Braxton is 5 months old!!!

Who can believe that its been 5 months since this sweet little boy entered the world? Because I surely cannot! He is growing so much each day and gets just a little bit more of my heart every time I look at him. He laughs and coos all the time and rarely gets upset. He has such a sweet disposition and everyone says he look just like his Uncle Josh. Ironically they also say he looks like Brookelynne who apparently looks 'just like Mitch' and anyone who knows Mitch and Josh knows they look nothing alike, lol. :) Here are some pics and stats from the past month!

* Can sit up for short periods of time, but I really haven't been working on it with him very much because of how busy we have been.

* LOVES his toys!! Rattles are his favorite right now but he also likes playing with his paci pets. (The frog and dog that are connected to his pacis)

* He's rolling over everywhere! If you put him down for any amount of time, he'll roll over within minutes. :) He doesn't mind being on his belly but once he's tired of it, he'll let you know.

* He's going through 2 to 5 bibs each day between his drooling and spit up. You would think he would have a tooth or two by now but none in sight! He's got the best toothless grin though!

* Is quite the socialite! He talks to everyone!

* Loves to stand up/straighten out. Anytime you lay him down, he's as straight as a board. They should have no problem measuring his length any time soon because he's as long as he can be every time he lays down! He also loves to stand up. You have to fight him to get him to bend at the waist most days, but if you just put his feet on the floor he'll hold his own weight for 30 minutes or more. I've even started holding just his hands or just putting my hands on his hips, and while he's not super stable, he'll stand on his own for short spurts.

* Is about to pop out of all of his 3-6 month and 6 month clothes. We pulled out the 9 month clothes last week and are starting to clear out his drawers and replace them. I've noticed that we don't have many 9 month church clothes though. Guess that means I'm going shopping soon! :)

* He naps in his swing often times, mainly because he's in the 'fighting sleep stage' and it's much more effective to put him in the swing and swing it fast to get him to fall asleep than to hold him tight and make him go to sleep because as soon as you put him down, he's up again..

**** He's sleeping through the night!!!!!! ******** :) He started this at about 4.5 months, and has done great with it. He takes his last bottle around 9 and then I just lay him in his bed and he goes right to sleep! He's so precious and hardly ever fusses. If he does fuss, I let him do so for several minutes until he's about to cry and then I walk in there and give him his passy. He immediately takes it and is out in seconds.If you try to give it to him any sooner than that, he won't take it. (Little stinker!) :)


* He's starting to know my voice even from across the room. If I'm outside of his classroom at church and talking, he starts turning his head to me and immediately smiles when he sees me! Its so stinkin cute! (Oh, and in case you were wondering, he has the best smiles ever!)

* He doesn't have any favorite toys yet, but does like playing with rattles. Especially the ones that he can shake and make a good amount of noise.

* He puts EVERYTHING straight into his mouth! I know this is 'normal' but it's so new to us because Brooke never did that. Literally everything that his hand touches goes in  his mouth, so we now have a much more clean-conscious Mama over here! It never bothered me with Brookelynne if she dropped a toy on the ground or even if she picked something up off the ground because 95% of the time, she'd just play with it and then put it down/back. Not Little Man, he immediately tastes it, meaning when he drops it on the floor, he puts those germs right into his mouth. Not cool. :) It makes me wonder what type of learner that will make him. Hopefully I figure that out soon! haha

*We finally found a song that he likes!!! Unlike his big sister and his Mama, he was not at all concerned with music for the longest time! You could sing and sing and it didn't calm him a bit. I stumbled upon a tune that he likes and we now officially have the first 'Braxton James Song" :) It goes "Where is Braxton James, Braxton James, Braxton James, Where is Braxton James? He's sitting right over there" We also substitute  "I love...he's our sweet baby boy" and Brookelynne's name for more variations of the song.

 * He's eating solids! He has had carrots, sweet potatoes, pears, green beans, peas, peaches, strawberries, kiwi, spaghetti squash and butternut squash. He doesn't like the squash though! :) We started him on it right at 4 months, and it took him quite a while to get good at eating off of a spoon, but he's gotten it now! We knew he wanted to eat, because if you kept at it, he'd eat 2 or 3 ice cubes worth each day for the first week or so and then 4 to 6 ice cubes each serving after that. He eats great now, just as long as its not squash, lol.

* He LOVES his big sister! He thinks she is hilarious and loves when she plays with him or talks to him. If she comes into his line of sight he always smiles and usually laughs anytime she does or if she makes faces at him. She'll play peek a boo with him, which they both love, and she loves to do 'giccha giccha goo" with him while she pokes his belly!

Backyard Playspace....

When we bought our home four years ago, one of the selling points for me was the beautiful view on from the back door and nice large covered back porch. I told myself I'd sit out there regularly and enjoy the breeze coming off the lake and that we would get plenty of use out of it. I lied to myself. LOL. :) But since Brookelynne was born, we've gone back and forth about what to do with it. As she gets older she wants to spend more and more time outside, and lets just be real for a second, I do not like getting dirty and sweaty if I can't go take a shower as soon as I'm done. And lets just face it, with two kids, I barely get my one shower each night after everyone's asleep, there's no way I'm getting one at 11 am after playing in the park. So when we started talking about getting the playground stuff for the back yard, I started thinking about what I could do with the back porch for rainy days or time in the shade. I have wanted to get a 'playhouse' but knew there was no way I was going to pay $80 or $100 for one, and I knew I'd like a slide and coupe car, but wasn't paying full price for those either. So a few weeks ago, my mother in law, Jeanna, called me to tell me she was at a garage sale and they had a few different things and she was getting them for her house so the kids could play in them. I told her that I had been wanting some things like that and she said that she would keep an eye out for them. Later that day she called me back to tell me that she had found another garage sale and had cleaned up! And that she'd have the stuff at her house for me to pick up whenever.

