Love

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this baby.  I cannot get enough of this adorable face!  I just want to kiss his little face all the time!

So much for that...

So we did the same newborn picture of both Kameron and Brenner in the striped onesie that we sent out for their birth announcements.  I was all excited to get the picture of Micah in the onesie laying in Travis' hands and he was NOT having that!!  So after several failed attempts and lots of crying and a squirmy baby, we gave up!  So here are the pics of the boys:

Kameron:

Brenner:

Micah:

 

Every time we tried to put his arm up, he would just throw it right back down and get mad.  At least in this one, he wasn't screaming, but he does looks a little scared about what we were trying to do!

Looking at these makes me realize that the boys definitely do have their own unique "look" to them.

Micah Update

Brenner calls Micah "Mikey" or "Micah Monkey"

When Micah is falling asleep, he always holds onto the collar of our shirts.  He has done this from the time he was born, and I didn't know newborns would start doing this so early.  It is SO cute.  Most of the time we swaddle him up to sleep, but if we don't, he always does this.

He is a HAPPY baby!  Seriously the happiest baby I have ever met.  If anyone will look in his eyes and talk to him, he just lights up.  I can't even describe the amount of joy it brings me on a hard day.  Here he is smiling at daddy!

He definitely got my big eyes.  In a lot of the pictures I have of him, he looks frightened, just because you see so much white around his eyes when he is looking intently at something.

He weighs about 14 pounds right now and is almost 3 months old.  He sleeps from about 9 or 10, until about 5am, eats, then goes back to sleep until about 8.  It's amazing. 

He does NOT enjoy the car!!  It's the only thing he really doesn't like, but he makes it very clear that he is not a fan.  Hopefully this phase ends soon.  :) 

He has quit nursing.  :(  He has been my hardest baby to feed.  When he was a few weeks old, he started becoming REALLY gassy and uncomfortable all the time, and he wouldn't get restful sleep, and neither would I since he was grunting all night long.  He was always turning red from grunting and stretching so much.  He would also spit up a lot, and wanted to eat every hour and a half...  24 hours a day.  So I was a zombie from being up feeding him so much at night.  So after talking to my midwife about this, she thought maybe I had a milk imbalance and he wasn't getting enough of the fatty milk.  So I started pumping and doing bottles, so I could make sure he got the fatty milk, and he became a different baby.  He started sleeping much longer stretches and was so much more comfortable, and hardly ever spits up anymore.  So that was GREAT news!  So I was probably nursing half the time and doing bottles half the time.  But nursing AND pumping was consuming a LOT of my day.  So we were so excited that he was feeling so much better, but then the little man decided that he liked bottles much better.  So every time I would try and nurse him, he would just scream and scream.  But then you'd put a bottle in his mouth and he would attack it and down the whole thing!  It made me really sad that he wouldn't nurse, but I just couldn't get him to do it.  So I am currently pumping and we're doing solely bottles right now, but we have a very, very happy baby on our hands, so there could be worse issues to have...

I just love this little baby SO much.  I am loving having a baby in the house again, I love just sitting and talking to him or snuggling him.  He's just such a little bundle of joy and is so smiley and chatty.  I feel really bonded with him and feel like every day I tell him he just needs to stay my sweet baby!!!

Kameron's 4th Birthday

Hard to believe that our sweet boy is already 4 years old.  We are really loving this age.  Kameron is so sweet, helpful, funny, kind, creative and caring.  He loves to help take care of his brothers, he is great at building things like lincoln logs and Legos and is a great eater.  His favorite foods are spicy foods!  He loves Tapatio, Tobasco, Phad Thai, spicy sauce at Subway, salsa, etc.  He says the funniest things and his memory is amazing.  He will randomly bring up things that we did 2 years ago. 

 

This year, instead of doing a traditional birthday party, we did a few different things.  On his actual birthday, him and Travis made chocolate cupcakes and we spent the day playing games and hanging out at home.  That evening, we got pizza and the Howlands came over to play.  Travis and I had set up a little scavenger hunt with clues around the house, leading them to a drawer full of goodies for all the kids.  After he opened his gifts, we let the kids decorate and eat the cupcakes.  It was a really simple, but fun day. 

