Evan: 12 months!

Evan is one! You'd think by the third time my heart would be better prepared to handle a baby's first birthday, but that's a big fat NOPE! I was on the verge of tears - both happy and sad - all day. Thinking back to my pregnancy with him, his birth story, the ups and downs of his first year...it's all just so, so precious to me. These babies just arrive and never slow and I want to be in the moment and freeze time and rewind time and prepare for the future all at once!

Evan is cruising, free standing for a moment, making new sounds, and playing games with us (like throwing and chasing balls). He's my little sleeper, and I've yet to discover how much sleep is too much sleep for him. I think this kid would sleep all day if I'd let him! Right now he's on a morning cat nap and mega nap in the afternoon, and then his standard 7:30p - 7a overnight.

He's not taking a very big bottle before bed (maybe 3 ounces), which is nice because it shouldn't be too difficult to cut that feeding out eventually. Now that he's one, I'm going to slowly start removing breastfeeding sessions and offering a sippy cup with his table meal instead. I have a feeling my supply my tank when I remove a feeding, but now that he's 1 I'm okay with that. I have loads of frozen breast milk stored up, and it's time to start transitioning him to other liquids anyway. I've found that he can't yet do dairy straight-up (like yogurt, cheese, or milk), so I'm going to offer him breastmilk in a sippy at first, then almond milk and/or water. My other kids long ago ditched the cow's milk and just drink water at every meal so that's the plan for Evan, too.

We had a very small little celebration with family this past weekend to celebrate his birthday. And now I have a one year old! I just know I'm going to blink and have a full blown toddler.

I don't have his weight or height stats yet because his well visit isn't until next week, so I'll have to update this post later with that (for my reference, mainly, haha!). Here he is in all his little cuteness!

Evan: 11 months

Evan's bad mood seems to have passed and he's having happier days again. He is getting better at expressing himself - like getting excited when he sees Kyle or my dad after they've been gone at work, or by throwing little baby tantrums when a toy isn't doing what he wants it to. He's getting around the house just fine by crawling, so he hasn't shown much interest in cruising yet. He's got the skills, but it just hasn't clicked yet. He scoots up the stairs so fast though! Now we need to teach him how to safely get down them.
Meals are going well, and I'm still nursing him 3 times a day, and then a small bottle of breastmilk at bedtime. I think at this point my plan is to just nurse through 12 months and then go from there. I never thought I'd be someone to go a full year of nursing, but here we are...might as well make it the whole way!
I don't have any big plans for Evan's first birthday. Partially because I'm must totally in denial that my baby is 1, and partially because of the holidays...and because he's 1 and has no idea what's going on, and already has every possible toy a 1 year old could need!
Love this baby boy of ours!

Evan: 10 months

(Evan was 10 months on October 16th)

Evan is doing great with crawling! He crawls everywhere now, including up stairs. He has also started pulling himself up to standing and is flirting with the idea of cruising. He's also been fond of the "all-fours" pose (like the pic above). Each day he seems to get a little more confident with this gross motor abilities. His PT was so pleased with the progress he's made, and we're considering him "caught up" at this point! 

Evan finally had surgery to repair his undescended testicle. It happened really quickly after we had the consult with the specialist. The Lord really gave us peace about the decision ahead of time, and the surgery went wonderfully. He did have to be fully put under, and I got to stay with him until he was asleep and then was reunited with him before he woke up. He recovered within a day, in terms of mobility. The surgeon was able to descend his testicle as well as repair a significant hernia. All in all, it went really well and I'm thankful this is all behind us now.

That being said - Evan has had a really, really fussy month. There could be a million reasons why: teething, new skills, growth spurt, cold/sickness, appetite changes, emotional development, the disruption of his surgery. He's been sleeping a ton, refusing purees (only wants finger food) and taking full nursing sessions still. He escalates so quickly when I leave his side, lay him down on the changing table, or put him in his car seat. He's still cute as a button though, so I've been as patient as I can be with him while he goes through this phase.

He's still nursing, and I think I'm safely in the zone where I could wind down the nursing and have enough freezer milk to last him until he's 12 months old. But it takes time and effort to end nursing, so I keep putting it off. I'm still producing so much milk that it's just hard to stop a good thing, ya know?

We're starting to see more of his personality come out, and he may end up being a bit feistier then he's previously let on. I'm so excited to get to know him better as he continues to grow. My baby boy! Love him!

