Deacon's 1st Easter...

Every year our church has a big Spring Fling for the kiddos for Easter -- everything from egg hunts for all ages, pony rides, bounce houses and food, of course.  We usually participate by serving somewhere but this year we just attended as parents.  :)  And any good parent would take their child to an egg hunt, right?

So that's what we did.  We took Deacon to his first ever egg hunt.  It was at 10:30am last Saturday morning and I thought we were going to get rained on but it turned out to be a pretty day.  Basically, we have this huge field that we just throw a bunch of eggs on and then when the horn blows, all the kids run onto the field to gather as many eggs in their baskets as they can.  No hunting, really.  Just gathering.  For Deacon's egg hunt, the ages were from babies to 1 year olds.  So, pretty much we just sat down somewhere with Deacon and took photos of him chewing on the eggs.

Cuz that's what he does.

But he's dang cute when he's doing it.  :)

And then Easter Sunday, we awoke to a beautiful morning that turned into a gorgeous day.  Exactly what I would order to celebrate the day my Lord Jesus rose from the dead, praise His name!  We dressed Deacon in a cute overalls outfit (I had been told that boys get robbed when it comes to finding cute little outfits for Easter and that was pretty much it -- I ended up going with something he already had that was just as cute as what I found in the stores).

We gave Deacon a little Easter basket with a few things -- some books, a pack of pacifiers and an inflatable beach ball (which he can't play with now, but soon...).  He also got some bubbles, a fuzzy, cuddly stuffed bunny and a little outfit from family.

We had a nice day -- awesome service at church, good lunch with friends and then just relaxing the rest of the day.  Jeff's younger brother, Tim, and his wife, Leslie, were here for the weekend so it was nice to visit with them.  We took a walk around the neighborhood...it was just a really nice day.

[hard to see his eyes with his cool sunglasses on,

but I think he was watching the bubbles...]

Hope you all had a blessed Easter, too!

[6 mos]

my beautiful boy...

Hi there.  :)  Don't have much news to report as of right now -- just wanted to show off my boy...

[22.5 weeks]

[ready for a walk]

[oh, look -- here's my foot!  23.5 weeks]

[my beautiful 5.5 month old]

5 months...

Good gracious, another month of this boy's life has gone by!  We had kind of an exciting month, experiencing several "firsts", but mostly, we just take one day at a time and see what life brings us.  We're still "wingin' it" in this thing called parenting, doing the best we can with what we know and learn.  :)

We still try to make sure he gets tummy time, for the brief moment that he'll lay on his tummy.  He's still not a big fan but every once in a while you can catch him in a good mood where he'll lay there for a little while before he gets frustrated.  He's still not rolling over yet but we've caught him rolling on to his side a time or two.

[18 weeks]

And when he gets frustrated, we just flip over onto our back and chill for a bit.  :)

At the beginning of March, Deacon started sleeping through the night!  It was a gradual process, though, and you can read about that here.  Now, he's most definitely sleeping through the night without waking at all.  If he does, it's only for a second or two and he puts himself back to sleep.  I can't tell you how nice it is to know that when we put him down for the night, he's down until the morning.

Deacon got his first TOOTH at 4.5 months old!  You can read more about that here, but I'll just go ahead and tell you, he's cut his SECOND tooth already!  Yep, it popped out this past Monday.  He had a little fever with this one and a little more chewing & fussing, but he trudged through and got it done.  Such a trooper.  I hope we'll have a few months before the next ones start showing up...

[first tooth @ 4.5 mos]

We finally got some warmer weather so I was dressing Deacon in just onesies...

[20.5 weeks]

[love his chunky little legs!]

Around 21 weeks, I started putting size 2 diapers on Deacon overnight and after his morning feeding to try to avoid some of the messes (aka "blowouts") he was making in his clothes.  That seems to be working pretty well and I don't think it will be long before he's officially wearing size 2 diapers all the time. 

Deacon also found his feet this month.  :)  This is what we ocassionally catch him rolling on his side for:

[just relaxin', watching TV]

At 21 weeks, Deacon started sitting in a bumbo seat!  Have you heard of these?  We had and several of our friends told us we "had" to have one -- those things are expensive, though!  But Daddy ordered one for his boy and we promptly put him in it.  He seems to like it pretty well...

[21 weeks]

On the night that Deacon turned 5 months, we tried giving him rice cereal for the first time.  The box said we could mix it in his bottle or spoon-feed him.  So we mixed up what we'd normally put in his bottle (so it was very watery) and tried giving it to him in a spoon, just to see what he'd do...

Needless to say, it was kind of a bust.  But we were pleased with how he did with the spoon, having never had one of those in his mouth before.  He figured out what was happening pretty early on and would open his mouth when I held the spoon up to him.  But as I said, it was pretty watery, so he wasn't getting much.  We chalked it up to experience and got his bottle ready.

We gave him 6.5 oz (instead of the standard 4 oz) w/a tbsp of rice cereal mixed in.  He drank it down with no trouble and slept great that night.  The next night we mixed in 2 tbsp of rice cereal in the 6.5 oz bottle.  He did great with that, too, so that's kind of become the standard.  He gets a 6.5-7 oz bottle with a couple tbsp of rice cereal in it at night and he's good to go until morning.  :)  So proud of him for how he's handling all these changes as he grows up.

[5 mos]