and for our next trick!

note: i am not pulling graham up by his arms. he is holding onto my hands to pull himself up onto his feet!

finger foods

we've entered the wonderful world of finger foods!!! aka, puffs and cheerios!! :) the little dude couldn't be more proud of himself when he actually gets the food in his mouth. our mealtime rituals have changed so that he can feed himself in the beginning, then we give him whatever food he's getting at that time of day (cereal, fruit, veggies, etc) and then he feeds himself a few more puffs/cheerios at the end.

the epitome of graham

okay, so this video is a little long, but it captures the every essence that is the dude in recent days.

- enjoying some alone playtime

- low pitched (dinosaur) voice

- high pitched (baby) voice

- playing with his favorite toys: car, alligator, rings and ball popper thingy

- reaching for toys

- 'trying' to crawl towards toys

- raising his butt in the air

enjoy the dude!

happy fathers day!!!

a special happy fathers day to the other man in my life, to my dad, and to my brother! i love all of you and hope you had a wonderful day!

me and the dude gave dad some time to himself this morning and played in the sunroom. he was practicing his crawling skills, and i actually captured him with his belly off the ground!!! it definitely won't be long now!! especially since he's been working on standing himself up by just holding onto our thumbs, and grady said he walked in to get him after an unsuccessful naptime and he was sitting up in his crib!!! rut roh! looks like it's time to lower the crib!!! :)

our little dude is turning into a little man!!!

oh...and ps...we went to the doctors yesterday for a follow-up and dr. bill was happier with the rate of his breathing, but he still has some mucus in his chest that he has yet to get rid of. so instead of diagnosing this as 'asthma,' i think dr. bill really thinks it might have been something viral. grady seems to have a stuffy nose, so maybe a cold set off the breathing incident? who knows?! buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, we found out how much the little dude weighs!!!! 20.1 pounds!!! litlte chunkamunker! :)

little dragon

ever since the dude had to have his first neb treatment (which seems like eons ago, but was probably only 3 months ago or so), i've told him he's about to become a dragon. i don't think he has any idea what a dragon is,but i think it's pretty cute. he's never been scared by the nebulizer, and for the first time wore the little mask!! we used to have to hold the mouth piece near his nose and have him breath it in that way.

this afternoon he was even wearing the mask and playing with his toys. such a trooper!

ps...we also found out this morning that the dude likes yo gaba gaba....that's what he's looking at in the pictures!

crazy panic mom mode

today was the first time i entered the 'crazy panicked mom' mode! here's how the day went.

6am - graham wakes up and is a little congested, but other than that...normal.

7am - get the dude changed for school. noticed he's got some good 'candles' going, so i suction out his nose.

8am - drop off at school and he's as happy as can be playing in the padded ring thing they have in his room.

12:50pm - i get a call from one of the teachers at school: "we wanted to call to see if you were aware of graham's congestion." me: "yes. he was somewhat stuffed up this morning, why?" school: "well it's gotten pretty bad, to the point where he can't fall asleep. and then when he does fall asleep he seems to be having a hard time breathing. we think you might want to come pick him up and take him to the emergency room."

FREAK OUT in 5.....4.....3....2.....

i try to remain as calm as possible and tell them we didn't see that at all last night or this morning and that i would get there as soon as possible.

12:55pm - call dr's and get an appointment ASAP.

1:25pm - i get to school and he indeed is breathing REALLY fast and hard. all the teachers were worried. never a good sign!

1:35pm - worst car ride yet with the dude. he was crying the whole way there, but i think that was the only way he was able to breath. he would start coughing and i think it hurt him, so he would cry more and the cycle continued.

