Wyatt's 4 month (sort of) well visit

Poor guy has had one AWFUL month with sickness and it continued on Monday when he had to go to the walk in clinic because he wasn't eating much and hadn't been all weekend.  They said his ears looked perfect, praise the Lord, but his throat was really red.  So another round of antibiotics....

The poor guy has only slept through the night a few times since he got home from the hospital and the frequent nighttime diarrhea has definitely not helped.  So when I tell our NP that, she gives me this uh-oh look and says she is afraid it might be C-diff and that they need a sample to run tests on....  Well guess what that entails... yep, me scraping doo off of his butt and putting it in a canister, can you say Yipee?!?  I pretty much beg Wyatt to please poop before we leave the doctors office but he sweetly tells me that no it's not going to happen, I'm going to wait so that you can have the character building experience of collecting poop on a stick!  

Then comes the fun part, shots!  Normally Clay and I attend these together because I refuse to be the one that holds him when they stick his poor little legs.  Well Clay said he deserves a bye on this one since he had to hold him down through the whole IV experience at the hospital.  I can hardly argue with that, plus it is his "prince week" so he gets to go hunting without any fussing or guilt trips from me....

So Wyatt unleashes the fury on that poor nurse who I think has the worst job in the world, making kids cry all day.  Thankfully it is only for a minute or two and then he immediately falls asleep.  Poor baby!  

Wyatt has grown a lot since his 2 month well visit.  He is 2.25 inches taller and  4 lbs heavier!  His demanding to be fed in the middle of the night has really put on the pounds!

Stats are:
Length - 25.5 inches 75th percentile
Weight - 15lbs 15 oz - 60th percentile

I think they said his head was 14.25 but not really sure I can't be trusted to remember things correctly if they aren't written down.

So three hours after I left work I return to joyfully anticipate the text from his daycare telling me to come and scrape poo.  Fun times I tell ya!

Gavin's choral debut

Gavin is in the First Baptist 3 year old choir that is led by some of God's very own angels, I believe!

Last night they had their Christmas program which included all levels of the Children's Choir and it was so good!!  As soon as the congregation started singing the opening song and I could hear all of those little voices singing their hearts out for Jesus, I started crying. In fact, I'm crying again just thinking about it, LOL!

We are trying extra hard this year to make sure that Gavin understands that Christmas isn't about presents that we give each other but about the ultimate present that God gave us, his Son Jesus.  We are doing the Advent candles every night with scripture reading in the hopes that this will bring the whole family back to the true meaning of Christmas each day since it is so incredibly easy to get caught up in the crazy this time of year.

Anyway, here is a video of the program if you are interested.  Gavin's portion starts at 5:00 and ends about 10:00.  The other choir groups are really cute and some of them are really good as well.  I was especially impressed with the last group.

Where did November go??

I can't remember a month passing by as quickly as November did.  I feel like we just had Halloween and now we are in the second week of December!

I thought remembering to and actually taking pictures was hard with just one child but it is nearly impossible with two!  Every time I remember, I am like miles from my phone or my hands are completely full with Wyatt. So I have next to zero pictures to commemorate the last month.  I am hoping, hint, hint.  To get a nice camera for Christmas so at least when I do get to take pictures, they come out looking halfway decent and not dark and grainy or the other common occurrence, red eyes so both my children look like demons even when they aren't acting like it ;-).

So here is our month is poor quality pictures, except for the Christmas tree ones, those came out pretty good :-).


Gavin was having a bit of an identity crisis.  Spiderman, Superman, and Daddy's boots

One of my staged photos that went as well as they usually do, which is not at all.

Not sure what is being communicated between the two of them here, probably plotting against the current regime.

And this is Wyatt's innocent, who me????  look....

I had gone to the grocery store one of the very few cold days we have had this year and this is what Gavin comes out of the door in to help me bring in the bags.  Jacket, underwear and boots! And then he decides to get embarrassed when I insist Clay get my phone and take a picture :)

We went on our annual Christmas tree harvesting at Hambricks Christmas Tree Farm the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  

As you can see I am MUCH more concerned about the placement of the tree saw than Clay was, Ha!

