6 months

Happy half of a year to our sweet boy! I may or may not be teary-eyed as I type those words. It's been another big month for Gray. He has grown and learned a lot and his stages of life just keep getting better and bringing us more and more joy.

At 6 months...

Gray weighs 17 pounds, 1 ounce (42nd percentile). I was surprised in his weight because he hadn't even quite gained two pounds since his 4 month check up. But the doctor sad his curve looks great and that weight gain will really slow down a lot from this point on. He has more than doubled his birth weight and by the looks of his chubby cheeks and legs, we are confident that he is packing on enough chunkiness.

His height is 27 and 1/4 inches (75th percentile). He has grown and inch and a quarter in the last two months and 5 and a quarter inches since birth!

His head measurement is 17 and 1/2 inches (82nd percentile). This isn't surprising considering Mama and Daddy both had big heads. It's just because he is so smart already :)

The biggest milestone for Gray this month is that he has TWO TEETH! Both of his bottom middle teeth finally broke through the skin a week ago. I haven't been able to get a picture of them and they aren't up enough to see when he smiles but it won't be long. He had a really rough time with teething and ran a fever and was up a lot at night and didn't nap well at all. He has been holding his mouth funny and just seems very curious about these new, strange things that are in there. I'd love it if he had a break until the next ones came in, but I'm sure not holding my breath.

He can sit up with no support for about 5-10 seconds and loves to be in the sitting up position. I wrote that just yesterday and today he sat up for almost 2 minutes! I think play time is going to be even more fun for him when he can sit up for as long as he wants to by himself.

He is rolling all around. Though he has been able to roll over both ways for a couple of months, he will now roll several times in a row and can get around a lot, considering he isn't crawling yet.

His favorite toys are his feet, his Sophie Samson giraffe (Daddy made it have a boy name. Plus, it would have been confusing with Sophie the dog), his exersaucer, his crawl ball and any and everything that lights up and makes noise. His Nana and Grandpa got him a Noah's Ark snow globe and he is so fascinated by it. Mean 'ol Mama won't let him put it in his mouth though. He is also loving the Christmas tree lights. He also loves books and his favorite one is a tractor book. Of all the books we read, he shows favoritism toward this one particular tractor book, which amazes me. I also find it so fascinating that boys this young already show such interest in boy things. No one has to teach boys to like tractors and sports and girls to like baby dolls and kitchens, they just do. Isn't it just amazing how God created us?

 

 He is starting to play like a big kid, like riding on Daddy's shoulders. This doesn't make me nervous at all.

And swinging at the park.

He is eating solids once a day, soon to be moving to twice and eventually three times a day. He has done great with eating from a spoon since the very first time we fed him that way. He wasn't a big fan of peas the first time he ate them but other than that he has loved everything so far. He nurses every 2-4 hours during the day. We still give him a pumped bottle with rice cereal before bed and he will take 7 ish ounces. He is close to being able to completely hold his bottle on his own and has become interested in holding his own spoon.

Sleeping is going good, except for last week when he was teething so bad. We are almost done with weaning him from his one middle of the night feeding and he has done great with it so far. Last night he was down to only getting 2 ounces but never woke up to eat. He woke up and stirred and whined a couple times but only for about 2-3 minutes so it was the first time he'd gone all night without eating-yay for this!!! Most nights he sleeps 12-13 hours, waking up anywhere from 1-4 times. Other than when he was teething bad, he usually just cries or whines for a few minutes and sometimes plays for a few minutes and then goes right back to sleep. We let him cry unless he is in pain. We learned at the doctor yesterday that their sleep patterns change around 6 months and it is very common for them to wake up several times after midnight. Naps have been pretty iffy lately. He usually only sleeps an hour or hour and a half so a lot of days he ends up taking three naps.

He has really started reaching for and grabbing things this past month. Gone are the days of being able to eat or drink anything while holding him. He now loves to grab at your face and has even poked me in the eye a couple of times.

