10 months

Reid has been crawling for awhile now, but is getting pretty coordinated in other ways too now. He will free stand without a crutch and sit himself back down (sometimes plop down). He has taken 1 step here and there, but tumbles as a result. He's getting more confident and strong- I'm sure he will be walking by his birthday. He has 3 teeth on the bottom, but none on top. I can tell the top 4 are going to all come through around the same time and not far from now. He still isn't sleeping great. He loves all food so far. 

5 years (Damon) & 9 months (Reid)

 Damon had a birthday recently. He absorbs so much. He learns things that I don't even realize and takes everything in. I find myself having a little mom guilt for not giving more, but hopefully one day he will look back and remember the good stuff. Damon is not in preschool this year because of COVID. We didn't sign him up because we weren't sure what things would look like with that and with us recently moving (in July). Since he had preschool last year (which I most likely would have kept him going on, but his teacher retired from teaching,) he has grown so much and it makes me confident that he will do great when it's time for kindergarten. I hope the inconsistency isn't going to be an issue. Then I have to thing MAYBE with him being in primary at church that it would help. But he hasn't been in that basically all year either so yikes! We can just do what we can and hope for the best, I guess! I'm sure I wouldn't really be internalizing it that much if it wasn't my first child, but here we are. Since our move, we have had a lot of work we have been doing on the house and Damon has been loving helping out. At first, uncle Jason was doing a lot of the work. Now it is mainly us finishing things up. Damon looks up to his dad SO MUCH. He is very obviously is favorite. I'm glad they can be close. He loves being dads helper with all the projects. There have been many late nights working on the house after the kids go to bed lately. One of the times we were up late, around 1 or 2am, Adam hears one of the kids moving around upstairs. Next thing you know, he walks over tot he stairs and Damon is sitting at the bottom of the steps putting his shoes on getting ready to work on the house. He thought it was morning and time to be dads helper. He also loves matching his dad. Every morning (thanks to COVID working from home), Damon always waits till Adam gets dressed and then tries to wear the same colors. They have a few matching ties and every Sunday, he has to match Dad as much as possible. It is one of my favorite things to witness. He is very into dinosaurs, rocks, and trucks/racecars right now. He has been calling any car with a spoiler (aka peddle - his word for spoiler), a racecar. He loves watching these Jurassic park dinosaur fighting videos on youtube these days. He most recently has gotten into Lilo & Stitch on Disney+. I never really watched that as a kid- maybe my mom didn't like the aliens? He has been learning to ride a bike (with peddles) lately, but still requires our help with balance. I'm sure if we put more time into it, he'd be set. Damon & Ruby (our Goldendoodle), are best of buds. Any time Damon is out with the dogs, he always flocks to her. She is so good with him. For Halloween we are being Mario Kart characters. Damon is going to be Mario. Adam is going to be Luigi. Jade is going to be Princess Peach, I am going to be Princess Daisy, and Reid is going to be a banana. We are excited to go experience it this year in our new neighborhood. Damon was also suppose to be in Teeball this year, but thanks to COVID, that got cancelled. We have not signed him up for a different season yet. Damon made is first major summit climing Mt. Humphreys with Adam a couple of weeks ago. He had some help from dad, but did very good and was WIPED OUT when finally got home. I have never seen the kid so tired. Damon sneaks into mom and dads bed every night right around 1am and does fine (not too disruptive) unlike his sister who wakes everyone up. Some top things that Damon loves to do these days are: Working with dad, looking for rocks in the back yard, drinking apple juice (yes, still obsessed) or soda, watching his shows, coloring, lining all of his cars (or other toys) up in a line (Sometimes in color coordinated order), going anywhere with dad, playing with his cars or dogs, etc. He is such a blessing to our family and I look forward to seeing what this next year holds for him and watching him grow and learn every day. 

Reid is 9 months now. He has 2 official teeth (his bottom 2), and so far looks like the next ones will be the 2nd set on the bottom. No sign of anything on top yet. The bottom upcoming ones are not through the gums yet though, so we will see! Reid pulls himself up on all the things now and is getting better at balancing every day. I do not think he will make it to 1 year before walking. He eats everything you give him. In turn, has made him a little plugged up, but we are working on that. He has a few blabber words that he repeats such as "da" and "ya" which I'm not totally convinced he has been saying on purpose. He is not a big adrenaline kid. He gets very nervous when played with in some ways, but has been getting a little more open to it. I remember just before we moved, whenever walking down the stairs with him, he would tense up (aka hulk out) with every step down the stairs because he thought he was falling. Not doing that anymore. He is still very much attached to mom. He is becoming more open to others slowly. He is still sucking his thumb. More often when he is tired or teething. I have pretty much given up. If I try to pull his thumb from his mouth, it goes right back in. So we try to put is focus elsewhere as much as possible. He does not like to be held back especially by his sister who wants to hold and play with him all the time. I am looking forward to the day when they play more. He climbs up on everything now so we have been having to watch him very closely. He gave me a good scare recently when he pulled a full length ladder over on top of him. It happened in slow motion and I could not get there fast enough. He didn't get seriously hurt thankfully- just a bloody nose. But was such a close call. I feel like I have PTSD from it. This is about the age Damon tried to eat a baby scorpion but was unharmed too. This age is so fun, but definitely keeps us on our toes. He is taking about 2-3 naps per day and still sleeping in the closet. We put his bed in my closet because it has no windows in hopes of him sleeping in some. Well, he usually does! Jade is usually the one who wakes him up. I am just nervous for the day when we need to move him out of there and into a room where it's not pitch black. Blackout curtains will definitely be needed. Right now, Reid is a little smaller than Damon was at this age. Not sure if it is because Reid was born 2 weeks early, or what, but he is doing well and is healthy! We love him so much.

