Zach's Four Month Stats

As always, these posts are intended for grandma's and nana's and honorary "family" members who care.  If you don't, you have my permission to skip over this post.

I forgot to pack the camera this morning, since we are having some house drama at the moment, so you only get cell phone pics.

Today was Zach's 4 Month Appointment. I can't believe he has gotten that old or this big so fast. Seriously...sleep deprivation will do that to you.

"Mom, why are you still talking?  Give them the stats!" 

Here is how he is shaping up:

Weight: 15lbs 8 oz (50th percentile) 

Height: 26 inches (84th percentile)

Head: 41.5cm (44th percentile)

For those of you looking back to last appointment at 2 months, you'll note that his weight is still the average for his age but he has gotten longer than the average baby and his head is starting to grow into a more average size.

Things of note:
He rolls onto his tummy all the time now.  At the appointment he kept doing it and I like to call it "baby guided tummy time" or "self imposed tummy time".

And he likes to sleep that way now, even though I've told him that I don't like it because it scares me.  He still insists on doing it anyway.  Rude.  It's like he doesn't care about my feelings at all.

 I never did tummy time with him and a couple weeks ago while putting him down for a nap, he was flailing around so I put him on his tummy to contain him....and he rolled onto his back.  So I guess he knows how to roll both directions now.  That sneaky little baby.

He is still as snuggly as ever.  His grandma Anderson calls him her "Snugs".  He is taking most of his naps by himself these days but every once in awhile, I snuggle down with him and enjoy every second that I get being close to him....till he pokes me in the eye.

His smile renders me incapable of being mad/sad/tired/irritable.  It totally slays me. That could be a bad thing someday...but at the moment, it makes the aforementioned sleep deprivation bearable.

"Mom...are you seriously still writing?"

He LOVES to be sitting up or standing.  But he HATES that he can't do that all the time by himself yet.  He has gotten bored with being on his back and looking up at his toys.  He loves to sit or stand on my lap and look all around him.

He loves being outside.  I'm scared that winter will be really hard for him because we will be mostly indoors.  The other day, I bundled him up and took him outside to show him the yellow leaves.  He liked it but his tiny cheeks got chapped.

We will be starting solid foods today...or at least...that is the plan.  He loves to eat and so far in his life he has shown that he will take formula, breast milk, or medicine and he doesn't care if it comes out of a real nipple, plastic nipple, syringe, dropper, or spoon.

I love my little sun bear.  He gets kisses every day and so he isn't hurting in the getting love and attention department.  Every day I hope that we aren't messing him up too bad because we sure do think he's great.

Grocery Shopping

It is almost time to get this kid used to sitting in the cart....because right now?  Yeah...he is taking up way to much space when I got grocery shopping.  (Also...I just love his face in this picture)

We had to make an emergency run to the grocery store because we ran out of rice to feed the missionaries.  And I'm not going to be the one that slowly starves the missionaries!!
 

Harvest Update

And this year was the lamest year of all!
Every year I try to write an update about how our garden did and every year it always does lamer than expected.  So in that regard....we did GREAT this year!  Hahahaha, there were ZERO expectations!  Aaron and I knew that the whole backyard was going to be a disaster.  With the weed problems we were having and knowing that I was going to be at work all during planting season and pregnant/postpartum during weeding and tending season...we figured that it would be best to not do anything.

\

But the fence that we share with Lou made it so that without any effort on our part, we got bushels of green grapes and raspberries grow no matter what!

The green grapes have seeds and so most years they just fall off and rot.  But this year, a woman at church showed me how to turn them into my own juice!!!  So I made a couple gallons of grape juice for Aaron and I to enjoy.  With the steam juicer that she loaned me, it was the easiest thing in the world!!  I can't wait to do it again next year!
  

Family Walk: Take Three

"We really going to do this dance again?"

We love going on walks as a family and so we decided to stick Zach in the stroller again, now that he is a little older and see what would happen.  You can read about the first and second attempts if you want.

It was just a short walk, close to home.  We brought the dogs with us.  Bambi loves to stay close to her boy.

We walked around the church building and stopped for pictures to document that he actually LIKED this walk.  No crying at all.  He was having fun looking at everything around him.

I love this picture of my hair...just going to say.  I got it cut recently since, if you know me, I NEVER do my hair when it is long.

I'm so glad that Zach had a fun time on this walk!  Maybe more walks to come?  I don't know...it is starting to get cold and rainy around here.

Passed Out on Dad

I come downstairs in the morning after my wonderful husband let me try to sleep in and I find that I'm ready for Zach's nap.

My only question....how can he breathe like that?

 

Doggie Collection

I think that in some page in Zach's baby book, I'm going to have a page of Pippen and a page of Bambi.  It will be my collection of Pippen stealing baby things and Bambi "protecting" Zach.

Most of the stuff that Pippen steals are toys...and so I usually yell at him instead of taking a picture.  He tried to eat a Fisher Price farm animal that I got the other day.

New Blanket From Grandma

The basement is a dangerous place.

There is a whole bed to lay on...but he was slowly creeping onto the blanket.

If he fails, she's there to make a soft landing.

On his back...obviously very vulnerable to attacks.

Needed cuddles on the bed.

Her two favorite people were in the bathroom...so of course, she puts herself between them and the door.

Got to keep that little boy safe in the bathtub.

Cub Scouts: Bottle Rockets

I was released from cub scouts in August but since Aaron doesn't have a partner and can't meet all by himself....I still have to go to scouts.

Today they were working on bottle rockets for pack meeting.  We are going to be shooting them off for fun.   Aaron and I saved some bottles of soda from his birthday to use for this project and it looks like the boys really enjoyed getting to design their own rockets.

