Family Update

Chase is 6 1/2 months old now. He's a really happy baby, and always makes us smile. Just so we remember, here's what he's up to lately:

Eating: He's still breastfed and not so great with a bottle, although he can do it when need be. He started solids a few days before his 6-month birthday. He now eats rice, barley, squash, avocado, and banana. Avocado seems to be his favorite. He loves to drink water, from sippy cups and especially from a regular grown up cup. We make all his food. The barley and brown rice we just add extra water and puree, the squash we steam and puree. Then portions we won't use in a few days go in ice cube trays until they freeze, and then the cubs to a freezer bag, and we just pop them out and warm them up as we need them. A recent discovery is that solid foods result in solid turds. We're still getting used to this, and it takes both parents and a bath to clean him and his diaper up. Recently, we were giggling as we watched his face and listened to him toot. A few minutes later we were shocked as we cleaned up, "What if he does this when we're out somewhere?!" "I just don't know," said the bewildered parents.

We started him on solids mainly because he showed so much interest. No Chase, you can't have ice cream just yet.
And here is Andrew giving Chase his first taste of something (rice) other than milk.

Sleeping: He naps twice a day, from about 8:30-10 and 12:30-2/2:30. He used to be a good sleeper at night, but not for the last month or two. We're working really hard to fix that. He just wakes up and needs help going back to sleep quite often. Some nights he sleeps through the night (I'd guess about once per week), but most often he's up a lot, sometimes every hour. We're working on a lot of things, but the main ones are sticking to our routine (you mean we have to be home by 7pm and for all his naps on a Saturday?!), and putting him down before he's asleep (he's only good at falling asleep in our arms, which is a challenge the 5th time in the night). This morning we celebrated because he slept 4 hours in a row, something he first did at 4 or 5 weeks of age! I must mention that right now he's sleeping in his teddy bear sleeper and is just heart-melting. He's just so lovable it makes the lack of sleep bearable. He's finally seemed to outgrow swaddling over the last few weeks.

Playing: He's just a happy little guy. At the moment, he loves to sit up on his own and play with cloth blocks (well, suck on them, just like everything else). He's starting to get into stuff now, like grab the pen when I write, grabbing our plates, patting the keyboard if we type near him. Over the weekend, we set him in a bed of stones, and he picked up handfuls of them, and we were surprised that he didn't put them in his mouth, like everything else he gets ahold of. How did he know he shouldn't eat stones? He's rolled and rolled (2 months ago he earned the nickname "the Human Steam Roller" from his cousin Noah), but he's bored with that now, and would much rather sit. He loves story time and laundry time (folding clothes is great fun!). He's mesmorized when I play the keyboard, and he loved when my dad played guitar for him. He enjoys all his grandparents, aunts, and uncles, but you should see his face when Grandma B starts cooing and talking to him. And Andrew can get him giggling and laughing like no one else. There's tickling and tossing and the happiest noises you've ever heard.

Talking?!: He babbles and coos, and yes, you can laugh at us, but Dad and I believe he says words. Twice now, he's looked at Andrew and said, "Dada." Two syllables, not even dadadadada... like he often does. He says, "Nummnummnumm" when he wants to nurse (more like a noise than a word, but certainly communication). Around 5 am this morning, Chase decided it was playtime. As to not encourage playing at night, I lay down next to him in the dark with my back to him and pretended to be asleep. He did all he could to get my attention (or maybe I was just the only thing he could play with), he patted my back, shrieked, and then he said, "Mama, HHIIIIIII!!!" It took everything I had to show no reaction, but I stopped breathing and my heart may have skipped a beat or two. I would have thought it a coincidence (and yes, you can keep laughing at me), but we say hi, dada, numnum, and mama to him in context quite a bit. And yesterday I said HHIIIII to him all day long.

Chase isn't the only one in the family!

Oliver is just as cute and fun as ever.

Andrew's enjoying his vegetable garden. He's really done all the building, digging, planting, watering, and other tending. We've had beans, tomatoes, basil, and more. We also have some humungous squash, but... we also joined a CSA (community supported agriculture), and we get weekly deliveries of veggies (salad greens, garlic, eggplant, peas, beans, beets, kale, swiss chard, all kinds of stuff). They have a ridiculous amount of squash, so much they have to throw some out, so we're just letting our garden squash get as big as it can on the plant, since we have no use for it. Andrew collected all the basil and made lots of pesto and froze it so we can enjoy it all year long. We're also enjoying all kind of berries. I've helped a little, but Andrew's been good about picking blackberries. Then he freezes them and can have them all year too. Jen helped me make some of the strawberries into jam. Andrew's also been riding his bike with Scott (they're training for the Peach of a Century!), and doing some work on his Subaru (replaced the busted mirror, peeling hood scoop, changed spark pulgs). He was even nice to me when I backed it into our fence a couple days ago (minimal damage).

Here are some of the vegetables.

I've been working on notes for when I go back to teach (28 September). We found a nice lady a few blocks away who will take care of Chase while I'm away. I know she'll love him, be attentive, and take great care of him, but I'm going to be so heartbroken to be away from him. The longest I've been apart from him so far has been less than 3 hours. I will work 4 days per week (Tuesdays off), and all my classes and office hours are between 8am-2pm. Because I'm doing so much preparation over the summer (during Chase's naps), I shouldn't have to do too much more work outside of those hours. I will do some grading on Tuesdays during his naps, but that should be most of it. Also, both of his naps are during the hours when I work, so that helps minimize the playtime I miss. I think it will be hard at first, but good for our family after a few weeks. Please pray for us!

My sister, Kate, and her husband are expecting a new baby in just 2 weeks! They'll have 2 boys less than a year old. Pray for them!