This month's photo session is an accurate depiction of his mood right now, haha

Evan: 9 months

Evan was 9 month on September 16th, so I'm a tiny bit behind :-)

Evan is crawling! He finally took off crawling just shy of 9 months old. He's now very content to be plopped down in the playroom and just busy himself among the kids and toys. We're still working with the PT to continue to improve some of his gross motor skills, but overall I'm so pleased with his progress. Just today he started clapping (at a football game, no less...how cute is that?!), so I know he's going to continue making progress just fine.
He's got 7 teeth, and he's weighing in at 19.5lbs. He's 28.5 inches tall, and his current car seat height max is 32 inches so I'm hoping to keep him in that seat a bit longer. We do have a convertible seat ready for him when it's time, but the infant seat is just so convenient to click right into the stroller when we are out at about.
He's been babbling quite a bit lately, and started playing games with us. He's favorite is just shaking his head back and forth and laughing. The kids love joining in the fun and engaging with him, and I'm just so happy with how well they are all getting along right now. Drew really steps up from time to time to help me with tending to Evan or Mary, and even Mary has started helping here and there. I'm really trying to teach them how to look out for each other and not just rely on me to mediate their relationships. I love it when I see Mary go to Drew for help with something, or I watch Drew grab Evan a toy to chew on if he's getting fussy. Evan really, really likes Drew and considers Drew a suitable replacement for me or Kyle if he's upset. But it's very clear that I'm Evan's favorite, and I'm totally okay with that :-)
He's still nursing, which is so fun. I do feel like he's been getting less interested in it recently, and his solids intake has really increased. So this may be the final descent in our nursing relationship. I have about a months worth of milk frozen, so I'd love to make it to 11 months old with nursing and then do frozen milk until he's 1, but we'll see! We are having a lot of fun with solids. I've mostly done veggie purees that I make at home, and then these last few weeks I've been doing more purees of whatever we are eating for dinner. This week I made some batches of pancakes using the Trader Joe's pumpkin pancake mix, but adding in spinach to one batch and sweet potato to another. Both batches I made with coconut/almond milk and coconut oil instead of milk and butter, and then I also added a chia/hemp/flax seed blend to both. The texture and consistency of the pancakes are perfect for him right now!
Sleep is going great, he's on 2 naps a day. I've started capping the first nap to be shorter just to line his second nap up better with Mary's nap and Drew's quiet time. I've been trying to get to bed earlier at night so I'm really relying on that 1-2 hours in the middle of the day to tackle computer work so that I'm not up at night doing it.
Lastly, we finally had Evan's consult for his undescended testicle. They located the testicle (phew!) but he will need surgery to correct the issue. They will also assess his descended testicle (as it may not be fully descended either), check for hernias, and check for any other abnormalities. I really like his doctor; she studied at UW medicine, trained at Seattle Children's, and now works at Swedish. Also, one of my best girlfriends also works at Swedish in another field but highly recommends this doctor - so that is great peace of mind!

Evan: 8 months

I think the biggest deal in Evan's life right now is he's finally rolling from back to tummy! He does this while he's sleeping, and now I typically find him on his tummy when I go into wake him up. Also, we've started physical therapy with him here at the house to help him work on some other gross motor skills. It's a really neat program through the county, and they send someone out to the house so I don't have to pack everyone up which is so great! When they did the assessment, he actually didn't qualify as having any significant delay. But the gals doing the assessment saw my concern and decided to override the score and qualify him for services. We're only doing 30 minutes every other week, which is hardly anything. I love the PT that comes out, she's so friendly and knowledgeable. We have a great time playing with Evan on the floor and she shows me little moves for him to practice so that we can get him motivated to make progress on his gross motor skills. He's already advancing and it's so cute to watch him grow! Hopefully by next month he'll be crawling and maybe even cruising.

We're still nursing, which is so fun. Older babies really know how to take care of business while nursing and it's so much easier than nursing a newborn! Still staying away from dairy, but not as strict as I previously was. I have yet to introduce him directly to dairy, and I'm not sure how and when I want to go about that.

