4mo

We've reached the 4 mo mark and even at this early age Ambrose has decided that he'll be a type A personality. At his last appt., the 2mo mark he weighed in at an average (literally 50th percentile) 10lbs 11oz. However average just isn't good enough, we've got to be the best. So at his appt yesterday he scoffed average and decided the ninety-second percentile was more his style. Yes folks, he weighs 17lbs 10oz, no wonder the car seat feels like I'm carrying a bronzed statue of this kid. Good grief. His above average-ness continues on to his height as well, he's abot 26inches tall, which lands him in the 82 percentile, and is head circumference (forgot the number) is in the 88th percentile. Big kid all around.

In other 4mo old news, he can roll over (sometimes) - I think he finally realized that he could get himself out of tummy time if he could just master the rolling....so he did. While he is getting better at tummy time, and occasionally enjoys it.....

he still spends some of is time like this...

Although he's getting better and better at sitting up,

He still dive bombs face first into the carpet without warning,

I'd love it if he'd master it completely because he hates laying down to play. So it's either the jumperoo/excersaucer thingy, being carried, or playing with his toys in the upright position.Since I feel a tinge of guilt letting him sit in the jumperoo thingy for long periods of time (for fear it will bring his physical development to a screeching halt .... stop googling things already Stephanie!) and carrying him for extended periods of time is also not a great option it look likes sitting up it is:)

We are paci free. we went through a stint where he was waking 9 times a night and I was grasping at straws and thought thar maybe the culprit was the paci, so we weaned him cold turkey. It wasn't near as bad as I thought, however, I don't think that the paci was the true source of the problem, I think it was me....Oh well. Once again, this is my first child, I'll do better with the second.

Due to the paci weaning, or at least partially due to that we have a semi thumb/finger sucker on our hands. I think that he might have ended up that way regardless because he always had his fingers in his mouth, but the taking away of the paci solidified it. He occasionally sucks on his thumb to fall asleep, but will usually take it out once he's fallen asleep. Glad I got the braces for me now because I'm sure we'll be spending oodles of money on his teeth when he's older.

We've started him on rice cereal. He's taken to it pretty well but still tends to wear more than he eats, in fact it's a small miracle if any of it makes it all the way down. However, lucky for us, he's in no danger of starving any time soon.

A guy can't even drink his bottle without the paparazzi getting all up in your bidness!

He is proving to be a pretty resilient child. Moving and living out of a suitcase tests any adult, let alone a child but he has done well so far. We are not out of the woods yet, but he did survive the trans oceanic flight, living at one grandparents house for 5 weeks, moving to the others grandparents house for a week, back to grandparents number 1 for the 4 days, a flight south, and now currently staying in a friends home (for those of you in Japan with us we are staying with Motley...poor guy , he had NO IDEA what he was signing up for when he said that we could stay with him) and hopefully in the next week we will be closing on our house and sleeping well with the first of many move behind us :)

Packing for our next chapter in life

Our vacation back home is coming to an end and we've started the tough part of packing up. John drove down on Thurs. with what we have affectionately deemed our Hillbilly Truck, the only thing missing from our hillbilly mobile was a granny camped out on top in her rocking chair. It was packed to the gills, to the point that when John made sharp turns he was attacked by boxes coming from every direction.



As we come to the next chapter in our life I am a mixed ball of emotions, excitement, nervous.... all of you who have been there and done this know exactly what I'm talking a bout. Every three years I go through the exact same emotions I felt on the first day of my freshman year, however, the friendships I have made and all the experiences that go along with this wonderful life far exceed any I had in high school. So with more excitement than fear we begin the next chapter in our life!



Here is my little helper helping me pack!

12-14 weels

I had every intention of writing this at his 12 week mark, but being at home and all the fun things that go with it have "gotten in the way" of my blogging.

Ambrose at 12 weeks

1. is 100% formula fed. Many of you know what a heart wrenching battle breastfeeding was for me and Ambrose, but he made the final decision and just quit (refused, screaming hold his breath...the whole nine yards )breastfeeding. Maybe it was Gods way of telling me that it was ok to let go, I couldn't force him to, and so with him having made the decision we were done with it. Ambrose continues to grow and thrive (which for some reason was a crazy fear), I still share a wonderful and special bond with him and most importantly he is SO much happier ( I kind of kick myself for not being ok with it sooner, my life could have been so much easier!!!!).

2. is still swaddled. He is escaping from it most every night, I think that it's probably time to either get a bigger swaddle, or just start weaning him from it. Hmm.... I'll let you know what we decide.