My mom recently said goodbye to her guinea pig, Squeak. He lived a good life and got lots of love and attention, including hand feedings for quite a while.

Through one of Sachiko's friends, I met another family with a 9-month-old son. Here we are walking at Bush Park.
Here's some hiking fun with cousins. Eric, Sachiko and family visited Salem. They whole family and Grandma and Grandpa Boes went hiking with us. Chase seems to enjoy being in the backpack.

We also went hiking with the Bradleys at Hearts Cove. Just beautiful. Wow Tiffanie, what a leap! Uh, oh - Scott and Megan still have to make it, with babies on their backs!

Here was one of the views. We could here and see sea lions.

Cutie

Amazing Baby

I'm holding our amazing baby boy. His surgery went well today. He was cheerful beforehand, even though he wasn't allowed to eat, and is waking up sweetly as the anesthesia wears off now. We love our baby so very much, and are grateful for everyone's prayers and support.

Baby Backpacking

I guess you wouldn't call what Chase did backpacking. He really went sleep packing, but he's really good at it.

We headed to Marion Lake last Saturday for some camping with friends. The weather was really great and so was the company. Oliver was self sufficent this time around, he carried his own food, bowl, and tennis ball.

He was really great on the hike, although his lack of awarness of his pack earned him the nickname wide load. More than once that pack almost tripped me as he would jog by.

If it weren't for the mosquitos we would have had a good campsite too.

At least we had a great view. Megan and I are a new and overly protective parents when it comes to bug spray, so we didn't use any. This wasn't a huge problem until about an hour before sunset. Then the litte parasites came out for dinner so we retreated to our tent. Baby's first bug bite isn't something you get real proud of, but it's still a first.

Being a great roller isn't always an advantage. Sometimes you get a mouth full of dirt.

I managed to get a couple sunset pics before getting eaten alive.

Happy family...

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Chase is addicted to rolling. He can't stop himself. When we put him down he immediatly rolls onto his left side then suspends himself there for awhile. About half the time he then rolls onto his back and the other half onto his stomache. When he was three weeks old he would occasionally roll from his belly to his back but this was an accident and it has become very infrequent. Consequently Mom and Dad have to roll him back to his back after three or four minuets on his front.

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East Coast Swing

For his first plane ride Chase chose the red-eye from Portland to Newark. It was a good choice, he slept four out of the six hours we were in the air. The bad part was that his parents and grandparents were dead tired the next day. But we all survived.

The fam visited Megan's relatives during the week of the Forth of July. It was a very relaxing trip for me and also nice to get to spend so much time with my son.

Chase got to meet a lot of his family for the first time. Aunts, uncles, great uncles, great aunts...

Including his cousin Conner...

Chase isn't very good at sharing...

He also learned some music appreciation...

Flying with a baby was not nearly as bad as I had feared. In fact there are some bonuses. The first of which is that you get to board the plane early. This is a huge advantage because we never check any bags, we got first access to the overhead bins. The second is that it gave Megan and I an excuse to walk up and down the aisle burping and entertaining Chase. The downsides is how cramped it was. Fortunately we sat next to some very gracious people who gave lots of compliments about the behavior of our child. It's really nice to hear, even though we didn't have anything to do with it.

Driving in the car has been the biggest struggle so far. Chase doesn't really like to be in a car seat for more that twenty minutes. We're not sure if he gets car sick or if he's just cranky. We tried to time all of our car trips around his naps. The key to travelling this way is flexibility. We rarely told anyone that we would be meeting them at a certain time. Mostly though we tried to have people come to Meg's parents house.

All in all it was a very good trip. Now it's back to work :(

Can Oliver come out and play?

Of course we adore our dog, but he's become quite popular around the neighborhood as well. In addition to his human admirers, he has a number of doggy friends. A dog named Molly lives next door and frequently prances onto our deck and checks at our screen door for Oliver. If we miss her, Oliver whines to let us know he wants to go play. We open the door, and off they go.



You would think this is an anomaly, but, he has other doggy friends as well. There's a pair of boxers that play on the track. Their owner waves up to our house, we let Oliver out, one of the boxers comes up to our yard to coax Oliver down to the track, and they're off.

Although our dog is not the smartest, he does recognize familiar dogs from ones he hasn't met. From our house to across the track, he can tell the difference. He whines when he sees a playmate, and often barks or growls when he sees an unfamiliar one. (Andrew's not so sure of this, but I'm home all day and observe it regularly.)

Another great thing is that Oliver comes when we call. And on the rare occasion that fails, he always responds to the whistle, which is followed by a treat.


As for the rest of the family, Chase continues to grow, and Andrew continues to get older. :o)

Chase has doubled in size since birth (7 pounds 15 ounces). He clocked in at 16 pounds 5 ounces yesterday. He's a great eater. Imagine if you doubled in size in less than 4 months!

Andrew's birthday was yesterday. So Chase stayed with his aunt & uncle, and Andrew chose a yummy sushi place for dinner.

Here are some Chase pictures:




He's no musical prodigy, at least we haven't seen the signs yet, but he loves the sounds the keyboard makes.

High Chair

He's not quite ready for food but loves to sit up...

Vowels are fun!


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Hiking and Swimming

Last Friday, I met up with 3 other moms and their babies at Silver Falls and we did a hike. I didn't realize what a spectacle we'd make, but it was nice to get lots of Mother's Day wishes from other hikers.

The following day, Andrew, Chase, and I went swimming. Chase is too young to really appreciate it; the outing was more for me. I had a great time.



Andrew and I had some playtime too. Andrew got to go down the water slide, and I went off the diving board.

He Smiles!

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