1:40pm - probably about 5 seconds away from parking in the drs office parking lot is when the real crazy panicked mom came out! i had been watching the dude in the backseat mirror the entire way to the doctors, thinking he may be getting worse. then at 1:40, with the drs office building in sight, he all of a sudden turns beet red and stops breathing!! FREAK OUT! then, not 2 seconds later (not to be graphic, but...) he projectile vomits what looks to be everything in his little tummy. and this doesn't happen once, but twice! FREAK OUT! finally, what seemed to be 100 miles away (but was only about 200 feet) i get to a parking spot. i honestly don't know how i didn't hit someone over those 200 feet. i was freaking out so bad i was probably going 20 miles an hour through the parking lot. oops, but can you blame me?! i was crazy panicked mom! i JUMP out of the car and sprint to the other side. i completely ignore all the vomit that is all over the poor dude and grab him out of his car seat. amazingly i remembered to grab my purse and i ran into the front door.

"hi, i have an appointment at 1:50, but someone needs to help me now!"

1:41pm - the nurse takes me back to a room and they immediately start asking me all sorts of questions. i knew something was wrong with the dude since he was, what i call, a limp noodle. he was just laying there in my arms and there was nothing i could do for him. we undress him, since he's disgustingly covered in his own vomit and the nurses notice that his breathing is retracted. another FREAK OUT!

1:50pm - the nurse walks over to the room across the hall: "excuse me dr. bill. i hate to interrupt, but you really need to come check this little guy out." FREAK OUT!

1:55pm - dr. bill: "oh my goodness graham. what are you doing to your poor mom?!" he takes a quick look and immediately has the nurses get a neb treatment set up for him. he'll be back in 10mins.

2:20pm - neb treatment is done, dr bill takes another look at him and the dude is back to normal!!!

2:35pm - walk out of the with a diaper clad baby (since i was not putting those clothes back on him) and drive home.

O-M-G!!!!

i was so glad to be home and able to just cuddle with the little dude. he snoozed on me for a good hour and a half and then we ventured out to get his medicine.

he's on albuterol neb treatments every 4-6 hours, steriod neb treatments twice a day (we can mix it with the albuterol thankfully!) and prednisone orally twice a day. we did our first combined treatment at 630 and it really seemed to help. thankfully the little guy ate his dinner with no problem, took his bottle at the regular time and has been snoozing in his crib since about 745 or so. we're not sure if we're going to scoop him up and let him sleep with us so we can hear him better, or if we'll just turn the monitor on REALLY loud, so we can hear everything.

i think he's on the mend and hopefully we'll get a cleaner bill of health when we go for our follow-up visit on saturday morning. i'll keep everyone posted!

sylvie's first birthday

sylvie (dark haired cutie in the white flowered dress) had her first birthday party today, and we were honored to be able to celebrate with her. kiera (brown haired cutie in the pink dress) also turns one in a couple days, along with austin (at the party, but i somehow missed taking a picture of him!). there definitely was no shortage of babies, kids and pregnant women at this party! everyone had a great time. derek (handsome dude in the orange shirt) was being an awesome big kid and playing with all the little kids.

seeing as the dude isn't mobile (YET!), he ended up chilling out and entertaining himself when everyone walked off. he's good at doing that! he's content with just watching kids play. even school mentioned that. they'll take him outside and he'll just enjoy being outside and watching everyone run around and play. i think he's secretly plotting when his big move will be, literally!

and i'm definitely diggin the foam puzzle piece mat. VERY good for tumbles and spills! we may have to look at getting one and maybe putting it in the sunroom, since the carpet on the wood floor isn't very thick. we'll see! we've gotta get some good forward motion going first i guess (yes, the dude is scooting himself backwards on his tummy).

five one

we found out on friday afternoon that the five one was playing at the herndon festival, so we had to go support them and show them some kindercare lovin! back story...each person in the five one is named a color: mr. green, mr. blue, mr. red and mr. gold. mr. blue used to work at the dude's kindercare, but has since gone to a different center. mr. green still works at the dude's school, but he's in the school aged kids room.

