Here it is...the weekly update

Two things to note in this week's picture:

1. The drool spot at the top of Micah's shirt. Drool is a constant part of our lives now, although we have yet to see any teeth as a result.

2. The fact that Micah seems poised to pat his rather rotund belly. At no other time in life is this cute, but we love it now!

These are two shots from last night. Micah really enjoyed his bottle before bedtime - that's the picture on the left. Notice the double chins! He's proudly working on his third. The picture on the right is him staring at one of his favorite things to look at. If you thought it was a nice toy that was given to him, you'd sadly be wrong. Instead, it's the light fixture above the dining room table. Whenever we have him standing on our laps, that's immediately where he looks. And he could stare at it for hours. I guess this is a prelude to what we'll experience later in life when he enjoys the boxes the toys come more than the actual toys.

Finally, I couldn't resist adding this picture. The dogs love to walk so much that it's gotten to the point where whenever Tim or I put on our tennis shoes, the dogs go beserk in hopes that we will take them with us wherever we might be going. This morning Tim got out his shoes in preparation to actually take the boys on a walk, but stopped before going so that he could get his coffee to brew while he was walking them. Wanting to ensure that he was NOT left out of the fun, Heinz lay down right in the middle of Tim's shoes and refused to move until Tim took them to put them on. He's an ornery dog, but he's pretty intelligent and how could you not love that face??

You better watch out...

Bored with school already??

This is a picture of Micah visiting my dad's former workplace. He retired in June - Dad, not Micah - and brought his new grandson in for a visit while we were in Pittsburgh. Micah tried to stay awake, but the visit came too close to naptime and he zonked right out, apparently only opening his eyes very briefly for the staff. Just so everyone at Mt. Lebanon High School knows, Micah's eyes are blue. :)

Tummy time!

One of the things I try to do with Micah everyday is have some tummy time. I haven't been as diligent as I should be with it because he hasn't really seemed to like it very much. But this morning he really started to take to it and was really working on lifting his head. Tell me, is this the cutest face in the world or what?

Oh, and here's a little portrait from our session yesterday. "Morning face" Micah in a Santa hat. We love it!

Christmas is coming to town

We set aside today to take a family picture at Sears, take Micah to see Santa, and decorate our home for Christmas. As the old saying goes, two out of three ain't bad. Turns out that it costs a minimum of $20 to have your picture taken with Santa. $20. My kid is 3 months old and will most likely not ask for anything unless Santa's a master at translating Micah's spit bubbles. I just wanted a cute picture of him with the guy in the red suit. For that price, I told Tim I would rent a Santa costume and plant him in a chair at the mall and he could let people take pictures of him with their kids for free. Oh, and if you do go to see the official Santa, the mall people have a big sign up asking you not to take pictures with your own camera because doing so may endanger Santa's ability to show up at the Brandon mall in future years. If you'd like to hear my thoughts on that, please feel free to email me directly and I'd be happy to expound on why I think this whole thing is the most hideous racket I've witnessed in a long time. My guess is that most of you can probably write that speech yourself. At any rate, the family picture turned out great and our home is now decorated appropriately as you can see by the pictures below. We're grateful for both of those things - oh, and finding a Santa hat that fits Micah! We took our family picture in jeans and white shirts and Micah was still wearing his when we decided to take this picture. We got a version of this at Sears, but neglected to order in favor of one we liked better. We recreated it at home though. Unfolding the tree. :( The pine scented candle was lit while we were doing this, and that makes it a little bit better. Micah supervised from his swing. Micah and Daddy in front of our tree!

Posing for the camera

Micah is really getting the hang of posing for the camera - already! He had just finished his breakfast on Friday morning and was looking at Tim for a while so I put my hand underneath his chin and he stayed that way for quite a while. We couldn't help but take a picture since he seemed like he really wanted to have it done!

13 weeks old

In the midst of updating the blog with our Thanskgiving snapshots, I almost forgot that it was Friday and sign day! Here it is. This was taken in the evening, which is not Micah's best time, but he managed to grin for us once so that we could get a good picture. Happy day after Thanksgiving to everyone!

