A year of firsts...

First Christmas (and a white one at that!):

Jonah woke up at his usual time, around 6 and ate just like every other day.  We decided that Derek and I would open our gifts first, then we would let Jonah open his.  Of course, Jonah had to help daddy open his gifts...the paper was delicious!

And the ribbons were his favorite.

Jonah didn't care much about the snow that showed up Christmas Day...but it was still beautiful.

First Ear Infection :(

So much for Breastfeeding preventing ear infections.  Poor guy hadn't been sleeping well the week before Christmas, but I chaulked it up to him possibly teething since he acted fine during the day.  Two days prior to the holiday he was refusing to nurse, so I brought my light home and checked his ears.  Bingo, that was his problem.  Unfortunately we went through our first round of antibiotics, and it didn't work, so we are on our second round.  Cross your fingers!

First New Years:

Completely uneventful.  Jonah was in bed by 8 and Mama and Daddy were in bed by 10.  Good thing 2011 didn't care that we were sleeping and still showed up.  I am excited for 2011 and all of the new milestones and learning adventures that it will bring for my little man.

One Half Year

6 Months ago today I fell in love with the most precious little boy, whom we all thought was going to be a girl.  I secretly wanted a boy to be my first though ;)

He has grown so much in the past 6 months and I love watching him learn something new every day.  He has so much personality now, and his little gummy smile is just contagious.

As Christmas quickly approaches, it makes me think about all of the traditions we had growing up and the ones that I want to start with my family.  When my brother and I were little, our mom always took us downtown to see Legendary Santa.  We waited in a super long line every year to first see the Snow Princess, and then next to Santa who always knew our names before we even told him.  I guess the big guy really does know everything.  I decided to start the same tradition with Jonah this year.  We even got to watch Legendary Santa come down the chimney.   Here is some proof of our big day:

After visiting santa I was inspired to take more Christmas photos.  Here are my faves:

I am hoping to start some other traditions like yearly handprints on a table runner and reading The Night Before Christmas each year on Christmas Eve.  I also hope to buy him a yearly ornament, and let him pick out his own once he is old enough to do so. 

Jonah's life as a six month old is pretty exciting.  He is weighing in right at 17 lbs, which is right at the 50th percentile.  Much better than his four month time frame when he dropped to the 10th percentile. Yikes!

Jonah is sitting mostly by himself though after a few minutes he gets sorta tired, so I put him in the middle of the boppy pillow for some extra support.

Lots of smiles these days.  No teeth to accompany those smiles, which is ok with me I love his gummy smile :)

When he first sees Derek, Me or our babysitter, he gets a great big grin, grabs our cheeks and pulls our face to his.  So cute!

He is starting to babble.  So far we have gotten "da" "ga" and and attempt at "la".  It's a work in progress.

We introduced the sippy cup...he doesn't quite get it, but he sure looks cute trying!

Bathtime is hysterical.  Jonah splashes so much we often have to refill his tub atleast twice and whomever is giving him his bath should wear a rain coat because we get drenched!  But he has a ton of fun so it's worth it!

Jonah does well with independent play...for about 20 mins.  He will usually play with his toys, sit in his exersaucer or his jumper for about 20 mins then he wants your full attention before he moves on to another activity.  

When he is tired, he chews on his binky.

 

My little hot potato

The joys of being a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and the fun little germies that I bring home to my sweet little boy.  All week I had patients with a high fever and a upper respiratory infection (cough/runny nose).  Guess who my patient was over the weekend?  Yep that's right, poor little Jonah.

Started on Saturday with some infrequent coughing, then in the early afternoon he just was acting "off."  He wouldn't sleep well and was just kind of whining.  I felt him and thought he felt a little warm, not hot.  Maybe he had a low grade temp.  So out came the thermometer, and his temp was 102!!!  Poor guy, I felt horrible that I had no idea.  And come to think of it, we took a nap together and he felt warm while we were napping and he got all sweaty mid nap....DUH!!!! 

So he got some tylenol and his temp came down to low grade.  Then back up again to 101 after four hours, so he got another dose.  Then it was bedtime, I gave him a "cover" dose at 10 pm to keep his temp down while he slept.  Well that didn't do squat since his temp was 102 at midnight.  I sent the hubby out to get some Ibuprofen, even though Jonah is not supposed to have ibuprofen until he is 6 months old.  Since that is in two weeks, and I know that no magical fairies come and sprinkle 6 month magic dust on him, I gave it to him.  It worked great except he was just crabby from not feeling well.  So we "slept" together on the couch with me sitting upright and Jonah sleeping on my chest. 

Today went ok, just a low grade temp until this afternoon and it spiked to 102.8.  He was MISERABLE.  And I would be to with a temp that high.  The good news is that tonight so far he is doing well.  I am hopeful for a better night than last night. 

5 month zipidy do das...

Jonah is so much fun these days.  He loves to laugh and squeal and have a jolly good time.  It is so neat to see his personality develop.  He is growing so much every day and I love watching him learn. Here is what is going on in Jonah's little life these days....

**He rolls all over the place

**He loves to sleep on his tummy with a warm fuzzy blanket on top of him.  And you can never forget his "Hokie" which he loves to rub against his face as he is falling asleep.

**He has started eating solids in an effort to get some extra "muscle" on him since he spits up SO much its hard to keep weight on him.  So far he loves sweet potatos and peas the most.  He loves them all really, though carrots are not his favorite.

**He loves when I sing "You are my sunshine." It never fails that I can always calm him down with that.

** He still loves to watch TV.  Football and Sesame Street are his favorites.

**Jonah gets the BIGGEST, CHEESIEST grin when he sees one of us for the first time that day.  This completely melts my heart.  I love that he is learning who is who.

