Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone!  Sorry for the delay in posts, but there are enough pictures in this one to make up for it.  It is very, very hard to narrow down pictures of Grady in his train conductor uniform.

We've been in varying degrees of under the weather over here for the past few weeks.  Grady's had a cough and runny nose for a while, which Matt and I caught just in time for Uncle Cliff's visit.  Matt's turned into pneumonia (poor Daddy!) but Grady and I luckily managed to avoid that.  We're all on the mend, although the cough persists still.  In fact, Matt and I are having a cough-off as I type. This one is a doozy.

We had a great time with Uncle Cliff, as commemorated by exactly one picture (gah!).  Here we are at the food carts after a fun trip to Forest Park.

Grady was quite smitten by Uncle Cliff, and would ask for him almost immediately upon waking (after Mommy?  and Toys?  came "Kiff?" much to Daddy's disappointment....).  He's still talking about him a few weeks after his departure.  Cliff was sleeping on the couch, so we would be quiet coming downstairs on our way out to let Cliff keep sleeping.  Grady will still randomly say "Quiet.  Kiff!"  We also sent a picture of Grady in his Halloween costume by text to Grandpa and Nana.  When I told Grady what I was doing, he insisted we send the picture to Kiff as well.  Grady liked to point out all the "TRUCKS!" to Uncle Cliff, even putting together his first three-word sentence ("Big white truck!"). 

At our new house, we are pretty near a busy road where you can see lots of trucks, and beyond that is a train yard.  A little boy's dream!  Here's Grady on our first venture down to the yard.

Now for the picture overload.  I have narrowed these down as much as I could, apologies.

Here are some photos of Grady playing in the leaf pile.  As you can see, he is quite fond of his rake.

 The leaf pile isn't too shabby, either.

Next Halloween-y activity - pumpkin carving!  If you look closely, you can see Grady's technique gradually devolve (evolve?) from carefully using one spoon, to somehow using 3 spoons to scoop the pumpkin. 

We roasted the pumpkin seeds after ("pum-kin... seeds") and Grady was a bit obsessed with them.  I brought up a small plate for everyone to eat, and he was at first cautious and then one by one shoveled those suckers into his mouth so fast!  No sharing for Grady.  Daddy asked for one, and Grady picked it up, brought it over to Matt, and then changed his mind and ate it right up.

This weekend we also took part in our neighborhood's Monster March. 

Along the route we ran into one of Grady's friends from school, Soren (the lion).  Did Grady acknowledge Soren?  No.  Did he go right over to Soren's wagon like he owned it and take a seat?  Well....

And to add insult to injury....

It was a great event, and we even ran into my business partner Tabitha there.  Her son was dressed in the same costume - the only other boy we saw in it.  Great minds!

And here's a shot of mommy and Grady.

Onto Halloween Day.  Grady LOVED riding around in his train before getting ready to Trick or Treat.

Then it was down to business. Here's Grady with his bucket.

We went to three houses for trick or treating.  Our neighbor across the street has a little girl named Josie a month younger than Grady, so we started there.  Grady didn't quite understand the whole trick or treat thing, being much more distracted by the toys in Josie's living room.  Our neighbor gave him the candy, Grady then handed him his entire bucket and ran as fast as he could over to the toys.  By the second house, he got it, and quickly took a piece.  By the third, he was reaching in for a second.  Although he was able to say "trick or treat" at home, he was too shy to say it while we were out - or else too distracted by the candy. 

When we got home, we let Grady have his first candy bar.  He chose a Twix.

I love my little engineer!  Happy Halloween!

Family visit and Pumpkin Patch

We all got a nice break from moving and settling into our new digs while Grady's aunts Tara and Annie and his cousin Austin came out to visit.  They were good sports about Fuzz's random night of constant yowling, the overly loud heating vents, the lack of room, and other "quirks" that we are finding and figuring out in the new place.  Grady was quite taken with everyone, but especially Austin.  Austin, in turn, was a very sweet older cousin, playing with Grady and humoring him when Grady pointed and waved at him.

We were a pretty active crew while they were here - voodoo donuts, Powell's books, walks around the neighborhood, and a pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island, among other adventures.

I thought Grady would be pretty excited by the tractor in the pumpkin patch.  What can I say - a mother is never wrong!

Uh, Grady?

Grady was quite impressed with the corn maze however - at least at first.  He had very definite ideas ("this way!") and actually navigated us through the first half fairly well.

Are you guys coming or what?

Follow that corn!

Grady sat it out (in the stroller) for the second half.  Oh, the second half.  Well, we didn't sink to the level of the woman who called 9-1-1 after getting lost in the pumpkin patch, but I can't say we wouldn't have done that had we thought of it.

