Three Months Old

How did this happen?  I actually noticed Eli was three months old from the ticker on my blog Wednesday. 

He's been turning from newborn to squishy baby for the last month.  Sleeping longer at night and being more wakeful during the day.  He's getting really good at tummy time with the boppy pillow and his favorite toy is a plan old blanket.  He loves to move the blanket around with his hands and then stick it in his mouth.  He loves it when we talk and play with him.  Sometimes he squeals so loud that he scares himself and sounds a lot like Adam.  Eli also likes to talk to us and it is completely adorable.

He's such an easy baby.  Every night when he starts to look tired we take him downstairs to be swaddled and he smiles at us the whole time.  It's like he's happy we figured out what he wants.  We put him in the crib wide awake, in fact we try to always put Eli down awake and he falls asleep unassisted.  It's great!

Eli's First At Bat

Dave was trying to pacify Eli while I was getting dinner ready.  He gave Eli a bat and decided it was too cute not to photograph, which I do agree.  But then Adam walked up and started saying, "pitch, I pitch to Eli" with a plush ball in his hand.  My heart melted and I was all, this is exactly why I need a DSLR with HD video capability.  And yes Dave that is a hint, my birthday is soon.  (don't worry no balls were thrown at Eli during his first at bat)

Three Month Growth Spurt?

That first growth spurt at a couple weeks and the 1 month growth spurt were difficult with both Adam and Eli.  But that's the last I remember from Adam, so I was completely caught off guard today when Eli demanded to be fed every one to two hours.  Tonight I finally googled "three month growth spurt" and was surprised to find that the experts say along with a 10 day and 1 month growth spurt you should expect one at 3 months. 

I was just thinking Eli looked like his 3 month clothes were going to stop fitting a month ago, but some how I'm still just barley buttoning or zipping them on.  Might as well pack them away and pull out the 6 month gear! 

I had intentions of doing a 3 month picture today, but instead of snapping pictures of Eli sitting in the rocker I was in the rocker feeding the little guy.  So hopefully tomorrow.  And now you'll have to excuse me, I guess it is time to nurse again!

Baseball Boys

Dave plays softball on Thursday nights in the summer.  When the games are earlier I typically pack up the boys and go.  Last week I road my bike with Adam in the pull behind carrier (his bike as he calls it).  It made me dream of next summer when we'll be able to travel around town on our bikes, but Eli is a cute little baby and I don't want to wish away the way our little family is now.

Adam brought his own glove and ball and really enjoyed watching the game.  "Nice hit daddy, nice hit!" he yelled after Dave's double in the last inning (and yes Dave's team won).  How cute are my boys in baseball hats?

Baby Stretches

I've been finding Eli in this position a lot lately.  He looks like he's one good kick away from rolling onto his belly. 

Big Boy is getting Bigger

Last week was a huge number 1 for Adam, well maybe I should say 2.  He did a poopy sans diaper in the bathroom, unfortunately it was on the floor.  He was insisting that he had to go pee and even though we had tried unsuccessfully three times, I let him sit on the potty one more time while I ran downstairs to through a load of diapers in (there's probably a 50-50 chance that I'm doing laundry on any given day).  In the back of my mind I thought, maybe, just maybe he needed to poop.  All of a sudden from the top of the stairs I heard a little voice yelling, "momma clean my toilet".  Oh no!  I ran up the stairs worried about what I would find.  There in the middle of the bathroom floor was two little poopies.  I guess mopping my floors was newly added to my to do list.

12 Weeks

Eli is twelve weeks old- almost 3 months.  I can't believe how chubby he's getting.  His obsession with his nuk isn't as bad as it was his first 4 weeks of life.  Now he only asks for it when he's going to sleep.  But he has found things that are a little more handy to suck in a pinch (horrible pun, right?). 

I think it's so cute when he sucks on his palm.  Dave gets stressed when he finds Eli with his thumb in his mouth.  He tells me to quick find a nuk, we don't want Eli to become a thumb sucker.