He is now responding to praise and gets so excited when we clap for him or say "Yay, Gray!". He is also catching on to games like peek-a-boo and anticipates being tickled by laughing and making funny faces.

I feel like I say this every month but he is talking A LOT!!! We had a family Christmas get together this weekend and a lot of people met Gray for the first time and they all kept talking about how verbal he was. We talk to him pretty much nonstop and I read books with him every single day so I think that has a lot to do with it. I find him looking at my mouth a lot these days while I'm talking. It is so amazing to me how early language development begins.

He is wearing most all 9 month clothes because he is so long but a few 6-9 month stuff still fits. He is also still wearing size 2 diapers but when we run out soon we are going to try moving to size 3.

He loves, loves, loves music! We jam out to all kinds of music every day and it just makes him so excited. He recognizes when it cuts off and will look at you like tragedy has struck. He also loves to be sung to, especially if he is tired or fussy.

He really started noticing Sophie about a month or so ago and LOVES her!!! He just smiles and talks to her all day long. He tries to pet her but she usually runs away ;) One of his favorite things to do is to sit with us on the floor while we play fetch with her. He could watch her run down that hall a million times. She is also warming up to him more and more and has even given him several kisses right on the mouth.

He has started recognizing other babies and can tell the difference between them and "big people". He gets so excited and starts flapping and talking when other babies are around. He also really recognizes Mama and Daddy compared to other people. We always make a big deal when Daddy comes home and he is starting to show excitement with that. Paul was able to meet us at the doctor yesterday for his 6 month check up. We were already back in the room when he got there and when he walked in Gray started flapping and squealing. It was so sweet!

He is starting to show a little bit of a temper. When he's in his exersaucer and gets frustrated he will stomp his foot. He also makes a noise when he gets mad. I guess the complete meltdowns are soon to follow.

Here is our sweet Gray Christopher at 6 months...

I love this picture of him. His teeth were really bothering him and he was holding his mouth funny. It made those sweet cheeks look even chubbier!

Can't wait to see what our little man learns in his seventh month of life!

Gray's dedication

Gray was dedicated at our church the Sunday after Thanksgiving, November 25. There are several purposes for baby dedications at our church. 1) for the pastor to give a charge to the parents about how to raise their child in a way that reflects Christ 2) for parents to come in front of the church to publicly proclaim their promise to God about how they will raise their child 3) for the pastor and the church family to pray over the children and the families 4) for the Pastor to ask the church body to pray for and support the families and 5) ultimately to dedicate the babies to the Lord. We believe that Gray is God's child but He is graciously allowing us to be his earthly parents and for that we are immensely grateful.

It was so special to us that Pastor Will did the dedication. He is not only one of the most influential pastors in my life but he is also one of the pastors that married us.

 

So do y'all remember me saying in my Thanksgiving post that the more people that were around, the more energy Gray had? Welp, the same went for dedication day. We were on stage in front of the congregation (a much smaller number of people in the contemporary service that we go to) and Gray hammed it up, to say the least. He squealed and talked the entire time. Pastor Will first went down the line of families to introduce them and then he came back up the line at the end to pray for each family. Both times he stood with us, Gray got even louder. Thank goodness for Will's microphone. He was definitely the most vocal baby up there and of course everyone was cracking up at him the whole time. In Pastor Will's prayer over Gray and our family, he thanked God for Gray's voice and all of his energy. I thought that was priceless! I have a feeling our boy is going to be wide open with a huge personality.

Here is our family after the dedication (minus my mom who had to scoot out early to work in the infant preschool room and my sister in law and two nephews, who were sick with the flu)...

The Sowers were there too, which meant a lot to us

It was a special day for us and one that we do not take lightly. We pray every day for Gray and that he will continue to grow and be healthy. We also pray that we will be godly parents and an example of Christ for Gray through our marriage and parenting. But our biggest prayer is that he will come to know Jesus at an early age and be a strong Christian boy and man. Few other things in life will make our hearts as full as that would.

