Snow Flakes Keep Falling on My Head

Last night it snowed, again. This is a really pretty snow. It was a heavy wet snow so it's great for snowballs! What was also great about this snow was that it melted from the streets fairly quickly. Last night after Brigham's dreamfeed (yes we are back to doing the dreamfeed) Mark was acting a little suspicious when he went out to our cars so I went out the back door and made a big snowball and then went out the front door and ran up to Mark and just threw it at him. We then proceeded to just throw snow at each other. I wasn't even wearing shoes; just socks. It was wonderful. We were both laughing so hard. Most of the snow will probably melt away today and I am a little sad to see it go. It really is so beautiful this time.

Teaching is going well. I had my first observations this past week and they were good. This next week is going to be a busy one. I have to video tape myself teaching on Monday, Mrs. Smith will be doing her 2nd observation of me Tuesday, and then Wednesday Dr. Gibbs is coming for her 2nd observation. I don't know that there will be that much growth from my 1st and 2nd observation since they are only a week apart but there will hopefully be a little growth. My third observations are the week of March 8th. One of the 5th grade teachers stopped me in the hall on Thursday and told me that there will be 1 and possibly 2 openings for teachers in 5th grade at the end of the year and she told me to get the principal and vice principal to observe me teaching if I wanted to be a contender for the job. Then on Friday we had our Mardi Gras celebration at school and the principal bought lunch for everyone so we went to the teachers lounge and the principal and vice principal were there eating and we just happened to sit at their table. This was my first opportunity to talk to them since I have been there. They asked me if I was interested in teaching in CMS. So we'll see how this all turns out. I don't hate teaching now that I am doing it so hopefully this all works out in my benefit. I do love the school I am at and it is one of the few school's I would teach at in CMS.

This is a common occurrence in our home: SportsCenter. Brigham gets completely mesmerized (just like his dad does) when it's on

Brigham is doing well. He is still teething. Who knows when these teeth will finally push through but he's become less fussy and more like his old self again. This may be in part to me changing his schedule again! I have put him back on 3 naps a day and we put him to bed between 7 and 7:30 at night. I have also been able to get him to quit rolling himself over onto his back in the middle of the night (which leads to him crying until he is rolled back onto his belly) by using this wedge pillow thing that I got as a baby shower gift that is intended to help them sleep on their side. Once we began putting him on his belly to sleep, we quit using this wedge. Well now it is super handy to have and I am so glad that I held onto it. Last night was our first night using it but it was great. It has also made putting Brigham down for naps easy again! He just goes to sleep just like he used to. He has been getting liquefied carrots or green beans in his bottles each day. We put a little rice in his dreemfeed bottle. We had been giving him more rice but he became a little constipated so we stopped completely and now we are reintroducing it into his diet. He's probably forgotten how to eat from a spoon since 2 weeks ago he had finally gained the skill to eat from the spoon and was opening his mouth when he saw the spoon coming. We will probably start feeding him that way again in the next few days. Mostly we've just been too lazy to do it I think.

The Past Week

Brigham is growing up everyday. He is grabbing for his toys when he lies on his activity mat. He is starting to stare at his hands and his feet. When he wakes up in the mornings he lies in his crib and talks to himself until we get him. Most mornings when we go in at 7:30 he is already awake so I'm not exactly sure what time he actually wakes up. His new schedule is going pretty good. He has adjusted well to just 2 naps a day but he has a hard time staying up till 9:30 in the mornings so the last 2 mornings I have put him down at 8:30 and 8:45. Most nights he wakes us up in the middle of the night crying because he is on his back. We have to go and roll him over onto his belly and he goes right back to sleep. Hopefully he will learn to roll over from his back to his belly soon.
I start teaching the full Literacy block this week. I am so grateful that the 4th grade teachers do team planning. This should make lesson planning extremely easy since I'm not going to have to really write any lesson plans. I hate lesson plan writing.

