5 Months

So, I am a major slacker and didn't take Jackson in for his 4 month checkup until he was 5 months. Oops! So, anyway here are his 5 month stats:

Weight: 14 lbs 5 oz (17th percentile)

Height: 26 inches (61st percentile)


And here are a few things about Jackson:

• He is still an amazingly good baby, but he is starting to be a little more vocal and let his thoughts be heard, whether they are happy or sad.
  
  


• He loves his sister and always has smiles for her, and puts up with quite a bit of smothering and smashing.


• He is always shoving something in his mouth, or at least trying to including: toys, blankets, hands, my hair and face, and anything else he can get his hands on.


• He always has scratches on his face and the top of his head because when he is either getting tired or just waking up he digs into his face or the top of his head and no matter how good I am at cutting his nails, he still ends up scratching himself.


• He is now wearing 3-6 month clothes


• He still wakes up in the night and it seems to be getting worse. It was just once a night, and now it can be up to three times a night much to my dismay.


• He still wears a swaddling blanket at night because if I don't put him in one, he ends up with a ton more scratches all over his head.


• He loves to play pat-a-cake, and almost always laughs like crazy when he plays.


• He has a love/hate relationship with the floor. He likes to be on the floor, but he has learned to roll over from his back to his tummy, and so he tends to get stuck on his tummy which he does not love.
  
  
  and a lot of times he gets wrapped up in his blanket which gets him even more frustrated.

He loves to sit in the bumbo, especially when that means he gets to be where the action is. He likes to sit in it up in the kitchen while Raylee and I eat lunch or while I am making dinner etc.

We recently got out the little einstein activity center. He likes to be in there, but we still have to put a blanket in there with him so he doesn't flop around too much. He especially likes to bounce in it.

And we just gave him rice cereal for the first time right after he turned 5 months. We let Raylee feed him, and I was surprised at how well he did although he got tired of it after like 5 bites and started gagging on it. Now he doesn't really like it at all anymore and spits it out everytime we try and feed him.

I seriously can't believe how big he's getting, but we are loving every minute of it!

Pictures

I finally went and got the kids pictures taken. They didn't turn out fabulous, but there were a few cute ones!

Two Little Monkeys!

Raylee and Jackson got matching pajamas and Raylee thought it was so cool. She said "Mommy, Raylee Jackson have matching jammies. Take a picture!" I think she's starting to realize those picture worthy moments!

In this next picture Raylee was saying, "Jackson, you gotta mile (smile)!"

I love my two little monkeys!!

Easter and a Special Visitor!

Easter this year was SO much fun. We did lots of partying for most of the week before Easter because my Grandma Whipple came to visit us from Oregon! She arrived on the Tuesday before Easter so we went down that night for dinner and it was the first time she had seen Jackson.

On Thursday we went down to my parents house again and this time we had a girls night out. We left the guys at home watching the kids and we went out to dinner at Zupas (SO good!) and then we went to see The Last Song. It was so much fun and I think I need to do this more often:)

On Saturday we started out the day by going up to Tremonton for their Easter Egg hunt. Totally worth it even with all the snow! Raylee came out of there with 12 full size candybars! Then we went to Corey's brothers house for awhile.

Then we headed out to my parents house for some more partying!

We played Easter Bingo.

We dyed Easter Eggs. For little kids it works really well to put the egg in a wisk, just in case you were wondering why Raylee is holding a wisk.

All the girls used malted robin eggs as lipstick and gave ourselves blue lips.

We decorated cupcakes andsugar cookies.

And my dad took Raylee and Ashlyn on horsey rides. As soon as he was done Raylee would climb back on and say do it again. I think she would have kept on riding the "horsey" all night long!

On Easter morning, Raylee was really excited to see that the Easter Bunny had brought her a new trike! She rode it in the kitchen all morning long.

The Easter bunny also hid some egss with candy for her to find. She did really good and only needed a little help finding them!

After we watched conference we headed down to my parents again. After a yummy Easter dinner, the kids got to go om a scavenger hunt to find their Easter packages from grandma and grandpa.

Then later that night we had our second annual egg cracking contest. Everyone dyed an egg on Saturday, and on Sunday Corey made a bracket and everyone got to compete with their eggs. Two people would go against each other and you just hit the ends of your egg together and only one of the eggs will crack.

I won last year, but this year Emily won it and became Captain Egghead and got to take the awesome trophy home!

We had an amazing Easter, and it was so much fun to get to spend so much time with my Grandma!

2 Months and a Blessing

Our cute little Jackson turned 2 months on the 14th of March. Time is just flying by and we are loving every second of it! We took the little guy in for his two month check-up this last week and the doctor said everything is looking good besides him having a double ear infection as well as another cold. I think the poor kid has been on some type of antibiotic for half of his life. Anyways, here are his stats:

Weight: 11 lb. 10 oz. 24th percentile

Height: 22 1/2 in. 25th percentile

A few things about Jackson now:

He is really cuddly, which I am loving!

He moved from newborn clothing to 0-3 month clothing right at about 2 months

He is a pretty smiley baby. You don't have to work too hard to be rewarded with one of his gummy grins.

