Keeping Up with the Kramers

It's already been a month full of celebration. It started with Shawn turning the big 4-0 at the beginning of the month. To start the festivities, Shawn and I went to this amazing farm-to-table dinner as part of the Winter Garden Harvest Festival. We sampled amazing food - all locally sourced and prepared by local chefs - cocktails from a local distillery and beer from a local brewery. Slow food, they called it. Amazing concept! The event was held in our new downtown pavilion with beautifully decorated tables dressed with crisp white linens and fresh flowers. In addition to enjoying the food, Shawn and I took to the "dance floor" and swayed to music being performed by a couple of local acts. It was an amazing night...we want to go back next year and invite you all to come with us!

The following day, we continued celebrating with family breakfast and the opening of gifts. Sam got daddy the Indianapolis flag t-shirt he's wearing in the photo above... he's so thoughtful! Later that afternoon, Gene and Jen came to celebrate with us. They made us a delicious meatloaf dinner and brought red velvet cupcakes! Yum-o!

We also celebrated my first Mother's Day! The boys were so good to me... they made me breakfast, picked out the loveliest bouquet of flowers and other special treats that they knew I would enjoy! Even Teddy pitched in to get me a massage gift card, saying that he was sorry that he "stresses me out." If you haven't been to our house lately, then you haven't had the pleasure of witnessing me yell at him every time Sam cries and he attacks various spots in the carpet. He's started to put holes in the rug, which displeases me to no end. But I digress....

We are also so proud of our boy who has successfully learned how to soothe himself to sleep at night. It took a couple nights of crying it out - no more than 30 mins - but he learned and now sleeps very well in his crib. We can't say that he's sleeping all night now, but he sleeps well beyond the six hours that is expected of him at his age. He goes to sleep between 7 and 7:30 p.m. each night. We usually hear from him again around 3 or 4 a.m. and then not again until between 6 and 7 a.m. We aren't feeding him at night now so we really hope that he figures out that it's not worth it to get up in the night anymore. As his brain matures, we should start to see that night waking disappear... frankly, daddy and mommy can't wait. We're happy with his progress so far and are so excited to see him each morning when he wakes smiling and cooing at us.

When he's awake for the day, he's hitting all kinds of milestones. He can roll from his back to belly and belly to back. It takes a while for him to work his way around, but he can do it. He can hold toys and get them into his mouth now. We think it's pretty ironic that he will pull his pacifier out of his mouth with one hand and suck his fingers on the other hand... silly kid! He also has such great head control now that he can also sit up in the Bumbo. This is going to come in handy for haircuts, as we learned today when he got his second one.

Can't get enough of Sam? Check out more Sam photos from April and May.