We found this abandoned grizzly bear cub in our backyard on the snow day

So we brought him in and took care of him

He enjoyed eating some rice cereal while we were washing him in the tub

First Day Teaching

Today was my first day teaching. I only taught part of literacy but it went well. The students were really excited when they saw I was going to be teaching a little and I didn't get nervous at all. My teacher said I did great. I'll spend the rest of this week teaching part of literacy and next week I'll teach for the whole block.
In other news, Brigham's schedule is changing. As of tonight his dreamfeed is no longer happening and tomorrow we are trying him on a 4 hour schedule. This will mean that we are eliminating his 3rd nap of the day and he will be going 4 hours between bottles. Here is the schedule we are hoping works

7:30am- breakfast
9:30am- nap
11:30am lunch
1:30pm- nap
3:30pm 2nd lunch
7:30pm-dinner and bed

We'll see how it goes. I'm thinking it will be a rough couple of days especially since he will be at his grandma's for part of the day but then he'll be here Thurs-Mon so hopefully we will be able to get on this schedule by then. We are having to change his schedule because he has started waking up at 6am and also not sleeping as well during the day. Lucky for us when he wakes up at 6, he just coos and sometimes falls back asleep until 7.

Pictures from today:

Wow, It's Already Been Four Months!

Briggs' 4 month anniversary here on Earth was Thursday. On Friday Mark took him for his 4 month well check and shots. He weighs 15.1 pounds and he is 26 inches long. His weight is in the 60th percentile and his length is in the 90th percentile. His head circumference is 43cm and that is in the 75th percentile.
He has 2 teeth coming in, or so the doctor says. We can't see them but he has been drooling excessively for nearly 2 months and he chews on his fingers and bottle nipples all the time. Yesterday he started rubbing his right ear. I feel so bad for the little guy. Luckily he was only fussy one day and other than that, he has been completely normal so hopefully he isn't too uncomfortable and he will continue being his easy going self.
He still takes 3 two hour naps a day and we have to wake him up from each of his naps most days. He eats 6 ounces for his 1st bottle of the day at 7:30am then every 3 hours after that until 4:30 he eats 5 ounces. At 6:45 (just after his bath) he eats 3-4ounces then at 10pm he gets 5 ounces. We are in the process of dropping the 10pm feeding. He started rice cereal on Friday. He did ok with it. I put what he didn't eat in his bottle for him to drink just after his bath. Last night he wanted nothing to do with the rice cereal. I ended up just making him a 4 ounce bottle and putting the cereal in it. We went to the mall after his bath to hang out with Christian and Deena and then went to Chili's for dinner. Brigham was pretty distracted by everything at the mall but we were able to get him to drink most of his bottle. We are probably just going to put the cereal in his 6:45pm bottle for the next week or so in hopes that he can get used to the thicker consistency/texture then try feeding him with a spoon again.

His first bite of rice cereal
After his first cereal experience


Although I love the 10pm feeding, we are hoping that eating the rice cereal before bed will allow us to drop this feeding. I am assuming that this feeding will be eliminated in the next week.
Briggs is also developing his motor skills. He grabs at the toys on his activity mat and also at the toys that strap to his car seat. I love hearing him play with them while we drive down the road. He used to always go to sleep in the car but now he stays awake a lot of the time. We love the little so much.
School is going well for Mark and I. I start teaching on Tuesday which I am excited and nervous about. I'm mostly nervous because I know it won't be very smooth at first and my teacher will be watching everything I do at first and that is always nerve racking. I think after the first week I won't be nervous anymore though. I am also only teaching 1 subject at a time and every 2 weeks, I will pick up a new subject so it should be a very easy transition into teaching full time.
Mark has really stepped up since I started back to school. He gets up with Briggs every morning. He has said that now that he does more for him, he worries about him more when he is away. Mark has called me a few times just to check on Brigham which never really happened before. It's really sweet. I love seeing Mark with his son. He is so loving and caring.

Happy Birthday Mark!!!

For Mark's birthday we went to Carrabba's with friends and it was great. We didn't get a group picture but Melanie, Kenny, their daughter Madison, Amber and Matt, Nate, Scarlett, Janae and Jason, Daniel, and Justin, Shannon and their daughter Kaitlyn. It was a great night. I made some cupcakes and we had them for dessert there. I meant to get a picture of the cupcakes because they were so pretty and really good!! They are my new favorite dessert. They were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache filling, vanilla buttercream frosting with a strawberry on top. They were completely made from scratch. I really can't wait to make them again.

I didn't realize how much I didn't like Mark's chin hair this long until now when I saw this picture I just uploaded. Luckily he has since shaved. I am a huge fan of facial hair, just not long facial hair.

