Harvest Day

As I've mentioned in previous posts, we planted a vegetable garden this year.  We've lost a few plants so far (I tried starting my own tomato plants indoors but they didn't make the transition outdoors) but we've also had several plants come up already.  We were actually already able to harvest our spinach and made an awesome strawberry spinach salad the other night, straight from the garden.  Yum!

 

Mother's Day

As I mentioned before - Hank's dedication was on Mother's Day, so after church we invited some family and friends over for brunch.  Not everyone was able to make it, but we did have my dad, Ben's dad and brothers, and the Keelers and Millers over.  It was the perfect celebration. 

Like Lucy, Ben planted me a tree for Hank as my Mother's Day present.

 

It's a plum tree that is supposed to eventually produce fruit we can eat - a nice addition to our new vegetable garden.

Here's Lucy's tree this year..

And here is the tree last year (so funny to think I was a couple weeks pregnant with Hank there!)

It doesn't look like the tree has grown much, but I think it's filled out a lot.  And you can see one of the new flower beds Ben made for me.

I didn't get man pictures from brunch, but here is my dad holding Hank...

And Brandon and Ben with Hank...

After nap time, I wanted to snag a few pictures of the kids with their nice outfits on... sorry for the picture overload!

I'm still learning everything on my camera (my sweet friend Emily actually came over a few days after Mother's day and gave me a little tutorial) - but we've been able to get a ton of great pictures of the kids already!

And of course - JJ and a favorite already...

After our little photo session - we headed to my mom's house to celebrate with my extended family.  It ended up being a great, relaxing day (I'm not going to lie, it was a little stressful leading up to the celebration, buying outfits, prepping the house, getting food ready - but once that was all done, I got to sit back and relax with family, friends and of course two of my favorite people...)

Hank's Dedication

 We dedicated Hank at church last weekend on Mother's Day.  It was a very special day for our family to stand before the congregation at church and commit to raising Hank in the church and to do our best job to teach Hank about Christ and His love for us.  We love our church and we love all of the people we have connected with at church, I hope some day Hank will say the same thing about Grace and come to love it as his home away from home.

My Mom, Dad, Ben's family, Jadyn, the Millers and the Keelers joined us during the service.

The Wehner clan (plus Jadyn!)

A photographer took pictures before the service - so nice to get a picture of all four of us, even if Hank was a a little sleepy and sucking away on his thumb.

Thankful on Tuesday

Lucy is thankful for:
1. Bethy
2. Corky (Courtney)
3. Mommy

Again, I am amazed at what jogs this little girl's memory.  We see Beth and Courtney a lot and they spoil Lucy way too much, but we actually haven't seen either of them for over a week, so I'm not sure what made her think of them.  Glad she did though, because I am definitely thankful Lucy has such great "Aunts" that live near by.

Also - I tried to get her to say something beside "Mommy" for the last one, but she was too distracted and wouldn't tell me anything else... so I'll take it :)

I am thankful for:
1. My sweet cousin Alli who is home from college and watched the babes on Friday night so Ben and I could go out to dinner and to a friends engagement party.
2. Our Food Club group - we've been getting together with friends once a month for over a year now, sharing good food, good wine, and good conversation.
3. The sunshine.  Enough said.

No fun pictures - I have a bunch to upload, but I'm afraid I'll never get this post up if I wait to get the pictures off my camera!

Big Sis, Lil Brother

I still haven't figured out anything on our new camera - but I love how I can capture each little face these babies make because the speed of the camera is about 100x's faster than our old one.

Here's Lucy showing a little too much love to Hank (which is what typically happens whenever we are all playing together)...

 

That girl loves her baby brother.  Her she is singing to him.  I just love how much she wants to be with him and take care of him.

Hank's On the Move!

Ok - this is my final update on Hank (for this week!) He isn't officially "crawling", but he is getting up on all fours and lunging forward and can get across the room doing this little move.  And he is getting faster and faster - I'm learning I can't just set him down in a room and walk away anymore. 

Hank - Solids

As I mentioned before, Hank's had a busy couple of weeks... I'm starting to make the realization that we are officially moving out of the itty, bitty baby days... crazy.  Here he is starting solid foods.  Our doctor wanted us to get as close to 6 months as possible, but she said we might want to start a little sooner since Hank is such a big boy.

