D 'talking' a little bit

Video taken October 17th, 2012

Green beans!

Waiting for green beans...

Okay, so maybe green beans weren't so bad...

All cleaned up!

10 weeks & a mini vacation

D was 10 weeks old on the 15th, so here he is posing for the camera again.

We also took him on a semi-vacation. Chris had a training class in Dallas and D and I came with. It was a really long drive on Sunday as we had volleyball games to go to Friday and Saturday, so we couldn't spread out the trip as much as we would have liked. We made a 10 hour drive on Sunday in 13 hours. D did really well, with the exception of the last few hours, but who can blame him -- who wants to ride in a car that long?!

Wormy - sing to me again!

We also visited the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium on Monday and took a few pictures. Chris and I had visited the old stadium years ago, and it was neat to see the new stadium and amazing all of the money that they spent on different things!

Chris had to be in class Tuesday through Thursday 8-5, so D and I were on our own for the morning and afternoon. We made sure to have lunch with Chris before we headed 'out on the town.' We shopped at a few stores that we don't have back home (BuyBuyBaby and the Container Store), and the Galleria Mall.

I'd never been to a Container Store before, and it was a good thing that we didn't need anything at home for storage. I made it out of there with only buying two things for D's room! That is definitely a store I'd go back to - they had an amazing variety of stuff in there! We had fun and spent a little too much money on our shopping trip. ;) We were back to eat supper with Chris each night.

One funny thing, D had about had it with travel when we were coming back home on Friday night (we were about 30 minutes away from home), and as he still won't take a pacifier, but wanted to suck on something, I stuck my finger in his mouth to see if that would calm him down. Well, it did and he vigorously sucked on my finger and promptly fell asleep. Not something I really wanted to continue, so we've been on the quest for a pacifier he'll use. He is now tolerating the MAM pacifiers and will suck a little bit on the taggies blankets we received at the baby shower. So, we're working on him taking the MAM pacifier, which seems to help... I think it's our 4th or 5th pacifier to try?!

Carrots & bath time

October 13th

I don't want to miss anything!

Roo doesn't want to be left out, so she climbs up while Chris is feeding D.

If only...

If only I'd been faster with my camera... what you don't see is the squirrel that came up and tapped on the glass while Roo was napping... she 'attacked' the squirrel and it went away rather quickly! 

Mmmmm...carrots!

Waiting for sweet potatoes & my bath...

9 Weeks Old

Sweet potatoes???  Not happy about this!

Yummy rice cereal

2 Months Old!

D turned two months old on Saturday. He's still in his size small diapers even though he's 14 lbs. I'm not surprised, since he stayed in the XS diapers past the recommended weights on those too. Who knows though - it might not be long before he's out of the small size, so I'm starting to get prepared with ordering more medium sized cloth inserts. Hopefully he won't catch me by surprise before I have those ready for him!

He's definitely a cheeser. He will chatter away and if you don't respond in a certain amount of time, he lets a howl loose, and when you come to see what's up, he just grins at you! I swear he winked at us a few times today too! He really is a happy baby.

He's still working on head control, but looks around quite well when you're burping him. He's been sleeping through the night (about 8 hours or so) for the past few nights/week! I can definitely notice the sleep difference in me, that's for sure.

He has been fascinated by all the goings on at the babysitters this week and after he's awakened from his nap and has a bottle, he stays awake to watch the other kids there. They enjoy saying 'hi' to him as he watches them. Even though he only goes two afternoons a week, I'm sure that's helped with him sleeping through the night too!

Not too keen about the squash at first.

We started veggies on Saturday too. He started with squash (about 1 1/4- 1 1/3 ounces) and we're on day two of sweet potatoes. He was a little surprised by the flavor of the squash when he first had it, but liked it...the sweet potatoes, he was unsure of. However, the one night we fed sweet potatoes and rice within a few hours of each other, and he definitely didn't like the 'sourness' of the rice and wasn't too keen on eating his rice cereal that night! I usually try to feed the veggies at lunch time and rice before bedtime.

Now squash is OK!

2 Month Checkup

D had his two month checkup on Friday. Unfortunately that meant he had to get vaccinations too! He had three needles for the six vaccinations. I 'got' to hold him down for the nurse. He did OK with the first shot, but definitely didn't like the two after that! He also was diagnosed with thrush, so we had to pick up a prescription for that too! He definitely doesn't like the taste of that stuff and I don't blame him!

He was right at the top of the weight for his age at 14 pounds 3.3 ounces! He'd also grown to 23" long, but his head supposedly shrunk a 1/4 inch. ;)

We (Mommy and D) caught our first daycare colds Friday night too. :( I was hoping that we could put it off for a little while longer, and not have us get sick the first week he was at the sitters, but it wasn't to be! Oh well, must start getting our immunity to germs some time! It hasn't been too bad of a cold for either of us though, so that's good. Just a little stuffiness/fussiness on D's part, which wasn't helped by him being constipated, either. Thankfully the constipation is behind him now though. I know, more information than anyone wanted to know!! :) He's mostly back to his cheese ball / chatterbox self today.

Sleep

D slept another 7 hour stretch! If only I'd gone to bed around 2 or 3 hours into that 7 hour stretch ... Silly me - I was getting too much done!

Grandparents & generational pics

8 Weeks Old!

D has definitely been growing! We're guessing that he's between 12 and 13 pounds now. Chris did an unofficial weigh-in with D on our home scale. Although one Grandma guesses he's at 15 lbs. :) We'll find out this week when he goes in for his 2 month appointment.

