Shhh, don't Disturb

New Alex pics

Baby Alex is growing up! He's three and a half months old, and is wearing size three diapers. He's lost the newborn look, and is now a chubby, smiley infant. He likes to eat burp cloths, and recently discovered that his thumb likes to be in his mouth. He's trying to roll over, but can't get his shoulder out of the way. Simon likes to kiss him and burp him. Ben looks at him occasionally. He loves sleeping, and being held by an adult who is not allowed to sit down, but must stand and sway. He clings to your shoulder now, and likes to play with hands. He can almost hold a toy, but usually ends up bonking himself in the head with it, so toys are still not a favorite activity yet.

We sure love our chubby little guy!

At the parade

We all went to watch the miniature float parade this evening. I love our city parade. I can't wait for my boys to be big enough to participate. But this year, we were all happy spectators:



Alex and Dad in hats:




Nancy was happy to be there. Alex had his grump on:



Simon was the best dancer on the sidelines:



Also, (this has nothing to do with the parade) we're thinking we should buy the boys a bigger backyard pool:

Hairbows!

My one regret about not having a daughter is the hairbows. I love the huge flowers, bigger than the baby's face, with a froth of ribbons overwhelming the wispy hair. When my niece came to visit, she brought her hairbows with her, and Ben and Simon were happy to model them.



But you can't put boys in ribbons and flowers. And so here we have Alex in his manly hairbows. I was going to call them hairballs, but that word is already taken. Isn't he cute?

Road Trip with a preschooler, toddler, and newborn

"Next time we drive seven hours for dinner," I said to Dirk, "we're going to eat someplace more fancy than the Subway in Beaver." However, we probably would have been asked to leave anyplace fancier than the Subway in Beaver. As it was, the employee was very nice about fishing Simon out of the kitchen and bringing him back to us while Ben howled on the floor and Dirk paid for our sandwiches. Alex was very well-behaved, and slept through the entire thing.

Dirk's family gets together in Beaver every Memorial Day for what is the coolest cemetery party ever. Every veteran buried in the Beaver Cemetery gets a full-sized flag by their gravestone on Memorial Day. And about every third person buried in Beaver is a veteran. The men go over about dawn to put the flags up. The rest of the town shows up in the late morning with lawn chairs, water bottles, and all the decorations saved from the funeral, which was probably years earlier. It's a town-sized reunion, as we are not the only family to drive over a hundred miles to get there. The whole day ought to be a front-page story in a magazine called "The Heart of America," if there were such a magazine. Really, it's amazing.

We missed it the year Dirk was deployed, but he's gone every other year. So we packed up our new trailer, our three boys, and headed to Beaver. Baby Alex handled the trip better than either other boy; he zonked out as soon as the truck started moving. Ben and Simon, whose carseats were next to each other, wouldn't leave each other alone long enough to nap. The played more often than they fought, though.

We pulled the trailer in next to Dirk's parents' trailer, where Susan had kindly picked up most of the broken beer bottles. Apparently, we were camping in the Beaver wild spot. Simon found broken glass anyway. He and Ben headed out the trailer door at the same time. Ben won the contest for the stairs, and Simon went headfirst into the dirt and glass. He's got a scab under his nose, and a couple scratches at his hairline. But after being wiped off, he recommenced running back and forth.

We tried; we really did. But Ben's bladder ended up with the veto vote. He won't potty anywhere besides our house. After a few hours of dancing trauma, he piddled on the bathroom floor in Shawn's hotel room (sorry, Shawn and Kris! we cleaned it up!), and we decided not to put all of us through that again the next morning. We hooked up the trailer and headed home. The boys finally fell asleep about 10:30. We got home about 12:30. And Ben happily pottied in his very own potty the next morning. A happy bladder makes a happy boy.

We got to introduce Makae, Dirk's niece, to Baby Alex. It was great to see her, and she thinks the baby is cute. Woo!

We were sad to miss the traditional party. We were also sad to miss the opportunity to listen to Simon excitedly mangle the pronunciation of "flag" in ways that cannot be transcribed on a family-friendly blog. So we took him to the local cemetery, where he got to run around and name all the "flags" he could see.

One week of baby

My parents left on a mission three days before Alex was born. Here's them with Ben and Simon, and then a whole bunch of new pictures of Alex.



This is Alex wiggling and being a newborn:



Ben, do you want to sit by your brother?
No.
*I put Ben next to his brother anyway*
Ben, do you want to look at your brother?
No.



Simon has been much more sociable with the baby. The first time he found me feeding him, he stuck his finger on his head and asked, "wat dat?" He regularly says, "hi, baby Ack." He also liked checking out the new baby stuff.




But they're still not quite ready to babysit:




Alex yawns, yells and looks content.






Aunt Nancy and Alex.


Here's the boys brushing their teeth. They love brushing their teeth, or at least sucking the toothpaste off the brush.



They really have had a good time with that big balloon bouquet.

More Baby Pix

Big eyes open to check out this new world!

Softly sleeping on mommies shoulder

Here he is dressed to go home, in Daddies arms.  This'll probably be the only time he gets to wear this outfit.  He's already outside it's weight range and is just shy of it's length size limit.  But it's cute.

All buckled and tucked into his car-seat ready to go home!

Brothers were sooo excited for him to come home...  Well they were excited to play with the balloons.  So far they've mostly ignored him, just happy to have mommy home.