Winter Trip to West Yellowstone

Nate's parent's are currently in the middle of remodeling their entire house. The first two floors are mostly done, but they recently started the top floor and wanted a little help, so we ventured north over President's Day weekend to help with construction and so the kids could enjoy some time at Grandma and Grandpa's.

We left Saturday morning and got there by early afternoon. Dayton was pretty excited for his first trip to Grandma and Grandpa's and was an angel in the car all the way there and back.

Even though Scott and Alice were in the middle of construction when we got there, they took a little break so the kids could go play outside in the snow. One of the first orders of business was for Grandpa to create a good sled hill with the tractor. Felicity was happy to help. I should note that they've had plenty of snow this winter and had 3-4 feet in their yard and many piles of plowed snow that were even higher.

 

And here's a little video of some sledding:

 

It did snow a couple of days while we were there adding a few more inches. The girls would have loved to play in the snow more than they did, but I had to stay inside to take care of Dayton. And I didn't mind too much since the Olympics were on, and I'm a bit of an Olympic junkie.

Nate did take a few breaks to go outside with them and ended up building a little snow cave.

Bridget thought the cave was pretty cool and was sad to have to leave it when we left for home the next day.

When the sky is blue instead of stormy, it's quite picturesque. It's certainly fun to visit, but I know I couldn't handle living in a place with that much snow for months and months.

It was a quick, fun trip and fairly uneventful unless you count that Nate scared me to death on the drive home when he slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting a fox that ran across the road.

4 Months

 

Dayton is growing way too fast, and I mean that very literally. He's getting so big that carrying him around is exhausting and carrying him in his car seat is even harder. I've decided it's time to move him up a clothing size again because the 6 month size is too short in the sleeves and the pants. Seriously, how many 4-month-olds wear 9 month sized clothing? I took him for his checkup at the pediatrician today, and his stats were as follows:

Height:26.5 inches (94th percentile)
Weight: 19 lbs. 6 oz. (97th percentile)
Head Circumference: 17.5 inches (99th percentile)

Technically, he's still not rolling over. He rolled over one time from his tummy to his back about 3 weeks ago but has yet to repeat it. The doctor said that the bigger babies tend to be a little slower at accomplishing this milestone. I don't blame the kid though. He's got to have some super strong muscles to push and roll all that weight over. I'm sure he'll learn soon enough though.

He still isn't sleeping through the night, so I pulled out our favorite sleep training book again and decided that the first thing we needed to work on was getting him to go for a long stretch at night without eating. So for that past week, we've worked on getting him to go at least 6-7 hours without eating at night. The next step will be getting him to fall asleep on his own rather than being rocked to sleep. I look forward to that. Although I do love snuggling with him, I've been spending way too much time rocking him to sleep to have him wake up when I lay him down and then have to start the whole process over again.

He's getting more predictable with his schedule, but I can't say that I love it. He goes to bed much earlier than I would like and is usually struggling to stay awake by 8:30. I would prefer that he stay up a little later just so I can get a larger chunk of sleep at night. Then he's up for the day sometime around 7-8 am. He's usually ready for a morning nap around 9 or 9:30, but it's always a short 30 or 45 minutes - barely enough time for me to shower. He's usually ready for another nap around noon and this one can sometimes be short or sometimes a couple of hours. Then he takes another couple of short ones in the late afternoon and evening. If I could somehow get him to take 3 good naps, I think he'd be much more rested, happier, and not need to go to bed so early at night. We'll have to see how this pattern progresses and changes as he gets older. I'm hoping the sleep training will help him take better naps.

He also started blowing raspberries this week which is kind of fun. It makes the constant stream of drool even worse, but it's cute anyway.

A couple of other things to note: His left tear duct is still blocked as it has been from birth, but the doctor thinks it may still unblock itself. I have a feeling it won't and we'll end up having to take him to an ophthalmologist in a few months. His "stork bite" birthmark hasn't seemed to fade at all either. I keep hoping it will, but it could still take several more months.