I'm trying not to jinx us, but Eli has slept from 10 or 11 PM until 5 or 6 AM the last three nights.  I decided that the night time feeding probably wasn't needed so on Sunday night when Eli fussed early in the morning I got up and gave him a nuk and he fell back asleep for a few hours.  I'm hoping this trend becomes our new normal.

Momma Lay Down

Adam doesn't like it when Brockway surfs for food around his chair while he's eating.  He gets really upset and starts whining at the level that we don't understand what he's saying.  So we're working on teaching him to tell Brockway to lay down.

This morning we were outside, because with the breeze it didn't feel like a sauna quite yet outside (we've had a brutal week of high temps and even higher humidity).  The house next to us shades our patio for a few hours in the morning, but Adam wanted to play in his sandbox that was already in full sun, so it was time for sun cream.  Adam was not okay with it and after telling me several times, "no, Mommy's turn" he finally shouted, "momma go lay down!"  Ha, I love it when they take something you're trying to teach them and use it on you.

A Day in My Life

I wrote this post on June 22nd and just realized I never posted it.  Enjoy:

One of the blogs I follow has been having guest posters write about what their typical day is like.  Honestly I find these posts a little depressing because they make a day seem so short and uneventful, but I figure if I don't write what my day is like I won't remember in six months when hopefully I won't be so sleep deprived.

I typically wake up around 7 AM when Dave is getting out of the shower.  I'm up twice in the night to feed Eli around 3 AM and 6 AM (and last night once with Adam at 3 AM before the Eli feeding).  This morning I woke up at 6:45 when my alarm went off so that I could go for a run.  I hustled out for a quick 15 minute jog with Brockway.  Once back I hoped in the shower and then got dressed.  My hair is still wet and will wait a couple of hours before I do anything more than brush it.  I grab Eli and bring him upstairs.

By this time it was 7:30 and Adam was awake and eating waffles with Dave.  I made some scrambled eggs and chowed down.  While Adam and I finished eating Dave kissed us goodbye and left for work.  After breakfast I do my least favorite daily activity - pumping 5 oz of milk for the freezer.  I hate pumping and it's a daily reminder that I will be going back to work and relying on a freezer full of milk to feed my baby instead of me feeding my baby. 

While Eli napped in the swing, Adam and I went downstairs.  He played while I threw a load of diapers in the washer.  I cannot believe how much laundry I do these days.  I didn't notice the extra loads when Adam joined our family two years ago, but now with Eli and two in cloth diapers I feel like I spend more time in the laundry room than any where else in the house!  Today was a good day and I did my hair only an hour after showering.  And when I finished Eli was wailing for food. 

After feeding Eli, Adam getting a snack and a round of diaper changes I packed up the van to go to the mall.  It's been raining a lot so I figured walking around the mall and letting Adam climb up on the mechanical quarter eating machines would get some toddler energy out.  When we got to the mall a grandpa was fishing change out of his pocket to start one of the mechanical toys up for his grandson.  I grabbed Adam and ran real fast in the other direction.  Our children DO NOT need to know that they will move!  After 45 minutes of walking and climbing I succeed in tiring Adam out when he asked, "momma hold you".  We came home to eat lunch and then the process of toddler nap.  Lots of tears, pleading, and playing to go through before we have a sleeping child.  Today it took 45 minutes and several interventions before he finally napped. 

Then it's time to straighten up the house and mommy time.  I get to blog, check email, watch the DVR and on rare occasions nap for a few uninterrupted minutes.

Adam and Eli both woke up at 2 today.  After eating and another round of diaper changes a neighbor girl came to watch Adam so that Eli and I could go to the doctor.  Adam waved goodbye and seemed really excited to play with Ashley and her sister Catlin.

After our doctors appointments I came home for a short hour.  Somehow I managed to squeeze in yet another toddler snack, some hugs, feeding Eli and putting together the diapers I washed earlier this morning.  Then my parents showed up to watch the boys and Dave and I left for golfing.  It was a much needed date night.  I really enjoyed it even though it was raining.  On the hole with the longest drive competition one of the guys we golfed against thought his partner had out drove the longest drive stake.  I jokingly said, "I don't know you haven't seen my drive yet."  Sure enough I had a great drive and out drove him and the longest drive stake.  That doesn't happen to me very often.  My friend Brooke out drove me later, but she gave me the free drink because she such an awesome friend.

