My Sweet Journey: Will's Fourth Month! 5/11

I am 4 months old!! • I have started sleeping on my side
at night and wiggling around in my crib, so mom never knows
where I'll be when I wake her up at night • my sleep at night is unpredictable,
but I have been napping like a champ during the day • I stick out my tongue
like a little lizard and blow bubbles with my spit and I chew on EVERYTHING! •
I have way too much fun at my weekly swim class!
My mom says I'm a fish • now that it's hot I spend a lot of
time in just my diaper • I love my activity mat and my pack n play •
Pretty much anywhere my mom has to put me down,
I will have the time of my life • I smile at everyone and have started to laugh,
but never at the same thing more than once, so it keeps mom and
dad on their toes • my favorite song is "down in the meadow" •
my favorite toy is daddy • I'm having fun on my first family
vacation with mom and dad • Being 4 months old is the best!

My sweet little boy is a complete joy to be with! He is so chill and easy going and happy. He has the absolute best expressions and keep us all so entertained with his newly found giggles. I can't ever get him laugh at the same thing more than once, but when I do get a good belly laugh out of him, it is the greatest thing in the entire work. Will is also very social and loves being around new people and meeting new friends.

This month, we introduced Will to swimming! The local swim school offers free swim classes to parents and babies until the little one is 6 months old, so we started this month and absolutely love our weekly outing to swim class. The class is about 30 minutes long and we sing songs and just basically focus on getting Will use to the water. Will LOVES going back and forth through the water and feeling it on his cheeks and face. He will often turn his head to try to drink the water too, which is a no-no, but so cute. The teacher has used Will a couple times as her example baby because he is so happy and relaxed. My favorite part is when we start with the back float and at first he wiggles and squirms, but then I start singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and he completely relaxes and smiles so sweetly. He is truly a little fish!

So much trust

Those chins! Those dimples!

At the end of class, all the tiny babies would do some tummy time on a raft where they would get a chance to see each other and Will will coo and babble constantly to the other babies! What a flirt! He is such the life of the party.

Aside from learning to swim, Will also has discovered another source of endless entertainment - June,

our dog! He definitely as started noticing June and finds her fascinating as she moves around him and comes in and out of the room. June has made it very clear from day one that she is quite enamored with Will, so it is so sweet to see him really start to notice what will eventually be his best friend and partner in crime.

My favorite is when Will does tummy time, June will be right next to him keeping him company. June will sometimes lick his face or his head or hands and is just generally so sweet with him. I love that Will has a pet right away. So many immunities building up from all the puppy kisses and also just a sweet little friendship!

To finish out the month of May, Will made an appearance at Shawn's Annual birthday outing with Buttermilk Bear!! The story behind BMB is too convoluted to explain, but this is a highlight of our year to be with this group! If I am being truthful, this is actually Will's second time at BMB considering it turns out I was pregnant the previous year, but was a week away from finding that out!

This year we went out to Fate Brewing for dinner and drinks then to Papago Brewing for more drinks and fun, and then back to Shawn & Nicole's house for more time laughing until my voice is horse and my cheeks hurt. Will was a great partier and is getting quite good at Bar crawls, this being his second one. I do sense that especially at the second location, which is just a bar, that everyone seeing a baby walk in is a bit of a buzz-kill and I probably was judged, but I don't care and it was so fun! For the party, Will rocked a pair of tennis shoes that belonged to his uncle Shawn when Shawn was his age! My mom didn't know she still had them until recently, which is why Tyler or Shawn's boys never got to wear them, so Will was very honored to get to sport them for Uncle Shawn's bday!

Seriously this is an awesome group of friends! We only really get to see Matt & Jeannine (far right of picture above) once a year for this occasion, but we instantly have a complete blast and make way too many inappropriate jokes and talk about beer.

Will and got to spend the day with sweet friends this month like Amy and her little boy Ridge! Ridge is a year older than Will and was a HUGE source of baby fever for me in the months before I got pregnant with Will. I have known Amy my entire life! We are up at the same church and our families were close friends. It is so fun getting to me a mom with this incredible lady. She was and is such a fountain of information from what stuff to register for to what is normal for motherhood. Also, she and I are both obsessed with instragram giveaways for baby gear and tag each other to win prizes daily. I can see Ridge and Will having a lot of future memories together!

Before I knew it, June began and I realized that it had been a YEAR since I discovered our tiny little boy was on his way! I remember everything leading up to that day and every detail of the exact moment our lives changed forever!

Will was definitely planned, but at the same time was a surprise. Every told us and everything we read told us to be prepared that it could take a month or two to get pregnant once we started trying, so we decided to get started about a month earlier that we probably logically should have because we honestly thought the first month was a throw away. cut to a few weeks later and it was Shawn's annual birthday outing and I knew I would have a drink or two, so I took a early pregnancy test just to be safe, since I was a few days away from being able to suspect anything. The test was negative. I wasn't surprised or even sad that it said we weren't pregnant and just went about life. Then a few days later I started noticing some symptoms that were unusual for me and started suspecting that maybe that previous test was wrong. I was still a day or two away from really being able to know for sure, so I just took note and continued on. Aaron and I were staying with my dad at my parents house while my mom was in Wisconsin for a visit, when I realized I was "late", but I didn't want to take a test then because I wanted to do it at home and at a time when Aaron and I could celebrate and go out to dinner if the test was positive, which we couldn't do for a couple more days. So I waited. Finally the days with my dad were done and we were able to head back to our tiny apartment (where we lived before we bought out house). I got home from work before Aaron did and had picked up a pregnancy test on my way home. I had told Aaron that I suspected I might be pregnant and asked if he wanted me to take the test and tell him later, or if he wanted to be there to see the results? He told me that everything short of being there while I peed on the stick, he wanted to be there for, so I had to wait a few hours before he got home to know for sure. By this day I was 4 days late, which I am NEVER late, and had a ton of other tell tale random symptoms that made me pretty positive that I was pregnant, so I was going to be SHOCKED if the results were different. Aaron got home and I had been downing glasses of water like nothing else to prepare, so I was ready!

I remember taking the test and before I could set it down on the bathroom counter and walk out the door to wait with Aaron, I started seeing the lines. Aaron and I sat on the bed and waited for the timer to go off and then walked back into the bathroom together. We took a look at the test and I squealed and jumped into Aaron's arms! Aaron's laugh with be something I remember for my entire life. It was so full of deep deep joy! We were so incredibly excited and also amazed that it happened on the first try!! I couldn't be more excited, but of course I wasn't really prepared to be pregnant for our trip to England in 4 weeks, so that crossed my mind... but other than that I was in perfect heaven! We went out to dinner for Thai food that night, and I just kept ransoming declaring to Aaron, "I'm a mom!! I'm gonna have a baby! There is a baby in there right now! You're a dad!!" We decided to wait and tell our families after we got back from England (I had a cute idea for how to tell people related to the trip), because it was just too fun to keep this news to ourselves!

It is so fun to see the difference a year makes!

The rest of Will's fourth month was spent in San Francisco on our first family vacation, just us 3! There are enough pictures, that I'll include that in it's own post.