Will and Grace

We have a chihuahua named Gracie. She was our first "child". She is a very easy-going dog. All she needs is a blanket, a bowl of food, and someone to love on her. She does yap(like most small dogs), but once she gets to know you she will love you for life. Since Will's arrival, her world has been thrown for a loop. She no longer gets our sole attention. We were afraid that she would be jealous of Will and act out because she was not getting all of her normal attention. But, she has been just the opposite. In fact we call her "Mama Gracie". She wants to be wherever Will is. When he goes down for a nap in his crib(a rare occurrence right now), she curls up in the rocker in his room. If he cries, she howls. She loves to kiss him(we don't encourage this, but sometimes she sneaks a kiss on his cheek when we're not looking). She is also very protective when anyone wants to hold Will or when anyone approaches our house.

This past weekend, Will started to notice Gracie. All of a sudden he watches her as she runs around the living room. Last night as he played in his jumper he saw Gracie sitting on the ottoman and laughed out loud. Grace was doing nothing but sitting, but Will thought it was hilarious. When Gracie jumped down, Will stopped laughing. But when Mike put her back on the ottoman he would laugh again. We were rolling!

Will has even started to reach out and touch Gracie if she is near him. Mike and I are both trying to guide Will's curious little hands softly over Gracie's back. We want to teach him early how to treat animals, we don't need any unfortunate accidents in the near future.

Will and Grace, a boy and his dog. What could be better!

Poor Baby Will!

Will is starting to become a little man. How cute is he!

Well, in the last post I talked about how well Will was doing sleeping in his crib. This week, all of that has gone out the window. Will has been a little under the weather therefore our schedule has been totally thrown off.
Early Monday morning, Will got his first noticeable fever. He has been real congested lately and hasn't been breathing really well. I told Mike that I wanted Will to sleep with us so that I could keep an eye on him. Around 2:30 am, Will got restless. I thought it was time to eat, so I rolled him toward me. That's when I noticed how warm he was. I sat up and started to unzip his pjs and felt that his little body was really hot. I got Mike up to get the thermometer. Will's temp: 103. Yikes! We tried to keep calm, we gave him some tylenol and put lukewarm rags on him to bring the fever down. After a little while it went down to 101.6 and then down to 99.6. On Monday, his fever went back up during the early evening, but then it came back down. We thought that it could be the beginnings of teething, but when I called the nurse at the Dr.'s office, she also suggested an ear infection. She told us that since his fever has been down for a couple of days there is not much that they can do and to call back if his fever goes back up. Not much help to a new mom, let me tell you.


I love this hat!

So, all of this to say, what progress we had made with sleeping last week seems to have gone. Will still sleeps ok at Aimee's (baby-sitter), of course. But at home its a different story. Last night he did not want to be put down. If I sat him in his high-chair, swing, bouncy seat, or heaven forbid, his crib, he screamed. He did fall asleep twice, once while I rocked and once I was just cuddling him and sitting in bed. But both times he was being held upright. The night before, we did get him down, but he was waking up every 10-15 minutes. Poor little guy, he doesn't feel himself. I have no clue what to do, other than to love on him, and try not to lose my patience when he fusses for three hours straight.

Learning to Sleep

Look at those blue eyes!

So...its been awhile since I've posted. I am back in the swing of things with school, so that makes me a full time teacher and a full time mommy. Needless to say, I'm a little short on time. But there are some new things going on at the Fessler house.

Will chilling on the couch.
Daddy and Will at dinnertime.

First, we have a new schedule. Mike is now working from home. He starts work about 12:30 and works until about 7 every evening. My friend Aimee is watching will from noon until 3:30 when I get there to pick him up. Its been a good set-up so far. He basically goes to her house to nap and eat lunch, but in the process he has made some new friends. Aimee's little girls, Abigail and Naomi adore Will, and he loves the attention they give.

Will was laughing so hard, until Mike got out the camera. Of course!

Second, Will has finally started to sleep in his crib. He is not sleeping there all night yet, but we are slowly moving that way. He has been sleeping in the bed with us. Which has been great until recently. Will has been getting real restless in bed and has been keeping both Mike and I up at night. So last weekend we started laying him down in his crib. He got it, after a few tries of course. It does take a little work, making sure his pacifier is in or rubbing his back, but he eventually doses off. Three and a half hours straight is our record. Hopefully we will start going longer here soon. I miss my little cuddle bug, but I don't mind having my side of the bed back either.

Playing with my blocks during tummy time.

Will after bath time.

Will has also started to get himself on somewhat of a routine. He is eating solids three times a day and we think that is also helping him sleep better. Every night after dinner, Will gets a bath, clean pjs, story and milk. We let him stay up with us for a little while, but by 7:45-8:00 he is showing signs that he is tired. So we put him down. He will sleep for about 30 minutes, before waking up, but once his paci is back in, he usually goes right back to sleep. Its amazing the things I can do once he goes to sleep. I can finally read again!

Will eating his feet. He loves his feet!

Will's Friends

Its nice to be in the same place in life as your friends. We have lots of friends that have kids, but a few have little boys that are roughly the same age as Will. Over the weekend we saw two of those couples and their little boys.

Here is Will and his buddy Henry. Henry is about 3 1/2 weeks older than Will, and doing things that Will hasn't done yet. I think that Henry was teaching Will how to prop on his hands. We saw Henry's parents, Todd and Lori, Saturday night at a get together with friends.

