"mamama" or "dadada"

It's "dadada"! I knew that was going to happen! We have both been "coaching" Alex since the day he was born! I always say "mamamama" to Alex. Joe always says "mamama, dadada". He always has to be the bigger person! lol Well it worked! Alex had made"mmmm", "mom", and "mamama" sounds when he was sick, when he is tired, and when he is grumpy, but last night he was clearly talking about "dadada".

(6 month post will be up by the weekend)

5 Months old, and a night out!

5 Months old!

(Every month I put him in this 12 month onesie and take a picture of him on his rug)

What a big weekend at our house! (not really) Alexander turned 5 months old on Saturday! That is a big deal. He got to have a date night with Aunt Sara, while we had a night out. That is a huge deal! And one of our dogs turned 3! Not as big of a deal, but would have been a big deal before Alex! (poor dogs)

5 Months Old Already!

I can't think of anything that has changed since my last big update (last week), so I will save you from having to re-read all his stats. I am pretty sure he is really teething now. It seems like he has been for months now, but he must be now! He has been a little grumpy, which is not like him! He was so fussy on Saturday that we thought we were going to see a tooth that day. I also think he might have been bored. During the week he goes to work with me and has 3 girls to play with, and most weekends we are so busy that we are going all day. Well, Friday night and Saturday we didn't go anywhere, and I don't think he likes to be home all day! Silly boy! On top of that we had a lot of cleaning to catch up on, so he was left to play alone, which he doesn't mind, but not for long periods of time.

He was much happier when his Aunt Sara showed up! Later Uncle Joe came to help watch Alex and he really liked having both of them over. Saturday night was only the second time in 5 months that we have left Alex to go out. It is hard for me to do, but I am working on it. I was a little uneasy about it, until we got to the mall and into our movie. I started to feel better, but checked my phone during the whole movie. After the movie we went to see some friends. It felt really nice to be out at first, but after saying hi to everyone I was ready to go home to Alex. The best way I can explain it, is what I was telling Joe. When I think about leaving Alex it feels like I can't breath. He feels like such a part of me that I feel like I am not whole when he is not near by. I think back to the over night scrapbook party that I went to, and I don't know how I did it! I guess it's a little different leaving him with his dad! That must be how I did it.

Sadly, this is causing a little problem this weekend! My sister's bachelorate party is this weekend, and it is an over night party about 3 hours north of where we live. I want to go, and it sounds like fun, but there is no way I can leave Alex for that long, and be that far away from him! I could have a panic attack just thinking about it! I think some of this comes from a point that I touched on in the last post. We do not have a finalized adoption, and the thought of loosing Alex makes me want to really take in every second that we have him. If we were to not finalize our adoption I would hate to look back at the nights that I could have been with Alex, but I was not. Everyone says that I should not even worry about it, because we are not going to have Alex taken from us, but no one can say that for 100% until it's finalized! I just hope that this feeling goes away after we finalize, or I might just be crazy! lol

So, that was our weekend. We saw A Nightmare on Elm Street*, it was good, but not as good as the original. I hope to have more date nights soon.

Mother's Day and Carrots, a day of 1st!

Yesterday was my "first Mother's day", and Alex had carrots for the first time! He loved the carrots,and I had a very hard Mother's day!

Lets talk about the carrots first! While shopping Saturday night I picked up all of the 1st stage fruits and vegetables. We were pretty excited to see what he would think of them. He has been having cereal for just about a month, but not everyday. If he is in a good mood, and we are not busy, I will give him some cereal before the 7pm bottle. Some nights he does pretty good, and other nights he is not into it at all. Last night after Joe got done eating, he ran in the kitchen and opened up the carrots. I was still eating and Joe did not even give me time to get the camera before he had the first spoonful in Alex's mouth! I was trying to tell him that you have to put half in a bowl, and that you should not eat out of the container. He would not listen so I had to get up and take the carrots before he double dipped the spoon. I put half in a bowl and gave him that. I also got the camera at that time. Alex did really good and seemed to like them. He opened his mouth when he saw the spoon. He also grabbed the spoon and helped Joe, get the carrots into his mouth. He even whined when it was gone. I am excited to see what he thinks when he has them again tonight.

















