six months old!

Dash is six months old today!! We figure he decided to celebrate with finally catching the cold that Delaney had. He sounds really snotty. Poor little guy.

He is still in size 3 diapers and I think he'll be in them for a while still. Zap weighed him the other day on the WiiFit and he was at 18.5 pounds, so he's still gaining weight well. He's going to have his six month checkup on Monday morning, so after that I'll know and post his percentiles and measurements.

He's nursing about every 2.5 to 3 hours now. I've been more able to get out of the house for quick errands without worrying about leaving him high and dry if he gets hungry. He's still being a good nurser (after a spell of aggressive nursing that left me very sore) but he's started to talk more when he's nursing or just after he's finished.

Dash is an amazing sleeper. Seriously. He now sleeps 10 hours straight... He goes to bed around 7pm and wakes up sometime around 5:30am for a nurse. Then, Zap tries to get him to sleep until around 7am. I can't imagine how crazy we'd be if he wasn't a good sleeper.
Here's the thing. My husband is a sleep guru. He's the one who's sleep trained Dash to this point. We're getting ready to start training him to fall asleep on his own.

Since my last update, Dash is now longer swaddled for nighttime or naps.

He's still a mommy's boy and wants to be held a lot of the day. He's starting to tolerate tummy time more and he's also been hanging out in the jumper. He's rolling over from his back to front consistently, but we think the reason he's not rolling over from his front to back is that he just doesn't want to. Stubborn little monkey :)

Another big development: Dash loves Delaney. It is beyond like. He likes Zap, he loves me, but he LOOOVES Delaney. I like to get Delaney to play peek-a-boo with him, because the sound of those two giggling at each other reminds me what all this hard work was for; Dash and Delaney are going to have each other their whole lives.

His eyes are green, blue, and sometimes brown. Like Delaney, it depends on the day and time. His hair is still dark but I know its lighter than a month ago.

He's teething like mad still but no teeth in sight. I'm going to go on the record and say the teeth are six weeks away. We'll see.

Dash has a great new toy, a teething toy that is a giraffe who squeaks. Her name is Sophie. He loves her.

I'll be sure to put some pictures up soon.

traveling fools

I've had a travel bug lately, so last Friday I headed to the Bellevue Children's museum with Delaney and Dash. We met my friend Laura and her two boys, Emmett and Bridger. We had a really fun time. We've known them a long time and they recently moved to Woodenville so we haven't seen them for a while.
Dealeny had a really good time. We've been to the museum there once before so I knew it would be fun. We hung out in the baby/toddler area where they have a large climbing area. Delaney climbed it over and over and over again! I was so proud of her!
She also played with Emmett here and there. She's been "asking" about him, I guess, lately. She'll just start yelling "Emmett" around the house. It's adorable.

After our fun on Friday, I still wanted to see some new things on Saturday and I thought it would be great that Zap was with us. We decided to check out the Everett Children's Museum. It's just a little past Seattle, so it was just over an hour and a half drive. Thankfully, the babies slept a lot of the way there. We got there around noon and loved it from the start. It's a great museum. It is designed really well and Delaney was able to participate in all of the exhibits at least a little bit.

This is the Vet's office and Pharmacy. Delaney was working the phones.

"Ta-Da" at the stage. They had a tv and video camera on so the kids could watch themselves and this was Delaney's favorite part.

Sliding at the outdoor playground on the roof!

Delaney playing pilot; she was loving the buttons and gadgets.

COW!!!

Delaney loved the bank where the money went around and around.

Dashy and his new love, his Sophie teething giraffe.

how cute is he??

he's adorable. too stinking cute.

just a quick update

In our world, there's not much new happening. But, Grandpa Jerry is doing really well. I saw him the other night and looking at him, you would never know that he had open heart surgery not even a week ago (well, a week ago TODAY).

Delaney is doing well; we've gone to pull-ups in the potty training. I got tired of cleaning up peed on car seats. She seems to be doing really well with the pull-ups, so my plan is to use them until she's better trained (i.e. telling me when she needs to use the bathroom) and then we'll go back to the training underwear.

Dash is doing really well. He rolls back to front now. He slept last night from 7pm to 6am; I can't even tell you how wonderful it was to get that much sleep. Zap said he did wake up around 1:00 but by the time Zap went in to get him, Dash was back asleep.

We've been reminded this week by a few things (the earthquake in Haiti, the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, and a good friend who suffered a loss this week) by how blessed and lucky we are. I'm not even sure that we have a right to be this blessed. It makes me want to pay it forward in as many ways as I can find. I know that one way I can do that is to continue to take good care of my husband and children, but I think I'd like to start finding some community outreach for us to participate in. I think it would be even more enriching if I could get Delaney involved in it as well.

we're full of thankfulness

Grandpa Jerry's surgery went better than expected. His recovery went better than expected. He had mitral valve replacement and a single bypass on Thursday and he is home on a Sunday afternoon. We're headed out to visit him here at home for a few minutes in just a little while.

bad blogger mommy!

So it's been a while since I updated. I was doing so good for a while.
After Christmas, we had just a few days to recover then we had a big party at our home. For our little toddlers, we welcomed in 2010 with a "Noon Year's Eve" party. Our house was PACKED! I think I need to work on rearranging the house when we have a party to give us a little more moving room.
The kids played and ate snacks and toddled around; then at 11:59:10 we started our countdown and yelled and screamed when the New Year (and a new decade) came in. My good friend, Sarah P, brought a ton of noisemakers and we shook 'em. I will say that the toddlers had NO idea what was going on but it was fun!

Delaney's been enjoying her kitchen and all her other Christmas toys. Dash has really started to take notice of her and he thinks she's the greatest thing since sliced bread. He's getting close to sitting up on his own and he's rolled back to front a few times. He's still not really into rolling front to back but I'm giving him time.

We've started some solid foods with Dash. He prefers the multigrain rice cereal over the "white bread" of rice cereals. My guess is that the multigrain has more flavor to it.

The main reason I was M.I.A for a few weeks was that I had a really bad migraine headache. We tried EVERYTHING (given my nursing restrictions) from the walk-in-clinic, my family doctor, a visit to the ER, and finally a visit to a doctor who referred me to PT. Once I made the PT appointment, the headache went away. I also started hitting the Motrin pretty hard and picking up chewing gum again (to help my TMJ pain).

In other news, we're keeping our fingers crossed and prayers going up for Zap's dad tomorrow. He's undergoing open heart surgery to have his mitral valve replaced as well as two clogged arteries replaced. He went in because he suspected some heart troubles and they were going to do an angioplasty. The angioplasty failed and after the cardiologist gathered his data he determined that Jerry was going to need all of that stuff done. Zap will be spending his day at the hospital with his family and I'll be waiting at home with thoughts and prayers going his way.

So, pass some prayers and thoughts to your higher power and I promise I'll update as soon as we know anything.

I'll work more on getting some pictures up - here's a sneak peek:

We found these farm animals in the dollar section at Target. Delaney walked all around Target trying to hold all four of them. She kept dropping them and picking them up. This is the face she makes when you ask her what a pig says.

And not to be outdone, here's Brother eating some sweet potatoes:
He's seriously so handsome.