Micah's first Thanksgiving

Since we've lived in Florida, our Thanksgiving tradition has been to have Thanksgiving day dinner at our house with Derek, Rebekah, and anyone else in the area that needs a place to go. In the past that has included friends with a newborn baby, and my brother and sister-in-law. This year, Rebekah has been struggling with a back injury that has had her laid up (well, really laid down as she's mostly unable to get up from the couch) for a few weeks now. Since she couldn't come to us, we decided it was much less important to continue with our tradition of having it in our house than it was to spend our day with Derek and Rebekah. So we packed up our meal and cooked it at their house. Their son Andrew surprised Rebekah by showing up on Wednesday so he was there for dinner too. This year, we were especially grateful for our baby. Micah is happy, healthy, and growing like a weed. He's smiling and babbling and blowing spit bubbles and has become such a great source of joy for us. We're also grateful for friends who treat us like family, good food, warm homes filled with laughter, and the opportunity to say thanks to the One who has given it all to us.

Derek and I worked hard to get the turkey in the pan!

Micah fell asleep and Rebekah snuggled with him for a long time. They both loved it.

Our official Thanksgiving family picture!

Micah and Daddy played together for a little bit before bed. Micah was so tired by the end of the day that he slept a full 12 hours! Must have been the turkey...

November in Florida

If it's the day before Thanksgiving in Florida and you're a three month old little guy, what do you do? Put your shades on and go out for a stroll in the 80 degree weather with your mom, of course! (During the walk, I spent a lot of time explaining to Micah that Thanksgiving is supposed to be much colder than what he was feeling!)

Our little thumbsucker

While never having taken to a pacifier (unless he's too exhausted to fight it), Micah has found something new to stick in his mouth. I caught him sucking his thumb the other day, and have gone to get him in the middle of the night and he'll be sucking it then too. He also uses it to calm himself during the day. I don't think this is a passing phase! Good thing he looks so cute doing it. I think I've mentioned orthodontic bills before in this blog. They're still looming somewhere on the horizon, but like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow.

Last pictures from the trip

Chloe and Micah meet for the first time... ...and share their first kiss. Note to Chad: We know that you're probably not too happy about the big kiss. However, you'll notice that Micah isn't either! At least you can take comfort in the fact that he won't be ready for Chloe for quite some time. Well, at least until Christmas. :) Our great friends Steph, Sany, and Katie (a.k.a. Chloe's mom) with Micah and Chloe. We all dined at the Pittsburgh institution Eat N Park. Can any Pittsburgher believe we walked out of the joint and none of us had a smiley cookie?? By the way, Thomas is in this picture too, and even though we can't see him, we already can't wait to meet him! Micah meets his cousin Brandon for the first time. They hit it off immediately, and Micah's already looking forward to hanging out with him more when we visit over the holidays. This is Micah kicking back on the floor of the Pittsburgh airport, getting out all of his energy before the flight home. For the record, he slept for the entire flight home, just like he did the flight to Pittsburgh. His mommy could not have been more proud of him, and more thrilled that he decided to take pity on her traveling all alone with him and not give her any trouble. The one thing that I can conclude after taking this trip is that Micah is a really good baby. He went anywhere and everywhere I took him and was hardly fussy at all, let alone screaming and crying. He was such a joy, and his incredible behavior made his mommy love him even more, if that were possible.

Micah is 12 weeks old today!

Here's Micah playing the 12 week mark all cool. It's hard to believe he's three months old already. We're in Pittsburgh so we don't have our customary sign (I have it but the printer isn't working!) nor are we sitting in "Micah's chair", as it's come to be known. But he's still celebrating his 12-week birthday and I wanted to make sure he took his picture. Notice that he's still sitting on the same side of the chair that he usually does! Hanging with grandma, taking an afternoon nap. He has slept seven out of the last nine hours, which is unusual for him. I'm just hoping he still wants to sleep tomorrow when we're on the plane back home!

