"Trunk or Treat!"





So Christopher was an elephant for his first Halloween, and he made out pretty good candy-wise! We went to a few neighbor's houses and they enjoyed seeing him. Hope you had a nice Halloween and got lots of goodies - we didn't get a single trick-or-treater!

Andrea

19 1/2 weeks






Cracking up with grandma.




Hanging out with his aunties.

I thought it was funny to catch him eyeing that cake in this photo, he's starting to get ready for solid foods as he watches us eat. Pretty soon, buddy!

19 weeks old...


Giving cloth-diapering a try (I'm not very good at the folding, I don't think its supposed to go down to his knees!). The women on the La Leche league forum I'm on have given me lots of tips though.


Hanging out in one of his new diapers.


He LOVES standing! He can support himself for about 10 seconds or so. He is just dying to sit up, crawl, and just get moving in general.


He's also chomping away on anything he can!

Out for an evening stroll...

"Someone get me outta here..."





He surprisingly doesn't mind being confined to this Bumbo thing, but I don't use it yet really because I think he's too young for it. They say it can be used as early as 3 months, but I won't use this until he can sit up independently because I don't like him slouching forward so much. When I tried him in it he let out a sigh and I was convinced he was short of breath from being hunched forward so I took him out immediately... probably not true. We're not ready for the sitting yet!

Last week was my 30th birthday and it was very nice. I thought about how I expected to be done with school with 3 children by the time I was 30... it used to seem really old to me. But I am so happy with where I am at and am loving motherhood and my family. I wouldn't change anything.

I'll try and post some more videos soon, those take a while to upload so its not as easy to find the time. Have a nice weekend!

Andrea

4 months


Taking his tubbies for the night.


Enjoying his jumper Auntie Jenn got him.

Hi everyone,

These are a few pictures that Chris' parents took when they were here for the baptism. I like how these came out, you can really see his chubby thighs in his jumper!

He had his 4 month doctor's appointment and everything is great. She said I can start with rice cereal but I am not going to give him anything but breastmilk until he is six months old. He is a few ounces shy of 15 pounds, keeping him right at the 5o% percentile which he has been at for every visit since birth. I'm not sure how much stock I put into his height measurement, he was squirming around and they got 25 1/2 the first time then said that seemed high, so did it again and got 24 1/2 and said "that seems better so we'll keep that one." Not too scientific! He handled his shots ok, he only cried for a minute but seemed warm and uncomfortable that night and Tylenol seemed to help.

Have a nice week,
Andrea

So in this week's Providence Journal we came across this article and I thought you might find it funny. Make sure and read the entire thing, and you can click on it (and any photo) to enlarge it.



How funny is that! Keep in mind Christopher's middle name is Michael :0)

Sunday 10/7/2007
Christopher's Baptism

Below are a few pictures from Christopher's baptism ceremony yesterday. It was a wonderful day and we're so glad our families could be there!

Thanks to Christopher's godparents, Aunt Carol and Uncle Mike.


Christopher wore my baptism gown and some really cute satin shoes that were a gift from my mom.


Grammy & Grandpa Lavigne


Great-grandparents Lavigne


Thanks again to everyone for sharing in Christopher's day!

love, Andrea & Chris

3 months, 3 weeks


He's got the bringing-toy-to-mouth thing down! Look at him sitting in his high chair already :0)


Even though his feet don't touch the bottom, he likes his entertainment center.


Yet another piece of baby equipment! He recently started to really enjoy his jumper.


Getting a bottle of breastmilk during his first (and hopefully last) nursing strike last week from Auntie Lorie. He went a couple days refusing to nurse (except at night), which put me in a panic because even with pumping, that much time without nursing could mess up your milk supply. Talked to lactation consultant & brought him to pediatrician and we figured out it's just because he is getting very curious and he gets to look around when drinking from a bottle. I switched to a very slow flowing bottle (a feeding takes almost an hour with it) so he wouldn't like it very much for the days I'm at school, and Chris started feeding him facing in so he can't look around. That worked immediately - he'll take the bottle but he doesn't prefer it.


Hanging on tight to Auntie Lorie

Also, big news today - he rolled over! He's been working on it for a couple weeks, and today he did it. It was so cute, he was really mustering up the energy and over he went. He adjusted his arms himself and hung out on his tummy for a while. Then we flipped him back over and he did it 3 more times, so he's got the hang of it. Chris had just gotten home from work 10 minutes before so he caught it but his parents pulled in literally 2 minutes after so they missed it, but, they got to see the next few times!

Thought I'd post a few pictures & a link to that baby poll before they delete it, so you can see how you did. Lower points mean a better guess.

http://expectnet.com/game.php







He & Grammy matched... he wasn't happy about the extra outfit change!


But soon he was happy to be held by Grammy.

These are from over 2 weeks ago, but I thought I'd put some pics up that Chris' parents took.



I think he looks more like me as a baby...


Our drooling, teething little man.

3 1/2 months

Hi everyone, just thought I'd post a video of Christopher trying to roll over - he makes it halfway :0). Will update more soon.

love, Andrea

3 month photos...






So we got Christopher's 3 month photos done... again. I had gotten them done a couple weeks ago at Walmart and I don't know why I went there, it was just lousy and they did a lousy job. The rug he sat on was dingy and the place smelled! And so did the worker! And they were no less expensive. They had this deal where the whole package was under $6, so I thought, great - except you get there and that package deal is only on the first photo, which I didn't like. So Chris and I went to Sears to get these done, I like them.

