25 March 2010

Verity's 4 month checkup - and 5 month too...

My darling baby Verity -

How you have grown! I can't believe how fast the time is flying by. You are getting so big! Here are your stats from the doctor:

Weight: 13 pounds (50th percentile)

Height: 24 3/4 (75th percentile)

Unfortunately, your 4th month of life was wrought with sickness and lots of doctor visits. Both you and Maddox caught a nasty cold/flu and it took up residence in your nose, sinus, chest and ears. You had a mild double ear infection, fever and a terrible cough that kept you up at night. Your sleep schedule was interrupted by you waking up a lot during the night and crying inconsolably. Mama and Dada were not getting sleep and not getting much work done during this time. Luckily after a round of antibiotics, staying home and time, you are mostly better now.

You are holding your head up really good now and can sit up in your bumbo chair during dinner time or whenever. On your belly, you are pushing up with your arms and looking all around. A couple of weeks ago, you rolled over from your tummy to you back for the first time since that fluke when you were really little. You woke up twice that night cuz you rolled from your back to your belly and you were not happy about it. You love to look around at everything and especially Mama and Dada's faces. You smile all the time. You laugh when we tickle you and give you kisses. You like to kiss back too, or maybe you are just trying to latch onto my face, but it feels like a kiss! You are a very vocal baby too - you will talk, babble and moan and groan all day long. You love to watch your big brother Maddox too - he is good entertainment for you. I think your favorite thing right now is Mama's singing voice. When I sing to you you seem to light up. If you are crying, singing gets you to stop and calm down. Finally, someone appreciates my singing! My favorite songs to sing you are: Little Star by Madonna, Fly me to the moon (Sinatra), Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan, Bliss by Alice Peacock and Bubbly by Colbie Caillat. I think that you will like to sing too since you are constantly making noises and sometimes it sounds like you are singing yourself!

You are now sleeping in your own crib in your own room! We had to take drastic measures to get some sleep when you were sick and so moved Maddox to his new big boy bed and you into your crib down the hall. After a few weeks of this, you are sleeping through the night! You sleep from about 9pm to 5:30am straight through! Yes! That is good since before you were waking me up twice to eat and then during your illness, every 5 minutes it seemed. You are also going down for your naps in your crib awake and putting yourself to sleep, good job! You like to flip over onto your belly and sleep that way now though, it is making Mama very nervous. Since I have to check on you frequently, Mama isn't sleeping through the night yet. :-D


I am so proud and happy to be your Mama and am enjoying every moment of your babyhood since I've learned how quickly it passes. I love you baby V! Speaking of V, you have many nicknames I call you - V, Vee vee, Miss V, Sweet V, Sweet pea, boo, pooh bear, and many variations, Mama just loves to come up with new ones! One of them will stick more than the others eventually, but your Dada loves to call you V too.


We just got back from Austin, TX for spring break where we hung out with the family, it was a fun week!

Here are some pics from the last couple months.

Wearing her owl onesie made by Mamie and her sweet khaki pants!
Singing to Mama!
Hanging out with big brother Maddox on his new big boy bed
Modeling Mamie's new line of flower headbands
Sequins, jewels and magnolias, oh my!
Mama and Verity
Playing with big cousin Eva

06 March 2010

19, 20 months and growing

Happy 20 months to you mister Maddox! You are such a bright, happy, silly, funny, smart, cute, chubby, cuddly little boy and your Mama couldn't be prouder of you. You are still the bright spot in my morning - I so look forward to seeing your smiling face every morning and getting a big hug. Even though lately you wake up with Dada and Mama hears you stomping around the house downstairs and yelling and laughing before she sees you. Your baby sister is taking up a lot of my time and I feel guilty and am very sorry if you feel like I don't see you enough. I just can't get enough of you though and I love you SO MUCH! That's why I go to Music and Me every Saturday to spend some special time together singing and playing instruments and dancing and running around, it is so much fun! You love music class - even though you are still pretty shy about doing all the things in class that you are learning. You do them when you get home though! I hear you in your crib or in the other room singing "Baa baa, ba ba ba ba ba!" like we do at class with our microphones! You love to clap and spin and stomp your feet. You love the drums and you turn pretty much anything into drumsticks and beat the table, the floor, the counters, anything!!

You are a really good climber lately too and a savvy problem solver. You have figured out how to push around the chairs and other objects, like boxes or a stool and can get on top to reach onto the counters and tables, etc. You also have suddenly gotten taller and can reach onto the kitchen counter and desks and beds and pull things down to play with - sometimes things you shouldn't play with though. I think your favorite is to find a pen and then go draw on something with it. Speaking of drawing, you love to color with your crayons and now have a coloring book that you drag around with you. You also still love our cellphones and laptops and will do ANYTHING to get to play with them, although you aren't supposed to and we can't let you do that for quite a while. But, we can't wait for you to get your own computer because your Mama and Dada are computer geeks and we want you to be techno savvy like us. Speaking of technology, we've started letting you watch some tv shows here and there. I mean kids shows, we always seem to have the tv on anyway, but we are purposely steering you towards watching some shows for you. You watch some Sesame Street, Mickey's playhouse and Curious George. "Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog!!!". You like it when Mama sings that song, hee hee. We usually watch these shows with you, we don't just park you in front of the tv by the way. You have a short attention span for this though, you will only watch a whole show if you are sitting on our laps or in bed with us. If we are all running around doing stuff, you will just watch little bits and then go off and play with something, which is prob a good thing!