After golf we got to stick around the club house and eat dinner and catch up with our friends Andy and Brooke.  We joked that it was the first time we hung out sans kids and pouches in the two years since Adam was born.  So today wasn't a "typical" afternoon and evening, but with two boys nothing is routine or typical anymore.

What's Cuter Than....?

What's cuter than a boy in blue plaid overalls?

Two boys in matching blue plaid overalls is much cuter.

What's cuter than a boy in a bright orange swim hat?

Of course a second boy in a bright orange swim hat, because two is always cuter than one!

(Don't mind Eli- it's so hot that it's hang out in diaper weather)

And earlier today they were wearing the same bright orange diaper one in size 1 and the other in size 2.  I love little matchers!

And these are the bonus pictures for any grandmas out there that are missing their little men.





Crazy Week 2

It's been a long two weeks at the Schwedskala house.  Dave continued working 12 hour + days through Wednesday this week too.  Thankfully he took today off to recover and spend some family time with us.  I know he could be traveling, or worse be deployed, but it still was a hard two weeks and not having daddy around made me a single mommy and Adam a little extra crabby (I couldn't even count how many times he asked me where his daddy was). 

Monday I had a root canal (I know lucky me) and Tuesday and Thursday I drove into the cities to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa.  We went to the Minnesota Zoo on Tuesday and after we went to visit Great Grandma in the hospital.  On Thursday I really needed to run some errands, so we met at the mall and then went to my favorite Hippy Crunchy Baby store and then to Hugo to visit Great Grandma again.  On Thursday she held Eli for a very long time while Adam played with little people next to her chair. 

One new thing happened at our house this week.  My little Big Boy started eating Cheerios "Like Daddy".  Which means he can eat cereal with milk out of a bowl with a spoon and not spill every where.  When did he get this big?

Halfway Done

I took Eli to work today after I dropped Adam off at daycare.  While I was there I came to the realization that not only is my maternity leave halfway over, but in exactly two months I will be walking into that office for real work!  I'm not ready!  Thankfully I think that two months is a heck of a lot of time.  Here are some cute pictures from this last week.

Trapped in a Closet

It was a short work week, but yet oh so long.  Dave was at work 12 + hours every day, which left me a single mom for 4 days straight.  Our house is very "lived in" at the moment.  To tell you the truth I making an effort to not keep up with the cleaning.  I want my energy to go into taking care of, playing and having fun with my little men and what ever is left will go toward working out and then cleaning.

But the new week started today- that's right we only got one family Saturday before Dave had to go back to work again.  So I took the boys to church alone and we all survived.  Thankfully my parents showed up to help me this afternoon.  It felt so freeing to be able to go back to man on man coverage plus. 

Anyway it's turning out to be a late night for Dave, so severe thunderstorms and a tornado warning for my county and what do I do... make a pillow bed and grab the boys to hang out in the bathroom.  Turns out after I settled in to the bathroom that the warning was for only half of my county- the half my house does not reside in.  But I stuck it out and now that the rain, thunder and lightening have stopped I think we may end up back in my bed for the night.

My Son is Clairvoyant?

There was the Girl scout Cookie incident this spring and then once we were calling Grandma Rose because he had asked for a pie, but when she answered the phone all of a sudden he switched topics to dinosaurs.  Grandma Rose was like I just found a dinosaur coloring book for him to have, how did he know?  Well then today in church (side note- I took both boys to church by myself, ALONE) he was talking about aliens again.  I remembered that I had figured out before what he was trying to say when he said alien, but I would have to go back and find it on my blog to figure it out.  I looked it up and of course, ambulances.  After church my mom called to tell me that Great Grandma had been taken by an ambulance to the hospital at about 11 AM, right about the time church started and Adam was babbling about aliens.  So what do you think, is he clairvoyant? 

If he can indeed see the future I wonder how far he can see, because he told us that Eli will play hockey for Michigan Tech. 

