Nathaniel is three months old!

Nathaniel is still a pretty easy baby, although he's been reluctant to sleep during the day lately.  He will only sleep in his crib for 20 to 40 minutes, and then he'll wake up screaming and refuse to go back to sleep.  He's still swaddled, and we play white noise for him, so I don't know what has changed.  Just yesterday he fell asleep in the car while we were waiting in the pickup line to get Amelia after school, and he stayed asleep when I brought the carseat inside, and slept for almost two hours.  It was amazing!  I played with the girls, did dishes and laundry, and even some cleaning. So today, I kept him up until it was time to get Amelia, and he fell asleep in the car again and has been sleeping in his carseat for almost two hours again. 

He's still sleeping through the night most nights, from about 6:45pm to 6:30am.  Although when Jeff and Jane were here last weekend, he was waking up again in the middle of the night, or even worse, at 5am, and then refusing to go back to sleep.

He is smiling a lot now, and holding his head up really well. 

He also loves to laugh and make faces by sticking his tongue out.

He loves to be held facing forward so that he can look at everything.  His legs are getting strong, and he especially likes it when he can stand on my lap and I help him bounce.  He also likes to lay in his gym and bat at his windchime toy, although that usually only lasts for 10 minutes or so.

He loves his sisters, of course.  Amelia is good at entertaining him by bouncing him in the bouncy seat, showing him toys or reading him books.  Megan is always trying to hold him and give him hugs.  After we dropped her off at preschool today, she ran back out of the classroom because she had forgotten to give Nathaniel a hug.  So sweet!

Amelia the Photographer

As Amelia was finishing her dinner tonight, she looked at me holding Nathaniel and said she wanted to take a picture of us together.

Then she wanted to take a photo of everyone individually.  She's figured out how to get faces in the photo and how to focus. 

She wanted to get one of all four of us, but we couldn't figure out how to make that work with my camera, so I took a picture of her instead.

She was so excited to (very carefully) use my camera, and so proud of the photos she took.

Three Months Old

Each of these photos was taken at three months old.  Can you guess which child is which?

 How about here:

Finally - a day above freezing!

We had a snow day yesterday, because the weather service had predicted 7 inches of snow total, with 2 inches of snow an hour falling around school pickup time.  As it turned out, we only got 3 inches total, and while there were some heavy snow periods, they were sporadic.  So the snow day turned out to be unnecessary.  The girls didn't get to play in the snow, since the baby refused to nap in his crib all day.  Instead, we made pretzels.

Amelia made the letters A and M, a heart, an octopus, and a girl.  I made a snail, a turtle and a girl.  Megan declined to participate.

Amelia used my camera to take a nice photo of the baby in the Baby Bjorn.  He was cooperative, but I found that it was hard to knead dough while wearing a baby.

In contrast, today was a beautiful winter day!  It got up to 43° and the sun was even out!  As soon as we got home from school, we went outside to play.  I bundled Nathaniel up in his snowsuit and put him out in the snow, since he again refused to sleep in his crib.  He didn't seem to mind the snow at all!  At first, he kept his eyes squinted practically shut, and I realized this was the very first time he'd been outside without having his entire face covered up.  He didn't know quite what to make of the bright sun shining on the snow.  When he got a little fussy, I put him in the stroller in the driveway, and he slept a little while we played.

Megan colored with chalk a little, and made a beautiful letter A, but found it was a little hard to do wearing snow mittens.

The girls especially liked climbing the tall pile of snow by the mailbox.

They tried to help shovel the icy snowy slush at the end of the driveway, but the only tools they could find were garden tools.  Guess we ought to get some kid snow shovels!

Megan had fun splashing in puddles and trying to dig in the big snow piles:

Amelia got cold and went inside when Ben got home; she said she had splashed cold water into her boots and her feet were cold.  But she had been coughing earlier, and ended up having a low fever before bed, so I think she just wasn't feeling well.  Megan and I took a walk through the sneaky back way, since we wanted to stay outside as long as possible.  Megan wanted to walk right across the snow on the prairie, instead of sticking to the sidewalk and then the trail, so we blazed a path across the creek and through the trees and grasses.  I had to walk first because the snow was so deep that Megan couldn't walk unless she followed in my footsteps.  There were times that the snow was higher than my knees and to the tops of Megan's thighs, and let me tell you, that is hard to walk in!  We followed some melted paw prints (I'm guessing a fox) and saw a dead animal (I'm guessing a rabbit).  Other than that, we had a wonderful time exploring, and Megan thought it was great fun to fall over in the deep snow as she was trying to walk.

It is supposed to be 37° tomorrow, so we will try to get outside again before the cold weather comes back.

