This makes me so happy

Within the last couple of weeks -- somewhere around 3 months old -- Cayden has really started looking around with amazement and curiosity. Imagine my delight when I picked him up, put him on his feet on his changing table and realized how excited and enthralled he is with the bulletin board I made him months before he arrived. He loves it! My hard work and craftiness resulted in more than just wall art; that bulletin board is a visual extravaganza for my little boy's growing brain!

He's also a big fan of the tree on his nursey wall and animal burp cloth Ruth got him in Canada. I layed the cloth over the top of the glider, so Cayden stares and smiles at it when I burp him over my shoulder in the chair.

two fingers

Not of tequila or scotch, like Dad likes, but rather soothing fingers.

This past week Cayden started trading out his thumb every now and then for two fingers to suck and self-soothe. Dad was a thumb-sucker and Mama sucked her pointer and middle fingers, but Chicken Wing is going for his middle and ring fingers -- the same fingers Uncle Jeff used to suck!

Thanks, Grammas!

This weekend I finally downloaded all the pictures of Cayden from both Grandma's cameras, and we got some great new shots!!

These were the ones I was really hoping for, since we obviously weren't taking pictures at the baptism. Aunt Lauren got some good ones, but these take the cake!

Thanks to Grandma Connie we now have a picture to put in the beautiful baptism frame Paul and Deb got for Cayden.


And thanks to Grandma Barb, we have a good family photo. Or as good as you can get when your baby is sleeping and screwing his mush up.

symptoms of teething

Excessive drool: Check.
Putting things in mouth and chewing: Check.

Now, all three-month olds do both of these and they're not reliable signs of teething, so I have been reluctant to agree when all the grandparents tell me Cayden is teething.

But yesterday, after Chicken Wing woke up from a 30-minute nap screaming and continued to cry while he nursed, I opened his mouth to find a little white spot on his lower gum. Not a tooth, but as soon as I found it Brian went online to look up symptoms of teething. Now these, I had not known about:

Ear pulling: Check. He's been pulling on his right ear for a few days. I was actually worried he had an ear infection.

More frequent stools: Check. After weeks of pooping every few days, yesterday he went three times in 24 hours.

And the little white dot on the gums: Check. Incidentally, it's on the same side as the ear he's been pulling.

Only time will tell, but we've got the baby Tylenol on the ready, and the teething toys are now in the freezer. He's a little over three months and one week old.

Sigh. I guess my baby isn't really into staying a baby. Good for him, I guess, but a little sad for me.

Here's my strong boy standing on his changing table this morning.

And yesterday.



And pulling his ear.


And this is what I found when I came up from putting laundry in yesterday afternoon. Crack me up. Pun intended. No idea how or why he got the back of his dipey pulled down so far.

Balding & Blowout updates

First, while my hair loss has slowed to normal pre-pregnancy shedding rates, Cayden is now really losing his beautiful black hair. There's a stripe of hair on his crib sheet(looks like Hercules dragged his butt puff across there, but I know he didn't), and now whenever I kiss the kid with lip gloss on, I get a mouthful of hair stuck to my lips.

It's starting to look not so cute. :( I just hope his hair figures out what it's doing in the next couple of weeks, before our family portraits with Scott Church on the 19th. We may have a bald baby by Christmas.

And on the poop front: this morning's blowout was completely army green, not French's yellow. Not sure how or why, but his poop has changed color.

I'll take it

Chicken Wing only slept in three-hour windows last night, but he did three of them instead of his usual three-hour, three-hour, one-hour, one-hour crap.

So he ended up staying in his crib until my wake-up time, shortly before 6:30 a.m.

It was nice not having to get up at 3:30 a.m., then again at 5 a.m. to bring him into bed with me. When he woke up at 5 a.m. this morning, he quickly soothed himself and put himself back to sleep. Or at least I assume so, because he quit whining pretty quickly.

Hey, I'll take it. He's three months and a week old.

Stand Tall

Within the past two weeks Cayden started standing. With support for balance, of course, but he holds his own weight. While a week ago he'd buckle at the knees after a few minutes, now he holds himself upright for long periods of time.

He's just shy of 14 weeks.

And here's a photo of my big baby. Compare this one to his one-month bath shot.