5 months

Yes, he is actually 6 mo. as of yesterday, but here are the last few pics from his 5th month. I had time to upload them the last Sunday of Thanksgiving break, but then never got to journal.

Check out the onesie (and no, we didn't buy it, lol) and how much his hair is beginning to come in:

Eating his hands...

A big gummer (not sure how much longer those will last since teeth can now come in anytime!)

And eating has definitely gotten better all of a sudden. Here's when he was just really getting interested in eating with a spoon (pardon the retarded noises I make...that's the only way he'd open his mouth)...and then last week (once the fever broke), he suddenly decided he LOVED oatmeal and would grab my hand trying to get it into his mouth faster! I was planning on introducing solids that week, but with the fever and recovering, we opted not to. Then, the Similac Sensitive totally messed up his #2 schedule, so the poor little guy had to drink prune juice (I'll tell the whole story the next time I post).

During the break, Jason went to the Saints/Cowboys game with his family (I didn't have any interest in going to the game with a baby--who ended up being sick anyway--and thought my folks would still be here, so I opted out). Reid and I bundled up and went for an evening walk to look at the Christmas lights. Remind you of any particular snowsuit in A Christmas Story?

Laura had told me how you should record them crying at a few stages (and I'm sure it'll crack him up when he's older), so we took some video before we found out he had fever. Thankfully he is better this week.

We tried the swing set on our neighborhood playground for the first time (he's still not quite ready for it, but it was still cute)

On Thanksgiving Day, he was definitely feeling better (but was still cranky the rest of the break as he caught up) and demonstrated his new tummy time grins.

Thanksgiving

"Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank You that You have heard Me." John 11:41

Okay, so obviously I am not (even comparable to!!!!!) Jesus, but wow...as I read one of my devotionals this morning, I realized that I couldn't have ever said it more eloquently myself. I am beyond grateful for all He has done in my life. And as Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, it truly is "in His time." This year, especially, with the birth of our little Reid, I am truly thankful for ALL He has provided for us. (and if you can't read his bib, it says "Thank Heaven for little boys")

In true Shepherd fashion (have I ever mentioned we rarely ever celebrated anything on the "correct" day growing up? One of the many perks you get when your dad is a pilot...and it has worked out just beautifully as Laura and I have gotten older b/c it allows us to share holiday times with in-laws, etc.), my family and the French family combined our Thanksgiving last night at Steven and Aimee's house in Frisco. We had so much fun and it was wonderful seeing everyone.

Aunt Kristen needed some Reid time:

And of course he wouldn't look at the camera (we really, really need a camera with a faster shutter speed!!)

The French boys:

Hayden sweetly brought several little pumpkins to show Baby Reid (and I love how the pic captured him whispering!)

Shepherds and a French Shepherd:

The "kids' table" (I always LOVED that when I was a kid...and look how cute it is...just their size!)

The only thing that would've made this more perfect would've been my sister and her family, but since she came to see Reid after he was born, they stayed in Australia this year. Wish those plane tickets weren't sooooooo expensive... (we even looked into flying over there for Christmas, but it was absolUTELY ridiculous...not to mention 30+ hours long!)

Another thing I am quite thankful for? A well baby! Since the last post, I'd tried the tried and true "resetting" of Reid's sleep schedule with a low dose of Tylenol (yes, that's called desperation!! He'd only had Tylenol once in his life before that!) for three nights in a row. But finally last Thursday, I just still had a feeling something was wrong, so ran him to the doctor before the weekend hit. No ear infection, apparently not close to teething (yet he drools EVERYwhere and chews on EVERYthing, lol!), throat fine, etc... The doc said to change him to the sensitive formula--long story short, we tried several formulas (which resulted in one constipated baby!) and then he ended up with a virus, unrelated I'm sure, but talk about Murphy's Law. So we were back at the dr's office yesterday since he'd had fever for four days. Thankfully, it finally broke last night and our little happy guy was mostly back today--tired, but smiling and talking instead of his pitiful "whale song" as my dad called it. Looking forward to a healthy, cuddly, family-of-three-plus-two-kitties kind of weekend :)

Babies and time changes don't mix...

