One-month-old!

Guess who turned one-month-old on Friday! Time flies when you are having fun...and really sleep-deprived :-) We have really enjoyed "Baby Blake" and look forward to what the coming months bring!

Our baby boy is a big boy! At-home weight measurements have him around 12 pounds already! And he's getting close to maxing out size 0-3 months clothes and size 1 diapers!
Here are some things we have learned about baby brother over the last month:

He is very observant! Objects that get his attention are the ceiling fan, the folds in the couch, and the blinds. He is tracking objects, and he really looks at us square in the eye now since his vision is getting better each day. He is a wee-bit crossed-eyed, and his left eye is a little droopy (pediatrician said this should work itself out).

He has an outtie belly button!

And he's starting to lose his hair on the top...looks like a receding hair line!

He likes his playmats (we have one upstairs and downstairs), and he will kick and grunt away as he plays!

He also does not mind his swing (thank goodness for an extra 10 minutes here and there!), and he does well in his bouncer and the car/carseat. We try to do tummy time several times a day on the play mat and boppy, and he is good at turning his head/neck side to side.

The boy is backwards: he hates being wet, but does not mind having a dirty diaper...
Blake has been doing a lot of this over the last month:

But more and more he is staying awake/alert for longer periods of time :-)

He will take 2-3 long naps during the day with a couple of cat-naps in there. If he is restless and really tired, he wants to suck to fall asleep. Thus, we introduced the paci! He did not take it at first, but now he does and we can hear him chomping away at it.

I started having him nap in his crib last week, and he does SO good in there that I put him in crib at night on Friday night. He is a loud sleeper because of all of his grunting! He has gone almost 5 hours only two or three times at night; otherwise, he is wanting to eat every 2-3 hours. There is something about the 4-6 pm hours that he does not like, and he is up and wide awake around 3 or 4 a.m. :-) We hope he drops these two tendencies soon. He wants to eat right when he wakes up, so we are starting to settle in an "Eat, Play, Sleep" routine.

He is cooing and gooing quite a bit these days! The boy wants to be heard, especially with a loud older brother in the house!

He also wants to be heard when he does not like something. Hence, he had a really loud cry! We hear it often when he is getting a new diaper and for the entire time he is getting a bath. And he cries hard :-( We have come to the conclusion that he does not like to be in the buff!

Just last week we saw him flash smiles a handful of times. It has not been consistent, so it could've been gas! Speaking of, the boy can burp and toot with the best of them! We are using Mylicon like it is going outta style! I have tried my best to cut back on dairy, and it seems to have helped a little.

We started bottles this past week since I go back to work in a month. And he did good with the Medela bottles that we already had. I would say he is getting about 3-4 ounces a feeding, around 8 times per day. He also has reflux and spits up A LOT. Poor little fella! We started him on Zantac two weeks ago, and it did not seem to help. So he has been on Prilosec less than a week now, which also doesn't seem to be helping much. We burp him a long as we need to and have tried elevated sleeping for him. We just want him to be more comfortable!

I did take one-month pictures with his stuffed animal, but my camera is being finicky and won't upload new pictures to the computer. But here's a cute one with big and little brothers!

We are so in love with little Blake Everett and thank God for him every day!

Grandkid Camp

This post is long overdue, but I could not NOT include it on the blog. I was waiting for the pictures from my in-laws, which I got about six weeks ago :-) Brett's parents took the four oldest grandchildren for the week of Spring Break (the same week of Brett's 30th). They have had three of them before, over the course of the week we were in Guatemala last summer. Since we aren't going to Guat this year, we did not want JW to miss out on "Grand-kid Camp," as we have labeled it. And the pictures clearly show that they had a BLAST!!

After church and lunch! About to get on the road to Austin 

How to you keep four kids entertained for four hours...DVD players! They had my brother and sister-in-law's new SUV for the trip, and you can bet the kids wanted to watch a couple of movies! Jameston was in for a treat...

Once they arrived in Austin, they hit the ground running! I mean scooting...

And had lots of playtime on the sandy hill

One morning after waking up, posing with Papa

Dressed for the day and raring to go!

Snack time!

Cousins with crazy hair! JW:

Little Miss Layne

Four kids finger-painting on the front porch!

