Gil at 2 Months

Gil actually turned two months old almost 2 weeks ago.  At least I took the pictures then, right?

Sweet Baby Gil is two months old!  I know it's trite, but these first two months have flown by!

Gil is a tall string bean.  He weighs 12 pounds (40%) and is 24 1/2 inches long (96%).  For comparison, Jack was about 14 pounds at 2 months.  This guy just isn't the chunk that his big brother was!  But he is every bit as tall.  If you know Bech and I in real life, this is strange, because neither one of us is extremely tall.  Not sure why we have these tall kiddos!

Gil still fits into some 0 to 3 month clothes, but we are in mostly 3 to 6 month clothes now.  He is just so long that we need the extra length!  His cloth diapers are set to a pretty small size, but we bought some size two disposable diapers the other day.

This month Gil started smiling.  He is happiest in the morning or right when he eats (who isn't?).  He gives me the sweetest smiles when he wakes up!

We have given sweet Gil lots of nicknames:  Gilly boy, Gilly bean, and (my creation and personal favorite) Gilbo Baggins.

Likes: cuddles, smiling, baths

Dislikes: being cold, changing clothes, getting buckled into his car seat

We are back into Babywise this time around.  He is on a 3 hour schedule.  We start the day about 7 a.m. (give or take 15 minutes).  He goes down for a nap (or he has to sleep on the way to drop Jack off at school!) at 8.  He can only handle about an hour of wake time.  He eats at 7 a.m., 10 a.m., 1 a.m., 3:30 or 4 p.m. (I vary this because we have to get Jack at 4).  We usually cluster feed at 6 and then 8 p.m.  He goes down for the night and gets a dream feed at about 10:30.  He's been pretty regularly giving me a 5 hour stretch, which means he only wakes up once after his dream feed!  But some nights, he wakes up more than that.

He had a week or two of bad naps, but he seems to be over that.  One thing I was great at with Jack but not so good at with Gil is putting him to bed awake.  We would swaddle Jack and lay him down, and he would fall right to sleep.  But Gil has a different temperament.  We swaddle him and hold him until he is drowsy or asleep and then lay him down.

I'm constantly surprised by how different than Jack he is.  First of all, he looks so different!  His eyes are completely different.  The jaundice is almost completely gone, so we can tell that he definitely has different coloring.  And that hair...so dark!  He looks so much like Bech to me!

But more than that, they are so different in temperament.  Jack was such an easy baby.  I was reading Jack's 3 month update the other day.  In it, I wrote, "There are days that go by where I hear him cry maybe once (and usually only cause he woke up from a nap!).  I am so thankful that he is such a good baby--it makes my crazy schedule a little easier.  Of course, I do know this means I am probably due for a colic-y baby next time around! (I was a second child and had colic!)"

Y'all...so true.  We have definitely had an adjustment with this little guy.  He cries a lot more.  It was really tough at first, because I kept trying, to no avail, to fix things.  But Gil is just more of a crier.  I think we are over our colicky days, for the most part, but he still is just much fussier.  But he is absolutely the sweetest, and I wouldn't trade him for the world!

Happy 2 months, Baby Gil!

5 on Friday

First of all, thank y'all for your sweet facebook (and blog, thanks, Courtney) comments on my post on Grace!  I am so encouraged to have such sweet friends!

Now, time for my favorite type of post... 5 on Friday!

O     N     E

Gil is two months old today!  Ahhh...how do I already have a 2 month old?

This little chunk is a much tougher baby than Jack ever was, but every bit as sweet and kissable.  He's kind of serious, but I managed to capture one of his rare smiles.

He has his two month appointment (with the dreaded shots!) on Monday, so I'll wait until then to do his update, so I can include his measurements.

T     W     O

Well, it's the holiday season, which means...

Red cups!  I love when Starbucks releases these!

And this year, they released a new holiday drink, the Chestnut Praline Latte.  Since I am a gold card member (read, obsessed), I got to try this out earlier this week.  It's okay, good even.  But I have to remain loyal to my white chocolate peppermint mocha.  It's like drinking Christmas!

