if he doesn't get to pick and Liam is content to watch anything.... but if he DOES get to pick, he usually choses SpiderMan or Iron Man.

One more month til he's 2!  Crazy!

Brielle at 3 months

Brielle is three months old!!!!!  She continues to be an absolute joy.  Facts about Brielle at 3 months:
-She is still in size 1 diapers, though that's more because I want to use up what we have before moving on.
-She's up to 6 oz now in her bottles, though sometimes she only drinks 5 or 5.5 oz of that.  She drinks about 5 bottles a day.
-She LOVES looking at her brothers.  When they come near her, she always smiles.
-She is the smiliest baby ever and always breaks out into a big smile if you smile at her.
-She gets really fussy when she has a wet or poopy diaper.
-She LOVES her baths.
-She's getting a little better in the car, now that I bought her a fun mirror she can look at... and now that she realized her entertaining brothers are sitting next to her.  She's better about falling asleep in the car, but still hates when I stop at lights.
-She's started grabbing for things and yesterday (May 13th) she pulled a toy (her new crunchy pages book) to her mouth for the first time.
-Her typical schedule, which can vary a lot, goes a little something like this.  She wakes up around 6:15 or 6:30, usually because she hears Daddy or her brothers or both.  She usually wakes up fussing a bit, but when she sees me she starts smiling and when I unswaddle her, she stays pretty happy.  I can let her hang out in her crib for a while or on the floor next to her crib while I'm fixing her bottle, and she's usually pretty content to just hang out.  She drinks a 6oz bottle and then I put her in her bouncy chair while I make breakfast for the boys.  She happily looks around the kitchen and at her hanging toys for most of this time.  Then I get her out and hold her while I'm eating or go over and play with her for a few minutes on her mat.  Between 8:30 and 9, she starts to get fussy/sleepy, and if she was up early, I'll give her another bottle.  If not, I'll just walk around with her til she falls asleep.  She's very easy to put to sleep and usually falls asleep within 5 minutes of walking/bouncing.  I'll lay her down and she'll take her first nap... which usually lasts about 45 min or so.  She's then up til 12 or 12:30, looking at toys, looking at her brothers, eating every 2 hours.  She's usually very happy and content during this time.  She then lays down for her big nap of the day and will sleep anywhere from 2 to 4 hours.  She gets up in time for me to make dinner and I'll put her back in her bouncy chair to be with me in the kitchen.  I can't leave her unattended in the living room, because Liam likes to lay on top of her to give her hugs.  Yesterday, I left her in her crib (she'll hang out in there, happy as can be, for  like an hour at a time) and went to wash dishes.  When I peeked out to check on the boys, I saw Liam sitting in the crib with her.  Sigh.  She is always very happy to see Daddy when he gets home, and hangs out with him for a bit after he gets home.  She's usually ready for bed around 7:30 or so and we get her in her jammies and swaddle her up before her last bottle.  She usually falls asleep by the end of her bottle, and if she's not out, we'll walk around or bounce with her.  She rarely takes a pacifier anymore...she doesn't really need it... but on occasion, she will.  Once she's down for the night, she's out.  She sleeps allllll the way through the night, from like 8pm until 6:15am.  Amazing child.  :)

:)

Brielle

Just wanted to make note that today is the first day that Brielle is trying to actively, purposely reach for things.  I was holding her today and she kept reaching for my face.  She didn't do a great job making it there, but you could tell she was trying.  She has been VERY alert over the past week and is really starting to notice things like toys.  For the past two days, she's really been watching her brothers...she tracks them and definitely seems amused by them.  She's always smiling at them.  She's still the happiest and easiest baby ever!