Baby Boom

Reed was the first child born into our local group of friends. The next closest kids, age wise, are about a year younger. Our friends were great about being okay with Reed joining us at different events and parties when he was the only kid and it has been wonderful seeing the group's collective brood grow over the last two years. In the last nine months alone, eight babies have been born, with two more due in the next month, and two other's expected in the fall - quite the baby boom! While we love all of these kiddos, the newest edition is the most dear as it is Miss Lyla Jane, our niece (Tio and C's first child). She put her family through the ringer with her dramatic entrance into the world but immediately mended our hearts and has us all already wrapped around her littlest of fingers.

Meeting Lyla a few hours after she was born

Kieran getting his first glimpse of Lyla

Reed visiting C and Lyla

Uncle Jon showing off his baby holding skills

Included in the new baby count is Jeffrey, who was actually born in Virginia to our local friends Mikael and Erin. Mikael is getting ready to be deployed until December which means Erin and Jeffrey are going to be in the Valley for the rest of the year. Mikael got some time off to bring everyone West and so last week we had a few get togethers to maximize our time with him and his growing family. On Thursday Russell and Laurie hosted a pizza party for the gang. It was great looking around the room and seeing all of the young kids that are (or will be) so close in age.

Jeffrey and Kieran

Clara and Reed

Eden and Kieran

 

On Friday we had Mikael and family along with C, Tio, and Lyla over for dinner. Being less than a week old they weren't ready for Lyla to be around the big group that was at the party the night before so lucky us we got to have another night of fun and babies!

Jeffrey and Lyla meeting

Cousins!!!

Mikael, Jeffrey, Jon, and Kieran - boy how things have changed!

The rest of this post doesn't really have much to do with the Baby Boom, but are things I want to share about the boys:

Reed's adjustment to baby Lyla has been a bit interesting. For the past ten days he has been constantly asking if he's a baby or to be treated like a baby. He also has declared all of his stuffed animals babies and spends a lot of time nursing them, giving them bottles, burping them, swaddling them, and putting them to sleep. It is very endearing and for the most part fairly positive so we are just going with it right now.

Reed and a swaddled "Skeeter Baby"

Kieran is now sitting up completely independently and it seems like the boys are interacting a lot more and there are quite a few moments during the day that they "play" together.

Teething - uggghhh. For the last three months Kieran has had bouts of fussiness every couple of weeks that we attributed to teeth coming in, but then there would be no teeth. On Friday night he started screaming non-stop after I put him down for the night. He was content if Jon or I were holding him, but if we laid him back down it immediately turned into another meltdown. We finally put him in bed with us for a bit and even though we were exhausted his cuteness softened us especially when he started inspecting Jon's mouth (I think he was trying to figure out why teeth are such a big deal). The good news is that as of this morning one of his bottom front teeth is poking through so maybe we will have a break from the teething crankies for a bit!

Kieran inspecting Dad's chompers