Yolande

Gah, I'm late with this update, and I know you were all worried when 4/11 passed without a post about Porter-P. Alas, I am a slave to the concept of equal documentation between children and there will only be three more monthly posts after this one. Because at age two, I stop doing them and THEN WHAT?? What will drive me to blog at all after my baby doesn't need my rambling voice to recap his monthly happenings anymore? Wah.

So old and distinguished, probably can read his own blog posts already.  :)


Porter thinks he is a big kid lately. He refuses to sit in a booster seat and now sits in a regular chair at the dinner table, even though his little chin barely reaches the plate. No matter, since he sits still for approximately five minutes to eat then says 'down' and is over it. I can't decide if he is a good eater or not---I don't think he is all that adventurous as he knows what he likes and rarely deviates from it, no matter how many other options I'll put on his plate. His favorites are yogurt, pizza, bread crusts with mayonnaise on them (so random, such a third kid thing), PBJ, and chips. Porter loves 'dips' and will scream for them more than most other food types. Well, cookies and M&Ms are his ultimate favorites in life, and if I make my M&M cookies he will try to pick out the candies first and then will eat the rest of the crumbs. He knows what he wants, this is for certain.

So happy on the swings!


Loves selfies, duh.


He seems super long and lean like he's lost his baby belly, but I know that compared to 2-3 year old Porter this guy is still 'chubby'. But he's really thinned out and is running constantly, eating very little it seems, so no wonder he doesn't seem gigantic and fat anymore! He comfortably wears size 24 month clothes, 2T seems a little big, and 18 months are usually too short but he could squeeze into them if needed. And I'm pretty sure last summer he was wearing 12-18 month clothes so as I pull out his warmer weather clothes, some of them still fit from last year! This is absurd and usually doesn't happen with my kids until they are much older and wearing clothes for longer than one season.

Long and lean!


Toddler body proportions slay me.


Hi, big kid!


The biggest obsession for Porter is definitely trains, and specifically all of the Thomas trains. He will name them now, pointing to them in a book and on TV and in 'real life' with our toy trains that are scattered across every inch of our house. I believe his favorites are 'Diesel 10' which he calls 'Ten', Spencer which sounds like 'Pen-durrrr', and Gordon. 'Gord' is still the bees knees around here but this month brought the ability to name 20 or so trains. Also he will request to watch Thomas and will actually sit down and watch a full episode without getting distracted. He will play with the three train tracks we have set up in the basement for a solid 10-15 minutes before calling for help. I love watching his little mind at work when playing with trains and I hope it continues! For we have many-a-Thomas shirts for the 2T-3T size little boy.

At Easter church service, double fisting the trains of course.




Can handle his Kindle with the best of them, usually picks Thomas or Daniel and watches it without interaction! Julia, the mom to one child, would have NEVER approved of this milestone but Julia, the mom to three kids, is super excited about this.


Ports is still a good sleeper, going down around 7:30 and sleeping until at least 7:00. Sometimes he will go through a phase of waking up earlier around 6:00 but thankfully that hasn't lasted more than a week or so. Also he still naps for 2-3 hours in the afternoon and really despises being woken up to get his brother at school. Porter needs to sleep with one giant Snoopy blanket, about three Aiden and Anais blankets, his duckie, 3-4 trains, and a billion stuffed animals. And two books. Then he makes me carry down all of those blankets with us after he wakes up, because sometimes he'll make a pile of blankets in a random place and will just lay face-down on them.

Loves him some duckie, filthy, filthy duckie.


Snuggles before a bed, a newish part of the routine that I looooooooove.


He's a goofy dude who loves to get a laugh, especially when they come from the mouths of his siblings. He'll pretend to be a dog and say 'woof woof' and pant, then he'll crawl around and scratch at my legs. Hilarious to CC and Truman, of course. And speaking of animals, Porter is truly obsessed with all animals and definitely at a perfect age for the zoo. His mind is blown when we see any ducks or geese and seeing bears at the zoo was probably the highlight of his entire month. He wouldn't stop telling everyone about the 'bay-ah' and then he would go on a tirade about every other animal we saw, and what they were doing (high! birdie! head! wa-wa! monkey! ooh-ooh-aah-aah! mump (jump!) ) The list goes on but let it be known that we have an animal and a train lover on our hands. Also a talker---Porter is still crazy verbal and it's awesome to hear him communicate mostly understandable thoughts!



