Mr Smiley!

Garrison has been full of smiles the last few days! It's so FUN!

Garrison is doing really well. He is a good baby. Fusses when he needs to eat, is tired or when he is sitting in a less than clean diaper. Other than that, he is really good. He LOVES going outside. If he is fussy for some reason, I can put him by the window or walk out the front door with him and he calms right down. He is a pretty good sleeper too, my best sleeper yet, which after Grady, anything is better, but I am not going to say anything more about that so that things stay the way they are. He's weighing in at 11lbs even as of today (Gibson was 10lbs 2ozs, Grady 9lbs 9.5ozs at this same age)...he's my little chunk.

(excuse the milk/spit-up mouth - he is a spitter upper something terrible!)

I'm so in love.

Grady

Grady is the funniest kid. He cracks me up everyday with the stuff he comes up with. His new thing is to climb up into the chair and recline it back and "lounge". It was a riot the first time we saw him do this. He knew exactly what to do.

An update on his speech for those interested. He has added a few more words to his list - blue, green, hi. He even said Mama once. We are still working with him and he continues to go to speech therapy. He is becoming very frustrated with a lot of things and I think it is due to his inability to communicate what he needs/wants or what is frustrating him. Mainly I think his older brother frustrates him and he doesn't know how to tell him how to stop. We have been really trying to work with him on some of that stuff as much as we can, so hopefully that will get better soon, because his solution right now is to cry and scream and that really wears me out, and fast!

Happy Birthday Gibson!

4 years ago today at 7:36pm, after 23 hours of labor plus 3 hours of pushing and a c-section, I had accomplished the best thing ever...the birth of my first child. I remember like it was yesterday. What a precious moment in my life!

Happy Birthday Gibson! I can't believe you are 4 years old already! I love you very much!

PS - I have lots more pics from today to post, but have a *very* fussy baby, so it will have to wait. Stay tuned.

Bottle

Today I decided was the day to finally introduce a bottle to Garrison. Gibson took a bottle from day one and Grady didn't take a bottle until he was about 8 months old (one extreme to the other!). So, as a result I was never able to be apart from him (Momma does need a break occasionally!) so, since I want to try to work a few nights and/or go out here and there, I didn't want to relive that experience and from what I have read and been told by the pediatrician between 4 and 6 weeks is the best time to introduce a bottle, so we did that today. Garrison took it like a champ. No issues. I let Gregg feed him and I headed upstairs so that he didn't sense my presense. No problem...Now, I just have to remember to give him one occasionally so we don't have any issues with him deciding he doesn't want one.

A few more shots from the last week or so...

Just a few more misc shots.

His shirt says "Major Giggler"

I set Garrison down to do something and when I walked back into the room, I noticed that he and his dad were in similar positions. Apple didn't fall far from the tree...

How I have been spending most of my days...good thing this chair is a comfy one!

Some Family Pictures

So while we had a good portion of the family here and all the grandkids together, we decided to take some group shots. These are some of the best ones. None of them are perfect, but then when do ever get a perfect picture with 10 people in it, 5 of them being kids?

Dinner at Aunt Wanda & Uncle Steve's

Aunt Wanda and Uncle Steve invited all 10 of us over for dinner on Father's Day evening. So, we packed up after naps and headed over there. We decended upon their house and I am happy to say that when we left, it was all in one piece, mostly. We had a very yummy dinner that included, steak, chicken, corn on the cob, salad, olives, fruit...it was great!

Grandma with Reuben and Garrison. Reuben really enjoyed holding the baby.

hanging out before dinner

Dinner - good thing AW & US have a really big table!

I was in charge of bringing dessert and so in addition to the yummy pies we got, I decided to get cupcakes for the kids and do a little birthday celebration for Gibson since mom, dad and Aunt Kristi were here. Gibson thought it was grand to have everyone sing happy birthday to him.

and of course, the cousins enjoyed the cupcakes also!

Seriously, how cute is this face?

I'm sure I have mentioned this before, but Grady has some issues with texture. It's always very funny to watch him try something new when it comes to needing to use his hands for something with texture. He really doesn't like the feel of a lot of things and doesn't like anything on his hands or to have them dirty, so I had the camera ready when I gave him this cupcake because I wasn't sure how he would do. It took him quite a bit and some encouragement to finally get past the frosting, but once he did, he enjoyed the cupcake and actually ate all the frosting off one and then the cake of 2 cupcakes. I was very proud of him. He seems to have his dad's love of desserts once he can get past the texture.

He figured out quickly that if he just used his mouth, nothing would have to touch his hands! Smart kid!

Mom and Dad