Brothers

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts.....We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

I'm so glad they will always have each other!

Five Months of Wes

Wes turned five months old a few days ago. I'm trying not to cry about it.
He is so much bigger than Owen was at five months. At one of the (many) recent visits to the Pediatrician's office (to make sure he just had a cold and not an ear infection, whooping cough, RSV, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc!) he weighed in at 15 lbs 5 oz with his clothes on. He is at about 42% for weight and at 26.5 inches long he is about 60% for height! I feel like he is gigantic, but he is actually just about average. ( I don't ever pay attention his head measurements. I'm always told they are normal, so I'm good with that!)
He is a sweet, sweet baby. He is still only nursing---about 3-4 hours during the day, and even though he wakes up during the night...I don't feed him anymore, and he doesn't seem to care about that. :)
Unfortunately, it has been awhile since he has slept straight through the night. He generally wakes up at least once, sometimes twice. He usually wakes up happy, and I'll typically just pick him up and rock him back to sleep. If you think I'm creating bad habits, I don't want to hear about it :) I don't do cry it out...at least not now (if he's still doing this at a year, maybe I'll reevaluate) and he's my last baby, so even though I'm tired, rocking him back to sleep is wonderful for me and it usually only takes about 10 minutes for him to fall asleep. In general he wakes to eat around 5:30 AM and then goes back to sleep until about 7:30 or 8:00.
He is teething for sure. He wants everything to be IN HIS MOUTH! :) He gnawed a little divot in pointer finger....so sad, but poor baby...I know his gums hurt. I've been orajel-ing him up and we bought him a special teething toy--Sophie the Giraffe.
He continues to roll easily from back to tummy and occasionally he will roll back, but not often. He is really interested in his toys and he is doing ok in the exersaucer...I think he might still a big young for it, but he will definitely be into it soon.
I've been holding off on solids...I've given him little tastes of things here and there just for fun...a bite of a piece of mashed up banana, carrot, avocado, and tonight I steamed some apple pieces and mashed them up. This is completely different than what I did with Owen. I had Owen on formula and around 5 1/2 months I started him on rice cereal, which he never really did well with and I ended up introducing fruit and mixing it..yada yada yada....well, this time I decided that I was going to not do cereal at all and wait for sure until six months to do any kind of real food....except Wes has been watching us like a hawk when we eat, reaching for food when we have it in our hands and acting like he really WANTS some food! So, tonight I thought...good grief, why not. Thus, the steamed apple....I mashed it up and sprinkled some cinnamon on it and...he was just ok with it. So, anyways. I'll be more regular about giving him solids after six months, but if he acts like he is just dying to have some of our food, then I'm not technically opposed to giving him some tastes. I know he will be ok, but I also know that he doesn't really need anything other than breastmilk at this point. His weight if fine and there is no real need for baby food right now....and I'm also going to try and loosely follow baby-led-weaning ...so, we'll see how this goes! I didn't breastfeed past four months with Owen, so this figuring out nursing and solids is a whole new territory for me! :)
Other fun things....Wes will blow "bubbles" (read:spit) at us :), he LOVES Owen, Owen can always make him laugh, and still really has a thing for his mother :) He is a lot of fun and its so wonderful to see his personality developing!
I think that's about it! We love our sweet boy. Happy Five months Wes! I don't want to think about you being nearly six months old, but I'm grateful for each minute I have with you...even if it means you have to grow up! (I'll try and get over that!)

Wes Dedication

We dedicated Wes at church on Sunday. Here is the big fail: we forgot to take pictures. My dear mother took two. One of Wes and one of Wes and I. I guess the second child always gets jipped on pictures.

We love you sweet baby. And just as we have prayed for Owen, we pray that you will grow into a man who knows and loves the Lord....and follows hard after Him!