Yesterday Caspian turned four months old and today Koa turned three years old, so we have much to record!
At four months Caspian weighs about 16 pounds, has almost grown out of his six month old clothes and still has the most kissable cheeks imaginable! He has been a much happier baby lately since I have been off dairy for quite a while. It seems that it took quite a while to get it all out of our systems, but it has made a big difference for him. Now if I have even the slightest bit of dairy it really effects him. The other day I used part of a boxed tomato soup as an ingredient in something I made for dinner and didn't think to check the ingredients. It turns out it had milk in it and poor Caspian immediately started spitting up and has a terrible diaper rash now! At least now we know what causes all of his problems and as long as I can avoid dairy like the plague he seems to do really well.
He has been working on rolling a lot lately. He has the front to back down pat and can usually do it at will. Occasionally he looks like he knows that he can do it but has forgotten the mechanics of it and he lays there twisting and squirming and looking over his shoulder but can't quite seem to accomplish his goal. Other times he rolls over in his sleep unintentionally and it wakes him up and makes him mad. Now he is working on rolling from back to front but has only made it to half way. He rolls up on his side and just lays there and plays with his hands.
Caspian seems to be a very goal-oriented kid. You can see the determination in his face when he finds something that he thinks he can reach/do and he will just stare in that direction and struggle and wiggle like he is willing himself to be able to accomplish the goal. I don't remember Koa being so focused. Koa hit all of his motor skills pretty early, but he never looked like he was trying to work on it. Caspian is all business!
He's starting to grab at things and has discovered his hands which is always fun to see. He will just be sitting and playing and when his hand catches his eye and he just stops and examines it on all sides for a while and acts completely fascinated.
He continues to have very tiny little smiles. Even when he laughs his smiles are pretty small. His little giggles are just so sweet, though. He prefers to be upright, so he spends quite a bit of time each day in his little jumper and is really starting to bounce a lot in that and can spin himself around to look in whichever direction he wants.
He has also started to become very demanding from time to time and we have started training him to "talk in his nice voice". One morning when I got up to feed him in the wee hours he decided the milk just was not coming fast enough and was screaming in this very high-pitched squeally voice. I let him know that was not acceptable and then laid him down for a minute or two until he calmed down. Then we tried again. He did fine the next time around and he was less squeally in general after that. It's amazing how quickly they can learn good or bad habits and how early this all starts!
He still gets very demanding about wanting to be in his bed to sleep and will gripe at us if we try to get him to go to sleep elsewhere. He will eventually give in with less of a fight than Koa ever would at this age. Today we had him out in the yard and it was nice and sunny. Zak was just sure he would want to take a nap in the sunshine (and get a little dose of vitamin D), but he was quite sure he did NOT want to sleep in the yard, so close to his cozy bed. We eventually brought him in the house and he immediately snuggled in and went to sleep. He's very easy to put to bed. I've got to be thankful for that!
We celebrated three years with Koa last night by having friends over for dinner and ice cream. Koa adores spaghetti, so we had spaghetti with meat sauce and Caesar salad and roasted garlic bread sticks. Koa specifically asked for an ice cream cone for his birthday, so I bought some cones and made two batches of ice cream--roasted banana (with coconut milk) and chocolate peanut butter.
Koa called all the people he wanted to come and invited them to come celebrate his birthday. It was pretty cute watching him act all grown up and working on his phone manners. The only little kid he called was his friend Caleb. When Koa asked him to come to his birthday Caleb immediately started singing "Happy Birthday."
Dinner ended up being a lot more hectic than I had hoped it would be because Zak and I were working on our Greek assignment all morning and I didn't get things prepped as I had hoped I would. So dinner was a little more hectic than I had hoped it would be. It was still lots of fun because everyone just pitched in and we had fun cooking together and visiting until dinner time.
Today he has been enjoying some of the things he got for his birthday from his friends. We spent some time out in the yard working in our garden and riding his new little tricycle. You can find some pictures of our fun day in his brand new three year old photo album. After that we came inside and planted some seeds indoors in preparation for the coming season of planting! Koa got just the right tools for helping with that!
