Today's post is really just another update of what has gone on in the Mayo household in the last few days. The first pic I will share is of JC getting his first real tub bath. We had just been bathing him off with a rag while he sat on the counter on a small mesh bath seat thing. I tried bathing him in the big tub about a week ago and did not have great success so we decided to just go ahead and buy a baby bath tub. This worked much better! Mom likes it but as you can see from the pic JC does not really care for it just yet. I think this is in part because he has had a terrible diaper rash almost since the day he was born. I am happy to say that it seems that if we keep powder on his bottom after every diaper change the diaper rash goes away. So that is the game plan! Thankfully we received several containers of baby powder as shower gifts so we will not be having to buy any for a while. Tonight will be his second time to get in the tub, so we will see if he enjoys it some better with a more healed up bottom.

Last night we went out for my friend Stephanie's birthday. We ate at the Olive Garden which is one of my most favorite places! We had a great time being with friends. We originally planned to leave both boys at home with our favorite babysitter Katie. One of Stephanie's girls was going to be here for her to keep also. Well I backed out of leaving JC. I completely trust Katie and know that she would have done a fine job of keeping him but I just could not bring myself to leave him yet. She did stay and keep Drew and Becca though. They had a great time with her and must have played very hard while we were gone because when we arrived home we found them both asleep on the couch!! These two are usually still going strong like the energizer bunny, so whatever Katie did to accomplish this I am jealous that we don't seem to be able to reproduce it! They were so cute laying there together that I had to get a picture.

Today has been a good day. We did not have anywhere to go today and I wanted to keep it that way! Jim did the yard work this morning, that was quite a chore in this heat! I stayed in the house and worked on a special project of making homemade baby food. This is something I have decided to do this time to help save money. I cooked 3 bags of carrots and got over 40 serving sizes frozen! Now that is an incredible savings over buying baby food! I cannot say that I will do this exclusively, maybe just on veggies and we will buy fruits. We will see how it goes. I am pleased with myself for doing it and it really was not that big of a job.

This morning before I started all the cooking the boys and I were just hanging out in the living room. JC had just finished a bottle and was having some good awake time and smiling so I did some picture taking and videoing of him. Drew wanted in on the act too, so I took some of both of them. Here they are...

Drew kissing JC on the head


My sweet boys!

A lot to blog about...

Let's start with last Saturday. This was a very busy day for us. We had some house and yard work to get done that morning and then we had an Anniversary Party to attend as well as a Going Away Party. We also ended up going out to dinner with the Hanks. They had just returned from vacation and since Stephanie and I had gone an entire week without seeing one another we had to get together!!! Drew ended up going over to the Brooker's house to swim while we went out to eat. Amazingly he began jumping off the diving board, doing flips in the water, letting Monty throw him in the air, and basically showing no fear at all! I just cannot believe that this is the same boy who 1 year ago would cling to mine or Jim's neck for dear life. I am so thankful for this progress that he has made but I do not know that I am ready for a dare devil!


HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
We celebrated a beautiful Father's Day. I made Jim a special lunch of homemade chicken salad served with croissants and a salad. We also enjoyed some cupcakes and ice cream for dessert. I took a pic of our lunch because I tried to do my Food Network best at making the plate look perfect and pretty! We let Jim just kick back and enjoy the day. I think he appreciated it. He does so much for his family. He is a wonderful dad and he is totally hands on. He changes the diapers, bathes them, plays with them, keeps them while mom has to work and run errands. I am so thankful that God has blessed me with a husband and father to my children who loves me and them unconditionally and will do anything for us. WE LOVE YOU!


JC Update
Well he is now 4 weeks old, will be one month on Friday. He is growing to be quite a big boy. He is taking 6oz of formula every 4 ours now. I actually gave him about 2tbsp of cereal in his bottle last night to see if we could sleep longer, that only bought me an extra hour and a half! He is still an incredibly good baby, we cannot complain, I would just like to sleep all night! Here is a slide show of several pics from the last week.

