pool party

A few weeks ago Kate got her first bath in the sink, which happened at Grandma Sue and Grandpa Bill's house. Her eyes get quite wide open in the bath, don't they? This picture is actually from Labor Day weekend, which we spent in Grand Rapids with both sides of the family. Drew has never been much of a guy for sweets, but just recently he's show more interest in chocolate. He's sitting here at the kitchen table getting ready for some birthday cake. To our surprise, he was very interested in birthday cake!

Even though it was a happy birthday for Jana, Drew loves to sing along to "Happy Birthday." He's fascinated by the whole process of lighting the candles and blowing them out, so we always do it more than once.

Drew was a big help for Jana with getting all the candles blown out.

We all watched in astonishment as Drew polished off this piece of cake. He was making appreciative noises and working his way through it consistently. Jana and I were quite surprised! Usually, Drew would rather have meat, fruit, or vegetables instead of cake.Grandma Sue got the special treat here of reading a story to both her grandchildren.

Kate has been growing a LOT lately, and we have the feeling that the next time we see the doctor she won't be in the 25th percentile anymore. Drew took off in size as he approached six months, and it appears that Kate is going to do the same thing. She's getting much longer all of the sudden and she's been gaining weight like crazy.

On Labor Day it was quite warm in Lansing, so Drew and I went out in the morning and set up our little backyard pool. We put it out in the morning and by the afternoon, the water temperature was in the low 80s. Our whole family headed to backyard after Kate and Drew's afternoon nap and we had a pool party! We stripped Kate of her diaper and even she got to go for a little swim.

Kate enjoyed the water, but not that much!

Drew asked to hold Kate, so we gave him a turn holding her in the pool (closely supervised!!). How sweet!

Kate likes to relax on the couch. She's pretty good at sitting on the couch or standing next to it, but she hasn't quite gotten the hang of sitting upright yet.

We've been enjoying Kate's continued growth, her smiles, her giggles, and her increasing appetite. After some initial resistance to solid foods, she's been eating like crazy lately! It's impressive how much squash that girl can eat.

Kate tried to camouflage herself in her bed. I snuck in to take this picture, which was helped by the fact that Kate has become a much more sound sleeper lately. Our new nightly tradition is for Jana and I to sneak into each kid's bedroom to give them a kiss while they are sleeping and say goodnight.

This is a picture that Jana took of Kate lying on Drew's bed. Kate had reached over and grabbed Jessie, Drew's giraffe from the Binder Park Zoo.

Drew and Kate were on the bed together and Jana got a picture of the two of them together, which isn't the easiest thing to do. They are both rarely looking at the camera or in good poses at the same time!

video of a video

I've got more pictures coming (lots more), but I thought I'd get started with what I've managed to get on here so far. Drew likes to close his eyes and make goofy faces for the camera, so the best way we've found to get him to smile for a picture is . . . tickling! In the picture below I was madly tickling him and then we both paused while Jana snapped a quick picture. After doing this a couple times we arrived with a somewhat satisfactory picture of the two of us.

Drew has been enjoying daycare and playing with Jana, but he's been rather Dad-focused lately, which I'm not complaining about! We've got a routine in the morning where I get him out of bed and we both quietly ease our way into activity and talking. In the evening, Drew is constantly clamoring for me to head down into the basement to play with him. At the same time, Kate has been thoroughly enjoying Jana. You should see her smile when Jana walks into the room! I need to capture it on film because it is a look of pure joy.Whenever I'm on the computer Drew asks if he can see pictures of himself and especially "talking pictures" of himself, a.k.a. videos. A little while ago we were going through pictures of his first visit to Uncle Todd's fire station, and Drew was captivated by the video of the fire rescue coming out of the station. He wanted to watch it over and over again. We're continuing to work on Drew's manners and you'll notice me ignoring him at the end of the video of us watching the video. We don't even pay attention to him unless he requests something politely. Once he does that, we still often say "no," but we at least acknowledge his request!


I will try to get more pictures up soon, especially of Kate. She is a cutie!!

messy eaters

Kate has been packing on the pounds and she's got a new favorite food to add to her short list . . . carrots! As with Drew, Jana has been hard at work making baby food and her first efforts with Kate have involved carrots and squash. For some reason Kate loves the carrots, but previously has not been a big fan of rice cereal. For now we use the carrots, thicken them with a little rice cereal, and sneak the rice cereal to Kate under the disguise of the carrots. Kate loves to "help" with the feeding by using her hands, and it is MESSY!! After some feedings it will everywhere on her; the carrots end up in her meager hair, on her back, in her neck folds, in her ears, up her nose. It's incredible!I'm not sure about Kate's expression in this photo. She looks like I surprised her or something. Anyhow, she was so cute on her changer on the floor in her hat that we had to take a picture. You can't see the back of this watermelon outfit, but the back is covered in ruffles. I'm still getting used to outfits like this. Drew's clothes didn't have ruffles!

