Cade - 7 months - an update on scooting, crawling, standing. plus he's cut one tooth!

Cade playing with his cousin Millie in Bend over Thanksgiving

Our Crazy Crawler!

A proud Cade at 6.5 months and standing for 20 uninterrupted seconds on our bed.

Cade's Baby Dedication...here he is with his favorites...Grandma, Papa Don, Apu and Apu Daddy.

After work with my favorite little man.

Here is Cade on a saturday morning getting ready to help Daddy paint.

Daddy and Cade play time

Cade LOVES being outside. I took him off road in the jogger and he was way into it.

Naptime for the both of us.

Cade is a little over 7 months and has been crawling for about 3 weeks now. It's crazy how quickly he went from a slow scoot to full on crawling. I think he is much happier now that he is more mobile! I think he has freedom issues, much like his mom. He is into everything. He especially loves electronics, including remote controls, and anything that has a cord. He is the cutest when he crawls. He can go for long stretches and very very focused. He was doing laps at my parents house. We're discovering that everything is a safety hazard so we need to do some serious baby proofing! He loves being higher than anyone else and most especially loves to pull himself up to standing position - -it's always a little scary because we think he is going to fall, and has a few times on our hard wood floors, poor guy!

Sleep: A couple weeks ago Chris and I started sleep training in earnest. Mostly because we have been lazy in letting him come to bed with us when he wakes up and then I nurse him in the middle of the night till we all wake up in the morning. It was very nice to wake up and see him in the morning with his smiley little face, and him reaching for his little feet and rocking back and forth making his cute little ma, ba, da, ba, mmmph sounds, but we realized we needed to start some good sleep habits. We tried the "Ferber Method" where you put him down drowsy, let him cry for one minute, make an appearance after 1 minute, let him cry for five minutes, come back, and so on, adding five minutes each time. Eventually he falls asleep and its supposed to take 3-4 nights before he figures out how to soothe himself to sleep. Well, the first night was ROUGH. After 5 minutes he was crying super hard. After 10 minutes we was standing at his crib, like he was in jail...looking at me like I was the meanest mom ever....after 15 minutes he sounded possessed...angry little tears were streaming down his red face and his little body was shaking....then....silence....I waited 10 minutes to go in and make sure he was still breathing as I was convinced that he could possibly cry himself to death....and there he was, poor buddy...asleep on his stomach...one hand clutching one of the crib jail bars, and his other arm wrapped tightly around little Ricky the monkey...his only friend that hadn't abandoned him in the night...good old reliable Ricky...in whom he had only taken a mild interest up until this night. Poor buddy, but he made it!

The 2nd night it only took like 15 minutes. He protested again super loud. My favorite was when I gave him his pacifier which seemed to distract him for a few minutes. As soon as he saw me leaving the nursery I heard something fall on the floor. Cade was so mad that he threw his pacifier across the room and it landed right behind me, nearly tagging me in the behind on my way out the door!!

By the third night it was about 5 minutes. Now when we put him down, he protests for less than a minute and burrows into his blanket. When he hears me shut the door he stops crying! He still has one night time feeding, and I'm still nursing him, but it is getting progressively more difficult now that he has cut his first tooth.

CADE's First Tooth: while we were in Bend for thanksgiving, Cade cut his first tooth and I won't forget it because he pretty much cried the entire night. Next morning, we saw his little tooth had broken through his bottom gum and another one is coming in right next to it! He can do a lot with that one little tooth....he can gum bits of oranges, bananas, vegetables, and grapes. It is SHARP...let me tell you., and he has bitten me a couple of times. Ouch ouch ouch!

Food: We think he is allergic to peaches :( Although he absolutely loves mangos, the doctor told us to avoid till he's 1 because of the peaches. Very sad for Cade because he really loves mangos. He has super happy feet when we feed him his mango dessert. Much more so than when we give him anything green (beans, peas). He is especially fond of sweet potatoes, yams, mashed potatoes, applesauce, and bananas. He gets so excited that he grabs the baby spoon and helps us shovel into his mouth! Then he beats on his high chair with delight, sitting there like a baby bird with his tinymouth gaping open. He is a very enthusiastic eater! He also really likes bits of peeled grapes I discovered recently.

