James's 18 lbs of chunkiness; end of school year

James weighs double his birth weight as of today, 18 lbs.  Yet, when a person holds him, he grabs around his or her shoulders/arms with his arms so tightly and stays close, so his weight doesn't put that much strain on the person.  Plus, if feels so cuddly to hold him like that, like a little koala.
Over the last few days he's been a bit crankier than usual.  His nose has been very stuffy and I've had to rinse it with salt water a few times, and I'm also suspecting that his teeth are moving up through the gums and it's now starting to hurt him.  He'd start fidgeting and crying out of the blue.  Even nursing wouldn't calm him down, in fact, it might even irritate him more.
His naps are shorter too.  When I take him to work in the mornings, he only gives me half an hour to an hour of work before he wakes up in the stroller, and that's it, I might as well immediately pack up and go home.

Sonja and Michael's last day of school was last Wednesday, and Nikolas's was today.
We stocked up on activity books to keep them busy, especially a lot of new ones for Nikolas.   He has been writing a lot and reading longer books.  He can easily write a page or two, without help.  His latest favorite books is Where the Sidewalk Ends (poems), and I've introduced him to Asterix comics, which he liked too.
He is now way past the books like 'I Spy', Dr Seuss, etc.
Addition and subtraction up to a hundred and even beyond for simple numbers is a breeze for him.  He understands the idea of multiplication, and now we are ready to work on analogies, logical sequences and such.  It should be a fun summer.  He's been into drawing too.  Lately I've noticed his drawings of houses with two stories, with stairs that he drew in the middle, and he's been expressing his wish to move into a 2-story house where his room would be upstairs.  I wish.  We are seriously running out of space here.

Sonja and Michael are doing simple addition and subtraction through 5, and some logical sequencing, comparisons, counting, etc.  They also like to draw and paint.  Sonja is still obsessed with dressing into her gazillion dresses.  Michael is as easy-going and relaxed about everything, as usual.  Very few things can  throw him out of his giggly and happy mood.

James's head support, reaching, grabbing objects, wears 6-12 months clothes

He can now hold his head upright, I noticed today that he didn't need my support.  A few days ago he started reaching for and grabbing objects that were interesting to him, especially the caterpillar toy that all the kids loved.  He weighs 17 lbs and wears clothes 6-9mo up to 12mo.
His personality is amazing:  he smiles (and giggles--those are the best!) when people talk to him, and those smiles he gives me are the warmest and the most communicative smiles I've ever seen on a baby's face: first thing in the morning, while he is nursing, while I'm strapping him into his car seat, while we walk through a store and he is in front of me in the cart, and of course, in the house when I hold him in my lap and talk to him--then he'll string together all the sounds that he can make and with varying intonation talk to me like he is describing something very important.

Daddy is finally getting his smiles from James too.  For some weird reason, the kid would cry when he saw daddy, but now anymore.

Nikolas's haircut turns into an earcut

James's 2-month doctor's appointment

At two months James weighs 16 lbs, which puts him at 98th-100th percentile in weight for his age.  He barely fits in his infant Graco carseat so we'll have to move him to the next carseat any day now.
He is getting a little fussier when it's time to sleep.  He cries more and wriggles, stuffs his fists in his mouth--the other day I thought that nursing him would calm his down, but he took so long to stop crying that he ate too much, and the moment I stuck a pacifier in his mouth instead of the boob, he threw up all over me and all over the couch!  It was pretty amazing to see the amount of milk that came out of his little belly!
He is still very patient during the day (crankiness hits around 9-10pm) and very happy when he is talked to.

The older 3 kids

On April 23rd, Nikolas asked to have the training wheels removed from his bike, and he zoomed down the street as I stood next to him.  I got nervous thinking he would fall and skin himself, especially as he turned to the side to look at me as he took off, but he actually controlled his balance.  Then he came back up the hill, in perfect control.  The kid is amazing at sports.  When I only think how many times I had to try until I learned and how much darker the skin on my knees was from the rest because of falling and scraping it over and over again. 
Go Nikolas!

On a different note, he still finds us all boring and annoying because we always give him homework to do, but when he is motivated by some kind of reward (dessert, going somewhere, getting a toy or a right to watch a movie....) he does a beautiful job.  When he was trying to impress his friend Yarden when they did homework at her place, he wrote a page and a half long essay in meticulously neat handwriting, the kind I've never seen from him before.  He adds and subtracts in his head carrying over 10 without counting one-by-one or using his fingers (8+9); deals with ones, tens and hundreds (20+30, 100+200...), and understands simple multiplication too (5*3).

