My Little Bamboo

Charlie is now two months old and the time really has been flying by. I can't believe how fast this little child has grown. It seems like he was only small for a minute. I'm actually missing his little body and kind-of wishing the time weren't going by so fast... something I never thought I'd say about an infant. 

At his two month check-up on Tuesday, he weighed 11 pounds 8 ounces and was 23.5 inches. At his one month check-up the doc noted that he was the perfect textbook proportions: weight, length and head circumference all at the 25th percentile. This time, just one month later, he jumped up to the 50th percentile in weight and 75th in length! If only I could be shrinking at the rate he is growing...

Charlie - An Update

Just a quick update -- It took a few days to get ahold of the correct form of the medicine for acid reflux (he's taking a 10 mg dose of Nexium granules), but once I started giving it to him regularly (it took a bit of learning to figure out how to get him to swallow it) the medicine has been working. Hooray! We are back to enjoying having a newborn around. He has a generally happy disposition and is starting to extend his night sleeping periods, usually waking only twice per night now.

These pics are from when he was 7 weeks old... darling smiles!

Paczki Day!

In true Detroiter style, we celebrated Fat Tuesday by eating some jelly doughnuts! Mmm... well, they weren't quite as good as a real paczki (pronounced like poonchki), which is an extra-sweet, extra-fattening jelly- or cream-filled donut, especially because I forgot it was Paczki Day until about 5pm... and it's hard to find a good donut place open at that time. So we stopped by Kroger and got the ones left over from the morning. But we enjoyed them none-the-less! Davey especially liked the tradition!

Paczki Day was traditionally on Fat Thursday in Poland and they made these delectable donuts to use up the rest of their lard, sugar, eggs and fruit which were forbidden during Lent.

Smiling

Despite all the crying Charlie does and complaining I've been doing about it, Charlie did start smiling very early. He was smiling so much at Dave a few days ago that he made me go get the camera, though they were hard to catch. Here's one of the pics!

Davey just loves spending time with his little brother. This morning when Charlie was screaming and I heard him stop, it was because Davey was at his side patting him and talking to him.

I'm so happy you two have each other!

Our Date

Davey and I got to go on a date today! We went to the library to check out some books, though the first order of business was to watch some pennies to spin round in one of those charity wishing wells. We played with a couple puzzles (they have a fun children's area), picked out two Clifford books and two Thomas books, read some of them and then moved on to the second part of our date.

Then we headed to La Centerra to get ice cream and throw pennies in the fountain!

Davey loves to throw pennies in fountains.

We started doing it in Bakersfield when we 

were bored and needed to get out of the house.

He just never gets enough of watching them splash!

Davey got to choose his ice cream for the first time and knew right away when he saw the case that he wanted the blue one. Blue Moon was always my favorite as a kid, too! (Though Cold Stone just boringly calls it Cotton Candy.)

Thanks for being such a great date, Davey! I love you!

Life with Charlie

The last two weeks have been pretty challenging for me. Charlie seems to be getting progressively fussier lately and it is wearing me out. He still wakes three times a night to eat (though last night was the first time he only woke twice... I'll pray it continues) so the tiredness makes it much more difficult to be patient. When he is fussy, he seems tired but has great difficulty falling asleep, often staying asleep only while I'm holding him and then still often waking to fuss. Compounding all this, I haven't had any break in two weeks because Dave has been super busy at work, leaving before 6am and returning just before 8pm in time to say good night to Davey and I.

So I'm way behind on everything in my life. I'm trying not to let that bug me too much, but I hate being in a dirty, messy house and feeling like I'm not in control... 

I was so at my wit's end yesterday morning with the non-stop crying that I called Charlie's doc and made an appointment. My mom kept thinking there must be something wrong (my little sis Lacey was crying, crying and had a life-threatening staph infection as an infant), a baby his age should be settled and happy by now. I was finally convinced there could be something wrong. I kept taking his temperature and he didn't have a fever. But there had to be something causing all this -- or even if it was just normal, I needed someone to tell me that and to talk about it with me before I went crazy.

