"Come what may, and love it.": May!

Well, instead of cheating and making a few posts for the entire month but change the date so that it looks like I'm keeping up, I've decided to just do this whole month in one post. It will kind of be backwards because when you read the posts, the old stuff is first and you scroll up to the new stuff... but I'll be writing chronologically, so you will be scrolling down. Anyway. You can deal with it.

Let's see. On May 3rd we all went to Ella's 1st birthday party! It was great fun. She actually won't be 1 until this Thursday, but they wanted to have it before Michael left on his business trip for THREE WHOLE MONTHS! I don't know how Anna does it. AND she is getting the house ready to sell while he is gone with a 1yr old and a 5yr old. She is my role model. Here is a picture of Ella loving her cake.

Peyton is growing so much every day! He has been able to hold his head up pretty well now, so Mom started putting him in the walker. He pretty much loves it... sometimes haha. Peyton is the type of baby that knows what he wants, and he will let you know when you aren't letting him do it fast enough. Matt says he has my temperament. Oh well. He is still a wonderful baby and we love him very much

So Peyton pretty much does not have contact with any kids except his John Michael and Ella. He doesn't go to day care, and he stays in his car seat when we go shopping. SOMEHOW he got the hand, foot, and mouth virus about the 9th of May. I thought he had scratched himself (because his nails grow like crazy and I can't keep up), but it wasn't healing like his other scratches. Then Mom noticed he had a little blister on the bottom of his lip. It wasn't until Saturday morning that the blisters started showing up all over. Thank goodness he only had a few inside his mouth and he was still able to eat. That whole weekend he felt so bad, and he just wanted his Mama! I pretty much cuddled and swaddled him for three days straight. Matt helped a little, but he was just getting over strep throat (he got it so bad he had a really bad rash with it). Also, Peyton just wanted to be held by his Mama. I'm not complaining, because I loved that time I was able to spend with him, but it was definitely exhausting. I've put pictures below, but I'm not sure if you can see that well. One of his ears was really bad, blisters all over his fingers and toes (the skin is now peeling from where the blisters stretched it - a few of his toes were absolutely covered in blisters, so a layer of skin was peeled off the whole toe!), and his legs had so many little blisters it looked like a rash.

Ok, below are his 4 month pictures and I also have a few videos of Peyton. It will only let me upload one video at a time, so here is the peek-a-boo! (loves it) I also have a video of him tearing it up in the bath and telling a story. He has grown so much! FOUR MONTHS! Ruth and I weighed him the other day and he was 17lbs!! Such a cute little chunk. I also started feeding him cereal for dinner this week. Guess what that means. HE SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT! Well, every night this week but Friday night. He sleeps until 6 or 7. It is so wonderful. I think he likes the cereal, but still prefers formula. I will feed him cereal first in his chair, then after he eats most of it he will start getting fussy and want his bottle. Then I give him another bottle before bedtime. He laughs and smiles and is really learning to pick his head up during tummy time. He lifts his feet up though, so we need to work on that. Oh yes. He also LOVES to snuggle with his blankets. Holy cow. Any blanket. Even a rag. He will grab it and rub it on his face. Has to have it to sleep, and loves to play with it.

Last but not least, Anna and I got together to take pictures of the grandkids for Mother's Day. We are late on it because Peyton was sick and who knows what else. Oh yeah. We are renovating our bathroom. It started out with taking the wall paper off, then the walls, vanity, toilet, and floor are all gone. Yay... It will be very nice when Matt is done, but we were not expecting this in our budget. And Matt was expecting to have it done this weekend but work switched his schedule and screwed it up. Hopefully it won't take too long to finish. I'll post pics of that when I have time. Matt has been taking them with his camera. Here are the pics of the grandkids!