Evan: 7 months

Evan had his 6 month appt a month late because I wanted it to coordinate with the kids 2 and 4 year well child visits. What a circus that was! Bless my husband for wrangling the kids in the waiting room while I cycled through children in the exam room. Fortunately our pediatrician is simply wonderful and it was so great to be able to do all three kids at once. Anyway - I finally got some updates stats on Evan and got to ask some questions about lingering issues he's having. Despite his chunky thighs, he's actually not all that big for his age. At 17.5lbs and 27 inces long, he's in the 35-37% for weight and height. This is confusing to me because he's about to grow out of his 9-month bodysuits, so I'm not sure how a baby that fits in 12-month clothing is only in the 35% at 7 months old...but, he's sitting nicely on his growth curve so I'm not concerned.

He's cut his two front bottom teeth, which is a new experience for me in terms of nursing. Normally I wean around 6 months old, but I don't have any desire to do that with Evan so we're forging on. But teeth = not fun. So I guess I'll be cracking down on teaching him proper nursing behavior, because the latch and then turn your head to look at your siblings move is getting old (and painful). 

I had two other concerns at today's appointment, one being his undescended testicle and the other being that he's not rolling from back to stomach yet. I probably wont say much more about his undescended testicle just to respect his privacy, but from what I understand it's a simple procedure to correct and we'll find out more when we meet with the pediatric urologist in a few months. His ped was waiting until the 6 month mark to make the referral, and now it's time to move forward with accessing things further. 

I had a hunch that his superman reflex has something to do with him not rolling back to front, and his ped agreed. Whenever I pick him up or place him on his tummy, he pushes his arms out straight behind him (like superman pose). He also sleeps with his arms tucked under his back. His ped isn't too worried about this long term, but our county offers a program where a PT will come to your house and work with baby to correct any motor delays so I think we're going to take advantage of that. Fun times!

I'm still off dairy, although I think at this point he could tolerate it reasonably well. However, since I've been off dairy my headaches have nearly disappeared! I've suffered from tension type headaches for a decade, at least. Who knows if it was dairy related the whole time, but I figured it out when I trialed back on dairy a few months ago. I had such a strong headache the next day! So then I went back off dairy for several weeks, and 2 months later tried again and the headaches returned. So that was enough evidence for me to lead me to decide to give up dairy for good. At this point, if I can avoid it, I do. If I ingest a bit on accident though, I don't fret about it too much. I just know that I'll have a headache and Evan's spit-up will be more frequent for a few days.

He's still sleeping great. I've been extending his wake times a bit to keep up with his needs. He's down to 2 naps now (most days) which is nice!

Evan enjoys sitting up, his jumperoo, stroller rides, playing peek-a-boo with Drew, and smiling. He seriously smiles all day long and it's adorable. He's so squishy and happy and we just love him!

Evan: 6 months

Evan is doing so, so great. He's such a happy baby, it's hard not to smile at him when he's around because his cheeks are always so rosy and he's just so cute and smiley.
He's on a 4 hour feeding schedule with 4 liquid feedings and 3 meals of solids. He's doing much, much better with the spoon in his mouth so now that he's officially 6 months old I'm introducing a wider variety of solids: squash, sweet potato, banana, avocado, green beans, pears, applesauce, carrots, and prunes. The solids have made his digestive track slow way down, so we do prunes one meal a day to keep things moving. Breastfeeding is still going great and I'm still off dairy.

He's almost sitting up on his own now, and he's found his feet which will likely lead to rolling over back to front soon. He lays on his back and grabs his feet and kind of rocks back and forth. Although he hates tummy time, so I doubt he's that motivated to roll onto his front. 

He's getting coordinated at grabbing toys and bringing them to his mouth to explore, so we have to make sure there aren't things within his reach that he shouldn't have because he's quick!

His 6 month appointment isn't until next month because I lined it up to coincide with the kids 2 and 4 year well-child visits, so I don't know Evan's stats right now but my guess is he's on the same growth curve and doing just fine. He's so adorable and we love him so much!

