Thanksgiving 2015 and a Baby Shower!

Samuel's first Thanksgiving weekend started off at Nana and Papa's. 

We arrived on Wednesday evening and were up bright and early to watch the parade on Thanksgiving day.

Both Millie and Samuel were captivated by the Thanksgiving Day Parade

Great Grandma Fredericksen also stayed the night at Nana and Papa's, so they had some time to hang out before it was time to go to the party.

Nana knows how to make Samuel smile!

Aunt Mel and Uncle Russ hosted Thanksgiving at their house. There was so much great food and it was great to see everyone. This was the first time that Samuel was getting to meet cousins Staci, Denys and Jayden!

The turkey cheeseball I made (I didn't get a picture before some of it was eaten!)

Taylor wanted the turkey leg all to herself!

After lunch, there was time to hang out and time for some Samuel snuggles, of course.

"Yea, I know I'm a stud" - Samuel

First cousin picture and Taylor's first time holding Samuel

Samuel and Uncle Russ

The obligatory Thanksgiving after-lunch nap!

In the afternoon, the party shifted to be a celebration of Samuel's arrival. Melodie had a very fun shower planned!

She had great decorations and had everyone write in the Dr. Suess book "Oh the Places You'll Go!" for him. She made ah-mazing cupcakes and had fun games planned as well!

The first thing she had was a fun fall-themed quiz for us all to take. I didn't do that well, but it was hard!! :) Then, we all got our own container of Play-Doh and we were supposed to sculpt a baby. They were then judged anonomously by some super special judges (aka Trent, Russ and Chuck). There were some pretty scary looking babies in the mix, but, in our defense, it wasn't as easy as you would think!!

My baby!! Haha

We were very spoiled by everyone. Samuel got some clothes and a nice, warm winter hat, a hilarious mustache binky and, the big gift, his high chair! We have LOVED having a high chair for him and having him sit at the table with us. We received the chair at just the right time, as we were able to start using it right away! We are so thankful for the awesome gift!!

Friday after Thanksgiving was a great day of relaxing and hanging out and watching football. Of course, I took some pictures of Samuel :)

Saturday morning, we took off for Westside to spend some time with my family. It started with having lunch in Manilla with my Aunts and Uncles and some of my cousins and their kids. We got to meet baby Carson who is just about three weeks younger than Samuel.

After lunch, we stopped to see Grandma and Grandpa Jons. Grandma was sleeping and we couldn't get her to wake up to see us. So we got to see just Grandpa for a while! Grandpa really checked out Samuel for the first time and had the biggest smiles on his face. He said "Oh my" and said he was pretty nice several times! That made my heart very happy to see Grandpa hold Samuel and be so happy about it.

Saturday night we went to Vail to a party for Great Uncle Ted's 80th birthday. We got to see some of my cousins that we hadn't seen in a while and meet two new little babies that were born in August and October.

Tricia and I - 9 Days Apart with
Logan and Samuel - 19 Days Apart

Finally, on Sunday, Samuel went to church for the first time and then we brought some pizza out to Grandma and Grandpa Kock's and all hung out before it was time for us to head back home and wrap up a busy busy Thanksgiving weekend!

We are so thankful that we have so many wonderful family members to spend the holiday with and, of course, we are thankful for our first Thanksgiving with our little guy!

Samuel Davey - Four Months

This is a little late, but we were busy with everything that went on with the holidays! 

Our little guy turned 4 months on the 22nd of December!

Weight:
At his 4 month appointment, he weighed in at 19 pounds 4 ounces!
99th percentile

Height:
He is now 27 inches long (or 2 feet 3 inches, whichever you prefer!) - 98th percentile
His head was 45.5 cm. 99th percentile

Clothes:
We have said good-bye to 6 month clothes and have moved to all 9 and 12 month (except for a few 6 month PJs that he still squeezes into)

Sleep:
In his 4th month of life, he has averaged right above 10 hours of straight sleep at night. He had only two nights where he slept less than 9 hours, and those were 8 hours and 51 minutes and 8 hours and 20 minutes, so he's rocking it!! (I have started to not like telling other moms how much he sleeps...)
The longest he's slept is 11 and a half hours on several occasions. 
He naps okay during the day if someone is holding him. If we attempt to put him down, he will usually last about a half hour at the most, but most of the time it is just a few minutes before he wakes up and doesn't want to lay there anymore on his own. We wanted to have him 'trained' for his naps before starting daycare on the 4th of January, but I'm not so sure that's going to happen... Hopefully he does alright with the whole nap thing there - or at least figures it out fast!

Likes:

Samuel LOVES to put anything and everything into his mouth! He loves to chew on his fingers, on toys, his burp cloth, or anything he can get a hold of. I'm not sure if that's a sign of teeth coming in the near future or if it's just a developmental thing. His doctor said that was one of the signs that he's ready to start eating real food, so at least there's that...
He loves his play mat and staring at the mobile on there and on his swing. He has gotten awesome at grabbing the mobile and anything hanging above him (and trying to get them in his mouth, of course.)
Samuel got a high chair from Trent's family at a baby shower his sister threw for us and he really likes sitting in that and being able to look around while sitting with everyone at the table. I really like having him so close to us, too!
He also seems to love being naked or at least have his pants off while he's being changed. He is so happy and smiley when he's on the changing table, so changing him can take a little longer than it should because it is just so fun to see how happy he is!
Samuel likes to have books read to him. He just stares at the pictures and listens to whoever is reading so well!

