Reilly's 1st Christmas!

Reilly's first Christmas was SO much fun and went so well! We had three Christmas' to get to, my mom's house, my grandpa's house, and jeff's mom's house! He did great and for the most part stayed happy all day. Unfortunately the only nap he took was a 2 hour nap at 9:30am, so last night was a catastrophe. (So bad I turned off the monitor.. don't worry.. he got me back by SOAKING his bed..ew!) I think he got a little overstimulated, but it was so fun watching him open gifts and play with his cousins. He got so many gifts (too many!).. I let him have 5, the rest are in the closet and he will get them over time.

We hope everyone else had a great Christmas, or whichever holiday you celebrate!! Have a great new year.. I will be watching the ball drop with the baby monitor by my side. Woo..hoo.. :)

ps-Reilly has made up some pretty sweet dance moves, and is starting to add songs to them.. it's pretty funny. Of course his songs are just sing songy babbling, but they're hilarious!! I'll have to post videos once I get my camera back from Jeriann.

Sleep Training..

Not Rei.. me! I'm not sure what happened, or why it happened, but I have developed some strange sleeping habits, the biggest being that I now sleep curled up on the edge of the bed, practically hanging over spooning the mattress. It's weird, but Jeff loves it, he likes to gloat about how he has the whole bed to himself and he feels like he sleeps alone again. Meanwhile I am getting crappy sleep and back pain from my new weird habits and am trying to train myself to sleep ON the bed again!

While I was pregnant I made what I called a pillow fort.. and I think that's where it all started. I would use 4 king size, big, whatever they're called, pillows and put on behind me to keep me from rolling onto my back (NOT a side sleeper), one in front of me to keep me from rolling onto my stomach, one between my knees because my hips got so dang wide and would hurt after 15 minutes of side sleeping.. sometimes one under neath my ribs to support them, and usually with all of that I wouldn't even need a separate one for under my head. No.. this was not comfortable at all, but it was much worse without the fort. Naturally, with Jeff and my pillow fort taking up so much space, in addition to getting out of bed every 40 minutes to use the restroom I stayed pretty close to the side of the bed.

The came Reilly.. yeah, we co slept! Totally against it in the beginning, but it happened and it was awesome and I would do it again. We waited until he was old enough to move around in his sleep so I would feel comfortable sleeping with him and not suffocating him with him next to me.. until then he just slept on me. (Not all the time.. he did have a bassinet, but.. it was allowed.) Anyway.. being constantly alert of him, and my husbands creepy sleeping issue (don't touch him in his sleep he will wake up swinging! it's terrifying!) I would try to give Rei plenty of space.. pushing me to the end of the bed and giving my son enough space for 7 babies! Of course he was tiny and insisted on being cuddled up against me at all times, not to mention gravity, but the more he moved closer the more I moved away to give him space, thus half my body hanging over the side of the bed. Fabulous.

So.. that's my newest development. It's not exciting, I'm consciously trying to work on it by starting in the middle of the bed and moving back there anytime I wake up.. kind of weird. Thought I'd share.. has this happened to anyone else?

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Christmas is so much more exciting this year having a little one to celebrate with! I had to stop myself from making "From Santa" labels for his gifts and making sure I wrapped things in different wrapping paper, can't wait for those years! Instead this year I figured.. eh, he doesn't know what Christmas is.. why not just give him his presents early? I have given him one, and if it weren't for Jeff not letting me, I probably would have given him them all! Mostly I am excited to start new holiday traditions!

We had our first family Christmas last week at my Dad and Rhonda's. They go to Kentucky every Christmas so we always celebrate a little bit early. It was funny watching him figure out that there were things underneath the paper as he opened his gifts, and in my family's true spirit- Reilly received toys that made noises and bounced around.
Here is a little video of him opening gifts:

Jeff came back from his San Diego trip a day early, so yesterday we got to have a family day. We took Rei to see Santa at the mall. He fell asleep on the way there, so I wasn't sure how it would go. We woke him up and let him look at some of the displays, just to get him excited, then handed him over to Santa. He did awesome, I fully expected, and not going to lie- kind of wanted him to cry so I could enter him into the contest for a shopping spree, mother of the year... he looked around a little unsure, but then, at no fault to my sisters and their constant paparazzi style pictures of him, he saw the camera and started smiling.