Afterwards, we checked out the barn.  Grady, as always, was quite taken by the goats.

Do you see that protective fence in front of the goats?  Well for some reason, they neglected to put that in front of the goose, and Grady got quite a shock when he pointed his finger at it and it nipped his finger.  He was pretty inconsolable for a bit.  I think it was a mixture of the shock, the sting, and - as we later learned - the 102.5 fever he had that day.  Poor kid.  That didn't stop him from wrestling with some pumpkins, though.

Hmm....

That one!

So heavy!

I don't have pictures of the rest of the visit, except for one shot of the Wilkinsons - luckily, Matt has recovered from the tree coming out of his head.

Progress on the house is coming along.  The inside is basically gutted already.  It's pretty crazy to walk through and see the bones of it.  It was a bit of a "what have we done!" moment when we first saw them ripping everything down and apart, but we are optimistic that it will be well worth it in the end.

We are settling into the new house, and the cats finally seem back in their routine.  Where is Besa anyway?

 Grady's vocabulary continues to explode.  Every day he busts out a few new words.  Some he really struggles with and carefully articulates - triangle, gone/going.  Some he just says out of nowhere, without me realizing he ever knew them - crayon, heat.  He's putting more and more words together, and likes to tell stories with them.  For instance, the story of how he touched the goose poop at the park was a big favorite yesterday and even today.  (Don't worry, hands were immediately washed.)

He is sort of awkwardly running now, and continues to love to climb up onto everything.  He is also big into taking little steps by himself - off of small curbs for instance.  Navigating inclines and declines are also a pretty fun activity.

The other current favorite activity is dumping.  We have a box of Fisher Price "little people" (aka "poopoo").  He can easily spend 10 minutes just pouring them from one plastic box to another.  Not sure of the fascination, but it's nice for mom too, since I get a bit of a break while he keeps himself occupied!

And I would be remiss if I did not add the photos of the newest Wilkinson - here is Tuzz's debut, at approx. negative 22 weeks.

She was pretty spunky during the ultrasound, and over the past few days I've been feeling the jabs a bit more.  Grady was a very mellow baby in utero, but I sense a departure with this little drama queen.

Urology Appointment Update

Today Grady had an appointment with the pediatric urologist to follow up on his ultrasound last week.  Some pretty good news.  The upper kidney that had turned into scar tissue as of the last ultrasound has now completely disappeared - which means no second surgery to remove the upper kidney since Grady's body took care of that for him. 

We will go back in 6 months for another ultrasound and VCUG.  This will tell us whether anything has changed in terms of how well the kidneys are functioning, and will tell us the degree of reflux he has.  As of the last VCUG, it was level 5 (the worst). 

It sounds like at some point after that, but within the next year, he will have to have surgery to reconstruct the bladder and push the ureters further into the bladder. This will hopefully  get rid of the reflux and will allow us to finally get him off the antibiotics. 

So the good news is only one surgery instead of two.  The bad news is there's still one surgery and we have to continue him on the antibiotics for a bit longer.  But given the near zero percent chance of Grady not having to have any surgery, we are pretty pleased. 

Video dump

I've had some videos sitting on the camcorder that I've been wanting to share but keep forgetting.  So -  while I'm thinking of it - here they are.

First, Grady helping Daddy with the yard work.

 When Amy was in town, she brought a bunch of wonderful books.  Grady's favorite by far is Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things that Go."  On each page, there is a little bug named Goldbug that is hiding on the page.  Here is Grady trying to find him. 

And Grady showing off his stellar Swap-genes dance moves. 

And best for last - Grady singing.  

Thanks for all your well-wishes on the move.  It was an exhausting weekend, but it went quite well.  Grady completely missed his Saturday nap because of the timing of the move, but stayed in good spirits until his early bedtime and didn't seem too off the rest of the weekend.  He settled in really well to the new house.  It is definitely much smaller than our old house - both in terms of square footage and in that it seems to have been made for people under 5 feet.  Matt and I have had our share of head bumps and elbow scrapes.  It's nice to be so close to home, though, and we are already getting used to it here.  The kitties are doing well with the transition too. 

Matt's birthday was yesterday.  While we were waiting for Daddy to get home from his commute, I tried to teach Grady to say "Happy Birthday" and then we waited outside for him to come home.  When Grady saw his daddy round the corner, he started running toward him saying "Happy! Happy!  Happy!"  It was pretty amazing. 

Grady also did a good job opening the present he got for Matt

And then monopolized the phone when Grandma and Grandpa Wilkinson called.

It was a fun birthday!  Matt's sisters and his nephew are coming into town tomorrow.  We are really excited to have everyone meet Grady and show them around Portland.