Lots o' Stuff

After a quiet Christmas in Minnesota, we headed to Iowa for lots of activity.  

We celebrated Christmas at Rob, Carrie and Eleanor's house:

Anders got another hat to add to his collection (the matching mittens are still attached to the hat in this picture).

Eleanor got a fun hat from Aunt Betsy, I'm thinking Eleanor looks pretty darn cute in this hat.

  
Clara entertained us with her scooting, though in this picture she looks rather alarmed - it could be that several of us were talking to her and not one of us was her favorite person - her mom.

Anders got over stimulated (he then slept for 7 hours straight once we got him to bed).

Then we did Christmas again the next day at Bill and Kathie's house.  Here is Hoody Henry passing out some lottery tickets.  

Anders got to hang out with Uncle Rob, 

And he got to watch football with his dad.  

He watched the Hawkeyes kick some butt - Go Hawks! 

Then we tried to get the 4 cousins together for a picture.  This one cracks me up.  Eleanor had better things to do.  Betsy has a good group shot on their blog.

Yep, these guys are related.  At this point in time, I don't see any similarities that would make random people ask if they are related.  I do see some similarities between Anders and Eleanor - maybe it is just the fair skin and hair.  This is a fun picture though - I love the look on Henry's face.  

After the Iowa game, we headed to Des Moines for a short visit with my sister Sarah and her family - Mike, Zach and Drew.   I stole the next 2 pics from her blog because we didn't have our camera handy, plus Mike's new camera (oops - their new camera I mean) is probably better than ours.  

Anyway, Drew was way into Anders.  Sarah has a cute series of pictures of these two together.  They look a little more like each other. 

Here are the 3 boys together.  

We came home Friday night because I wanted to have Saturday and Sunday at home before the first day of day care.  On the way home, we saw an amazing meteorite over Ames.  It was very bright with a huge trail and it broke in two on the way down.  I remember it being green and orange, but Will thinks I am embellishing that part.  Either way, it was super cool. 

So, Anders started day care on Monday.  He is going to a Montessori 3 days a week and the other 2 days he stays home with me or Will.  They love him there - they say he is a very happy baby.  It is sad to leave him there, but I can tell the people there love what they do.

He also started sleeping in his crib on Friday night.  It seems to be going well, though the act of going upstairs to him is really waking me up - now instead of laying in bed listening to Will, Lucy and Anders snoring, I get to lay in bed listening to Will and Lucy snoring and Anders and the fish tank making noise over the monitor. I should actually go to bed now...

Anders also had his 4 month appointment this week.  He is doing well.  He is very strong and holds his head up quite well and really likes to stand up these days.  He is long and skinny - 25 3/4 inches long (in the 75th percentile) and only 12 lbs 1 oz (25th percentile).  The doctor isn't concerned about his weight - she says he is obviously healthy and if he wasn't getting enough nutritionally, he wouldn't be so long.  She just believes that he has a super high metabolism and that he is very active (we might be in trouble with that).  She said we can start him on rice cereal now so that he gets more calories and maybe even sleeps through the night (he has an internal alarm that goes off at 4 am regularly).  We aren't really ready to start him on solids immediately - I think we need a few weeks to get used to the crazy circus our lives have become now that we need to get to day care and work, but then I think we will consider trying the rice cereal.  He is definitely interested in other people's food!