I started to get the feeling that he was ready because of his eagerness to play with and drink water from a spoon and because of his constant needing to nurse - I just knew I wasn't getting him enough food anymore.  So we waited till just after his 5 month "birthday" and opened up a jar of sweet potatoes my friend Heather had given me that her son no longer needed.  Let's just say this little guy was beyond ready - he was leaned forward, mouth open, and grabbing the spoon out of our hands in eagerness to get the sweet potatoes into his mouth faster.  He finished two containers of sweet potatoes and we stopped here there, but I think he might have kept going if we let him. 

Since then we've tried avocado, pears and oatmeal as well, and Hank loved them all (I ended up only going 2 days between introducing foods, instead of the recommended 3-5 because Hank was so eager and we don't have many allergies in our families).  I'm planning to make my own food, so those were easy foods to get started with (since they really just need to be mashed), but I've already started to puree and freeze some veggies in preparation for Hank's expanding appetite.

I also moved to feeding him 2 times a day right away because he did seem so hungry, and he was completely ready for it... apparently I should have started this a little sooner!  We actually fed him 3 meals today and he ate at all three, so I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm happy to keep his belly full!

 Getting after it...

 Happy boy...

 Guess who else wanted to try sweet potatoes...

 Leaned back in for more...

 But oh, look what I found!

I think he can't decide which he likes better, the food or his thumb.  The past couple times I have fed him he has sucked on his thumb until I brought the spoon to his mouth, he then grabs the spoon shoves it in his mouth, and when I pull it away, he pops his thumb right back in.  Needless to say this creates a bit of a messy situation!

Hank - Sitting Up

 
Hank has gotten better and better at sitting unassisted.  I still wouldn't walk away from him without several pillows in the area, but he can pretty much hold himself up.  He just needs to get that whole diving after toys thing down.

 Luckily when he falls, he's still all smiles!

 Testing out his new shoes I got for his dedication...

 Love him so much...

Hank 5 Months

Ok - so Hank is now a little over 5 months old and has been changing so much the past couple days... I'm going to try to make sure I only include stuff from months 4-5 here.

EATING - he is on pretty much the same schedule, eats about every 3.5hrs.  (7:30am, 11am, 2:30pm, 5:30pm, 7pm and 4:30am) I'm starting to feel like this boy could eat a little fewer times during the day (I'd love to get rid of that middle of the night feeding), but at the same time I feel like he's hungry, so hopefully we'll reach a better balance this next month.

SLEEP - sleep was hit or miss this month.  At the beginning of the month I thought we totally had things down, Hank was sleeping two 1.5-2hr naps and a third shorter nap, but towards the end of the month he went a little wacky, sometimes only napping 30-45 minutes at a time.  I wasn't sure if it was teething, sickness, a growth spurt or a combination of the three, so I just kept feeding and rocking him as much as I could... Little wearing, but I have to keep telling myself that this is only a phase.  Oh, Hank also decided he was going to wake 2-3 times at night (after giving me a couple nights of sleeping all the way through)... so we have been a little exhausted the past couple weeks.  He still almost never cries when he is going down to sleep, and often ends up playing in his crib a lot if he wakes early, so I guess I don't have too much to complain about!

Hank has been screaming a lot and cooing, and laughs and smiles all the time.  He is an extremely happy and laid back baby.  He has been getting better at sleeping/being happy in the car and has had longer awake periods so we've been able to get places more often.  He has been getting better and better at sitting up, but still needs support and has gotten better at rolling but still doesn't do it a lot at play time.  He loves, and I mean LOVES jumping.  He has gotten a lot of use out of the jumparoo and when he isn't it that he loves jumping in my lap. 

He still loves, and again I mean LOVES sucking his thumb.  He always falls asleep sucking his thumb every night and he often tries to suck it throughout the day. When he isn't sucking on his thumb he likes to play with and suck on his toes.  He has been finding more and more joy in watching and playing with Lucy - and she loves playing with  him, I'm excited to see their relationship develop over the next couple of months.

STATS - we didn't go to the doctor this month, but I think Hank weighs about 18 pounds. 

So I lied... these pictures were actually taken with our new camera - but I have no idea how any of it works (accept how to push the button to take a picture) so nothing fancy here! 

This first series shows how wild this little man is.  He loves to get his feet and arms going when he is laying on his back.

Can you tell how much he loves to smile?

Here's Lucy at 5 months... still looking pretty similar if you ask me! But I think I see a bit of a unique look.

Teddy pictures were not that succesfull... one look at this guy and he was diving after him.

I'm guessing you can tell where this was headed...

But I grabbed a shot of little man after he had fallen over.. peeka boo!

 

 I tried for a couple more, but toys seem to only go one place these days...

 

Woops, fell back over...