And baby makes a family of 5

Quentin Ezra was born Oct 28th at almost 8 in the morning.  He is our only morning baby. We decided not to stay in the hospital the whole time we are allowed since Nicollette and Elijah both had coughs and we didnt want to bring to the hospital because of that. They were excited to meet their new little brother at home. 

big brother and big sister

Quentin is doing well. But adjusting to life with a newborn, a toddler and a preschooler is a learning experience, especially since daddy had to work unusually late most of his first week of life. 

one week old

I have updated our Shutterfly Sharesite if you want to see more pictures. I will probably add some more posts to this blog and back date them so they are in chronological order since I havent been keeping this blog very updated in the last year.

Elijah turns ONE!

Our sweet little boy is one year old, not a baby anymore, now he is toddler. He can crawl super fast, and he stands, and walk a few steps on his own. He want to climb in  and on all the toy storage containers. He is starting to hold his own against his sister when she plays a little rough. He may only have 5 teeth but he likes to try to eat some of the same food as everyone else.

10 mos old

11 mos

standing on own

he does this sometimes when he gets upset

Birthday

sister "helping"

unsure about  messy cake

zoo time

day three - getting the hang of cake

cool toy put together - sister wants to play

I want to play with the flags

Elijah is 9 mos

He is very mobile. Around Memorial Day when Oma and Opa visited us, he was just rolling and scooting and sitting like a tripod and just a few weeks later he was crawling and really sitting up. Now he is pulling up to standing and trying to cruise along the toy bins and couch. He is eating more baby foods and acts like he could live on Cheerios if I let him. We gave him some baby food pouches to try and he has gotten good as sucking on them, which made our weekend trip to Mall of America a little easier. I forgot a pouch one night for dinner and after some resistance he ate some mashed potatoes.
He says "ba-ba-ba" all the time and has started to say "ma-ma-ma" and "da-da-da" sometimes. He has two tooth on the bottom and at least one tooth coming in on the top.

love my toy at 7 mos

7 mos

7 mos -getting so close to crawling

still kind of a tripod in this pic

Cheerios

tea time with sister at  8 mos

8 mos

time to lower the crib

only one hand to stand up

9 mos old

Elijah is 6 mos old

Hard to believe some days that our little man is 6 months old. He is trying to be a mobile rollypoly. You put him in his crib and come back and his is in a different part of it. He can roll front to back and back to front, but prefers his tummy. The first few days he rolled from back to front I could not catch him doing it, I would lay him down on his back to help his sister with something and then look over and he on his tummy. His also pushing up onto his hands and trying to push up to his knees, so the play yard bassinet had to be removed, I hope he doesn't feel like it is a cage now :D

He loves to remove his sock, can't wait for summer so I don't have to keep track of socks when we leave the house.

We just started cereal and he seems to like it, not sure how much gets in his mouth since he spends the whole feeding time trying to control the spoon.

He is starting to transition to spending the night in his room in his big crib and it is a bit of an adjustment for both of us, but better now than me sleeping on his floor later trying to make him sleep in his crib.

Both my kids are little bookworms

So I didn't mean for  him to be wearing a similar shirt in these photos, but I did remember to take photos on his month birthday (one of the cameras has a bad time-stamp because I took theses all on the 16th):

4 mos

5 mos

6 mos

PS myBump growth chart and photos updated

How I keep a toddler busy

Well, I need to keep Nicollette busy while I nurse Elijah, so I have a stash of busy box things (lacing beads, flashcards, aquadoodle, color wonder book, pom pom sorting, etc) but I quickly learned that those don't last long. Sometimes if I do something with her, she is more willing to eat a snack or play on her own so I can nurse Elijah. So I did some Googling to find ideas and started liking toddler blogs on Facebook. Then after spending way to long trying to find an idea I had shared on my Facebook  page to save it. I took the plunge into Pinterest and it is as addicting as I had hoped/feared. So much easier to find toddler ideas and locate them later.

Some things we  have tried:

Felt Snowman

Foam sticker gingerbread baby

  

Cloud Dough cookies

Cloud Dough cake

felt tree

paper plate fish

pipe cleaners and a colander

Cream of Wheat sand

foam sticks to window with water