Howdy strangers!  Wow, has it really been 2.5 years?  Let me re-introduce myself.  My name is Jessica; I am a wife and mother of 3… I know I’m a loser of a mom not to have written about my precious darlings over the past couple of years.  We’ve just been so busy living life in the real world, and haven’t stopped to document it in the virtual world.  Well, for the record, I’m officially back in blogging action.

I feel the need to explain this sabbatical.  Primarily, we’ve been a little busy.  To put it into perspective, let me offer the following list of events that have occurred since I last wrote:

• Subsequent children birthed: 2
• Possibility of terminal diagnoses for said children: 2
• Doctor and therapist appointments: my guess is over 100
• Nannies interviewed: 8
• Nannies employed: 3
• Homes bid upon: 8
• Homes bought: 2
• Homes refinanced: 2
• Homes rented out: 2
• Home renovation/repair projects: 15? 20?
• Multi-day power outages: 2
• Hail storms that required new roofing and skylights: 1
• Dogs lost: 1
• Dogs gained: 1
• Dogs housebroken: 1
• Children “housebroken”: 2
• Wild animals found in yard/garage/pool: ~150 hummingbirds, 2 ducks, 1 jaguarundi, 3 red tail hawk nests, 5 kite nests, 2 wren nests, numerous squirrel nests, 4 bunny nests, 2 possum nests, 1 fox, 1 turtle, 1 frog
• Trips taken: NYC, Saint Louis, Austin, California (Brad’s work), next week: Seattle (Brad’s work), next month: Yellowstone
• Social events hosted: my guess is 3-4 dozen
• Churches visited: 5-6
• Siblings married: 1
• Nieces born: 1
• Close friends and family having major life events: couple dozen
• Reorganizations/layoffs/job changes for Jessica: countless (all with Bank of America though)
• Home businesses started: 1
• Law school graduations and career changes for Brad: 1 each
• People thoroughly exhausted: 2 (plus more if you count our parents & other sitters)

Furthermore, I’ve been in a state I like to call “analysis paralysis.”  Many previous posts that I’ve written but not published have been waylaid due to technical difficulties, such as hacking of our website, computer problems, spam attacks, video/photo issues, mysteriously vanishing posts, etc.  So then my conundrum was whether to wait until I could sequentially revive and post the rapidly aging drafts, or whether just to pick up from now and move forward.  Well, I decided to hybridize my approach.  I can’t resist the urge to write what’s on my mind, so I’m going to write current stuff as time allows.

So to both of you faithful readers, thanks for holding out hope!  I’ve been a bit overwhelmed on all fronts.  However I hope to ameliorate the growing backlog and catch up with posting them over time.  I’ll have to toy with when/where/how to post updates, so bear with me.  But it feels good to be back on the map, and I hope you’ll stay tuned!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. The Birchfields.

I don’t know why it still amazes me that Levi continues to age and grow… I guess it’s just because it happens so much quicker than I thought possible.  He is already 8 months old!  Wow.  Here’s what he’s up to these days:

He now has 8 teeth, 4 on bottom and 4 on top.  He loves to grind them together and make this horrific sound, although he doesn’t do it as much as he did at first.  I guess the novelty is wearing off.

He is sleeping really well.  He sleeps about 11 hours at night (7 to 6), and usually takes 3 naps during the day – a morning nap that is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, his main nap in the early afternoon that lasts usually an hour and a half (up to 2.5 hours), and an optional late afternoon nap for another 30 minutes to hour.  Almost immediately upon being put in his crib, he will roll himself onto his tummy and gently coo for about 15 minutes until he falls asleep, occasionally crying out once or twice.  The only challenge now is that he can scoot himself backwards and jam his legs through the crib slats, which awakens him on the wrong side of the crib, so to speak.

I really feared, um I mean thought, that he’d be crawling by now, but he’s not (yay!).  He still scoots backwards and in circles.  He rocks himself forward on his tummy like he’s doing “the worm” breakdance.  He gets up onto his knees like a dog and rocks back and forth, and has even brought his left knee forward to get him closer to his toys, but he has not officially crawled yet.   I would say it’s around the corner, but since I’ve thought that for awhile, maybe not! Who knows.

He can pull himself to standing when you take him by the hands.  In fact, he LOVES to do this.  When you try to sit him down on his bottom, he fights long and hard to stay standing.  He also loves to “bouncy bouncy,” when you hold him under his arms and he immediately starts jumping up in elation.  He thinks this is really funny. » More: 8-Month Milestones

Forgot to mention a few things in Levi’s last update:

1) His body has now caught up with his head. Previously, you may remember that his body was somewhere around the 45th percentile, while his head was in the 75th percentile. That’s quite a large noggin’, comparatively speaking (perhaps a future chess champion?). However, we’re proud to report that now his head circumference, body length and weight now all proportionately fall somewhere in the 60th-65th percentiles.

2) Speaking of weight, he now clocks in at just over 20 pounds. At least he did a couple of weeks ago. Five more pounds, and no more baby jumper! Anyone know of a high capacity bouncy device? We did eventually kick the swing, but we might be asking too much to kick this toy too.

3) He has a new “thing” – it’s grinding his upper and lower teeth together. It makes this horrible nails-down-the-chalkboard sound, but actually seems to calm him down. Everything I’ve read said it’s no big deal – they’ll grow out of it. If not, judging from the huge gap between his two front teeth, we inevitably have substantial orthodontic bills in our future anyway.

4) He seems to be developing a slight case of separation anxiety. The sad thing? It’s in relation to the nanny. On the weekend, he’s like “Who are you, and what did you do with my Susy?” Saturdays are now not so fun in the Birchfield household. I sure hope this doesn’t last. Seriously, this might be the single most depressing development in his brief little life so far.