Andre- 3 months

 Oh my goodness.  This boy.  Oh, this boy has my heart! When he raises his brow, he looks like he has a unibrow.  Only a baby can still look cute with a unibrow!  
Andre is honestly a wonderful baby. It helps that he is #4 and I have some experience with infants under my belt.  He is quite easy going- if he is crying, it is either hunger, fatigue, a burp or a dirty diaper.  For about three weeks now, he has been sleeping all the way through the night, with only a few exceptions.  I can't tell you what a blessing this is to me, since 8 hours of sleep is essential to my mental and emotional functioning!  He will often go to bed around 10 or 11 pm and I often have to wake him up around 7 am to feed him, otherwise I am in pain with all the milk my body has produced.  One night, Brad put him down at 8 pm, and he slept all the way til 6 am.  He is amazing!  I've never had a baby sleep this long at night at this young of an age.  I think a big reason why he sleeps so long is that he finds his thumb- I often come in to wake him up to eat, and he is sucking away on his thumb, having soothed himself back to sleep.  I am enjoying getting sleep immensely!

He loves to sleep on his belly!  Lately he wants me to rock him to sleep, which I love.  I feel like I am able to savor this baby whole heartedly.  I feel like I savored Noah (my first born) as well, but with #2 and #3, I think I was a little too attached to my house duties.  I think my perspective got a little skewed and I often felt overwhelmed by the amount of housework that had to be done, or getting dinner on the table at a certain time.  This time around, if I am snuggling baby and enjoying it, and it's time to make dinner, I just enjoy the moment.  I know Andre won't stay a baby, so I choose him,  and of course, we always get some kind of meal on the table eventually.  (It helps that my kids are older and can fend for themselves if necessary.)

 Brad is a wonderful daddy to him.  Brad loves babies, always has and has had a lot of experience with them, being that he is 12 years older than his younger sister and they had a lot of foster babies in his home, growing up.  It makes me so happy to see my hubby so completely enamored by our little one. Andre is definitely a snuggly baby.  I remember that as soon as Amalie could lift her little head, she refused to lay it down on my shoulder, but this guy just snuggles into me, and boy do I love it!

 Brad blessed Andre in our home on May 4th. (We took a family pic to commemorate the occasion.)  My parents were going to be in town for my nephew's baptism, so we decided to bless Andre that weekend so my parents could be there.  It was so special!  I had my brother and his family and Brad's sister and her family over and we had Grandma on Skype.  It was such a sweet day!

 This boy loves to communicate.  About 3 weeks ago, Andre was crying, so Brad picked him up and soothed him.  He was holding him outwards and was talking to me in the kitchen while I tidied up.  As soon as I got close enough that Andre could see me, he started wailing.  I had Brad turn away and Andre stopped.  Then I walked over, again, he wailed upon seeing me.  Poor boy was still hungry!  I thought it was so cute that he knew who could give him the goods!  Makes me feel good to know that he needs me, and he knows I will help him!  More often though, he will make a sound to get my attention and try to tell me he is hungry.  It's so cool!

He's been "talking" more and more to us, and even lets out a high pitched squeal at times.  I think he's going to enjoy talking like all the kids in our family do! What can I expect when both Brad and I love to talk!  

The other day, he fell asleep on me, and I was going to put him down to go and get some work done, but I realized I was enjoying his warm body snuggled up to me, so I just held onto him.  I'm so glad I did.  He started laughing in his sleep.  That was an absolute delight!  It reminded me so much of Brad, who often will start cracking up about something he is thinking about or some funny situation he just remembered, and we never know what he's laughing about.

 I wanted to take a picture of my brother Ian with Andre; I think Andre looks somewhat like Ian's baby pictures.  I also think he looks like my Mama and like some of my baby pics.  I'll have to post some.  Whoever he looks like, he is gorgeous to me.  I'm so in love with him!  

Another thing about him that is absolutely enchanting to me is that he loves to look at things- in his swing, he is fascinated by the mobile above it.  Seeing that, I went and got him a playmat to lay on with toys hanging above, and he LOVES that!  He will usually be entertained and fascinated by looking at those toys for a good hour while I make dinner.  There is a stuffed frog hanging down, and sometimes when he first sees it, he squeals.  It is so cute!  He tries to talk to it as well.  It's the cutest thing!  He loves when Gabe will hold up toys or books for him to look at.  And he is my first baby that will just take a moment and stare at me while he is breastfeeding. I love it!

His brothers and sister are all still enamored with him.  I feel so grateful that he could come to our family and have the love of two parents and three siblings.  It hurts my heart to think of all the sweet babies who don't have a loving family.  It just kills me.  But I take some comfort in knowing that this little spirit that came down to us in a tiny baby body does have that.  Oh, how we love our baby Andre!