Happy 1st Birthday to Baby B and lots of catching up!

Well, it's been a long time since I posted! I had to at least blog about Baby B's first birthday.
I made his birthday cake out of a chocolate cake mix and baked it into a sheet cake. Then I cut it to make it into a "1" and iced it with yellow frosting and green shells around the edge. I wrote "One is fun" on it in green. The table cloth, bib, hat and napkins are the "One is fun" theme, so I was trying to match that. I also made him a little "1" out of the scraps of the cake. It was very cute. I didn't get a good picture of it, I guess. I think I lost those pictures, somehow. :( The table cloth and all the "One is fun" themed stuff are from Mischievo and Little Miss Priss's 1st birthdays. I've made it last for three kids!

Here's the big birthday boy before we sang "Happy Birthday" to him. Here he is eating his cake. He really enjoyed it. This was the first time he's had anything with sugar in it.

I guess you can kind of tell how this year has gone since Baby B was born by my lack of posts. It's not like I haven't had time to blog, I'm just too lazy. I'd rather just sit and read other people's blogs and not have to think about posting to my blog! I guess I've just been so tired, overwhelmed and down a lot, too.

This has been a tough year for me. Baby B has been very challenging for me. He has not been a very good sleeper and I really, really, need my sleep. He had the reflux issues and even after we got him help for that he still didn't sleep very well. Crying it out didn't work as well for him as it did for my other two. I had him sleeping through the night for a little while after we made him cry it out, but then he would get a cold and wouldn't sleep very good. It seems like we had A LOT of crying for a while there. In fact it's been only about two weeks now that I have had consistently good nights. So, hopefully, we've reached a turning point. He still wakes up a lot earlier than I would like, but I'll take that over crying a lot in the night.

In spite of all these challenges he is a precious little guy and I'm really enjoying him these days. He's still crawling and I doubt he'll be walking anytime soon. But he's always learning something new. I love hearing him "talk". It's so cute! He loves to point at things and wants you to tell all about what he's pointing at. He's very good at letting you know what he wants. He loves his big brother! And Mischievo is very good with him most of the time. Little Miss Priss is doing better with him but tends to be too rough with him.

I've also started cloth diapering and baking my own bread, so those things take a little more time. Plus I have the chickens and I started a garden this year. So, I've been quite busy!

Little Miss Priss got potty trained a few months ago, so that has been so nice. She did so well with the potty training. Not one #2 accident while we were potty traing and none since then! That is much better than Mischievo. He still has accidents! Also, she just moved into a big girl bed out of her crib last week. That was a smooth transition and I am so thankful for that. The Lord really knows what I have need of! He has carried me through more than I realize!

Mishchievo is starting to be a good little helper, when he wants to be anyway! He really loves his baby brother and watches out for him for me.

I'll have to do more pictures on another post, maybe!!! We'll see if that happens! There's so many other things I wanted to post about, but all my kids will be up from their naps soon and I haven't even cleaned up the kitchen from lunch!

Playing Meeting and more snow!

Whew, I'm worn out! I just got my work out gathering the eggs and feeding and watering the chickens! The snow is up to my knees, so it's a workout just to get out to the chicken coop. Then I have to haul their water container all the way up to the house where my wonderful husband has a faucet with some stuff on it to keep it warm so we can fill up the chicken's water everyday, and then back again!

I started this post with the intention of posting this video of the kids playing meeting! It's so cute when they do that. Mischievo is quiet the preacher, huh? We trust and hope he'll grow up to fulfill the meaning of his name "preacher of rightousness".



After I started this post my husband brought to my attention how hard it was snowing outside, so I took this video.



My husband measured the snow in the front yard and it was 13" at about 1:00 p.m. It still snowing hard so I think we're in for a whole lot of snow! It's not even supposed to get over 36 degrees for the next ten days and it still shows snow on the day it's supposed to get up to 36. Right now it's 18 degrees out, which feels warm compared to the 5 degrees we had a couple of days ago!

Info on the last slideshow!

Ok, I don't know what's wrong but I can't seem to post a slideshow and write anything extra along with it! Maybe this is why I haven't posted in so long! I've just spent the last 15 minutes fooling around with my blog trying to get it to do what I want!
So, anway, it's been snowing since Saturday here. It started at 34 degrees and now it's 14 degrees. We have about a foot of snow. It's not snowing very heavily but it still pretty. Trying to keep the house warm with our wood stove so we can save some money!

Thankfully, everyone seems to be better except Little Miss Priss has a cough that's worse at night. Her pink eye is completely better and no one else got it, which is a real mercy.

The slide show is of the past week and some pictures of the snow.

It's Snowing!

Some catch up pictures

Very belated 2 month pictures and lots of catching up

Many months ago I started this post, so I thought I had better finish it! I'm back for this post anyway.
Here's Baby B's two month professional pictures.



And for comparison here's Mishievo and Little Miss Priss at 2 months.



So, anyway, I have tons more pictures to post since Baby B is now 7 months old and I haven't posted in ages! Nobody is probably even reading this anymore! I'll have to do another post with pictures since I don't feel like waiting to upload them all right now. I just want to get everyone up to date on things.

