My & My Shadow

Sometimes it is so fun to watch Micah discovering everything for the first time. One of the things he has been fascinated with is his shadow.

 

 

 

 

 They are good buddies now.

Fun With Donuts

Micah loves playing with the donuts in the nursery at church, so a few weeks ago I decided to pick him up his own set when I saw them on sale for $1. 

His favorite thing to do with the donuts is put them around his hands and feet like bracelets. I couldn't help but have some photo fun with this...

 

 

 

By the end of it you can tell he was so done with pictures haha.

First Time on the Swings

Micah is finally big enough to fit in the baby swings at the park. 

We popped him in it a week or so ago and he loved it! The first couple times Stephen pushed him, he started out with this terrified look on his face and had a death grip on the chains. 

But pretty soon he was all smiles!

 

 

Soon the smiles turned into full out laughing and squeals:)

 

And then he decided he was brave and didn't need to hold on any longer:)

 

What a big boy!

Daddy's Kisses

Daddy's kisses are the best. They are also the roughest. 

Poor Micah gets a rash all over his cheeks whenever Stephen decided to munch on them or cover them in kisses. I know from experience that his "bees" as we call them are prickly! 

Micah loves these kisses though and always squeals with laughter. 

Here's a cute moment I caught of the two of them...

 

 

7 Months Today:)

Today Micah is 7 months! 

It's so crazy he is that old. And every second he is getting stranger. Did you hear me correctly? No I didn't say cuter (even though that's true.) 

He is becoming a very strange child.

Case in point: 

On Friday he just felt like leaving his feet in the air awkwardly for most of the day.

Look at him...

Silly boy. Okay I guess it is sort of cute. Especially with such a serious face and his socks all crazy. And this is probably a normal thing when you are just discovering that you have feet. But I will never understand how he could like eating peas and green beans but hates pears and bananas. Or why he likes to completely cover his head with his frog blankie before falling asleep. It's enough to make me crazy checking to make sure he's still breathing under there.

Anyway...we had a really fun weekend just hanging out as a family in the nice weather (before the freak slushy snow thing on Sunday night.) I have lots of pictures of our adventures that I will post later but here are just a couple highlights...

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Getting tickled by daddy...

...and yep, that is a tooth! I magnified it in case you got sidetracked by his boogies and drool. He has his very first tooth and it seems to have grown doubly since I took this picture. He likes to sink his new tooth into my shoulder when I'm unsuspecting, so I can testify that that little guy is nice and sharp! 

First Shoes

We tried out shoes for the first time this week.

Won't be long before we are seeing grass stains to match!

 

Wanna see pictures full size?

Busted!

Micah has become quite the little roly-poly. 

Which was great until he decided that the best time to use his new found skills are during naptime. 

This is the way I lay him down to go to sleep...(looking so innocent)

and five minutes later this is the way I find him...

Today he knew he was in trouble so he started "faking" like he was really trying to go sleep. Hahaha.

It would be really cute if I didn't have to go in there and flip him over like 37 times before he goes to sleep. And he is only 6 months! What am I going to do when he is walking and getting into all sorts of trouble? 

Oh my. I'm getting gray hairs already.

We're back!

It's been about four months since I last posted and now that I finally have time to blog again, I don't even know where to start! Micah has grown so much so I will just have to sum it all up as best as I can!

Stats:

Age: 6 months

Weight: 18lbs

Length: about 26"

Sleeping:
Micah loves going to sleep! He is down to about three naps a day: a morning nap, a lunchtime nap, and an afternoon nap. He usually goes to bed around 7pm and then wakes up everyday around 8am. Of course he wakes up 2-3 times in the night to eat. 

Eating:
Micah just recently started on baby food. He has tried rice cereal and all the orange vegetables: carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, etc. We are going to green vegetables, fruits, and then meats. As a taste test one day, we tried pears and he did not approve! (watch video) It is so nice because we qualify for the WIC program and get his food for free!


Playtime:
The little guy has turned into quite the roly-poly. He loves rolling around on the ground with toys. His favorites right now are his squishy blocks, his jungle jumperoo, and his music ball.

Discoveries/Accomplishments:
He has started sitting up but is still slightly tipsy. He likes practicing by sitting in his bumbo seat. He is also getting his first tooth so everything is in the mouth or covered in drool.

Sounds:
It is hard to even put his silly personality into words. His laugh is so contagious because it's straight from the belly. He is totally a boy and instead of baby squeals, he gives us manly grunts. He has also recently started babbling, mostly saying "woes" and "woos." Sort of sounds like E.T. haha.

Micah is so joyful and just lights up our day. 

It's very easy to just live our lives and truck him along with whatever we are doing. We are loving every minute of the stage he is in right now.

Breaking him in to the chaos

It could possibly be bad parenting, but we've been taking Micah to youth group and into the church service each week. We wanted him to get "broken in" and used to being around all the crazy kids. It actually has been going pretty well, except I learned a few things the hard way..haha....

