Charlie's birthday

Here are pictures of the birthday boy. There were lots of boys at Charlie's party and they all wore red! The adults had a great time too. The theme of the party was Curious George.

Dylan and balloons

Here are pictures from our godson's 3rd birthday party last month. This is where we realized Dylan's fascination with baloons.

Steven and Dylan playing together

These videos were from Christmas. Not much to see but these were the videos we got. I'm so glad we got a new camera. The new videos are so much better.

Adventures in eating

I think Dylan might be going through another growth spurt. He's been eating a lot the last two days. And he ate meat that wasn't pureed! That was exciting.

He also seems to want to feed himself. I let him the other night. He wouldn't eat and he kept screaming and I couldn't figure out what was up and then I realized that he wanted to use the spoon himself. I mixed his pureed meat with pureed veggies and that made a good consistency for him to scoop with his spoon. He took about 3 bits like that. Then I think he got frustrated and wanted it to go faster so he tried scooping it out with his hands. Then he got annoyed it seemed that his hands were sticky. I fed him the rest but I was very happy he is starting to make progress in this area.

I might have to have a talk with Bushra about Dylan's eating there though. When she thinks he doesn't eat enough she loads him up on milk, sometimes 16 oz in the 8 hours that he's there. And she's still giving it to him in a bottle. I told her to start weening him from the bottle but I don't know how much success she's had with this. I'm going to tell her this coming week is the last week for the bottle. And then she gave him peanut butter on bread this week...I guess he's not allergic! The weird thing is she made sure to ask me before she gave him eggs but she never asked about the peanut butter. I never told her not to though either. And I've seen peanut butter bread as a suggestion on at least 2 websites for 12-18 month-olds' menu so I guess it's not a big deal. Dylan must have drank a lot of milk yesterday...I can't get him to drink any today. Get him to drink more is probably my only sort of issue right now with his eating.

I'll try to get some pictures up soon...I know i've really be slackin there.

Life is good and then you get sick

About a week and a half - two weeks ago, I was thinking how much I was loving life. I still am in general but nothing like illness to put a damper on that. Let me explain in more detail....First, I've noticed how Dylan's care has become a lot easier in the last say 3 months. He's doing more for himself (like eating) and sleeping better (more napping) and have I mentioned I don't have to pump anymore?! Dylan is also so much fun these days - communicating more, making us laugh more with silly expressions and "comments." He always wants to go outside despite the bitter cold and so he's always talking about his "joooz" or shoes. And he is continually asking us to sing Itsy Bitzy Spider and pointing out the balloons in the store when we go out.

I have also been feeling like I was keeping busy with things I liked to do as well as getting some of those things that I didn't like to do done. I felt like I've had more time to relax as well as spend some quality time with God which has been missing for a while. I just felt like things were going really well too.

And I still do with the one little damper of having all of us sick. For Martin and I it hasn't even been that bad - just congestion. Dylan got an ear infection and had a really high fever last week but he's on an antibiodic now and seems to be getting better, and seems to me to be in better health than he has for a couple months. My frustration is just with having to cancel all my appointments because I don't want to get other people and their kids sick. In that respect I am so sick of winter but maybe that's why I have more time now...hmmmm. I have literally rescheduled this one financial counceling appointment 3 times because either she was sick or we were sick. And I know that a lot of you, my friends, are going through this too, especially you will little petri dishes (i.e., kids) at home. Part of me is like, I don't care, we live in community, we can't isolate ourselves for 3 months (for example, not go to church afraid our kid will get sick in the nursery), so what if we get sick, that's life. And you can really never know exactly where the illness came from. But then of course you don't want to get other parents mad at you and you want to at least try to prevent what you can. I guess this is just my end-of-winter rant. Hopefully spring will be here soon and this won't be such an issue.

Despite having to cancel our dinner reservations and babysitter, Martin and I did have a nice Valentines Day. We ordered in Chinese and ate it by candlelight after Dylan went to bed. I know we weren't the only ones because the take-out place was uber-busy that night. We got Dylan helium balloons for Valentines Day - you should have seen his face when I walked in the door with those! Wow, his smile was priceless.

One good thing about the current economy...

our property taxes (finally) went down....so our mortgage payment will be $100 less this year and we got a $175 rebate check from our escrow since they had too much of our money. That's almost as good as the $1500 we're getting back from Uncle Sam. I don't think we'll be helping out the economy too much though. One, we're cheap, and two we're about $4000 behind a savings goal that we set for ourselves so all that money will be going into savings.

So what are your plans with your tax rebate? Spend, save, pay off debt, or other?

Potty!

I taught Dylan the sign for Potty (toilet). So now instead of just stopping, staring, and grunting, he also makes a fist with his hand and sticks it in the air when he's pooping. I'm hoping this will help with potty training down the road.

I'm amazed that I only have to do the sign 2 or 3 times and Dylan gets it. Craziness!

More words every day...

Dylan seems to be learning new words every day. He now says car and I think he is saying truck and duck too (and least I hope so...:) And he can do the sign for sleep! In context! It's so fun to watch him learn so quickly!