Sore throats, coughing, and sleepless nights!

Over the past few days all of us have been suffering from one or more of the above ailments. Poor Michael has had them all as one causes the other! Wesley has been coughing a lot and I have had the sore throat! Well, we have been drinking lots of water and doing whatever we can to get better! I have especially been trying to stay healthy so that I do not have to take any meds that could do anything to Lani through my breast milk. I am sure that it would be minimal but why take the chance? She has managed to stay healthy through all of this, thank goodness! I guess it’s true what they say about nursed babies! She is a healthy one. We all are feeling better now so maybe I can have the Hubby back in my bed tonight?!? He’s been camping out on the couch so that his coughing does not disturb our light sleeping babe!


On Thursday, Wesley has his first school “Holiday” concert! It is at the new high school in Alton! It should be interesting to see how he reacts to being in front of that many people! This brings me back to his toddler room graduation into the preschool room at a center that I worked at. He walked out onto the stage with his finger in his mouth looking down at the ground. He suddenly realized that there were more people than just his Mommy and Daddy watching him get ready to sing “Mr. Alligator”. His bottom lip started to quiver and I went up onto the stage with him before the tears started rolling. I helped him finish the song and get his little certificate. He has obviously grown a lot since then but he still has bouts of anxiety and I hope it does not decide to bubble up to the surface this Thursday. He has been practicing his 3 songs daily:: LET IT SNOW, FROSTY, and a turkey song that I have never heard of!


The new little boy that I am going to be watching is coming to hang out with me for a few hours tomorrow. He is almost 3 months and according to his mom “is not easily pleased”. Hmm… should be interesting. At least she was honest with me so that I am not expecting this sweet perfect baby and all I get is a fussy, cranky one! I’ll be sure to post a photo of him because he is so cute! Maybe that will make his unhappiness forgivable?!? I hope his Mom is doing well tonight knowing that she is going to leave her little baby for the first time! She has been over a few times to visit with him so that it will hopefully be a little easier for her!

Lani is 5 months old!

Lani turned 5 months old today. We spent the day Christmas shopping and took these photos almost right at the time that she was born. She has grown so much in the past month. She has begun to interact with the things and people around her. When we put our face down close to hers she will grab at us. She especially loves to get Michael’s goatee. In these photos she discovered that she has feet. She was watching them wiggle. Her favorite game is peek-a-boo which makes her giggle like crazy. It seems that she is also developing stranger anxiety. Someone will talk to her in a restaurant or store and she will get a pouty face and then start crying. I did notice that people with glasses bring on more fear.


Lani is still sleeping well at night. There are some nights that she will wake up around 2am for a quick feeding and then she goes right back to sleep. Something that is helping her sleep better during the day is her pacifier. She now takes her “buppy” instead of her Mommy when she needs to be comforted. (Buppy=pacifier::This is what Leah called her pacifier as a baby and it has stuck with the family since then)As a nursing Mom it is very easy to feed the baby to console them. This led to Lani constantly wanting to nurse and needing to nurse to fall asleep. I was beginning to go nuts with this because it was about every 1 1/2 to 2 hours that I was doing this. Now she will use the buppy for comfort and goes longer between feedings. It is a relief to no longer be a “human pacifier”.


We will be going to the doctor on December 11th so I will have the latest numbers on her height and weight then!


Soon we will be getting out the Christmas decorations and cutting down a tree. We are still trying to figure out where we are going to put this tree in our already crowded living room. We are going to have to find a place to temporarily keep all the baby equipment. We are excited to introduce Lani to our holiday traditions and create some new ones.

Peas Please

Lani has been slowly trying out fruits and veggies mixed with cereal. We started out once a day and now she usually has a little twice a day. It has been hard for me to get photos because I am always the one feeding her. Today Michael was home and had the chance. So, I snapped these photos of her eating peas. She was spitting the plain peas and cereal at us so I mixed in a little pears to make it seem more familiar to her. She munched it all down. Feedings are beginning to become messier as she enjoys grabbing the spoon and sucking her thumb while I am feeding her. I’ve read to let babies explore so that they become more comfortable with the food. But I am not so sure how comfortable I am with the gigantic mess that I have to clean twice a day and all the extra clothes that I have to wash. If it was warmer I would strip her right down!