Wyatt just hanging out, taking it all in!

Gavin is super proud and happy with the successful slaying of the Christmas tree.

The victors next to their conquest looking very proud of themselves

Gavin getting to "drive" the tree up to the shaker.  I think this might have been his most favorite part of the entire day.

So there you go, our very pictureless November.  I hope to do better in December but with the lack of sleep I reference in the previous post, I'm not promising anything!!

Wyatt's Month 4

Poor Wyatt has had a month of yucky, with a few first thing milestones thrown in the mix.

 He started off the month of November getting his first taste of rice cereal at  3 months and 1 week.  I wasn't really even thinking of starting him on any solids since Gavin hadn't started until he was almost 4 months old and I guess since Wyatt is so much smaller than Gavin was, I always just assume he will eat less.  But his fantastic teacher, Ms. Amanda was faced with an angry bear one Friday afternoon after he had finished his bottle and apparently had been fending off said angry bear for most of the morning.  So she ran the cereal idea by me and with me completely trusting her judgement/knowledge because she has only taken care of like a million infants in her professional career, I said go for it!

I attempted feeding him the cereal on Saturday afternoon and it was a complete mess/disaster and Clay wasn't there to document.  So he tried that evening after he got home and it went much smoother for a couple of spoonfuls and pictures. Until Wyatt decided he preferred to watch football and get a crick in his neck.

We've been pretty sporadic with the cereal feeding at home for the most part.  Wyatt just doesn't seem to eat as much at home as he does at school.  I'm not sure if it is because he gets more sleep at home, even though you would think that Gavin makes way more noise that 4 - 5 infants ever possibly could, or what.

Wyatt makes the funniest expressions with his eyebrows.  I don't remember Gavin giving me that look.

That very next Tuesday he woke up with a pretty nasty cough but I sent him to school because he didn't have a fever and Clay is always telling me I overreact to all of the boys coughs, etc.  Well his teacher called me around lunch concerned because it was getting worse and he was having trouble breathing without choking so I went to pick him up and take him to the doctor.  Well I am so thankful I did, come to find out the poor guy had RSV, which is super dangerous for infants.  In fact his doctor said if he had been any younger they would have put him in the hospital for observation to make sure it didn't get any worse or develop into pneumonia.  So we got sent home with steroids, breathing treatments, antibiotics, and strict instructions not to leave the house until the following Monday.  That week was brutal!  I was so scared Wyatt was going to choke from all his congestion I had to have him sleep in his swing in the living room because it kept him elevated, well this also meant that one of us had to sleep on the couch right next to him so we could be right there if he needed us.  Well he coughed/hacked all night and then all of the sudden he would start breathing really softly so of course I had to get up to make sure he was still actually breathing :).  I took the first night and my incredible husband actually did it for the rest of the week!  I am so blessed!!

I wasn't completely ready to send him back to school on Monday but the doctor had said it was ok and he had definitely improved.  So we did and everything went fine until Friday.  Let me mention that I had contracted strep throat on Wednesday...  I got a text from one of his teachers about 4 o'clock saying he had a temp of 100.5.  I got off at 4:30 and went to pick him and Gavin up to go get a pizza and head home.  When I picked him up and held him at the daycare he was SO lethargic and felt super hot.  All I could think was that he had gotten the strep throat from me.  So as soon as we got home I took his temp again and it was 101.9.  So off to our favorite after hours walk in, meanwhile Clay is showing some land in Quitman to a client so I am wrangling a hungry toddler along with a super sick baby, on top of still being really sickly feeling from the strep throat.  As soon as Dr. Parrott listened to Wyatt's breathing he suggested we immediately take him to the hospital and wrote orders for a direct admit so we wouldn't have to go through the Emergency Room and all that craziness.  He was concerned that it was pneumonia.

