The first year of life for children is full of constant development and changes – babies do new things every single day.  Realizing this, I decided to make a diary for each of my kids about their first year.  I would write in it from time to time to summarize all of their many changes, hoping some day they’ll enjoy reading them.  I was writing in my son’s Baby Diary the other day when it occurred to me that I should share it on my blog; especially since he’s been very crabby lately and it’s been really difficult for me to write blog posts with him in my arms.  He was born on July 11, 2008.

Christopher’s Diary:

7/16/08 – went to dr. checkup for your slight jaundice.  dr. said everything looked good and you weigh 7 lbs. 11 oz.
7/17/08 – Actually, since it was the 12:01 showing, it’s actually the 18th…  but your  first movie in the theater was the Dark Knight.  You barely stirred and did drink a bottle during the movie.  You didn’t make a peep.
7/19/08 – You attended your first stage play, the Music Man.  You were very good, except you pooped early in the show and were crabby and had to be taken out, but only for a few mins. so you could get your diaper changed
7/20/08 – umbilical cord stump falls off – you are 9 days old.
8/11/08 – You had your one month check-up today!  Everything looks good; you weigh 9 lbs. 14 oz. and are 22 in. long.  Your head circumference is 38.3 cm.  You didn’t cry at all while getting weighed and measured.
8/13/08 – You smiled at Mommy!
9/3/08 – In the past week, you’ve started “talking” back to me!  You smile really big when I smile at you and give you a big HI, and you smile at me every time you see me when you wake up.  When you were born, you could hardly see any lashes, but now your eyelashes are getting long and beautiful!  Your eyes are still a bright beautiful blue!
9/5/08 – You laughed for the first time – long and loud.  And it was during Daddy’s funny play, The Nerd.  You laughed at the part where they’re playing the ‘I’m going on a trip’ game.  I don’t know if you heard the other people laughing or it was just a coincidence, but it was SO cute!
9/12/08 – Today you had your 2 month dr appt.  You are 12 lbs 9 oz and 23.25 inches long.  Your head circumference is 44.5 cm.  You fussed a little as they were examining you, but you didn’t cry.  The dr said you have dry skin and we have to watch your ears to make sure formula isn’t going in there.
9/22/08 – For about a week now, you seem to recognize your bottle.  You’ll get extra excited when you see it and open your mouth.  Your big sister Disney calls you “Beeber”.  Your big sister Sammie loves to hold you and is always asking questions about newborn babies.  She calls them “born” babies.
10/16/08 – You are 3 months old, and you are starting to play with toys.  The other day I saw you “discovering” your hands, and ever since you’ve been grabbing things.  You know how to put your fist in your mouth.  You’re still spitting up a lot.  Not as much at a time as Disney did when she was a baby, but many times throughout the day.
11/5/08 – You’ve been playing with toys for awhile now; you can grab things and you try to draw them into your mouth.  You love making g sounds – ga, goo, ggg.  You are still a very happy little guy and smile at everyone, making their days!
12/4/08 – Time flies and you are almost 5 months old!  Disney used to call you Beeber, and the name stuck, so we call you that sometimes.  Disney now calls you Kipper.  You’ve had some crabby days, but most of the time, you’re still very smiley.  You’ve been experimenting with vocalizations and you LOVE to stand!  You do not bend at the waist!  We tried the tot wheels (walker) for the first time the other day, and you like it for short periods of time since you just hang in there – your feet don’t touch the floor yet.  Most of the time, you’re pretty good about sleeping at night, usually waking up only once.  But you also have bad nights where you won’t let Daddy sleep!  You like baths, and you’re really starting to like toys.  You play with the busybox on your crib, and try to eat EVERYTHING!  You might be teething because you try to knaw on everything.  You’ve been trying cereal and if your gums seem really sore, Mommy and Daddy have been giving you a treat – a dab of peanut butter on your pacifier.  You LOVE it!  You found your feet a few weeks ago, and you were trying to get your toes in your mouth.  We are excited to take you to see Santa pretty soon!

Two baby moose are called what?  Twin baby mooses, I guess…  But anyway, check out this really cute video I received via email – a baby moose finds someone’s backyard sprinkler, then he goes over and “tells” his mommy and twin brother about it, and they all enjoy themselves tremendously.  The mommy moose grooms her babies in it, and the babies play together – it’s SO cute!

Sure beats the other baby moose video I saw this week – we won’t go into that (you fellow CNN junkies know what I’m talking about), just nature taking its course, I guess…  But let’s focus on the cute mooses (?) playing in the sprinkler instead:

Click here for some extremely cute baby animal action.

