August

Firefighter training at the Benton County Fair

Sierra loved the rabbit/cavy/poultry exhibit

Jaxon willing himself to be big enough to play with his sister

Feeding the llamas!

She had so much fun!

The reptile exhibit was her favorite:)

A few too many times around

A special daddy/Sierra day at the coast

Sweet brown eyes can make daddy do just about anything!

LOVE!

Daddy's 31st birthday.  The cake didn't melt either;)

So much joy!

On your mark, get set......

"He. won't. stay. still."

"Who me?"

Smoothie face!

Sierra's first kite flying experience

He's sitting in one place!  This lasted about a half of a second.

First time in the pool.  He was very serious but loved it.  This picture doesn't quite give that impression.

Weeee!

One cool dude.

The army crawl has been perfected.

Sheet changing day.  It only took 45 minutes.

:)

August has been kind of a rough month on the homefront.  Jess has worked a lot of overtime this summer, is playing softball and gone in the evening some nights, and Sierra is going through something!!  I guess the terrible 3's are here already.  Holy cow!  We are dealing with lots of temper tantrums, she's waking up a lot at night, she wants held and rocked, and to be honest some days she scares the crap out of me.  She's down right mean sometimes.  She told me for the first time that she "doesn't even like me."  She will hiss at me like a cat if I tell her no.  She also showed her first signs of aggression towards Jaxon.  She was mad at me for something and I was holding Jaxon.  He was smiling at her sweetly and she just reached over and pinched him.  It wasn't hard enough to make him cry or anything but we had to have a serious talk.  When I asked her why she pinched him she said, "I didn't want him to smile at me."  I then asked her how she would feel if she was happy and smiling at me and then I just reached over and pinched her.  She thought about the question for a little bit and then cried and cried.  It's been the only incident so far, and I know it is common, but it broke my heart.

This is the kind of reaction that I expected when Jaxon was first born.  I'm not sure why all of a sudden we are reverting to temper tantrums and other toddler like behavior but it's been rough.  Jaxon is getting more and more mobile and demanding more and more attention from me, and I guess maybe she's tired of it, but good grief. 

Jaxon is raring to go.  He is perfecting the army crawl and does get up on his hands and knees and will sometimes get some forward motion in that stance, but generally lunges out onto his belly and slithers forward.  He gets places though - generally to places and things that he should not.  I have so many tiny things to put up!  I'm not sure how Sierra is going to react to all of her favorite teeny toys put in boxes for quite a while.  My house will probably be a lot cleaner.  One can only hope.

We are delving into the world of food with Jaxy and he is loving it.  It's nice to not be worried about every single thing that goes into his mouth causing a tummy ache.  He has liked pretty much everything he has tried.  He does well with pureed food and cereal but has also done well with rice puffs, graham crackers, and some homemade smashed food rather than pureed.  I've got lots of berries in the freezer and so I just add some frozen berries, breast milk, and some cereal for a yummy baby smoothie.  He can drink out of a cup if I hold it and uses a sippy well but needs help tipping it all the way up when it runs low.  He's putting his teeth to good use and chomps things right up.  His two uppers have been working their way to the surface this month but no more teeth came through.  He has taken to biting though.  My shoulder, my arms (I have bruises!) and um, some more sensitive areas.  I never had to really deal with this with Sierra, so I'm having a hard time trying to decide how to handle it.  If he's nursing I try to unlatch him without losing my nipple and always say NO bite but instead of a low stern voice, I'm usually speaking in a super high borderline hysterical voice.  

Jaxon is taking more consistant naps and actually sleeps in his crib during the day for longer than 20 mins!  He usually takes his morning nap around 9:30 and sleeps anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.  His afternoon nap is generally around 1:00 and lasts an hour to 1.5 hours.  He still kind of needs a late pm nap, but we rarely have time to get him to sleep so he is a little fussy sometimes in the evenings and very ready for bed.  He started really having a fit at nap and bedtimes so I started sleep training this month at night.  With Sierra I let her cry herself to sleep around this same time and it was awful but really did teach her to sooth herself.  Jaxon is a very different creature and has responded so well to my "training".  I started putting him in his crib and letting him fuss a bit but if he gets too upset I will go in and pat his bottom a bit.  If he calms right down I will pat and hum until he goes to sleep.  If he still fusses and squirms I'll leave the room for a few minutes again and then come back and try patting again.  At first it took quite a few times but by the end of the month sometimes I just lay him down, pat him for a bit, and then stand there till he goes to sleep on his own.  But it goes in cycles and sometimes I feel like I've made great progress only to have the next few nights go worse.  Naptime is still more difficult than nighttime but one thing at a time.  Sierra didn't go to sleep for her nap without some sort of intervention until after Jaxon was born.  I wish I could report that he was sleeping through the night but this month was rough sleeping-wise.  With Sierra waking a couple of times a night randomly and Jaxon usually still waking twice a night to eat, I feel like I will never catch up on my sleep and my patience some days is, well, non existent.

We enjoyed a few days at the Benton County Fair at the beginning of the month.  Sierra would only try one ride (not really a ride but a jungle gym type thing) and I had bought bracelets for both of us but could not get her to go on anything else.  We came across one of my friends from high school and her two kids and they asked Sierra to go on some rides with them.  She did!  And after than gained a lot of confidence and felt good enough to go on several rides by herself.  She still refused the big slide and the roller coaster but I was so proud of her for going on the rides that she did.  She loved the animals and was especially excited about the reptile exhibit where she got to pet a snake. 

We have all of a sudden kind of moved past the Why stage and are onto the "Look mommy, look" stage which doesn't mean you glance and make a comment, in means you have to look at what she is doing the WHOLE time she is doing it.  This is hard when you are trying to keep track of another baby too.  The more I type tonight, the more her attitude this month makes sense.  I'm not justifying her tantrums, and she doesn't get off scott free when she talks nastily to me, but I can see that her world is turning more and more upside down.  How do we handle this?  I'm trying to figure it out.  And I pray nightly for wisdom.  And patience.  Hopefully next month will go a little more smoothly.....

July

Jaxon loves his GG

And so does Sierra.  I remember doing this very same thing with my grandma!

Sibling love!

I don't want them to ever get past this stage!

Blueberry picking!

Jaxon was a little too busy eating his toes to help:)

Sierra's ballet class!

Big boy can hold his own bottle.

Olive is so good with her babies!

Farmers market berries!

Fourth of July

Jaxon was impressed with the fireworks

Sierra did not enjoy the loud ones

Otter Beach with Daddy!

Sierra's first sparkler:)

Home Depot little builders workshop

Two of the most beautiful smiles in the Universe

More Otter Beach!

Jaxy takes a break from watching Sierra swim

Philomath Frolic Parade

And Jaxon takes a break from watching the parade

Sweet ZoZo loves

Sierra watching her first Thunderstorm (well the first one she was awake for)

Daddy's birthday project for Sierra!  Fixing up the play structure.

She was so excited!

"Look!  My very own stairs!"

"Thank you daddy!"

So happy she didn't want to leave:)

Sierra 3rd birthday cake made by Grandma Shelly

Birthday festivities

Jaxy sitting like a big boy

It was a busy month!  I took almost 1100 pictures of the kiddos in July, so this is only a small sampling:)  To start the month off, Jesse ended up taking the two days off after the 4th of July so he had a five day weekend!  It was wonderful for all of us!  We took Sierra lots of places and Jess got to do quite a bit of things that he doesn't usually get to take part in because we do it during the week when he is at work.  We took the kids to downtown Corvallis on the fourth to check out the vendors and the parade but weren't terribly impressed.  We did end up getting some delicious berries at the farmers market though.  We also went to the bounce house, Otter Beach, and Sierra got to build a mini truck at Home Depot.  We had a wonderful time and were all sad when Jess had to go back to work.

Jaxon had 3!!! teeth come through this month.  He was really the same happy boy we were used to for the most part but his sleep pattern suffered and he/we had some rough nights.  He also suddenly started talking in ba ba and ma ma's on the 1st of the month instead of in squeals.  One afternoon he just started jabbering out some syllables and never stopped.  He also started reaching to be held mid month.  This is one of the most precious things of early development in my opinion.  When they can reach their tiny chubby hands up for you to hold them it absolutely melts your heart.  He's also working on getting up onto his hands and knees but not usually at the same time and is sitting without too much support by the end of the month.

Sierra started her first ballet class this month.  It's one night a week for 30 minutes.  To be quite honest I dreaded the first class because I had no idea how it was going to go.  She hadn't had her third birthday yet and most of the other girls were 4 and 5 year olds.  The class went okay, she was quite distracted by the other girls and had a hard time listening to the teacher.  But for being almost 3, she did pretty well.  The next couple of classes went so so - and sometimes I think I expect too much of her - but I know that this socializing is important as well as learning to take instruction from someone other than mommy and daddy.

Jaxon started on cereal this month and is doing great.  He opens his mouth for bites and keeps it in his mouth very well .  On the 13th we saw his PCP and even after some formula for the last several weeks he did not go up on the charts.  The Dr said he thought I should switch to formula full time and said, "He's almost 6 months old - a lot of babies get switched to formula at 6 months."  I went home and cried.  My mommy instincts were screaming that this was not the correct answer to Jaxon's low weight "problem" and while I continued to pump and give him 1 to 2 breast milk bottles a day with formula added, I refused to quit nursing.  I scheduled an appointment with a lactation consultant who said that even mothers in other countries that are basically starving themselves can still provide nutrition for their babies.  She said low milk supply is rarely a real problem because within a couple days you can boost your production up by nursing more frequently and taking in more fluids etc.  Basically she said that unless I was taking a medication that was causing my milk supply to be low, that she agreed that going to a bottle was not the right answer.  At this same time we also are in the process of switching to a new PCP that we have heard great things about. 

It may sound crazy to some people that I would go against what my Dr suggested but Jaxon is a healthy happy boy.  He is thin and so was Sierra.  My siblings and I were all thin and so was Jesse.  Breastfeeding is really important to me and I plan to nurse Jaxon until his first birthday just like I did with Sierra.  This doesn't mean that I didn't agonize over what I felt was best for my baby, but most of the time our mommy instincts are pretty spot on!  In a country where obesity is a huge epedemic - I find it frustrating that the kids that aren't chunky are pressured to be so.  This seems like the wrong approach to me.  If Jaxon was sickly or failing developmentally I would possibly think differently about my decision.  But for now I'm going to do what comes naturally to a mommy.  I'm going to provide nourishment for my baby with the boobies that God gave me:)

Sierra turned 3 this month.  I'm not sure how it happened to be honest.  Yesterday she was a baby!  We had a low key birthday party with family and friends.  We didn't go anywhere or rent any fun toys and Sierra had a ball.  She was more interested in playing with her two children guests than eating cake or opening her presents.  She was a super good girl at sharing her new toys and we were really proud of her.  I find myself staring at her with my mouth open these days when she spouts off some grown up concept.  She is such an amazing big sister and I'm proud of her transition every day.  I hope that she realizes how proud I am of her and how much she is loved.   She will be my baby girl always and forever!