Merry Christmas

I have a ton of pictures to post, but my house is in upheaval with lots of toys and some switching around that we are doing, so I haven't been able to do much with the pictures.

Brian's family was in town for the last week, so I didn't spend a lot of time on the computer since we always seemed to be on the go or having fun with them. Rest assured that I took pictures though!

I didn't want to just leave the blog to the way side (anymore than I already have the past week), so I wanted to post our Christmas card that we sent out to some people. It was a last minute thing and I even have a couple of the cards still sitting on our counter that hasn't been sent out yet. Sorry to those who will be getting yours late. LOL

We didn't have birth announcements made for Aiden's birth, so this was kind of his debut to the world. Poor third child! :-)

Hope you had a great Christmas and that your New Year is awesome as well!

Smile!

This little boy makes me smile so much!

Especially lately.

When he flashes this grin,

and his whole body smiles with him, I smile too!

Rudolph, Frosty, Jingle Bells

They were all sung about at Austin's school on Wednesday. We got to go to the Kindergarten, 1st Grade and Pre-School Sing-a-long and it was a great show!

Austin has been singing the songs at home quite a bit. The one thing he didn't like was that his nose got painted red. He said it felt weird. I only have a couple of pictures of just him and it was after the show.

The rest have other kids in them and I didn't want to post pictures of other people's kids without permission, so I included one picture with everyone else blurred out.

They all did great though and we are so proud of Austin! Before he started pre-school last year, singing was WAY out of his comfort zone for some reason. Now, he has two holiday shows under his belt and it doesn't seem to be as big of a deal as it used to be. We look forward to many more shows over the years!!!

Tubes and Adenoids

One was put in and the other was taken out of our dear, sweet middle son. Yesterday, at an hour MUCH too early, Brian took Colten in for an ENT doctor to insert tubes in his ears and then remove his adenoids. Yes, I said that Brian took him. Yes, it killed me not to be there with my baby, but that's the nature of the beast when you have a child that needs to get ready for school and the appointment is much too early to have him go to someone else's house. Plus, the hospital has these policies that say only one parent can be with them in certain areas, so it really was ridiculous to have both of us there just so one can sit in the waiting room the whole time.

Anyway, they said he did great. I ended up getting down there just as it was time for him to come home, so I took him from Brian so he could go to work and I brought our sleepy child home to recover. They had given him some morphine before releasing him, so they said he would probably be pretty sleepy most of the day. The doctor had told me before that it would probably be the next day that he'd be back to normal. I didn't really believe him though...I know my kids.

Let's just say that one minute he was like this:

And the next he was being silly like this:

He went from laying on the couch and being out of it to running all over the house like a crazy child (aka - a normal day in the Steele household).

Today, you can't even tell that he had surgery yesterday. Well, except for the medicine he has to take twice a day and the ear drops we have to put in his ears 3 times a day. Yeah, not fun. For any of us.

So, now we are hoping he will be able to hear normally after this and will start talking. The lack of vocabulary is what started all this anyway...he still only has a few words mixed in with his caveman grunts. We'll be getting a referral for speech therapy so that maybe he can catch up soon. That will probably start sometime in February since his follow up appointment isn't until the end of January. I'm sure it will take care of a lot of frustration he has when we have no idea what he wants!

3 Months

3 Months...a quarter of a year old! I can't believe how fast time is going and how big Aiden is getting! Boy, you need to slow down!

Here's the monthly comparison picture. You can see the progression on the side bar to the right!

Aiden, you are starting to show your personality a bit more nowadays. Here's what you are up to lately!

*You are still nursing every 2-3 hours during the day, but are sleeping really long stretches at night.

*The last few days you have slept at least 7 hours in a row at night, which makes Mommy very happy.

*You are grabbing for things now.

*You started rolling over from belly to back just a few days ago (at 11 weeks).

*You smile a lot when someone talks to you. Your whole face lights up and sometimes you just can't help but let out a little squeal of delight.

*You watch TV no matter how much Mommy tries not to let you. You will crane your neck as much as you can to get a glimpse of that magic box.

*You like the swing and the rocking chair, but prefer to be held.

*You still like to be swaddled...all the time. You are our snugglie baby and like to be warm and cozy. You have a favorite blanket now to be swaddled in and it just happens to be the same blanket that both your brothers liked as well.

*You wear 3-6 month clothes right now, but will need 6-9 month clothes before the winter is over!

You are so much fun right now and I know this is just the beginning!