Some pictures from our visit up north

Hello all! Greetings from Western Pennsylvania. Micah and I have come up for a little visit. Micah handled his first plane ride beautifully - he slept from five minutes before we got on the plane until I put him in his car seat when we arrived in Pittsburgh. My arms were asleep, but I would gladly suffer through that if it means that he didn't scream the whole time! We've been running around and visiting a lot of people, as you'll see from the pictures below. It's cool and beautiful here, with only a little bit of rain so far. As you can see from one of the pictures, fall is still hanging on and I'm thrilled that we got to see some colorful leaves as part of our journey. As an added bonus, we're supposed to get snow flurries tonight!! As beautiful as it is in Florida right now (although I hear it's only supposed to be 60 degrees on Friday), sometimes I really miss the seasons. Micah has been a great traveler so far, rarely complaining and frequently sharing his smiles. I hope you enjoy the snapshots. For those of you who follow his Friday updates, I have a copy of the sign and am going to do the picture tomorrow as always - although obviously from a different chair! Aunt Deci helps Micah try to stand. He loves using his legs - I have this sneaking suspiscion that he's going to skip over the whole crawling thing and just start to run in a few months! Sarah holding Lexi Marn, Micah's new pal. She's the daughter of our friends Mandy and Kevin, and she's only three weeks old. It's amazing how quickly I've forgotten that Micah was once that little!At lunch with Dan and Martina. We're so excited that they're getting married at the end of December! We can't wait to be there. Well, Micah will sit that one out, but Tim and I are looking forward to it! After he had his lunch, Micah was all smiles with his new friends. Just two nights before, Micah christened Dan with some spit-up. Multiple times. While Dan was at work. And wearing a black shirt. :) It's still fall up here!! I love Florida, but I really miss the beauty of the fall season. Who can look at these trees and not love autumn? And they're even more gorgeous and vibrant in person.

Wednesday was a lot for Micah to handle. While we ate dinner, he passed out in his grandpa's chair.We took a tour of Ryan and Deci's new house. I have lots of pictures of their beautiful new place, but had to include this one that intrigued me. It's the bathroom in the finished basement. The toilet is the shortest toilet I've ever seen. I made Ryan stand next to it and roll his pant leg up so that I would have some perspective on it. It only comes up to the middle of his shin. I have no idea why this fascinates me as much as it does.

Holding my own bottle!

Yesterday, Micah starting trying to hold his own bottle! I thought it was a fluke, but he went for it again today. This time I went for my camera and managed to get it on film. He doesn't hold it for long and I don't really think he's ready to start holding it all the time, but it was cute to see him take over and try to feed himself.

11 weeks!

Here's our little - well, not-so-little boy at 11 weeks. We're a little biased, but we think Micah's pretty cute. Next week will be Micah's first plane ride! He and I are going to take a fairly impromptu trip to Pittsburgh next week. We're not going to be there long, but since I'm still on maternity leave, I figured that I should take advantage of the time off work. Tim has to stay behind to work so it will also be Micah's first time away from his daddy. We'll miss him, but it probably means we'll update the blog more often so daddy can see what we're doing! In the meantime, here are a couple more pictures of Micah from the past week. Asleep on mommy

Property of mom!

Mommy's little helper

I had to stamp some letters for work, and Micah was hanging out with me in his Bumbo. He's learning how to grab things, and this was the perfect time to practice!

10 weeks old!

Here's our happy little boy at ten weeks old! We can't believe Micah's already been here for two and a half months. What did we do without him? At his doctor's appointment on Monday, we found out that he now weighs 13 1/2 pounds and is 24 inches long. He's in the low-80s in terms of percentage of both height and weight. And for those of you concerned about his head size, it's now in the 30th percentile of growth far from the 19th percentile it was at his last visit. (By the way, there really was no concern - his dad has a small head and apparently it's hereditary.) Thanks for following Micah's progress!