Thanksgiving weekend-WITH PICTURES :)

Thanks to my friends Patrice and Sarah for helping me with the whole "you don't have any more storage space for your pictures on blogster" deal. Part of me thought it was a scam, part of me was just worried that there was going to be some crazy ridiculous charge to have pictures on here from now on. I almost panicked, but all is well now. Two and a half bucks a month is certainly worth how precious and one day valuable this blog will be. Now on to catching up a little...

I felt more overwhelmed with thanksgiving this year than I ever have before. I truly don't even know where to begin in counting the many blessings God has given us. I try my best to not take all of those blessings for granted and not just on Thanksgiving day, but every day. And the most important thing is to remember that we have been given those blessings from God and nothing or no one else can get the credit for them. Gray is certainly at the top of the list for us and he sure made this Thanksgiving a special one.

We spent Thanksgiving in Boone, as we usually do, with Paul's dad's side of the family. They have a very large family with 12 grandchildren and number 13 on the way. All of the children are extremely smart and well behaved and Paul and I started taking notes long before Gray came along. They do things completely different from most of the rest of the world and I love it. I could make it an entire post and maybe I will sometime. Anywho, we had a wonderful time visiting with family and hanging around Boone. Gray got to meet his great grandfather (Paul's dad's dad, not the one Gray is named after) for the first time. He has severe dementia and doesn't know who anyone is so he won't remember meeting Gray but we sure will.

Four generations of Hicks men!

 

 

Gray didn't nap very good at all but considering he was in his pack n play with 12 children running around he didn't do as bad as I thought he would. We always stay in a hotel and I was especially glad for that this year. The first night was pretty rough but by the second night he did much better. Despite the lack of sleep, he was in such a good mood and absolutely loved being around so many people. He laughed and carried on and showed off as much as his little self could stand it. The more people that were around, the more energy he had. The two most common words spoken about Gray while we were in Boone were "big" and "verbal". I'll take both as compliments :)

On our way home we went back to the same Christmas tree lot that we went to last year for the first time. It was even more fun this year with the company of our sweet boy. The people that live there are super nice and down to earth and I think we will be giving them our business for a long time. And any tree/any size is only 40 bucks. By looking at their house, you can tell how they afford to give people such a good deal.

 

I tried telling Paul that the tree we picked was way too big but he didn't believe me until we got it inside and it didn't even come close to standing up straight without hitting the ceiling.

He came in and out with that big 'ol thing three times and ended up trimming a foot off and then had to doctor it up to get the top shaped back up. It made for a lot of laughs, which just happens to be one of our most favorite things to do. Decorating has been a little different this year with a little one taking up most of our time. It took us three nights to get the tree completely finished. It's so big that we spent one evening just putting on the lights. But as I recall saying last year, no tree is too big and I love coming downstairs to this sight every morning! Gray loves the lights and he just stares and stares at the tree. I guess this will be the last year we don't have to worry about him pulling on the ornaments and lights.

 I decided to put up a few more decorations this year than I did last year. I am so over our house being on the market and having to keep it a certain way. It's been almost four years so at this point I don't think Christmas decorations are going to keep it from selling.

Gray was dedicated at church on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. That is deserving of its own post though, so I'll be back with that soon!

I don't think this even counts as a post

Just in case you were worried, the Hicksters are alive!

This mama has had very little time to do anything lately so blogging has been on the back burner. Gray hasn't been napping well and we've been super busy in between. I've had a blog in draft mode all week and finally sat down to finish it but it's not letting me upload pictures because my free storage is full. ?? Any of you bloggers know anything about that? I guess I'll look into it when I have the energy and hopefully get caught up on some posts. It would kill me to write a post with no pictures. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, got a massive Christmas tree, Gray was dedicated at church last Sunday and there has been a whole lot of cuteness going on in the Hicks house with a certain baby boy. All of which need to be documented. But not without pictures.

On a random side note, I am TIRED y'all! Being a parent ain't no joke! But it's seriously the best job I've ever had and I feel so blessed to get to be a mama.

