Michael at 9 months or We're all getting older

For my birthday, Michael gave me the gift of 5 lbs. Yes, Michael gained 5 lbs from his six month to his nine month appointment! Here's his official stats.

Weight: 18 lbs 10 oz 20th% (6 mo- 13 lbs 7 oz 1.25th%)
Height: 28 inches 42nd% (6 mo 26.25 inches 36th %)
Head: 17.8 inches 48th% (6 mo 17 inches 35th%)

So obviously he's growing, and growing a lot! As you can imagine, I'm thrilled, the doctor is thrilled, and Michael is just thrilled to be eating and eating and eating. We're all thrilled. For your reading pleasure, Micheal's eating schedule is as follows: wake up, nurse, eat breakfast with family (Greek yogurt, baby food+baby cereal+formula) naps, wake up, nurse, snacks (graham crackers, bread, yogurt), nurse, naps, wake up, late lunch (pureed leftovers mixed with baby food veggies, Greek yogurt), perhaps another nap, dinner with family (our dinner pureed or more baby food+cereal+formula), nurse, bedtime. Plus snacks when necessary. It's a pretty food filled day, and I can tell you he loves it. To clarify, I would have been following this schedule anyway even if he hadn't been under weight, but I wouldn't have had to add all the Greek yogurt and formula. By the way, the Greek yogurt I think was the key to his success. I found this brand called Zoi at Winco that is made with cream and whole milk. It had 19g of fat per cup! It's pretty intense, and he loves it!

Other Michael milestones:
* He got tubes in his ears last Thursday. It was a very good thing because not only will it stop the chronic ear infections but it has also drastically improved his hearing and verbal skills. He went from hardly doing any babbling and not being able to mimic sounds to doing it all the time and beginning to use more and more sounds.

This is Michael pre surgery. He's all happy here, but he was NOT happy when he came out.

* He is doing the "real" crawl more and more now instead of the army crawl. It's so cute to watch him.
* He is sleeping through the night!!! This one is so awesome for me, and all mom's know the relief that comes when their child masters this. It only took a few nights of him sleeping in his own room and realizing that mom was not going to come feed him every time he woke up AND he had a three week hiatus from ear infections which helped a ton as well. We're all much happier now. :)
* He can put in his pacifier all by himself whenever he needs it, even in the night, so when he does wake up in the night, most of the time he can find it and put it in and go back to sleep, all without me having to leave my bed! I love pacifier babies!

Eloise also had a growing up/learning moment this past week. Evelynn found one of those big plastic straws that you can blow through and it will whistle (I hate those things, so I keep them hidden, but she found them anyway) and I made her play outside with it while I moved furniture with my brother Mark. Eloise felt left out, so she went and found her own straw, a hard plastic one that has no give and took it outside on the trampoline, unknown to me. A few minutes later I heard massive screaming and Eloise came staggering up to the house with blood coming out of her mouth. She had fallen onto the straw while jumping on the trampoline. Luckily it had not gone down her throat, and also luckily it has just hit the roof of her mouth, so after some calls to the pediatrician and dentist it was decided she didn't need stitches and everything would be fine, but it sure looked awful. In fact, here's a graphic picture of it!

It's much much better now, only a small scabbish type thing in her mouth.

Evelynn has been her normal happy, active busy self, and she has fallen in love with our neighbor Tinley. She spends most of her days at Tinley's house happily playing dress up, princess, Mom and Baby, and all the other girly games she can think of. But she does spend some quiet time most mornings (while we wait for a decent hour to ring the neighbors doorbell) reading. I snapped this picture a few days ago. I hope all of our kids catch the reading bug like Doug, Evelynn and I have. Granted, most mornings she "reads" a comic book, but that's ok. :)

In other news, it's my birthday. I'm now 27, officially in my late 20's. This is the first birthday where I've been surprised at the age. I know 27 isn't really that old, and I don't feel old at all, but it seems like 27 year old women are considered "older". I'm realizing that the people I run by around campus are all much younger than me, sometimes by 7 or more years. I'm wondering if I'm starting to look "older." I tried to explain to my 18 year old brother that I might be turning 27, but I still felt like the 18 year old just starting college. He laughed and looked at me like, "Yeah, whatever." But it's true. The only perceivable change I feel in myself is a deep, deep underlying exhaustion and the three kids I tote around in the back of my car. It's a weird feeling. I'm sure many of you can relate. :)

There is another tell to my increasing age, as I found out recently. I've been having back pain for.... well since motherhood began really. It's gotten significantly worse in the past few months, and I knew I needed help, but I was unwilling to schedule an appointment with the chiropractor because I did NOT want to take 3 kids to an appointment where I couldn't be watching and physically restraining them the whole time. I would rather endure the pain than go through that. Anyway, Doug finally scheduled the appointment for me, so I finally went. This chiropractor was recommended to us by a friend, and he does a combination of deep tissue massage and chiropractic adjustments as a way to retrain your muscle memory so that when you get adjusted your back muscles don't pull your newly adjusted back out of alignment again and again. It's a view I've actually had for a while, but not all chiropractors do it. Anyway, I went in to get the initial diagnosis, and it turns out that I'm more messed up than I thought. You know it's bad when the doctor is poking you back muscles and all you hear is "Oh my goodness, that's tight. Oh my. Oh wow, you have seen better days. Wow. Oh my." Yeah. Then he started working on my back. I thought I was going to puke, it hurt so bad. After about 10 or 15 minutes (aka an eternity of pain later) he said I did a terrific job (meaning I didn't scream, flail, or punch him in the face) he tried to adjust my back. He was only partially successful. Originally I thought I just needed one or two adjustments and I'd be off on my merry way. Nope. It turns out I need lots of sessions of torture, I mean massage, just to be able to get my back to fully adjust, and then I'll need more to retrain my muscles to keep me pain free. It's a long, very painful road ahead. It seriously is one of the most intense pains I've felt, and that means I'm ranking it up there with breaking my tailbone and labor. But it has it's benefits. I've been twice now (once yesterday which I am still smarting from) and even though it leaves me sore for days, I can already feel an increase in flexibility that I haven't had in a long time. It's made me realize that I have been slowly getting less flexible with time even though I've been stretching 3 -5 days a week after aerobics and running. It's was kind of funny when the chiropractor was trying to describe what my tight muscles were doing to my posture. Basically he said my muscles were rounding my back and arms. He showed me what it looked like, and I said "You mean I'm molding to the shape of nursing a baby?" Yep, that's exactly what it looked like. I laughed. I guess it was to be expected, but God wasn't kidding when he said that we would have sorrow in bringing forth and up children, because it takes a toll on our bodies. Not that it isn't worth it, but ouch.

But on to happier things. In honor of my birthday, I'm going to share some cute kid videos. I'll blog about any fun birthday excursions when/if the occur later. Eloise has a fever and so our planned activities for the day have been cancelled or put on hold (seven peaks and library picnic). I hope we can still do the picnic because I made a cake for the dessert contest. I'll have to take a picture of it when it's complete even if we can't go, because it should be pretty cool.

This video shows that my son is all belly and tongue. I guess there are worse combinations.