Umbilical Cord Finally Gone

Well today JC's umbilical cord FINALLY fell off. I am convinced that this is one of the incredibly gross memories of your newborn infant's life that God graciously deletes from your memory because otherwise you would never want to have another child and deal with this again! For 2 days now this icky stub has been oozy and smelling horribly! This morning we inspected it and could see that it was hanging on by one tiny strand in there. So we started the day off hoping that it would go ahead and fall off today. Now here is the story of how it actually came off. We got all ready for our 1pm afternoon feeding, with not electricity in the house again! Apparently they are turning us off periodically as they are working and repairing other lines because this has now happened several times. But back to the cord story, so we got him up from his nap and finally took him out of his pajamas and put him in just a t-shirt and diaper. I dressed him this way because it was getting hot in the house and also I knew that the cord needed to be exposed to the air to help it dry on up. I was giving him the bottle and as usual he did not want to burp for me so I passed him off to Jim to try to get a burp out. Jim worked on him for a while and we were talking about how gross and smelly the cord was and then Jim pulls him back and I saw immediately that the cord was gone! So I pointed this out to Jim and then he freaked out a bit not knowing if it had gotten on him! Fortunately it was on the burp cloth!! It was funny though to see Jim panic just a bit. We cleansed the area really good and now he smells like a sweet baby again and not a bag of smelly garbage!

3 Weeks

It has been 3 weeks now. It is hard to believe that much time has really gone by. I am now officially back at work part-time. JC and I had our first day at work yesterday and it went great. He is definitely growing and changing. He stays awake a good bit more now and will watch us closely and seems to be fascinated with his big brother!

I do not really have much to say tonight. My heart is heavy for two families that I know. One of these families has had a devastating loss today and the other has been given a devastating diagnosis. I am not really at liberty to share any of the details of either of these situations, but I will ask you to pray for these people. I know it seems difficult to pray when we do not know anything specific but God already knows all the details. Thank you for your prayers.

Swim Lesson

Well after a week of no swim lessons Drew finally got to make up his very last lesson today. Jim took him because I was at work today. He did really good and as you can see from the pic he actually jumped in without any fear!! He has been able to swim a couple of times since he had last been to the swim teacher's house and did pretty well just working with Jim. He definitely learned the skills needed for survival in an emergency and he is no longer scared of getting in a pool. That was our goal for swim lessons! He really has come far beyond just those simple goals. I am so glad that we did this for him! So hopefully mom will be able to do some swimming soon and we can all enjoy some time in the pool!

Meeting Nana Dean

Yesterday my mom and I took JC to meet his Nana Dean. This is my mom's mother. She lives in the nursing home in Senatobia. She was so excited to see the baby, as you can see from her big smile! She was having a very good day. I am so thankful that God allowed this to be a really good visit! JC is her 14th great-grandchild and #15 is on the way in Houston, TX! JC was great during the visit and stayed awake for quite a while and just cooed at her.


A project that I have had rolling around in my head for some time now has been to make a "Chore Chart" for Drew. This will be his requirements for earning his allowance each week. It literally took several hours to do this! I think my design was a bit labor intensive. Next go round we may just buy a dry erase board or Jim's suggestion was to just use star stickers. But I will say my chart is much prettier than just a plain old sticker chart! He is very excited about it at this point, we will see how long that will last! He is fascinated with "earning his checks".



Well Monday I start working again, officially. I have been in the office 2 days this week while Drew was at VBS and both days I did a few things. It was nice to kinda clean my desk off and feel ready to come in on Monday. JC will be going with me on the days I work in the office (Mon, Wed, & Fri). This will be my schedule for the summer. I will work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In August JC will begin going to daycare and I will be adjusting my work hours a bit to accommodate Drew's school schedule. Lots of changes happening in our family this summer and fall. It is still so hard for me to believe that we have one starting kindergarten and now a newborn!! Thankfully we have reached a point with JC that he seems to be taking at least one 5 hour stretch at night. So we are sleeping about 6-7 hours, they just aren't all together! It has been okay up to this point. I know I will probably feel it much more when I am having to get up and go to work. It will be nice to only have to get up early every other day, then I can sleep later and hang out in my pj's on the other days!! Please pray for us as we begin getting on a new schedule in the next week. Thank you to all our family and friends that have loved on us since JC was born and blessed us with food, prayers, support and encouragement! We love you all!!

2 Weeks

Well here we are on our way to the doctor for our 2 week check up!

Today JC weighed in at 8lb 10oz and still 21 inches long. The doctor visit was great. They said he looked great. So that was about all there was to it! We were in and out in 30 minutes. Here are a couple more pics to show you what he is looking like at 2 weeks of age!