Lately your words are "stucks" and as of last weekend "No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO!!!" Sometimes it sounds like doh and sometimes it sounds like ni or na. You have also said "down" and "sheesh", something Mama has been saying lately. You have said a lot of words in the past, but seem to forget them when you move onto new words. But, you do also say "thanks", "yes" and "dada". Very seldom do you say "mama" - only when you are mad or upset it seems. You still like to scream and yell alot, you have a lot to say, except we can't understand most of it. I can't wait to have conversations with you!

You really get mad when you don't get your way - you hop from foot to foot and shake your fists and stomp your feet and scrunch up your face, it is quite comical. You learned a new thing from your dada recently - the fist bump. You love it and can do it with both hands! Another thing I have been letting you do lately is helping me in the kitchen. You love to pull up a chair and stand at the counter and "help" me cook dinner. It is the best way to keep you occupied while I make dinner. You helped me make Dada's birthday cake and you play with bowls and utensils and sprinkle seasonings into your bowl and "stir" them. You are quite interested and I love it! Although, standing on the chair is not the safest thing, tonight you took a step back and fell off the chair, Mama felt SO HORRIBLE. You were ok, but it scared you and you cried for a while and made me hold you and carry you around. :-(

When you are in the mood, you will repeat things we say and things we do, it is pretty fun to teach you stuff. Although, sometimes we teach you silly stuff that you don't need to know. Like one night at dinner we were having chicken noodle soup and Dada started drinking the broth from the bowl. Next thing we know you are picking up your bowl (even though it didn't have any broth in it) and you were "drinking" your soup too, so fricking cute! Mama was so impressed with your mimicking skills that I wanted to put them to the test. So, I started flapping my chicken wings at the table like I was doing the chicken dance. I pretended like it was a totally normal thing to do and didn't even really look at you when I was doing it. Of course you won't copy ME, so I made Dada do it too. You got this big grin on your face and stuck your hands in your arm pit and did a little flap, it was awesome!!!! The best part though was the next day at lunch with your Dada, out of the blue you gave him a sly little grin and started flapping your wings!!! I am so proud of you!! :-D Hee hee!! I promise I will mostly teach you useful things, but come one, it is fun to learn to do something silly too!

We are putting together your "big boy room" right now. Mama is quite excited and is having a blast decorating and picking things out. I decided to not have too much of a theme, but did want to incorporate owls into it. I found a cute owl fabric and I will make you a new blankie as a throw for your bed (when I get around to it). I mostly just wanted it to be a fun colorful room and to have all your toys and a big boy bed. We already have some maple bunk beds from Room and Board that your big brother Jackson and sister Cassie used to sleep in when they were little. So, the bunk beds are now your big boy bed!! You seem to LOVE them so far - you aren't sleeping in there yet, we just set them up so you could get used to the idea in the other room. You already can climb up the side and jump into the bed - it is almost like a fort in there it is kind of enclosed and cozy. I will get a side rail and then sometime soon we will try to get you to sleep in there! Verity is going to get your crib and so we want to move you into your new room and then we will work on transitioning her from the cosleeper into the crib. So, back to the decorating since that is Mama's fav thing to talk about. I ended up keeping the aqua and green that you had in your other room in this new room, but introduced the color orange. I meant it to be an accent, but it is pretty dominant in the room right now. I got orange quilts from the Land of Nod and then ordered some polka dot sheets from PBteen. I just couldn't find any sheets I really liked so just went with blue and green polka dots which I though were cute and colorful. I found the most AWESOME orange lamp at HomeGoods and put it on your new maple dresser we got at Room and Board. I have to say, your room is quite sophisticated and upscale for a little boy, but I think you appreciate the design. ;-D We also got you a new table and two chairs - we only have the orange chair so far, the blue chair is on back order and the table should be in next week. You are going to love this table - you sat at it in the store and we had to get it for you! Once we get this all together, Mama will take a picture and post it here for everyone to see. I was kind of lazy though, I didn't paint your room, it is still white. We are getting the house ready to sell and I didn't feel like painting the entire room just to move out some time this year (I hope). I have to say though, with all the colors going on in there and the toys and stuffed animals and Mama's crazy paintings, it looks pretty good with white walls. Crazy! The story of us selling our house and moving is another story I will have to tell soon, let's just say we are getting close to listing our house for sale and we really hope that in this crappy real estate market we can sell it sometime this year and not lose too much money. We are really excited about buying our next home though, there are exciting times ahead!

Well, I really went on and on and I want to finish by telling you Maddox that you are my one and only baby boy and I love you with all of me, you are my little star, never forget who you are!!
Mwah! XOXO
Love, Mama

My little monkey riding his motorcycle
Helping Mama bake Dada's birthday flourless chocolate cake. He is really whisking the eggs!
He's watching tv in this shot, that's not a far away look... yikes!
Being silly and trying to grab the camera
Sound asleep... This is a kooky shot because it was very dark in your room and I left the shutter open for a long while to take this pic.
You and cousin Eva goofing around
Here you are yelling again!
Just a sly little grin as if to say "What?" I am playing, leave me alone!
Trying on Mama's glasses, such a little goofball!