Three Months

Dear Nathan,

Welcome to the month of personality. Or perhaps you should be welcoming us, as we are the ones who get to enjoy it. And enjoy it we do. It turns out that despite your seemingly endless energy (I'm not looking forward to that when you're mobile), you have the same endless adoration for your family. Anytime you're awake, you want someone in the room with you, preferably showing you one-on-one attention.
I am very blessed that your brother is starting to adore you back. He seems to love being the recipient of your toothless grins and giggles. When I'm unable to entertain you at the moment, Patrick is every bit as good of a distraction. In fact, there are moments when I'm not enough and I catch you looking around for a glimpse of Patrick. All it takes is one glimpse of him moving from the corner of your eye and you are happy again. If only I could expect this charmed relationship between the two of you to last forever...

And Nathan, my little social butterfly, you are already doing your best to communicate with us. Your cries are already becoming rare, only when your needs have become urgent, and you instead "talk" to us using your voice. You coo most of the day: happy, giggly coos when you're happy and smiling, and frustrated, demanding coos when you're in need of something. They're better than crying anyway.

These "conversations" we have are wonderful. I've found myself neglecting other things I need to be doing just to chat with you longer. Perhaps it's just the star-struck mommy in me, but I feel honored when you bless me with a smile, or a series of smiles and coos. You make me feel special, as though I'm your favorite person ever. And maybe I am, which only makes me more content.

I wish I could avoid writing this paragraph, Nathan, but I can't just gloss over the more frustrating things you do. You still don't sleep as well as I'd like. At least this month you have finally started to sleep eight-to-ten-hour stretches at night--sometimes. You still want bedtime around the same time as Patrick, though, so I'm still getting up in the wee hours of the morning for your first feeding of the day. Then other nights, like last night, you still want feedings several times at night. I'm trying my best to cherish those quiet nighttime feedings with you, as I know they will be few and far between before long, but I have to admit that they're getting old. So is the lack of sleep and my lack of patience that results (as Patrick can certainly attest to).

But when you do sleep, I can't help but want to snuggle. You are more than willing to cooperate most of the time. It is now our routine to spend a few minutes snuggling together every morning before we get Patrick up. I have to confess that it is my favorite time of the day. I wake up from our short snooze together in a loving mood, which carries over through the first few otherwise drowsy and cranky hours of the day. This is something I was never comfortable doing with Patrick--between his early issues with apnea and his fountain-like spitting up--so these morning naps are particularly special to me, something I can share with you alone.

This last month has cemented my relationship to you even more, now that you are able to contribute more to it. When I see "I love you" in each smile and coo, I can't help but fall in love with you all over again, just like I did that Saturday morning thirteen weeks ago when you were first placed on my belly, all gooey and slimy. You gazed at me then with this look of awe--and yes, love--the same way you do now. My heart melted then, and you're doing your best to keep it melted.

I hope that never changes.

I love you forever.

Mommy

The Rest of the Pictures

I told you I had a lot of pictures! Here are the newer ones of Nathan. And please don't panic when you don't get any new Nathan pictures over the next few days; I need to save a few for his three-month letter on Saturday!

Yes, they still adore each other!

And so do they!

He's not always happy--just most of the time.

He was enthralled with this ball, one of Patrick's Christmas presents last year. You'll be glad to know that Patrick wasn't too jealous watching his brother play with it.

Sleepy and a tad grumpy

Catching Up

I've been hoarding pictures again. Sorry to overwhelm you with my favorites. I'm not nearly picky enough, so I have lots and lots of favorites. Today you get the last few days of Patrick pictures, and tomorrow I'll do Nathan's.

Any guesses as to what we were watching this day?

He's so good at sharing.

The teddy bear love is a recent development that I've loved watching. He actually sleeps with this teddy bear now.

I just wish he would hug me like he does the teddy bear. Maybe if I was half as soft...

Walk Down Memory Lane

Christmas two years ago:

Christmas last year:

Christmas this year:

Who knows what next year's picture will look like?

Not What I Would Have Asked Santa For

One of Patrick's Christmas presents this year is going to be a potty. Yup, it's about that time. When we went shopping for the boys' gifts this last weekend--isn't it great when they're still young enough to tag along?--we picked up a potty as part of Patrick's Christmas. Instead of wrapping it and putting it under the tree, though, we just stuck it in "his" bathroom for him to get used to. It looks like we'll be starting potty training after our Christmas trip when things will be pretty settled for a while.

