Finn Edward | One Year

Our Finn Edward has officially made his first trip around the sun! He is wearing size 18 month clothing, size 4 diapers, and is just the cutest thing you've ever seen. He's become so much more communicative in the past few weeks. We're holding that his first official word was brother ("buhbuhbuh" - he loves pointing to big brother and saying it) but key and car were close contenders for that number one spot. Other words include: balloon, dada, egg, camera, bird, dog, and (finally!) mama. Finn has mastered the good-bye wave, pulls himself up on anything and everything he can find, is able to locate his belly button, and loves to "brush" his own hair and teeth.

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Finn 10 & 11

Oh, Finn Edward. You are the exclamation point on our family sentence. Born into a house of first-borns, you remind us every day that you, sir, are different. Determined to prove sibling theory correct, you display all the hallmark characteristics of a classic second born. While the rest of this house is cautious and structured, you have been rebellious and dramatic since day one (when you arrived so fast that Dada and the nurses barely got the table pulled out for your delivery, nevermind that there was no medical doctor in sight).

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Finn Edward | 7-8-9

Our Finn Edward is nine months old! He's mastered the army crawl, is wearing size 12-18 month clothing, and can already pack away a full size adult meal (boy can eat!). He goes crazy for crab, and loves steak, shrimp, and fish as well. He has a knack for identifying the most dangerous thing in the room and beelining straight for it. We live for his giggles and smiles - he loves playing on the carpet, flipping book pages when we read to him, being carried face-out in the Bjorn with Dada, peek-a-boo, cruising in his walker, sucking his thumb, being tickled, and going for walks around the neighborhood. He takes 2-3 naps a day (anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours) and goes on and off with sleeping through the night. Here's a look back at months seven, eight and nine...

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Finn's Nursery

Welcome to Finn's nursery! It's about 90% complete. I'd still like to swap out the ceiling fan for a wooden light fixture of some sort, but this is what it's looked like for quite awhile now though I'm just finally getting around to sharing it (the little one who occupies this little space is high maintenance!).

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Finn Edward | Six Months

Finn has been halfway around the sun! He is wearing size 9-12 month clothing and size three diapers. This was a BIG month as he went on his first airplane ride, earned his first passport stamp, saw the ocean for the first time, started eating solids, and moved to sleeping full-time in his nursery (no more bassinet by Mama and Dada's bed - he pretty much outgrew it!). He's still waking up at least once a night to nurse, but his nursery is right next to our bedroom which is nice.

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Finn Edward | 5 Months

We blinked and September was over, and somehow our babe is five months old! He is still our high maintenance grumpster,  but he's napping more which helps everything. And while he's super picky about most things, he'll take a bottle straight up cold so I guess that makes up for it?

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Finn Edward | 4 Months

It's been a third of a year with our Finn Edward! He's continuing to trend tall, coming in at the 90th percentile for hight (26.5 inches) and 50th for weight (15 lbs. 13 oz.). The doctor used the words "big" and "strong" 😊 Finn is wearing size 6-9 month clothing and is barely still in size 2 diapers. New this month: we're rolling back to front and front to back!

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The Fourth Trimester

photo credit: Olivia Reed

They call the first three months after birth the "fourth trimester" - typically babies eat, sleep, and grow a lot and not much else. While our dear Finn has been a champ at eating (and growing), he apparently didn't get the sleep memo. These past three months have been a doozy. Max and I are basically running on 2 hour chunks of sleep. At one point I was legitimately quizzing Max on whether or not we could die from lack of sleep - apparently sleep deprivation makes me very paranoid. There are studies that show that an insufficient amount of sleep makes the brain function in a similar way to being drunk, and I'll attest that the night I squirted contact solution onto a cotton ball and tried to take off my eye makeup with it felt very much like having one too many drinks, ha ha! I eventually figured out that I needed makeup remover instead but it took a hot minute. Here's a look back at Finn's first three months...

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Fast & Furious | The Birth of Finn Edward

58 minutes. That's the amount of time it took to go from 4cm dilated to delivering a baby - into the hands of a nurse, no less, because when I say "fast and furious" I completely mean it. Finn's birth was so completely different than Parker's - and so much quicker. With my first pregnancy, it took eleven hours to go from 3cm to 5cm, and another six hours after that to deliver the baby. Both L&Ds had some frightening elements for sure, but both resulted in healthy babies and a healthy Mama, and I was able to do both without an epidural (which, after safe and healthy was really my only other wish, thank my inner California hippie side for that one).

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