3 Month Update

Little Mamoo turned 3 months old this week!

He is abounding in smiles, love, and huggable fun.

Matthew loves to smile...provided he has food in his tummy and it isn't right before his bedtime, Matthew is SO easy to get to smile. It's like he's got a smile waiting all the time, ready for whenever someone looks at him. It's so precious!


Matthew is doing well in his sleeping...only getting up about once a night and on a few occasions, sleeping more than 10 hours at a time at night! Quite a turn around from the first 1.5 months of his life! Every once in a while he does something sneaky like wake up for food at 4:30 or 5, and then decide he wants to be awake for a good hour, which lands us pretty close to 7am, when Michael gets up. That's no fun...but thankfully that isn't all the time and hopefully will not become so.

Matthew loves to stick his fingers in his mouth. It's like a new toy he just can't get enough of. He chews on them until they are red...and does so very loudly so that I can even hear him if I'm in another room!

Matthew LOVES his brother and follows him with his eyes pretty much wherever he goes. He does take quite a smothering from Michael most days, but it's always done in love...Michael just can't seem to get enough of him and feels like he has to just be right on top of him in order to adequately express his love.


Matthew is doing better with his reflux, and so we are slowly transitioning him back into his bassinett from his car seat...so hopefully in the next month or so he'll be sleeping like a normal baby (and I can wash his car seat finally!) and we can start some sleep training.

In the mean time, I am just thankful he takes good naps and sleeps well at night. Whenever I get a little frustrated because I want him to sleep more than he wants to, I always remember that Matthew's shortest naps are longer than what I used to describe as a "long nap" for Michael and when Matthew gets going on a long nap...lookout! He'll be sleeping for hours...which never happened until Michael started taking only one nap a day. So, I'm thankful Matthew is a good sleeper. God knows what I could handle, especially now that Michael really isn't taking any naps anymore (boo!).

I often forget to give Matthew good rolling-around-on-the-floor time, so hopefully he won't get too far behind in rolling over. I always worry about what questions the doctors will ask at his checkups (his next one is in a month) and feel like I have to "cram" to get some landmark skills done for him so I don't get any sort of worried look or warning from the doctor that he is behind. It's just that his reflux makes it hard to just lay him down wherever, and/or I feel like Matthew is a little safer from the wanderings of a toddler when he's in his bouncy chair or swing than just laying on the ground.

Matthew likes to talk and coo, especially if he is wants to get your attention.

...and it appears we have another Daddy's boy in the family. As much as Matthew is good to his Mommy, whenever his dad is in the room, his gaze is fixed on him. If Matthew is crying, one look at his dad will calm him down, and at Mass when I hold Matthew, he makes sure to position himself so he can look right at his Dad and his brother, almost as if to say, "How do I get over there to be with those guys?" I wouldn't be surprised if, in a few months, Michael Sr will be juggling two boys during Mass...not because I'm not willing to help, but simply because Matthew will want in on the Daddy fun!

Matthew is loved abundantly by all of us...he's the family's Little Moo!

Mystery of the Universe

Answer me this:

How is it that a baby, when taken to a park, can sleep soundly in a stroller with construction men sawing through metal poles not more than 20 feet away....

...but the smallest creak of my bed when I get up in the morning, hoping to bustle around a few minutes before the kids get up, wakes him up every single time?

Mean Geese

I decided to take the boys to Lake Poway today to try and burn off some of Michael's energy (average of 1.5 naps per week...ugh!) in hopes he would take a nap (no luck this time either, by the way). Kathy and I had gone there before once...there is a nice park and a little lake with ducks and coots who like it when you through bread at them.

Hmm...showing Michael real life duckies! That sounds like a great idea! I grabbed some old hamburger buns on the counter, packed up the boys and some snacks and headed out.

Matthew was asleep in the stroller and so I carried Michael and wheeled Matthew down the little embankment to get near the water where the ducks and coots were. Michael really liked looking at them...there were probably 100 birds in total (who am I kidding, I'm terrible at estimating numbers in crowds...but there were a lot of birds!) and they were mostly just floating in the water, some of them waddling around on the dirt not bothering us, just quacking and "cooting."

I figured I would get out the bread and see if I can coax Michael to hurling some bread at them. However, I didn't even get that far. As soon as I dug around in my bag, the birds, who clearly are used to this routine bolted right for us without an ounce of fear.

Now I know ducks are usually pretty calm and standoffish, they'll come closer for the bread, but I've never experienced an aggressive duck who will bite. However, I don't know about coots so I whisk Michael up and hold him while I hurl bread at the birds. They come right at might feet and are swarming! I toss the bread as far as I can in hopes they will back off, but they don't! They keep coming closer and are hovering around my heels.

Meanwhile, Matthew is sleeping the stroller (note, it will be important later: I had to put the brakes on the stroller because of the incline).

Ok, now ducks and coots are not really a problem for me..I'm laughing at their noises and Michael is having a good time looking at the birdies....

...then they came....

...two big nasty geese make their way up the bank and decide to pay us a visit.

Ducks=nice
Coots=persistent, but still non-aggressive
Geese=Mean, nasty, and aggressive

I knew from a few nips in my childhood that geese don't like to wait patiently, or waddle around and look cute. Geese go for the source of the food, in all likelihood to maul the source and get the whole jackpot of bread instead of just a crumb or two.

So these geese tag team and start to go after me. I desperately try to throw bread right at them hoping they will get the food and I can bait them further and further away from me. But these geese aren't even interested in the food. They didn't eat a single chunk despite my attempts to get them away from us. They just keep coming toward me, leaning their heads forward, honking and really looking like they are coming in for the bite.

