Eventful weekend

We all had quite an adventurous weekend this weekend! 

To start things off, Matt went for his photography class fieldtrip in downtown Portland.  Grady and I kept busy by going to family story time at one of the nearby libraries.  When I put Grady in, he was fully dressed.  Here is how I found him when we arrived at the library.

He was quite pleased with himself, as you can see!

Today, a local Portland band called the Alphabeticians played at a nearby cafe, so we checked that out as well.  Grady (and his Daddy!) were pretty into it!

Sorry, Grady, I'll keep it down.

THEN we went and met with some of the parents from our Good Sam baby class.  I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd seen some of the babies. They are getting so grown up!

Matt also had some time this morning to practice his photography skills.  Here are some shots of Grady looking at his mommy, and making me feel like a million dollars.

And here are a couple other cute shots of him.

Grady's "4 month" appointment

Quite belatedly, Grady had his 4 month appointment yesterday.  Here he is in his doctor's visit outfit.

Grady stayed pretty consistent with his height percentile, coming in at 26 inches and 74th percentile.  He dropped a bit in the weight percentile.  He was above 50% before, and now is at 38% at 15 pounds 0.5 ounces.  The doctor didn't seem too concerned, but said to try to get Grady to eat more - and thus immediately securing himself as Grady's favorite person in the world. 

Until the shots.  Grady had all his boosters for his vaccinations, and was not feeling too great afterwards.  He is still a little worn out, and has been having some very low-grade fevers (in the 99 range).  So, I haven't taken as many pictures as I am wont to do.  However, here's a cute one from this morning.

Hopefully he will be feeling all better tomorrow so we can do some fun activities and take lots of good pictures!

Speed dating

Today Grady and Rose had their first real play date.  They went through all the dramatics of a relationship in about 3 minutes.  The whole process was caught on camera.

Do do do, cute babies

Hello, Grady.

Hello, Rose.

Are you ticklish?

I asked you a question!

Too forward?

Hey, she doesn't seem to mind!

I guess he deserved that.

Sticking with single life.

Pffffllllt

Grady has discovered how to make raspberries.  Right now it is pretty cute - he gets spit everywhere.  Even his eyelashes.  Although I can see this new trick getting old pretty fast....

. 

Another fun thing Grady discovered these past few days: Grumpy bear:

Luckily, Grumps is pretty good with kids. 

Speaking of wild animals, on our jog today, Grady and I saw a deer! It was maybe 30 yards from us, if that.

I was a little nervous she was going to eat my baby, but Grady was pretty nonchalant about it.  He was wearing his tough boy outfit.

Today, Matt and I met up with one of my coworkers and her husband and their two little kids.  They were both fascinated by Grady and really good with him.  Here's the older one with Grady.  He is smitten.

We've still been working away on our other website.  We've had over 400 unique visitors now, and have gotten a lot of other websites to link to ours.  I'm pretty excited about this little venture.  And it's fun to be so in the know!

Before you leave, here's a parting shot of some cuteness. 

Back in business

We've all been a little tied up the past few days because Matt and I have been working on getting a website together that will showcase all the fun things to do with kids in Portland.  There are a lot of kid-activity-type calendars out there, but none of them seem to be very user friendly to me.  So we went ahead and created one.  The first one was a ton of work, but it should speed up now that I've got one done.  We've already gotten a lot of great feedback on it!

Grady and I took advantage of my new-found knowledge of everything there is to do in Portland by going to Book Babies at one of the local libraries today.  It was pretty fun, and we had a surprise run-in with one of the babies from our baby class with her grandma!  Grady's favorite part was when we sang a song that involved bouncing. 

Anyway, enough words.  Here are some pictures.  

Here's one I forgot to post of Grady back during the oppressive heat this weekend.  Grady was not impressed with the weather. 

These two are from our jog today.  We took a break to look at some of the big pine trees.

Grady couldn't believe how big they were!

Finally, here's Grady being a big boy and holding his bottle all by himself.  

He's growing up so fast!

For the past day or two, Grady has been turning to his side, and then rolling back onto his back. But last night he figured out how to turn from back to tummy! Here's a video of his new skill from this morning.



Unfortunately, this is usually how this new skill plays out:



(That's a shot from the video monitor.) He can't seem to figure out how to roll back onto his back and instead gets all tangled up in the side of the crib. It's pretty startling for him!

But it's STILL hot

I know I've had a couple posts with this heading before, but man, it's HOT. Another weekend in the 90s. It's hard to get motivated to do much when it's so hot, so we had a pretty boring weekend. Luckily, though, we have Matt to thank for some really great pictures. Matt has been taking a photography class, and here's some evidence of how good he is getting - there are all manual, not automatic!

I like this series because it shows how many different expressions Grady has now. (These don't even include his fussy faces!)













That last one was taken during Grady's favorite activity - bouncy time!

We gave Grady a nice cool bath to try to cool down yesterday. He was pretty interested in catching the drips of water. I think this is the first time I haven't seen him try to put something in his mouth!







The heat is supposed to break in a few days, so hopefully the next post will be a bit more newsy!

It's been a while - here are some videos

As Grady has become more and more interested in his environment and things going on around him, he has been getting a bit distracted during bottle time. He still gets pretty excited when he sees it coming, though!



I was told by daycare yesterday that he has started holding his own bottle there. He held it for himself at home the other day when there was only about an ounce left, but I think it was too heavy to hold on his own in the video up there.

Grady has been really enjoying tummy time lately. Well, for the most part. Sometimes he's not too sure when he gets started.





He usually ends up deciding it was fun at least!





Here's a video of Grady from this morning. He's really working at moving, but he just succeeds in turning himself about 90 degrees. It's pretty funny.



I've been trying to take Grady outside more, since he doesn't get to be outside at all while he is at daycare. He gets pretty contemplative when he's outside. He must feel pretty small in this big world.



Either that or he wants to eat his feet. Hard to tell.

All better

I'm not sure what was going on with Grady on Sunday, but he seems to have kicked it, whatever it was (knock on wood). His appetite is back and he hasn't had any more massive spit-ups although he has continued to spit-up a bit more than usual. So that is a relief. It gave me a taste of the terror of what it will be like when he actually does get sick. Not fun.

Grady and I went for a walk to a nearby park yesterday. After some initial tasting of the stroller strap (not tasty apparently), we had a very nice time.



Grady especially enjoyed looking at the leaves on the tree!



Today Grady and I met up with Jada and Rose for our walk. Grady and Rose interacted for the first time. It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Rose was reaching out to Grady, and Grady was trying to engage her in conversation. They were really fascinated with each other. Next week we're going to try to go to a park instead of walking so that the babies can spend some time getting to know each other better. No pictures, unfortunately, but I'll take my camera if we go to the park.

Because of Grady's extra spit-up, we put a bib on him for the first time today. I don't know what it is about the bib, but I think it makes him look extra cute! I'm of course biased, so I'll leave the decision to you all.

Made it!

At long last, we made it to the ocean today! We abided by our three rules learned the hard way a few weeks ago: (1) left early; (2) avoided biker conventions; (3) saw the ocean!



Matt's friends from high school drove out from Idaho to visit Depoe Bay, about 2.5 hours away from Portland, so we made the trip to see them. It was a lot of fun for Matt to see his old friends and it was great to finally see the ocean!

Here are some shots of Grady from the trip.







What a great way to celebrate Grady's four month birthday.

Unfortunately, Grady has had a decreased appetite today and had a massive spit up after his bottle this evening, so I am on high alert. He doesn't have a fever and has been in a cheery smiley mood today, so I'm hoping it's just an off day. Here's to Grady feeling all better when he wakes up.