Aunt Julie & Uncle Scott Visit

Tyler & Lucas have been so excited for Julie to visit. They love playing board games and know they can usually convince Aunt Julie to play game after game with them.

Uncle Scott scored major points with the boys for constructing a fort with them.

We had a great visit and miss them already!

Colin Wants an iPhone

Glammie & Papa took Ryan, Julia, Tyler & Lucas to see the Winnie the Pooh movie this morning.

After the movie the kids had pizza here while Glammie cuddled with Colin.

Ryan & Julia LOVE baby Colin and always want to talk to him and play with him.  They are going to be so excited when baby sister arrives.

Ryan thought Colin needed some toys so he gave him this phone to talk on. Colin, however, looks exceptionally bored by a phone that doesn’t have internet access.

Blind Date

Kevin and Rachel’s daughter, Kadence, was born just 2 weeks before Colin. Today we got the two together but it wasn’t quite love at first sight.

We plan on giving them plenty more chances to turn things around so we’re not calling off the wedding planning just yet!

Vanessa Visits

Vanessa stopped by to meet Colin today. She and I met through a mutual friend (Jen) when Tyler was born. Her daughter, Claire, is just one day younger than Tyler so they’ve grown up playing together.

 

In this picture you can see Colin’s belly button sticking out. He has an umbilical hernia that looks like it is going to leave him with an outie belly button.

Colin & Jack

Colin made his first friend today, Lisa’s son Jack. 

Jack is just a few weeks older than Colin but that makes him twice Colin’s age. He looks so much older which made me a little sad about how fast Colin will be growing up. Notice how Jack stretches out his legs? Like many newborns, Colin still likes to pull his legs up  and roll into a little ball when you hold him. It reminds me of a turtle so that is one of his nicknames. I am really going to miss that!

The entire crew.

So Long, Farewell

Yipee! Look what I don’t need anymore:

After about 240 injections I am finally done!  Cuddling with sweet Colin makes it worth every one.

 

(If you don’t know, when I was pregnant with Tyler I developed  blood clots in the vein and artery in one of my retinas.  As a result, I have a  football shaped blind spot in the center of my vision in the right eye. It’s sometimes annoying, but  it usually doesn’t bother me very much.  However, pregnancy increases your  risk of blood clots so I had to be on anticoagulants during my pregnancies with Lucas and Colin.  When I was pregnant with Lucas I was on a stronger dose and had to take shots twice daily for most of my pregnancy up until 6 weeks after. With this pregnancy I only needed one shot daily until 36 weeks and then 2 shots daily  until 2 weeks after delivery.)

The Perfect Patient

At Colin’s one week checkup he was already back up past his birth weight, clocking in at 8lbs. He looked great overall but the doctor thought she heard a hip click and was concerned he might have hip dysplasia.  She referred him to Cardinal Glennon for an ultrasound and to see a pediatric orthopedist.

His hospital bracelets were so loose on his tiny wrists and feet.

He screamed through most of the ultrasound but did great with everything else. One of the doctors he saw asked if I minded if she just  held him a minute. He is so incredibly sweet she couldn’t resist cuddling him a bit.

Thankfully, everything looked great and his hips are fine. He just has to go back in 6 months for a follow-up ultrasound.

Papa & Grandma Visit

Papa and Grandma came to meet Colin, who was not the best host as he slept through most of their weekend visit.

(Wow, he looks so yellow here! He has some jaundice but after 3 days of testing his levels started to go back down without needing treatment. His pediatrician said he could still look jaundice for about a month.)

The weather was insanely hot but they ventured out to pick peaches at Eckert’s while Colin in I wandered around the air conditioned Country Store.  

Colin looks yellow in his picture and Tyler looks bright red. Whenever Tyler gets hot his face gets very flushed and his hair  is super sweaty. After this picture everyone head into the a/c  for lunch including bread with oh-so-good apple butter. Colin was well behaved and snoozed through his first restaurant visit.

Divine 9

Happy Anniversary to my amazing husband, who now has a free pass to forget an important date.  While I knew our anniversary was coming up I somehow completely forgot when the day arrived. I’m blaming it on a combination of sleep deprivation  and the fact that I haven’t looked at a calendar since Colin’s arrival. 

 

Thanks to Glammie & Papa who, after a hasty phone call, agreed to watch all 3 of the boys tonight while Brian and I went out to dinner. I forgot to get a picture of Colin’s first time being left with “sitters”. 