 

The day after his birthday, Travis' family came up from Yakima, and then we all drove down to meet my parents in Everett.  Wes and Leanna and the girls also came down with us, and we all went out to pizza and had a great time.  We had a huge table next to a fireplace, and my parents had brought birthday presents for Kameron.  After having pizza, we all headed over to a Silvertips hockey game!  Kameron LOVES watching sports, so he was beyond excited to go watch a hockey game.  It was also Kid's Night, so all the kids got free jerseys! 

Since we had bought a group of tickets, we got to put a message up on the reader board for free!  It was really neat seeing Kameron's name up there!  :)

Kameron had a great birthday weekend getting to spend 2 days with so many friends and family, eating cake and pizza, opening presents and watching hockey!  It was really special having both mine and Travis' parents there.  Every time I see pictures of the boys with both sets of grandparents, it just makes me so happy that he gets to grow up having that experience.  My grandparents all lived so far apart and far away, we rarely saw them growing up.  So I was just really happy for him that he gets to have these memories. 

Wow - it is so hard to get anything done besides just caring for our family right now!  I have all these blog posts floating around in my head and have not managed to get a single one posted.  I've probably forgotten half of them by now.  My dad was joking about not putting up any pictures of the 3rd child.  Well it is not because the pictures don't exist, we have a ton.  It's because the time to get them off of the camera, onto the computer, onto a blog post does not exist!  It has amazed me how long it takes to get anything done or get out of the house with the 3 of them, and Micah is a really easy baby!  I can't imagine how it would be if he was fussy!

The boys are all doing great, it just takes a lot to keep everyone fed, clothed, fed again, potty runs, change diapers, fed again, pick up the glass of spilled milk, remind them not to run their bikes INTO the side of the van, remind another not to use 15 pumps of soap to wash his hands, feed the baby again, turn down the boiling over pot that has lunch cooking in it, etc.  And that was just all today and it's not even 4:00 yet!  :) 

One reason it takes me a long time to get anything done, IF I get anything done is because Micah has been eating every 1 1/2 - 2 hours.  And when it takes a good half hour to feed him, that takes up a huge chunk of my day.  He is also doing this at night, which means not much sleep for me.  Thankfully, my strength is renewed each day and we are still functioning.  When Micah is 4 weeks, we are going to try pumping and giving him a bottle so I can sleep through a feeding a get a better chunk of sleep.

It has been really funny to watch the boys learn about nursing.  The first time I nursed Micah at home, Kameron asked what I was doing and what those parts were.  So I was explaining that it's mama's chest and it's just a miracle how a mama has a baby and then her body starts making milk to feed her baby.  Their comments were:  Brenner - "Yeah, babies need lots of milk and chest" Kameron - "I can't wait until I get a miracle and can feed Micah too!"  So sweet.  One morning I woke up to find Kameron sticking breast pads onto this pajamas. 

Travis and I cannot agree on who Micah looks like.  I say Kameron and he says Brenner.  I am going to find a 3 week pic of each of the boys to compare and maybe somehow find a time to even make it a blog post. :)

Snapshot of our life

This picture sums up our life perfectly right now.  Micah sleeps all the time, the boys are over the moon in love with their baby brother and never short on energy, and Travis and I are exhausted.  :)

Micah actually does amazing at night, so we feel very blessed that we are getting as much sleep as we are with a newborn, but are still exhausted from waking up during the night and keeping up with the boys.  Travis just went back to work yesterday, so we were very blessed to have him home for almost 2 weeks!  I have so many blog posts I want to do like Micah's birth story and photos, what we were up to in the weeks leading to him coming, Kameron's 4th birthday, Kameron's playing T-Ball, etc.  But for now and my limited energy, this sums it up.  :)

Micah Jesse St.George

We are so excited that Micah has arrived!  He was born on April 3rd, 2013 at 2:53pm at the Bellingham Birth Center.  He weighed 8lbs 5oz and was 21" long.  We came home around 7pm that evening and everyone is doing great.  It still seems strange that we are now a family of five with three sons, but we couldn't be more thankful for these beautiful boys.

Kameron and Brenner were so excited when we brought him home.  It has been amazing to watch them interact with them and want to help take care of him.