Stay with us sleeping baby...

While Shelby and I were out of town Lennon slept late each morning for my mom.  He didn't get up before 6 45 at all and a couple of mornings he slept until 7 45!!!  Monday when we were home he slept until 7 30, but then tuesday he got up at 7.  Today he woke at 6 45 and that is fine, but I am praying that he will not go back any further than that.  6 45 is GLORIOUS!  compared to the 4:45 or 5 am wake up he was doing before this weekend, and I want it to stay!  Please please Lennon keep it up!  I cannot believe I ever complained about Mia's wake up time of 8.  I would give anything to sleep until 8 every morning.  Why do I love sleeping so much?  Thanks so much Mom for keeping the kids for us to go away for the weekend!  

Playdoh

We went to this thing at the library today where we made our own playdoh.  Mia and Mateus worked together to mix and make the stuff and then all four kiddos played with it.  It was Lennon's first time to play with playdoh.  I would not have thought about letting him so early, but he seemed to really think it was cool.  He had a measuring cup, a really large bowl and a small glob of the dough and he was just moving the glob from container to container and back to his hand and so on.  He was having a really good time.  Bianca definitely tries to say Lennon now, she says "lele."  It's sooo cute!  They had lots more hugs today.  When we got home Mia and Lennon sat at the kitchen table and probably played with playdoh for about another 30-45 minutes.  It was soo cool.  I cooked about a million meals today so that my mom wouldn't have much cooking to do while she's here for the weekend with the kids and Lennon and Mia were having so much fun together.  It's so exciting!  I hope he does well with Gaga this weekend.  It's the first time I've ever been away from him for a whole night.  He is still nursing about two times a day right now and I'm not sure how he's going to take this whole separation thing.  I guess we'll see.  I sure will be happy to see him monday morning when he wakes up!  

A WEEK OF FIRSTS

This past week brought several firsts for our kids.  Lennon celebrated his first birthday.  I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but we sliced strawberries on top of a piece of whole grain sandwich bread at breakfast time and put a candle in the middle and sang "Happy Birthday."  Mia and Lennon both thought it was pretty cool.  He sort of blew on the candles - he does the sign for "hot" now - put he didn't get them out.  The rest of the day was pretty average.  We went to a park in the morning where we met up with Jessica, Ella and Diva and they gave Lennon a pair of handmade leather baby shoes from the country fair in Oregon.  They are so cute and look super comfy!  After his first nap we went over to Amy's house and hung out with Lennon's baby friend Bianca as well as Mateus, Miranda and Michael.  Bianca is now about 20 months and she LOVES Lennon.  Whenever she sees him she runs to him and gives him big hugs.  This particular day he also went up to her and gave her hugs.  It is the cutest thing ever.  He has actually started giving lots of hugs.  It's always on his terms though.  He gives Mia the most hugs probably and then he sometimes chooses a random stranger to hug.  Like on Thursday we went to the Science Museum with Mia's friend she made in Plymouth, Nicole, and while we were there Lennon went up to this random man who was there with his kids and gave him a big bear hug around his knees.  The man was caught off guard and thought it was totally sweet.  It was pretty funny.  

Another first this week was Lennon's inaugural trip to Breakheart Reservation where we had Mia's 5th birthday party.  We went there all the time before he was born but hadn't been back since.  He had a great time.  The water was the perfect temperature and he had a blast dropping stuff in the water and retrieving it and playing in the sand.  Mia and Mateus spent a lot of time digging a channel that Lennon and Biance spent a lot of time sitting in.  

This week we also had Shelby's annual company picnic.  This year it was at The Museum of Science.  So, yes if you are paying attention that means we nerds went to the museum on thursday and on friday.  It was great though.  The food was awesome and they had tons of toys bought from the museum store for the kids to play with during the picnic.  The kids both had fun and Mia made a new friend named Maia (maya.)  

Our last first of the week was Mia's first guitar lesson with Shelby on her new pink guitar.  It was a little rough starting because she has a hard time doing things that she isn't instantly good at, but in the end she was really enjoying it.  She practiced more after dinner and then again sunday morning.  Tonight when Shelby was on the phone with Dusty Mia asked to play what she had learned for Dusty.  It was pretty cool watching her sit down and play guitar with Shelby.  

I am finally starting to feel like I have two kids rather than one kid and a difficult baby.  They are really starting to interact and Mia and I are able to do more and more while Lennon is around playing with his toys.  We read a few days ago for about 45 minutes while Lennon played nearby with various toys.  He is really loving dogs right now and we're pretty sure he says "daaawwg"  when he sees them.  He is also definitely doing several signs now.  He does the sign for food, more, hot, fish, he gives high five and he has started walking back to his bedroom and basically asking to go down for naps.  He's having a blast communicating with us.  He will clap his hands anytime someone says patty cake and he gets a big grin on his face.  He no longer hates his car seat.  He does great in the car.  We've also been going on lots of walks lately around the neighborhood and he seems to enjoy those as well.  Mia likes to point out which houses she would like to live in, but tonight she said she liked the area our house was in better than the other houses because we have a nice view of "the forest."  She likes to jog during our walks and we talked about starting to jog in the mornings before Shelby goes to work.  She's so much fun.  We spent the last hour and a half she was up tonight organizing her vast collection of jewelry in her bedroom tonight.  She mentioned several times how much fun she was having.  It was so nice to hear her unsolicited enjoyment of such a mundane task.  I will bask in it as long as it lasts.  

