Christopher's First Easter

Third cousins, three weeks apart. Congratulations to Mark and Stephanie. Matthew Raymond Klaben was born on St. Patrick's Day. In this picture both babes look like they are doing the chicken dance.

Grandmother loves her Easter bunny.

Christopher with his future Godparents, Aunt Lisa and Uncle Kevin. Leif of course never misses a photo op.

Christopher loves his safari swing given to him by Oma Ru.

Introducing the pacifier.

Christopher is a real pro at holding up his head.

Christopher meets Aunt Mary Ann. They look as if they don't know what to make of each other!

Happy Easter from the Winterseins!

Mutual Love!

"See Ma, I can do this all day!"

How bout this for strategic hand positioning. Christopher loves his bathtime.

Fresh and Clean!

Today marks Christopher's four week "birthday". Tomorrow he will be one month old officially! These past weeks have flown by. Of recent, Christopher is smiling often. Many times it is a more social smile, in response to our smiles at him. He has settled into a great night sleep pattern. Last week he slept from 10pm to 5am, when I decided to finally wake him to nurse. Most nights he sleeps 4-5 hours straight, wakes to nurse then quickly goes to sleep for another 4-5 hours. Unfortunately, his evenings are his fussiest times. I am learning more about him everyday. I believe for the most part, his fussy periods are from being overtired. Last week we decided reluctantly to introduce a pacifier. We use it sparingly to help Christopher learn to self-soothe. Beforehand, the only way to calm him in the evenings was to nurse him, and he often didn't need to eat, just to suck. Since his body didn't need the milk, he would just spit up and become gassy, making him even more fussy. It was a vicious cycle. The pacifier helps this situation tremendously. Hopefully he'll only need it until he learns to calm his self down. On another sour note, his has a bad case of infant acne. His beautiful little face is covered with tiny red pimples. They should go away in the coming weeks. Until then they just look awful. Poor guy.

Tomorrow I will mail Christopher's birth announcements. I wanted to make them myself, rather than have them printed at Target or online. Boy, I underestimated how labor intensive it would be. Nevertheless, they are complete and turned out nice. Thanks to Lola, for her photography and hours spent assembling them. Also thanks to Laura for running me around for the supplies and my Mom for assembling them as well. In the end, I am glad we went the handmade route.

Our Easter was enjoyable. Ryan, Christopher and I went to mass in the morning. This was our first mass with the little guy, he was very well-behaved. Afterwards, we joined the Wintersteins for a tasty Easter dinner compliments of Gran Winterstein. For dessert we headed to Bayside to join the McClain gang. By the end of the day, Christopher was completely worn out, tired beyond reason. We wasted no time getting him to bed upon are arrival home.