What else about my little dude? He still loves his mommy and gets a little picky about who is going to help him do things. He usually says 'no, mama!' if someone else tries to help get him down off a chair or change his diaper. The last one is super fun for me. I've been telling Nate he needs to remember what it's like to change a disgusting diaper but *funny* how Porter just won't allow it :/



He's really into saying 'bye' to everything. 'Bye, wa-wa! Bye, plane! Bye, duckie! Bye da-da!' It's my favorite, even when he says goodbye to his privates as I replace his diaper. Also, he wants to be naked all of the time and sprints away from me when I'm changing him, just to feel the breeze on his skin or possibly because he likes to have me chase him down.

I also chase him around Costco, pictured here.


My favorite Porter activity is when he rides his sister's hot pink tricycle. We finally got him a helmet so he can ride the tricycle and also ride in the Burley with Cecelia on family bike rides (key!). I foresee many afternoons playing in our backyard this summer and as long as P doesn't wander off to explore the woods (he does have a tendency to follow birds), it's going to be a great time with this growing babe.

I mean....


We had a good Easter with Porter this year, but egg dyeing was not the most pleasant.


And yet, it's such a treat to watch our little caboose grow into himself. We are all pretty smitten with Porter and the feeling can be mutual. He can also hold his own and will purposefully push Truman and Cecelia's buttons, so I hardly have to worry about our little 'baby' of the family. In fact, Nate and I think he is going to be the toughest and wildest one of the bunch! Hold me.


We love you so much, Porter-P. This month and every month, words fail me to describe how amazing you are!
xoxo
Mommy

'He'll be two NEXT MONTH,' is what I'm telling people lately when they ask Porter's age. And all of a sudden he seems to be every bit of age two. Every.stinking.bit.

There was a span of about ten days when I swore that Porter was getting sick. He was incredibly cranky, and irritable, and would melt into a puddle (of high-pitched screams) whenever he couldn't get his way. He was clingy and basically a hot mess for those ten days. Nothing ever came of it, I don't see any gigantic teeth gleaming through his gums or any obvious illness that peaked. I think it was just a phase, the start of his two-year-old personality. When looking to Nate for comfort and guidance regarding this wretched phase, he simply said, 'How old is Porter going to be next month? Don't you remember CC at age two?'

Big guy!!


Long legs!


And I honestly do not recall her tantrums, although I'm sure if I read back over the blog archives it would all come flooding back at me. All that I remember about Cecelia was that she was an excellent big sister when Porter was born, and she would have been about twenty-six months then. Nate rolls his eyes at me when I claim recall failure but I truly blocked it out of my memory. Survival mode at it's finest, I guess (or newborn memory blur, take your pick).

NEVER FORGET, JULIA OF THE FUTURE!


This one cracks me up, shopping at Target, tears rolling down his face, but obliged us when we had him try on a hat. He wants that toy which is not for him.


Back to Porter: he seems a little less psychotic these days compared to that rough little stint, but still throws himself on the floor and chucks trains at his siblings, throws his food down, and yells things like, 'NOOOO, CECE!' on the regular.

His newest naughty habit is that when we tuck him in for bed or a nap, he always demands to sleep with approximately 800 trains in his crib. But now we will say goodnight, walk downstairs, and about 5 minutes later we will hear each and every train crash to the floor as he tosses them over the edge of the railing. Then he will do a grand finale by throwing his beloved Duckie lovey over the crib rail (we can watch the whole show on the video monitor), and will start yelling for me. I will retrieve Duckie and usually some trains, he will quickly flop down onto the mattress pretending to be innocent/tired, and will eventually fall asleep. But the sound of trains smashing on the floor will be a nice marker for this time in our lives with Porter-P. A part of his soundtrack to life, if you will.

An old shirt of Nate's from the 80s.


Besides pushing some major buttons, Porter is pretty much amazing. He is hilarious and a total copy cat when it comes to his siblings. He will fake cry if Cecelia is wailing about something for real, he will follow Truman around and do anything the kid wants, and he will sigh EXTREMELY loud like his mama does sometimes.

Must run down this hill a hundred times, mom.


The other day I took Porter grocery shopping alone, while Nate took the big kids to Costco. P and I had a blast together and I think he really eats up alone time with one adult! But I had to get a video of him saying 'Yuppie Hill' over and over and over again. Yuppie Hill is the brand of eggs we buy and I said the name once in the store, then he became a broken record and repeated it a million times with his baby lisp. I freaking love this kid so much, he is so weird and delightful.

Chocolate face, can't quite reach the pedals.


