4 months...and then some

Mason's four month appointment was on April 10th, and he continues to grow, and grow.  This kid is still massive :)  at least he's massively cute, though.  For my records, these are his stats:

height: 26.5 in  90th percentile
weight: 17 lbs 4 oz  80th percentile
head circ:  40.75 cm  50th percentile

He is still such a happy boy, and he's pretty good at going down for naps.  He's a short napper like Chase was, but he'll occasionally take a nice long 2 1/2 hour nap just for fun.  He still makes lots of noises, and is a great smiler when you first start talking to him.  Mason rolls from his back to his tummy almost every time I lay him down--including when I lay him down in his crib.  Like Chase, he's completely skipped the whole "rolling from tummy to back" milestone.  He loves standing in the jumperoo and going on walks in the stroller.  He also giggles when he's tickled, held upside down or being "pretend dropped" (you know, like moving him up and down in the air like you're dropping him?).  We love this baby and are so glad he's a part of our family.

Chase continues to impress me with his sponge-like brain.  As in-he learns new things so fast!!  He now can count to fourteen (random that it stops there, I know.  I think it's because I counted fourteen toys one time, but that's as many animals as there were). He knows all of the letter sounds (as in "A" says "ahh" and "B" says "buh") and sometimes starts saying the alphabet with sounds-only ("ah...buh...kuh...duh...eh...fff...guh...").  He has memorized a lot of the books we read together (What's up, Duck? is the most impressive one...)  Am I just being biased or is he super smart?  I think I'm in for some trouble either way :)  He still loves music and dancing (right now we're in a "Rio" music rut.  that music is now ALWAYS stuck in my head), and now requests that I only sing "Baby Beluga" when I put him to bed.  I wish he would pick a song that I like better.  Never really cared for Baby Beluga.  What's so special about that white whale anyway?  He's pretty polite, and has taken to saying "thank you, welcome" lately whenever he gives me something.  He has a funny little pretend laugh when he says something he thinks is funny--I'll have to see if I can get it on video sometime, but it's not too likely considering he stops everything when the camera's out.   We love having this little entertainer around.

The boys still don't pay too much attention to each other yet.  Chase will still give Mason hugs and kisses occasionally, but most of the time he's too busy doing his own thing to want to pay attention to a baby.  He does say "Mason crying" whenever he's, you know, crying :)

My favorite moment of the past few weeks was when we were at my parents house, and I was holding both boys and jumping on the trampoline.  I don't remember another time when they were both giggling together like that.  It was awesome!  (Buddy was at interviews in Washington, so couldn't be there...)  Hopefully as they grow older I'll start hearing them laugh together more.  I'm hoping they'll be good friends!

Photoshoot

My sister took some great pictures of Chase and Mason while we were all in Pennsylvania together.  Our kids are cute, but not always photogenic.  She had a hard time getting them while they were smiling, but she still did an awesome job.  I think we just needed Kent there to fling his limbs around and make goofy noises.  I tried my best to imitate his methods, but I just couldn't quite capture his essence.  Plus, it was tiring jumping around like that :) Thanks for the great pictures, Jenny!

Mason and Baby E

Too bad we took pictures while Buddy was gone, it would have been nice to have him in some of these pics.

You'd think that Mason would be happier to be right next to me :)

Meanwhile...back at the ranch

You know, I always want to title my blog posts "Lately..." since it requires no creativity and is spot on to what motivates me to blog.  It's never a specific event I'm writing about, it always just seems like I'm catching up on our lives for the past few months.  Aren't you so glad I don't title my posts the same thing? Okay, maybe I'm only doing it so I don't get bored.  That's why I do a lot of things :)

Anyway, here's what we've been up to lately...

