Jack: 2 Months!

Jack hit the 2 month mark on Sunday! He is definitely awake more and more interactive. He smiles at us. He watches Max play. He also love to look at lights, just like his brother did at the same age! If I remember correctly, light was one of Max's first words lol. Let's hope Jack's will be "mama!"


Like probably all babies, but especially my two at 2 months old, sometimes he is just grumpy for absolutely no reason. Usually later in the day. I have to stop having babies in the winter so that we could go for evening walks and escape the witching hour. Okay, truth be told, sometimes we just do this anyway and it's freezing and kind of raining out. But, it would be easier, ha!


His 2 month pics were amusing. First he wants to hug the giraffe...


...then he wants to eat him!

Despite the occasional grumpiness, he is a pretty cool baby. He is "go with the flow" most of the time. He loves to cuddle. He is relatively patient which seems to be necessary when you are the second child in a house with a tyrant three year old ;) I mean, I'm biased, but I think he is pretty cute!

Eating: He's still not a schedule guy and still a snacker, so I usually feed him on one side every 1.5-2 hours during the day. I'm embracing his flexibility and kind of love the no schedule part. I do hope he will eventually eat a little more at a time so that it doesn't have to be as frequent. He is also a much faster eater than Max (probably because he is eating less at a time) which is great. If he took as long to eat, I'd probably literally be feeding him all day. Though it kind of feels like that anyway!

Sleeping: All over the place. He usually wakes up twice a night, sometimes once. Often there will be a 4-5 hour stretch somewhere in the night, but where is still completely unpredictable. He still does the thing I hate sometimes where he screams and then by the time I get in there (which takes me about I dunno....20 seconds?) he is already back to sleep. I still have his crib elevated a little bit, but I'm hoping to wean off that in the next few weeks. 

Likes: bath time, lights, snacking on milk, cuddling, walks

Dislikes: tummy time, waiting to eat, being tired

Max is THREE years old!

Max had his third birthday last Tuesday! It's both easy and impossible to believe he has been in our lives for 3 years!

Max is both the sweetest boy in the world and a stubborn three year old tyrant all at the same time. He is incredibly caring; hates for anyone to be sad or hurt. He'll say, "Mama, you ok?" or "Dada, you ok?" Upon hearing Eric's dad was hurt, "oh no! what are we going to do? I have to get GPa a band aid!" Sometimes when Jack cries he will just go over and pat him on the tummy trying to make him feel better. If it takes me an extra minute to come into his room in the morning, he will say "Mama, I was so worried about you!" Often Eric will say to Max "I missed you today!" when he was at work. We thought Max knew what that meant until this weekend when Eric was with Max every single second of the day and then Max said, "Dada, I missed you today!" Ha ha! When I'm feeding Jack, he often asks if he can "sit with me" and then he will sit right next to me or practically on top of me and say "we are sitting together!"

Max loves routine. He has been this way since he was a baby. Some routines he loves include watching a show on his iPad at breakfast (he lines up his monster machines to watch it with him), reading 3 stories at night before bed and having us stand at the door while he takes a sip of his water and hugs his doggies. Then, we say, "see you when the light turns green!" and he likes to say "tomorrow is a HOME day!" He says this regardless of whether it actually IS a home day or not.

Though it can sometimes be a huge challenge to get Max out the door, he does have an adventurous spirit! He loves being outside, whether it's going to the park, going on a hike, going to the beach etc. His recent favorite adventure is hiking up to Watch Tower in Medford which he calls "the castle!" When we were at the Cape over December vacation, he loved going down the boardwalk at Grey's Beach and going to the Museum of Natural History. This time there was a giant whale you could walk through, so I think his favorite part of the whole museum was RUNNING through it.


Max continues to love taking walks to the park, something he has been doing since he was just a few months old. He still likes his old favorites at the park including the slide and the swing (where he likes to get "underdogs" and "super pulls"). His more recent obsession at the park is actually the woods behind the park. He likes to take the toy lawnmower from the park and push it down the path in the woods. Don't even try to make him turn around until he has gone just as far as HE wants to go into the woods. Max found this toy camera (pictured above) at the park a few weeks ago. He decided he wanted to be like his best friend Aunt Caroline. "I take a picture of you! Cheese! Cheese! Cheese!"


Max continues to love watching TV shows, mostly Blaze and the Monster Machines and Paw Patrol. Occasionally he likes to watch Daniel Tiger, especially the birthday episode, and Curious George Flies a Kite or the donut episode. He gets very into his TV shows. His favorite Christmas presents were his monster machines from Blaze and a fire truck with Marshall from Paw Patrol. He can spend literally hours just making up/reenacting things that happen on the shows.
His other favorite form of entertainment is books! He has also loved books since he was a baby. He is really into holiday books with absolutely no awareness of what holidays we should be reading about. Earlier tonight he wanted me to read "Little Blue Truck's Halloween." He loves Pete the Cat, Sesame Street books (Elmo Gets Lost, Bert and the Missing Mop Mix Up...), his many truck books, Llama Llama Red Pajama, The Hungry Caterpillar (which he says "calapittah!"), Ten Apples Up on Top, Where is the Green Sheep, Carl's Snowy Day and so much more. He memorizes books and loves to "read" them with us.