He is a really good baby. He really doesn't actually cry very often. He will usually just grunt when he is hungry or wants some attention.

He loves his binky!

He has some really cute rolls on his thighs.

We call him our little owl, because he coo's a lot and when he does it always sounds like an owl.

He will usually sleep for a 5 or 6 hour stretch at night. I wish it was longer, but I'll take what I can get.

He just started laughing and it was so cute! He's only done it once, but we are sure working hard to try and get him to do it again.

He loves Raylee (even though she can be a bit smothering) and always has lots of smiles for her.

He has a really cute cry and sad face. I know its bad but sometimes when he is crying I let him cry a little longer just because I think it's so cute.

Jacksons Blessing

We had Jacksons blessing on Saturday, March 20th. Our bishopbric was nice enough to let us do his blessing outside of our Sacrament Meeting so that we wouldn't expose Jackson to all those germs. We just had it at our church with our families, and it turned out great! Corey did a wonderful job with the blessing, and then we had a dinner afterwards in the gym. I think Raylee was a little confused because her cousins on both sides were there and she wasn't really sure who she was supposed to play with! My mom was nice enough to make Jacksons blessing outfit, my grandma crocheted his booties, and Coreys grandma crocheted his blanket.

One Sick Baby

About a week ago Jackson started showing signs he was getting a cold. He started with a stuffy nose, then he got gunky eyes and could barely even open them they were so yucky. I was going to call the doctor on Friday the 5th to see if he thought I needed to take him in but he started sounding better so I decided not to (I was kicking myself later for not calling!). Later that night he started in with a cough and got really congested again, but I thought it would be fine to wait and call the doctor on Monday. His cough just gradually got worse and worse until Sunday night after the superbowl we decided we better take him in to the ER. We were still up in Tremonton at Corey's family so we just decided to take him in to the hospital up there.

At the hospital they tested him for RSV, took chest x-rays, did bloodwork, and ended up deciding that he had bronchialitis. They decided to admit him because he wasn't able to keep his oxygen levels up on his own. A respiratory therapist would come in 4 0r 5 times a day and do some deep suctioning on him which is just sticking a little tube really far up his nose and sucking the mucus out. They put him on oxygen and they also did a few nebulizer treatments hoping that they would help him breathe better.

He ended up staying for two days (Corey's sister and mom were lifesavers and kept Raylee for us), and then on Tuesday they told us it was up to us on whether we wanted to stay another night or go home. He still wasn't keeping his oxygen levels up so if we went home we would have to have a homecare company come and bring the equipment we would need to have him on oxygen at home. We decided to go home since we didn't know how long he would need to be on oxygen (they said it could be a couple days up to two weeks) and we were tired of being at the hospital. So right now Jackson is stuck to about a ten foot radius in our family room. He is hooked up to an air compressor which filters the oxygen out of regular room air, as well as a pulse oximeter which measures heart rate as well as oxygen saturation levels, and we also have a humidifier going as well. We also took him in to Mckay Dee's bronchialitis clinic a couple times just to get him suctioned out so he doesn't get too congested again. He is still on the oxygen (5 days after getting out of the hospital), but is doing so much better at keeping his levels up and I think he will be off it completely in a couple days!

I have felt so bad for Jackson through this whole thing and wish there was something I could do to help, but he has been an angel. He was never extra fussy, and always ate really well. I definitely learned my lesson the hard way on this one, but I am so happy he is getting better now!

Superbowl!

The superbowl is always a big day in Coreys family. Each person has a football team that they cheer on, and everybody wears their team jerseys to superbowl party whether their team is playing or not. Corey is obviously training our kids to be dolphins fans and Raylee was so excited to wear her jersey. I tried it on her a few days before the superbowl to see if it would fit her and she didn't want to take it off after that. I know she would have worn it constantly if I let her. She calls it her superbowl.

All of Raylee's cousins in their team colors!

2 Weeks Old!

We took Jackson in for his two week appointment this last Thursday, and he is growing like a weed! The doctor said everything looks great, but I just can't believe how much he's grown in the last week. I guess I am just used to Raylee who just stayed small. Here are the stats from his 1 week checkup as well as his 2 week checkup.

1 Week
6 lb. 9 0z. 15th percentile

19 inches 12th percentile

2 Weeks

7 lb. 6 oz. 20th percentile

20 inches 25th percentile

Raylee is such a good big sister to Jackson. At times she is too helpful and smothers poor Jackson, but she is always really gentle. She tried to pick him up once, but after I told her that only big people can carry him, she hasn't tried since. She loves to give him kisses and hugs, as well as sing songs to him. She is constantly coming up to him and saying "Hi, Jackson", "Hi Brudder", or "Hi Buddy".

If Raylee is not right next to Jackson then she can often be found here in his carseat. Who knew that a carseat was such a great toy!

Poor Jackson already has to deal with a sister trying to make him girly. Raylee loves to share his jewelry with him. She especially likes it when he wears one of her rings.

There have been many times that I look over at Jackson and find Raylee's doll right there with him. I guess she doesn't want him to be left out of the fun!