Max 23 Months

I can't believe my little Maxi is a month away from turning 2! I have already sent out his party evite and am looking to make it a Thomas the Train birthday party. He has started to talk more saying Bottle, Girl, Water, Bath, Ball, Car, daisy, agua, baby although he doesn't pronounce it too well. But it is slowly starting to come together which is nice. We believe his terrible two's have started over the last week because he has become very defiant and is defintely trying to test his boundaries. At first I thought it was because of me and being gone at work all the time but now I'm realizing it is just the terrible two's. He has been falling down a lot lately and always has a scratch or a bruise to show for it. We had our family pictures in upstate CT which turned out great. The drive was a bit of a pain because it was past the kids bedtime on our way home and they were both a bit testy but overall it was a great experience.

Max has started to help out around the house. If I ask him to get me a diaper for Jake he is able to go into his room and open the cabinet and bring me one. He also is able to throw away his own diaper or put something in the garbage if I ask him to. If I ask him to tidy up his toys he sometimes does it. One night we were doing naked time in Jake's room when Max pointed to his privates and ran into his bathroom, sat on his potty and peed. I couldn't believe it and I was so proud I rewarded him with a piece of chocolate. Of course he hasn't done it since ha!

Max is incredibly intelligent and just needs to watch us do something and is able to replicate it. Not sure that is always such a good thing since he now knows how to turn on the fireplace and open locks. But I have to give him credit for picking it up so fast. He is able to look at cards and pick out what I ask him. He adores his little brother and always brings over a toy for him to play with.

He has had a terrible rash on his butt which is slowly clearing up. He is still sleeping like a champion and is becoming such a big boy. We just decorated the basement with stickers and he especially LOVES the cars. I have been working on the house a bit since he has messed it up quite a bit. Things are slowly starting to look better. Tonight we made our very own pizza at home and it turned out so delicious. Max also helps out when I bake cookies and cupcakes and loves to eat the dough. He plays with playdo a lot lately and still loves books and his trains and cars. He watches Thomas every day.

Halloween was so much fun with the kids. Max was Yoda and Jake a cow. They both looked adorable. We went to the community party at the clubhouse followed by trick or treating around the community with all the other kids. It was a blast. The Croppers joined us along with Delia who cooked us dinner and watched Jake when we went door to door with Max. He carried his own bucket and picked out his own candy. The older he gets the more fun we have. It really is something special watching your children grow.

Jake 6 Months

Little Jakorino...or shall we say definitely not so little is 20 pounds now and rolling around like a gymnast. He first started rolling over from back to belly but was unable to roll back and cried like crazy the entire night because he hated being on his belly. It only took him about a week to learn how to roll full circle and now he prefers to sleep on his belly which is great for his head which we still have one month to correct. Our families don't think he will need a helmet, but we will have to see what his doctor says at our next appointment. We switched him from rice cereal to oatmeal since it was constipating him a lot. He has it for breakfast with his formula mixed in and then the bottle to finish. We started him on butternut squash and then gave him pear as well. He loves both which is great, however for the past few days he has had severe diarrhea so I took him off of it for a day and am giving him soy formula instead. He got his first tooth at 5.5 months and a few days later his second one on the bottom appeared. He now has two adorable little teeth and is still teething like crazy.

Jake loves to giggle and has become very loud. He has started to babble and today even sounded out mamamama. He is MUCH louder than Max was but is such a happy baby it is adorable to watch. He is on a size two nipple now and has even used a size 3 from time to time. He is wearing a size 3 diaper which is becoming a bit small so soon I'll be putting him in 4's.

Jake still adores his big brother and looks for him all day long. Once he spots him he just looks at him with the biggest smile and big puppy dog eyes. He is sleeping so well these days and rarely ever gets up during the night. He still can't sit on his own but sits in the bumbo without a problem. His feeding schedule is still every three hours six ounces with one eight ounce feed and his nighttime feed 7 ounces. He eats solids twice a day and I'll be introducing pureed apple into the mix now.

I just organized his entire closet having to pack up all his clothes size newborn to six month. He now has 9-12 months in his closet which still baffles me. He is just such a loving little Buddha baby and we really lucked out with him. My hair has finally stopped falling out at the rapid pace it was. I barely have any hair left and I have baby hairs all over the front which looks awful. I am so glad it has all stopped and hope it will fully grow in again. I am back at my pre pregnancy wait before I had Jake but still ten pounds over from when I had Max.
In two weeks we have our doctors appointment for Jake and I'm just so excited to see what my big juice bug learns next!

Max turns 22 Months!