Onto Mother's day. I am not going to get into the whole story because that would take a lot of time to write out, so the short of it is that our adoption is not finalized, and Alex does not have our last name, and for other reasons that I am not ready to write about, I was dreading Mother's day! I do feel like I am Alex's mom, and I do care for him 100% of the time (along with Joe), but yesterday I did not feel like I was his mother, and that I did not have the right to celebrate Mother's day. At one point Alex was being grumpy, and I broke down bawling and wondered to myself if he knew. If he knew on Mother's day that I am not his biological mother! As crazy as that might sound to some, I know I am not the only one that this has happened to! (another reason I am so glad I have all the other adoptive mom's blogs to read. -Thank you ladies) By late afternoon Joe saw that I was having a hard time, and I shared some of my feelings with him. He made me feel a little better, and we went on with our day.

(20 Week Ham)

Another thing that was a tiny factor, was the lack of relationship with my own biological mother. Another long story, but the short version is that she in not in our life, and has not been for close to 8 years. Well, a person asked me how I was doing and I started to share some of my feelings about Alex, and it turned out they meant about my mom. (no fault to that person) but that got me thinking about her, which I don't do unless someone brings her up. My pain over the Alex situation out weighs the pain for my own mom, by far, so I quickly got over her, and worked on feeling better about Alex!
After having dinner with Joe, and watching him (as Alex's daddy) give Alex carrots for the first time, I let all the hurt I was feeling go, and ended the day feeling fine.
I should also mention that Joe did a great job helping me celebrate mother's day. He had four cards for me when I got up Sunday morning. One was from our dogs, thanking me for all the treats I give them! lol 2 were from Alex, both pretty funny, and with Alex's hand traced in one of them. The other was from him, and it had a very nice note in it about what a great mom I am to Alex. They (Joe and Alex) also had a bag of gifts for me. There was some perfume, candy, a frame that said "I love Mom", a parents magazine, and the Willow* Tree. It has a woman holding a baby. It is very cute! For Christmas we had gotten the one with both parents and the baby, from Joe's mom. That started our collection, and I can't wait to add the one with the dad and baby at Father's day!
I also want to say that I am 90% sure I heard Alex say "mom" today! lol He was not looking at me, but just playing on the floor. He was trying out some different sounds and I swear I heard "mom" mixed in there. This is big because so far I have never heard him say anything with an "M" in it! :) Oh, and yesterday he said "gaga" for the first time. Before that he had never used "g". Joe and I looked at each other and cracked up when he said it!

(the waitress gave Alex a menu! lol)

Also, I do not think it will be long before we have a crawler on our hands! He has been using rolling as a way to get across the room, and now he has added "inching" like an inch worm. He does not stay in one spot when on the floor, that is for sure!

End of April/19 weeks

(More pictures will be added tonight)

Alex is 19 weeks today! He turned 4 months two weeks ago, and that post is still in "draft" mode. I just can't seem to find the time to keep up with my blog. My last post was about Alex almost rolling over, I can tell you with a proud Mama smile that he is rolling both ways now. It was not long after that post was written that he did make it over, and now rolls all over the place. He uses rolling to get across the room! Every time I leave him on the floor, and come back from doing something, I find him off his blanket.

This is what 19 weeks looks like for us:
Eating

He still eats the same amount as when he was 10 weeks. He gets 36 ounces everyday, but most days he has a bottle or two that he does not finish. He eats 5 ounces at 7:30am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, and 6 ounces between 9pm and 10pm. When we got home from Alex's 4 month check up on April 15th, he got to try rice cereal for the first time. I wanted to wait a little longer to get into cereal, but Joe was so excited to try it. Alex gets a little bowl most nights. If we are not home, or Alex seems tired I don't give it to him. If we are around and Alex is in a good mood I will feed him a tiny bowl before his 7pm bottle. He doesn't seem to mind it, but he also doesn't love it! I will wait another month or so before I started adding cereal to his everyday food schedule. Alex is still a stinker when it comes to burping. He even "cries" if you try to burp him half way through his feeding. He has also started spitting up lately. I think this has to do with not burping enough.