I'm super excited to see how they fly!  I'm sure that it is going to be an awesome pack meeting.

Home Improvement: Our Dead Dead Dead Backyard

I think that our friend Daniel Harnish said it best last fall (or rather, signed it best) "Who murdered your backyard?"

Last year, our yard got completely taken over my wild morning glory, or "bind weed".  By the time Aaron found out how to effectively poison it (you have to dilute Round-Up, put it into a jar and stick the ends for the morning glory into the jar and let it slowly slowly carry the poison down the 6 foot main root), it had already smothered our grass to death.

This is actually a picture of what was left of the morning glory this year.  It started to come back in the raised garden area so Aaron had to kill it all over again.

So Aaron raked it all up and by fall, our backyard looked like a brown prickly muddy mess.

Fast forward to this summer.  Aaron was going to rip it all out in the spring but instead we had a surprise baby that we hadn't planned on last summer/fall when we made our plans.

Our backyard got taken over by a new binding vine called "knot weed".  Aaron had to, once again poison the whole backyard and try and rip out all of the dead growth.  And since we had to rip out all that dead growth and start from scratch anyway, we decided to till up everything and just lay down new sod and give this backyard a completely fresh chance.

Aaron finally started tilling up this mess at the beginning of September when I borrowed a tiller from some friends at our church.

While he was tilling, he ran into these obstacles...

...and decided that while he was ripping stuff up, he might as well rip them out as well.  They are old laundry posts that we used when we first moved in and we didn't have a dryer...but it's been 4 years since we hooked up the dryer and stopped using these....so it was time to say good bye.

Aaron backed up my Montero and got some rope.

And it was trial and error back there for the next two weeks.

Aaron decided while my dad and brother were over (on my brother's way back to BYU-I), we would try and get more tilling done in the backyard. 

My dad went out to inspect how dig Aaron had dug around the pole and how deep the cement went and how tough our rope was.

My dad confirmed again that the rope was not going to be good enough and we were going to need some chains.  Aaron knew this and again lamented that we didn't have any...while I reminded him that we had friends who did, who would be able to lend them to us.

It was all tragically hopeless.

Oh wait...no.  It wasn't.  I called up a friend with chains and a friend to help be some added muscle to the project and a couple hours later....

Aaron and our friend, pounded all of the cement off of the poles.  They were cemented down about 3 feet...which is kind of absurd.  What kind of laundry were they expecting these to hold?  This isn't tornado country.

Now we just have a big dead dead backyard.

 

Nap Time Trap!!

Aaron went to put Zach down for a nap today....and....totally got trapped there.

Zach is a REALLY light sleeper and really hard to get back to sleep once he is up, especially if he has slept for over 10 minutes.  Aaron was too scared to move and wake him up, so he just stayed there.

Happy Chocolate Milkshake Day!!

My dear friends, Geoffrey and Clarise, are celebrating a holiday every day!!   Which I think is awesome!!

Thought that I would play along with this one too!!  It is Chocolate Milkshake Day!!!  So I made myself a banana chocolate milkshake to celebrate!

Moving Up (in Size) in the World

Zach is moving up in clothes sizes now that he is a little over 3 months old.  I'm going to miss all of his little newborn baby outfits.  I'm already hoping that my next baby is a boy so that I can pull them all out again.

But he has a really great selection of clothes to go through now that he is bigger too!!

You already saw this one.

Made with love by Grandma Anderson

Made with love by Auntie Crystal

Sent with love from Great Grandma Reinert

I love watching this boy grow!!  And I love putting him into clothes from all his loved ones and imagining him covered in their love!

Peaches and Diaper Disaster

Well, it is harvest time here in Ogden and that means everyone is getting their produce all in order for the long cold winter.  I didn't do any gardening this year because I was busy making a person and keeping him alive.  No biggie.

But yeah, no garden.  Which is kind of a bummer but if you have been following this blog for any length of time you would know that even when I plant a garden...it usually ends TERRIBLY!

A woman at my church gave me a ride home from a meeting one day and the whole inside of her van smelled like peaches.  And she said, "Oh yeah, it's because I have three whole baskets that I don't know what to do with because I don't have room for them in the house right now.  Would you like them?"

If I had been a woman with canning experience, I would have said, "YES PLEASE!!  ALL OF THEM!!"  But I said, "I'll take a couple but I know that if I take more than a handful we won't eat them and they will just rot."

And she asked, "Well, can't you just blanch them?"  ....I'm sure I could...if I knew what the crap that meant.

She told me that you just boil them for about 45 seconds, then pull them out, rip off the skin and put them in the freezer till you want a piece of that peach action.

PERFECT!!  I didn't take 3 basket fulls because that would have been INSANE and we don't have the fridge space for that.  That kind of volume is for canning only.  BUT, I did take a grocery bag full.

And of course, while I worked on them, I snagged a few bites....okay...I might have eaten the equivalent of 4 peaches while I was working...or more.

It was peach madness and they were delicious.  Packed away in the freezer they went.  Ready to use them by the sandwich bag full.  I'm excited about middle of the winter peach smoothies or peach cobblers.  I'll keep you posted.

Cool end of the story, the next day, I was hanging out with my little bear who is still breastfeeding.  I was taking pictures of him in this cute shirt that his Grandma Anderson made for him.

ALL OF A SUDDEN!!!!

I was ZACH ATTACKED!

That is when I found out that if I eat a lot of fruit....my baby gets the runs the next day.  Lesson learned peaches....lesson learned.