Dislikes:

Being burped is still in the dislike column most of the time, especially if it's in the middle of a bottle or while he's nursing. He does alright when you have him standing up on your lap, but then there's no telling where any spit up might go and he's a little harder to hold steady while patting his back... I usually give up on the burping before I probably should because he doesn't like it all that much.
Then there's the usual stuff - he doesn't like to be tired or hungry... he also doesn't like to be left alone for long periods of time without someone paying attention to him. He's a little spoiled with attention :) Not that that's a bad thing!

Milestones/Development:
He has started to try and help his Grandmas and his dad with feeding him his bottles.
He is tons better at tummy time and actually enjoys it at times. It's so fun to see him on his belly with his head held high looking around. 
He talks quite a bit and has gotten a lot more coordinated when trying to grab onto things.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Samuel continues to be called Buddy, Buddy Bear, Honey Bear, and Baby (by me) and mostly Stinker or Stinky by his dad. Aunt Kellsey calls him Baby Baluga every so often, which I think is super cute :)

Nana and Papa as well as Grandma Kock have still been coming to watch Samuel a few days a week so he has gotten to stay home rather than going to daycare when Trent and I have been at work. It's so great to be able to have Samuel spend time with his Grandparents and we love that we have been getting to spend time with them in the evenings as well. 

This month we traveled to Nana and Papa's and to Grandma's for Thanksgiving. We celebrated Thanksgiving Day at Aunt Mel and Uncle Russ's house and Mel threw us a great baby shower to celebrate Samuel's arrival (more on that in a later post). We then went to Grandma's on the Saturday/Sunday of Thanksgiving and got to see some extended family at a birthday party for Great Uncle Ted.

At Samuel's doctor appointment on the 17th, the doctor said he was pretty great once again (of course). He is growing like he should and right on track developmentally. She said that since he has started to watch us while we eat, can hold his head up really well, and has been putting his hands in his mouth all the time, that he is ready to start with foods other than breastmilk. She said he won't eat for sustenance now, but it will basically just be practice for him so he can get the idea of how to open his mouth and swallow, etc, while he is in this stage of putting his hands in his mouth all of the time.
He will continue to eat breastmilk as he has been, but we will be adding in prunes once a day. The only thing missing from breastmilk that he really needs is iron, so she gave us the choice of three iron rich foods (prunes, spinach, or red meat) that we coudl pick one from and start feeding him in the next 4-8 weeks. I won't go into our decision making process, but we decided to go with prunes.
So, once a day, when he isn't really hungry (like after he has nursed or been bottle fed) we will feed him prunes!! We are planning to start with the week between Christmas and New Years when we will be home with him, so we can get a good start before he starts daycare. 

On the 19th of December, we had our first Christmas celebration of the season with my immediate family where Samuel got to open his first Christmas presents. We went to a Christmas pageant in the afternoon and Samuel did so well. He seemed to like listening to all the music and checking out all the action that was going on around him. He seemed pretty captivated by it all! He will get to experience several more Christmas celebrations in the coming week!

We had our intake meeting at daycare with his teacher, Connie, last week in preparation for him starting full time on Monday, January 4th. She seemed very nice and I think it will all go very well. We went into his daycare room for a few minutes while we were there and it was all a tad bit overwhelming to be around all those babies at once (there will be 8 total in his room), but I know he will be fine. I'm sure it will take a little bit to get into the routine of figuring out what we all need to have ready to go each day and getting used to taking him with me when I leave for work every morning (I think I'll enjoy the extra half hour with him in the car in the morning and evening each day as he gets older!), but I know we'll get it all worked out before too long! I'm sure he'll make lots of baby friends and have a good time - I know I'll be excited to see him at the end of every day, though!

On the 21st, we took off for our week-long Christmas trip to spend the holiday with family. We will be at Nana and Papa's from Monday night until Thursday (Christmas morning) and then at Grandma's from mid day Christmas day until Sunday evening, the 28th. We had to pack the whole house, but hopefully it's a successful trip. It will be quite different to have to incorporate a baby's schedule into all the Christmas festivities, but so much fun to be able to celebrate Samuel's first Christmas (even though he won't really know what's going on!).

See how much Samuel has grown:
One Month
Two Months
Three Months

Here's some of the other pictures from our four month photo shoot. He had some really good smiles for me this time!

Merry Christmas from The Fredericksen's!!

Samuel's Three Month Photos

We had Steph from SM Photography come and take pictures on the 22nd of November to commemorate Samuel being three months old and to get a few family pictures for our Christmas card. Now that most people have received our Christmas card, I wanted to share them all here. They turned out so much better than I could have imagined! I sure love our cute little guy!