So of course the doctor examined him and didn't find anything wrong, but she did suggest a mild case of acid reflux. I had been wondering if he had it for a while now (and actually did bring it up at a previous appointment -- he doesn't spit up excessively, but he's always choking on the milk as it comes back up and it prompts crying), so I wasn't surprised. She also suggested doing a work up of his blood, but I decided not to have him pricked. We can always do that later if the Nexium doesn't help and there is still a problem. But now that I've had a day to think more clearly (Dave was actually home at 5pm yesterday and had the day off today :), I'm remembering having gone through a similar phase with Davey. My reaction to it was just worse this time since I'm busy with Davey and didn't have Dave around to spell me. Luckily Dave thinks he'll be back to normal work hours next week. 

Charlie has been sleeping better today and after all of the negative emotions of yesterday, I was overcome with love for him today as he slept and looked so sweet and darling. I couldn't resist taking a couple pictures...

 I love my boys so much even though I am finding this transition challenging; it has nothing to do with me loving being their mother and having them a part of our family.

I also have to share a funny picture of Davey. After I pumped to be able to add the reflux medicine to a bottle for Charlie, Davey grabbed it and tried to do the same...

He was so proud to be like mommy...

We didn't have to coax this smile at all!

Happy Birthday Kenzie!

Davey's friend, our neighbor across the street, MacKenzie turned 3 last Saturday and we celebrated with a fun party at Pump It Up. We just love that place! Kenzie is such a sweet girl and fun playmate for Davey. She and her parents, Charlotte and Shawn, are such nice neighbors.

Kenzie and Davey

I love having fun with him!

Davey loves playing basketball

Speaking of neighbors, we also have two sweet boys next door that Davey loves to play with. I am so happy to actually have him play with boys! (I wish we lived closer to all of his boy cousins!) They love to play sports, so he has picked up more of an interest in playing and even enjoys watching them on tv. I don't know what it is about it, but I absolutely love watching Davey play and explore with his buddies. I guess it just reminds me of how sweet, fun and innocent childhood is.

I Need Mary Poppins

Apparently my house-keeping has been slipping lately (no secret, really), so much so that the past few days every time Davey notices my cleaning up he comments, "Somebody's coming over." Ugh.

All Planes go to Michigan

This past Saturday Dave's group at work had a barbecue. I wasn't sure we'd be going, but when I heard it would be held in his co-worker's husband's airplane hangar, I knew we couldn't miss it. Davey just loves spotting airplanes and even hears them overhead while we're at home. When he's playing at the park, he's always the one pointing his finger up to the sky shouting "Airplane!" at the top of his lungs over and over until the other kids get excited enough too to join in.

Dave's boss and his wife are so sweet and when we got there, scooped Davey right up and brought him outside to watch the planes take off and land. Since it was the weekend, all of the airplane hobbists were having a grand old time taking off, doing tricks, fly-bys and landing again. There was no shortage of excitement for Davey as he exclaimed for each one and determined their color (I was glad to hear he was getting them right).

Later I was chatting with Betty (the Boss' wife) and she was asking how Charlie was doing and do we still have family here from California. I said that my mom had gone home and that she was actually from Michigan. She said, "Okay, that's why Davey kept saying all the planes are going to Michigan." He can't wait to get on one again himself and go see everyone. He has also been learning about the kinds of planes and was pointing out to me that these were not jet planes.

The funny thing about the night was that as excited as Davey was to watch the airplanes, he was hesitant about getting in the cockpit of our host's plane.

There was also a pretty cool tractor Davey got to sit on, and he was even promised that he could come back to help cut the grass!

Thankfully, Charlie slept the whole time so we were all able to enjoy ourselves. It was nice to meet a lot of the people that Dave is always talking about.

Wings

Yesterday at naptime I added a new lullabye to the repertoire, called "Wings." It's a sweet song that talks about giving your child wings to be able to accomplish his dreams. After I finished the song, Davey looked up at me and sweetly said "Give you wings?" It was sweet to know he was listening.

After he woke up and we came downstairs, he asked me, "Mommy have wings?" When I said no, he threw himself on the couch, crying and exclaiming, "Aaaaw! Davey want wings!" I guess he was really listening and took me at my word when I sang, "If I could, I would give you wings..." He just didn't know I can't, literally anyway.