Little man Max isn't so little anymore. I can't believe how much he has grown and is now a little boy. I took him to get a haircut again last weekend and it looks super cute. We have decided to let his hair grow out, I'm curious what it will look like. We had a speech therapist come over and take a look at him since the doctor recommended we do it at 20 months if he wasn't speaking yet. At 21 months we had them come but he had just started saying a few words so they weren't too concerned. They just said he was a bit delayed to call again if he weren't talking 2. He has been saying Baby, Ball, Car, Bubbles, Bottle and Daisy. Hasn't tried to say much else, but he does say those words a lot.
Every night we do bath time and recently I have been putting bubbles into the bathtub which he loves. I try to get him to blow the bubbles since he seems to have a difficult time blowing things.
He still loves to touch his private parts and stick his finger into his poopy hole which cracks us up. Every night during our bed time routine he just runs in circles and makes himself dizzy. Today he was running around outside and hit the pavement pretty hard. He now has a nice shiner on his forehead just in time for our family photo shoot tomorrow.
We have taken him off his morning and afternoon bottle and he now only gets a nighttime bottle. We plan on taking that away from him in two weeks or so. He still loves books, and recently Jan has started to draw with him and he enjoys it. He is still obsessed with cars, trucks and planes when we are outside. He is a total ladies man outside with all the girls always wanting to be around him.

Jakorino turns 5 months old!

What a crazy month it has been for our little or shall we say big Jakorino. He had his 4.5 Month check up where he weighed in at a healthy 19 pounds and was in the 95 percentile for height, weight and head. The doctor was concerned about his flat head and his size (he went form 50th to 95th percentile since his last visit) and wanted him to get an ultrasound. We took him to Greenwich hospital the weekend I was leaving for New Orleans. Everything looked great but they wanted us to see a brain specialist just to make sure. Steve took him the following week and it was confirmed that things looked good but that he might need a helmet. He told us to come back in two months to see if things got better and to not put him on his back unless he was sleeping. So we have been putting him in things that sit him up or on tummy time if we can't hold him. He is still unable to roll over, the doctor said due to his size he might not be able to do it for a while. He does sleep on his side at night which is great. I went to New Orleans for the weekend with my girlfriends and I had a great time with him. I did have a very difficult time being away from my children though and I'm not sure I will be doing that again without him. It was just too difficult for me since I work so much and only get to see them on the weekends.
Jake is the most adorable little guy and when I come home from work and he hears my voice and sees me he lights up like a Christmas tree. It is the best feeling to come home to and he can brighten even the worst of days.
He has been teething like crazy and chewing on his entire hand. I still can't see anything poking through but my guess would be six months we will see the first ones arrive. He had a bit of difficulty falling asleep at 4.5 months and would cry for hours. We finally had to feberize him again which took three days and things got back on track.
Jake adores his brother and is always looking for him and smiling at him. And his brother adores him too and is always hugging him and showering him with kisses.
When I get home early I love to take him to his room and do naked time with him while he is on the floor. He loves it and it is a great bonding experience for us. We have him Rice Cereal for the first time last weekend. He didn't understand the concept of swallowing yet but hopefully soon. We started him on rice cereal a month after Max, not on purpose but it just turned out that way. Next month we start him on pureed veggies. He has been eating six ounces every three hours and goes to sleep at 6pm until 7am the next morning. I think he only got up once the entire last month, he is a great little sleeper knock on wood. Jan has upped some of his feedings to 8 ounces because she said he seemed hungry after feeds. I got him his first halloween costume: a cow. It is so cute, I can't wait to see him in it! We decorated our front stoop and the community is going to have a little party for the kids on Halloween which I'm looking forward to taking the kids to.

Jake turns 4 Months

My little Jakorino is 4 Months!!!! He is cuter and sweeter than ever and never stops smiling. He really is the happiest baby. The past two weeks he has been much harder to put down at night. He cries and cries and we are trying to ferberize him but haven't been as tough as we should be. Maybe because we are on day three today and he had bad diarrhea all day and is teething we took him out of his crib again. Bad choice we know but it's hard to have him cry it out when he isn't feeling well. I gave him some tylenol and he went down real easily after Steve rocked him a bit. ****It took us four days to feberize him and he now goes down with no crying for the past two nights! We have him on soy formula for 24 hours while he has diarrhea. ***We thought we would have him on it for 1-2 days however after only 2 oz of regular formula he got diarrhea again. Jan said he seems to be doing much better on soy and sleeps much better, which we have noticed as well. Therefore we are switching him to Soy formula.

He can now roll to the side and lift himself up. He still has a bobble head when he sits in his blue boppy but he is getting stronger and strong each day.