this was graham's first live show, and i think it's safe to say he loved it. especially since three of his most adoring fans were there...miss jodi, miss maribelle and miss samantha! i think miss samantha (one of the dude's teachers) was happy to not have to change the dude's diapers though! haha! miss maribelle is the three year old room teacher, so we've got a little ways to go before the dude will be with her, but she's definitely not shy with the lovin for the dude! and of course miss jodi was lovin on the boy as well!

we all had a great time (even if mommy and daddy got sunburned!)!

hard to say goodbye

it was a whirlwind weekend, but we had a great time. it was definitely hard saying goodbye to everyone, and to the house that grady and i got married at. since grana and grampa are moving to san antonio VERY soon, this was our last trip to their house in nc.

before we hopped in the car to head back home, grampa had to also show the dude his fish pond. if you look closely in the top right hand photo you can see two of his HUGE koi. again, the dude was mesmerised. he couldn't stop looking at the fish.

good bye nc,

good bye tree we got married under,

good bye road trips to grana and grampa's...

...we're going to be jet setters now!

cuckoo

of course before we left this morning, grampa had to show the dude the awesomeness that is the cuckoo clock!

he was completely mesmerised.

thinking about it!

he's getting the motions! won't be too much longer!

four generation family dinner

it's not very often you get four generations at the table!

of course the little dude provided some table side entertainment!

great grandma and great grandpa

we were so lucky that our trip to see grana and grampa also involved a visit from great grandma and great grandpa! we couldn't have planned that one more perfectly. we wish we could have visited for longer, but we were happy we got to see them before they drove back to indiana. and thank you for the cute outfit, awesome book with matching stuffed llama and the coolest new truck toy!

it's a shame that great grandma doesn't like babies! :)

kicker

during one of the wind storms that grana and grampa had this great pink ball happened to blow under some of their trees. between grampa and i, we were able to get the ball out and cleaned off. the dude LOVED it. here he is showing grana his new found kicking abilities! yes...the dude is very ambidextrous and uses his feet whenever possible to move things, push things, feel things, etc.

grana and grampa's for the weekend

i've been playing a little bit of catch-up lately with my blog. it's been just somewhat busy around here lately! sorry!

well this weekend we headed down to grana and grampa's. of course when we woke up this morning to drive down graham woke up with a low-grade fever. gave him some tylenol and that seemed to do the trick. he, again, was an AWESOME traveler. he slept for probably a good 3-3.5 hours, ate a bottle on the go, played with some toys and then just kind of hung out. not a bad 6.5 hour drive! although, we were all ready to get out of the car by the time we got there.

the little dude had lots of fun playing with grana and grampa!!! we found out this weekend that grampa likes to put things on the dudes head. :)

(oh, by the way...look at those chunkamunkers...aka chunky legs!!!!)

before bedtime, the little dude sat with grana and read a story. i think this was the first time he actually sat and listened to the whole book instead of just wanting to turn the pages or eat the book. must be because of grana's expert story reading skills!

seven months!!!

my little dude is somehow seven months old today! how did this happen?

and let me tell you, you are definitely becoming one cute little dude!

no well visits this month, so we're not sure what your stats are. but i know for sure you're growing!! here's what you've been up to this past month:

- wearing size 3 diapers...thinking we might need to switch to 4's very soon!

- still wearing 6-9 month clothes.

- totally transitioned to formula (sniffle!).

- still gobbling up 1/3C of cereal twice a day and getting 2oz of fruit and 2oz of veggies everyday. (i'm proud to say i'm still making all his food too. makes me feel good that i know what's going into him!)

- LOVES pears and sweet potatoes

- likes apples and peas

- has recently started rolling over to your tummy at night after i place you in your crib on your back.

- starting to make the motions of crawling, but no movement yet. although you can spin yourself in a circle on the floor when you're on your tummy.

- would rather be sitting on your own than reclining or laying down. no assistance needed with the sitting either!!!

- uses the BIG big boy bathtub!