Man that was the longest night of my life!!  Wyatt's fever got up to 103 and the whole giving him an IV process was almost more than I could take and I wasn't even in the room with him, I made Clay do it.  But when they couldn't get an IV in either of his poor little arms they had one of the NICU nurses come and put it in his scalp.  Well I could hear him screaming all the way down the hall.  It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do to keep from rushing down there and yanking my baby away from all of them.  They did a chest X-ray and it showed no pneumonia but there was still some yucky in one of his lungs so they woke him up for breathing treatments every 4 hours and ran a whole bunch of blood tests to try and figure it out.  Neither Clay or I were willing to not stay at the hospital with him and each other so thankfully Uncle Chris and Aunt Stephanie kept Gavin and Clay and I tried to both sleep on that tiny little fold out chair... I am pretty sure neither of us slept more than 30 minutes.

His fever finally broke that morning and the blood tests didn't show anything but slightly elevated white blood counts so they sent us home with more antibiotics in the hopes he could get much more sleep at home and get better much quicker.

This was the best and most sleep Wyatt got at the hospital.

A little tummy time to pass the time after they took the IV out.

By the way the IV backed up into his scalp which created this huge tumor looking thing on the side of his head which almost caused me to stroke out!  Thankfully it went down quickly after they removed it.  The nurse said that if he had to stay they would probably have to put a new IV in, so I was overjoyed when we got to go home, even though we never figured out what was wrong. By Sunday night he hadn't had a fever in 24 hours but I really wasn't comfortable sending him back to school yet.  I knew he needed to be able to get as much rest as he possibly could so I took some leave and kept him home the week of Thanksgiving.

Wyatt also reached his second milestone of the month and officially became a stomach (non)sleeper on Sunday night, November 24th.  Clay found him on his stomach while still in his swaddle blanket Sunday morning, so Sunday night we had to go cold turkey with breaking him of his having to be swaddled to sleep. Well he has definitely had the last laugh on that one because along with us breaking one of his habits he has now broken us of our habit of sleeping through the night!  Sweet mercy are we exhausted!!  Our perfect little sleeper has turned into a gremlin between the hours of 10 - 5!

So I am going to blame the lack of Thanksgiving and the following day at Wild Adventure pictures on our seriously deprived sleep state.

So here is the only picture of the boys at Thanksgiving that I took, hopefully someone else took some and I will get them eventually, but honestly I can't even remember if anyone even had a camera that day, ha!

And here finally after all of my rambling is Wyatt's picture at 4 months.  As you can see the sickness has not had any adverse effects on his weight gain.  I seriously think all the extra middle of the night feedings to try and get him to sleep for a few more hours are the culprit in him gaining over a pound the last week of the month.  When he was weighed at the hospital it was 14lbs and 4 oz.  Clay weighed him the other day on our scale at home and he was 15.5 lbs!

Look at those rolls!!  Good news is my mother is no longer overly concerned with him being skinny.  She declared at Thanksgiving that he is now fat and she is happy!  Hahahahaha

Wyatt month 3

I'm sure most people are like this but it seems so different the second time around.  I spend so much more time just hanging out and relaxing with Wyatt than I did with Gavin.  We always seemed so much more concerned about milestones and if we were doing everything right the first time than we are the second go round.  Or maybe, and this just occurred to me,  it is because we had so much more time when Gavin was a baby to sit around and think about that stuff whereas now all we do is run Gavin around to all these activities and then poor Wyatt is just along for the ride in his carseat... Now I feel guilty!!!  

Either way, we have so enjoyed this past month with Wyatt, he is really showing his personality and what a sweet lovable laid back little boy he is!  He smiles constantly, pretty much every time you look at him which completely melts your heart!  

He had probably been doing this for his teachers for a while but at 11 weeks we finally managed to make him laugh!  At first it was much more like a cough but we are definitely qualifying it as a laugh.  

And like I said before we are home so little that it just occurred to me last week that we hadn't even tried to sit him in his Bumbo seat.  I honestly thought he was too little to sit in it but apparently not! He just has a whole lot more room in it than his chunky big brother did!

He seems to really enjoy it, gives him something new to do I suppose.

Wyatt has really hit a growth spurt these last couple of weeks.  We had to add another feeding during the middle of the day to keep up with his appetite, which is good because I was kind of worried he wasn't eating enough.  I made it four weeks longer breastfeeding with Wyatt than I did Gavin, I am anxious to see if he gets sick less than Gavin did, I sure hope so!