#1. Loud worship music and drums + baby = bad. I must have been desensitized but I seemed to forget how loud our worship music was until we got blasted that first night. Poor Micah about jumped out of his onesie. Lesson learned: Remove baby from youth room before worship begins. He sure likes to hear the music from the hallway though.

#2. Baby needs limited time with Junior Highers. We recently started a jr high program on Wednesday nights for an hour. I didn't think an hour would be too bad for Micah and I to hang out with 5-7 of these 6th & 7th graders. But then I realized how CRAZY this age group is. Last week Micah was way overstimultaed by their chaos and his eyes were as big as saucers for about 20 minutes after it ended. So now we leave a little early haha.

#3. Getting out of church early to feed him = impossible. We are very blessed by having so many people who love us at church. But this means that about 50 older ladies are going to surround Micah like a celebrity and each need a good long turn holding him even if it's 20 minutes past his feeding time. Now we know that an extra bottle is mandatory for after the service.

#4. Careful selection is need when choosing which students are allowed to hold the baby. Extra loud students, hyper freshman girls (who like to "overbounce" him until he spits up all over their shirts), and the guys who like to use babies as footballs are all banned.

It is definitely a learning experience, but we know he'll grow into it:)

Our New Arrival

I know it's been almost a month now since Micah was born, but I decided to start at the beginning. That way I can share details of the last few weeks and the billions of photos I took won't go to waste!


Prelabor
I hate in the movies how pregnant women always seem to just be perfect one minute and then all of a sudden they know "it's time" and you see them rushing to the hospital. If only it were that fast and easy! Two weeks before Micah was born, I started prelabor or 'prodromal' labor. I had never heard of this before, but let me just say it was really annoying haha. I went to the hospital after having regular contractions for a few hours, found out the baby was dropped down, my cervix was almost all the way effaced, but I wasn't dilating more than a 1. So after walking the halls all night, we decided to just go home until the contractions got worse...but then the next morning they stopped. This was the cycle for two weeks: Basically painful contractions would start up, become regular and closer together, and then right when I would be thinking hey maybe we should go back to the hospital, they would just stop. About the same time every night this happened. Stephen and I were going crazy wondering if we were finally gonna have this baby and finally we just stopped getting our hopes up.

Early labor 
Fast forward two weeks. On August 12, around 6PM I started the normal cycle of contractions and they were really weird. The contractions started lasting 10 minutes long, then 20 minutes long, all the way until my stomach just never relaxed except for maybe once an hour. I didn't even tell Stephen but just went to sleep. At about 3 A.M. I woke up and the contractions were normal again, getting a lot more intense and this time they didn't stop. So finally at 8A.M. I called my doctor and she sent us to the hospital...and again we were told that my cervix was only at a 2 and we may have to go home if it didn't change. That put me into action. I was so done with this whole waiting game so when they told me to walk the halls of the hospital, I started doing stairs! I was not about to go home again! Apparently that worked because we after three hours of walking and stairs, I got up to 4cm and officially became a patient at the hospital. Finally!
We were very happy about this...

Active labor
However the waiting was not over. I was told that I couldn't have an epidural until I got up to at least 6cm. It took ALL DAY. By this time, I had been having really painful contractions ever 2-3 minutes for the last 24hours, been doing stairs, walking the halls, and couldn't have any food. I was tired! When I finally did get the epidural, there were certain spots that just wouldn't get numb (should have been a warning sign here), so I still had to breathe through my contractions but I was much happier! At this point the nurses were noticing a few other problems. The babies' heart rate kept dipping very low right after a contraction, and then my blood pressure was getting very low. So they strapped an oxygen mask to my face (reminding me of all those breathing treatments I had as a kid haha mom and dad) and I think this kept me calm during the transition phase too...because again, the epidural was not doing its total job, and I was feeling a lot of my contractions.

Delivery
About 4:30AM I was allowed to start pushing. I was definitely getting worn out and they noticed the baby was not getting anywhere. My doctor called in another OB to get her opinion and they realized my bone structure was preventing the baby from being delivered. So sadly, after all of that work they told me at 6:30AM we were going to have to do a C-section. They got me all prepped, gave me an extra epidural and told me they were going to do a test cut, saying "it should just feel like a pinch." It did NOT feel like a pinch and I told them I definitely still had feeling. Unfortunately the numbing never did fully kick in and I felt the majority of the C-section. (...And I had to apologize to the doctors afterward for screaming at them haha) But the minute I heard Micah's little cry and saw his scrunched up face I didn't care what they were doing to me. He was absolutely perfect! I was able to manage a couple pictures below...and then I passed out:) Stephen assures me that we are never going through that again...but one look at Micah's face and I know I'd do it a million times over.

Micah was born on August 14, 2010 at 7:05 AM. 

(By the way, Micah's cousin Penelope was born June 14 and his cousin Ella was born July 14)