With 2 parents who are teachers, it's probably not surprising Max has a little bit of a teacher in him. He loves telling people what to do, for one thing! When they don't do it (for whatever reason) he often yells irrationally... so I guess he needs to work on his classroom management a bit! He likes to ask us to say things, "Mama, can you say blue?" Then when I say it, "good job!" In fact, he loves to compliment us on the most basic of tasks: "good job turning on the light Mama!" "good job getting me milk Dada!"

The things he gets irrationally upset about include when the iPad isn't working to his exact specifications, getting his diaper changed (yes, we've explained if he'd like to use the toilet this would no longer be an issue!), putting on clothes especially socks, when the "wrong" person helps him or offers to help, when we say no to something he wants or wants to do, when his routine or what he "usually" does changes unexpectedly... probably more if I thought about it. He continues to be a terrible eater. I know "all" toddlers are bad eaters but everyone says that but trust me my toddler is worse. He literally with not eat ONE SINGLE fruit or vegetable. We continue to put them on his plate, and his friends at school eat fruit every day... but no luck with him trying anything. He used to sometimes eat what we ate (turkey pasta, tacos etc), but it's been months since he even did that. He essentially eats Trader Joes fruit bars (all of which he calls "blueberry bars"), chocolate chip granola bars, waffles with peanut butter, pb or sunbutter sandwiches on wheat bread, and most snack foods like Goldfish crackers, Inner Peas, etc. He will also conveniently eat/try almost ANY candy, cake, cookies and ice cream. I'm just praying that Jack will be a better eater so I won't think this is all my fault.


We are obviously a little biased, but we think Max is the coolest three year old out there. He is incredibly enthusiastic about things (loves to jump up and down in excitement) and creative. He's an amazing big brother and can play independently for hours. He LOVES his cars and trucks- he has a million and plays with all of them. It's so much fun to watch him start to really play and have conversations with kids his own age. Plus, there is just nothing better than when he randomly says, "I love you SO much!"

Jack 1 Month- 6 Weeks

Jack is 6 weeks old tomorrow! I can't believe it! (I'll probably say that about every single age with this child because it seems like time is going by really fast.)

It's been a super busy few weeks with Christmas and Jack's first visit to Cape Cod! We had so much fun hanging out with family and even a few friends. Jack loves being held by the many people that love him, so he was on board for all the festivities.



Due to the holidays, Jack hasn't had his 1 month doctor's appointment yet- it's not until next Monday, but I think he's around 8.5-9 lbs right now and starting to outgrow his newborn clothes. His big accomplishment was his move into the crib which I did on his 1 month birthday. I had to make some alterations to the crib to convince him of how amazing it is (I propped it up with a pillow and did some towel rolling under a sheet- don't ask) but he seems to be settled in well. For the first few weeks I had lots of middle of the night debates with myself because Jack would grunt and grunt and grunt, and I'd be like, is he awake? should I feed him? The move to the crib made it so that I don't hear all the grunting as clearly and I only go in when it's clear he is actually awake and hungry.


This past week Jack has been awake a lot more. Sometimes he is quite happy to be awake, and other times he is quite grumpy about being awake. Such is the life of a baby, I guess!

Looks Like:



Eating: Jack is a total snacker, which makes me a little crazy even though I'm a snacker myself. I just am not a fan of being "on call" to eat allllll day long... which is kind of what breastfeeding is anyway but it's even more so when there is no schedule and just small amounts of eating happening all day long. Max was very schedule oriented and he still is now, so I'm hoping this is a sign Jack will be a more flexible toddler? Ha Ha!

Sleeping: Jack goes to bed between 10-11PM, wakes up twice around 1-2am and 4-5am. The past few days he then wakes up around 6 and then will only go back to sleep in my bed at this time, but whatever, survival mode. There is always the occasional bad night, but this is the usual.

Likes: snacking, wearing clothes, walks as long as it's not shockingly cold/windy, his paci, pooping all day long...

Dislikes: gas, diaper changes, sometimes I really don't know why he is grumpy ha!

Big Brother Max Update: 
Max continues to surprise us with how he's handled this transition and what a great big brother he is. Every morning he asks about Jack. He often goes over and rocks his Rock N Play or shows him one of his trucks. The rest of the time he basically just continues with whatever he is doing and doesn't pay much attention to him. I try very hard to not constantly "blame" Jack if I can't do something but every once in awhile I'll say "I have to finish feeding Jack" and he usually responds pretty well. Last week at the Cape we had a couple of outings where Jack stayed at home with my parents including a visit to the boardwalk and the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. It was a great break for us to just focus on one child, but I don't think Max even noticed very much. I don't expect this will necessarily continue when Jack is more interactive, but for now I'm thankful for it!