For crying out loud, geese! I am holding my toddler and you are coming after me with your red eyes, honking, and leaning forward like you want to bite me...do you seriously want to take on a Mom holding her baby boy?

I am evading these geese because I don't want them anywhere near Michael, but for the life of me, I can't get them to stop following me. I use Matthew in his stroller as a shield...we keep going around and around the stroller, the geese going after me, and me circling the stroller holding Michael.

Ok, I'm getting tired of this. I want to leave now. I lure the geese away from the stroller and then go in to swoop Matthew away and bolt in the stroller: but guess what? The brakes on the stroller are engaged...doh! I can't undo them fast enough with my foot and here come the geese again..closer, closer, closer...

I use the bag of hamburger buns to swing in the goose's general direction hoping to startle it away. It didn't, he just held his head down again, honked, and glared at me with his little eyes while his partner tried to outflank me and come at me from around the back.

I'm officially not having fun and I just want to get out. I've left Matthew to fend for himself among a sea of coots and ducks and I'm running away from the two mean geese!

Hey...what if I throw away the bag? Maybe since they know what it looks like when I take a bag out, maybe they will know what it looks like when the bag goes away.

I throw away the bag and wouldn't you know, as soon as they rushed upon us, they all went away back into the water...ducks, coots, and geese.

Michael was pretty unaware of my concern and he actually kept asking to get down, and he thought it was pretty interesting...

..but I was a wreck and that will be the last time we will feed the ducks in a long while!

A Post Dedicated to Michelle

Quite some time ago, for a baby shower my co-workers threw for me when I was pregnant with Michael, I received a wonderful gift-bag full of books (an appropriate gift from Michelle, with an MA in Information Sciences who is quite the expert Librarian!).


In this bag of books was a title I knew was a classic.

But I never knew how precious it would become.

Of course, it's about the Moon, which Michael loves, so it was sure to be a hit.

But, inspired by Michelle sharing how much her adorable little girl, Rosalie, loved this book, reminded me that I need to remind Michael that he has it.

Since we showed it to him again, Michael cannot put the book down.

He's obsessed with it.

It's the first thing he wants in the morning (after the light being on, and wanting to know where Mamoo is), it's what he wants to read before naps and bedtime....and, he walks around the apartment, book in hand, saying "Ee-Ah Moon!" (Ee-Ah, meaning, "Goodnight", I guess).

Michael will even be caught walking into his room, picking up the book, and lying on a pillow on his back reading it to himself.

He wants to read the book again and again...and enjoys when I lay next to him on his pillow to read it.

Michael LOVES this book.

He knows many of the words and says them along with me, especially the part about "the quiet old lady whispering hush" which he turns to me and says "Hush" in a whisper everytime.

Amazingly, it is no longer the moon that has his attention, but many other things, like the house, which he notices has its light on.

The red balloon gets frequently mentioned too.

The fireplace is his big obsession now.

Michael has always liked us to read books to him, starting from a young age with Good Puppy, but to see him always want to enter this realm of the "great green room" and see the wheels turn in his head, almost as if he is in that room, looking around imagining what it would be like to live there....it's so cool.

Thank you, Michelle!!!!! Not only for the book, but for sharing Rosalie's love for the book, reminding me what a classic this is! You rock!! :)

Michael-isms

Michael is just bursting with funny things he says and does.

The funnies that comes to mind is:

"Mommy...chair...down!"

Michael was eating his dinner, I was busy in the kitchen and trying to pick up the apartment before Michael Sr. got home, and Michael wanted me to stop bustling and sit down like I normally do and join him for dinner. He pointed to my chair and said: "Mommy...chair...down!"

"Back!"
Michael is all about putting things "back" where they belong. Even his beloved pacifier (pa-fire, as he calls it) he knows doesn't come out of his crib. When he's ready to get down out of his crib, he'll hand me his pacifier and say "Back" for me to put it in its little bin.

Also, if I'm cleaning his meal dishes, and some food fell from the plate onto his try, he'll pick it up and hand it to me to throw away "Back!" he'll exclaim as he hands me a morsel of food.

"Please!"
For several weeks, Michael used the phrase "Ga-ga!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to indicate he wanted something. I use so many exclamation voice, because he got SO demanding with it. It was so harsh, rude, and impatient sounding and he would repeat it over and over again until he got what he wanted: "Ga-ga! Ga-ga! Ga-(with a loud whine and pout) GAH!!!!!"

Ooh...this was torture on my nerves!

Even though we had been trying to teach him "please" we never got him to say it, so finally, I just said to myself: this kid can say a lot of words...he can say the word please...and from now on, he will!"

So I asked him, "Can you say the word please?" and he said it...and from that point on, "please" is now a fixture in his vocabulary.

Yes, I still have to remind him, but the coolest thing ever is when I don't have to remind him. When he wants the lights on, he will say "On please" instead of his normal bark: "On!" Ah...it sounds so nice.

This isn't to say the please won't ever turn into a demand. I am aware that it may, but as of now, he really is learning to be polite.

"Gi-im!"

This one is really sweet. Whenever he hears Matthew wake up from a nap he wants me to go "get him." This started because when we would hear Matthew cry, I would tell Michael, "Oh, Mamoo! We should go get him!" And oh, the way he says it is so cute...he is so concerned for him!


I know there are more and I'll do my best to update them as they come!

I Can Do It!

Michael is getting into a "I can do it myself!" age.



It's fun to watch him try to accomplish tasks.




Even when he asks for help, he wants me to help him do it...not do it for him (in this case, press a button to get the sirens to sound and lights to light up).


"Hup, Hup!"

He tries and tries....






and eventually he gets it.




And beams with pride!

Still the Same Me