Look who's 4 months

Clay turned 4 months last week and I was lucky enough to take him to his appt. without Carter screaming about needing more crackers while I talked to the pediatrician.
Clay weighed over 13 pounds and is over 24 inches tall. (By the way only a few inches shorter than Carter.)



He's in the 75th percentile for height and weight! (Holy Moly!) and 95th for his head circumference...nice huh? And I thought Carter had a big head?
Also, none of those percentile's take into consideration that he was a month early.

Only 2 months ago he was 6 pounds and losing!



He's a little slower developmentally but I think that's mostly due to the fact that I rarely put him on his tummy. It's hard to intentionally make one child unhappy when the older one seems to always be unhappy without any reason. Clay's pretty content to sit in a bouncy or in the swing and watch Carter and me.



I first put Clay in his own bed at 3 months and after a few nights, decided I wasn't ready for him to leave me. About a week before he turned 4 months we tried again and he slept through the night on the second night!
So far he's done GREAT sleeping through the night (from 8-6:30am). He's woken up once per night the last two nights, but I can't help but think what a BREEZE this is compared to what I went though with Carter to get him to sleep through the night.

10 Things I like about Sarah

She gets up at 7am every morning with me and the kids even though she didn't have to.

We can laugh about bodily functions (for an extended period of time)

We have 5 years of inside jokes

She puts up with lots of spit up all over her really cute 'I'm not a mom so I don't wear clothes with stains or holes in them' clothes.



She'll put her feet in a pool of feet eating fish with me just for the fun of it.




She's a good driver so if I'm about to do something stupid on the road, she'll remind me why we want to live.

She's super hot and attracts plenty of the 'male variety', so I always make new friends in the squadron :)




She waits patiently for me to get the kids ready and out of the house so we can go DO something.



She'll take my shots of Soju when I've decided I'm done for the night.




We can sit in absolute silence, it not be awkward and just enjoy each other's company.

While I'm watching ANOTHER Baby Einstein video

I thought I'd post some pictures of the boys


Carter playing on the playground


The boys in their big and lil bro shirts


Carter loves to slide down and then "shock" us.


Clay sportin' the jean jacket


This is my favorite little outfit on Clay

Quack

Shawn and Deborah gave Carter this duck when he was baptised in hopes of it keeping him entertained during the service. While quack didn't quite fulfill his duties that day, Carter still pulls him out to play occassionally.



For those of you who don't speak 'toddlenese'
he's saying, "I love you Shawn and Debo"

Smarty Pants

Carter thoroughly impressed me today with skills I didn't know he had.

Carter's been a lover of sushi since Sakura's in Tucson. Well, He graduated to sushi, he used to just eat the pickled ginger. (gross, I know)
He gets so frustrated when we eat it, because he wants to use chopsticks and he can't work them. Today for lunch I ran upstairs to borrow Charlie's kid chopsticks and they were a HUGE success! He ate 4 whole pieces.







Also, while we were leaving the bx today, he pointed and said, "Excavator! Mama, An Excavator!"
And yes, it was totally an excavator.

Clay's New Trick

Everytime Clay reaches a milestone, it always catches me by surprise. Not that he's done anything early, but because I'm not waiting with every breath for him to reach those milestones like I was with Carter. Truthfully, I could go my whole life and him be 3 months old. Never do anything but sleep, poop, eat and smile. Here's his latest. He just did this for the first time tonight! and ps, ignore the awful, annyoing, high pitched sound coming from my mouth.

Kitty Snacks

Have I ever mentioned that Carter looooves to go play at Anna's house?
He gets to play pretend with Weston. (Which he doesn't do anywhere else) and he gets to play with/boss around Shane (whichever suits him at the moment).
Anna always has a plethora of yummy food available for Carter to eat as well.
Some of his favorites have been "kitty snacks" when the three of then pretend to be kitties. This usually consists of come Cheerios and kix cereal.

However, during our breastfeeding support group this week Anna let the boys have bowls of grated Parmesan Cheese to eat. Mmmmm. That sounds great right?
Wait, it gets better.


Carter then proceeded to dump his cheese onto the carpet. Weston, pretending to be a kitty, began lapping it up, off of the carpet and then before we knew it, all three boys were licking Parmesan cheese off the carpet. Mmmmmm. I bet that was yummy.

There was a new girl at BFSG this week and as she was watching this unfold, I'm pretty sure she was thinking, "DEAR LORD, THANK GOD I'M HAVING A GIRL!"

23 months

Is the difference in age of my boys. Here's some pictures of them. Can you guess who is who?

A few days old...





A few hours old...





3 months...





Almost 4...

Karate Kid

Sunday Best

We gave up on church awhile ago here. Well, not gave up, more like got discouraged. There's nothing on base that really inspires either of us, and we've been too lazy to try the off base churches.
However, we have started going to brunch on Sundays at the O'Club. We really like this new tradition and I think we're going to start looking for a church home again because of it.
Someting about brunch...is just so, yummy. However, it's NOT helping my wasitline.

Off with her....tail

After our vet appointment today the veterinarian was not impressed with how slowly Bailey's tail is healing, so we're taking her in for surgery Wednesday morning. Luckily it's a quick, easy procedure and we'll be able to pick her up that afternoon. She'll have a few stitches but they'll be able to come out after a week or so.
Wish her luck!

Willpower

When Carter was born/little, I was so consistent. We had a routine, we only strayed when we had to, and once I made a decision, I always stuck to it. That's the only reason he's as good of a sleeper as he is, I NEVER MADE IT AN OPTION.
However, now that I'm trying to get Clay to sleep in his bed I find myself having no willpower at all. When we ferberized Carter, I did exactly as the book said, I NEVER brought him back into the bed, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and knew it was worth it. But the last two nights, I have been such a wiener and a slave to sleep that I'm gone and 'rescued' Clay out of his bed and put him next to me again.
And while I know that right now, there's really no harm in him sleeping with us (we're actually sleeping great with him there) I know that I don't want him in the bed at a year old. And the sooner I do this, the easier it will be. Babies have a lot more opinions and willpower at 6-8 months than they do at 3.
I just don't seem to have any willpower these days. I've also been letting things slide with Carter, kind of pretending he didn't do this, and "not seeing" that he did that. I know this isn't helping ANYONE, but I can't get out of this lazy attitude.
It's easy to give in, it's harder to see the end result and trudge through. I've got to remember the rewards of well behaved children and good sleepers, wish me luck.