Sleeping:
Alex is still sleeping through the night. In over 12 weeks Alex has only gotten up once in the night. It was a few weeks ago. He was grumpy before bed and had a fever. It was hard getting him to sleep that night. Then around 3am he woke up fussing. I went in and cleaned his nose out, rocked him, and put him back to bed. He slept the rest of the night, and has not gotten up in the night again. He still goes down between 9:30 and 10. I still wake him at 7:30 to feed him and then take him to work with me. On the weekends he was sleeping in until 8 or 8:30, but he is starting to get up closer to 7:30.

Naps are still a mess! I try to follow the eat, play, sleep; eat play, sleep schedule, but Alex finds a bottle so soothing, and tries to nap after his bottles. He still naps where ever, and that needs to change. The bounce sleep, with the vibration on use to be his favorite, but even that hasn't been working. He is trying to make the Bjorn, or moby wrap as his new nap place, but that is not going to happen. Because he is not getting very good naps he is starting to be a grump boy, so I decided today that he is going to start taking every nap in the pack n play. I took him down there and put him in it, then I sat in the just outside the door and watched him. At first he looked all around, then he fussed a little and ended up falling asleep. The problem is that he had been waking up after only 15-20 minutes down there, and then not being able to fall back asleep. I think he is not used to sleeping in the quite, because he had been taking naps where the girls were playing. Also because I have not been good about using that area, I think he wakes up and does not know where he is, so he stays awake.

Alex is over 16 pounds now! I thought he was still close to 13 pounds! lol I was sure they were going to ask me why he had not gained much weight from 2 months to 4 months! lol Boy was I wrong. I guess it's hard to see how big he is getting when I am with him 24/7. He also jumped from 75% to 89% for weight, but dropped from 75% to 50% for height.

He fits best in 3 to 6 month clothes, but I have been putting him in a lot of 3 month outfits. A lot of his clothes are 3 months and it seems like just yesterday that I pulled the tags off them. I hate to "waste" them, so I have been trying to put each of them on him one last time. I plan to pack up everything that is 3 months or smaller, this weekend.

Alex still smiles like crazy, but has also learned how fun it can be to cry! I had only heard him really cry twice before this week. And 1 of those times was when he got his 4 month shots. After a very long weekend of being out of town, not taking good naps, and getting up around 6am, Alex can't seem to catch up on his sleep. He has been very tired/grumpy and has been crying a lot. Before this I could put him in the bounce seat, or lay him on the floor when he was tired and he would fall right asleep, but now he cries. I am not used to this kind of baby. It's hard to find ways to soothe him, when I have never had to deal with this before!

Alex still loves TV. :( He is getting better about playing with toys, and not just watching TV. The older he gets, the more we need to turn the TV off. I had always said I did not want to be a family that just sits around with the TV on all the time. Joe and I always have it on now, some times just for the noise. In the morning I watch 15 minutes of the news while I feed Alex, and he turns his head to watch it too. Stinker!

He babbles more and more. He talks in a really high pitched voice, which sounds a lot like the voice I use to talk to him! lol

He has found the dogs! In the last week or so he has really started to watch them when they are in the same room. Then the other night Alex was having tummy time, and the boys were playing around and Alex started to crack up! Also on the car ride to Joe's mom's house, the dogs were jumping back and forth over Alex's car seat and he was laughing at them. He also likes it when they whine, but jumps when they bark. It's great to see them bonding.

He loves to be "thrown" in the air, and loves to play "tick tock". He is very ticklish and that can always get a laugh. He seems to be use to having the camera in his face and smiles when I get it out.

We go for a walk almost everyday, and he loves it. Some times he falls asleep, but he is getting better at staying awake and looking around when out.