So now he has 6 oz of formula at:
6 am
9:30 am
12:30 pm
4 pm
7:30 pm

He does pretty good with his belly time or at least a whole lot better than Gavin ever did.  Wyatt will last for several minutes before he gets so frustrated from not being strong enough to crawl.  His little legs push and push and push but he doesn't really go anywhere.  He hasn't grasped the arm part yet :).  Now if you put him on his back you better watch out, I laid him down the other day on this play mat and then went to unload the dishwasher.  When I went back a few minutes later to check on him, he had moved in a complete circle and then managed to move himself off of the mat and across the floor!  No more putting him on our bed unsupervised!

He also hit another milestone last night, 13wks and 2 days, he rolled over from his belly to his back!  Apparently he had done it several times for Clay while I was tucking Gavin in but when I got there and tried to video it, he had used up all his energy I guess.

At three months he still isn't filling out his 0 - 3 mo clothes although this past week they have started getting a little short length wise.  It cracks me up to compare his pictures to Gavins at the same age, they look a lot alike in a lot of pictures but Gavin's pictures look like he ate a baby the size of Wyatt!

Wyatt at 3 months

Gavin at 3 months

All I know is that I sure am blessed with two of the sweetest and cutest boys in the entire world!!!  And they get it all from their Daddy! :-)

What we have been up to October edition

This past month has been nutso with activities.  Gavin has soccer twice a week and then choir on Wednesdays not to mention all of the other activities on the weekend. 

These two pictures were taken by our Children and Families Minster after choir one day and I just love them!!  Gavin takes such good pictures for everyone but me :).

Gavin's school has a Farmer Brown day every year in place of celebrating Halloween.  We were last minute with the costume as usual, Clay and Gavin hit Walmart two nights before.  I thought they did really well.  Gavin adores his boots even if they are 2 sizes too big and fall off every time you pick him up....

Just to show you the difference in the pictures I get and the ones other people get please see below.  The first one was one Mama took and the other three his teachers took... I am really glad they send them to me or I may never have a decent picture of the little rascal!

On the 26th, I slogged/walked my first race since having Wyatt at the St. John's Color Me Wicked.  I now know what my worst time ever will be.  And I was sore for the entire next week.... I definitely have a ways to go...  Gavin and two of his friends joined in after the 5k for the 1 mile run and they absolutely loved getting hit with all the "paint" in fact they went through a couple of the stations more than once which made us the absolute last people to pass the finish line, Ha!

Then of course we stayed after for the carnival where they had some of the most artistic face painting I have ever seen, Gavin was SOOOOOOOOOO proud of his lion face, he wouldn't let us wash it off that night and we only got to take the remnants off the next morning before church with the promise that Clay would paint his face again after church.

On Sunday we had a birthday party for two of the boy's cousins.  Wyatt enjoyed being snuggled by everyone there and Gavin had a blast being chased by all of his girl cousins and blowing bubbles with Uncle Chris. 

They look like the mafia don't they....until you see that Clay's face is painted like a brown lion???  Gavin wanted Daddy's face to be painted too.  He tried to talk Mama into being a pink lion but I had to draw the line somewhere :)

 I just love Gavin's expression in this picture

After the cousin's party we had the fall festival at church, Gavin was Spiderman with a brown tiger face....

We talked sweet Clay into letting Gavin pie him in the face, pretty sure he wins Daddy of the year for that one!

Last Thursday we celebrated Wyatt's first Halloween.  He was his usual laid back self in his Max costume from Where the Wild Things Are.  The thing said it was 0 - 6 months but as big as it was on him I am pretty sure they meant 12 -18 months!

 I just love this picture of them, Gavin is the sweetest big brother ever which is such a sigh of relief because I just knew he would react to Wyatt the way that I reacted to my little brother....which was not sweet at all!

Saturday Gavin got to go on his 1st deer hunt of the season and they saw two deer!  Gavin kept screaming at Clay, "shoot it Daddy, shoot it" needless to say the deer heard them and made his exit quickly :)