Megan's Snack Helper Day

I got to go to school with Megan today to be snack helper for the Valentine's Day party.  Ben stayed home with Nathaniel and went in to work at lunch time.  It was so nice to spend some time just with Megan (and 19 other rambunctious kiddos).   The kids did relay races in large motor; here Megan is trying to run with a heart between her legs and then scootering on her tummy.  She refused to do the race where two kids put one arm each in a men's dress shirt; she told me later that she didn't want to do it because she didn't want the shirt to cover up her dress.

It is interesting to see what Megan chooses to do in preschool free time, because she doesn't like to talk a lot about her day.  Today she wanted to play with the pattern blocks, which she told me she does a lot.  She also did some lacing cards and made a Valentine card for our family.  She wasn't interested in playing with the other kids, but I don't know if that's because I was there, or because, at three and a half, she still plays next to other kids instead of with them.

Megan got to bring Buddy Bear home last weekend, but she didn't get to play with him very much before she got sick on Saturday night.  She didn't seem to be as interested in Buddy as Amelia was two years ago, which was good since I took Buddy away after Megan got sick and washed him in the washing machine.  This is what we wrote about Buddy:

"Megan had a lot of fun with Buddy Bear this weekend.  First, we talked about how Buddy had come to our house two years ago with Megan's big sister, Amelia.  Megan and Amelia dressed Buddy up and put bows in his hair.  Doesn't Megan look little in this picture?  She was only 1!

Megan decided that Buddy Bear is a girl, so she dressed Buddy up in a flowery blue dress this visit.  Megan said that Buddy liked her dress.  She pretended that Buddy had a loose tooth.  We also learned how grizzly bears catch fish - they stand in a river and open their mouths, and the fish just jump in their mouths.  Megan fed Buddy fish at dinner time.  Buddy liked the fish - she ate them all up!

Megan dressed Buddy in a nightgown that matched hers for bedtime.  Buddy slept in her very own bed, with fancy curtains and a heart quilt.  Buddy slept well in the bed.

Megan had a fun time with Buddy!"

The girls also pretended to ice skate with Buddy.  Here Megan is throwing him up in the air like the Olympics pairs figure skaters that we were watching on TV.

Mrs. Singer read our Buddy story to the class while Megan got to sit in the special rocking chair and provide additional details.

We brought juice for snack, while two of Megan's friends brought cream cheese and jelly heart shaped sandwiches, fruit cups and cookies.  There are extra snack helpers on party days, so it was a big snack!  They always do "Open, Shut Them" before they start to eat. 

We had such a fun morning together!

Random thoughts

Because Amelia is at school, Megan is playing at a friend's house, and Nathaniel is taking an extremely long nap, I thought I would post some random pictures that I've taken during the last week.  We haven't done anything super exciting, just more hanging around indoors while the temperature hovers around 0.

Oh, one day it got up to 20°, so I let the girls go play outside.  They wanted to check on their "fairy house" in the middle of our tiny prickly bush.  I guess it isn't prickly when you are wearing heavy snow mittens.  Amelia told me there were no fairies inside of it, and she figured that was because it was covered in snow.

Then, of course, they had to eat some snow.  And throw snow up in the air.  And take a nap in the snow.

The girls had fun trying on all my shoes one evening.  They particularly liked wearing my boots.  Oh, and by the way, the girls choose matching dresses themselves; they love to match!  I do not pick out their clothes anymore, and in fact, when I try to pick out their clothes, they refuse to wear whatever I suggest.

 Amelia is getting braver about taking a bath.  She voluntarily covered her face with bubbles the other night, and poured a pitcher of water over her head to clean herself off.

Nathaniel seems to not mind baths, for the most part.  One time I gave him a bath in the sink and he screamed and screamed, reminiscent of Amelia as an infant.  The next time I tried it while the girls were eating lunch so Amelia could experience the screaming herself, and of course he didn't scream at all.

Nathaniel is really good at holding his head up, so I thought I'd prop him up to take some photos.  Fail.

 He didn't mind toppling over, but he was a little mad when I tried to make him sit up again.

Ben can still hold him up with one hand, but I can't.  He's still too small to hold on my hip, so I've been using the baby Bjorn and the Moby wrap a lot.

And he still isn't thrilled about tummy time.  Here's a preview of his disdainful teenager look:

But he is smiling an awful lot now, and even starting to chuckle.

You may have noticed that I got photos of him in different clothes, to prove that he wears something other than the gray and white striped raccoon sleeper.  He does, I promise!  He wears that sleeper a lot because it's the one the girls picked out for him, and so they want him to wear it whenever it is clean.  But he does wear all the new clothes we received as gifts, and a lot of Noah's sleepers, too.