Sonja is reading short words and spelling them out for us.  Michael is just starting to do the same, even though he is the one who gets most excited about books and spends a lot of time going through the pages.
They don't pay attention when we read books to them before bedtime though, and they just use stories to procrastinate going to bed.

Both Sonja and Michael are doing great at piano.  They read notes, they understand their duration, left vs. right hand and are just starting to use both hands simultaneously as of the last class.
These two are also very imaginative.  We just need to throw an idea to them (to imagine (Cinderella's) dwarfs, ninjas, spiderman, animals, and they will act out a story together.

All three recently started going to gymnastics.  Nikolas was so excited from the first day when he realized he was as good or better than the rest of the boys who have been doing this for months already, so that the next time he told me he had butterflies in his stomach from the excitement about going to the class!
Sonja and Michael are not afraid of flipping over the bar (like one of the parallel bars in gymnastics)--they actually like it now!

James is almost 2 months old

James is almost 2 months old and he is still as easy a baby as during the first week after birth.  He sleeps well, eats well and passes other liquid/gaseous outputs from the body without much fuss, and keeps the spit-up to himself.  We don't need burp cloths with him!  He sometimes makes gagging motion with his mouth, which perplexed me for a while until I realized that he was probably having a little spit-up that he
swallowed?  Whatever happened, we never saw anything come out....
When he is awake, he looks around, smiles at us, loves being talked to and a-goo's back.  He gives cute little shrieks when he gets too excited by someone's face.  He giggles occasionally too.  I didn't think a baby knew how to giggle at one month until he did it.  He even makes all the sounds that I mentioned in his sleep.

How can he possibly be such a good baby!?  He must be saving all the bad behavior for later!

Did I mention how huge James is?!  I weighed him at a month and a half and he weighed 13 lbs!  If pounds don't say anything, then the outfits do:  he wears clothes for 6-9 months old babies.  He is wearing now what Nikolas wore when he was a couple of months older--and Nikolas has always been in the 95% percentile for height.  I wish I could hold a newborn a bit longer, but this definitely doesn't feel like a newborn....

Sonja is starting to show a bit of jealousy.  She keeps touching his head when she is told not to, especially when she thinks no one is looking.  And, on a separate note, she likes to clean between James's fingers and toes very thoroughly!--like a little monkey :)  If she asks to hold James on her lap, and I don't let her, she gets mad at me (Ja sam ljuta na tebe, ja necu vise da ti pomazem da promijenis bebi pelenu, itd...) and storms away.  The boys ask to hold James too, but they don't show any possessiveness and jealousy--yet.





 
Baka's visit:

 

 

 Grandma and Grandpa stopped by on their way back from FL to Boston:

 

James's first 'a-goo' word

James said his first 'a-goo' on March 31st.  Looking at him reminds me so much of Nikolas when he was this little.  He sleeps better though--doesn't require countless hours of bouncing on our feet with him in our arms so that he can fall asleep.  Thank you, James!

Nikolas, in the meantime, is testing authority and our limits in what we'd let him get away with.  This includes provoking Sonja as he teams up with Michael to the point where she is refusing to go down to the swing set with the two of them.  Also, while he is at the swings, he throws sand on Sonja and Michael and plays rough with Micheal which he loves until he gets hurt, and Nikolas just doesn't get that he is much heavier and stronger than his little brother.
He's been doing a lot of work on reading and writing, math, piano, some Spanish and, his favorite, Stratego, cards (tablich), some chess, putting LEGOs together according to the instructions on the box, creating pyramids, dinosaurs, etc. out of Tinker Toys, various structures out of wooden blocks, and now also playing some computer games (learning ones, usually).
Michael is starting to copy everything Nikolas is doing--unfortunately, that for now means things like saying gross things about food and refusing to eat, saying 'I can't concentrate, be quiet.' (Ne mogu da se koncentrisem!), pretending to have to go to the bathroom after we've read them stories and got them ready for bed, and asked multiple times whether anyone needed to use the bathroom--just to procrastinate going to bed.
Sonja is turning into a girly girl.  It's all school's influence.  She's been talking about girl vs. boy colors, showing how boys and how girls run, distinguishing between girl and boy toys, etc.  I don't like it, but I know she has to go through that phase at some point.  She is more cuddly too and especially gentle around the baby.  She loves to hold James, his head on the pillow on her lap, and she can stay still like that for half an hour.  She also helps me in changing diapers by handing me wipes and clean diapers.  Very sweet.