One big occurrence for mister P is that we switched him to forward facing in the car seat. Yes, it is one month shy of two years and I realize it's incredibly unsafe compared to rear facing, but even if we waited until three years it would always feel scary at first. The first time he rode facing forward he was giddy and smiling and kept looking at Cecelia as if to say, 'Hi! I can see what you see now!'



Favorite hobbies include splashing in every single rain puddle available, then complaining about being wet. Searching for a Bobcat working truck that he calls a 'bot-cap'. Looking for the wild turkey that has been hanging around our house lately, along with bunnies, birds, and squirrels. Porter loves animals so much that the other day, out of the blue he said, 'Mommy? Zoo, animals, big!, lion, bear, tiger, scary.' I mean, how is his little mind working like this now? He was just sitting by himself, playing with his trains when he told me he was thinking of the zoo animals and how some of them are 'scary.'. So, so fun!

Another favorite phrase is ,'No, I do it.' I hear this constantly when I try to pick him up to walk down the sidewalk, or help him up our stairs. In fact, he won't really ride in the stroller anymore unless we force the issue by using the straps and several snacks for distraction. He also likes to ride on Cecelia's hot pink tricycle but it takes about a million years for us to get anywhere this way. One Saturday morning we took a family walk to the Farmer's Market, Truman and Cecelia rode their bikes while Nate walked along side of them. I got stuck with Porter on his tricycle and it literally took us an extra hour to get to the Farmer's Market, including three failed attempts at me putting him in the stroller until I finally just dealt with the tantrum and booked it with the screaming child hanging halfway out of my stroller. He also hates diaper changes and brushing his teeth---basically anything that he cannot do alone is the WORST according to Porter.

Our epic trip:


What happens when we put him in a stroller?


Lois noticed that Porter is incredibly smart when she said something about how we were going to our friend Sam's party later that night. Porter looked at her and pointed up the street, right to Sammy's house, and said 'Sammy party!'. I mean, how does he know directions like that already? Blows my mind and never gets old to see him start to seriously understand the world around him.

I've had at least three people come up to me in the past week, asking me if *that* is Porter? These are other parents who last saw Porter in the spring and all of a sudden he's like a different child: tall, lean, a little boy instead of a baby. Waahhhhhh!!

Showing me his belly after eating a big meal at Culvers.


Sleeping is about the same, one long nap from around 12:30-3:30, bedtime at 7:30, up for the day around 7:00am but his record of sleeping until 9:00am has been attained several times. Thank goodness for summer schedules and Grandpa Tony, who Porter adores and requests after every nap. Tony now has all three kids on Mondays and Wednesdays as I work from about 9-3, then Friday mornings when I try to be home by 1:00. So far so good, and Porter is doing a decent job sharing Tony with Truman and Cecelia now.

Bros.






Eating isn't his favorite thing, but he'll graze most of the day and sometimes surprises us with what he can put down the hatch. Newest favorite is mayo on bread, cut into strips. Not a big fruit or veggie guy but we are working on it. Will eat any type of sugary treat you place in his vicinity though, so watch out.

Smoothie love.


S'more love. (and those baby blues!)


Porter always amuses us and he is a great mix of sugary sweet with a pinch of salt. I don't know how we got by without him in our family and I have a feeling he will be our wildest child yet!

The littles. Their relationship is something to behold, I love watching them interact (most of the time, anyway).


Matching tank tops!!! Not sure how long this will last but Truman adores it, so you better believe I will oblige as long as possible.


Nature walk in the woods with these two, we saw a deer and Porter almost lost his mind.


Catching some butterflies, duh.


One more month until TWO, Porter!! Love you so much, you little stink pot. ;)

A long and slender week, apparently...but I suppose we are to focus on the length, only. Week of the banana.

And that weight guess is right on because our boy weighed 13 ounces at his big US! And speaking of weight and the lucky number 13....guess who's packed on 13 of the big lbs? (And yes, I got my hair chopped off tonight. Could not take it anymore. Does it make my face look fat?)



