5th Month of Claire

December 1-31, 2021

Daddy needs a bigger lap! He loves cuddling with all 3 kids.

Claire started food this month!  We did the rice/oatmeal cereal but quickly moved to baby food.  She didn't like the cereal but ate the baby food fine.  It did upset her stomach so we have been going slowly with food.

Nana and Papa wanted help putting up their ornaments and Grant was a great help!  Claire and I observed and Blake was doing his own thing with the toys.

Grant has always been able to memorize books quickly.  Greg and I think it is so cool that he is able to do that and he does it so fast.  He read one of the Cars books to Blake and I one night before bed.

Claire is always happy after bath and we get lots of giggles!  We love this time with her.

Grandma and Grandpa came down so we could decorate Christmas cookies.  This is a Young family tradition and we had to alter it since Blake is Keto right now. The boys had fun with Grandma and Grandpa!

Blake is home with us all the time because of his seizures.  So he gets extra time when we go and visit Grandpa.  Grandpa and Blake are the best of friends and Blake just loves crawling up on his lap.

Claire is still trying to roll over.  She is getting there but can't quite figure it out!

We went to Iowa City to get and EEG for Blake.  Greg and I felt it was pointless because we knew he was having seizures.  He had 2 that we noticed while we were there for 6-8 hours. Blake did awesome!  Greg and I really want to stop Keto since we know it is not working but our doctor wants us to keep trying since it hasn't been a full  3 months on Keto, but the doctor left it up to us.  We decided to stop and Blake had no issues coming out of ketosis.  And he is loving eating normal foods again.  We are going to increase Keppra and try valproic acid.  We need to come up completely on valproic acid before the doctor will let us stop Keppra VERY slowly.  This is going to be a long process. We are so proud of our brave little boy!

Claire is still loving her jump-a-roo!  And I still love putting her hair in the cute little pig tails.

The boys thought it was funny to "fart" on Mom.  Anything about pooping and farts is funny to these boys!  All 3 of them ;-D

We made gingerbread houses that our elf, Henry, brought us.  It was fun that Blake is also able to eat a few of the candies while making the house. The boys had fun!

We went and visited Santa at Valley West Mall and road the train.  Blake was too scared to ride the train but Grant and I had fun riding it. 

Grant was making Claire giggle with the purple phone and was loving it!  It is fun seeing her so interactive with the boys.

I tried to get the best picture I could get with the 3 kids on Christmas day.  This was the best I got.

We celebrated Christmas with the Chaliks on Christmas Eve morning.  It was the start of our Christmas celebrations!

That evening we went to Aunt Randi's and the boys got a few more presents and heard Santa's sleigh bells!

Christmas morning was so fun!  The kids got so many great presents from Santa and were very excited!  It was quite the mess after opening all of the presents but it was so fun and totally worth it.

That afternoon Grandma and Grandpa came down early to play with the kids and the boys opened their present of a basketball hoop!  They were very happy.  Later we went to Auntie Kellie's house and opened even more presents! 

Nana got Claire an Iowa State headband and so we had to wear it for an Iowa State game and, of course, take a picture.

The boys thought it was so funny to stick out their "big bellies"!

Milo came over to visit and Blake and him had so much fun playing! It is so fun having my best friend's kid's friends with my kids!

We drove to Webster City to celebrate Grandma's birthday on New Years Day.  We had a fun day celebrating and Blake loved eating the cake!  It was misting the whole day and on the way home the interstate completely froze over. It was the scariest thing we have experienced driving in a long time.  Greg drove well and we got off and onto a gravel road for the rest of the way home.  We were safe and the kids all napped during this which was a blessing!

Claire is a Mama's girl right now.  She knows where she gets her food from. :-) This video was so funny.  She had to keep an eye on Mom!

Claire is 5 months old!  She is 16lbs 6oz.  She found her toes and sits up well.  We are still working on getting her into her crib so hopefully next month is the month!  She smiles, loves her brothers and sits up well!