The Aedo Family: December 2010

Anderson had his two month check-up and he is a big boy! He weighed in at 13lbs 7 oz (75th-90th percentile) and already weighs more than what Nathan did at four months. He was 23" long (50th percentile) and his head measured in the 50th percentile. The only issue that we are now having is that Anderson has green poop that has trace amounts of blood in it. Since it is most likely a food sensitivity I have cut out all dairy from my diet since dairy is usually the biggest culprit. We see a GI doctor in January to see what may be causing it. Although, there is this issue Anderson is still a pretty great baby and isn't very fussy. I on the otherhand am very fussy because I am not eating dairy. I really miss my cheese and butter! It was very hard to not have mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cookies during Christmas because of the butter that was in them! At least I didn't gain any extra weight from the cookies I would have eaten!

**Since I wrote this post about a month ago and never posted it (took me forever to get the photos and videos uploaded) some things have happened! We went to the GI doctor and he said that he thinks that Anderson most likely has lymphoid hyperplasia. Basically the lymph nodes in Anderson's small colon are being irritated and causing the bleeding. The cause of the irritation would be from all of the colds that the poor kid has had since his birth. I think that he has been sick-free for about two-three weeks since his birth. We take some more poop samples next week and if they have blood in them then we go from there. One of the options to try and figure out what is going on is to restrict my diet even further. Right now I am not eating any diary or nuts and it is HARD! I really would just like to have some cheese! We don't think it is an allergy issue because there is still trace amounts of blood in his poop and it should have been gone by now since I have been dairy free for seven weeks and nut free for four weeks. Another option is to put Anderson on an allergy free formula and see what happens. The last option is to do a baby colonoscopy (I can't remember what the actual name for it is). Hopefully, it is just the colds that are causing his bowels to be irritated and I can go back to eating whatever :)! We also hope that we can shake off the colds and all get better!**

Anderson also had his newborn hearing finally done! And he hears just fine. While we were at the hearing place Nathan was the highlight for everyone there. He was not shy at all and made friends with some older people (the patients all seemed to be over 70).

Anderson smiles all the time now, but especially when we are around. When you talk to him he "talks" back to you by cooing and it is the cutest! Anderson has laughed, but it has only been in his sleep, which is funny to me. When we were up at my parents he woke himself up by laughing in his sleep. I am looking forward to when we can get him to laugh when he is awake.

Anderson has discovered his hands and it is fun to watch him stare at them. His hands must be so fascinating to him. He now reaches for stuff that you put within his grasp. He will sometimes grab a hold of the item and hold onto it real tight. His neck is getting much stronger and he is able to hold his head up off the floor pretty well sometimes.

Nathan is doing awesome! He cracks Christopher and me up all of the time with stuff that he says. Of course, I can't think of specifics right now, but he is funny. He does have his terrible two moments, but overall he is a pretty good toddler.

For Christmas we went up to my parent's house and had a great time. The drive there was 11 hours, with stops, and both kids did really well. Christopher and I were so proud of Nathan for doing as great as he did. He was so well behaved and he was able to keep himself entertained without any TV or DVDs! We did have to play the song "The Journey Home From Grandpas" (it goes with a book he has) about a million times though! Nathan got to play in the snow and he loved it! We told Nathan that you couldn't eat the snow because it was dirty, but that any new snow that fell he could eat. On the third day that we were there it snowed and the first thing Nathan said when he woke up was "eat clean snow." He really doesn't forget a thing. He played outside in the snow for hours. He would have stayed out there all day and night if he had his way. He did some sledding and really liked that. Christopher, Nathan, and Lucy went on a walk where there was a couple feet of snow and Nathan didn't care for that deep of snow. We found this cool hazmat looking suit that is a rain suit and we used it for the snow and it kept him bone dry. Here is a video with Nathan and his cousin Joseph sledding in the snow.

Christmas was a little more fun this year because Nathan was more into it and he was able to open up presents by himself. He still doesn't get the whole Santa concept because we haven't really talked to him about it and I was too paranoid to take the boys to see Santa in fear that they would catch a cold from all the germs on Santa. I think that next year he will understand. My brother, his girlfriend, and son were there and it was nice having them around. My nephew Joseph is super cute!

I don't think that much else is going on with us. Christopher and I are on a reading frenzy. We got Kindles and reading has become so much easier to do and we have been reading like crazy. Christopher finishes a book every few days it seems.

For New Years I do have some resolutions and here they are:

-Nathan will be potty trained!!!!

-We will get rid of the paci for Nathan

-Anderson will sleep through the night by four months (this is wishful thinking!)

-We will finally get our new windows put in

-Christopher and I will start exercising again (we have to since we signed up to run a 1/2 marathon in July)

-I will do a much better job at keeping up with this blog...:)

**Funny to see those resolutions a month later. Nathan still isn't potty trained and still sleeps with his paci, but we FINALLY got him sleeping in his bedroom by himself. Since we had Anderson things were a little out of whack with Nathan's sleeping schedule and he needed one of us to sleep with him every time he was laying down. Then if he woke up in the middle of the night and realized we weren't there he would come into our room and want to sleep with us or we would have to go in his room and sleep with him. Since things have settled down we decided that it was time for Nathan to sleep on his own. The first day was a little rough, but now it is smooth sailing! It is so easy to get him down and he stays in bed the whole night and during nap time! Our next mission will be to get Anderson to sleep more!

We are getting our windows put in!!!! It is pretty exciting to have new windows that look really nice. They should also help in saving us money in the long run with the heating and cooling of our house. By next week the windows should all be installed.

There was an opening in the Waldorf preschool in January and we were told that Nathan could join. We tried it out for a week and it wasn't working for Nathan. He wasn't enjoying it at all and both the teacher and us decided that right now wasn't a good time for Nathan to join. So, he will start preschool for the next school year.

We had our friends, the Stones, visit us the first week in January and it was so nice having them. Nathan really enjoyed the company of Ziah and it made me realize that he needs more kid interaction than what he is getting. The Stones live in the Czech Republic (we plan to visit there next year for their wedding!) and Ziah taught Nathan how to count to three in Czech. They would count to three while standing on the couch and then jump off onto the orange pouf chair that we have. Now that Ziah is gone Nathan has forgotten what "one" in Czech is so he starts at "two" and then for "three" it has morphed into "gorilla, monkey, big TREE." We have no idea where that came from!

Lastly, Nathan is a funny little kid. He has this obsession with stepping on sprinklers when we go on walks. He loves looking for the sprinklers that didn't go back down after they were on so that he can step on them and make them go down. He has to check out all the sprinklers and it makes the walks longer than usual. He also likes to hug trees on the walk. I have no idea where he picked up both of those habits because we didn't teach him that.

-Heather

Enjoy the pictures!

Two sleepy boys!