I know many toddlers start potty training earlier than this. After all, Patrick is well over two years old now. But back when it first got mentioned, I realized that he needed to hit a few milestones first. Of course, he needed to be able to walk proficiently, which he's been doing for many months now. He needed to be able to sit on something like a potty, and he has mastered the art of sitting on smaller chairs pretty well--although he has yet to try on the potty.

He needs to be able to pull his own pants down and back up, at least by the time he's pretty good at going without much help, and he is showing interest in learning how to dress himself. He loves to find clothes of any sort, whether or not they fit or are even his, and sit down to try to pull them over his legs. It won't be long before he won't let me help dress him at all. So he should be pretty close to manipulating his own clothes while pottying.

And the biggie is that he needs to be able to tell me when he needs to go. His communication skills have certainly been improving, but he has yet to get good enough that I can understand him when he tells me that. I keep hoping maybe he will develop the words for pottying as we focus more and more on it, but I'm not necessarily counting on it.

But today I think he is ready because he was able to successfully communicate with me that he needed a clean diaper. I thought it looked like he was pooping as he took breaks between playing. I looked away for a minute, and when I looked up he was gone, playing in the other room where his changing pad is. I snuck up on him to see what he was doing, and the second he saw me, he crawled onto his changing pad (on the floor) and waited until I figured out he was asking for a clean diaper. Sure enough, he was dirty.

I guess it's good that even without using words, Patrick was able to communicate that he had gone to the bathroom and that he was uncomfortable enough to want a clean diaper. Both are good milestones telling me he might be somewhat receptive to the idea of pottying in a toilet. I'm glad now that we went ahead and got the potty in preparation for potty training, even though we weren't sure he was ready when we bought it. So now I wonder if that was at the top of his Christmas list this year.

Travel Disaster and Pictures--Again

I spent most of last week at Mom and Dad's with the boys. Matt had to go to Chicago on business, so I hung out in Dallas to not be alone. Poor Matt. He spent the week in snow and ice and had a fiasco getting home, partly due to the weather. He ended up having to fly back to Houston instead of Dallas as planned, then enduring a crazy cab ride home, only to discover that he didn't have a house key with him. It makes my solo drive home the next day with both boys seem like a cakewalk in comparison.

You may have noticed that some of the pictures I've posted in the last week looked like they might have been taken somewhere other than our house. They were the ones I took while we were in Dallas. Here are the last few and a few from the day or two after we got home.

Mom and a kissable Nathan

Dad and Nathan laughing at each other

Patrick, working hard

The sleepy boy

Patrick, my big helper (never mind that Nathan won't really take a pacifier anymore)

Patrick with a monkey on his back

Really, he loves this thing, which is wonderful since it doubles as a harness (i.e., leash). That will make it much easier the first time we need to use it that way too.

Christmas Tree

I thought it would be a neat idea to take pictures of our Christmas tree this year. It's easier said than done, to get the kinds of pictures I had in mind. I experimented a lot with the special settings on the new camera and threw away a bunch of pictures, but I kept a few I liked.

Our tree

Patrick in front of the tree (notice the gate around the bottom of the tree--genius idea for keeping toddlers away from it, whoever mentioned the idea)

the angel on top of the tree

a couple of our more generic ornaments

Patrick's first Christmas ornament--I guess we need to get one for Nathan now too

Letters and Sleep

As I'm writing this, Patrick is playing with his letter puzzle, the one intended for ages three and up, and he's astounding me with his knowledge--or perhaps his memory. We've made it through all but about six of the letters, and I've helped him with only one so far. And really, I can understand how he can mix up a V and an A. I won't pretend he knows the names of all the letters yet, but I wouldn't put it past him. He hears each letter every time he does the puzzle. At the moment, I suspect it's more that he remembers where he saw the letters in the puzzle last and can match up the shapes pretty well. Still, I think he's pretty smart for being able to do that much.

