Oliver: three months old

Here is what our littlest man is up to at three months old!

Sleeping:  Still doing well in the sleep department.  Bedtime is gradually becoming an earlier time for him and Oliver now goes down for the night around 8:30-9:00 pm.  With that change has also come a slightly earlier wake up time and he wants to eat between 4-6am most mornings, falling back to sleep after the feeding if he wakes up on the earlier side of that range.  A few nights per week he will sleep a solid 10+ hours though and we wake up closer to 7am.  And then I feel like I superhero who can do anything because I got 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, yes please.  He is still sleeping in the rock and play in our room with no plans to change that anytime soon.  Naps are still pretty much the same - morning nap (usually semi-interrupted as we always go out in the morning), and typically a longer nap in the afternoon around the time Arlo takes his.
 

Eating:  We have far surpassed my goal of breast milk for this little guy and he's still getting donor milk from our awesome donor mama!  He receives about 10 oz of donor milk per day and the rest is the homemade formula we are using.  Still doing great on both!  Hasn't increased the amount he is taking in so we are still at 4 oz per feeding.  He always eats on demand, averaging a bottle every 3 hours or so during his awake hours.

Weight and length:   We didn't have a pediatrician appointment this month so we will find out his stats at his next appointment.

Wearing:  Goodness.  6 month onesies to fit his cloth diaper.  Pants are 6-9 month for the same reason.  I had bought some seasonal gender-neutral things before he was born that he has already outgrown.  Gah.  I guess I assumed that he would be more true to size like Arlo has always been but that is not the case.  It might change as he gets closer to 12-18 month clothes and starts to thin out but for now he's rocking the larger sizes.

Likes and dislikes:  This little guy is pretty happy with most things.  Still loves his swing, play gym, rock and play for sleeping at night.  He loves his mama and dad's faces and smiles alllll the time at us.  Loves when I play pattycake with him which always makes him giggle in his "heh heh heh" laugh.  Likes being outside as long as it's not too cold.  Loves to eat!  Has already lost interest in the pacifier which Arlo also did around this age.  Loves baths and will happily splash his arms and legs up and down until that bath time is over..  Loves to be naked and sometimes I just let him hang out in the pack and play diaper free so he can wiggle all over and kick his legs wildly which he will do for surprisingly long periods of time.  Loves when I sing to him (Gilmore Girls theme song is a favorite) and will always smile at me when I sing, which proves that he is tone deaf and obviously loves me a whole lot because I am zeee worst at singing!  He has even come around to being okay in the car seat but I wouldn't dare leave him in there to just chill for any length of time, car seats are for traveling purposes only in his book.  So when we are out and about as long as he's awake I wear him in the carrier (we splurged on a new Beco Gemini this time around and love it) which is almost essential to be hands-free when also chasing a toddler around.

A new dislike - teething.  Oliver started showing signs of teething (drooling, grunting and trying to eat his hands constantly) and 10 weeks.  10 weeks, y'all.  That isn't even fair for a baby to start teething that early!  Nothing has actually popped through yet and I am guessing we still probably have another month or so before anything actually emerges, but I have a feeling we might see something by Christmas.  I guess he's giving a whole new meaning to the song "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth."  Poor little guy, teething is rough on us all.  The evening fussiness has pretty much resolved but has been replaced by intermittent teething pains through the day.  At least they are not bad enough to wake him up at night (yet?  hopefully there's not a yet to this statement!)  After a couple of friends mentioned having success with an amber teething necklace we picked one up for Oliver but so far I haven't seen any major decrease in his symptoms.  I am hesitant to use any medications on him since he still so young, so we soothe him with the usual suspects - holding, rocking, bouncing on the ball, etc.  He is maybe sort of getting the hang of the teething rings but needs us to put them in his hands for him.

New milestones and developments:   In the last month Oliver has started to become a lot more aware of his surroundings, especially around his big brother.  He will watch Arlo with interest, but isn't laughing or smiling much at him yet.  It's more like "who is this loud and energetic person who always seems to be around?!"  His head and neck control is so much better now and in the last couple of weeks I brought out his Bumbo chair and walker so he has a couple places to "sit" now.  His legs are still way too short for the walker but we put a pillow underneath him and he seems to enjoy sitting there watching his surroundings.  And Arlo enjoys pushing him around the room when we are not looking!  Not rolling over yet, still pretty early for that, but he can roll over on his side so maybe a complete roll over isn't too far in the future.

Current nicknames are Chug, Chug Chug, Chunkster, Duder, Chunk Muffin, and baby - which is what his big bro usually calls him.  We call him pretty much everything except his actual name which I am thinking we should eventually start using!

Baby Oliver we all love you so much.  Your smile is my one of my favorite things and your sweet laughs give me all the feels.  Thank you for being such a sweet and adorable little addition to our family  :D

Halloween 2016

Oh, Halloween.  You are my favorite for sure.  I love everything about this time of the year.  Cooler weather, fall colors on the trees, and of course pumpkin everything.  Just like last year, this year we crammed about a weeks worth of seasonal activities into a span of a few days.  By the time Halloween hit I think Arlo was like - "I get to do this again?!"  This year Arlo wanted to be Handy Manny, a cartoon handyman that is todays bilingual version of Bob the Builder.  I would be lying if I said I didn't put the bug in his ear to be Manny after falling in love with the show last winter (yes, I actually think about Halloween ten months in advance.)  Thankfully Arlo was still on board with the idea when October rolled around, although he did say a few times when asked that he also wanted to be a dinosaur and a monster.  Keeping with my current theme of keeping things as simple as I could, I did the best I could to put together a Handy Manny-like costume without worrying about being too spot on.  I ordered the hat and shirt (a close enough match for me) online, made his tool belt from inexpensive craft felt I already had on hand (the night before our first Halloween event I might add), and dressed him in a pair of slightly too-big pants so we could cuff them.  He also wore some boots we already had on hand, and the tool set was bought on Amazon.  He was super excited to dress up and loved telling people he was Handy Manny - and had to correct about half of everyone because they all thought he was Bob the Builder, ha!  Oliver spent all his time at the Halloween events in the carrier so he wore the pumpkin hat I recently crocheted for his two month photos. 

Our first Halloween event was one we also did last year - story time and trick or treat around our local library.  So fun!  We went with Arlo's little friend Noah who was dressed as Daniel Tiger.

The Friday before Halloween we went to visit Erik at work where they had trunk or treat and games for the kids to play.  After we left we headed to the nearby community center where they had a huge halloween event - more trunk or treat and a gym full of games.  Arlo had so much fun, Oliver slept happily in the carrier the whole time.  I was happy to learn that all of the stops had non-candy options so Arlo came home with a lot of stickers, pencils, and small toys instead of candy that he wouldn't be able to eat.

Saturday we went to a local farm and pumpkin patch.  I had been looking forward to doing this all month, and it was so worth the wait.  They had animals to visit and feed, a giant corn pit to play in (equally fun for the adults!), a corn maze, tire swings, and several other fun activities for the kids.  We ended the visit with a hayride to the pumpkin patch where we picked out our own pumpkins.  We stayed there all morning and when it was time to leave Arlo ran away from us crying and yelling that he didn't want to go, ha!  Visiting this farm will definitely become an annual B family tradition.

 

Sunday evening we carved our pumpkins.  Keeping things simple we did just two this year.  Erik made a traditional jack-o-lantern face and I let Arlo pick out the stencil for his pumpkin, he choose a spider which is no surprise since he has a slight spider obsession lately.

notice the spooky Lucy face in the background?

Monday was finally Halloween and of course that day both kids napped until dinner time so by the time we got costumes on it was almost dark and I couldn't take any photos outside.  So here are the kids before we headed out:

 

In case you are wondering how vegans do Halloween... Well, we are still figuring that out year by year.  Arlo doesn't eat candy so it still isn't an issue for us.  He loved picking out candy from the bowls but really had no idea what he was choosing since he's never had a kit kat, skittles, or even a sucker.  We don't intentionally deprive him of these things, he's really just not interested in them yet and we certainly don't encourage it.  So when we got home we quickly swapped out the collected items for some we had ready to go - vegan gummies, fruit ropes, and fruit snacks.  Arlo didn't notice things had changed likely because he was so excited to find his favorite fruit ropes in their place.  I think he ate something like four or five packages of fruit snacks but I suppose that is what Halloween is all about, right?