T     H     R     E     E

A friend just had a baby, and I took her a meal last night.  Can I be honest?  When I make people meals, I look for recipes that look yummy to me too!  That way I can just make a double batch and feed my little family as well.

It is getting cold here (snowflakes sighted this morning!), so I wanted to make a soup.  Okay, I used that as an excuse to make a soup.  I would eat soup and sushi every day (with a little Mexican thrown in), if I could.  I found this copycat Panera tomato soup recipe and paired it with Hawaiian roll ham and swiss sandwiches.  SO good.

It was really easy and simple and took relatively few ingredients.  I would suggest blending the soup a tad.  I used our immersion blender, which is one of my favorite kitchen tools.  It is extra helpful if you are a soup junkie like me.

If you've never made or eaten the ham and swiss sandwiches before, then your life is not complete.  I grew up eating these every Christmas eve (paired with my mom's tomato soup).  Google and you can find a myriad of recipes.  The one suggestion I would make is not to use onion powder (as some recipes suggest).  Instead, I always grate part of a small onion (using a small grater) into the butter/poppyseed/Worcestershire sauce mixture.

F     O     U     R

I've been working on a Christmas wish list, and I came across this book:

Happy Handmade Home

Anyone read this?  It looks good, and seems to be recommended by the same people who like The Nesting Place, so I am intrigued.

F     I     V     E

Well, we are still sick over here in the Evans household.  Jack started getting sick Wednesday night, and we finally headed into the pediatricians office this afternoon.  Another one of my boys with pneumonia.  Ugh!

I think we caught it pretty early though, so I am hopeful that we can get Jackie boy feeling better soon.  And I am hopeful that Gil will not get it!

I hope y'all have a wonderful weekend!

Grace

If I had to pick a word right now that summed up the past couple of months, it would be Grace.

The past couple months have been really tough.  We had the scare over Gil's brain size (which, thankfully, turned out to be nothing, but still gave Bech and I two weeks of immeasurable worry).  Then Bech has had some health issues.  We moved and had a baby.  I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but Gil is having to get his blood drawn once a week because he is still hemolyzing my blood (I think I phrased that right?) and is still jaundiced.  Bech is on his second round of antibiotics for pneumonia (the first didn't get rid of it!).  Plus, I think Gil might be a touch colicky.

I'm not the kind of person who asks for help easily.  I like to take care of everything on my own.  But the past few months, I haven't been able to do that.  

You know how some Christians struggle with overusing grace (Romans 6:1)?  I'm the other side of that equation.  I struggle with thinking I can do it on my own, not realizing my great need for God's grace.  And not realizing my need for grace and help from the body of believers.

My friends mother-in-law was in town a couple of weeks ago, and so she came along to our Bible study.  She said something that has been resonating through my head and heart since.  We are reading David Platt's Radical  and were talking about how we could show the gospel to those in our Church.  I thought of basic ideas: help in the nursery, teach Sunday school, bring meals, etc.  And this woman, who is recovering from a pretty major knee surgery right now, said, "We can show others the gospel by accepting help from them."

Wow.  

And that's where I am right now.  Having to accept grace from others, having to have grace on myself when everything isn't perfect or when I feel weak.

The past few months that has manifested in several ways.  Sweet Amanda has had me cry to her multiple times at Spring Creek Park (I feel like you should be charging me therapy session fees!).  Countless people have brought meals to me.  One friend was messaging me and found out Bech had pneumonia, so she simply replied, "I'm bringing you dinner tomorrow."  It was great...I didn't even have a chance to refuse!  There have been afternoons where I have picked Jack up, brought Jack and his crying brother home, and we have watched Curious George for the millionth time.  When Gil started screaming in Trader Joe's the other day, a sweet worker pushed my cart and had me point to what I needed so I could shop and comfort Gil at the same time.

What an amazing, tangible taste of gospel grace!

And one of my biggest hopes is that when this season of craziness dies down (and before another one invariably starts again), my actions towards others will be as full of grace too--that I will notice those in need of a little help and reach out to them as swiftly and kindly as I have been reached out to these past few months.