Seattle On My Mind

On our way home from Cheesesconsin Dave and I were reminiscing about all of our 4th of July's since we started dating.  We've been a lot of awesome places together on the 4th Chicago, Copper Harbor, Devil's Lake, Paris, home with a brand new baby and last year Seattle.  It was such a fun, carefree vacation (mainly because Adam stayed with Grandma and Grandpa in Minnesota and I was not pregnant).  And we did everything and put a ton of miles on our rental car.  Every morning started the same way- with a great cup of coffee or a latte.  Oh my mouth waters thinking about how good the coffee was.

And there was plenty to do in Seattle- Pike's Market, eating sushi, biking, dining at the top of the Space Needle, sea kayaking in Lake Union, shopping in the original REI store all of which kept us busy our first two days, but my favorite part of the trip was the two days we spent on the road driving to Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks.

We got up early on the 4th of July and took a ferry across Puget Sound and then drove 163 miles to the Hoh rain forest.  It was beautiful and the first and really only time we saw rain on our trip.  I loved the trees covered with moss and how green everything was.  I probably will never get to a tropical rain forest- so this will have to do.

Then we turned around and started heading back toward Seattle.  We stopped in a little town before we got to the ocean and I didn't realize it, but it was Forks as in the town from the Twilight books.  I thought it was strange that a warning sign at the gas station read "vampire danger level" instead of fire danger level.  We grabbed some snacks in Forks and headed to the beach. 

We walked the full length of second beach and although lots of people were there it felt like we were all alone.  It was foggy at first, but the sky cleared as we walked.  The sea stacks reminded me of Lake Superior and Sea Kayaking in the Apostle Islands.  Really Lake Superior is so similar to the Pacific North West coast.

We continued our journey back towards Seattle and made one more stop in the mountains.  We literally had to drive through a cloud to get to the Hurricane Ridge.  At points we could only see 20 feet in front of our car and it was soo dark.  But when we emerged from the cloud a surprise met us, snow topped mountains.  So we got out of the car to let the driver take a breather and enjoy the views.  And then on the 4th of July my husband threw a snowball at me. 

The mountain range was beyond beautiful and was the cherry on the top of our Olympic experience.  We hiked a trail and snapped a ton of pictures, but these two were by far my favorites.  On our hike one little deer was standing on the trail as Dave walked around a corner he turned around real fast and got both of our hearts racing.  So I was already on edge when I noticed the trail was narrowing and steep drop offs were on either side.  I'm not normally afraid of heights, but at that moment I was ready to go back to the car and be done.

So when we got back in the car we realized that if we got a move on we could make the 9 PM ferry from Bainbridge Island back to Seattle and watch the fireworks from the deck of the ferry.  So that's what we did and skipped eating dinner.  By the time we got back to Seattle none of the restaurants were open except a Subway so in Schwedskala traveling tradition we ate Subway with a bottle of wine.  In Europe we at peanutbutter sandwiches almost daily and in Hawaii there was our famous champagne and Spam dinner due to the power outage after a earthquake. 



The next day we skyped with Grandma and Grandpa and Adam.  Wow did I miss him a ton.  To keep my mind off of wanting to go home we traveled to Mount Rainer.  I was so worried that Mount Rainer would be cloudy and therefore the mountain top wouldn't be seen.  Our second day in Seattle Mount Rainer was visible from the city, which doesn't happen often.  I guess people will walk around town proclaiming "the mountain is showing".  So since we saw it once I figured our chances of seeing it a second time were slim.  I was wrong.  Mount Rainer came out from behind the clouds after we showed up. 

The Sunrise trails were still snow covered, so we hiked on a ranger access road.  I think I may have had the altitude affecting me, because I remember the start of the hike but I don't remember where we turned around.  It's a strange feeling to not know how you got to where you are.  After that we decided to hike a trail in the valley.  Of course the trail I picked was washed out in a flood a few years ago and the new trail was still under construction, but that didn't stop us.  It was a really difficult and fun hike traversing over the river and wash out several times.  It also doesn't hurt to be looking at this the whole time.

