Zaiden 8 months

He is on the move! 8 months brings a big milestone as I think we can now officially say Zaiden is a crawler. He is just beginning to actually crawl only a few arm/leg moves at a time, but he seems to have mastered his own method we like to call the inchworm. Zaiden gets himself up onto his hands and knees then will dive forward and will keep doing this pattern until he reaches what he wants. He can cover a pretty good distance when he is motivated (usually to cause trouble like emptying a box of wipes at daycare!). In all aspects he seems to be such a big boy. He continues to love the attention of his brother and will try to get his attention by laughing or squealing at him. He loves to get hugs from Zander. Zaiden is also starting to give "high 5's" when we ask. He continues to be a good eater and is making great progress as a sleeper (thank goodness!). He continues to be a happy little guy and loves to give smiles and coos, although he did not have many for the camera this month.

This was the closest smile I was able to get on camera this month! 

He had a lot of fun at the children's museum 

Our little inchworm showing off his skills 

Holidays

The best thing about the holidays is spending time with our family and this year was extra special by having the addition of Zaiden to our family. Zander loves being a big brother and it was great to see them spend so much time together. Thanksgiving was spent in Wisconsin and we enjoyed some mild weather and spending some time outside. The month of December was filled with many Christmas events as Zander was old enough to be really excited about the season. He could not wait to get home after our Thanksgiving travels and put up our tree and Christmas lights. He did several cookie/candy baking projects with mom. We made a trip to Milwaukee to see the Holiday Train with Aunt Abbie and Uncle Garrett. We met up with friends over Zaiden's baptism weekend to see the zoo lights. The weekend before Christmas, we spent the weekend in Chicago celebrating our own family Christmas. The weekend started with a trip to see the play Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer play (unfortunately Jasmine and Zaiden stayed home due to Zainden's injury/illness). We then had a family dinner at home followed by a Christmas box of (matching!) family pajamas, movie and snacks for a Saturday night movie night. We then got up Sunday morning to unwrap the presents under our tree followed by breakfast in our pajamas. We then traveled to Wisconsin to spend time with friends and family for Christmas. Zander was very excited about having Santa come visit and he asked Santa for a Teddy Bear which he was thrilled to find under the tree Christmas morning (and even requested some new toys for Zaiden). We then continued our travels to Iowa over the weekend for a busy few days visiting friends and family, although the trip was cut a bit short due to the arrival of an ice storm. We have enjoyed spending the rest of the week with a lot of family time. We rung in a quiet 2016 at home and spent the rest of the day gearing up for Iowa's trip to the Rose Bowl (with a disappointing finish). We look forward to many good things in 2016!

Holiday Train in Milwaukee 

Zoo Lights 

Some Christmas baking projects

 

Family Christmas at home

 Santa was good to the boys! 

Starting a new year cheering on the Hawkeyes with dad 

7 months

It has a busy time of year, but we still had to take some time to celebrate Zaiden's 7 month milestone. He is a very active and busy little guy. He is getting so close to crawling as he scoots around very easily in circles and is beginning to push himself backwards and is starting to get his knees under him. He will also stay on his hands and knees and rock if he is placed there. Parker and Zander continue to big his biggest motivation, although this Christmas season the tree became very appealing he made some good efforts rolling to rip apart a few presents! He has pretty much mastered sitting and can reach very far to get to the toys he wants. He grasps toys very easily and although still puts most things in his mouth is staring to use the toys too (he likes to bang a hammer from a toy he got). He also continues to be very interactive and talkative and likes to take turns and will sometimes copy people (especially blowing raspberries). He is feeding himself baby cookies and has a pretty good appetite taking most of the foods we give him. Thankfully he is sleeping better for the most part, with the exception of did not have great sleep over our travels. He did also have a milestone of his first (2) ER visits this past month as he had a nursemaids elbow (dislocation of the radius bone), but at the same time was coming down with a virus and was running a fever which threw off all the doctors and delayed the elbow diagnosis and the generally pretty easy job of popping it back into place (I now know how to do it in case it happens again!). He was a trooper and I think actually enjoyed some of the extra cuddle time with mom! Life with kids is always an adventure!

I actually got a lot of smiles for the camera this month! Isn't he so cute!!