8 months

 Reid is growing so much every day. It's happening too fast. He is crawling and climbing everywhere. He is not a picky eater (yet). He still loves his big brother lots and gets a little irritated with Jade right now. She just wants to hold him, play with him, hold his hand, etc, but he's all about his freedom unless it's mom right now.

7 months

7 months already? Reid being born in 2020 is something that has been such a blessing to our family. I see so much stress, chaos, depression, and hardship at this time for a lot of people with the things we are dealing with in society. Reid has brought such a light, love, and happiness into our lives that make things so much easier that what I would imagine. He has been born in such a trying time that I know he has a strong soul and I can't wait to see what he does in his life. 

He officially has 1 tooth through the gums (his bottom front left). In turn, he has picked up a habit that I never thought I would see in my kids- thumb sucking. I don't know what I was thinking - like I'm exempt? NOPE. I know, it is such a small thing and I'm definitely overreacting. I am hoping it is something that is a phase that he works through quickly. I have tried to replace it with a pacifier, but that didn't go great. I will say that he has been sleeping a little better since then because he has been able to self-soothe. I am sure that other bottom front tooth is not far behind.

Reid rolls everywhere. He is VERY close to crawling. He will get himself in position and then lounge himself forward and belly-flop. Most of the time he doesn't seem like it bothers him because he gets around just fine that way.

He is taking a bottle pretty good now. We started with just water when he would have table food. I have more recently pumped milk and he has done well drinking breastmilk from a bottle too. Although, when Adam feeds him I can tell he is longing for that mom/son bonding time. He needs to adjust. I love being that person for him, but also love seeing the kids grow into best buds with dad.

So far Reid likes everything we have fed him. We have started hand-eye coordination self-feeding a little bit. But he's not quite coordinated enough (or maybe doesn't know?) to put the food in his mouth, but can mostly pick it up voluntarily. 

6 months

Reid is officially half way to 1 year which is so crazy. He is such a good baby and we are so blessed to have him at this time. During all this COVID stuff, I could not be more grateful for his graceful entrance to this world before everything went crazy. He has made the time at home so much better. Here are a few things that may or may not have changed since last month. He is eating prettymuch everything we give him (mashed up). None of his teeth have surfaced yet. He is not sleeping through the night but will wake 1 or 2 times. He goes down for naps much easier than his brother and sister (even at their current age) which I am so grateful for. He does not require me to nurse him to sleep and goes down well when he is swaddled and in a dark(ish) room. Right now (in our new house) we have his bed set up in my closet because of the lack of windows and I feel like it has made him sleep in a little better. He's taking naps every 2-3 hours right now. He's in 6-9m clothing and size 2 diapers. He has a couple of red spots on his skin. One on the upper left side of his forehead and the other at the base of his left ear. They kind of look like "stork bites" and are not risen at all. They haven't changed since birth either so we are just watching them.

Jade cast update

Jade has been doing pretty good with her official cast. She's back to pushing her limits and being a crazy toddler again, but does baby the arm a bit which I'm happy about. The doctor ended up having to set the arm a bit when we got the cast. They did it while she was awake and without medication. They put the cast on and then pushed down on the arm to straighten it out. Of course she was not liking that and was crying "DONE PLEASE" over and over again. It was so sad to watch.  She cried for maybe 10 minutes and then acted fine. They did an xray after the cast/setting and you could already see it was better lined up. They also ended up letting us know she would most likely have it off in 4 weeks instead of 6. Another thing they mentioned is that it will most likely take up to a year for the bone to completely straighten out, but the cast was only needed for the beginning stages of healing I guess? So it should be interesting to see how her arm looks after the cast is removed. Luckily Jade isn't super excited about swimming this year because it would be a bummer trying to keep her out of the pool. We ended up buying this cast cover which we used in the bath and seems to work ok, but we haven't attempted the pool with it yet. That's pretty much the lowdown for now. I'll update more when her cast is removed. 

Jade's first broken bone

Jade has always been a monkey and climbs a lot. Recently we have been staying at Adam's parents house and she was standing on the rocking chair/recliner and fell over the side. She instantly started crying and said "I WANT A BANDAID!!!" By that time I had rushed to her side and immediately realized how apparent it was that she had broken her arm. 

Adam had just left the house with the van and all the carseats inside to meet someone at our new house so they could buy a fireplace we were getting rid of. They were suppose to meet us there. The plan was that he would just leave out the pieces and they would venmo me the payment. Right as Adam was starting up the car to leave, they pulled up to the house so he was occupied with them for a few minutes longer. After that he came back home so that we could take her in to the doctor. Online it said that broken bones can been treated at the local Banner Urgent Care. So i scheduled a time for her to arrive in the next few minutes. Adam took her down (I had to stay with Reid and Damon because of all the COVID-19 restrictions) and they put a splint on her, but referred them to Cardons Childrens Hospital over by Banner Desert. Over there, they were able to confirm the breaks in both bones.

They told Adam that the angle of the break wasn't big enough for a child at that age to need it set and that it would correct itself. She is due to get a more permanent cast about a week from the incident and is currently in a splint/sling. Any time anyone asks her how her arm is doing she says she "got a big owie" or "it's a bad one." While in the hospital, they gave her fentanyl for the pain and he was pretty out of it most of the rest of the day. She had maybe 4 doses of tylenol/ibuprofen throughout the next day or so and has been acting normal otherwise. She is starting to learn to do mostly everything without that other arm and is back to her happy crazy self. The big challenge has been potty training her with that one arm. The hospital referred us to an orthopedic for the official casting which should last another 6 weeks. Her appointment is tomorrow so we will see if they say anything different. 

Another thing that has been a challenge is getting shirts on and off. So we have had her in tank tops since the sleeve hole is a bit wider.