Since blogging isn't going to work out tonight, I'm off to start addressing 75 Christmas cards. Does anybody else get crazy excited about Christmas cards? It's ridiculous how much I love getting them. Checking the mail has never been so fun.

Hopefully I will figure out this picture thing and be back soon.

5 months

Gray continues to grow and change so fast. It seems like he is still doing something new almost every single day. He is finally being able to stay awake a little longer at a time and sometimes he can stretch it out to three hours in between naps. I know me staying at home with him has a lot to do with it, but he is extremely scheduled/routine oriented. I think some of that is just his personality and that part he definitely would have gotten from his mama! We've been gone a lot over the past week and a half visiting my grandfather in the hospital and then over the weekend at his funeral service and it has just taken a toll on our poor little guy. Either dragging him with us or dropping him off at someone's house has done a number on his sleep. Until yesterday, he hadn't napped longer than 30 minutes in the last week. I want him to be more flexible but at the same time I know how much he wants and needs his bed and his normal nap schedule. We both might as well get over it though because as soon as we get him back to normal, we'll be heading out of town for Thanksgiving and he'll be re-introduced to the dreadful pack-n-play and his not-so-perfect nap schedule.

Anywho, let's talk more about Gray at 5 months...

He started playing in his exersaucer. At first he didn't know what to think and he just sat there taking it all in. Within just a week, he is already turning himself around and grabbing at and playing with some of the toys on it.

He discovered how to put his feet in his mouth and they have now become his new favorite chew toy. Sometimes when I go to get him in the mornings or from nap, the feet of his pajamas are soaking wet.

 He started eating baby food about two weeks ago. As I mentioned in his 4 month post, our pediatrician told me I could wait until 6 months or I could go ahead and start and we felt like he was ready. So far he's had bananas, peas, apple sauce and sweet potatoes. He wasn't a huge fan of the peas or apple sauce but the sweet potatoes were a huge hit! We are just feeding it to him once a day for now and will move to twice soon and then by 6 months, three times a day.

He's finally reaching for things and can hold something with both hands now and have more control over it. The first few weeks we gave him teething beads, he would get so frustrated because he couldn't hold it and keep it in his mouth for very long. Now he loves to have something at all times that he can hold in both hands. I can't wait to see what stuffed animal and/or lovey he chooses to get attached to. He is also starting to take his paci out and put it back in more.

When he is laying on his back, he can pull up if you hold his hands. He seems strong enough to sit up but just doesn't quite have the balance yet.

His laugh has become more of a chuckle, like a real laugh. He doesn't just do it all the time yet so we get so excited when we're able to get a good laugh from him. It's one of the sweetest sounds I've ever heard.

He is back to enjoying tummy time again and when he's on his tummy he can move around A LOT! It's amazing how he can scoot and turn. It seems like he could just start crawling at any point, though I am sure it will be several more months until he does. This is my favorite picture of him on his tummy.

He is wearing some 9 month clothes already, especially pajamas because he is so long. He continues to grow out of clothes left and right and it's hard not to shed tears when I pack yet another outfit away. Not that we are thinking about another baby any time soon, but I'd love to have another boy to be able to wear his brother's sweet clothes so I can enjoy and remember them one more time. I know I've said this before but about 90% of Gray's clothes are hand me downs and I just love knowing what good use all of those clothes have gotten. If we don't have another boy, I sure hope we can pass them down to someone else's little guy and they will be blessed by them like we have.