Honestly Seattle was an amazing surprise getaway.  Dave gifted the trip to me for Mother's Day and he surprised me with the dinner in the Needle and sea kayaking.  I discovered that I love 65-70 degree weather.  The trip was not without sacrifices though, while we were gone Adam put the whole walking thing together chasing his birthday balloons around the house.  Before we left he could take steps, when we came home he was a walker.

Happy 4th of July

Happy Birthday to Ms. Brockway, who turned 4 yesterday.  Look at how cute my puppy was!

Well my relaxing weekend in Coleman turned into a go, go, go weekend.  But honestly that's my style, so it was ok.  On Saturday it was just us and grandma and grandpa, so we went to the NEW Zoo in the heat of the day.  On our way home we stopped for some ice cream, except Adam had yogurt.  Then we ran around in the sprinklers until it was time for dinner, pork chops on the grill.  Adam was not a fan of the sprinkler at first, but after watching mommy and daddy make it look like fun and holding our hand the first few times he was hooked.  Being a parent really does allow you to become a child again, because I would have never guessed running through a sprinkler was something I would do in my late 20's.

 After dinner grandpa, Dave and I took Adam out to fish for the first time.  He thought that fishing meant constantly moving the pole like you're setting the hook (that is all they ever show on the fishing shows), so after almost hooking grandpa's head I decided to cast the bobber on the other side of the boat.  Before I could even hand the pole over a sunny was on the line.  I tried to get Adam to reel it in, but he didn't understand.  He did give the fishy a kiss and he touched a bass.

On Sunday we were rushing trying to get ready for church when I noticed my little fishy boy put a #2 in the tub.  It was the pooh that broke the camels back and we didn't make it to church.  We still went to visit Great Grandma who recently broke her hip and ribs from falling.  She was in great spirits and Eli showed her his biggest smiles when they met.  We all sang Twinkle Twinkle together and took turns holding her hand.  Grandma is one tuff cookie- less than a week after her fall she's up and out of the bed and in a wheel chair.

Ann, Titus and James met us at the nursing home and then it was pizza and malts at Penguin City.  We all went back to Coleman and had a 4th of July cook out with burgers and brats.  After dinner we walked to the park and played until it was bed time for the boys.  After they were in bed we had a fire and lit off a couple fireworks.  But don't worry, despite our busy weekend, we still managed to find time to cuddle Eli in the hammock.

The boys were great travelers this weekend.  Both trips we only stopped twice and got to our destination only adding an extra hour to our six hour drive.

Procrastination from Packing Up

Today is packing day, because we're heading to Dave's home town for the 4th of July weekend.  Adam is at daycare and I'm struggling to find the motivation to get moving.  My alarm went off and I just couldn't drag myself out of bed for a run (plus it's darn hot out there).  A shower didn't happen because Little Man woke up before 7 AM and was not in a good mood! 

So in mommy news, I just love going to the dentist.  On top of getting three cavities filled I need a root canal, a crown on that tooth and a night guard because I'm a grinder.  So I feel a little guilty taking antibiotics to kill the infection in my root, but not being able to sleep because of throbbing pain for the next week is not an option.  The pain isn't really to that level yet, but I believe this tooth was causing me at least half of the pain that was keeping me up all night at the end of Eli's pregnancy. 

In kiddo news Adam's vocabulary is huge, "mommy, I want the ca-chew" (I didn't know he knew cashew).  And Eli's super cute new thing is to grab a blanket he's lying on and bring it to his face and try and suck on it.

I'm really enjoying having two little subjects to photograph.  I only take pictures when I'm in the right kind of mood, but then I just snap away like crazy.  I think I took close to 80 pictures for Eli's 2 month post.  Last month I took 807 pictures.  What I'm finding though is that I don't like the exposure I get in the aperture priority mode.  So I'm starting to dabble in full manual mode (auntie Shar will be so proud).  There's a lot more to keep track of, but I think what I capture is much more "me" and less standard camera.  Right now I love this picture of Eli in his little car sleeper (that he got from my awesome cousin Vanessa):