    I know it's maybe embarrassing to admit this, but we've finally gotten rid of the FLEAS that infested our house.  We didn't bring them in (that was courtesy of the last tenant in the house) so we shouldn't be embarrassed about it, but it just made us feel dirty that we even had fleas in our house.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life (though I bet bedbugs would be worse.  I hope I NEVER have to deal with that one).  Let me just say that fleas are incredibly hard to get rid of to begin with, but if you don't have any pets they're almost impossible to get rid of.  When you have a pet you can at least treat the animal's fur so that the fleas all die when they jump on (because fleas prefer pets to humans), but when humans are the only blood source, we can't treat ourselves, so we have to just keep vacuuming and washing and showering and spraying.  Over and over again.  THE WORST!  I didn't even feel comfortable in my own home because I was always checking for fleas.  I didn't want to lay kids down on the carpet or play on the rugs for fear of fleas.  It is such a RELIEF to be rid of them.  And they better not come back!  You hear that, fleas?  YOU BETTER NOT COME BACK!  (you think that scared them enough?).  Needless to say, it did not make our house here in Cumberland enjoyable to live in and we made a lot of trips up to Nana and PopPop's house in PA.  Thank goodness we are only an hour and a half away.

 Speaking of Nana and PopPop's house, we love going up, and are usually up there every other weekend.  Chase loves all of the attention and the cool toys there.  The only thing that would make it even more awesome is if more cousins lived close by.  Here's hoping we get a job near SOMEONE in our extended families.  So far we haven't been too lucky yet.  Our leads are mostly in random states with no family nearby.

 My sisters flew in to PA for a visit, and when we were all at the house, we did some photo shoots of the new babies (and Chase-though not nearly as much).  I don't have the photos from the main photographer, but I got some from the camera belonging to one of my sisters (that's 10X better than my camera....someday....).

 Here's one of the 4-day-apart cousins.  You can't tell from this pic, but Mason is 3-4 lbs heavier than she is.  We call the 4 days between them the 4 days of plenty :)

 This pic shows off Mason's big cheeks!  It's so different for me to have a chubby baby.  He still seems like a giant to me since Chase was so small, and he's catching up to Chase already.  Chase wears size 4 diapers and Mason wears size 3!

 One of Chase's favorite games for a week or so was to come in the room and yell "Buckle" after he buckled all of the buckles on his buckled booster seat (I threw in that extra buckle for good measure).  Then I would run and unbuckle them so he could go back to work and buckle them again.  Would have been an AWESOME game if I didn't have to run back to the dining room and unbuckle everything every 2 minutes ;)

 I probably just think he's smart because I'm his mom, but I'm so proud that Chase knows all his shapes, colors, numbers, and letters!  I am a little embarrassed that he knows most of them from Baby Einstein and LeapFrog movies, but at least he's watching things that help him learn, right?  Some of his favorite toys are a shape puzzle and the Alphabets puzzle mats that go on the floor (I'll have to get a picture of those later).  Here he found a stick outside and started saying "Y...Y"  I didn't know what he was doing until I realized that yes, that stick looks like the letter "y".  See how smart he is? :)  He also loves going outside so he can find the "op-a-guhs" (octagons.  the Stop signs).  He points out all of the shapes and colors he sees while we're in the car, too.  Such a fun age!

 More fun at Nana and PopPop's

 Tummy time for Mason.  I miss Memphis' craigslist because there was so much to choose from, but I did manage to get this playmat from the State College, PA craigslist.

 Chase's second year at the turkey farm.  He loves to hold the baby poults, but isn't too gentle yet.  Once when I held one out for him, he squoze (I know it's not a word.  I like it better than "squeezed") it too hard and it peed right in my hand.  Nothing like getting turkey pee on your hand when you can't wash it off right away.  So I licked it off.  Okay, I washed it when I could get to a sink.

That's all I can think of for now.  I'm surprised I got a break to blog all this since Mason is sleep training now and doesn't sleep for very long at a time yet, and Chase is potty training right now--and that's a mess!  We're on day three of potty training and still haven't had once success!  It's frustrating, but maybe he's just telling us he's not quite ready.  He just barely turned 22 months today, after all...