Sleep is still going great (unless he's off his schedule of course). He usually still takes 2-3 naps a day, ranging from 2-3.5 hours. He sleeps 12-13 hours a night with one feeding during that time. We still haven't weaned him from his one middle of the night feeding. We were waiting for soccer season to be over because Paul is going to help and he needed all the rest he could get while he was coaching. Last weekend was his first weekend off but with everything that happened with my granddaddy, the last two weekends didn't go as planned. Our weaning plan is going to go something like this-we plan on using a bottle for the middle of the night feeding and Paul will get up and give it to him. Our pediatrician recommended this for two reasons. One being that it won't be mommy and Gray won't have the comfort of nursing, which is a lot of what he wants at that time. Another reason being that we can tell exactly how much he is eating and we can decrease the amount of milk each night. We'll start with his usual 6 ounces the first night and eventually get down to only one ounce. Gray's doctor and also the book on sleep that I read, both say that the baby will think it's not too worth getting up for just one ounce of milk, especially if it's not straight from mama. Now we have decided to wait until after Thanksgiving to start it because as great as the plan sounds, I have a feeling it's going to take some crying it out too and we want to be able to be consistent until he is completely weaned. I plan on still waking up once during the night to pump and hopefully get some milk saved up in the freezer. One of these days I look forward to knowing what it's like to sleep through the night again. It's been since I was about 4 months pregnant. That's a long time y'all.

We just retired the car seat adapter on Gray's stroller. He looks so tiny sitting in that big 'ol thing but I think he will like it much better now that he can see everything. I will sure miss looking at him on our walks though.

Here's our chunky monkey at 5 months...

 

I can't believe in less than a month now, we'll be headed to Gray's 6 month check up. And I don't really love to go there, but I can't deny that that means our boy will be half of a year old. Still trying to soak up and treasure every single second with our sweet boy.

My heart is heavy

I lost my Granddaddy yesterday.  He fell at his house on Friday and hit his head really bad. He had severe brain damage and bleeding in his brain and was in a coma. Nothing the doctors could have done would have changed his quality of life and he would have remained in a coma until he died. So my grandmother made the decision not to do anything to sustain his life, which is the decision I know he would have wanted. The doctors assured us all that he wasn't in any pain but he was on morphine just in case and to help him breath more comfortably. Paul and I spent most of the weekend at the hospital and we even took Gray for a little while one day. He was such good medicine for everyone. Since getting to the hospital Friday evening, the doctors had been saying he could go within a few hours or a few days.

God showed his perfect timing in so many ways. My cousin is 39 weeks pregnant with her second child and lives in Wilmington. She was distraught that she wasn't able to come and see our granddaddy and tell him goodbye. At her doctor's appointment on Monday she showed no signs of the baby coming anytime real soon so her doctor gave her permission to go to Greensboro for one night. She was able to spend a lot of time with our grandparents, her mom and brother and some other family. She was able to tell Granddaddy goodbye. Cole, our godson and my cousin's first child, and Granddaddy were good buddies. Cole sang Granddaddy songs and gave him hugs and brought smiles to everyone in the room. When I heard yesterday morning that Granddaddy would probably go sometime that day, I immediately began getting ready to head to the hospital one last time. I started praying right away that God would keep him holding on until I could get there and say goodbye one last time. I told my aunt to tell him I was on the way and to wait for me. Paul had a teacher workday yesterday and his workshop only ended up being a half day. Not a coincidence! I was so happy that he would be able to go with me. So I waited for him to come home and at the last minute we decided to take Gray to my friend Kristen's house in case we ended up being at the hospital for a long time. I was sad I wasn't going to get to see my cousin because they were going to head out at noon to get back to Wilmington. We got to the hospital at 2:00 and because Ashley had such a hard time leaving our Granddaddy, she was just leaving and we literally ran into her on her way out. We got to hug and cry together and Paul and I got to see sweet Cole for a few minutes. Then we headed up to Granddaddy's room. His breathing was so slow and although he looked peaceful, I could tell he was close. I talked to him for a few minutes and thanked him for waiting on me. Just a few minutes later he took his last breath. I'd never witnessed that before but it was as peaceful as it could have been. God allowed everyone who wanted to, to come and see him and say goodbye before he passed.

Granddaddy would have been 87 on the 30th of this month. His physical health had declined quite a bit over the past few years but he was still living in the same house my grandparents have been in for 45 years. He never wanted to go to a nursing home and always said he wanted to be at home. He loved going to the grocery store more than anyone I've ever known and had just gotten a good Harris Teeter senior day trip in the day before his fall. Though it was unexpected, he went the way a lot of us would want to. He never suffered and seconds leading up to his fall he was at home with my grandmother, doing what he loved. My grandparents celebrated 63 years of marriage this past September. What a huge blessing that was!