**Jonah's favorite toys are his "crunchie," his Pooh rattle, his barbell rattle and of course he still love his keys.  Most recently he loves chewing on one of my rubber spatulas.

**Recently in the bathtub he discovered his, eh hem, penis.  It apparently is a gender instinct to constantly make sure it didn't wander away.

**He also discovered his feet recently too.  He can just barely reach them...poor little short arms and legs.  I don't think he will be bringing those toes to his mouth any time soon.

** He still loves to rock in the rocking chair.

** His favorite books are anything Dr. Seuss.

Jonah's first cold :(

I figured that sooner or later he was going to latch on to one of the many germs that I bring home.  I also figured, that even though he is such a laid back baby that when he did get sick he would respond like his daddy does to illness and have a complete melt down. I was right. 

It started Friday night, I heard a few coughs when he was laying down, nothing major and he wasn't bothered by it.  I figured he was either catching a cold or his reflux was acting up so I gave him some Pepcid.  He woke up once Friday night, a little fussy but able to go back to bed.  A few coughs Saturday morning had me thinking it was a cold coming on.  Saturday night the poor guy woke up around midnight with a super stuffy nose and coughing.  I had to break out the bulb syringe, to which my four month old bug quickly informed me was a form of torture.  He thought he was dying.  I was confident that he was not so I proceded to get the slime out of his nose.  A few squeezes on the bulb syringe, and a dose of tylenol later his sweet little nose once again was clear and back to sleep he went until the morning. 

Since I have only had to vaccuum his nose once or twice, and the cough has disappeared.  Though he is intermittently irritable for no apparent reason, and he is prefering the bottle to nursing, I am hopeful that we are on the upswing of things!

4 Month Favorites

I cannot believe my sweet boy is four months old.  It's hard to imagine that 1/3 of his first year is over.  He is getting so big and so smart.  I love watching him learn new things every day. 

He is interacting with us so much more and his face just lights up when he sees us which warms my heart.

Special things about my boy at four months old:

**He is back to sleeping through the night, we had a rough month when I went back to work, but we figured out that he wasn't getting enough to eat during the day.  Once we fixed that he figured out he did not need to eat at night time.

** He loves to watch the Disney Channel in the mornings while I get ready.  He squeals and coos at the TV.  His favorites are Timmy Time, Agent OSO, and Handy Manny.  At day care he loves to watch Sesame Street, which was one of my favorites as a child too!

** We started cereal, and so far he loves it.  We decided to start cereal early because due to him not getting enough to eat during the day, he dropped weight percentiles at his four month check up.  Though based on his recent weight on my scale, we have him back where he is supposed to be!

** He loves to chew and play with his hands.  They have become his favorite companions.

** Jonah likes to grasp objects and bring them to his mouth to further explore them.  So far he enjoys his Sophie the Giraffe (a squeak toy that I paid WAY TOO MUCH for), his keys, and a rattle.

** Jonah Bug LOVES LOVES LOVES to just play on the floor in front of the TV.  You can hear him squealing and cooing all through the house.  Now he is rolling both ways, soon it will be impossible to keep track of him!

** He still prefers to sleep on his side

** He is enjoying listening to us read to him.  He often gets excited and starts kicking his feet throughout the story.  I love to read him Dr. Seuss books, I think the rhyming words help his brain grow :)

** Jonah loves to stand on your lap.  He is so proud of himself and grins the whole time.

** Bath time is still a good time.  He loves to splash and kick in the water.

** He still loves to be outside.

** He looks more like Derek now.

** He loves to be patted on the back, bottom or leg before going to sleep.

** Jonah still loves to be rocked, though he doesn't hang out in his swing as much as he did when he was new.

** His eyes are still blue.  I'm hoping they stay that way.

3 Month Tidbits

My sweet little guy is a quarter of a year old!  It is so amazing to watch him grow and learn :)

Here are some little tidbits about my best guy at three months old:

**He is sleeping soundly through the night

** He is finding his voice more and more each day.  He coos and squeals a lot and occaisionally tries to laugh but it just ends up turning into a cough.  I can't wait for him to figure it out!

** He started rolling from his tummy to his back about two weeks ago

**  I made him a virginia tech blankie that he loves.  It tends to soothe him when he is being fussy.

**  He loves the smell of chocolate (always gets a big smile on his face when mama lets him smell some chocolate

**  Bathtime is a blast and he loves to splash!

**  He loves to watch TV, especially football.  A man after his daddy's heart.

**  I went back to work two weeks ago and Jonah goes to a sitter.  So far we love her, I don't love being away from him but I feel good about leaving him with her all day.

** He is very interested in his hands.  Loves to eat them mostly but occaisionally just sits and plays with them

**  He tends to have a fussy/screaming period in the evenings....we are still learning how to get him to calm down

Busy Busy Baby

Jonah has had a very busy weekend so far.  First while playing with daddy on the floor yesterday, he rolled front to back twice, then repeated it again three times today for good measure.  Before I know it he will be rolling in order to get from point A to point B.

Secondly, after weeks and weeks of chasing his little thumbs, he finally snagged it in his mouth.  The poor guy has been licking his thumbs and his fists for so long, it's sort of bitter sweet that he has finally found his thumb.  Bitter because I dread the dental bills and procedures that "may" be needed in order to correct his precious little smile later on.  And Sweet for two reasons...1) it's super cute when he sits watching TV sucking on his little thumb, and 2) because he slept until 8am this morning all because he was sucking on his thumb (and the thumb is much easier to find over a pacifier when he spits it out and it rolls under the couch). 

Tomorrow will be another busy day as we plan to take Jonah to his first (of many) trip to Maymont to enjoy the beautiful weather.  Can't wait!