At the end of the rainbow...

...this is what I'd find in my pot of gold. 

Happy St Patty's! Hope your day is full of smiles!

I Spy...

...a phone! Can you find it? (Look in the bottom left corner you and will see a little bit of the camera sticking out.) So tonight when we got home I couldn't find my phone, which isn't all that unusual. I really thought that I'd brought it in with me and left it in the kitchen, though, so I used Ryan's phone to call mine. And, wouldn't you know, I heard it ringing, in the kitchen, in th seat with my sleeping baby. I Spy is one of Aiden's favorite games these days...I'm not sure if he was trying to play it with me or just really thought that Soph had some calls to make. Ah, life with a toddler. 

According to Aiden

Part of my conversation with Aiden this morning on the way to daycare:

Aiden: Look at those clouds! They're beau-diful. 

Me: Who made those clouds?

Aiden: God

Me: Yeah! And what else did God make?

Aiden: Birds, trees, branches. Light bulbs. 

Me: Well, Thomas Edison actually made light bulbs. 

Aiden: Thomas Medicine?

Yup. Thomas Medicine. 

Love Me Some Aiden!

Sophia is more emotional with her brother than anyone else. No one else can make her belly laugh....and no one else can make her scream, just when she looks at him. It's almost always the sweetest thing to watch the two of them interact. Ryan took this video of Soph watching Aiden on the trampoline the other week. It may be one of my most favorite videos in all the world....and, being the corny mother I am, I could happily watch it on repeat. Hope it brings a smile to your face too!

(Only downside of this fun video......Aiden now thinks shrieking in his sister's face is a fabulous idea...)

Four (Pretty Fabulous) Months

Sophia Raye turned four months old on Sunday. Four crazy months! Aiden is only a couple months shy of being three year old. Three years! What's the point of my repetitive exclamations? That time passes absolutely, incredibly, too fast. My babes need to slow it down. I asked Aiden the other day if he could just stop growing, and I'm pretty sure he told me no. I bet I could convince him if I gave him enough candy.....or applesauce...or yogurt. Maybe plenty of oranges. Food is really the key to that kid's heart.

Sophia celebrated her monthly birthday by rolling over (back to tummy) on Saturday - wanted to squeeze it in while she was still 3 months old. Her weight loss last month has her weighing in at 10lbs 11oz....a solid 4th percentile. (Now maybe the excited bottle post makes a little more sense...) Her height was 24inches, which was in the 40th percentile. She did so much better at shots this time, compared to her 2 month visit. She was distracted almost the entire time with her froggy rattle. If food is the way to Aiden's heart, rattles might be the current way to Sophia's.

Sadly, little miss is not a cuddle bug. She's always trying to be on
the go...attempting to sit or straighten her legs and stand or just
kicking, kicking, kicking.

But it doesn't quite work out the way she'd like yet....she ends up
 like this or face down. You can just see how thrilled she is.

I couldn't get her to look at the camera for anything....

...but, in one of his first camera handling moments, Aiden snapped
 multiple with her staring right at him! Loves her some brother.

A Bottle! A Bottle!

Do you ever chuckle at the things that make your adult self excited? Most recently I found myself ecstatic over bottles - and more specifically bottle nipples. And when I came down from the cloud that is reserved for moms who've found a solution to a baby who refuses to be bottle fed and is shrinking in size as a result, I laughed at my happy self. Really, it's the idea that we never know what the future will hold, and if you'd told the Courtney from 10 years ago, or even 2 years ago, that bottle nipples would bring her great joy one day, she would have made a face at how dumb that idea was. But, alas, it's the happy place we currently find ourselves in.

Short version. Sophia took a bottle at 6 weeks, and when we tried again at 9 weeks, it was complete refusal. And so we tried this, that, and the other but couldn't get anything to work. (Different bottles, different feeding positions, sippy cups, spoon feeding (which she didn't seem to mind too much, btw -  my ridiculous little babe who wanted to be spoon fed her milk). We dipped the bottle nipple in sugar water. The girl didn't care for a thing. Ryan's mom stayed with us for a week and got her to take 2.5-4.5oz a day from the bottle without screaming the entire time so I decided to consider that as much success as we were going to have and take it. (And by take the bottle, I mean she would either just let it drip into her mouth, so it took an hour to give her an ounce, or she would gum it in the middle of her mouth...never a latch).

After Dotty's success, I was mildly optimistic about daycare. Day one - survived. Day two - everyone (ok, Soph, Mommy, and the daycare workers) were in tears. We finished out the week with her choking down 4.5oz a day without too much of a fight, and on Saturday we headed to the doc to see if this lack of eating was affecting her weight....and it was. (I should note that she was also so tired when she got home in the evenings, she just wanted to sleep and not really eat.) 'No nursing until you figure out the bottle', the doctor told me. (Cue lots of sad faces). I left feeling pretty down - and with the latex bottles nipples they'd provided in hand.

Later that day I broke out the bottle, with the latex nipple on top, and braced myself for the usual fight. But the strangest thing happened. She sucked that bottle into her mouth and took it like that's what she'd been doing all of her little life. And she continued to do that at every feeding for the next two days. Every.Feeding. I know you don't understand the magnitude of this moment because I gave you the short version of the story, but trust me when I say it was a monumental moment. Pretty sure I called/texted/facetimed entirely too many people with this news. (An ENORMOUS thank you to my mother for suggesting that we give latex a try...never even crossed my mind.)

So now Soph happily takes 7.5oz of milk at daycare and hopefully at her next weight check on Saturday, we will be reassured all is well. I got excited just writing all this down. See, the things that excite our future selves may be something we never dreamed of....Now if only I can get Soph to swap her thumb for a latex pacifier....

Matching tie dye, thanks to Miss Jess! (Aiden was not in picture mode so
this is as good as it got.) Pretty sure Pup is wishing for her tie dye and tutu...

Love her some tutus!

Daycare day 1 (don't get too caught up in Soph's excitement...)

Day 2 of daycare...before the disaster of tears set in.
Aiden's super sweet self insists on holding her hand in pictures.

Very Belated Christmas Wishes, A Little Less Belated Happy New Year...

...and a slightly delayed happy 3 months to my little girl! (I actually took the picture on the 1st but I didn't weigh her until tonight so her 11lbs even is probably a few ounces more than she weighted 5 days ago.) Is this belated business my new blogging approach? Unfortunately, that appears to be the case, at least for the time being. Soooo, check back every now and again, but don't hold too high of expectations. I know I set the bar high with my bi-monthly posts previously, but try to drop it a little lower. :)

We hope you had a beautiful, blessed Christmas, full of good times and memories that carry over into this new year!

All the kiddos got moustaches as gifts to pass out to everyone in the fam.

Matching camo Christmas pjs!

This is her cute 3 month pic.....

....but her day actually went more like this. One of those
spurt things/my schedule keeps changing/I hate the bottle/
will there ever be any sort of normal in my life kind of days.