Alex's 6 month appointment

Alex had his 6 month appointment this morning.  I must not have known his sleeping schedule when I made the appointment because it was right at nap time and a doctor's visit is never quick.  He did a lot of crying because he was so tired, so it was not easy for any of us.  Alex is healthy and growing well, so we are thankful for that.  He is 18 lb, 14.5 oz (75th percentile) and 26 inches long (50th percentile).  There isn't a measure for cuteness, but I'm sure he's off the charts! :)  The doctor said we can start feeding him table food and I'm sure Alex will like it a lot more than the rice cereal!  We can start giving Alex puffs next month if he can keep them away from Robbie.  Alex won't go back until he's 9 months, so he gets an extra month to forget about this appointment since he had been going every 2 months.

Videos

More cute videos of my kids!

Robbie saw me feeding Alex cereal and wanted to do it.  Luckily when Robbie's dinner came out he was ready to eat so poor Alex didn't have Robbie shoving the spoon in his mouth for his entire dinner!



Alex is now a crawler!  He loves Robbie's shoes and it doesn't matter if Robbie is wearing them or not, Alex wants to eat them.  I love the look Alex gets on his face when he sees something he wants and starts going after it.



Matthew was playing Super Mario Brothers this weekend and Matt taught him to say "It'sa me, Mario!'

6 months, 22 months and a baby dedication

Alex turned 6 months on Thursday!  Unlike July, this month has gone by quickly and now he's half a year old.  Gone are the days when he would lie still while I changed his diaper.  He is definitely curious about the world around him.  He's also getting pretty good at eating cereal.  Robbie wanted to try Alex's cereal one night but was not too impressed by it.  Now Robbie just wants Alex's spoon, but not with cereal on it!  Alex is doing some army crawling as well as the lunging.  I guess he is officially crawling now that he is making forward progress, but at least he still remains in one room!  I know I need to go through his clothes and take out the small ones and add the next size up, but there are still some 3 month outfits that he fits into and that may even be a little roomie on him!

One week

One month

Two months

Three months

Four months

Five months

Six months

Robbie is 22 months today which means in 2 months he'll be 2 years old!  I'm often asked if time goes by quickly, which it does, but I don't know if this year has gone by faster than last year.  It probably has, it's been a pretty big year!  I'm so glad that Robbie loves Alex.  Robbie will literally pull Alex out of my lap when I'm sitting on the couch so he can give Alex a hug.  I'm pretty sure Robbie thinks he can carry Alex.  Luckily I have not seen him try to pick up Alex when I'm not helping him hold on.  Robbie is getting better at counting.  He loves to say the colors of cars, though some cars are tough!  I wish there weren't crazy colors like "sandy desert at dusk".  That's just brown for now.  For a while he has grabbed my hand so I will go wherever he wants to take me.  Now if I don't get up fast enough he says "walk" and "come on".  Guess I say that often enough to him.  He's definitely becoming Mr. Repeat so we'll have to be extra careful what we say around him!

Robbie at church this morning.

Today was Alex's baby dedication at church.  It's a time for parents to commit to raising their children in a Christian home and teach them about Jesus.  My parents were able to come up for the weekend and go to church with us.  I know Matthew's family would have come if they were able to make it.  Both boys did great on stage.  We took the boys back to the nursery while we went back in for the service. 

They reserved seating for the family members that attended, so my parents took a few pictures during the ceremony.

All of us on stage.

They did a slideshow and put up a picture of each of the baby being dedicated.  Here we are with Alex's picture behind us.

The picture of Alex.

 

Lunger

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a lunger!  Alex isn't crawling, but he gets in the crawling position and lunges forward.  It won't be long before he's a crawler!

This is a long video, but I love his face around the 25 second mark.  You can tell he just wants to get to the whale!  At 1:10, he gets up on his knees and really starts to make forward progress.



Alex going for my water bottle.  He's been really interested in it lately, much to Robbie's chagrin.  I guess Robbie thinks I can only share it with him.  It almost looks like Alex is going to stand up and walk over to it!



Alex going for my water bottle again, but then he rolls over and finds other toys.  An early indication of ADD?  :)



Such a cute face Alex is making!

