Jonas update

Recent posts have been dominated by Elijah because quite honestly there's not much you can write about a newborn that's new or exciting. But this one...it's all you Jonas.

The doctors are so pleased with how healthy he is and as far as we all know he is fully recovered from the infection he had when he was born. He is getting stronger and bigger every day. His 2 month appointment showed he was 13 pounds, the chunkster. His double (and triple) chins are coming in quite nicely. But his thighs don't even compare to Elijah's at his age. He loves to eat about every 3 hours all day, and then every 4 hours overnight. Sometimes he stores up in the evening (called cluster feeding) every 2 hours so that he can go longer at night. He still has major gas issues which causes him quite a bit of pain and annoyance, but we are hoping in the next month that will be done once his digestive system matures a bit.

He's smiling a lot...the big, open mouth, melt your heart smiles...with the coos and goos and laughs is enough to put you over the top.

He looks a lot like Elijah to us where you can tell they are brothers - but definitely have their differences too.

The pediatrician says he is pretty weak in his upper body for his age, so we have been working really hard at "tummy time" -- which he absolutely hates most of the time. This is a variation of tummy time where he's still having to hold up his head but I guess he doesn't mind it as much:

And Elijah is still being as helpful as ever with his little brother. He likes to try to interpret Jonas' cries ("mommy, he wants milk" "daddy, change his diaper" "mommy, he wants paci" "put him in his bouncer chair") and always asks to hold him. He often wants Jonas to come in and read books with us before he goes to bed.

We took a trip on the train last week to another city about 30 minutes away. We were wanting to see if it's a city we would want to move to in the near future. We decided it's not, but we had a fun trip anyways. Our friends Crystal & Aaron came with us.











Elijah decided he'd had enough of being pushed and wanted to push the stroller, but it kept running into the sides so Bruce had to help.




Aaron with Elijah





Our family on the train. Elijah LOVES to ride the train and talks about it for days before and after we are doing a train trip. Although this time I think he was most looking forward to the "special train snack" (a type of Cheeto's that they have here which we brought with us and told him we had to wait until we got on the train).

Pony riding

Elijah and his good buddy Kenza went to a place where they let kids ride ponies and had such a blast. Now Elijah usually is not at all the adventerous type, but I think Kenza -- an older woman -- just brings it out in him. He will most of the time follow along with whatever she is doing. After Elijah saw that she had fun on the horse, he was happy to get on.


First, he watches from afar as this man takes care of the horse:

Then Kenza grabs his hand and he forgets his fears of the big horse:

And he realizes these creatures arent so scary. He watched this horse drink his water for a while:

Is this not the cutest thing - a riding helmet and everything!

A brief moment of fear but he's still having fun:

The horse's name is Guadalupe:

They are looking across the road at more kids riding horses:

I just love how he is practically leaning all the way over on the guy:

When it was the next kids turn to ride, Elijah watched as "my horsie" walked away:

And now thinks horses are the coolest animal:

Potty time

We are entering into potty training...slowly. Painfully slowly, but it's just about all we can handle at this point. For a few months, we've just let Elijah sit on the potty and read books and he's really enjoyed it. He just thinks it's his little chair..he would sit and sit, but nothing ever came out. But we've been reading some potty books to him. One is called My Big Boy Potty where a little boy named Michael is learning how to use his potty. For at least a week, he wanted to read that book every time we read books, like 5 times a day. It got to the point where we would think - please, just pick another book already - but no, again we would read the potty book. And again. Well, this weekend it happened. He sat on the potty and something came out! He knew that it happened and shyly told us "went peepee in potty" - we went to look and sure enough, peepee in the potty! We jumped up and down, sang praises, made fools of ourselves to show just how proud of him we are. He laughed at us like, what are you doing mom and dad? The he said the cutest thing...he said "just like Michael". Yes, Elijah...just like Michael in your potty book. Then he wanted to put on his big boy underpants "just like Michael". We let him for a few hours and he stayed dry. Then the next day, he went in the potty again and stayed dry for a few hours in the big boy underpants. Yesssssss. So we are celebrating the small victories and not pushing the potty training thing, but we are happy for the increasing interest.

Here's a few pics from his big moment:

Whoa, there's peepee in there.


Look, there it is, mom.


OK, and a bonus picture. All on his own, he found Bruce's headphones, got his ABC book and climbed up on the frosh (couch), laid down and pretended to listen to music "just like daddy".

Bootleg mobile by Bruce

When we were in Boston with Elijah, we had this sweet mobile in his crib that played music and had lights and spun around. And he loved it, but unfortunately it was just too big to bring with us here. But Bruce in all his "we must stimulate him so his neurons will grow" nerdy book-smart ways decided Jonas must have a mobile too (so that he can turn out just as smart as Elijah is now). So he rigged this contraption across the top of the crib for Jonas to look at and bat at toys on a string. He had Elijah "help" him (and I use the term help loosely here -- he mostly just got in the way) but he felt so special that he got to be part of creating something for his brother. He got to cut the string and pick out the toys to hang -- and he was on cloud nine talking about it. Jonas thinks it's pretty cool and doesn't know that it's just a bootleg mobile, so it works for us. Here's a few pics from today's neuron-growing session:

Gosh, I just love this kid.