So a few weeks ago, we started on our porch playyard, by putting together her new-to-us house. :) I started by bleaching them really well and scrubbing each piece and then put them together on the porch. Brookelynne was in love right off the bat! A couple days later I stopped by there to get the slide and 'picnic table'. We repeated the scrubbing process and added a step of spray paint to give them some new life and *tada* we had even more to play with!

 New Slide and Picnic Table! (The parts that are red were very faded, almost white. They look GREAT now!)

 Braxton having a blast on the slide and Brookelynne playing house!

Then I started searching craigslist for my coupe car. :) To my excitement, I found one that was being sold in a lot with 2 other ride on toys that I had liked anyway, so I bought all three on my way over to visit my nieces the other day. While at Jeanna's house that afternoon, she mentioned that the sand table was also supposed to go to my house, so we left the motorized ride on toy for my nieces, and loaded up the sand table to take home. Needless to say, we have quite the collection of plastic toys out there. Hopefully I can get the yard and house cleaned up in the next few weeks so we can have some of Brooke's friends over to check them out too!

 My babies in their cars!

Scary Moment that I never want to repeat....

So today we had VBS training/planning and I was at the church all morning. We didn't even leave the parking lot until 2:30 and even though it was past nap time, I had to stop at Sam's on the way home. We went inside and I stopped in the book section as always and headed back to the produce. I grabbed the salad stuff I needed and some green grapes for my favorite 20 month old and headed to get the tea bags. Brookelynne of course wanted to start eating the grapes, something I always allow her to do, so every couple of minutes I would pull 3 or 4 out of the container and give them to her to eat. We strolled through the store and up to the front. She was standing in the buggy, next to Brax's carseat (which he was in) and eating grapes, one at a time. All of a sudden she kind of coughed, and at first I thought she had accidentally swallowed some juice down her wind pipe, something that obviously corrects itself after a couple of coughs. A second later I realized that she wasn't just coughing, but choking with her mouth open and her face turning red. I didn't even think, what came next was just my training/instinct taking over. I 'swiped' her mouth out, feeling the grape that was lodged in her throat, but not able to 'get behind it', so I yanked her up out of the buggy, hitting her back with my right hand, as I positioned her on my left hand for the infant/child's version of the Heimlich. Before I could turn her over/hit her again, it popped out and she started screaming. I turned her around and just held her and calmed her down.

It wasn't until minutes later that I started shaking and thinking about all the what ifs. I mean my daughter eats grapes all. the. time. And she's been eating them whole for 6 or 8 months now. She's never had a problem. What if I hadn't been looking at her when this happened? What if we had been at home and she had taken some grapes into the other room (something she often does when she's snacking) and this had happened? Would I have even heard her? Would she have been able to cough it up or get to me in time? What if it happened in the car? There's no way I would be able to get off the road, back to her seat, her out of the seat and try to help her until 45 or 50 seconds after realizing what was happening. Seriously this could have been so much worse and I am so grateful that if it was going to happen that it happened this way and even more grateful that I have had cpr/first aid training to know what to do. Even though I haven't be 'certified' in 5 years, it was like I had been trained yesterday, I just immediately saw the diagrams in my head and began positioning Brooke accordingly. How great is my God that when he created me, he created my brain to work in such a way?!?! So grateful to Him, not only for Brooke being okay, but for being such an amazing creator!

TEAoBS: Potty Training Edition: Bloopers. :)

So we have some good news and some bad news.... lol. The good news is that she is good enough to tell me that she needs to potty and even if she can't quite hold it until we get the bathroom, she can stop herself once she starts.

So today in Target, I'm walking around the children's clothes when she tells me she needs to potty. I go to pick her up to find that her panties are wet, but they're not soaked, so I ask her if she still needs to potty and she says yes. I changed her pants/panties and then we trekked to the front of the store. We went into the "family restroom" (officially my favorite part of the store now!) and she potty-ed on the potty. She got off, I cleaned everything, put it all back into the buggy (which was where Brax was happily sleeping in his car seat) and rolled us all out the door. A second later, Brooke said "Potty" again. So I asked her if she needed to GO potty, to which she said yes, so we went back into the family restroom and repeated the process. After which we headed back to the baby department to pick up the bottle liners and toilet cover that we actually came to get.

I picked up the bottle liners and headed to the isle with all the potty training gear and started comparing prices and features. I was looking at the toilet seats that you put on regular toilets, because we need one that can permanently be in the bathroom and not have to come with us to public restrooms. These were all hanging on the top shelf, so while I was aware that Brookelynne was near my feet, I wasn't watching her every move or anything. A minute went by and I realized she was quiet, so I look down, and my sweet little daughter had pulled one of the portable 'potty chairs' off of the shelf, lifted the lid, pulled down her pants and potty-ed right there in the middle of the Target Baby Department. I quietly squeaked out her name and she replied by looking up at me, saying "potty" and clapping for herself. I didn't have a mirror but I'm pretty sure this was the moment that I turned about 18 shades of red.

So I grabbed her wipes, knelt down and cleaned her and pulled up her panties. About that time, Brookelynne reaches for the part that comes out saying "dump, dump", just in time for me to realize that there is no where to 'dump' this anywhere around here. So I tell her I'm doing to dump it, to which she about pitches a fit. I make her get into the buggy and let her hold the rest of the potty chair as I walk through the whole store, back to the front, pushing this buggy with now 2 crying/fussing/pitching a fit babies with one hand and trying not to spill pee out of this container in the other.

Needless to say we purchased this potty that we didn't really need and I got out of that store as FAST as I possibly could. And just because of my embarrassment, a copy of this post will accompany her on every first date for the rest of her life! lol :) jk