So how is life with 4 kids?  One word – chaotic.  I suppose some of that can be attributed to us not taking any time off from volunteering with the various community groups we are involved in…  Most logical people would have done the smart thing and laid low for awhile.  But us, we did just the opposite and jumped into a few new projects head first – oops.  But, I do enjoy getting out and spending time with fellow adults, and besides, we’ve already committed ourselves, so it’s too late now.

But anyway, the kids are adjusting just fine to having a new little brother.  Our almost 2-year-old has reached the terrible twos officially, and she spends most of her time being upset or making messes.  Figures, doesn’t it, that she would reach this stage right as there’s a new baby in the house.  But it can’t be helped, and we just have to grin and bear it for awhile until it passes.  The upside is that her terrible twos are no where near the magnitude of the turmoil that her older sister caused in the house when she was going through them, but it’s still hard to see our once sweet little girl being so nasty.  I don’t know what it is about the terrible twos, but every kid goes through them (maybe the terrible twos aren’t so bad with boys?  I’m hopeful…), and they can totally change a child’s personality for months, even years.  Little Disney was the sweetest baby and toddler, and now that she is almost 2, she has begun tantruming (almost constantly), hitting, spitting, and biting.  Much, if not all of the behavior comes from being so frustrated – she gets frustrated when people don’t understand what she wants or when she thinks her sisters are taking things from her.  Even if they’re just trying to help her, if anyone is doing anything she doesn’t like, she’ll throw a tantrum.  But what keeps me going is knowing that it’s just the age, and she’ll magically return to normal one day; that’s how it works.  It usually happens suddenly, almost as suddenly as it began – it’s like a spell is broken, and hopefully it’s sooner rather than later; but I’m prepared for the long haul because her sister’s terrible twos (and boy, were they terrible) lasted from about the ages of 16 months until she was 4 years old.

And speaking of our 4-year-old, Sammie loves her new little brother and always wants to hold him.  I’m trying to get better about how nervous it makes me; especially because Disney sees her older sisters holding him and then of course she wants to do it.  But as time goes by, he gets stronger and less floppy, so eventually I can let them help more and be relaxed about it.

Taylor, our 8-year-old, loves her new little brother also, although with 2 younger sisters, she’s kinda been there and done that, as far as new babies go.  She is still a big help, especially with Disney, but she and Sammie fight constantly, and now Disney is starting to join in…  If we could get a handle on some of the fighting, things would be much better around here.  I feel like my kids fight, argue, and bicker constantly.  I probably feel this way because it’s true.  Part of it is Disney being so frustrated all the time, and then neither she nor Sammie like to share things with others; and then also Taylor can be really nasty to Sammie, probably just cuz it’s summer and they’re sick of each other.  Thank goodness school starts in less than 2 weeks.  I say that now, but I’ll also be losing my day-help when Taylor goes back to school, so we’ll have to see how things work out.

As for the little guy himself, Christopher is almost 4 weeks old, and he’s doing well.  He is a constant joy to have around, but aren’t they all at this age?  The only problem with him is that he seems to be nocturnal – wakes all night and sleeps during the day.  Luckily for me, my husband is a light sleeper and wakes with him before I even hear anything.  He is getting no sleep, but I told him weeks ago, once you let me start sleeping through the night, my body will get used to it and I won’t wake up…  I don’t think he listened.  But my sleeping-lightly days are over – during my pregnancy I awoke very easily at every little noise, but now I’m back to my I-could-sleep-through-Armageddon phase.  I also warned Hubby that this baby was going to be nocturnal because in the womb, he wouldn’t move much during the day, but he’s start going crazy about 9pm until after I went to bed.

And almost all new babies bring with them the fear of something being wrong – the other day, Christopher’s legs turned purple out of no where…  I had just gotten him out of his stroller, but his straps weren’t too tight or anything like that; I checked on them later.  It was horribly scary to see his little purple legs, and I’ve never experienced that with my girls.  But the doctor didn’t seem to be too concerned; just something to take a look at next appointment – might be a blood vessel spasm, which I found out is not terribly uncommon in infants after looking it up on the internet.  There is a condition called Raynaud’s Syndrome that is characterized by purple limbs, however they’re accompanied by extreme pain, and little Christopher was sleeping calmly while this happened.  We’ll see what the doctor says on Monday.

That’s about it for now; it’s good to be sitting here blogging again – it’s been so hectic for a few weeks that I was not in front of my computer enough to even blog.  But then I started thinking of all my faithful readers I was disappointing, and I thought I’d better make the time to give them something to read 😉