You know sometimes when you just have that realization that your life is sooo beyond awesome and that you are so lucky to be where you are and have what you have.  I am totally having that today.  I know I don't live in a super fancy house or anything, but I love it and we don't have tons of money, but we definitely have everything we need and more and such a wonderful supportive loving family and it just rocks!  My kids are awesome, my husband is awesome (he has been getting up with the kids every morning again and letting me get some extra sleep) among other things.  I am just really lucky and I'm happy that I can realize that because I think a lot of people don't ever realize it.  I love all of you who are reading this and I can't wait to see most of you in Texas in just a couple of weeks. 

All Clear For Now

Lennon's rash wasn't any worse this morning so for now we are going ahead and assuming that both kids are well.  One thought I had was that possibly Lennon is getting my bodies antibodies to the virus right now since he is still nursing.  I have no idea if that's true or not, but I know it works that way with other stuff.  Supposedly from the skin to skin contact you get when you are nursing your body develops antibodies to anything that the baby might have and then the baby gets them through the milk.  Also if you are exposed to something at the same time as the baby it works in sort of the same way.  I am going to run that past my doctor and see what he says, but for now I will at least worry a little less cause it seems like it might make sense.  

On another note, Mia and Lennon are starting to be soo cute together.  He will just toddle over to her and bury his head in her and give her the biggest hug ever.  She is loving it and has remarked several times recently how much she loves having a brother.  Yesterday she said, "I'm so glad we have Lennon.  Aren't you?  I prayed and prayed for a sister, but at least I got a brother.  And he is so cute!"  

Stay Tuned...

We found another rashy area on Lennon today.  I'm still hopeful that it is just a regular old diaper rash, but we'll have to wait and see in the morning if it is better or worse.  

Rashes and Blisters and Pain, Oh My!

For those of you who I haven't talked too already, I have shingles!  And for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a form of the chicken pox virus.  Anyone who has ever had chicken pox is susceptible to breaking out with it at some point.  Basically it started out like an itchy splotch that I thought was some kind of bug or spider bite.  It has now turned into painful blisters all over my chest, back and under my left arm.  It's not that big of a deal except that if you have not had chicken pox you can catch it from someone who has shingles.  

Now, if you had asked me two weeks ago how I felt about my kids getting chicken pox I would have said, "no big deal.  Everyone used to get chicken pox.  I've had it, all my brothers and sister and husband and his brothers and everything had it.  Everybody has had it, it's no big deal."  Well, suddenly the possibility of it is looming over head and it's a little unnerving.  It's not so much that I'm concerned about the actual disease, although there are complications in about 1 in every 1000 people to get it, as it is I just don't want to basically be responsible for the suffering of my kids and also we are flying to Texas in a couple of weeks and after doing a little internet research I found that they will not let you fly if you have active chicken pox.  Which sort of brings me back to one of my basic objections to the chicken pox vaccine in the first place.  If you've had the vaccine and you are on that plane it shouldn't be a concern and if you've had the disease it also shouldn't be a concern cause you would be immune.  I'm not saying I think you should be able to fly with chicken pox, I know that's crazy.  I'm just saying they maybe should do a little more work on the vaccine before unleashing it on the public.  Anyway, the point is.  I have shingles and if my kids come into contact with one of the blisters they could get chicken pox and we won't be able to fly to Texas.  

That being said, I am being super careful.  As careful as I really can be considering where the blisters are.  With Lennon still nursing it presents a particularly tricky problem.  I am having to just be sooo careful when he nurses and wear shirts that fully cover my arms and chest at all times.  During the hottest summer month this is especially fun.  Yesterday we had a little scare.  I noticed during Lennon's bath that he had a bit of a rash under his chin on his chest.  He has been prone to skin irritations since birth and under different circumstances I wouldn't have thought twice about this rash, but I then showed it to Shelby and he seemed convinced that it was indeed chicken pox.  I honestly thought it was probably heat rash or something cause he's had it many times in the past, but still was a little worried about possibly dealing with a baby with chicken pox for the next 10 or so days.  I decided I would take him in to the doc this morning just to check it out.  Luckily, when he woke up the rash was almost totally gone.  Disaster averted!  The bad news is that even though that was not chicken pox, there are still plenty of days left that I will be contagious.  Here's hoping the kids don't get sick now and we get to come to Texas as planned in August!

The Mia Show

Some of what she learned in gymnastics last term.