The other night we had spaghetti, which Drew absolutely loves. We're working on getting Drew to consistently eat with a fork, but he eats so much and he's already SO SLOW that sometimes we give in and let him eat with his hands. Just like Kate eating carrots, Drew makes quite a mess! Here is Drew showing off his "goatee" from the spaghetti sauce. I pointed out to him that he had a goatee just like his dad, and he found that pretty amusing.

As my knee continues to get better, I'm more active and Drew asks every night if we can go down the basement to play basketball. Just recently he's discovered that the soccer ball has a nice weight to it and it goes nicely into his basketball hoop. Because it's lighter than his usual basketball, it's a little easier for Drew to control and he actually makes a pretty high percentage of his shots.

Often on hearing all the giggling and yelling from the basement, the women (a.k.a. Jana and Kate) come down to see what's going on in the basement. Kate loves to watch Drew play.

For the most part Drew ignores Kate. Actually, most of the time we're doing anything (at daycare, at home, in the car) Drew ignores her, but every once in a while he still goes over and gives her a hug or a kiss. I think he's still patiently waiting for Kate to get big enough to play with him. It will still be a while Drew!

The other night Jana was talking to Grandma Lynn when Drew grabbed the cell phone and started to talk with her. Drew had never done this before! He usually tolerates one of us holding the phone up to his ear and he'll talk a little, but he had never held the phone himself.This past week Jana went out for the evening and I was home on my own with Kate and Drew. It had been a long day for all of us, and when Jana got home this is what she found on our couch. Kate was in her diaper and bib sound asleep on my chest. My eyes must have gotten a little heavy as well!

M&Ms

I've not been getting the chance to blog lately, but Drew and Kate continue to do VERY cute things! Let me get you caught up on what we've been doing. Kate loves to stand up and she's got great upper body and neck strength, so we've been putting her in the exersaucer, and she loves it. Just like Drew, Kate enjoys being upright now and she doesn't like to be horizontal. She looks tiny in the exersaucer, doesn't she? Speaking of standing and legs, we had Kate's ultrasound on her hips, and it looks like everything is fine. We haven't heard official word from the doctor, but we charmed the ultrasound technician into pulling us aside before we left and letting us know what she'd found. Kate's hips should be fine, but it's something that we'll continue to keep an eye on to make sure that doesn't change. Yes!!

Every night Drew asks to go into the basement with me. He is into just about every sport we can play. He found my old baseball glove and so lately he's been into baseball. For some reason he doesn't like to throw the ball, but instead he likes me to wear the baseball glove and then he runs over and sets the ball in the glove. Where did he come up with that? We also play lots of basketball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, and running (that's where I chase Drew around the basement and tickle him!).

Kate has been simply delightful as she continues to smile and laugh and chat. She'll chat to herself in her crib and Jana and I love to listen to Kate's babbling on one monitor and Drew's talking on our other monitor. It's so much fun to hear our children talking to themselves in their respective rooms!

As you can tell, Kate was thrilled when I took this picture of the two of us. One reason I haven't blogged in a while: I had surgery on my knee to repair a torn meniscus. Unfortunately, that made it hard to sit at a computer and blog, so I've fallen way behind on updates. This picture was the night before my surgery as I frantically played in the basement with Drew and Kate as much as I could before I was laid up. We had a great time running and jumping and yelling!

Once I had surgery, I had fun taking pictures from the couch as the kids played in the living room. Kate continues to be a little Drew clone in her appearance. We are constantly astounded by how similar the two of them look. When I get the chance I'll put in some more side-by-side pictures so that you can be reminded of what Drew looked like at this age.

After I got home from having surgery, it took several hours before Drew was willing to come near me. We had warned him that I would have a big "owie" on my leg, so he was reluctant to get near it. He kept on talking about my HUGE band-aid. (You'll see it in a few pictures)

Kate had no problem checking me out as I lounged on the couch. For three straight days I had my leg wrapped and being iced. I didn't get a lot done and for several days Jana got to take care of three babies!For my surgery I wore my Michigan State shirt (the surgery was performed by the orthopedic surgeon who does all the MSU athletes) and as I left the hospital I was getting calls of "Go Green!" from other patients as my wheelchair was rolled down the hall. I got home and after his nap Drew wanted to wear his Michigan State shirt too. Jana and I have quite a bit of fun with Drew's strong desire to match whatever I'm wearing.

