Cleaning Time!

Recently I decided to institute a daily cleaning time in my house.  This means that for at least a half an hour each day, we all stop what we are doing and just focus on cleaning something.  (This is after months of being overwhelmed at the prospect of cleaning my entire house, knowing that the baby would need to eat or be entertained, or something before I got very far!)

Somewhat surprising is how much Charlie loves cleaning time.  I have given him a few jobs that he can do... things that I figured he couldn't really get wrong... but he's turned out to actually be very good at cleaning!  

Charlie is always excited when I tell him its cleaning time.  He loves to help.

He usually starts by wiping down the table.

Sometimes he's tasked with cleaning up his area, or his room.  Sometimes he dusts.   But his most favorite thing to do?  Swiffer.

He races all around the house while dry-mopping with the swiffer.  He can do it for twenty minutes and still want to keep going when I tell him its time to stop.  At the end we check to see how much stuff he "trapped".  Having a dog, a cat, and a house that just generally seems to collect dust, I sure appreciate his help!  It is fun for me to watch him want to be so helpful.  Hopefully he continues to enjoy it.  :)

Ephram at Four Months

Our little newborn baby is officially gone.  He has been replaced by a giggling, active and babbling baby boy.  Daytime sleeping has decreased in favor of more play time.  He's found his voice and loves to stare at the world around him.  His little face lights up when he sees me enter a room, and nothing has ever worked so well to warm my heart.

Ephram's theme for month three seems to have been growth.  Here were his stats at his four month appointment...  (drum roll please...)

Height: 24 inches (16%)
Weight: 15 pounds 10.5 ounces (65%)
Head Circumference: 44.5 cm (95%)

Everything about our boy is growing rapidly!  I was shocked beyond belief that he was nearing 16 pounds, and even more shocked when they showed me that he was over the 50th percentile for weight!  We're talking about my little baby that came home from the hospital at 5 pounds, 4 ounces.  Now he's almost triple his birth weight (6 pounds, 6 ounces.)  He jumped from the 14th percentile at his last check-up to the sixty-fifth.  That's quite the jump.  He was only in the 4th percentile for height at his two month check-up and then went up to the 16th.  And his head shot up from the 82nd percentile.  I did ask the doctor if I should be concerned that his percentile for weight is so much greater than the percentile for height.  She said no, that he looks very healthy and was probably getting ready to grow in length as well.  Finally, I am relaxed about the whole growth thing... at least for now!

Milestones:
14 Weeks - Held head up at 90 degrees consistently
14 Weeks - Rolled over from back to front
14 Weeks - Rolled over from front to back
15 Weeks - Moved into 3-6 months clothes

One day Ephram finally popped his head up while he was on tummy time.  And then he never put it back down.  The next day he rolled onto his tummy while I was changing his diaper.  And later that day he rolled onto his back during a tummy time.  At first I thought the rolls were accidental, but he repeated them for the next couple of days... he only rolls when it suits him, so I haven't been able to catch it on camera yet!

What he's eating:
2/3 breastmilk and 1/3 formula
My supply finally seems to be up and the amount of formula he's taking is going down.  Based off of how we started, I didn't think I'd still be able to breastfeed this long so I am thrilled.  We're planning to delay solids to his six month birthday to hopefully prevent food allergies that run in the family.

Favorite songs:
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Popcorn Popping
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Favorite things to do:
Play on the floor - he loves grabbing a toy, putting it down and choosing another
Watch mom and Charlie sing songs with hand movements
Laugh (he chortles - it's cute!)
Eat
Swing
Go for walks
Play peek-a-boo

Least favorite things to do:
Be alone, or not have someone to talk to (he'll talk to a "friend" if I can't be there)
Sleep

Nicknames:
Boo-Boo (he scratches his face all the time, despite every precaution I can think of)
Little E
Monkey

Coloring

Every so often I like to document some of Charlie's coloring projects so that we can look at progress.  This year, we've seen Charlie rapidly improve in everything involving holding skinny writing objects...  his coloring, drawing and handwriting are really coming along.  He's gotten so that he is good with markers and pencils, although he's still mastering the ball point pen.

