First Father's Day

Today we celebrated Allen as a Daddy! Since the way to his heart is most definitely through food, we started last night with dinner at Cheesecake Factory. This morning he received a Starbucks mocha alongside bacon, eggs and biscuits (a nice change from his typical granola bar as we run out the door to church!) and we had a yummy lunch at The Counter Burger, a gourmet burger place that was SO good! Mom and I also made his favorite dessert, a chocolate trifle that he usually only gets for his birthday. He may be making extra trips to the gym this week, but I'm sure he'd say all that yummy stuff was worth it!

Thanks for being such a wonderful daddy, Allen! You are so good with Luke and he just adores you. I'm so proud to have a husband who actually enjoys (well, never really minds, anyway) changing the dirtiest diapers, dealing with fussiness and getting up in the middle of the night! We love you!

4 Months Old!

Wow, so much changes from month 3 to 4! I can hardly believe how quickly Luke is becoming a baby and so much less a newborn. Here are the 4 month updates:

• Weighs 16 pounds, 4 ounces (80th percentile, so we are down from the 85th last month); 25 and 1/4 inches long (was 20" at birth), 50th percentile; head circumference 60th percentile
  
• Wears mostly 6 month size clothes, can fit in some big 3-6 month sizes and some small 6-9 months!
• VERY active and playful
• Reaches for and grasps objects, loves to lay on his back and bat at toys hanging from his play mat
• shakes rattle in hand
• puts EVERYTHING in his mouth (and so it begins...); loves to suck on his hands
• recognizes people he knows when they come into the room by both voice and sight -- will turn his head to find you if he hears a voice he knows
• laughs and giggles, smiles all the time
• "stands" all the time
• blows bubbles
• drools so much the front of his entire shirt is often soaked, but no teeth yet, still a little early...
  
• ROLLS OVER from tummy to back!!
• holds head up 90 degrees when on tummy
  
• lifts legs up and down and kicks in the air when playing
• eating rice cereal and starting to add first baby foods to help him like the cereal a bit better...so far not a fan....
• LOVES to look at himself in the mirror and watch you talk to him in the mirror
• LOVES, LOVES, LOVES to watch TV. You know how I feel about this, but it is uncanny the way he responds to TV. He can be crying, crying, and you walk past the TV and he is all of sudden completely captivated. You walk away and the fussing resumes. Back to the TV and he immediately is again fixated. My sister thinks this would make an excellent AFV entry.
• Still not sleeping through the night. This is very hard on Mommy, who has returned to work full time. Had a good conversation with the pediatrician and are trying a few new tactics.
• VERY stubborn and independent. Sometimes when he gets fussy it is because he is tired of being held and wants to stretch out on the floor.
• Still goes from 0 to 60 in no time. Wants what he wants when he wants it. Hmmm...we will have to work on this in the future. I see a strong-willed child...
  

Some of the latest pics of our boy:

What a doll!

First time with rice cereal. And check out those little chubber legs!

Not near as excited to eat rice cereal as Mommy is to feed it to him.

Definitely not liking the rice cereal....

In his new, fun toy! He loves to "stand" and use his legs so much that I wanted to get him a jumperoo. I did some research and really liked this "Laugh and Learn" jumperoo from Fisher Price. He LOVES it. He actually plays with all the toys, enjoys the music and sounds, and is working on growing taller so he can reach the floor. Until then, we put a shoe box underneath to help him stand.

So much growing and changing has happened just in the last month that we cannot wait to see what the next one holds! We love this sweet boy!

Nanna and Grandpa!

I went back to work June 1st and we were blessed to have Nanna here to take care of Luke my first 2 weeks back. She was SO wonderful with him, always making him smile and laugh, having lots of fun being silly together. Having Leslie here to tend to and spoil my sweet baby made the transition so much easier!

Grandpa also came to visit and play for a few days. Luke is so lucky to have grandparents who love him so much!

Three generations of Gillespie men!

Funny pictures with Nanna

Thank you Nanna and Grandpa! We miss you!

Roll Over

Luke rolled over for the first time today. Here is a video of the 3rd time he rolled over. You can watch it and pretend it was his first time and share in the fun.

Poop

Luke has had his share of blow outs, those that go out the sides and up his back, but none compare to tonight's blow out. He was playing in his new jumper toy and I went to pick him up and found poop everywhere -- all up his back and all over the seat of the jumper (thank goodness it was machine washable!!). I had to enlist Allen's help with the clean up so that in getting the nastiness off him we did not nastify his changing table cover (although this happens often anyway) or worse, get it in his hair. The more clothes we pulled off him, the grosser it got. The reason for this is because he recently started rice cereal and so there is more to the poop these days. The crumbly, yet still liquidy, poop was all up his back and got all over his arms as we pulled off the onesie and, therefore, all over our hands as well. At least I had not yet given him his bath; it became the definite next step in our evening. Can you imagine how much worse it would have been if we were not at home??

Another fun poop story -- Luke tends to do all his poopie diapers around the same time, like 2 or 3 in a row. I was changing him a couple months ago and, apparently, he wasn't done. I had just put a clean diaper under him and he made it dirty again right away. Okay, new diaper needed. I put the clean one under him and one last wipe of his little behind, and then it happened -- he pooped all over my hand. A little stream of poop. That was fun. So on to one more diaper....it was 4 all a row.

Good times.

****NEW MOM TIP******
After much washing and stain removal, I finally learned how to remove poop stains. They do NOT come out with oxy clean or even bleach. Here's what you do: wash as normal then put in direct sunlight to dry. It's that easy. It has to do with the bilirubin in breastfeed babies. For the same reason you put jaundiced babies in the sun or under lamps to clear up the yellow, you put the stained clothes in the sun to bleach out the yellow. Hope it helps!