Gannon, 2 months

sweet baby Gannon.

you are two months old already!?! the time seems to move faster and faster by the day.

so much has changed in just one short month.

lets see... 

*you grew a TON. i swear around 6 weeks old you must have grown 2 lbs and 2 inches overnight. you changed from looking like a newborn to a chubby round baby!

i love your features - your sparkly eyes, chubby cheeks, round face & sweet dimple in your cheek.

*you are flailing those little legs and fits around like crazy, and you will grab anything you can hold on to when i'm holding you.

*you are smiling more and more each day, and as of 7-8 weeks old you started becoming very attentive...follow our gaze and stare for long periods of time, big smiles & lots of cooing. whenever I say "say mama", you give the biggest smile along with a coo, as if you are really trying to say mama :)

*you are still a very fussy baby for the most part. you like to be held all day long and like to pace around the house while being held. if we stop moving or try to put you down, you protest instantly.

*you still don't have much of a schedule at all. some days you will be up for almost 12 hours straight with a few 5-10 minutes naps, and other days you will sleep almost the whole day & just waking up to nurse. although, no matter what your schedule is like during the day, you are still a good sleeper at night. you are generally ready for bed for the night around 8 or so and will sleep until 3-4am, wake up to nurse, and go back to sleep til around 7am. you refuse to go back down in your bassinet after the 3am feeding, so you snuggle with us the rest of the morning until we get up.

*you still put up with your big brother grady being in your face all day long. he sure loves you. lots of kisses and baby talk from that boy ;) even drew has started paying more attention to you. he will just quietly walk by and give you a kiss or poke on the head and keep going - that's big for him :)

you had your 2 month well baby checkup today and are snoozing right now...i'm sure the shots will wear you out a bit! we found that you still have a soft murmur, which will hopefully not get worse over time. we are also going to try some medicine in case you have reflux - i'm not sure if that's the case, but it's worth a shot. you also have laryngealmalacia (basically a floppy airway that makes your breathing sound awful), but that should start improving in time as well. the awesome news is that you are groing like a champ and seem very healthy otherwise!

I thought it would be fun to do a little comparison of you and your brothers at this age :) I pulled some pictures of them at two months off our old computer. It will be fun to see who you resemble (or not) as you grow over time. I see a little of both of them in you at times. Overall I think you look more like Grady, but you're definitely your own little person as well :)

Love you little G <3

Gannon's 2 month stats:

13lbs (72%) & 23.75in (81%)

Drew at 2 mo:                               Grady at 2mo:

11lb 2.5oz & 22.5in                          13lbs  & 23.5in.

the many faces of little G

i would be lying if i said that gannon has been an easy baby... 

he is mr. cranky pants most of the time.

but, it's moments like these that warm my heart. and when i see these little smiles and smirks, i just melt. over and again.

love him <3

the room situation...

we've had a few changes with rooms and sleeping arrangements since we moved to SD nearly a year ago. drew has always had his own room. grady has always had his own room. a couple months before drew was born, we moved the crib out of grady's room into what would be drew's nursery. we repainted & decorated grady's room & put up a twin bed. being just about 18 months old, we were expecting that the transition may not be easy, so wanted to start it before drew was born. well, the first night, grady stayed in his bed - the. whole. night...didn't get out once! literally, didn't even climb out of his bed, let alone the room. we were thrilled. it continued this way for the next 2 years. 

well, then we moved to SD and didn't have a house initially, so grady went from sleeping in a spare bedroom, to sleeping with me, or jon, or both...it varied by the night. (and drew slept in his crib in the basement living room). so much had changed so quickly & he was having a hard time adjusting, so we let it go - saying we will get back into routine when we buy a house. well, we bought a house, but it didn't get easier. he still wanted to sleep with mom and dad, and it's been a fight nightly. and now by this time, expecting another baby, drew and grady would need to share a room very soon. we have been hoping grady would find his room more appealing if his brother was in there with him. however, we've been dragging our feet now transitioning drew from his crib to a twin bed in a new room. a new bed AND a new room ... i was dreading it. change his even more difficult for autistic children. so, we had planned to do it before gannon was born, but that didn't happen. i have felt safer with drew in a crib. with him being autistic, he is also quiet as a mouse sometimes...and wanders. i've had nightmares of him wandering out of his room at night if he isn't confined by a crib. (we are now planning other ways of preventing that). but, we had to do it. 

so, we completely re-docorated drew's {old} room, into what is now gannon's awesome nursery. and as of three nights ago, drew was kicked out & is now sharing a room with his big brother! and grady isn't as opposed to being in there anymore. yes, he'd still rather fall asleep downstairs and then be moved, and yes there are still nights we have a little baby & grady in our bed, but oh well - it's getting better little by little.

and how'd drew's transition go? AWESOME! he has followed suit... we put him in his new bed, with lambie, all his blankets, giraffe and spongebob, and he didn't get out once. SO so so proud of him! we are on night three and he's gone to bed each time like it's nothing new... and he's even been taking naps in there too - how did I get so lucky? am i jinxing myself by saying that was way too easy?!

well, I'll take it for now ;)

okay so sorry for the long winded story... what's a blog post without some pictures?