3. is still EXTREMELY inquisitive (he is SO his fathers son). People are always asking, does he always study things like this? and yes he does

4. smiles so much (well in between studying people and things).
Just last night he giggled for the first time and it was SO adorable!

5. still doesn't like tummy time. We've become very inventive and use our legs, couch cushions, our tummies and even this....

yup, there he is having tummy time on the steering wheel of the riding lawn mower :)

here's one of the few moments of tummy time that wasn't spent crying face down into the carpet.

6. has rolls like you read about. His knees disappeared and have been replaced by what we affectionately call his cinnamon rolls.

7. loves the water. We've been to a few public pools and he loves it,well for 30 minutes and then he's pooped, he's not in his car seat longer than a minute and he is out!!

my little guy is big, but good grief this pic makes him look like he's gigantic

8. crying has been replaced by a loud and obnoxious scream. The first time it happened was in the early hours of the morning at my grandmas house and I instinctively threw my hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. It only accomplished making him more mad and sending him into a crying and screaming fit...so loud I actually had to go outside on the deck so as to not wake the entire house (however waking the entire neighborhood I guess was OK).

9. has learned a new game. Sticking out his tongue. He especially loves it when we stick ours out at him, he'll stick his right back out at us. However, there doesn't have to be someone around for him to play the game, he'll stick it out at pup the dog, the bird on his mobile and even a random wall or clock. . It's adorable.

10. LOVES anything electronic... tv, phone, computer, i-touch....ANYTHING. He'll sit and look at any electronic item for days. Capturing a picture of him smiling is almost impossible because the second you pull out the camera he quits whatever adorable thing he was doing and stares at the camera. If he's particularly inconsolable we pull out the i-touch and he instantly stops crying, he doesn't even have to see it, he just hears the sounds of his favorite "app" and stops crying. I have been tempted by the baby Einstein videos, knowing he'll sit there forever, but I use my best parenting judgement and know that he has years of sitting in front of the TV and it should definitely NOT start at 3months.

Ambrose being entertained by my mom and her i-touch

11. loves being/looking outside (once again his fathers son).

Week (or two) in review

* Ambrose had his first road trip, the second half of the trip was fantastic, the first half....not so much. My mom and I and Ambrose rode together, and then my dad and sister rode together (partly due to the fact that my dad and sister had to return home a day earlier than my mom and I but mostly due to the fact that Ambrose comes with a ton of stuff, you should have SEEN the back of the car, you would have thought that it was a mini Babie's R Us warehouse..... and trust me each and every single item was used on the trip). At one of our stops I made the comment to my sister that the trip was going TERRIBLE, and my mom chimes in with " IT's not that bad, he's only crying (translate...screaming like I'm ripping his toenails out one by one) about 50% of the time". When in the heck does that mean that the trip is going well. Needless to say, when we arrived at our destination I promptly made plane ticket reservations to New Mexico. No way am I putting myself through that again, even if he did get his act together on the second half. No way am I chancing that he'll happen to have a good traveling day on the exact date we need him to.

* My brother got married this past weekend. It was beautiful and wonderful and all the things that weddings are supposed to be. Pretty much my entire extended family was there and it was so great to see all of them again.There were about a gabillion loving hands to hold Ambrose, which was fantastic.

*meeting my cousins kids for the first time. Gracyn is 2 and Michael is 8 months.

* I got my hair cut, and it feels great! With Ambrose's arrival I think I've actually done my hair a total of maybe 5 times (meaning shower one day, "do" hair the next). I needed something fairly maintenance free yet still cute. I think I found it,hopefully it doesn't fall into the "mom haircut" category.

not sure why the pic is so small and blurry, sorry, I'm still figuring out this whole blog thing. I'll find another pic, but you kind of get the gist right?

* Ambrose is getting so stinking cute! I'm totally biased, but even strangers will tell me how cute he is. I'll post more on him later :)

* John will be here in a week, and I am SO excited. I do have to say that Skype is the GREATEST thing ever! It has allowed John to be present for things like bath time, play time and everything in between. It's so wonderful that it's free, but these past 6 weeks have made me realize that even if it costs me an arm and a leg, I'll pay it. Seeing Ambrose smile at John through the computer is priceless!

hmmm a little help here people, why in the world. Can't wait for my dad to get home, he'll fix it!

On another note, if Oprah would stop promoting Skype every show maybe less people would use it and it would work a little better. I mean how in the heck are 12 million people supposed to be talking with loved ones and have every thing go smoothly. Enough with the "Where in the SKype are you" Oprah.

