Guy Smiley

William has been smiling in his sleep since he was about two weeks old. The first time I saw him smile I thought my heart was going to melt right out of my chest.

Lately this is our favorite game to play with Will, as it usually elicits a great big smile. What to Expect says babies start smiling socially around 6 weeks, so that's what I'm hoping these adorable grins are!



Guy Smiley. 12.31.12 from Sandra Butler on Vimeo.

Christmas 2012

Gifts from William

William was a busy little elf and made quite a few presents this year! Not bad for a five week old :)

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and we wish you a fantastic New Year, too! 2012 was pretty great, let's see what 2013 has in store.

Love, The Butlers

It's Almost Time!

Holy moly, I did it. I wrapped my Christmas presents. William was fairly cooperative and I got them all done! They aren't under a tree, but sitting on an ottoman. Hey, small victories.

Now that I have my presents wrapped, I'm starting to get really excited about Christmas - I guess it's about time!

Wrapping my Christmas gifts is the first "Christmasy" thing I've done this year, outside of listen to Christmas carols here and there. Well, I did help decorate the tree at my mom's house, and I hit up the tree lighting in Detroit before Will was born, but the tree lighting was in November so it doesn't feel like it counts. Normally by now I would have my whole house decorated, I would have made five trillion Christmas cookies and a pie to boot and I would have hit up all the fun, festive midnight holiday shopping nights in Ann Arbor and Detroit. I guess something has been keeping me a bit preoccupied this December :)

What traditions do you have that get you in the Christmas spirit? I'm can't wait until Will is big enough to help out with our family traditions and to also create new traditions involving him!

You've Got the Sweetest Little Baby Face

Papa

Mama

 

Baby

Could it be any more apparent that this kid is ours? :)

One Month!

 My sweet little boy is a month old today. How is this possible? How is he already "old news"? (not in my book, but I'm sure there are some Facebook friends out there who are already sick of hearing about every little thing this baby does :)

I still haven't even healed from all my "battle wounds" yet, which is probably why William still feels so incredibly new. Well, that and the fact that everything he does is absolutely fantastic and amazing to me. My friends who are parents assured me I would feel so fascinated by this kid, and I didn't believe them. I have been proven wrong!

I'll admit, this past month has been a blur of diapers, feedings and waking at all hours of the night. I can barely remember the first week of his life. This little man has wrecked my internal clock and I'm becoming quite the night owl - which leads to me sleeping all morning.... I'm just sleeping when baby sleeps :) But honestly, this first month has not been as bad as I thought it would be. There have been some tears (from Will as well as myself :) and some moments of "Oh my gosh... what have I done? Why did I ever think I should have a baby?" But for the most part, I've just loved snuggling and loving on this boy and getting to know his fantastic self!

William already looks so much bigger to me than he did when he was first born. His head is rounder and his skin has mostly cleared up. His face is bigger and his features are starting to become more proportionality positioned on his face. He's also getting more hair on the top of his head (have to even out that mullet we've got going on... :) I also cannot get over all the sounds this kid makes! He grunts and growls like a little dinosaur when he's hungry or fussy (he rarely cries!) and when he's content or sleepy he makes the sweetest little breathy cooing sounds, it just melts my heart.

I'm planning on taking a picture of William in this chair each month. Getting a decent picture of a newborn in a chair is kind of hard to do...

This is the outfit Will came home from the hospital in. Look how he's grown! I can't even handle it.

William celebrated his one month birthday by getting his Pavlik Harness for his hip dysplasia, boo! After reading parent comments on a bunch of message boards, I had myself all worked up over how terrible this brace was going to be. Of course I take everything from message boards with a grain of salt, but we really got fortunate with our situation. Everything I've been worried about has pretty much been resolved. It seems that most orthopedic surgeons want the baby to wear the harness 24/7 for the first 12 weeks and the harness cannot be taken off for anything - not changing clothes, not baths, nothing. Our orthopedic surgeon said we can take the harness off him every day to dress him (meaning he can wear clothes over or under the brace!), he will still be able to wear quite a few of the outfits he already has, he still fits in his car seat, we can take the brace off to bathe him and we can still swaddle him (thank goodness! This kid loves his swaddle!). Most importantly, the brace isn't as intrusive as it looks and I can still get plenty of snuggles from my little man. :) Will has an appointment in February to have another ultrasound done on his hips, keeping our fingers crossed it all looks good and maybe he'll get let out of this thing early!

There are straps that go from the strap around his chest down to his ankles to those bootie things on his feet. The straps from the chest tighten to keep his hips in that double "Captain Morgan" position. Will kind of looks like he's ready to do the Gangam Style dance... :)

That's pretty much all that's going on at the Butler house right now. I'm trying to find time to wrap my Christmas presents, if you end up getting a gift from me that is in a plastic bag instead of some sort of wrapping, don't be offended. :)

Baby B's Room - The Finished Product! (Mostly)

I guess it's about time I shared some pics of Will's room. I yacked your ear off about his room for the past 6 months or so, I should share the end result :)

I wanted to wait until his room was "finished" before I shared pictures - pictures on the wall, a few more decorative touches - but since little man surprised us a few weeks early, and I'm busier now than I've ever been in my life, I have a feeling it's going to be a very long time before his room is actually up to my standards of being finished. (P.S. This kid sleeps all the darn time, how and I still so incredibly busy??? Having a newborn isn't all sitting around drinking coffee and baking cookies, ya know? :)

So here we go. May I add that my husband worked his butt off on this room and had to deal with an incredibly pregnant/irrational me while doing so. For example: "There is a scuff on that wall over there! The whole room is ruined! You need to repaint the entire room!" then, two hours later after my wave of pregnancy hormones had subsided for the time being, I would regain my senses and realize how cute the room actually was. This went on for literally my entire pregnancy. My husband deserves some kind of trophy or something for putting up with me.

 Ta-da! Will's room. We love it a lot. Please also take a second to look at the before picture of this room. The transformation is pretty amazing, especially considering that Dave and I procrastinate on pretty much everything.

I feel like the shelves in his room look pretty cluttered right now, but once I actually get some things hung on the wall, it will even things out a bit.

And of course, a picture of William! Look at him hanging out in his crib like a big kid so his mama could take these pictures!

In other news, William had an ultrasound on his hips today. His right hip has taken care of itself quite nicely, but the left is still dislocated and clicking and other such business - boo! We have an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon next week, and it's looking like he will have to wear a brace for a bit. I'm disappointed, but grateful this was all caught early and can be taken care of quickly before his bones ossify. The device William will actually be wearing is called a Pavlik Harness, it looks like this, and I hate it. But we're going to call it a brace, because a harness sounds like Will is a dog or we're going to be hanging him from a trapeze or something, you know?

That's all that's going on around here right now. A lot of the time I just have a date with the TV when I'm not taking care of the endless diapers and laundry and bottles and nursing and what not. Hopefully I'll have some (somewhat interesting) things to post about soon! :)

Life is Good