One Down, Fifteen To Go

I finished my first full week of the student teaching experience. I'm not teaching at all yet but the week went by rather fast considering I don't do very much other than observe the students and my teacher. I am slowly trying to work up to getting to school at 6:30am. The students arrive at 7. It seems that no matter how early I get up and whether I take a shower the night before or in the morning, I can't seem to get out the door until 6:40am. I am now getting up at 5:30am and eventually I will hopefully move a little faster in the mornings so I can leave by 6:15.
There are 8 or 9 Mondays that I won't be home until 5:30pm at the earliest and those will be the hardest days because I will only have an hour and a half at the most with Briggs before he is in bed for the night. The rest of the week I will be home by 4:30 so that will give me two and half hours with him. I do miss the little guy but we are lucky he goes to bed so early because it gives Mark and I time together and also time to do any homework or lesson planning we may have.
Briggs is growing like a weed. He has his 4 month well check and shots this coming Friday. He is getting more and more active and vocal. He is constantly kicking his legs. He kicks while eating, sitting, getting his diaper changed, and of course when he is in his jumparoo. He is definitely a scheduled baby and his naps are like clockwork. He is not very happy if you wake him up early from his naps for any reason. We are so grateful to have our moms, Katelyn, and everyone else that will be helping us with childcare this semester. We still don't have anything set in stone for the first and third Wednesday of each month and since the third Wednesday of January will be here in 3 days, we should really get that taken care of.
Here are some pictures of our favorite person from the last 2 weeks or so

This is a constant scene at our home and we love it so much. His laughing and squealing is the absolute best and slightly contagious


I don't know if Reagan is jealous or what but I'm going with jealous


So Brigham's hair is always a mess, especially on the left side. Well I thought he was just going to have wild and crazy hair and was hoping that it would eventually calm down. Well, the other day when I went t get him up from his nap, he was rubbing his hands through his hair, on the left side! It was really cute and this is the only picture I could get that kind of shows his hand.

Happy New Year!

New Years Day will always mean a little something more to me, at least I think so. One year ago today Brigham started his journey into this world. I'm not sure if it was paranoia or mother's intuition but it was like I knew that a baby would be here for us in 9 months. For anyone who knew us, they knew this wasn't our plan quite yet. I was scheduled to finally graduate college December 19th and ever since Mark had decided 3 months after we got married that he was suddenly ready for kids, I had said that we could try any time after April 1, 2009 that way I could graduate on schedule. So January 2 of last year I started thinking of all the scenarios that could play out and what my options were if I had a baby in September. I knew immediately that I would have to postpone my last semester of school (student teaching) until the following January. Almost everyday for the next 16 days I got excited about the thought of a surprise baby and sad that I would have to move student teaching to the next spring and miss out on so much time with my new baby. I wasn't so disappointed that I would be graduated 6 months later that I had planned but that I wouldn't be able to give our child my undivided attention because I would have a lot of work that I would need to do for that last semester of college.
All month long I kept telling myself I was just paranoid and that the "changes" I was experiencing were all in my head. Obviously they weren't
In 3 days I start student teaching. I've been dreading this moment since last January. Last April we had students who were finishing up their student teaching come speak to us and tell us how hard it was. They were getting to their classroom at 6:30 every morning to prepare for the day. They wouldn't leave until 6 or 7 each night. They had no social life at all. Needless to say, the closer I became to January 4th, the more worried I was about how in the world I would be able to do this, until this week. This week I've felt calm and ready to jump in. I couldn't wait for January 4th to get here so I could get started!
I am sad that I won't have all day everyday with my little man but I had 3 1/2 months which is more than a lot of people get. Our mom's are going to be taking care of him for a couple of hours each day which is awesome for a few reasons : it's free, it's not a daycare, it's only for a couple of hours each day, and it's our moms (they obviously know what they are doing so they can totally be trusted!!).
We are so excited to have Brigham in our lives and wouldn't trade a thing for him! He is our little blessing and we really do love him to death. Sometimes Mark and I say we don't want any more kids so that we can give him all our love and a super fabulous life with just the 3 of us. Recently I have moved away from this way of thinking and I can't wait to have more kids! If given the option, I would say let's go for it right now but we are going to need Mark to graduate first before anymore kids are in our future and that is 2 or 3 years away.


Thank you Brigham for an unexpected and exciting 2009! New Years Day will never be the same and your dad can't wait to use this day to make things awkward for you when you are older. I'm so sorry in advance.