I was doing some cleaning in Robbie's room and Alex was hanging out with me.  Alex loves to watch the mobile and the squish toy is one of his favorites.

Crawling position and Peek-a-boo

Alex is starting to get into the crawling position.  He is making very little forward progress, but I think in the next couple of weeks (maybe by the time he's 6 months old) he'll be crawling.  I hope Robbie is ready for his little brother to be following him!

I mentioned in a previous post how Alex would get up and then pick up his arms and legs and flail around.  I got a video of it, though it's not as good as he used to do it.



Alex likes to play peek-a-boo as long as you don't keep his face covered for too long.  I love to hear his laugh!

Busy days

Friday Matthew took the afternoon off of work so that we could head down to visit family.  It was an extra long drive due to rain and accidents (luckily none that involved us!) and we were all ready to get out of the car by the time we got to Jim and Jean's house.  Unfortunately Jim had to travel and wouldn't get in until late that night, but we had a nice time visiting with Jean and Brittany.

Brittany made a great breakfast casserole Saturday morning.  There weren't any leftovers.  It was a quick morning because we were going to visit Gramps.  Matt's mom was already there with him.  We visited with him for about an hour and then picked up lunch and took it to Mimi at her house.  After lunch we headed back to visit Gramps and brought Mimi with us.  We went to Monett and Gary's house for dinner.  Kim and Adam joined us as well.  The dogs were out and Robbie didn't like all of the licking, but I don't really like it, either.  We stayed at Barbara's that night and Robbie was literally asking to go to bed.  When does that ever happen??

We headed to my parents' house Sunday morning.  Lisa and her kids had driven down the day before, so they were there to greet us.  Lisa, Jonathan, Chat and the kids were going to go to Chuck E Cheese's that night, but then plans changed and we joined them there for lunch and games.  Dad offered to stay home with Alex.  Alex wouldn't have much fun anyway!  I don't know how much Robbie really enjoyed it until we put him on a roller coaster simulator.  He would have stayed on that until it closed except that other kids wanted to ride on it, too.  It was a lesson in taking turns that Robbie was not ready to learn!  After Chuck E. Cheese's, the Eikelands and Wurdemans headed back to our parents' house.  Kayleigh and Brian took a nap, but Robbie did not.  Lisa and I sneaked out for a little Target shopping trip while (her) kids napped.  Mom fixed a great dinner and then Barbara and Jack came over for a visit.  It's a running family joke that they go out of town whenever we come in, so we had to trick them and tell them we were coming the weekend before (when they were out of town) and came last weekend instead.  We bathed the boys before loading them into the car for the trip home.  I'm sure Robbie would have been asleep before we pulled out of the driveway if we didn't have a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD playing!  Luckily the drive home was much less eventful and we made good time.

Yesterday Robbie decided that green is finally green (not blue) and today Mickey is finally Mickey (not Minnie).  Alex is starting to make some forward progress crawling, though it's pretty much canceled out going backward.

We gave Alex rice cereal for the first time tonight.  I have to say he didn't have nearly as good of a reaction to it as Robbie did his first time trying it.  I think most of it came back out, though by the last spoonful I heard him swallow a couple of times.  He also kept grabbing the spoon so it was a messy meal. 

I haven't watched these videos, but I'm sorry for my baby talk!





Some pictures from dinner.

Love that face!

What is Mommy doing to me?

I have the spoon!

 

Some pictures Matthew took of the boys this morning.

Watching ESPN.

Alex has my hair!

Look at the smile on Alex's face!

Here's your paci, Alex.

It's upside down, but we'll call it a success.

More videos

Who doesn't love random videos of my kids?  Ok then, here are more!

This was taken a while ago when Matthew and Robbie were playing basketball at the end of our street.  I was holding Alex which is why the video is so shaky. 



I don't even know how to explain this one, but it's funny.



And here is Robbie going through the tunnel I built.  Matthew has been building them with Robbie lately and probably does a better job, but mine definitely stayed up longer!  After Robbie knocked down one of the pillows he grabbed another one to try to fix the tunnel and later he was grabbing for pillows off the other couch which I assume was to make a bigger tunnel.  (We didn't change the tunnel.)