Nathan, on the other hand, is sleeping peacefully in his bouncer chair. He's continuing to stretch his time between feedings overnight, now going eight hours on a fairly regular basis. I'm proud of him, but not as proud of him as I would be if those eight hours started closer to the time I'm ready to go to bed. As it is, I'm still getting up between three and four in the morning for his "morning" feeding. Fortunately, he usually goes right back to sleep after that feeding for about four more hours. I'm probably getting enough sleep after all, but it's getting kind of old to have the sleep interrupted every night.

Yet somehow I don't mind it much, despite my complaints about the interrupted sleep. I know I won't have opportunities to cuddle with my little baby alone in the middle of the night for much longer. There's something so sweet about those special quiet moments with no other distractions, and I suspect I'm going to miss them when they're gone. I do miss them with Patrick. So as long as Nathan still needs to eat in the middle of the night, I'm going to cherish those snuggly moments. I'll get chances to catch up on sleep later, but I won't have another chance to get these bonding times back when they're gone.

And More Pictures

I'm sorry I haven't had much to write about lately. There have probably been plenty of stories, but I've been too distracted with taking pictures to remember to write them down. If I don't have a picture to remind me to tell the story, it will probably be forgotten. At least I'm getting lots of great pictures, right?

Here are a few more from last week. If you read the last post, you saw all the great ones of Patrick, so these are mostly Nathan. They are both getting so good at posing for me.

Twenty-Six Months

Dear Patrick,

Your twenty-sixth month cemented your entrance into your terrible twos. I only thought you had all the symptoms of the dreaded year before the last few weeks, but as usual, you have entered this phase just a bit later than most of your peers.
I have learned patience of a level I never thought I could experience--and even then you test its limits. I can understand that you want to control your world and that your only method of communicating your displeasure that you can't control everything is a tantrum. That doesn't mean I'm at all thrilled with it, however. Many days I am ready for your bedtime hours before you are.

I am grateful that while your tantrums have escalated this month, so have your sweet, affectionate moments. You are all too willing to let us know when you want a hug or to be held. You are even bold enough to ask other people you deem loveable to pick you up. Before this month, hugs were reserved for Daddy coming home from work, but now you want them from me when you get up from a nap or your grandparents when you see them. All this sweet affection makes it easier to tolerate the numerous tantrums each day.

And finally--at last--this affection has begun to spread to your baby brother. You acknowledge Nathan's presence as more than just a gadget to figure out, like the latches on all the baby seats in the house. If you try to take him a pacifier, it's not just to figure out how it fits in his mouth but to calm his crying. You attempt to help me with whatever I am doing to calm Nathan, like rocking the chair he is in or smile and entertain him. And the sweetest was when I was doing something to calm him while he was in his playard and you peeked over the side to watch me. You have suddenly taken an interest in your brother, and it brings out a new side to your personality that I love watching develop.

You have had another language explosion this month. I can't even remember all the words you have surprised us with recently. The words you've had for quite a while are also much clearer now. You are just a few weeks away from holding actual conversations with us, not just toddler babble followed by my, "Really? That's great!" Or your insistence on going somewhere and my insistence that we're not going anywhere. I'm looking forward to those first real conversations, but I have a feeling all too soon I'll be wishing for these one-sided chats again, when I'm trying to explain why the sky is blue or how electricity works. Because, yes, I do think you are going to be one of those kids.

I got my new camera, my Christmas present this year, a week or so ago, and you have been a real trooper, letting me take more pictures of you than you've let me take in months. If you weren't still running to the camera to play with it as often as you do, I'd say you have a real future as a baby model ahead of you. I'm thrilled I have all these great pictures to remember this stage in your life. Thank you for being so cooperative.

Last night, we went to Nana's school with her and Grandpa to attend some open-house-type event. For the first time ever, you got your picture taken with Santa. I'm looking forward to explaining all about Santa to you and watching your face light up on Christmas morning as you see everything he brought you (even though we don't have a chimney--at least Gigi and Papa do, since that's where we'll be this year).

It was also a little nostalgic seeing you at the school with all the "big" girls and boys. It made me realize that it will be all too soon when I'll be attending events like that as the parent of a real grade-schooler. Please stop growing up so fast! I already miss the baby Patrick, and the crawling Patrick, and the toothless, "bionic-baby" Patrick from long ago. I'm not ready to miss the toddler Patrick and the happy-go-lucky, barely-understandable Patrick I'm in love with now. Slow down so that I can cherish every last moment with you.

I love you.

Mommy