Yeah, totally freaked out at my 20 week appointment last Tuesday. Where are those 13 pounds, I ask, because I'm still in normal clothes and people are still badgering me about not really being pregnant. I asked the doctor if that was an obscene amount of weight to gain thus far. And do you know what that saintly woman told me? "Oh no, that is actually low. I would have liked to see you at 20 pounds at this point being halfway through already." To which my eyes bulged in reply--we've never discussed weight gain before, so this was news to me. I asked, "Do you mean you want me to gain 40 pounds total?" and she informed me that yes--I am to shoot for the stars with this pregnancy. Something about me being on the borderline of 'underweight' for my BMI before pregnancy and so she wants me above the standard 20-35 pound mark. Score for me, I guess? I cannot fathom stepping on the scale and seeing a number FORTY FREAKING POUNDS heavier than my norm. Sorry for yelling, but holy cow. I guess it's doctor's orders so I won't complain too much. But please, Lord, let me lose the weight fairly easily. I'm so tempted to sign up for a half marathon next fall just to taunt myself with jumping headfirst into training again, but alas...I will not to that to myself just yet.

Besides the majorly awesome milestone of seeing our little man on the US screen last week and falling totally, madly in love with him, mister man has also turned up the kicking a notch. To the point where my new favorite pass time is laying down, pulling up my shirt, and watching the show he puts on for me. Nate is still working out the timing on these performances by our guy because he still gets a bit shy with daddy watching. But the kicks are insanely powerful right now and I wonder if this is the happy medium for movement during my pregnancy: when he has enough room to go nuts and kick like crazy, before he gets too cramped and has to deliver dull nudges instead. I suppose we shall find out.

The big question everyone wants to know now that the cat is out of the bag with his gender is: "So have you thought of names?" The short answer is yes, we have. The long answer? We (and by 'we' I mostly mean 'me) have been compiling very large lists of both boy and girl names that we (ahem, I) liked since even before I got pregnant. I went through the lists with Nate a few months ago and jotted down his reactions to some of my choices and got hilarious responses. From 'Okay, but dorky' to 'Not going to happen in a million years ' to a flat out 'NO'--he certainly had his opinions. So I let it drop, figuring it was way too early to decide something this monumental anyway. But on Friday morning, as we drove up to Madison and back to pick up our amazingly awesome dresser/ changer from Craigslist, we really narrowed down the name options. The night before we both made our own separate boy name lists of seven options each. Then on Friday we went through the lists and consolidated a Top Four, if you will. We each like all four of the names and although Nate informed me that he could make a final decision immediately, I want to wait it out just a little longer. You know, let the big four marinate a little bit, ponder it, and probably second and third guess all of them. THEN I might be ready to commit.

But it looks like we might be keeping this big decision a secret. Nate would prefer it this way and I guess that makes sense since we did find out the sex and everything. Either way we know the middle name will be Nate's middle name, Anthony, which is also Nate's dad's first name and Nate's late Grandpa's first name. Something about four generations of men with the same name is just way too cool in my opinion. My middle name is the same way, so someday we already have our girl's middle name settled (Lorene) !

So that's that. We now have a pimped out dresser changer that needs to be re-painted white and needs new knobs AND if that weren't exciting enough, we might have found our rocker, too! You'll never guess where we found it. No, not on Craigslist, despite my devoted stalking every day. No, not some other online store, or even a store at all. We found it in my in-laws attic. You see, they LOVE to store furniture up there like it's no one's business. When we needed a dining room table, we scoured stores for months before we decided we didn't like any of them. And then my in-laws informed us that they had three spare full dining room sets for us to choose from. Isn't that insane? You need a little step stool or a side table? Head on up to the attic of my in-laws and go crazy....they have it all. And we knew they had at least 3 rockers up there but we didn't think they'd like us to paint any of them white, since most are sentimental antiques. And I will not budge on the 'all white furniture' idea. But Nate's dad let us know about one of the 'somewhat modern' rockers that could be painted and whaddya know? It seriously looks just like the rocker from Ikea I've been stalking! All it needs is a little sanding, priming, and painting white. Then add two fatty upholstered cushions and voila...our nursery furniture is almost complete!

I am purposely not showing you pictures of the dresser/changer and the rocker to drive you mad. Not really, but I want to do a big reveal on both pieces once I get them both finished. My parents are making the trek up north to see us this weekend and I have a list of about 10 projects my mom and I will try to tackle while she's here. So patience, my friends. I'm dying to see them finished, too:)

Baby boy is moving right along on his developmental time line this week and get this: he is growing taste buds! Just imagine him, gulping down some yummy amniotic fluid and practicing his digestive process. Isn't he squeezable? But the weirdest thing is that some studies say that after he is born, baby might be more interested in tastes he's already experienced through my amniotic fluid. Guess this boy is going to love sweets then, huh? I totally need to lay off the sugar but it was Halloween and I just love them, okay? Okay.

I think that's it for week 21. I also had an eventful and fun weekend down in St. Louis throwing Hannah a baby shower. Pictures to come!