We finally figured out when Baby B was 4 months old that he had silent reflux, which is acid reflux without all the spitting up. He had been very fussy while I was feeding him since he was born and I just thought the bubbles were bugging him because he would stop fussing once he burped. So when he was 4 months old and still doing that I thought it was strange because I figured he would be used to it by then. He was also waking up crying like he was pain a lot in the night. Sometimes you would have to pick him up and walk him around until he stopped crying and then we could put him back in his bed and he would go back to sleep. Other times he would take his pacifier and go right back to sleep. He wasn't hungry because it would only be an hour or two after I had just fed him.

It was really driving us crazy and I was so exhausted. He didn't start sleeping so bad until he was about 3 months old so we couldn't figure out why he would all of a sudden start doing worse when normally babies start sleeping better around then! Also, when he was 4 months he started rolling over and that would make him wake up crying. So at first I just thought it was because he was rolling over and didn't like being on his back to sleep(we've put him on his tummy since he was born and I know that's not what you're supposed to do! In fact that's probably the only reason he wasn't any worse with the acid reflux than he was, since babies with acid reflux sleep better on their tummies.)

He was just such a good, happy baby during the day and that made it all the more puzzling, besides fussing while he was nursing, anyway. Somewhere I had heard or read about silent reflux and wondered if maybe that was his problem. I started researching it on-line and so many of the symptoms sounded like him. One reason he probably likes his pacifier so much when my other two would never take one is because sucking on a pacifier neutralizes the acid trying to come up.

Finally, we took him to the doctor to see if she would agree with us about him having silent reflux. She definitely agreed and prescribed some medication for him and that definitely helped with the fussiness during nursing. We also ordered a special wedge with a sling to keep him from sliding off for him to sleep on. That really helped with the sleep.

I only gave him the medication for a couple of weeks until I asked my midwife if she knew of a homeopathic remedy that would work. She said to try Nux Vomica and I did. It worked as well as the medication so I stopped the medication. Now he hardly every even needs the Nux Vomica. For some reason when I nurse him right before bedtime he fusses a little more, so that's about the only time I ever give him the Nux Vomica.

He still wasn't that good of a sleeper even with medication and the wedge. He would wake up around 11:00 p.m. and fuss until we put the pacifier in and then he would wake up twice more to nurse before morning. Sometimes he would make it with just the two nursings and not wake up at 11:00. I put him to bed at 8:00 p.m and he would sleep until 8:00 in the morning. He did that until last week when we finally decided enough was enough and now he's been sleeping through the night from 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., sometimes 7:00 a.m. without any feedings. It is so nice except now Little Miss Priss has been sick all week and she's been crying for mommy and daddy a lot in the night. It's been worse than what Baby B did! Now Baby B sleeps better than she does and he's been sick, too.

In spite of it all Baby B has been a pretty happy baby, when he doesn't have to sleep anyway. He rolled over a little before his 4 month b-day and got two teeth right on his 5 month b-day just like his big brother did! Now he's can sit up fairly well by himself and he loves to roll around on the floor or play in his Exersaucer.

Baby B is a little behind my other two weight wise because when he was having such a hard time with the acid reflux he wasn't eating enough because it hurt him so bad. Then about 3 weeks ago he got over two long weeks of bad diarrhea. I even had to change his diaper at night when he would wake up to eat. Poor guy has had so many set backs. He started off like he would be bigger than my other two. He still has the cutest chubby little legs, though. It's been a long 7 months! It's funny how time can fly, but when you're in the middle of it, it seems like a long time.

Mischievo and Little Miss Priss are growing up so fast, too. Mischievo learned how to ride his bike without training wheels a few months ago now. Little Miss Priss likes to get dressed all by herself. She does a pretty good job, too! We just need to get her potty trained now. That would be so nice. I hope she will be as easy as Mischievo was. She doesn't like being dirty or wet but I can't get her to go on the potty. She just sits there and then says she's all done, without doing anything. Maybe when things get a little better around here with sleep and colds we'll try a little harder to get her potty-trained.

Well, I hope this wasn't too long, but it's been so long since I posted. I hope I remembered everything! Oh, we also got a new front porch on our house. I'll have to do another post with more pictures. We have chickens now, too. I've also been grinding my own wheat and making my own bread. I make all of Baby B's food, too. I use the Super Baby food book and its not really that much extra work. So, I've been so busy. I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do. If I want to do something besides work than other things take a back burner and then I'm behind. So, since I like to do many, many things besides work, I'm always behind!!! I have a pile of ironing, since that is my least favorite thing to do and laundry never stops. I still haven't had any of the pictures we've taken of Baby B printed out since he's been born! I haven't started a scrapbook for him and I've never finished Little Miss Priss's scrapbook of her first year. Oh, well, I figure as long as I have all the pictures I can catch up another year. I've started knitting a sweater for Mischievo and want to do matching ones for Little Miss Priss and Baby B. We'll see if that happens!

P.S, to the last post

Well, I can't get that video on here. I wish I had someone here to help me with it. It's just not working for me.
Also, I wanted to thank everyone that left me encouraging comments on the One Month post. It was a big help to me. Thanks so much. The Lord has really helped me through this.