Andrew John Kent

We flew to Arizona to celebrate Uncle Kevin and Tia Paola’s wedding in Sedona. It was a little chilly but the scenery was beautiful.

After the wedding we took Andrew and Tommy for their first trip to the Grand Canyon!

We’ve had so many adventures lately I haven’t had time to post them all.

In January we celebrated cousin Josephine’s baptism

During the “big freeze” we escaped the cold by going to the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Andrew came to Tommy’s school to volunteer for a day with me and enjoyed getting mobbed by kindergartners. And I’m not being sarcastic, he really loved it.

Andrew will be 7 months old on Sunday and it’s incredible how much he’s progressed in the past month.

Now he can sit himself up and play with toys. He loves this drum Great-Grandma Riley got him!

He pulls up to standing on everything available.

If you take your eyes off him, he’s gone.

He also discovered that the cat food in the kitchen was a tasty snack (!) and that had to be moved.

He learned how to say consonants last weekend and treated everyone at mass to MA-MA-MA-MA the whole time. The church had great acoustics.

And possibly most importantly, big brother Tommy is teaching him to love trains already.

Andrew has lots of news. First he’s finally doing some real crawling

AND he grew in two teeth (picture was difficult)

AND he pulled up to standing for the first time today! We haven’t gotten a pic of the standing yet, but here’s a then and now perspective:

Where did our tiny little baby go? ?

We like to swim as a family so now that Andrew’s 6 months old it’s time to start learning to swim. We started him out with some water acclimation, back floats and a few face dunks. He did great!

Checking it all out

And here we are outside (what month is it again!?) at the park today enjoying the warm weather.

We’re so excited for 2019 and all the new firsts Andrew will have!

We celebrated at noon at the library today. Andrew was on an epic quest to eat a balloon and army crawled all around the room in pursuit.

But it kept getting away…

So we eventually helped him out ?

Wishing you and your family a blessed, safe and happy new year!

I can’t believe how quickly six months flew by!

Andrew is eating food now and loves broccoli ?

We haven’t gone in for his official weight and length measure yet, but my unofficial scale shows him at nearly triple his birth weight!

And his mobility continues to improve. He does well army crawling now but no “true crawling” yet.

Here’s Andrew cheering on cousin Josephine for her tummy time.

Merry Christmas from the mountains. At the closing of mass we very appropriately sang “Go tell it on the mountain.”

Opening and eating presents

Cousin love

We are traveling to visit family for Christmas and Andrew took his first two plane rides. Here he is after the first flight looking a little tired.

He received compliments after both flights for being a good baby!

Today Grandpa Kent, Andrew and I are at the top of Needles mountain (8800 feet), north of Salt Lake City enjoying the views while Tommy does ski school.

So this happened today…

He can get around pretty well by inch-worming now. I think you know what the next video’s going to be of!

Andrew sat up with both hands off the ground today and even reached for toys without falling over.

After he was done sitting, he worked on his tummy time. I think you can tell in the video how motivated he is to get moving!

Andrew slept through the visit today. But he was awake to see Santa a few weeks ago. So hopefully he got his presents requests in then.

We rode the new Delmar Trolley! It’s really cute and historic.

We also visited with a Clydesdale at the Brewery Holiday Lights.

Meanwhile when we’re not carrying Andrew around, he’s working hard on gaining forward motion. He sees things across the room and eyes them with intent.

The knees just aren’t cooperating yet. And another development, we have hair!

Looks like dark brown so far. ?

Andrew’s up to 14 and a half pounds! And he’s quickly getting too long for his size 6 month clothes.

He’s gained lots of new skills too. Here he is rolling back to front:

He’s also grasping toys and he’s working on staying sitting up unassisted.

Andrew got to meet his new cousin, Josephine! She’s just over a week old so taking pictures was tough. First Andrew rolled away…

Then Josephine rolled away.

Two turkeys

Andrew found his feet and he’s in love with them. In yoga, this is called happy baby pose. So I guess he’s pretty happy ?.

He’s trying his darndest to eat them.

We got the high chair all set up today so Andrew can have a new perspective on life. He seems to like it.

Andrew enjoyed his first big snow.

Ready for sledding.

This is Andrew looking proud right after he rolled from back to front for the second time! Now he can roll both directions, at 4.5 months old.

Next he’s working on scooting on his belly. He can’t wait to chase his big brother around ?.

I finally got Andrew rolling over on video!

Andrew also got a checkup from Dr. Tommy today. Andrew was very good for his checkup. Some of you may the recall the morning Tommy brought Oreo to me in bed complaining, “Mommy I’m trying to play dentist but Oreo won’t open his mouth!” Lucky for him, Andrew is a more willing participant.

Cute for four months I am.

Baby skeleton

Update on his size: At the 4 month appointment he was 26 in. which is nearly 90th percentile for height! And he’s 13 1/2 pounds which is 25th percentile for weight (up from 5th percentile). We won’t know what percentile he’ll stay at until he’s 2, but it’s looking like Tommy might have a very big little brother ?.

This little pumpkin is 4 months old!

After playing Minecraft a bit lately, big brother Tommy wanted to see one, so we took the boys to Bonne Terre to see the mine there.

Andrew’s still a tough guy but a whole lot bigger! He’s a look three months ago

And now!

We also got together yesterday with one of my highschool friends and her kids who are the same ages. So fun!

First we had a special visit from Aunt Pat and Aunt Hattie who had a great time meeting Andrew.

then on to pumpkins…

Btw- weight update he’s 12 lbs 8 oz and going through a growth spurt right now. Yesterday I felt like he weighed more at bedtime than he had in the morning!

Andrew got lots of love from family this weekend.

He helped Great Gram celebrate her 95th birthday.

And he got to meet lots of Aunts, Uncles and cousins.

And he spent some cute time with cousin Sophie

Here are they are two months ago, what a difference!

We’re on another epic journey this weekend. First we visited Great-Grandpa and Grandma in central Illinois. Andrew loved meeting them.

Then we continued on to Legoland in Chicago.

We’ll see more family tonight!

Here’s the boys being silly

Tomorrow Andrew will be 3 months old! He has really starting showing his personality the last few weeks. He loves to smile at people and if you talk to him he’ll make noises back.

He’s a pro at tummy time now too. And his facial expressions continue to be hilarious.

Andrew’s also now officially a thumb sucker, he loves his right thumb.

We also remember that this marks three months since Andrew’s birthmother had to make a very difficult decision, one that changed both her life and ours forever. We thank God for her and pray for her everyday.