Hilarious!

At the end of the week, they headed up to OK to drop Layne off first. And they had fun in the Wichita Mountains! 

Standing with Papa in front of the "World's Largest Rocking Chair"

Resting with Papap

Jameston and Riley

Posing with Granny!

Best.picture.ever! 

Thanks, Granny and Papa, for keeping our little fella along with his cousins! We sure missed him, but we know they made lots of long-lasting memories (and probably wore each other out)!

Blake's birth story (continued)

I know I briefly touched on Blake's birth day through the lovely BlogPress app on my phone, but I've finally uploaded the 100's of pictures from that day on the desktop. So I am ready to tackle the big feat and give all the details!

I may have been ready to post this a little sooner, if it had not been for a minor glitch in my recovery. I had planned to write a separate post about that (after I wrapped my head around what happened), but I have decided I do not want to really go into great detail. Let's just say that a complication from the c-section landed us back in the hospital (the ER to be exact) not two hours after we had been discharged from L&D---with a newborn. If you had asked me before we left the hospital my thoughts on the c-section process, I would have said, "The best decision I ever made!" However, since I had an issue with my recovery, I have second-guessed my decision to go that route. Enough about that...I am healing, and we have a healthy baby boy. We are so thankful and blessed beyond measure!

So, we had a c-section scheduled for Monday, April 30th, but I had told Brett all along that I thought baby boy would arrive before that. And he did! My blood pressure was up at my last prenatal visit on Friday, the 20th, so she wanted to see me that following Monday. I went in on the 23rd, and I was dilated to 2cm, and effaced 50%. I felt fine and went about my week, doing my best to "take it easy." Well, I went into full-nesting-mode that Tuesday night and baked a quiche and some banana bread (guess it was my body preparing for all of the family who would be coming in to stay with us? :-)

I went to work that Wednesday, the 25th (the day he was born!) and felt good (bags had been loaded in my car for about a week at that point), but I emailed Brett that morning saying that I didn't think it would be long. I started feeling some pretty intense back pain around 3 o'clock that afternoon. So, I called my doc, and she wanted me to go in to the hospital to get checked out, since I had started to show some progress just two days before. I called Brett, told him I would let him know what they told me at the hospital. I asked him to pick up Jameston from daycare and arrange for my sister to be at the house to keep Jameston just in case.

Well, on my 20-minute drive (north on 75 at 4:00 in the afternoon :-) I started noticing that the "pain" was coming and going, about every 6-8 minutes. It was then I realized I was probably in labor, so I called Brett to have him meet me at the hospital (and he arranged for my brother-in-law to pick up Jameston).

I walked in and up to the 3rd flood and checked in. Don't know why they have you pre-register because there is still TONS of paperwork to complete (that you really don't want to when you are in labor)! Anywho, after about 15 minutes of filling out paperwork with quickly intensifying contractions, I was taken to a room and got dressed in the lovely hospital gown. They checked me, and I was 3cm dilated and 90% effaced. That is when my awesome nurse, Olivia, said, "We are having this baby today!" Brett arrived about 15 minutes later excited as could be! In between contractions, we discussed our game plan (although we had gone over different scenarios before): whether we would have Jameston come up that night or the next morning, who all to call, etc. etc. I went through labor (contractions sped up to every 3 minutes apart) without an epidural for about an hour and half...then my water broke. And they wheeled me into the OR for the c-section.

Here we go!

He's here!

So in love!

Jameston came up to the hospital that night to meet his baby brother. He loved getting to see and hold him! Now his behavior since is a whole other post in itself!

Proud big brother!

Blake passed his hearing screening the next morning :-)

Jameston came up to the hospital again that next morning to see Blake. He was excited!

Time with Daddy:

Pops and Gigi also made it the the hospital the night of Blake's arrival and a couple of time after that. High five, Pops!

My three boys!

Jameston also received a gift from Blake: a "little Buzz" Lightyear, as he calls him. He was ecstatic!

And he was sure to give Blake a teddy bear lovie that he picked out himself in return. So sweet!

Headed home!

Our family of four

Getting checked out by Dr. Poole the following Monday, at five-days old

We are so in love with our newest blessing and feel so blessed to have another healthy boy! Next up: Blake's one-month write-up :-)