In the evening Drew was finally willing to come near me for his bedtime story. I was looped on painkillers and we were watching some of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. Drew's favorite part was the fireworks, which he'd seen before in person (he remembered!). The blue tube is from my Iceman, which was filled with ice water that was pumped through the tube and into a pad surrounding my knee. It was a pretty cool way to keep my knee cool without it getting too cold. I showed Drew this picture the other night (the one below) and he immediately yelled out, "The M&M picture! The M&M picture!" Jana and I were thinking, "What?" Then we noticed my shorts by my left hand. There are a few M&Ms sitting there because Drew got four of them that night as a special treat. You decide: did Drew notice the M&Ms in the picture or did he remember the situation??

Jana captured this picture of Kate's joy in the bathtub. She loves being naked and she loves being in the water!

Kate reached the big milestone of starting to eat rice cereal! Every night she gets a small bowl of rice cereal. We're hoping that as she starts to eat more it will put less pressure on Jana to keep her milk production high. Kate is drinking a lot!!

Kate doesn't do the greatest job of eating yet, but she eventually gets it all down. Her favorite thing is to spit out what we put in her mouth. Well, it's actually more of a slow push out of the food, but she doesn't like the rice cereal much yet.

As I began to feel better, I progressed to reading to Drew rather than gazing bleary-eyed at the TV screen with him. Drew got more and more comfortable around me and within days was crawling all over me! My knee is almost back to normal and within a couple weeks I can start running and jumping again. Amazing.

Ironically, my mom also had surgery on the same day I did! She was laid up in Grand Rapids, and I was itching to get out of the house (but to somewhere that I could sit on the couch), so Jana and I paid a visit to Grand Rapids last weekend. My mom had knit a sweater for Kate (she's more productive than me when she's laid up) and in the picture below Kate is trying it on for the first time.

There's nothing that helps the healing process like some time with the grandchildren!

Kate got plenty of kisses from grandma and grandpa. With her little bald head, she's pretty kissable!

Kate was working it for the camera, so we obliged by having a little photo shoot. Jana and I forgot how much we love this age when babies smile a lot, but aren't mobile, so you get LOTS of good pictures.

With no hair on her head, Grandma Sue was worried that Kate's head would be cold this fall and winter, so she's also been knitting Kate some stylish hats to wear when she's out on the town.

Drew also got a little Grandma time in and he got Grandma to read him a story before his nap.

Whenever great-grandma and grandpa hear that the grandchildren are in town, they magically appear too! G.G. got some time in with Kate, and it was nice to have some extra healthy people around to pay attention to Drew and Kate.

I did manage to snag Kate for a little bit from my perch on a different couch.

Here's another picture of our efforts to get rice cereal into Kate. Like I said, she's a little resistant, so it's not the cleanest process ever.

The big event from this week was Kate's first day of daycare and Drew's return to daycare after a summer off. The first couple days have gone very well and Kate was excited to tell us all about her first day.

In case you can't tell, these are Kate's capris. The difference between pants, capris, and shorts for her is VERY small!

A while ago I was in the basement with Drew when he ran over to his front end loader and deposited two golf balls in it. I didn't think much of it until he just stood there staring at the golf balls. As I watched, the bucket slowly began to tip and after an incredibly long time for a two-year-old, the balls fell onto the ground and Drew squealed with delight. I was flabbergasted! He immediately picked up the balls, set the bucket back up, and put the balls back in to repeat the process. Apparently, Drew had stumbled onto this discovery earlier in the day with Jana and couldn't wait to show me when I got home. I was impressed!

Kate's four month checkup

I haven't had the chance to post pictures this week, but hopefully I'll get some out soon. Kate has been laughing away, and I'm going to keep trying until I get a good video of it. Every time we pull out the camera, she stops laughing and starts staring at the camera. I need to get more sneaky!

Yesterday we had Kate's four month checkup and it went pretty well. She's still growing nicely and she weighed in at 12 pounds 15 ounces and was about 24 inches long. Both of those numbers put her in the 25th percentile, so she's still a little peanut! Who would ever guess that Jana and I have such a little baby girl? All her developmental milestones are on track and her movements and vocalizations are appropriate for a baby her age. Way to go, Kate!

The only concern we have at this point is that the doctor noted a "click" in Kate's hips when they're rotated and that may indicate Developmental Dysplasia of the Hips (DDH). We're going to have an ultrasound performed on Kate's hip joints and that will give us a better idea of what is happening with her little hips. If Kate has DDH, it's not a big deal, but it might mean she'll need to wear a little brace for a while. We'll see how the ultrasound turns out before we worry too much about DDH.

Next week is a big week for us because it's Jana's last week of the summer home with Drew and Kate. After that, it will be back to work for the fall and Drew and Kate will head to daycare. The summer has been going by quickly!