He still has a flat head which has me concerned, so we will have to see what the doctor says when we go in for his shots at 4.5 months. He coo's and has said mammamama a few times to Jan and I. He loves to be in the bathtub with his brother and always smiles at him. I can tell he adores his brothers and I can't wait for them to be old enough to really play together. He truly is the cutest little baby!

Max turns 21 Months

Max is growing like a weed. He has sprouted into a tall skinny little boy and is sooo tiny. I don't think he has been eating as much as he used to, or maybe he just has a real fast metabolism. Either way he hasn't gained any weight the past 3 months, he has been 24 pounds. He has added three words to his vocabulary besides mamma and dadda. The other day I was going over his word cards and a picture of a ball came up. I asked him what it was and he goes "ba". I asked him to get me one and he returned with two balls. I was stunned! He now says ball, although he doesn't pronounce the LL, car and "bebe". I have placed more of an emphasis on the first letter for example Bbbbball, or ccccccar so he gets the hang of it. And it seems to be working! We have a speech therapist coming this Friday to evaluate him and she him not pronouncing words like Ball so clearly was due to him still drinking out of a bottle. So now we are trying to wean him from them. He now gets his morning rice milk from a sippy cup which takes forever for him to drink.

Max still LOVES Thomas the Train and adores watching him on tv or on dads iphone. He is such a big boy now that he takes dads iphone, and watches thomas on the couch with it. He has started to take a bath every night again now and he has so much fun playing with all his toys in there and exploring how things work. His recent discovery was this cup that has two holes in it and how it has water coming out of it.

He has so much energy and just loves to run around and play ball. Whenever he is outside and hears a plane he starts screaming at the top of his longs and pointing to the sky. He also gets sooo excited every time he sees a car or a truck. It can get rather loud when we are driving somewhere since he seems them all over.

He still adores his brother and the dogs and tonight he actually pushed Chloe into his room. It was the funniest thing to watch. Daisy loves to chase him around and he can't stop laughing when she does it. I can now ask him for a kiss or kussi and he will turn around and plant a big one on me which melts my heart. He has the sweetest reaction when I come home from work and is so excited to see me. He can open doors with no problem which he started doing last month I believe, but its so strange to see him do it. He seems to like Jan, our nanny and she seems to be doing a good job with the boys. I have seen her once in the past five weeks since I'm always working but from what Steve tells me she is doing a great job wit the boys and is always in a great mood. As long as my boys are happy I'm happy :)

Max now knows how to make his cars go by winding them up backwards. I have tried to show him for a while now and he has finally gotten the hang of it. We still brush his teeth by singing the ABC's and I'm trying to teach him how to spit it out now.

Max is OBSESSED with his peru peru or perulingu (private parts) as we like to call it. He touches himself all the time,

I guess that's what it's like having a boy haha

He still likes to cling on to us when we are out somewhere and is still rather shy at first until he warms up. He is just such a good boy and I couldn't be a prouder mom. I'm already starting to think about his second birthday and how I want it to be thomas the train themed haha

On a side note, both my sisters have had wonderful news. My little sister is pregnant with her first and I'm sooo excited about that. And my older sister just had her third little girl, Samantha Zoe, born on September 3rd. Congratulations to the both of them, I am one lucky Aunti!

I bought Max his first froggy Potty and when I brought it home he thought it was so cool and so I took his pants off to show him how it works. He sat on it but nothing happened and so he stands up and not even 10 seconds later he takes a piss right on the carpet. Steve is yelling at me to go get a diaper which I went to fetch. As I'm coming down the stairs I hear Steve getting mad at Max and I thought he had just peed again. As I round the corner a giant crap the size of an adult males crap is on the floor. Operation potty training was an epic fail!

Max turns 20 Months!

I can't believe my oldest child is four months away from turning 2 years old! It makes me sooo sad! I had the best 3.5 months with my two children before I headed back to work this past week. I really enjoyed being a full time mom to my children while I was home and I know Max loved having me around so much. It definitely hasn't been easy being away from them at work after seeing them so much but I have no choice at the moment. Max has gotten so tall he can easily open doors now and reach things he never could before. He is still not talking although he has said bubbles a few times and babbles much clearer as if he were about to turn the switch on the speak. I am so excited to hear him talk for the first time, until then I will wait patiently and teach him as much as I can. He understands a ton and so I can tell him to do things and he does them but he just doesn't say them yet.

Max is still head over heals for his brother and has become a huge cuddler. He will just hug you and cuddle with you which melts my heart. I definitely try to take it all in knowing that I only have a few more years left of him wanting to cuddle with his mommy. Max seems to be enjoying his new nanny Jan and so far I am happy with what has been going on since I left. It is hard to replace Maria but I think we have found someone who fits in well. I have set up cameras around the house in the basement, Jakes room and the living room so I can see the kids when I'm at work. It really does make it a little easier because I can see them and what they are up to. I try to move the cameras so they know I'm watching them but Max hasn't grasped the concept of me watching them and waving to me quite yet.