Signs of Readiness

You know your child really, really needs to be potty trained when you wake up to him laying on your floor like this:

If he is old enough to know he has a wet diaper and to gather his changing pad, a diaper and wipes and bring them down the hall to your room unprompted that might be a sign.

We’ve been working on him but he is very stubborn and currently has no interest in sitting on the potty. His preschool class requires that he is potty trained so we are really hoping for some progress soon. We have been promising him almost everything but a pony if he will just start using the potty!

Skunked

Tonight I suddenly smelled a really strong burning rubber smell and called Brian (who was in the backyard) to see if something in our house was on fire. Before I could ask him to help me look around he told me he was staring at a tiny baby skunk in the backyard. I quickly realized that my burning smell was actually skunk scent on Abby, who had been sprayed and just come in the house.

Since it was late at night and the stores weren’t open to go buy special shampoo we turned to Google and concocted a home remedy that thankfully worked well.

We have since seen another skunk in the front yard so we are wondering if we have a den nearby. Brian looked up how to get rid of skunks and one website actually suggested trapping them, putting them in your car and driving them out of town. Don’t think we’ll be trying that one.

Lots of Love & Visitors

Colin is one lucky little guy. In addition to his brothers unwavering attention he has had lots of visitors:

 

Sorry, I know I missed a few. Colin is well loved!

Honorable mention goes to Beckett (lower right corner) who lives a few hours away but emailed Colin this super cute picture.

First Sponge Bath

Not the biggest fan of bath time yet.

Future Thumb Sucker?

Tyler and Lucas both used pacifiers to soothe to sleep. We haven’t introduced the paci yet to Colin but he’s managed to find his thumb a couple of times. 

First Pediatrician Appointment

Colin got a chance to meet Dr. Hulsen on her last day before maternity leave. His weight was down a little from birth, which is to be expected. These were the stats:

Height 19 1/2 (30%)

Weight 7.4 1/2 (30%)

Head 13 1/2 (25%)

Colin's Nursery

Tyler’s room has has a sports theme and Lucas’s room has a car theme so we wanted something different for Colin’s room. Sports and cars make up about 90% of boys bedding selections but we found a cute rocket ship set from Dwell Studios for Target. I liked that it was a little more modern than the PBK sets the other boys had.   He is using the furniture Tyler and Lucas used and we had his room painted to match his bedding. 

 

Tyler slept in a bassinet in our room for the first few nights but every little noise he made kept us up so we moved him to his own room pretty quickly. Both Lucas and Colin slept in their own rooms from the first night home. Colin did great the first night but the 2nd and 3rd nights home were a little rough. He cried every time I laid him down from about 11 p.m.- 3 a.m. Thankfully he was quickly back on track and he has been sleeping a 3 hour and a 4 hour stretch every night since. The other boys were up every 2 hours for quite awhile so I am a little tired but thrilled by how much sleep I am getting.

Headed Home

Colin wears real clothes for the first time

unlike his mother, who was too lazy to get out of her pajamas for the trip home.

The Cochran Family Meets Colin

We are so grateful to have wonderful family and friends who helped out with the older boys while we were at the hospital. The boys had a mix of caregivers including my parents, a babysitter, Aunt Erica and the Cochrans. They were so busy they had no time to miss us! 

Tonight the Cochran family came by with the boys to visit Colin before taking them back to their house for a slumber party.

Colin Meets the Conways

The Conway clan came by the hospital to meet Colin on his birth day.

Colin is Glammie & Papa’s 6th grandchild.

Cole checks out his new cousin.

While they were visiting there were two small  fires in the hospital and the air conditioning temporarily went out on a day when it was 100 degrees out. I felt sorry for the poor women who were in labor when the rooms were getting really hot and stuffy.  Newborns are almost always swaddled but here Colin is just in his hospital t-shirt until the air came back on. A nurse later told us they unswaddled the babies in the nursery since some of their temps were getting too high.

Ryan and Julia were excited to meet their cousin. Julia said she wanted to dress up in her jewels for the new baby. How sweet.

Just a few months till we are visiting Erica & Jeff’s new baby.

Party of 5

First family picture.

The boys did great meeting Colin. They loved holding him and Lucas asked if he could come to our house and play. On the way home from the hospital Lucas told Glammie that “I miss my new baby” and Tyler keeps saying, “I love this little guy!”

So  thankfully no sibling rivalry so far, despite the fact that  it looks like  they are trying to suffocate him in this picture.

This picture makes me laugh. Tyler grabbed Lucas’s toes (thinking they were baby Colin’s) and said, “Oh, look at his little toes!”