Here is Will and Parker. Mike and I played ball with Parker's parents, Brad and Brandy, in college. It was nice to get together and talk. We talked a little about the old days, but mostly we compared notes about our new lives.

Will is doing more and more things. Last night he, for the most part, rolled over by himself. He got all the way over, he just had one shoulder hanging behind. He has been working on this for a long time. We were just quitely watching him play on the floor and he did it. We didn't make a big deal about it because we didn't want to scare him. He was just chattering away like it was not big deal, it was kinda funny.

Will is all of a sudden able to tripod. My cousin Holly told me that this was the beginnings of sitting up on their own. This, like everything else, happened over night. He is doing so much now that I can't keep track of what day he accomplished what.

Will is doing an awesome job at tummy time, and I think we are getting close to propping up on our hands. Hopefully, Henry gave us some good pointers Saturday night!


More tummy time!

Ringing in the New Year

My first taste of green beans!

Will had a very exciting New Year's Eve! We had to take him to the doctor this morning for his 4 month check up and shots. He now weighs in at 14 pounds, 4 ounces and he is 25.25 inches. Everything looks good, we are in the 50th percentile for height, weight and head circumference. After that, we drug Will to Dawsonville and went shopping at the outlets. The shots must have knocked him out because he slept about the whole time we shopped. Several people commented on the cute baby passed out in the stroller. That was Will, what a hard life he has!

Will playing with his driver toy and sitting in his new highchair. What a big boy!

I forgot to post in the last entry, but Will has now started solid food. We started him on rice cereal the Sunday before Christmas. He has loved it! In fact most of the time that I feed it to him he tries to take the spoon away from me. He also grabs for the bowl. He has recognized that what I am giving him is coming from the bowl. Its so cool to be able to watch his face and see that he is starting to figure some things out. Anyways, today the doctor said that we could start introducing fruits and vegetables. So tonight he got his first taste of green beans. He didn't seem to mind it, but he didn't seem to love it as much as his rice. Well, he has plenty of time to aquire a taste seeing as how we can feed him solids three times a day if we want. After green beans we will try and master sweet potatoes, applesauce and bananas. Yummy!!

Eating and loving my rice cereal!

Will's 4 Christmases

Will's first Christmas actually consisted of four Christmases. We spent Christmas Eve with Mike's family, Christmas morning in our house, Christmas afternoon at my parent's house and then my dad's family and the day after with my mom's side of the family. Because Mike and I both have a lot of family, we do our best to try and see everyone around Christmas time. This year, Christmas week was busy. Here is a little of what we did in pictures:

We went to Sandersville, GA the weekend before Christmas to visit Mike's grandparents. This is Will with Grandma and Grandpa Fessler.

This is Will getting ready to go to Grandma's for Christmas Eve. He spent a lot of time in his car seat this Christmas.

Will and his daddy playing with Rudolph. The reindeer's nose lit up and sang Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. Will was interested in putting the reindeer's nose in his mouth. Right now, everything goes in Will's mouth, even his toes which he found this past week.

Will and Uncle Andrew. Will is wearing Uncle Drew's Thrashers Santa Hat. I don't know much about hockey, but Uncle Andrew promises to teach Will all he needs to know.

Will and Great-Grandpa Duggan. He just laughed and giggled as G-Grandpa was playing with him.

Will with his presents from Mike and I on Christmas morning. We did not give him a lot, his Marmie (my mom) and Grandma (Mike's mom) took care of that!

Will and Jake on Christmas afternoon at Uncle Garland's house.

Will's first trip to the beach! We went to my Gran's house the day after Christmas to do Christmas with my mom's side of the family.

Will's first time playing in the sand! He will get more practice this summer when we go on our first family vacation.

Will and his Daddy. Yes, Mike has a beard! He has recently resigned from his position at the golf course where he had to be clean cut and freshly shaven everyday for 6 years. So he is enjoying his freedom! He does have a new job, one where he can work from home.

Will playing in his new jumper that his Grandma gave him.

Will had a busy, but fun first Christmas. He got lots of clothes and toys and a high chair. All should last him for quite a while. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, its so nice to have family that loves you. They helped us give Will an amazing Christmas. Thank you to everyone for all of the wonderful gifts!

A few new firsts

Our little man has been growing like a weed. Here is an update on some of his new things.

This is Will's first visit to meet Santa Claus. This Santa was at the Mirror Lake Publix where Paul, Mike's Dad, works. He did very well, he didn't even cry. I guess he's still too young to be scared of Santa.

This is after Will's 2nd bowl of rice cereal. We just started cereal yesterday. We got video last night, but I had to have a still picture. I don't know if you can tell, but he got more cereal on his face than he did in his mouth.
Will can now hold his own bottle!
All of a sudden Will has found his thumb. He is not sucking on it, but he is gnawing on it. He has also started to make the motor boat sound with his mouth. Its pretty funny, especially since he learned it from us!
Aunt Linny giving Will his first taste of lemon. He didn't make the typical sour face. He seemed to actually enjoy it!

I'll end with this picture. We were getting ready to go Christmas shopping this morning and Mike was holding him. He looked so cute that I just could not resist a picture. Wednesday he will be four months old! Where has the time gone? Our little baby boy is growing and changing so much, sometimes it seems like it is overnight. He is such a joy to be around. Mike and I have been blessed with an incredibly pleasant and delightful baby.