Charlie has started to draw whole scenes, instead of just the smiley faces he was drawing a few short months ago.  He even drew a big picture and then insisted we send it to Grandma and Grandpa Boyce.  (I forgot to take a picture of it before it went off in the mail!)  If I was really good I would go back and find some of the older pictures, but that would probably delay this post from ever being created.  So instead, here is a look at a couple of things he has done recently!

Pushing Up

For weeks and weeks and weeks, tummy time looked like this:

Ephram would get so excited about being able to leverage the floor to get his whole fist into his mouth, that he couldn't be bothered with trying to do anything.  I tried not to worry about it, but as the weeks wore on, I started to wonder if he was ever going to do what he was supposed to do!  When he was 11 weeks old, he finally started pushing his head up at a 45 degree angle, but it took a lot of coaxing to get him to do it for me before he'd go back to shoving his fist in his mouth.

Then, one day he started to look like this instead:

No fist in mouth!  And actually interested in what is going on around him!

What is he looking at in these pictures?  Me and Charlie, singing songs with hand gestures.  Popcorn Popping, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the Itsy Bitsy Spider are his favorites.  We've been doing this for weeks, possibly months, but when he was fourteen weeks old, he decided he wanted to see us better and...

Voila!  We also found that he loved to stare at himself in the snail the Easter Bunny brought him.

Now he will not put his head back down!

And this next picture gives me glimpses of a possible future army crawl...

I think our days of immobility are fast coming to a close.  Time to baby proof!

Glimpses of Ephram

During Ephram's third month I have several random pictures.  Here is a glimpse into some of the things he enjoys!

Ephram loves the Boppy pillow.  I use it to prop him up in many positions, and it will often earn me a smile!

My mom gave Ephram this cute pram... and he loves getting dressed up in it to go outside when its chilly!  He outgrew it just when the weather warmed up.  (Okay, it got cold again, but I'm in denial about that.)

Ephram will often sit with his dad for awhile after finishing a meal.  I love the way he props his arms, and sometimes his legs, against his dad.  Here they are looking at Andy's computer.

Ephram still enjoys sleeping in the carseat.  I think it's cute how he puts his arm behind his head.  He also often clings to a toy during his naps, and I let him.  Trying to pry it out wakes him up!

Speaking of toys, he now loves them!  He will grab for the ones he wants and bring them front and center.  Now when we lay down to play, I put an assortment of toys around him.  It's fun for me to see which ones he chooses!

Sometimes the best toys are his hands.  He loves to grab at them, inspect them, and shove them in his mouth.

He also really likes to talk.  He's become quite loud about it.  It is really cute, but Charlie sometimes tells me that it is hurting his ears.

He also really likes books.  This month he started turning the pages as he looks at them... I know he's just playing with it, but it is pretty adorable!

Lego City

There are a couple of things you need to know about Charlie to appreciate his most recent Lego City.  First, he has always loved to categorize and classify things... so putting together all the blocks of the same color is par for the course around here.  Second, he loves to knock things down as he's building... so the fact that this city survived long enough for ten buildings to be assembled and for me to take pictures is a feat in itself.  Third, Charlie remains a silly boy... just look at his smiling face in these pictures!

Charlie said that the "zoo girl" was driving all of the animals by so that they could go to the volcano.

My favorite part here is the puppy that looks like he is barking at the other animals.

And why does he have a toy phone in his hand?  Well, he said that his friend Gwen was stuck in said volcano and that she was calling him to ask for help.  When I replied, "Oh no!  Are you going to help Gwen get out of the volcano?"  He picked up the phone again and called Spiderman and asked him to save the day.  What a silly boy.