17 Weeks 5 Days Old

Here are the updates that I said I'd post about:

Introducing Cereal
Christopher seemed to love rice cereal on his first attempt. I waited until Saturday evening (4/15) at about 7:00 pm when Richard was visiting. He literally lunged forward to get the spoon in his mouth! We tried again on Sunday at about 3:30 or 4:00 pm and he had a complete opposite reaction. He didn't seem to want anything to do with it, so I didn't push it. When I tried for the 3rd day (Monday), I waited until about 7:00 pm like the first try. Once again, he seemed to love it! However, this time he was trying the HELP me with spoon! LOL! I thought that wasn't supposed to happen until he got older! It's funny...even though we're using the spoon, he doesn't quite grasp the concept of how it works. Instead of letting the spoon go into his mouth, he tries to lift his tongue up so the spoon would go under. It's quite funny!













Converting to the Crib
This didn't go over as well. He went to sleep just fine...that was the easy part. When he woke up at about 4:00, though, I didn't hear him until he was crying really hard. We're not willing to sleep with the baby monitor since it has a lot of static, so I'm just going to wait until Christopher's consistently sleeping through the night before I try again. The bassinet will hold up to 25 lbs, so we should be able to wait a little while longer.

4 Months Old!

Christopher is 4 months old or 17 weeks and 2 days.

We've got bad news and good news. The bad news first... we've had to switch from satellite tv to limited basic cable to cut costs. We had the cable hooked up on Wednesday and then it went out both Thursday and Friday! After calling Comcast, they were able to send someone out within the hour on Thursday. However, when I called on Friday (Good Friday), they weren't going to be able to send someone out until this morning. Thankfully, they're giving us a $20.00 credit. We ended up using the rabbit ears to watch the local channels Friday night, so it wasn't too bad. When the technician came out today, he told us that the filter keeping us from getting expanded basic cable was bad. The good news about the bad news is that the technician took off the bad filter, so we're now getting expanded basic for the price of limited basic! Yay! Shad's happier since he'll be able to watch baseball and football on ESPN and ESPN2. There were a couple of channels that I would miss that we now have, but it was mainly Shad who was going to miss all the channels.

The other part of the bad news was that we're also going to have to cut our home phone service down to the bare basics. We're going to try to keep our DSL, but that may have to go, too. We're definitely keeping our cell phones as we consider those pretty important (what DID people do without them in the past???). We would even cut off the home phone completely, but we need it for Internet service. It's kind of a bummer to be staying at home with Christopher without much to do (besides housework, which gets old fast). I'm so thankful when the weather's nice so we can get outside! But even then, I have to be careful how much sun Christopher gets since he can't use sunscreen until he's 6 months old.

Okay, the good news... since Christopher is 4 months old today, we're crossing 2 milestones. The first is that we're going to start him on cereal today! Shad's going to videotape and get pictures of our attempt, so hopefully I'll be able to share them afterward.

The second milestone is that we're switching Christopher from the bassinet to his crib tonight. At least, we're going to attempt to make the switch! I just hope now that he's typically sleeping until at least 4:00 am (6.5 hours), he doesn't revert back to waking several times! It's going to be harder for me to get up since I'll have to go into another room instead of staying in the same one. It's all for the best, though. It's time for him to be in his own room now. I'm tired of having to walk and talk quietly in the bedroom at night. I'll post an update in my next entry.

Here are a few of pictures of Christopher taken 4/10/06:


















































Milestones: Christopher has now rolled both from his stomach to his back AND from his back to his stomach! He did back to stomach this week! He's playing with his feet a lot more, still drooling a lot, and now gumming things frequently. I'm sure those teeth are going to start poking through pretty soon! He also has been "talking" more often.

Job Update: The last thing I heard was that Bank of America hired someone from another branch, so that option is gone now. However, there's still supposed to be a couple of part-time openings at a couple of other branches here in town. They have yet to be posted, though, so I'm STILL at a standstill! Hopefully, something good will come out of this VERY soon!

16 Weeks 2 Days Old (4 Month Checkup)

We had a very interesting doctor's appointment yesterday thanks to some very bad weather! The storms started up in West Tennessee around late morning. By the time we got out of the car at the medical clinic for Christopher's appointment at 3:30, our city tornado alarm was going off! Apparently, a tornado was spotted right above the Church Street overpass of I-24! Thankfully, though, nothing touched down! We got as far as waiting in the exam room for the doctor (measurements had already been taken) when we were instructed to go down to the basement. Poor Christopher was in nothing but his diaper! After getting downstairs, I proceeded to put his clothes back on when we were given the okay to go back upstairs (where I undressed Christopher AGAIN). We were only downstairs for about 10 minutes at most. The worst that we got was some large hail, which didn't damage anything of ours, thankfully.

Okay, here's Christopher's stats and other pertinent info:

Weight: 14 lbs 4 oz. (50th percentile)
Length: 24.25 in. (50th percentile) - Yay! He's finally caught up!
Head: 41 cm (50th percentile)

Of course, there were more shots. It's so hard to have to hold your child down for those! What made me feel even worse was that he was in such a good mood beforehand! He's been doing okay with them. Surprisingly, he hasn't been cranky at all. When he's awake and not sleepy, he's been in a really good mood. He's napping right now, so we'll see if the trend continues this afternoon.

The doctor has given the okay to start cereal. Since Christopher won't actually be 4 months old until April 15 (next Saturday), I'm going to wait another week or so. As for fruits and veggies...she doesn't like to start those until around 5 1/2 or 6 months, so we're waiting another couple of months for that.

I think I'm going to make our own babyfood. It doesn't sound hard at all...just cook the veggie and puree it, pour it into an ice cube tray and freeze it, then store the cubes in a freezer bag until ready to use. It will also end up being much cheaper, too. I meant to talk to the doctor about it at yesterday's appointment, but with all the excitement, forgot about it. I'll bring it up at the next appointment, which is his 6 month checkup in June.