Granddaddy would want us rejoicing over his long life and remembering funny stories about him. Like last year when Paul and I took him to Cracker Barrel for his birthday. It was early December and we had just told them I was pregnant. He was so excited. There wasn't much I was wanting to eat at the time so I just ordered a few vegetables. We told Granddaddy to order whatever he wanted. He ordered the small trout plate and went on and on and on about how good it was. We certainly shared a love for food. After talking about how delicious the trout was, he told me he was going to change his order to the large size because it came with two pieces of trout but mostly so he could give me the extra vegetables. His meal came and he woofed the whole thing down, including those extra vegetables, never mentioning another word about giving them to me ;) My grandmother was telling us about their trip to Harris Teeter the day before he fell. She said a lot of times they would each get a cart and split up, so they could get done faster. They always met back at the register and checked out together. This day she couldn't find him at the register when she got done. She went back up and down all of the aisles and he was nowhere to be found. She finally saw him on the other side of the registers sitting down. He had already checked out. Finding that odd, she decided to see what was in his grocery bags. Not to her surprise, he'd snuck a bunch of junk food and checked out in hopes of "not getting into trouble". He was a little stinker like that.

Though he is already missed so much, those are the memories I know my family will focus on at his funeral service this weekend. For that and for his long, healthy life I am thankful.

Catching up

Holy moly I can't believe it's already November! And in just about a week our baby boy will be five months.

I spent almost every day the past two weeks babysitting Selah, my friend Ashley's sweet baby girl who is only two and a half weeks younger than Gray. Can I just say I am thankful I didn't start motherhood with twins?! Dang y'all, it was no joke! Thankfully it was only four and five hour days and they were really pretty good for the most part. It just seemed like they were on the exact same schedule, which made some of the time pretty crazy. They wanted to eat at the same time and they wanted to sleep at the same time, which meant one or the other (and sometimes both) were crying at several times during the day. Gray slept in a pack n play there so he didn't nap nearly as good as he does in his crib at home. Selah only sleeps about 30 minutes at a time. Needless to say, I had my hands full-literally! But I was thankful to be able to help a friend and make some money.

Soccer season is officially over. It's bittersweet. Bitter because Paul really enjoys coaching and it would have been great if the team could have made it further in the play offs. But mostly sweet because it means a lot more time spent together as a little family. Paul got home at 4:00 yesterday!! I didn't know what to do with myself. Gray didn't either. It was like he could sense his daddy being home and he woke up right when he came in the door from sleeping only an hour. So we went and voted early and ran some errands and had dinner at a normal dinner time. Hello, "normal" family life, I have missed you so!

Gray has been doing great lately. He has discovered his voice which has made things a bit loud around the Hicks house. He loves to squeal. The louder, the more fun for him. He still can't seem to stay awake for more than two hours, which doesn't seem very long for a baby his age. My boy loves some sleep and I guess I should be thankful for that. It is still making errands and going places difficult though. However, I am not taking for granted the fact that we can go out, even if it's not for long, and he doesn't scream in the car or while we're out. But when we hit that two hour mark, he lets me know it's time to go. I stay out sometimes and try to make him fall asleep in his car seat, but he usually wins and we head home to his bed. I am trying to let him spend time by himself every day. It's hard because I want to interact with him every second that he's awake but I don't want him to be spoiled and I think him learning to be independent is so important. One day I just let him play for as long as he'd do it to see how long he would hold out. Y'all, he entertained himself for over 30 minutes!! Maybe that's normal for his age but I was excited nonetheless. He is just so much fun right now. He is really starting to laugh more and more and I cannot get enough of that sweet sound. Daddy normally gets the best laughs out of him and I love that for both of my boys. My heart feels like it could explode any minute.

Blessed continues to be such an understatement.