Caleb: three months

Time flies when you're having fun... or when your life is insane... so Caleb is already three months old.  He's still totally adorable.  He's moving from looking more like Sabrina as a baby to Celia as a baby.  He's still a pretty easy-going guy.  He hates being left alone, but he's always happy if someone is talking to him.  He still smiles a lot - but not just at anything... you have to engage.  And we hear talking occasionally, but he really makes you work for it.  You have to really spend time working him up to talking.  He still gets all worked up smiling before he's ready to talk.  His eyes get all watery and then he'll give you a few coos.  It's adorable.  And we've heard the preliminary laughs that sound more like he's choking a bit while smiling.  He does this when you play with his arms and talk to him or kiss his neck (though this is a hit or miss move).  He's getting pretty good at holding his head up.  His schedule this month looks like this: Sleeps from 9-9ish eating around 6am.  Lately we've been camping out in his room from 4-6am giving him the binky.  He's not hungry until about 6, but he's just awake talking (more than we ever hear during the day!).  We're working on this.  The past few nights, we've put him down around 8:15 and he's slept until about 9 with a 6:30ish feeding without waking up before that at all.  We hope that continues.  Look at this little darling!

As for my health... as we know, this has been the hardest pregnancy and recovery ever.  I was finally cleared for exercise the day before Caleb turned 3 months old.  My abs never came back together after Sabrina, so this pregnancy involved my pelvic muscles substituting for my abs and trying to hold everything up.  By the time Caleb was born (with this head sideways and his hand by his face, mind you), my muscles were shot.  After recovering from a uterine infection post-delivery (and the three rounds of antibiotics), I started physical therapy.  I had to relearn diaphragm breathing and how to walk without using my hips.  Anytime I would eat something wrong or walk too much or turn the wrong way, all of my muscles would seize up like I had another uterine infection.  This happened daily.  It has slowly gotten better.  I haven't had that happen for about two weeks (knock on wood).  After 6 weeks of physical therapy, I can do a single leg-lift.  I can't yet do a sit up.  And they said it will probably take me about a year to be able to do a double leg-lift.  Everything in recovery has felt like one step forward, two steps back.  I still have periodic pelvic muscle pain/hip pain, but I'm getting a bit stronger every day (or so I keep telling myself).  I can now do 5 minutes on the elliptical before nearly passing out and we did a 10 mile bike ride this weekend, which I successfully finished, but am still feeling.  My gut is still trying to recover from the antibiotics and it seems like a new pain/problem pops up weekly.  So are we back to normal?  Not even close.  But we're getting there slowly.  And Caleb is pretty easy (such a blessing).  And I hope to one day not live in constant fear of what I'm flaking out on.  It's tough maintaining house, work, transportation for the all-state girls camp in June, shirts/devotionals for youth conference next week, and running the stake young women's presidency as secretary, and getting Celia off to school.  She only has 8 more days left!  I am blessed to have some amazing friends here that have helped so much.  My friend, Sarah takes Celia to and from school everyday (even though the weather is gorgeous and it's only 2 blocks away... I just can't seem to make it both because of health and schedules).  My friends Jessica and Vickie have watched my kiddos for a million doctors appointments and whisked Sabrina off to a home preschool every Wednesday for an hour and a half.  And cousin Taylor watches the kiddos during my physical therapy appointments.  Without them, we wouldn't have made it this far.  So... here's to recovery.  Hopefully I'll start feeling normal in the next few months and then we can start feeling a bit more like we've got a handle on our life!  But Caleb is worth it and I'm so glad he's here.  (And he just wanted to ensure he would be our last kid.  He loves the attention!)

Caleb at Two Months

Caleb was blessed two weeks ago when Nana and Papa were in town.  We took a few pictures in the hallway of Church, but didn't get around to his "blessing outfit photo shoot" until this week.  He cried and cried before his blessing and calmed down just a minute before the actual blessing.  Caleb rocked his photo shoot giving us sleeping smiles, his signature yawn pose, and overall just looked adorable. Though he decided to do other cute things when he wasn't perfectly situated.  He decided to adjust his bowtie when he had a binky in his mouth.  And the only full-mouth awake smile he gave us was after we took off his bowtie and suspenders to put him to bed.  But isn't he adorable?  And yes, we needed to post so many pictures of basically the same thing.  

Caleb's two month update:  We don't have stats yet as he doesn't go to the doctor until Tuesday, but he's wearing 3-month clothes pretty solidly.  He is smiling more now, but he still makes us work for it.  He rarely smiles just because.  You have to be totally engaged and talking to him.  Just this week, he's started talking a bit.  It's really funny because he has only done it a few times, and he works so hard.  He gets all worked up and then makes a tiny little cooing noise.  His cry is getting louder, but it's still a much higher-pitched, cat-like newborn cry than the girls ever had (they were screamers).  When Caleb was first born, he smelled like hot chocolate... majorly.  I always thought someone brought hot chocolate into the room, but then I realized it was Caleb (which disproves my theory that "newborn scent" is nothing but the smell of Tuck's pads and Dermaplast). I still can catch the faint scent periodically, but it's much more rare and much less strong.  Also since Caleb was born, he gets the hiccups after every single feeding.  That is still true mostly.  Luckily, he rarely gets them after his night feeding.  Caleb eats during the day around 9, 1, 5, and 9.  I usually feed him during the night sometime between 4 and 6.  He usually takes two solid naps, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  After his 5pm feeding, he usually just dozes for a bit in the bouncer, but stays awake for most of that time.  He seems okay with his sisters, though he mostly looks at them super blinky-eyed defending himself from getting hair in his eyes while being kissed incessantly.  Caleb isn't super chill.  He doesn't like to be left, and if you're holding him, he likes a change every few minutes.  But he's also super consolable.  Change positions and he calms right down.  He used to be attacked with gas periodically, but now that I'm no longer on antibiotics, that seems to have passed and he's a much calmer baby.  