*I have decided to get braces. It's been something that has been on my "self improvement" list, and I figure that now is the time. I do have quite a few worries/fears, mostly shallow what will people think , but other ones too, like how bad will it hurt truly, will I get the results I'm looking for, will I wish I hadn't done it at all, will I miss eating all of the foods I love so much... I could go on and on. However, when I was in for the consult the Dr. did make me aware that a "side affect" could be weight loss (due to pain, slower eating, and not eating the same foods) and was that OK with me. Um....yea! I'm still carrying around some baby weight so bring on the braces (probably one of the more painful weight loss programs)! I'll let you know how the whole thing goes. I'm scheduled to get them put on July 8, just 3 days before I leave for New Mexico.

So close to a giggle

Here's a video of Ambrose in the bathtub. He is so close to that cute little giggle, I can hardly stand it :) I also like this video because it is an excellent example of his terribly fickle personality!

Culture shock

Well, we're back in the good old US of A, the trip went better than expected. I have no pictures because A. who the heck has time to take pictures with a 10 week old and all of the crazy amounts of stuff that goes along with them and B. they no longer allow photography on airplanes and I'm a rule follower like you read about, so that means no pics. Anywho, Ambrose did great on the first stretch of the trip, sleeping 6 out of the 8 hours on the Tokyo flight. Once we hit Seattle John and I parted ways and it was Ambrose and I on our own. I carried him in a wrap the entire time (those in Oki know exactly what that looks like, the rest of you I'll see if I can get a pic) and it worked like a charm. I didn't have to take him out during security and I was hands free the entire time, however, people looked at me like I had my son in some kind of torture device...oh well. IT sure beats wrangling a screaming kid while trying not loose any of the items I was schlepping through the air port. I thought that the first leg of the trip would be the tough part for Ambrose, but like everything else about this kid, he never seems to be predictable..SO once we hit the states he started to fall apart. So from Washington to Utah he cried for about 30 minutes of the flight, and from Utah to South Dakota he cried for almost the entire thing. Greaaaat! Lets just say that when it was time to get off that flight every single person waited for me to get off first ( I kid you not). I will never give that "please don't sit by me lady with the baby look" to anyone ever again.



It feel great to be back home, but there are a few things that I'm getting used to, I guess you could call it "culture shock."

• The weather: in most parts of the world, it's summer, but not here in good ol South Dakota. Today the high is 46, yup 46 degrees Fahrenheit. It's the equivalent of an Okinawan winter...it's awful. My blood has thinned significantly and I'm FREEZING.


• My ID: no longer frantically looking for my ID prior to entering any store has taken some getting used to, but I've finally quit offering the Wal-MArt greeter proof of who I am.


• Fruit: the selection quality and price has prompted me to eat dangerously large amounts of fruit, it's awesome!


• speed limit: let's just say I'm in the slow lane a majority of the time. While driving I happened to notice I'm not surrounded by my "usual" driving company. I looked in front of me the other day and noticed an elderly lady driving ( and I wasn't even tailgating her), and then looked in my rear view mirror and saw a brand new driver with is hands at 10 and 2 (that's right isn't it?). And let's not even get into merging at these top speeds, let just say you don't want to be the person behind me.


• And while we're on the topic of driving, my car (well truck actually) looks like something that should be driving over cars at an arena while men in muscle T-shirts and hats are cheering it on, rather than something that is driving through a city. I've driven it a total of two times because a) I can't back it out of the garage, my dad has to B) I can't park the thing to save my life. (the truck isn't that big, it's a Toyota tundra, but compared to what I was driving in Oki, it's ginormous!)


• the glorious wonderful help: my family has been such a huge help! Ambrose begins to cry in the morning (promptly at 6:50 which soooo beats the 5:30 wake up call I used to get) and before I can even put my glasses on my face one of my wonderful family members is there to take him, feed him and change him. I can wake up on my own, grab a cup of coffee and just sit for a second...it's fantastic. It so make me wish we lived closer to home!

Needless to say, I feel like after having done that I can do anything!

I've started a post about our adventures across the ocean, but I want to get some pics up for John first. He's growing up fast and gets more and more adorable every day!

I've included pics of our every day life, things that seem same old same old when you do them day in and day out, but if I were away from Ambrose, those are the things I'd miss the most...so hon, here they are.

eating: he no longer is content to just look up at us, you have to do bottle acrobatics and follow his gaze around the room

Playing: he tracks things like crazy now and loves to always have something to look at. The Bumbo provides him with a new view, he doesn't last long, but seems to like it while he's in there.
just chillin: we spend a lot of time just hanging out with friends and family

Bath time: our favorite time of the day :) We got that new tub that looks like a bucket (but costs way more than a bucket), and he loves it!