2 Months && 23 Months

Christmas happened this month!

Garrick loved helping decorate the tree..."pretty tree!"

Opening presents at home Christmas morning

Christmas gift from Dad: Mater from Cars. The kitty is the toy he chose from Toys R Us

Zeke changes so much every day

Highlights from Zeke's 2nd Month:

• Found his hands and loves staring at them, trying to bring them to his face
• Staring at toys-especially likes to stare at the toy bar on his rocker/bouncer
• Weighs 13lbs5oz and has grown over 2 inches
• Started to smile :) 

Started napping in his crib this month!

Highlights from Garrick's 23rd Month:

• New phrases in rotation: "what happened?," "what't that?" "come on!" "Zekie puked." "Roscoe/Remmie come!" 
• Garrick has become super interested in nursery rhymes and will usually request either "wheels on the bus," "twinkle, twinkle," or "1, 2, buckle my shoe.." I am amazed by him every day... by what he remembers and is able to communicate. He has some parts of his books memorized as well. We love how interested he is in books!
• He has become very particular with clothes.. and prefers not to wear any. We have a hard time getting him to wear pants of any kind! He usually does not want his diaper changed or to wear a diaper in general. We are still a long ways away from potty training though I think.
• He knows "1, 2, 3!" and has a habit of assigning numbers to things..for a while it was always "two"..."two puppies, two cars, etc." lately it has been "six....six mommies, six spoons"
• Garrick is occasionally very possessive and demanding. He has an aversion to the rocking chair and does not like for Mom to sit in it alone, with Zeke, or with Garrick. He will say "No, rock! Couch!" 
• Garrick's language is progressing but we usually still have to translate most of what he says. Some words include "Memmie"-->"Remmie"..."Bock"-->"Rock"..."Sax"-->"Fruit snacks"..."Bopper"-->"Diaper"

One Month && 22 Months

Our first month with Zeke was a whirl-whind as I'm sure it is for all parents of newborns. Today marks Z's 8th week earthside, and I am only just recently able to breathe and consider things like the blog and the outside world in general.

Some highlights of Zeke's first month:

• While Easy-E maintained a relatively calm demeanor, he did develop some pretty intense acid reflux, which I could assume by his screaming and thrashing, caused him some pain. 
• Additionally, he became quite congested and therefore had difficulty sleeping considering his laborious breathing.  I was informed that acid reflux can cause chronic congestion but there was also the possibility of a respiratory infection causing the drainage.. begging the question, what came first, the reflux or the congestion?
• Despite the reflux/throwing up copious amounts of milk, Z was gaining weight well.  Thus his practitioner determined he was what is called a "happy spitter" leading me to stare at her blankly. My poor baby didn't seem happy when he was screaming from tummy pain.
• I finally got in to see the Dr who gave Z a round of antibiotics.  After a few days, his congestion started clearing immensely.
• Aside from the congestion and reflux, Z did pretty stinking good his first month. He slept a lot during the day which helped me recover and spend some time wrangling an active toddler. 

Garrick's first month as an older brother went fairly well! I was pretty nervous that G would have lots of negative emotions/behaviors when we introduced him to Zeke but it was love at first sight.  During the first few weeks of Z's life, older brother, G, seemed to finally comprehend what Mom & Dad meant by "nice," "gentle," "soft," that we'd been coaching him for months without progress. 

Current highlights in the world of Garrick at 22 months:

• Garrick continues to prefer the floor in his bedroom over his bed, causing me some distress.
• Seemingly overnight, G turned into quite the chatterbox!! After Zeke was born, Garrick had a lot of daddy time spent reading books and talking. They would spend hours alone together. I would wake up from a nap and could barely believe my ears as I heard Garrick naming new animals & things around the room.  
• Our new chatterbox has troubles with the letter "R" and to my dismay calls "Remmie" "Mommie." This has been pretty confusing at times and got even more annoying when he shortened "Remmie" to "Rem" aka  "Mommie" to "Mom."
• Garrick has started getting into "coloring" more than ever and enjoys short periods of time with crayons, markers, stickers or stamps. We think this has lots to do with time spent with his older cousins at Grandma's house!
• The haircut: G has the fastest growing hair ever! What was supposed to be a cute stylish haircut turned into a disastrous and uneven buzz cut when we sat down this 22 month old and he threw one of his biggest tantrums to date.
• Garrick got to really play in the snow for the first time! We got a huge snowfall in November and G liked following Alex around as he shoveled, falling in the snow and rolling around, and eating snow chunks. 

Introducing Ezekiel James

Baby Boy Ezekiel James Guggenmos was born on Thursday, November 12th 2015 at 1:48am.

Huge Thank you to Emily and Lou for the newborn photos of Ezekiel. I can't stop obsessing over each and every one

Our first impressions:

• He's so tiny!! Probably due to lugging around a 25b toddler around, but our 8lb4oz, 20" bundle seemed so miniature to us. 
• He is BLONDE!? This was almost as shocking to me as Garrick coming out having tons of dark hair. Zeke has the most velvety soft blonde peach fuzz-thus making him look like his brother right away.
• He's amazing. Ten fingers, ten toes. Perfect as can be.
• What a good baby! Unlike Garrick who came out screaming and rarely stopped, Zeke was incredibly calm for the entirety of his first couple weeks.  I was amazed as I looked at my minutes-old baby calmly observing his surroundings and eventually sleeping soundly in 4-hour stretches for the first couple days. 

Garrick's first impressions:

• Baby? Brother? Requests to "hug," "hold," & "kiss" then began and haven't stopped 
• Garrick immediately liked Zeke but gave me the cold shoulder for weeks after Zeke was born. He didn't want me to hold him and wouldn't even say "mom." When asked "do you love mom?" he'd say "no." Lots of daddy time ensued to his delight!