Celia's Sixth Birthday

Our big girl Celia turned six this month. To celebrate, she had an animal themed birthday with her friends Gabby, Sophie, and Sophia. She invited some kids from school, but none of them showed up, so it was a nice little party with all people we know. They ate snacks, combining all sorts of fruits and vegetables and making up names for them. A sandwich of cheese and crackers was quite inventive. But then grapes on a celery stick was named a bobsled, and the inventive hilarity continued. They played the same "feed the elephant" game we've been playing for years now (apparently a family favorite), which somehow turned into some game of crawling over each other on the stairs yelling "don't tell me I'm almost there!" Six-year-olds are hilarious. They made special clay pens (a project introduced by Nana) which was a big hit with everyone. Celia opened her presents, and the party ended with a game Celia invented called "pass the party hat" with one remaining hat from cousin Hazel's birthday brunch in January. It was basically hot potato with a party hat. They wanted to play it over and over.

For Celia's actual birthday, Nana and Papa were here to celebrate, so we went to see Muppets: Most Wanted. It was a bit old for Sabrina, but Celia says she loved it (though she spent quite a bit of it dancing down our row in the movie theater). Celia is a joy as usual. She is such a reader, and recently, a writer. She just started reading "Matilda" this week, she's working on writing her "thank you" notes all by herself, and she just got "Student of the Month" for the second month this school year. Nana and Papa gave her a bike with training wheels, which she took for a test drive in the driveway and is looking forward to doing again (she's had the flu this week pretty badly). Happy Birthday Celia! We love you!

Caleb: 5 weeks and a day

Caleb is now over five weeks old.   He's a happy,  sleepy baby.   He smiled twice for the first time on March 5th.  He has a cute little mostly closed mouth smile.   The first time was during tummy time (unlike my ladies,  he actually likes tummy time).   I was down on the floor next to him and he just smiled at me (first of my kids to smile at me first... He's a mama's boy!).  Then later that evening,  he was on a blanket on the floor and he heard Tom using the jigsaw in the garage.   He got really calm and when the sawing noise ended,  he just smiled.   He's also got a great series going of awesome sleeping poses.   Caleb loves to sleep.   He eats really well every 2.5-3  hours during the day.  Caleb also gets the hiccups after every single feeding.  He goes to sleep for the night after his 9:30pm feeding and usually sleeps until 8 or 9 in the morning with one gas attack around 4ish (after which I usually feed him).   The poor boy gets attacked by gas periodically.   He gets really growly and then passes really loud gas for a solid few minutes.  Before Caleb, I really thought baby gas drops were a placebo for parents because they did absolutely nothing for my girls,  but they totally seem to help him (for which I'm grateful).   He's getting big (though he started pretty big) and his cute giant tummy always seems to be hanging out.   It's so hard to be productive when Caleb likes to just sleep on my shoulder.   I'm enjoying our cuddle time tremendously.   And I'm so glad our little boy has joined the family!

Pictures From Marel's Phone

Since Caleb is a third child and smart phones are a real thing now, I need to start a new segment called "Pictures from Marel's Phone" in order for Caleb to not feel neglected and to cover some awesome moments only caught with my phone.

These first two were the view from my bed whilst in labor (maybe they were not included in the hospital post because Tom wanted you all to believe he spent the entire day holding my hand).

Sabrina showed off her brother at home in a "block him with my body" pose:

Caleb did some sleeping:

A lot of sleeping:

He woke up once!

 Make that twice:

 The girls dressed up like this one Sunday and Sabrina said: "it's Church day!"

Tom had a birthday and used his new grabber from nephew, Balo, to eat his carrot cake.  This was after we went to Benihana which was the entirety of our celebration of Tom's birthday (tough having a baby two weeks before your birthday).

The boys got all sportsy after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl:

Caleb got the thumbs up from Sabrina:

Caleb showed his personality.  Rawr:

Double rawr:

I was majorly losing a staring contest one day:

Until I totally won:

Celia got a pretty advanced "learn to draw" book as an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa.  Immediately, she opened it up, grabbed a piece of paper, and started freehand drawing some freakishly amazing figures:

Then the girls left for Spring Break to go visit Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and Papa.  Tom and I pulled up the carpet in our bedroom and now after we put Caleb to sleep in the living room, this is how we started spending our evenings: watching Hulu and eating ice cream out of the container in our construction area bedroom.

And this adorable little picture I took of the little man today.  He's getting so growed up!