Reilly is continuing to grow and change a little bit each day. Today he was wearing his "Baby's First Christmas" outfit has little reindeer on the feet, he kept wiggling his feet and getting so excited about the reindeer moving around.. strange child that one. OH! AND! Every night before his bath we clean up his room, and I try to make it fun and pretend he is included when really, until today, he has just watched my take away his toys and say goodbye to each one. Today I was cleaning up his toys doing my usual "bye panda, bye ring stacker, bye..etc" and he dumped the toy bin back over and continued playing with them! So this should be an interesting little transition. Hmm.

Oh.. if anyone has any great advise on introducing water, I'd love to hear it! I tried with the bottle, but he expected milk and wasn't too stoked. We have some sippy type cups, but the require more sucking than he is capable of.. he takes it out of my cup, but.. that's not reasonable. So the more tips the merrier! :)

Quick 6 Month Update!

Ahh.. I am falling behind again! Lately has been so crazy with work, Reilly, going to Reno.. unpacking! Love taking quick trips, but I HATE unpacking! Reilly turned 6 months a week ago and I don't know who this kid is from one day to the next! He is doing so much so fast that I can't keep up, but I am loving every second of it!

As of late, Reilly has decided he is a construction worker. One of his Christmas gifts this year was the Fisher-Price laugh and learn (or whatever that line is called) tool bench, and it's hilarious! He can sit for so long and just push the buttons, try to pull the paint churner thing, and hit it with other toys. It does come with a little hammer, first thing he does is takes the hammer out of it's place, plays with it for a few seconds, then uses something else (Sophie for instance) to hit the tool bench. It is also fun seeing him switch from toy to toy and keep himself entertained. While I was getting ready this morning I sat him up in his room with his toys and then got ready in his bathroom and just watched him as he played, it's amazing to see him grow and see how much he has developed! Child development was one of my bigger focuses in college and I worked in the area for several years, but I'm still so amazed by it- I really think it's one of the most incredible and mysterious things in the world and can't get enough of it!

Last night was really interesting, in a not so great fashion. I'm wondering if my sweet little angel is becoming a bit manipulative. Haha! I'm sure not intentionally, he just does what he knows gets a response.. but last night was.. frustrating! He went to bed around 8 and then woke up around 11:30 for his first middle of the night feeding, so it was looking like it was going to be a 3 hour night (it's always a surprise, either 7 hours straight or every 3.. fun little game). He woke up again at 1:30 and I put him back to sleep, but THEN at 2:30ish he started making one little cry noise, and then waiting for 5-10 seconds, making another, and waiting.. and this went on for quite a while. He wasn't crying, just making sounds and waiting. After a while Jeff was done listening to it, he gets up early for work and doesn't like when I ignore Reilly's noises. I knew that Reilly was just trying to get me to go in there and he didn't need me. He had just been nursed an hour prior and wasn't even crying.. so I went into his room just so Jeff could sleep and he was in his bed LAUGHING!! I was not stoked about this.. now, I laugh, because thinking about it the whole thing was pretty funny, and that is pretty clever of him, but at the time I was not a fan! So he got what he wanted, I rocked him back to sleep. That child.

We are missing his gym class today because he is moving up to Level 2, which is during nap time.. yuck! But I'm really excited for that class now that he is sitting up a lot more, so I guess we'll see it on Saturday. He is moving so much! He sits up for.. as long as he wants to, rolls everywhere, I had to use his changing table strap for the first time yesterday because he will not stay in one place. You put him on his stomach-he switches to his back, put him on his back-and he switches to his stomach. He has also started moving himself around backwards-like.. backwards army crawling I guess, and he is trying SO hard to crawl, he gets up on his arms and then kicks his feet really fast with his knees in the ground, but doesn't get anywhere.. poor guy! As much as I'm not in a hurry for him to crawl, he can take his sweet time as far as I care, it would be fun to see him crawling around with my cousins twins on Christmas since they are around the same age.

I think that's it for now.. as usual I'm skipping out on SO much but am not great at keeping this bad boy updated, and need to fully utilize nap time for other things besides blogging. I put a few of his 6 month pictures in here, he was so funny while Christina was taking pictures.. he looooves when the camera flashes so she just got that thing going and it had his full attention.