He is still drinking Rice Milk and has been off of dairy. We no longer feed him milk or yogurt but he does get cheese. He still loves his fruit for breakfast, mainly rasberries, blackberries, strawberries and banana. He gets one snack after his afternoon nap and no more juices. After reading the south beach diet I have changed everyones diet in the hopes of nobody getting diabetes down the road. He can eat with a spoon although we still let him eat with his hands most of the time. He loves having toast with hummus which is great and healthy.

Max has figured out how to ride his new motorcycle we got him which makes me laugh. He still doesn't know how to steer but that will come with time. One thing we don't have to worry about with him is sharing. He gives everything he has to anyone who is around. If we are at a store he gives the cashier his toy, if we are on a plane he offers his food and drinks to strangers. I almost have to teach him to stop sharing so much haha. He still sleeps great at night, going to bed at 7pm and sleeping until 7am. He takes his two hour nap at 12:30 after he watches thomas the train. He loves books and we read a ton to him. He is still obsessed with his toy cars we got him. He has about 15 of them and they are always all over the house. He is all boy, loving trucks and cars.

I am so blessed two have two beautiful healthy boys who are so happy and loving.

Jake 3 Months

My little Jakorino bambino as I like to call him, or baby Jake as he is known in the house. He is the happiest little guy and always cooing and smiling. He started teething around 2.5 months and is slobbering up a storm, similar to what Max did. He has been fussier than usual and not sleeping much during the day which got me to read a book on sleeping habits. It said to put him down earlier to bed and went into why sleep is so important. I put him down a half hour earlier and he slept 10 hours at a clip with no dream feed. Incredible. We now put him down at 6 or 6:30 depending how what he nap schedule was like during the day. Our nighttime routine consists of a bath and a feed and then he goes down in the my little lamb. We are going to start putting him down in his crib tomorrow night since he hates sleeping in it but he is old enough now and must learn.

He is still eating 4-6 ounces at each feeding and we have switched him back to his regular emfamil from his gentleease formula when he turned three months. He seems to be doing fine on it. Ever since I went back to work Steve has been in charge of the nighttime feedings. Jake has been doing great and goes down at 6:30 and will get up at 4am for a feed since Steve prefers doing that rather than a dream feed. He has had a bit of diarrhea lately, I assume from teething but it doesn't seem to be too bad. He can now hold on to things and still hates tummy time and can't roll over or push himself up. He is getting better with the bjorn as long as he faces outward.

He is just too cute for words and his hair has grown in much faster than Max's did. He reacts to my voice when I'm around and it calms him when he sees my face. His brother still adores him and I can't wait for Jake to be old enough to enjoy his brother.

Max and Jake

After shaving Jakes head he looks more and more like a darker version of Max:

Jake:



Max:

California

We took the boys to La Jolla, San Diego for two weeks of fun in the sun. Max was whining a ton in the car on the way to the airport until we realized he was just in pain from wearing shoes that were too small for him. The poor boy had bad blisters on the back of his feet so he had to walk around in his socks. We made sure we got Max his own backpack for the flight along with some toys and dvds we gave him on the flight to play with. He loved his new Thomas the Train backpack on wheels and walked all over with it. It was the cutest thing ever:



The kids each had their own seat however Max preferred to sit on my lap most of the time. Steve sat with Jake on one side of the aisle and I sat with Max. I definitely had the harder job since Max wouldn't sit still despite it being hours past his bedtime. He never slept on the flight out there but he also didn't cry. He was wild however and I had my job cut out for myself.

My parents rented a beautiful house right on on the Ocean and we had Ria there to watch the kids when we went out. The house was not very child friendly so we had 10 gets on all the stairs. Jukes got Max and Jake the sweetest welcome basket when we arrived:



We took Max to the San Diego Zoo on a very hot day and he wasn't too impressed by it:












I ended up getting the longest cuddles ever, only to find out that night that he wasn't feeling well and got Croup again (third time in last 3 months):






Max went to camp the day after we arrived. He was supposed to go for two weeks but got Croup after three days. When he went back he cried the entire time so we let him stay home. Here he is on his way to the first day of camp:



Each morning Ria and Max would go down to the beach and play. He loved being with Ria:







A day at the beach with his cousins:








Grandpa playing with Max:






Max, Ria, Mike, Steve and me went to Seaworld one afternoon and Max actually seemed to enjoy it. It was a great day: