..happy birthday, big brother..

dear finn,

today (september 25th) we celebrated your big brother, claus', birthday! he turned three years old! i cannot even believe how fast the time flies...it seems like just yesterday we were surprised with him on christmas morning. :)

i don't think you could ask for a better big brother than claus. he loves you soooooo much, and is so protective of you. one of my favorite memories of the first few weeks being home with you was the way claus would sit by any visitor who was holding you when they came over to our house to see you. he wanted to be right there to make sure they didn't hurt you! i am serious, it was so cute! claus likes to be sitting by us wherever we are in the house. if we are upstairs in mom and dad's room, claus is there too. if we are in the kitchen, claus is usually in the living room sitting on the couch nearest to us. if we are downstairs on the couch, claus is too. he is mama's little sidekick and i just know he loves being with you, his little brother. :)

claus loves to smother you with kisses, all.the.time! and i honestly think you must like it because you usually open your mouth for more! haha i guess it is kinda gross... as much as he loves you, he knows to stay an arms length away from you because you always grab is hair and pull hard, which i am sure kind of hurts him. but he is so patient with you, and if you do grab his hair he tolerates it until i pull your fingers away.

i am so happy you have at least one brother who loves you tons! duke is still warming up to you, or maybe it's just that he doesn't give as freely of his love and affection for you. ;)

let's say it one more time...happy birthday claustrophobs, we all love you more than you'll know!!

love you finn, and thanks for being such a sweet little brother. :)

love,
mom

..my little mover..

dear finn,

you have become quite the little mover. i sometimes wonder if you'll be an early cralwer (but i am secretly hoping you won't!). if i set you down in one place...on your back...you immediately flip to your belly and start scooting in every direction. usually the direction of a toy or the nearest object. and you seem pretty content on your belly, too, which i am very pleased about.

dad and i get a little laugh every time we go check on you after we have put you down for bed at night, because you are always in a completely different spot than we first put you. you move all over your crib now, which means we have had to get rid of your stuffed animals and the blankets that were draped over your crib, since you now pull them down in the crib with you.

you also have started to sleep in the funniest positions. i guess they aren't funny, come to think of it, it is exactly how dad and i both sleep...on our stomachs or our said, with our hands propping our head up a little. i will have to try and get a picture of it. :)

you also are now an expert sitter-upper. you sit unsupported for long periods of time. if you have toys around you then you will just lean forward until you can reach one, and sometimes you fall over, but for the most part you'll just sit up and play for quite a while. my personal opinion is that the reason you are so good at sitting up is because of your calm, easy-going nature. you are content to just sit and be, which is great!

i love seeing you develop in all these different ways, it is so much fun. and while it is fun to think about you crawling and walking, i can very honestly say i hope you stick to sitting for at least a few more months. :)

love you man.

love,
mom

..hallelujah..

dear finn,

as stated in your 5 month letter, your sleeping habits took a turn for the worse, right around 4 months old. this was quite an adjustment for me, because you have always been such a great sleeper. i guess i was just so spoiled from that, so when you all the sudden started waking up at 5:30 every morning, i had quite a hard time dealing with it! ;)

everyone told me that it was just a phase and that it would pass. but when? i wanted to know how long i should plan on waking up every morning at 5 for. i am a very planned out and organized person, and my life just runs smoother that way. from the moment you came, you were on a schedule, and to my surprise, you put yourself on a schedule that worked great for the both of us! you eat every 3 hours like clockwork, and your naptimes have generally been fairly predictable. of course you slept much more when you were a newborn, but now you take two, a lot of days even 3, great naps every day...one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and sometimes one in the late afternoon. this plan and schedule has been working well for us.

however, it has been a month, and up until a few days ago you were still waking up between 5-6 every morning. well, last week i decided we had to find a way to make this work for everyone. dad had been feeling sleep deprived because i would bring you into bed to feed you since it was most comfortable for me. i was feeling sleep deprived since i had to wake up to feed you. and i am sure you were feeling sleep deprived since you were up at 5 in the morning! so for about a week we tried sleep training you. i will not go into specifics, but lets just say those mornings were loooooooong. and dad and i felt so bad letting you cry, but we knew it would be best in the long run. as the baby whisperer puts it, "start as you mean to go on." i know you are getting plenty to eat, so i am not worried that you are hungry. i think you just started waking up at 5 one morning, and quickly that became your routine.

i am pleased to say that for the last few mornings you have woken up at 7! it is amazing how much better our days go. you are so happy when you wake up too, which i love. i don't wake up to you crying, i now wake up to you just talking away in your crib. it is so cute and just starts our day off so well!

i love you cute boy, and i hope this 7 o'clock thing sticks because it is not only a schedule i can handle, it is one that i love.

love you man,

love,
mom

..so sick..

dear baby finn,

you caught your first cold on september 8, 2011, and it was a sad few days for all of us. :( you were fine that whole day, didn't even have a stuffy nose or anything, but then when i put you down for bed that night you got all congested and started crying. you woke up every few minutes or so, crying, so we tried giving you your binki to see if that made you feel better, but it didn't. we didn't have a humidifier at the time, and the only way that you would sleep was propped up in my arms. even then, you woke up every hour or so crying and i'm guessing fairly uncomfortable. those first few nights were long ones for all three of us!

i think dad was the one who got you sick, because he had a runny nose and a little cough a few days prior to you getting sick. then i caught it from you, so for a good week at least one person in our little family wasn't feeling good. :( i think what made it even worse for me was being sick and not getting any sleep. afterall, that is what a doctor says is the key to a quick recovery - lots of liquids and lots of rest. so i just doubled up on liquids and eventually i got better. :)

i am so thankful we are all healthy (knock on wood) and hope we stay that way for a while. they say a baby gets about 10 colds a year, and it is worst in the winter. hopefully the humidifier will help in clearing you up next time you get sick, and we also need to remember that a little tylenol right before bed helped you have a better nights sleep as well.

i love you so much mr. and it makes me so sad to see you not feeling well. stay healthy, okay?

love,
mom

..five months old..

dear finn,

another month has come and gone, and you are already five months old! i know what you must be thinking, "wow, my life is flying by so fast!" haha and you are correct in thinking that...the days sure do pass by in a blur. although, of all the months since you have been here on this earth, the fourth month has been the slowest (for me anyway).

this month has been a bit different than the others. it was still wonderful, let me make that clear from the start. you are still a very happy and laid back baby. however, when it comes to your sleep habits, you have regressed a little bit. you used to sleep from 9-7 every single night, no problems whatsoever. but this past month you started waking up earlier...some mornings you'll wake up at 5, ready to eat...other mornings you'll wake up at 6:30 and some mornings you still wake up at 7. it is very unpredictable, and perhaps that is what makes it a little bit frustrating for your momma. ;) you are going to bed quite a bit earlier, though...usually you are in bed by 8. i know i should just be thankful that you sleep in the long stretches you do, but i would be lying if i said i didn't miss the 10 hour stretches.

you also have been more fussy than normal. i think it might be because you aren't getting enough to eat when you nurse, so recently i decided to give you a bottle after your nurse, because you never seem full. i hope this doesn't mean you grow up to be obese. ;) maybe i just need to start feeding you solids with every meal? that is one of the problems here...i have no idea what the heck i am doing, and everywhere i turn i hear something different. i guess we will just figure things out as we go (which is a hard concept for me to grasp because i like having a plan and knowing i am doing the right thing). all things considered, you are still a great baby and most people tell me your bad sleep habits and fussyness is probably just a phase. let's hope so!

we started feeding you solids this last month, and for the most part you have loved them. your favorites? sweet potatoes, apples, pears and bananas. you also didn't seem to mind squash or carrots. you didn't love peas or green beans, but you ate them. one thing i was very surprised about was that peaches made you sick. :( i love peaches, and i thought you would too, but the night i fed you peaches you were up...sick...all night long. it was so sad and now i am too afraid to give you peaches again. i love feeding you your solids, especially the ones you like, because after you are done swallowing a spoonful you automatically open your mouth for more! it's so cute. :) i bought a food mill and baby cook book, and i am now going to start making your baby food, so hopefully it will start tasting even better!

on kind of a gross, although related to food, topic, your poo changed a lot this month! haha dad says it now looks like brownie batter (the consistency, anyway) and i have to say that is a very accurate description. it is pretty thick, but still runny, and there is TONS of it! it has started to stink a ton too, which is rather gross for whoever is changing you. and i can usually tell what your poop will look like based on what solids you ate the night before. let's just say what goes in, definitely comes out. ;)

this month you started rolling from your back to your stomach. if i set you down on your back, you flip to your stomach in a matter of seconds. i am surprised how much time you will spend on your tummy, because you never used to like tummy time. it's great though, and i hope you will keep it up. you get a little fussy after about 10 minutes or so...and it's weird, because sometimes you'll roll back to your back, but other times you just lie there, on your tummy, fussy, acting like you don't know how to roll back to your back. haha i don't get it! you do this during nap time a lot - i will lay you down in your crib, bundled and on your back. about 10 minutes later i hear you in your room fussing, so i go in and you are out of your blanket and stuck on your stomach. the other thing that is weird is sometimes you sleep on your tummy, but sometimes you seem to not like it! and when i roll you back onto your back you just roll onto your tummy again. it must be a little game you like to play. ;) whenever you sleep on your tummy i check on you about 50 times more than when you are on your back, because i get so nervous that you will suffocate. daddy thinks i am overly paranoid and that if you can't breathe you will move your head so you can. i hope he is right.

this month you started taking long naps, and i mean long! and i love it! instead of taking small little naps throughout the day, you now take two long naps. the first one is around 10 a.m., give or take a half hour or so, depending on when you wake up for the day. usually you'll sleep from 10 to 12:30 or 1:00. it is nice for me, because i am able to get so much done during that time. then you'll eat, play for a while and take another nap around 2 or 3. we still don't have a great schedule for your afternoon nap because a lot of times we are out and about running errands,  but i know most days your afternoon nap is between 1 1/2 and 2 hours. keep that up dude!

you also started sitting up on your own this month. you can't sit up all the way, but slowly and surely you are getting better at it. i put you in the shopping cart at the store the other day, and with only a little help from me you sat up in it the entire time! i was so proud. :)

one of my favorite things ever that you started doing more of this month is laughing! you have the cutest little giggle. you don't give them away freely though, that's for sure. we have to work pretty dang hard to get you to laugh for us, but it is all worth it in the end because your giggle is just adorable! you think your brothers, duke and claus, are hilarious, and usually those are the only people in the household that you'll laugh for. :)

you caught your first cold the other day. :( it has been a long and tiring couple of days for you, dad and me. all of us have been sick and it is no fun. the first night you were sick was so sad for us, because you have never been sick before and we didn't really know what to do! you seemed to be fine all day long, but when we put you to bed that night you just cried and cried. we kept going into your room to see what was wrong, and finally we realized you had a stuffy nose. you were very congested, and the only way you'd sleep was propped up in my arms. you still woke up every hour or so, crying, so we cleaned out your nose with the nasal aspirator (which you don't like at all!), put your binki in and went back to bed. the second night was just as bad, but last night was a little better. we got a humidifier and put it in your room, so that must have helped a little bit. hopefully you are feeling better, because it breaks my heart to see you sick. i don't think it has been horribly bad though, because during the day you still seem to be pretty much yourself, which i am so grateful for. :)

the highlight of our month was probably our trip to jackson hole with all our friends. it was so fun to see you with your little buddies, krew, max and madi. the lowlight, was either the night you ate peaches or you being sick. both of them definitely=no bueno. :(

finn, you are just the most easy going, chill baby in the world. i really think you are! nothing gets you too excited or riled up, nothing gets you too down in the dumps. you are just so laid back and content and i love it. i love watching you grow and develop and learn new things, but at the same time it is fun to see the ways you stay the same over the months. we are really able to see a lot of your little personality and we love it! you are just the cutest little baby in the world and every day we thank our lucky stars that you are ours!

love you little man!

love,
mom

..jackson hole..

dear finn,

last weekend we went up to jackson hole for our inaugural "friendunion." it was a blast! we spent time hanging out with friends, taking pictures and exploring jackson and teton village. i grew up going up to jackson every summer with grandma cindy, uncle zac and the osborne family. i have so many memories up there and i hope it is a place we will visit with you often. :)

you did pretty good on the ride up. not as amazing as you did on our way to cali for tiff's wedding, but that was two months ago so things have changed quite a bit. you did great for the first 3 hours, but the last hour and a half was kinda hard. i think you must have been sick of sitting in your carseat. :( i can't say i blame ya though! once we got out and walked around a bit you were fine. we stopped at k-mart on our way in to buy you an umbrella stroller. you look so big in it!!!

it was so much fun seeing you with your friends, krew, max and madi. as you know, you are pretty close in age to krew and max so it is really fun to see you guys next to each other. you are all very alike in some ways, yet so different in others. it was good to get to know them all a bit better (i am sure you felt the same!).

while we were up there we went shopping in jackson. we strolled around teton village one night and the next day we rode the tram to the top of one of the mountains in teton village. i think that is probably the highest in elevation you have been (if you don't count being in an airplane). krew was with us when we did that, and everyone thought that you and krew were twins, it was funny! we spent the rest of our time up there lounging around, eating, playing games, reading books, taking naps, etc...

you are a pretty easy baby to travel with, all things considered. you took some pretty good naps and you slept great while we were there! you slept 12 hours one of the nights, which is a record for you! woo hoo go finn. we brought your pack-n-play, which you have never slept in before so i was a little worried whether or not you'd like it. it was so interesting because you immediately turned on your tummy and slept that way the entire night, with your body pressed to one of the sides of the pack-n-play. you don't sleep like that in your crib, so i am not sure what the reason was for sleeping that way! maybe the pack-n-play just isn't as comfy as your crib and you were most comfortable on your stomach? it was pretty funny and every time dad or i went to check on you we got a laugh out of it. :)

i hope this was the first of many friendunion's to come. not only are dad and i friends with all the people who went on this trip, i know you will grow to be great friends with their kids as well, and i think it will be a trip that you look forward to in the years to come.

love you mr.

love,
mom