Evan: 5 months

I'm really loving this age right now. He's still 100% my baby, but he's less fragile than he was as a newborn so I'm able to let him explore his surroundings a little more confidently. Plus, the non-stop smiles are really great :-)
As a true third child, Evan is very much a tag-a-long kid. He is happy to just sit and watch his siblings play. If he's awake, his only care is that he not be left alone. If everyone happens to wander out of a room briefly and he's left behind, he'll start hollering about it. Otherwise, he's all smiles and all laughs.
He's on a 4 hour feeding schedule now with 4 liquid feedings and 1 meal of solids. Like with the bottle, he's needed a lot of practice with the spoon so we're just doing oatmeal cereal for now. Breastfeeding is going great and I'm still off dairy. I did have dairy at a wedding last weekend and Evan has not been happy with me about it. Mainly, when I have dairy he gets stinky gas (and I think some tummy pain from the gas, too), more frequent spit ups, and eczema flares. Those symptoms are all tolerable if I really wanted to be back on dairy regularly, but I'm fine continuing to leave it out.
He's not rolling over yet, but I also don't give him a lot of tummy time because he spits up every time we do it. He's sitting up fine in the Bumbo seat, high chair, jumperoo, etc. so he spends most his awake time on his play mat (which he loves) or sitting up watching the older kids play. I do have a concern about the "superman" pose he makes often with his arms; he holds them down straight and back from his body more often than I care for. The internet tells me this is called "unintegrated moro reflex", but I'll wait to see what his pediatrician says about it as his next check-up.

Evan: 4 months

Evan is doing great! Things have really slowed down and we have a good routine going. Evan is on a 3.5 hour schedule with 5 feedings, 3 naps, and 12 hours at night. We've dropped the swaddle and took the incline out of his crib as he started to move around a big in his sleep. He loves having his hands available to suck on for sleeping. I tried to slowly drop the swaddle by just doing one arm out and he was not a fan, so after a few days of doing just a loose swaddle (which he also hated) I decided I was done with swaddle games and we were just dropping it cold turkey and dealing with it. And he then he slept great, haha! Turns out he just wanted to be done with it, too. He is my first baby to not need a binky, but I'm still going to try and "suggest" it to him around 6 months (when he can actually put it in his mouth by himself) to try and get him away from sucking on his hands.
I'm still off dairy, but I did trial it back in over Easter weekend. While Evan did "okay" with the dairy, his eczema did come back and his spitting up increased and he was fussier. So I'm back off the dairy for now, but glad to know it's not a total day ruiner if I accidentally have dairy. At this point, I really don't mind all that much and have just accepted my new diet as part of life (although I will be so glad to have mac and cheese back in my life again when I'm done breastfeeding!).
Evan loves to watch the older kids, and he just laughs and laughs if you get him going with smiles or tickles. He loves laying on his playmat and kicking his legs around (like he's dancing a jig). He likes bath time (he frantically splashes and kicks and thinks it's super fun). Just this week he started "talking"...he's learning very early on you've got to holler if you want to be heard in our house. We are not a quiet bunch!
His thighs are my new favorite thing in life. Seriously, I just think about them and it makes me smile. I just want to hold him all day long! We'll be starting solids sometime soon-ish, it will be so cute. I can't wait. We just love this kid!

Look at those arm rolls!

I'm obsessed

Look at that yummy baby thigh!

Sometimes I think about what a gift he is to our family and it makes me cry on the spot

Evan: 3 months

Evan's gotten so much friendlier and happy now that he can smile! He's spending a little more time awake (about an 1hr and 15 minutes) between naps. I try to do tummy time a few times a day for him, but he either spits up continuously or rolls immediately on to his back. We did get this Sit Me Up using a gift card we had left over and I really like it. It allows him to "sit up" and hold his head up but offers some support so he's not doing it all on his own. He really likes hanging out on his playmate and flailing his arms and legs around. His wake times just fly by, because I've got the other kids to wrangle. I love his middle of the day feeding because it's just Drew awake at that time and we get down on the floor and encourage Evan to do his tummy time, walk out and get the mail, and then Drew usually "plays" with Evan by showing him all his toys.
Evan is on the cusp of being ready for a 3.5 hour feeding schedule, but his wake time is still too short to accommodate that so we're still doing every 3 hours during the day. Bedtime is 7:30/8 and he sleeps until 7am! He's by far my best sleeper. It's glorious.
He's finally taking a bottle moderately well so that gives me some freedom to skip a feeding now and then.
Just today he started chatting and laughing pretty consistently, so I'm excited to interact with him more - especially once he starts spending more time awake.
Drew and Mary have been great big siblings. Drew helps clean up all the laundry even goes through (still waiting for that reflux to calm down!), and Mary likes to bring him various toys and accessories that she associates with the baby.
He's so cute and we just love him!