3 months....already??

It's true what they say about the third kid - it goes by in the blink of an eye...and there are hardly any pictures to show for it.  When I went to upload pictures for this blog, I realized I had more pictures of the big kids. Poor Tate! When people ask me how old he is, I have to think about it and then I throw out a ballpark estimate. With Wyatt I could tell you exactly how many weeks and referred to his age in weeks until he was practically 6 months old.

Tate is a happy, smiling, gurgling, cooing little guy. He is drooling up a storm and gnawing on his hands. Who knows, maybe he's working on some new chompers? All you have to do is make eye contact and he'll break out into his slobbery, toothless grin. He just started giggling and I'm in love with the sound. It's so delicious and sweet we'll do anything to try to get him to laugh.

He weighs 14 1/2 pounds. I have no idea where that is at in the percentile chart, but I'm guessing it's somewhere in the middle or upper half. He hasn't rolled over yet, but he's made a few good attempts. I know it won't be long!

He's been sleeping like a champ lately - 9 hours straight! He goes down at 7pm (sometimes sooner) and sleeps until about 4am, sometimes 4:30. It's great to have such a nice stretch of sleep, but he seems wide awake during that feeding and it's really hard to get him back to sleep. I've been putting him in his crib to nap during the day and he doesn't seem to mind it. I put him in his crib for the first time overnight a few days ago when Dayven was out of town. He slept fine, but when he woke I raced down the hall to grab him before his cries woke Hadley and Wyatt. No need to have all three up in the middle of the night! I don't find it nearly as exhausting as I did the first go around. Eventually he'll consistently be sleeping through the night like our other kids. They may not be easy in all areas, but we've been pretty blessed with great sleepers.

Hadley continues to be a sweet, doting big sister, announcing to me any time he's crying or spits up. "Uh oh! Mommy, will you please hand me the burp cloth?" She is little miss independent and insists on doing everything on her own. The other day she was going to the bathroom by herself. She announced she was done and I heard the toilet flush. I went in to check on her and discovered she had put the ENTIRE box of flushable wipes into the toilet, one by one. It turns out they aren't flushable when you use 98 of them. It started bubbling up into a huge mess. I quickly shut off the water and got a bucket and started doing damage control. It was right in the middle of trying to cook dinner, Tate was crying and Dayven was out of town. I was so upset, I really lost my cool and yelled at her, saying she had broken the toilet. She was devastated. I felt bad for being so harsh and apologized that night when I was reading her stories. The next day when she went to the bathroom, she said "Only one square, right mommy? You were just SO MAD last night!"

She's been having a ball at her mommy and me playschool one day a week. She will be so ready for preschool in the fall. She loves picking out her snack each week and putting it in her backpack. Her favorite part is the crafts and we can barely drag her to any other station. She loves to do all the messy things I never pull out at home!

Painting with ice cubes and Jello powder. She LOVES edible crafts!

Wyatt has had a little rough patch. He fell at the playground at the indoor gym and had a HUGE shiner. It seemed to get worse each day, the picture doesn't do it justice. It was so bad total strangers were commented on it to the point that he got tired of talking about it. He'd say in an exasperated voice "Just leave my eye alone please!"He also went through another stuttering bout. He seems to get them periodically and they last a week or two. Even Hadley was trying to help him out, saying "It's ok, Wy. Just go slow and take your time". Thankfully, it disappeared as quickly as it started though and he just woke one morning with no stuttering at all.

Dayven brought home a new xbox game for Wyatt called Skylander. He had been asking for it for a while and he was over the moon when Dayven showed it to him. They played it that night after dinner and pretty much every night since. We were surprised how good he is at the game since he's never played it before. How do kids figure this stuff out? Dayven and Wyatt where playing together using both the controllers. They gave Hadley one of the old PS2 controllers and told her she was one of the other characters on the screen. She wasn't, but she seemed to think she was actually playing for a while.

He's doing well at school and seems really settled. He will often ask what we're doing tomorrow and when I tell him he's going to school, he'll ask "Again!?". Um yes, every day. He usually comes home and announces "School was great!" so it's ok. The grade three class had a garage sale and the younger kids were allowed to go shop it. I gave him a loonie and a few quarters that morning. He raced in the door from school with such enthusiasm and couldn't wait to show us the loot he bought. They were just small little chotchkes and a couple of McDonald's toys, but he was thrilled with his purchases. My kids love a good garage sale!

The kids are enjoying their meals outside in this nice spring weather.

We woke this week to some fresh snow falling. We were having beautiful weather last week so I'm not sure where it came from. The street sweepers were just here yesterday cleaning up the last of the sand and rocks (they use sand here on the streets instead of salt). The snow melted quickly and we were back outside riding bikes the next day. Typical spring in Alberta!