The Fourth, And Funnel Cake!

Happy 4^th!

Lets see… its been a little over a week since I have updated, but in my defense we were out of town the 4^th through yesterday. I’ll start with the 4^th. As is becoming our habit, we woke up at the crack of 4am (4 on the 4^th! Woo!)  to get ready to drive to hubs parents’ house, that way we can drive without traffic and with BabyA staying asleep for most of the 4 hour drive. We left the house at 5, after packing the car and sneaking the sleeping baby into his car seat without feeding him. The drive up was uneventful, we stopped for breakfast for us and the baby around 7, and listened to a book on tape for the drive. BabyA did a phenomenal job in the car… he only started fussing about 5 minutes away from our destination. I love driving up to hubs hometown.. we go from sea level to 6000 altitude over the 4 hours and my ears pop and every liquid we have tried to expand and I end up cleaning up spills when I open things. You’d think I’d learn. Nope. The drive is beautiful (at parts) half is desert and boring, but then we get to the mountains and windmills and the clouds start coming out and then the farms and fields and it is definitely somewhere I can imagine raising BabyA. We got to his house at 9:20am, in time for second breakfast and the baby to eat again and get passed around to eager grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles. He did so well over the weekend. So well. He loved the chaos of the other babies and kids all over the place, and 9 adults moving around and holding him in turns. I don’t know how we made a social baby, but we did. He is the youngest of 5 grandbabies, all under the age of 4. 

Rather than give a blow by blow of everything we did, I will just include the highlights. 

Thurs: For fireworks, we went into town because their football field is an annual picnic, funnel cake, live band type arena with a great view of the explosions. We left BabyA at the house because it was past his bedtime, and it was loud and we didn’t know how he’d do. One of the aunts volunteered to stay with him because she was staying with her own 7month old. This is the 3^rd out of 4 years we have been up there for the 4^th and everyyear I look forward to funnel cake and fireworks, but mostly funnel cake. I start talking about it about a month before and then am on an eager countdown until I get some. I am really a fat kid at heart. 

Friday: BabyA sleeps through the night now 99% of the time, so I had to binky at 5am, but that was it, and he slept until 8:30. Getting him used to the pack and play was such a good plan he had his naps and slept like a champ. No fussing. We got up and did the whole family breakfast thing, then the boys had work to get done. My FIL planned to pour cement for a walkway and patio he had been planning for years and so my MIL decided she was tired of waiting for the future magic date to come and pointed out all three boys would be up  for the fourth and to get it done. The cement truck (a full on truck!) came at 10, and then the next four hours were spend pouring, smoothing, and shaping the cement before it dried. The ladies and babies set up lawn chairs to watch and ate popcorn and had tea while the men labored. Subtle, we are not. Even watching cement dry got boring (shocking) so I decided it was time to put BabyA in the pool for the first time to see what he’d do. I put his little swim diaper on him and lathered on the sunblock and his grandma and aunts came to the mini pool with us to watch his first cold water experience. Long story short he hated it. So then he just lay in the sun as NakedBaby for quite a while and was happy. My son, he definitely is. The rest of the day was margaritas, games, PitchPerfect, and various baby naps. At one point they were all awake and the cement was still wet, so we trudged outside to press their feet in the wet cement in order of age, BabyA is the youngest. BabyA of course has a thing with his toes where whenever they are touched they curl up and scrunch and try and grab whatever touched them. So his footprints look like a foot/blob. 

Saturday: We headed home on Saturday to have a day to relax before the workweek started and to beat traffic. So pretty boring. We stopped at BabiesRUs to look at highchairs and got ChickFilA to tide us over for the rest of the drive. The End.

Feeding: I haven’t been able to fill up the baby when he eats, he is still hungry when I am empty and I feel terrible. So to help (without resorting to formula...which I would hate to do) I have started to get up about 4 or 5 am to pump because I get a ton since he last ate 9 hour before. I get about 9-10 ounces at that pumping and use it the rest of the day to supplement the boobs. So three times a day he gets a bottle with another 3 ounces after he eats. So yes, he sleeps through the night, but I have to get up anyway to pump. But I can tell he is happier and getting fatter so I don’t care that I am tired again. Go boobmilk! 

And lastly, BabyA is in love with my Camelback waterbottle. He goes crazy when he sees it and then grabs on and sticks the straw part in his mouth and slobbers and sucks. He isn’t strong enough to get anything from it but that doesn’t stop him. Though he gets frustrated after a while and complains that it isn’t going as planned.