Eli is 4 Months Old!!!!

A friend of mine (Laura Reichert) has been doing a monthly  blog update on her son, who is also 4 months old and it inspired me to do the same for Eli. I can't believe it's been 4 months already!! I remember when he was just a few weeks old I kept thinking to myself, "if I can just make it to 4 months, I know this will get easier." For some reason I got it in my head that 4 was the magic number, and it would suddenly be easier by then...... and guess what..... it is!!!!! I am so happy to report that Eli has been going 6-8 hours a night without eating for about a week now! He still wakes up around 3am because he drops his pacifier and comes un-swaddled (the kid INSISTS on being swaddled still) but he will go right back to sleep, usually until 6 or 7am. He's been sleeping in his own room, so I don't wake at every little sound he makes, and I'm finally starting to feel like my old self again :)  Here is a picture of him sleeping in his bed for the first time:

    He hasn't been back to the doctor yet, but I weighed myself and then weighed again holding Eli and the difference was about 15lbs. So he's gained about 3lbs since his 2 month checkup! He's smiling more and more everyday, I love that when I walk into a room he recognizes me and gets a huge grin on his face. He has also laughed a couple of times, but he makes us work really hard for it. His favorite thing to do is stand up... he would stand up all day if he could. He loves to be in the exersaucer for this very reason. Here is a picture of him playing in it a couple of days ago:

    He's still primarily breastfed, although I've given him a handful of formula bottles when other people are watching him, and we started him on solids a couple of days ago. He LOVES sweet potatoes! The first couple of times he ate them it was mostly just him learning how to eat off of a spoon, and then last night we tried again and he gobbled up half the container and was reaching for more! I don't have any pictures of him eating yet... but there are some messy ones to come for sure :)

    Yesterday my friend Jessica came over with her son Caleb, who is 5 days older than Eli. He has been rolling over for a good 6 weeks already, and I was telling her that Eli hadn't done it yet; then I put him on the floor and turned around and what does he do right away??? Rolled Over!!! I caught the very end of it out of the corner of my eye. I think he was a little shocked because his eyes got really big. He did it again today and I managed to get a really quick video of it :

    Sophia has really surprised me at how grown up she is. She absolutely loves being Eli's sister. Whenever she meets someone now she says "I'm a big sister" and you can just hear the pride in her voice. The other day he was crying and I heard Sophia hurrying down the stairs saying "It's okay baby Eli (she only calls him "baby Eli") your sister is coming!!" It was just the sweetest thing I have ever heard. And Eli just adores her; all she has to do is walk by and he immediately perks up and starts smiling. I hope and pray that they will always love each other like they do now.

If you can't tell, I am such a proud mama!! I can't believe my little babies are growing up so fast!



**Sorry the pictures are kinda bad, they were all taken on my phone

No More Mullet

So as many of you know, my child was born with a Mullet..... yes, a full on  "business in the front, party in the back"  Mullet. I was hoping that it would fall out, but instead, the hair just above the long part fell out, making it look even worse; so it just had to go! I cut a little piece off to save for the baby book and my good friend Stephanie Riley took some pictures to document the "first haircut"  Here they are:

Together Again

We just finished up our last weekend in GA. Derek was able to fly into town for the weekend and drive back to VA with me and the kids. We hadn't seen him in 6 weeks, so we were very excited!!! It was also nice to have the whole family (the Brown side) together in one place again. We don't get to do that very often with Derek's schedule, so when we do we try to get a family picture together. Of course all the men complain about us girls making such a fuss over what to wear, and where to take the picture, and how to sit..... but I know one day they will look back and be thankful that we have these pictures :) We took A LOT of them, but of course there are only a few of everyone looking in the right direction with their eyes open, lol. Here they are:

 We had so much fun on our trip and we will miss everyone over the next couple of months, but it sure is nice to be home  :)