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]

first tooth!

What did I JUST say about Deacon reaching milestones way too quickly for this mama??  Well, he's done it again!  Deacon has his first tooth!  It popped out yesterday -- at exactly 4.5 months old.

This boy's tough, ya'll.  Aside from the ridiculous drooling and chewing on everything in sight, he never showed signs that he was teething.  He was never overly fussy, never had a fever that we knew about.  He just popped that tooth out like it was nothing.  I hope the rest will be like that.  :)

So he wouldn't let me get a photo of the actual tooth (which you can feel more than see, though there is a specific white tooth in there to see on the bottom) but this is pretty representative:

[4.5 mos]

sleeping through the night!

I don't want to jinx anything but *whispering* Deacon has been sleeping through the night for a week now!  Well, that's not completely accurate.  Here's how it really went down:

Last Monday night (Feb 28), he slept for 8 hours.  I fed him at 10-10:30pm and put him down to sleep.  He woke up around 1:30am which is a little early for him to eat again (I had typically been feeding him between 2-3am) so I decided to just wait and see what he would do.  He fussed for about 5 min and then went back to sleep.  I fully expected him to wake back up an hour or so later (at which time I would've probably fed him) but he never woke up until 6:15am!

The next night (Mar 1), he woke up a couple of times -- once at 1:30am-ish and then at 4:30am.  Both times, he just fussed for a few minutes and then went back to sleep.  He woke at 6am that morning.

On night/day 3, he woke up 3 times!  Oh Lord...is this going to be a pattern??  He did sleep until 7am that morning, but he was very fitful during the night.

Over the next couple of nights he was sleeping through, but still waking up a couple of times to fuss for a little bit.  I wasn't counting it a success yet.  Sleeping through the night was just a technicality at this point.  It just meant he wasn't eating during the night, really.

But then Sunday night (Mar 6), he slept all the way through the night without waking up one time!  SUCCESS!  And the next night...same thing!  He slept completely through the night, waking only when I went to get him up for his first feeding of the day around 6:45am-ish.

Last night, he did wake up once or twice but I think that's mostly because he's picked up another cold (dang nursery at church) and he's doing a lot of coughing.  I think it really woke him up and he just got aggravated.  Poor little buddy.

But for all intents and purposes, my child is (finally) sleeping through the night.  And we're happy about that.  :)

[4 mos]

4 months...

Truly, I don't intend to let a month get by before I post -- it just seems to take so much of my time to raise a child.  :)  So here we are at 4 months.  Whew.  We've had some exciting things happening the last month...

The biggest news was that Deacon's cousin, Bear Andersen McAfee, was born on February 2.  My brother & sister-in-law's 2nd child.  Cora Beth is now a big sister and a great one at that.  :)  Bear was born an entire month early (Brandi's due date was actually Mar 2) at 6 lbs 2 oz but he's done wonderfully with the exception of a recent case of RSV.  But he's on the upswing.  We got to meet little Bear a few weeks after he was born.  What a cutie!

[Deacon, 16.5 weeks, Bear, 3.5 weeks]

At the beginning of February, Deacon got his 2nd cold and this one was nastier than the first one he had at a month old.  He had some chest congestion and coughing with this one and oh, how I hated to hear my sweet boy coughing!  It took a good 3 weeks or so to get rid of that thing but not before me and Jeff caught it.  :(  We are all well now, though, praise the Lord! 

[14 weeks]

Also, at the beginning of February was the Super Bowl, of course.  Deacon's first Super Bowl.  He slept through the first half and was oblivious during the 2nd.  :)  He was pulling for the Steelers:

[14.5 weeks]

Deacon went to his first birthday party on February 12 (when we got the invitation in the mail, addressed to Deacon, I thought it was precious!) -- one of the sons of the lady who keeps Deacon, Brayden, was turning 3.  Deacon lasted for about an hour before I think all the commotion and noise got to him.  It was a fun time.