Not sure what other updates I can give except the nursing is going excellently. The pump works like a charm and feeding in public is fine, now that I don't try to cover his head with a blanket since he hates that. The visiting nurse of RI is coming tomorrow and will weigh him, I am guessing he weighs over 14 pounds now because he feels really heavy.

We're now trying him on Prevacid for his reflux since he is always spitting out the Zantac, which has to be given three times a day. Prevacid only needs to be given once a day so that will be better, and we mix it in with milk and he eats it right up. I read it takes a couple weeks to work fully, so we'll see if that does the trick more consistently than the Zantac.

Have a good one,
Andrea

12 1/2 weeks...



Hi everyone,

Chris & I had Christopher's baptism class last night where we basically learned about the meaning of the sacrament and some history behind it. It was interesting. There were four other couples there, one of them had a little girl Christopher's age but the other two had tiny newborns and one couple didn't even give birth yet. Christopher was the only one who cried :0).

As I'm sure you know, we had to give our other boxer Oscar away while I was pregnant and so we decided to give him to a boxer rescue league. That way, someone who knows they want a boxer specifically can adopt one. Chris goes on the website every so often to hear about updates and there was one today. You can see he's very happy in his new home, and there is another boxer there who even looks like Molly. I'm not surprised that the owners look tired in the pictures with two boxers!!

Oscar's update: (you might have to cut & paste the link)

http://www.boxerbuddies.org/Now/oscar1AA.htm

Oh and my Lyme titer came back negative, so that's good. The doctor did say there are lots of false negatives because you have to have it for a long time before it will show up on the titer, so its good I took the antibiotics just in case.

One last update - Chris will no longer have to bring the baby to Providence for me to feed him during my clinical, I realized what was wrong with the pump: the stupid face plate was loose. I called Medela and they troubleshooted with me. One snap and it works incredible, I went from pumping an ounce per session in the past month to 8 ounces in 15 minutes while I was away yesterday, which is more than he even eats at a feeding. I'm a tad furious at myself for not calling them sooner. It would have saved a lot of worry, all this time I thought my milk supply was too low to pump out and that my milk supply would stop when I went to school. I was pumping three times a day to get it increased, getting up earlier than the baby did so I could pump while he slept - it was a nightmare. Oh well, its resolved now and thank goodness it works so well.

Have a great week,
Andrea

11 weeks, 5 days

Hanging out with Curtis...

So its already September, I can't believe it! Its already time for school to start next week. I will be going back full-time but will be home with Christopher 5 days per week instead of working. Chris will be home with him the other two days, and so, the baby will get to be with just us until the Spring semester when he'll be almost 8 months old. We're very excited about that! By then, I feel like he will be at an age where there can actually be some benefit from 2 days of daycare per week. I had lunch with a friend last week who announced she is pregnant for the third time, and although her mother moved in with she and her husband, she continues to put her other two kids in daycare a couple days per week. She said they began to thrive when they were surrounded by all the other kids and wanted to do all the things they saw the other kids doing. So that was really nice to hear, that daycare is good for kids at a certain point and not something to dread. I think it will be fun for Christopher when he's 8 months to be in the infant room at the daycare near campus, he's already a sociable guy who prefers smiling at ladies!

I had my first day away from him last week, well, sort of away from him... I had an all-day orientation at Butler Hospital for a clinical I am doing there this year, and Chris was home. So I brought my pump, notified the instructor that I'd be taking breaks (she was so nice about it and went on about breastfeeding her babies! People really are understanding about this kind of thing) but when I tried to pump, I got nothing. I tried forever, virtually nothing came out. And so, despite having enough frozen milk to feed him for weeks at home, Chris had to meet me to feed the baby as I couldn't go 8 1/2 hours without draining my milk. They actually took a nice long walk around and waited so I could feed him a second time. So that didn't go too smoothly, but they had a nice day anyway because it was beautiful outside and Christopher loves going for walks. I had stopped pumping for a couple of weeks because it seemed like every hour I was either feeding or pumping, but I'm getting back to doing that now. He still eats all the time, so the two days I'm out I'll be managing one or two feedings with him per day - the pump just doesn't drain as well as he does.

Despite two nights last week where he slept until 5 a.m., he is back to the waking up at 2 a.m. I've been feeling really lousy this week and assumed it was just the sleep deprivation catching up with me, but based on my symptoms the doctor thinks I contracted Lyme disease. The titer comes back next week, but he said they often has false negatives, so I shouldn't wait for it and start the antibiotics now. Everything is fine with feeding the baby if that is in fact what I have, and the antibiotics are fine when used short-term, using them for months would cause a risk for teeth discoloration for the baby. I'm on it for two weeks which Chris said is safe.

One last update - Christopher and I went to church this morning and he really seemed to like it. He was in awe of the people singing and looking around the church. We are planning on taking his baptism class next week.

Happy Labor Day weekend!!



Andrea

Grandpa Resendes


He says, "thanks for the blue eyes, grandpa"

Christopher enjoying his nightly bath... I got a new tub because the one I had from Fisher Price was a real nightmare for the infant stage. You may have seen it around, its a very cute tub - it has this hammock with colorful fish on it. The hammock stage was great, but then when it was time for him to recline that tub just wasn't designed right. The seat was really shallow, so he slid down all the time and the seat was also positioned so high that even with the tub full, only his heels would touch the water! Anyhow, he likes this tub and if I put it over the sink like its designed for, it reclines a couple inches further and he's very comfy.





"Daddy, WHAT is that machine you're shooting at me?!"