It's official. Reid has his own agenda, and it's not exactly the one we'd have picked for him. Before the time change last week, he was doing pretty well as far as sleeping through the night (I classify "sleeping through the night" as me not having to get up during the night and him making it until 5:30am). THEN, the time change hit. I had actually attempted to slowly acclimate him to these "new" times by 15 or 20 minutes per day, but all hell broke loose on Saturday--he didn't sleep well, didn't nap well, didn't eat well...so there went my grand idea. Basically, he didn't have a single night last week where I got up less than five times. Most nights, I gave up and "slept" (if you can classify 20-30 minute catnaps as sleep) in the guest room since it's closer to the nursery. The worst night, he woke up 14 times! No, he's not teething. Nothing in his routine has changed. He's eating plenty, believe me (and just to make sure, I also started adding a T. of oatmeal to his morning bottle, too!!). Not sure what this new "sleeping" is, but we suuuure don't like it. I basically didn't get more than two consecutive hours of sleep for an entire week. But how can you resist a face like this??




Needless to say, we're hoping this week's sleeping will be better. Or at least an improvement of some sort!! It's been a challenge to figure out what this kiddo needs to wear each day with the weather changing so much...one day it's freezing, the next we're back in the 70's again... Sadly enough, a couple of the outfits he has have only been worn once, like this one. It has a little matching jacket, too, but since he barely fit into it this one time, I'm thinking that it was probably the one and only time...


Bath time has turned into a very wet experience. (for me, that is...he splashes so much water out on some nights that I'm not quite sure we got all his parts sudzed up...) He loooves his baths! They stay relatively short (about 10 minutes) and sweet since his last bottle is right afterward and he's ready to eat, but he's all smiles.




Some of his new favorite pasttimes:

Reading with Daddy! Oddly enough, they are reading Food and Wine magazine. We joke that maybe he'll be our little sommalier someday. (Well, he was obsessed with staring at glasses of wine the first month we brought him home from the hospital....but only white. Guess red didn't have the same appeal, lol.)

Chewing on anything (everything!) he can get his hands on.

...watch out, kitties!

And finally, opening Christmas presents early, just like Aunt Laura :) He loves it already!

Our little guy is beginning to make crawling motions (uh, oh, Christmas tree!). Daddy got to see the first propulsion that morning, and here's the closest he's come since then...

Reid's First Halloween

Reid is officially a bouncy baby. Well, he has been for quite some time... Whereas most babies enjoy being rocked, Reid often won't calm down unless he's jiggled. We might as well just have an exercise ball in the nursery rather than a glider. (but the glider is more enjoyable for us adults) So his latest feat is finding a way to make his swing into a bouncy seat...




Or better yet, get Daddy to play WHILE bouncing in his swing...





So I'm kind of a freak about the "Baby's first ___" bibs. They're perfect picture makers for the scrapbook because you know exactly when you took the picture! Thanksgiving was the only one I hadn't found yet, so I was quite the happy camper when Ross had this cute one for $2.99. It took about 10 pictures to get him looking at the camera and smiling while being able to actually read what it said, but it turned out cute! We have quickly realized it'd probably be a good investment to get a faster camera (or camera with a faster shutter) one of these days...

Long story short, any of you who know us well have probably heard about our "giraffe necks" (a dr. during my first year on my own after college attributed my neck pain to that...having a long, thin neck...and since then we laugh that Jason has the same problem), so when I found this adorable outfit at a garage sale for $6, I couldn't pass it up. Especially when all of the other outfits I found were upwards of $30+. It was sized as a 9 mo. outfit (but for being that inexpensive, I figured we'd try it), so I never figured it'd fit, but Reid is so long that it was absolutely perfect!

We are not big advocates of Halloween seeing as how it often represents so many evil things in the world, but from the innocent dress up/kids love candy part, it's kind of fun. Plus it's a great photo op! Our neighbors had a great little scene with fall flowers and pumpkins set up (and the sunlight hits it just right in the afternoons), so we opted for a few pics there.

Obviously, Reid can't exactly totally hold himself up nor sit independently quite yet, so there are hands in every pic. I know I'm biased, but what a cutie!

We realized this would be his one and only FIRST Halloween, and he seemed to actually like his costume, so we left him in it and took a little trip to our favorite grocery/gourmet/everything store, Market Street. It was really fun to watch all the oohing and ahhing over the "baby giraffe."

Poor little guy was all tuckered out once we got back into the car. I didn't have the heart to wake him (and he actually took a good 35 minute nap) and the picture op was just too adorable!

We trick-or-treated at the neighbor's house simply for the camcorder memories, then got him home for his normal bath/bedtime routine. I got his bath ready and he was just too darn cute rolling around on the floor to pass this up, snoring giraffe noises and all:

So it started out as a pretty awful day--up 5 times Saturday night/Sunday morning, I got called out of church (for the 5th Sunday in a row, I believe) by the nursery, then he was a little cranky man. But the sweet afternoon by far made up for the rest of the day!! We loved our little giraffe :)