Christmas Cheer (courtesy of Chase)

We've been busy with traveling and the holidays, but here are some Chase pictures from earlier in the month when Veronica and Josh were over. There are many, many more Christmas pictures to come, but in the meantime, here's some cheer from Chase. 

Mommy's First Night(s) Away from Chase

It finally happened. I had a work trip that I had to go out of town for which meant, you guessed it, I had to leave Chase overnight. TWO nights. 54 hours. The first time in 7 months....well, 16 months if you count the 9 that he was in my tummy for. His entire life I had never been away from him for more than 9 hours.

It was hard. REALLY hard. I was thinking about him a lot and missing him a LOT.

Luckily, we've got technology. We were able to video gchat on the airplane.  And we video g-chatted again that first night AND again the next morning AND again (twice) the next night. So lots. As great as the video was, I still wasn't able to hold him or kiss him after his 2nd flu shot (he was very brave and barely cried) or pat him on the back when he cried at night.

Speaking of night, guess what I DID get to do??

 Sleep.

Seven glorious hours straight. Two nights in a row.

Chase & Stephen, not quite as much. But sleep training is a work in progress (that hopefully won't be undone during my first night back).

Boy, I missed this little bundle of joy! And his Daddy!

I feel it in my fingers...

... I feel it in my toes. Christmas is all around me, and so the feeling shows...

Well there is a biting chill in the air, and Love Actually is on our TV, so the holiday season must finally be here! I absolutely LOVE the holidays and have been so excited to celebrate Chase's first Christmas since this time last year. We've been traveling a lot, so we just got the opportunity to buy a Christmas tree last Tuesday. Here's just the first set of holiday photos of Chase helping us decorate. There are many more to come!

Chase wasn't too interested in the tree.

He loved the tinsel!

 

 And the bell ornament!

 And the Santa hat.

Only 11 days to go!

Chase at 7 months!

This past month flew by--Chase is now closer to 1 than to 0! He certainly seems more like a toddler than a newborn and he's getting closer to toddling every day. He's curious and learns quickly. His personality is becoming more pronounced, as are his preferences which he's starting to vocalize.

At 7 month Chase is:

-Sitting up unassisted. Once in a while he'll randomly fall over, but for the most part he can sit up on his own. When he wants something that's out of reach, he lunges for it from sitting position and winds up on his stomach.

-Getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth. But when he tries to move forward, he falls onto his stomach. Still, crawling is not far off. Chase is ready to move!

The two above skills have made for a pretty ideal situation: We can sit Chase up so he can play, but we don't have to worry about him going anywhere yet. I'm not sure we appreciate what a great thing this is.

-Pulling himself up to standing, but only by pulling on one of us. He hangs on my (or Stephen's) shirt and pulls himself up to standing, but has yet to do it in his crib (or anywhere else). Again, I don't think this is a skill that's far off.

-Tranferring toys from one hand to the other. (Not that exciting, but an important developmental milestone).

-Teething. Still. With nothing to show for it, except it feels like his bottom canines are coming in. He will look hilarious if they come in before any of his other teeth.

-Vocalizing: He's not repeating syllables yet, but he is making a lot of noise. He's testing out different sounds that he can make an it's quite hilarious to hear him. Unfortunately, he likes to practice making these noises from 3:45am-4:45am...

-Speaking of 3:45am, Chase is NOT sleeping through the night. Quite the opposite. During our weeks of travel around Thanksgiving, he was waking up 3 or more times per night and sometimes staying awake for up to an hour. He's finally gotten back into a better pattern (sleeping for a longer initial stretch and then waking up only 2x per night), but he's still waking up a lot. Add to that his nightly talking and rocking/crawling practice and you've got a very tired mommy and a tired Chase. We are currently trying out some ways to improve his sleep and will report on that progress (when there is some).

-In order to facilitate his sleep, we've finally upgraded his bottle nipples to Medium flow. What a HUGE difference that has made. He's eating much more than he used to--guess the poor guy used to get bored of just sucking and wasn't eating as much as he wanted. It's a change we should have made at 4 months!
We are also giving him something to help him "self-soothe" at night. We were primarily trying loveys, but he absolutely loves this French stuffed cat that we have (Tom Le Chat). It's the perfect size for him to hold and to stuff in his mouth when his teeth hurt. Hey, whatever it takes!

-Showing a strong preference for Mommy and Daddy.

-Playing Peek-a-Boo: If we put a blanket (like his taggies blanket in the pictures below) over our head or his, he'll pull it off an laugh.

And now some pictures! (don't worry, Grandmas! We had fire in the fireplace while taking these pictures so Chase was plenty warm enough in his onesie)



 Getting ready to move!

 Happy 7 months, sweet boy!

Santa!

Thank you, Uncle Billy!

Chase's Uncle Billy kept watch over Chase this weekend not only when we were out, but also when we were around but doing other things. Unfortunately, Chase has decided that (especially when he's tired) he only wants Mommy or Daddy. So he was kind of a crank. So thanks to Uncle Billy for not only putting up with the cranky baby, but continuing to smile and play with him until he laughed!

In honor of Uncle Billy, here are some pictures of him and Chase from two weeks ago when they were wearing matching outfits and BOTH laughing.

Chase the Cutie

This is a pretty random post of cute pictures I took this past Friday morning around 6:30am when it was just Chase and I awake in the house. First, I let him play with all the fun toys that Grammy & Grampy have while I picked out his clothes.

Chase LOVES the toys at Grammy & Grampy's house

 One of my colleagues made this BEAUTIFUL quilt for us. It's truly stunning and something that we will not only treasure, but use all of the time. I wanted to thank her for the very sweet gift so we did a little photo shoot of Chase on the quilt.

 He especially loves the black and white squres--I'm not sure whether he can tell if they are flat or 3-D yet, but he spends a lot of time reaching for them, so I'm guessing that he thinks they are 3D.

Look for this quilt in a lot of our posts to come!

Our Thanksgiving

We had a lot to be thankful for this year especially, you guessed it, our little Chase. His adorable smiling face when I reach into his crib to get him out (even at 11pm, 1:30pm, 3am, 5:30am) grounds me to what's important. I'm so appreciative of all of the blessings we've received this year and all of the people who make these blessings possible. We really could not do it without you.

The best thing about Thanksgiving is that you get to share it with familiy. This year we were excited to celebrate Thanksgiving at the new house in Concord with Grammy, Grampy, Uncle Geoff, Aunt Carrie, Amelia, Owen, Aunt Sandra, and Carrie & Geoff's friends Mary, Kevin, and their twin boys, Calvin and Dennis. Needless to say, with five kids under 4 and a dog it was not quiet, but boy did we have fun!

Daddy made sure his Fantasy Football team was updated and watched his points accumulate during the Thanksgiving Day games. Hopefully he won his matchup this week! Watching football on Thanksgiving is definitely a Lamont family tradition.

The dining room table had 13 place-settings + a highchair!

Helen and the kids made place markers for everyone.

Pilgrim salt-n-pepper shakers (from Publix!)

Grampy reading to Amelia & Calvin (or Dennis. They are very identical).

Geoff and Owen.

Aunt Sandra and Amelia play with Chase.

Chase enjoyed his Thanksgiving "bird"

...and played with the big boys, Owen

and Calvin/Dennis

This is what dinner looked like. Chase had some sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and pears for dessert. In the spirit of the holiday, he shared his food with his polar bear who now has orange spots.

Look how calm, cool, and collected we look with three kids! Luckily the flash of the camera shutter was fast and captured a nearly-chaos-free moment.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Gobble Gobble