[Deacon w/Brayden & Bryceon, 15.5 weeks]

Deacon has really been changing and doing new things this past month.  It hurts this mommy's heart to know that he's growing up (so fast) but that is how it should be and it does excite me to see new things from him.  He's really been chewing on EVERYTHING.  If he can get it to his mouth, it's going in there.  And it's coming out with TONS of drool on it.  :)  We can't feel any tooth buds (and I'm praying it stays that way for a little longer) so we're not sure if he's teething or not.  Just chewing on everything.

[14.5 weeks]

And talking.  My LORD, this child has A LOT to say!  And it is so.stinkin.cute when he does!  I love to hear him making all kinds of noises.  Most of the time he's really happy when he's talking so he smiles a lot and kinda giggles a little bit.  He just recently started this high-pitched thing which I hope will not last too long.  It is cute and it's okay around the house, but it can get kinda loud.  I don't want to have a child that everyone is kinda like, "Oh, that's cute...okay, not so much anymore."  :)

[15 weeks]

Right around the 4 month mark, I took Deacon for his 4 month well-check at the pediatrician.  He got a couple more vaccines (one oral and one needle) and took them like a champ, just like in the past.  Such a brave little guy.  :)  He now weighs 13 lbs 13 oz and has grown almost 2 inches in the past 2 months.

Also around 4 months, we went for a walk as a family and put Deacon in the stroller without the carseat.  In the regular seat.  He sat like a big boy with no trouble.  I think he enjoyed looking around at everything. 

We also tried putting him in the "johnny jump-up" for the first time.  He's still kind of little for it, we have to prop him up in the front so he doesn't lean forward so much.  And he doesn't really know what to do in it yet, but it buys us a little bit of time, if you know what I mean.  :)

[4 mos]

I gotta tell you, Daddy is the one that put him in the jump-up and in the stroller like that.  Mommy would've put him in the carseat to take him on a walk in the stroller.  Jeff is so good about trying new things with him.  I think I just want to keep him little for as long as possible -- he's reaching new milestones entirely too fast for me.

[4 mos]

3 months...

So.  We've had this precious child of ours for 3 months now.  I can't for the LIFE of me figure out where the time has gone.  I have this terrible fear that I'm going to turn around tomorrow and see him graduating high school...

[11 weeks]

It's been quite a journey so far, this parenting thing, and we're loving every minute of it!  Deacon has moved up to size 1-2 diapers now and we're still using all the diapers that our friends/family bought for us (the only ones we've had to buy so far were a few packs of newborn diapers because we didn't get so many of those).  What a blessing to have a closet full of diapers!

Jeff and I have gone out a couple Friday nights and left Deacon with friends.  He always does well with other people.  Everyone says he's such a good baby.  Yes, he has his moments (mostly between the hours of 6 and 7pm) but if he's going to be really good, I'd rather it be for someone else.  :)  That's what my mom always said about us, and I think she would tell you that we DID act better for other folks than we did at home.

[12 weeks]

Right around 12.5 weeks, we gave Deacon a bath in his infant tub but we left the newborn netting out for the first time.  He really liked having more of his body in the water and even went to splashing Jeff a little bit.  :)  He really does well with his baths and we are so thankful for that!

[12.5 weeks, in the tub without the netting]

[12.5 weeks, all dressed up for church]

We took Deacon to the pediatrician's office the day after he turned 3 months for some more vaccines.  It wasn't a scheduled appt but we needed to go back because at his 2 month appt, they were out of a couple of the vaccines he needed.  So our tough little guy got 2 sticks, one in each leg.  Once again, he was so brave.  He didn't even flinch for one of them and for the other one, he only cried for a couple of seconds.  It amazes me.  He did get a little fussy later on in the afternoon -- I could tell that his legs were hurting him because every time he moved, he would whine a little bit.  We gave him a little Tylenol and he took a nice long nap after that.  Good as new when he woke up.

[3 mos, the day of more shots :( See his bandaids?]

We are still so, so in love with this precious child of ours and enjoying all the ways he's growing and changing.  His little personality is just beginning to emerge and we can't wait to see how it develops in the coming months.

[3 mos, love my precious boy :) ]