Cade - we just think you are awesome. You radiate with so much love and fill our lives with so much joy. You are doing a great job eating, and crawling, and playing. I can't believe how quickly you are growing! We love watching you grow and explore new things. You have a very social disposition and love to smile at strangers...from the guy at the gas station, to the ladies at Nordstrom...to the checker at the grocery store....you throw out that great grin and bring smiles to lots of faces. When you're really happy you tilt your head back to find me and daddy and give us lots of wide open mouth kisses on our cheeks and nose. You always have the cutest little sighs when you are relaxed. When you've been crying and you see me or Daddy you take a deep breath and let it out in a puff to settle yourself down. You love it when we blow on your face..you move your head from side to side and your wispy wavy hair blows all around and you suck your breath in... It works every time! You most especially love touching people's faces when you are trying to get to know new people. When Pastor Adam dedicated you at our church you couldn't take your hands off of his face. It was really funny! Everyone loves to babysit you, especially Apu and Apu Daddy and Gramma Linda and Papa Don. They are just crazy about you and you are so lucky that you get to see them several times a week! When we take you to parties everybody passes you around and you never seem to mind. Those are some of of the many things we love about you, our sweet and laid-back little Cade. You are really starting to get into playtime during bathtime. In fact, you sometimes get a little upset when we pull you out of the tub since you were clearly still playing with the water! We can't wait to take you to swimming lessons eventually. I bet you're going to love it!

We are super excited to celebrate your first Christmas this year!
Love,
Mommy and Daddy

Cade's First Halloween!

Cade and I spent Halloween morning with our friends Ava and Evan. We took pictures of our little pumpkins... A darling dalmation and a ferocious tiger. They are quite a pair!

Cade's First Halloween!

Cade and I went to Ava's house for on Halloween to get some pics of our little pumpkins. As you can see, Cade wasn't a fan of his tiger costume, so he didn't hang out in this get-up for too long. Evan was the cutest little Dalmatian. I hope to upload some addl photos soon! But here's a start...

Cade finds his feet! 4.5 month update

Last week I was giving Cade a bath and he discovered his feet, and they are now his favorite toy when no other bright and obnoxious colored toy is in his reach. He is looking all around these days and giggles and sometimes squeals with delight. His legs are getting nice and chunky. Today was his first try at something other than milk. I smashed up some banana and gave him some.
He scrunched up his face and smacked his lips a couple of times, not quite sure how he felt about it, but eventually he swallowed it. I tried a couple more times and he was more interested in getting his fingers back in his mouth so i set it aside to try again another day.

Anyway, here are some recent pics of the little fella. He is just getting so much more fun each day.

Cade at 4 months

Breaking news: Cade rolled over for the first time! Here is Cade with one of his best buddies, Evan. We went over to my lovely friend Ava's house this morning. I placed him on his tummy and all of a sudden he just rolled over!

Cade at 3 months!

Well it's been 3 months with our little tiny guy. We are having a great time being Mom and Dad and Cade is getting more and more fun. He's able to scoot around using his legs, track us across the room with his eyes, smiling way more, and is starting to make little baby sounds with his voice - gurgles, coos, intonations. Any minute we expect him to start talking. :) I think he's close, we have conversations all the time. Unfortunately, we don't quite understand each other yet but we sure have fun doing it!

We are able to take him around a lot more than we used to. The pictures here are from a Starbucks, a BBQ at Mom and Dad's place, a concert, and just general hanging out.

Let's see, what else? He's now about 15 pounds, a big jump from his 5 1/2 pounds at one week. Plus he's way longer than he used to be and much more squirmy! He's started to sleep more (praise God!) at night and some semblance of afternoon naps. It's waay better on Mom and Dad being able to get more sleep now. He is smiling so much more than before and smiling with his eyes too. He's pretty easy on the eyes!

Seems like his hair is getting lighter, more brown, and his eyes are changing color= either brown or hazel.

People say get ready for lots more changes the next few months and that it's such an exciting time. We can't wait!

Two months old!

Happy Fathers Day!!

Chris' first Fathers Day! Chris is amazing. It's hard to believe that Cade is already 7 weeks old! The last several weeks we've learned so much and the entire time Chris has had such a wonderful attitude. There is no one I can think of that has as much patience, kindness, and encouragement as he does. He really is a tremendous husband and father. Cade loves hanging out with Chris. Its fun to watch them together. His little face lights up when Chris plays with him. Cade coos and he cuddles. All those little smiles just warm our hearts.

For Father's Day, we had a little barbecue lunch with my dad and sister Pam, bro-in-law Jonathan, and our niece Hannah. It was a beautiful sunny day! Later in the afternoon we celebrated Chris' dad with a barbecue dinner at their house in Lake Oswego. Their house is on the lake and it was so nice outside that we decided to go for a ride on the boat. Our niece Lauren went tubing for the first time. We all had a great time. Here are pictures of Dad (Papa Don) and Chris' sisters Lindsey and Kim, and two of her little girls - Lauren and Grace.

Cade and Evan

Our friends Ava and Brett had a beautiful baby boy named Evan, just a couple of weeks before we had Cade. It was fun walking through our first pregnancies together, and even more fun now that our little guys have arrived! Here are some pics from a recent visit. We met up for BF at Daily Cafe and then walked back to our condo to feed/change/etc etc. It was a relaxing Saturday morning.

Bathtime!