Drew's first night in his big-boy bed...

 grady & drew's room that we finished decorating a couple months ago.

and gannon's finished nursery...  

i was planning on keeping drew's lambie-themed nursery in place for gannon as well. but i was kind of bored with blah-beige colors. i wanted some color! and, being the 3rd boy, gannon doesn't get a lot of stuff of his own...so he deserves his own "new" space.

this was mostly all pinterest-inspired :)  the bird-feeder i found a craft store, painted, and hung from the ceiling. the bird mobile, my mom and i hand-sewed and put together...it was a little more work than i had anticipated, but gannon LOVES it, so it's worth it. and the "G" wall hanging - i bought a canvas, covered it with a chevron sheet i found at target, painted the G and glued it on. we had no space for it left on the wall when all was done, so jon thought of screwing it to the crib - i love it! the rest was from various places - a local furniture store, etsy, poppy tree frames, amazon, land of nod, and nordstrom. the grey and teal walls i wasn't so sure about at first, but the tree/bird decals (which were a horrible pain in the ass to put up) made it all work together. hope that little boy likes some color! he's just about grown out of his bassinet in our room, so will be sleeping in there sooner than i'd like :(

frames from poppy tree frames. love them. the top one will be a baby's first year frame.

Gannon, 1 month

Okay kid, you are growing up WAY too fast on me.

ONE MONTH! 1/12/13

I feel like just yesterday you were born, and here we are now - over a month, a couple inches, and 2 1/2 pounds later...

I am trying to savor every moment of your newness before it's gone. We tend to look back and miss those things... the tiny baby, the cuddling, the sleepiness, the innocent preciousness (is that a word?) of a newborn...as I do, too, already. But truth-be-told...there is something to "miss" and long for in each stage of growing up. But for each thing I love about you now, I look forward to another new thing about you growing up. I hope I'm making sense... I loved you as a newborn, I love you even more at one month, and look forward to getting to know even more of your personality with each day that passes <3

So, "little" G...

1 month:

*9.6lbs

*you nurse every 30 minutes to 3 hours...hence the 9.6 pounds :)

*you SMILED your first real smile at exactly one month

*you are still a super snuggler - would love to be held all.day.long. if possible

*if you are awake, you want to nurse. and nothing more...

*you fuss 99% of the time you are awake if not nursing. true story.

*the eat. sleep. poop. thing still holds true for you right now.

*you love your mama the most. you are okay with others as long as mom isn't around ;)

*you love pat-a-cake (that's what makes you smile)

*you have the most amazing dimple in your right cheek when you smile. i can't wait to see more of it.

*you tolerate all your big brother grady's sloppy kisses. and the way he talks baby talk to you, hehe.

*you HATE sleeping in your bassinet. you'd much prefer sleeping snuggled with mom all day and night, but that's not safe, so I get up and down with you 100 times a night trying to get you to sleep on your back in your bassinet...sometimes we have to settle for the bouncer chair. although, you are learning and adjusting-thank you :)

*you've gone from sleeping in 2 hours stretches at night to 3-5 hour stretches

*you are SO sweet & SO loved! <3

xoxo, Mom

5 weeks

grandma and her little loves

My mom came to visit this last week. It's funny how we live so much closer to her now, but now she's in AZ for the winter, so I still don't see her all that often. This is the first time she's been to visit since Gannon has been born, so she got to meet her newest grand-baby.
We all loved having her - especially Grady, who loves the non-stop attention :)  They painted, built planes and trains, made cake pops and other treats, baked and cooked. Grady of course tried many things he never would with me (why is it that kids always eat so much better for other people!?). He was also super excited to show her around his preschool classroom!
We are trying to talk her and my step-dad into buying a place in/near Watertown, too...if they ever get tired of Spearfish anyway ;)
Anyway, I hardly had my camera out all week unfortunately, but these are a few favorites that I did take.

back yard sledding adventure

Confession: the kids have never been sledding (ahh!)...until today!

We've been wanting to take them out all year, but it's been SOOOOO cold! I know it's like nothing for some of you mid-westers to go out in sub-zero temps and be adventurous - but that's just not me. I've only been back in SD less than a year...gotta break me in easy to this crazy weather ;)

We actually haven't even got a lot of snow this year, but what we have got has stuck around for good.  And then, we finally got a decent day. It was about 30 degrees (but still windy as hell - my face was stinging cold. however, the boys didn't seem to mind one bit). What is it about kids? They don't care how cold it is - they just don't care...I went to pick Grady up from preschool last week & asked before I left if they'd be going outside so I could leave his boots and snow pants if needed - they said no. So, I come to pick him up and he's sliding down an ice hill in ZERO degree weather. 0. Aghhh.

Anyway. So we went sledding. Finally. In our backyard (which is awesome sledding for the kids - we use the empty neighbors lot as well which is a bit more steep). They had a blast! Grady wanted to go over and over. Drew went a couple times but decided to call it quits when he wiped out...haven't figured out how to teach him to hold on yet :( But he had just as much fun watching Grady slide down again and again. It made me smile just to watch them smile and giggle :)

And Grady and Jon built "Frosty" the snowman - which Grady keeps asking when he will melt. I informed him he'd probably stick around all winter ;) Or at least until March.. 

Now, we wait for another "decent" day to hit the hills again :)