Happy Turkey Day!

Here are the kiddos right before we headed out to Michael's parents

Grammy made a yummy turkey for us all to enjoy. Lisa and Cheryl also added to the dinner with some delicious side dishes. As we sat down to dinner, Leah read a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. When I get the words I will post them because it was really sweet.

I know that I over stuffed my self as I always do every year. Last year I was suffering from “all day sickness” when little Lani was in my belly so I had to eat double to make up for how little I ate last year! After dinner everyone spread around the house to relax after the tryptophan kicked in. Jenna used my camera and captured these moments below.

Michael and Lani enjoy some cuddle time after dinner. She was tired as we set down to eat so I was prepared to miss turkey while I put her to sleep, but I put her in the car seat next to us and she fell right to sleep while we were eating.

Dear Santa...

Wesley began his letter to Santa tonight. It was amazing to see him writing the whole letter by himself. He took the time to sound out the words and write carefully so Santa could read what he wanted. I love the Holidays and the writing of this letter gave me the itch to start decorating. This means that Michael will have to go down in the basement to drag out all the Christmas decorations.Wesley loves to help place all the Christmas gear around the house. It is hard to explain the excitement that I feel during this time of the year. It does get stressfull because I tend to be a last minute shopper or I get all these BIG ideas to make for people. It usually ends in me getting overwhelmed and not making anything.

Our New Bumbo Seat

This is Lani’s favorite place to hang out now. She loves to be sitting up and when the baby that I watch brought his Bumbo seat Lani tried it out. She loved it but we didn’t have the forty dollars in our budget for it. So I took a look on Ebay and found this one and got it for $28. I was psyched. These Bumbo seats are awesome. She can sit right up in it and be totally supported. It took us a while to get it but here it is and she was just as excited as I was. I cleaned it really well and when she woke up from her nap we tried it out. You can tell by these photos that she is very happy with out latest purchase! Gotta love Ebay!

Tummy Time

Lani has never enjoyed her “tummy time” very much but we have always encouraged it for small amounts of time during her day. As her ability to hold her head up gets stronger she has been happily playing on her tummy for a longer time. Along with that has come lots of drool. I deleted many photos because there was a beautiful, shiny drop of drool streaming from her chin! She has been working on one of her bottom teeth. There is a tiny bit of it popping through. I am sure that is contributing to the drool!

Lani is beginning the process of rolling over. She gets about this far then gets extremely frustrated gives up and rolls onto her back.

She has also discovered her hands. She has always sucked on them but now she notices as they pass in front of her eyes. She pauses for a moment and studies them intently before proceeding to bat at a toy or suck her fingers. I love the look of wonder and amazement in her eyes.

Trick or Treat

We all went trick or treating with our neighbors Jen, Dave, and their kids. We took their truck and Lani sat in her car seat up front with Jen and I. The kids sat in the back with Michael and Dave. Where we live the houses are pretty far apart so we take the truck to keep this kids from getting too tired.

By the end of the night Wesley’s bag was too full to carry so we ended the night on a high note, and a hyper one. Wesley was so wound up from running around and the excitement that Halloween brings. When we finally got home and started to settle into our nightly routine he has a breakdown and cried for no apparent reason until Michael settled him into bed. They had their evening talk and then he finally calmed down and fell sound asleep.

He went through all of his candy at Jen and Daves and picked out the ones he couldn’t have because of his sealants and the ones he just didn’t care for. He also took out all of the reeses for Daddy because he doesn’t like peanut butter. That has become somewhat of a tradition since Wesley first started going out on Halloween.

So, at the end of the night he came home with too much candy that we will end up throwing most of it away because there is no way that he can eat it all. But all in all we had a fun evening watching Wesley run from house to house with too much energy!!!