I also didn't realize until after I took this picture and was watching him kick that he'd grown out of this sleeper! He's not growing out of things width-wise, but his feet can't stretch enough in this sleeper. He's still OK in his other 0-3M clothes, it's just the sleepers that are too short now! He's also going to grow out of a few 0-3M onesies unless I get some onesie extenders.

He'll have shots at his 2 month appointment, so hopefully he won't be too bothered by them for too long! Our doctor also said to go ahead and start on baby food when he's 2 months old, so we'll start with some of that this weekend too - pictures to come!

He's usually drinking 6 ounce bottles every 3-5 hours, with a few 3-5 ouncers thrown in the mix. We feed him rice cereal usually by spoon. (Yes, I'm aware of the differences in opinion on feeding rice cereal/baby food at D's age.) :) If we're out and about, he'll get the rice in his bottle, but that's not usual. He still thrusts a little out with his tongue, but he definitely opens wide for more, gets impatient when we're too slow feeding him and is excited to eat! We'll see how the veggies go!

Grandma Nea found the seat that they used to feed my brother in. We don't have a high chair yet, so we'd been feeding him in his car seat - not ideal. So, D's now eating in Uncle Brian's seat -- it's only 30-some years old, but it still works! :) In the first two pictures, he's also sitting on a 30-some year old receiving blanket -- I found it in my doll clothes diaper bag, and it's still good.

D's watching Grandma Nea... waiting patiently...

Waiting for Aunt Cara...

D's still not sleeping at night in the crib. He sleeps in his Fisher-Price Rock n' Play. He's occasionally in his crib for naps, but he does much better in the Rock n' Play. We'll have to wean him off of that some day, but it's definitely smaller to travel with that than a pack-n-play.

He's been sleeping a little longer off and on -- he slept 7 hours straight one night recently! We couldn't believe it. He's not quite done that long again (usually between 3-5 hours), but he's definitely lengthening the amount of time that he's been sleeping at night, and I can definitely tell that I'm getting more sleep!

He's also noticing where we are more and responding. I can't say that he's given us his first smile yet, but he's definitely following us when we talk and when someone else is in the room, or comes by. One of the cats was purring near him the other day and D turned his head towards her. He also likes the crib music toy that Grandma Lori found.

I was dog-sitting for the past few days. D, the dog and I had a nice walk around the neighborhood last night - probably the last one with the warm weather! It was a beautiful night and just what I needed for the stressful day I'd had trying to care for 3 animals, D, myself and get a work project done at home!

Modeling his green gDiaper. :)

He also went to the babysitter for the first time on Monday. I think my co-worker and boss might miss seeing how much he's changed in a week.

I'm not a person that's on-time. I don't try to be late, but it just seems to happen no matter how hard I try to be on-time! Add a baby to that mix and it's even worse! D and I were only 15 minutes late to the sitters, so not too bad. I was still able to get quite a bit of work done before I needed to pick him up - better than the 2.5/4 hour ratio from before. ;).

I didn't leave the Rock n' Play with the sitter (he'd slept for 4-5 hours in his crib after his 5 a.m. feeding, so I hoped he'd be fine for her). He refused to sleep in the crib, but finally fell asleep in his car seat -- he just doesn't like to sleep flat on his back yet! It will definitely be dropped off at her house next time he goes to her.

7 Weeks Old!!

Marathon!!

September 22-24... We went down to the Quad Cities with some close friends this weekend to go to the Quad Cities Marathon.

Chris had been training with a friend for the Marathon and although that training was greatly thrown off after the birth of D, he decided to still run. Our friend hurt his knee and couldn't do the Marathon, but was able to do the 5K. Chris did really well and was pleased with his results, for not having trained much for the previous month and a half. Here are a few pictures.

We also had a nice supper with D's birth family while we were down there. He had grown quite a bit since they'd last seen him!

A little behind -- 6 weeks old!!

D is six weeks old in these pictures. :) Over that weekend, he'd grown out of his tiny gDiapers and is finally into the small size gDiapers/gPants. Which means that we can finally start using the cloth inserts (the tiny g's use the disposable insert)!

The small size uses the cloth or disposable insert, so when we're out and about we use the disposables instead. We also put one of each in D's diaper when he's down for the night to help wick away the moisture and keep him sleeping longer! Don't need him waking up just because he's wet, and not because he's hungry!

I also like the fun colors of the little gPants. No, that's not D modeling the gPant, just a sample of the fun diaper covers they make. These aren't your old-fashioned cloth diapers - no diaper pins involved at all! Yes, I must admit, I do match the gPant to his outfit when I can, even when you can't see them because he's wearing pants!

Since I'm behind posting, I can say that I definitely didn't have enough cloth inserts and needed to order some more. I wasn't even able to wash every other day, and didn't have the time to be washing diapers every day!!

tiny gDiapers

It doesn't help right now that D absolutely hates to be wet! We can change a diaper and 20 minutes later he's unhappy because he's peed in it again... So, we're definitely going through the 12 diapers a day that they talk about for cloth diapering! I don't mind the extra messing though.

gPants

We're still using homemade flannel wipes along with a wipes solution I found on the internet a while back. I also didn't have enough wipes made either, so more of those had to be cut. I found some closeout flannel in a cute print, so it didn't cost much to buy a few yards.

I also have to say, that yes, I know everything on the internet isn't real, but wherever I read that flannel won't fray around the edges when cut with a pinking shears lied! (Yes, I'm sure all the Grandma's are laughing at me, that's OK. I know... I should have asked and you would have told me!) All the wipes have now been hemmed around the edges so they don't fray any more! Thanks Mom for finishing the last batch! Knock on wood, but he's had no diaper rash issues at all!