Smiles, cuddles, milestones

This past week, Clara discovered her hands.

In practical terms, this has both good and bad implications.  Good because she is becoming increasingly aware, and because she is now endlessly amused by her play mat.

The best is when she inadvertently hits one of the objects dangling down - such consternation!

(Sorry, blogger really wants this picture to be aligned up and down instead of as intended.)

It also means more smiles - although for some reason I am unable to take a nonblurry picture of her smile!  Cases in point -

Here are a few smiles in focus, although not quite as joyful.

The flipside though is that napping has become very difficult.  I've been wondering where my days are going and realized that at least half are devoted to trying to get this little lady to sleep.  Usually I spend about an hour lying in bed with her, nursing, she falls asleep for 20 minutes and then she's up and at 'em again.  Not ideal for anyone.  We'll keep working on it.  I am becoming more convinced though that the residual fussiness is mostly from being tired.  I had dairy on Sunday for the first time, and she was maybe possibly a little fussier than usual, but I wouldn't bank on it.  Certainly not an "ah ha! It's definitely dairy!" moment.  I'm still avoiding it for the most part, just in case, but am looking forward to having dairy now and again.

On the Grady front, Grady had a really big milestone, which he will be angry about me sharing on the internet in a few years but not much he can do about it now - he successfully used the toilet last night!  He's been spending longer and longer just hanging out sitting on the toilet.  (Me: "Are you done?" Grady: "No, I'm still going.")  And yesterday something clicked and he used the toilet like an old pro.  We'll see if this continues, but we were all pretty excited last night!   (No picture, you can thank me later.)

The other day Grady also blew us away with his "reading." At nap time he picked one of his favorite books - Care Bears and the Terrible Twos - and proceeded to recite at least 80% of it back to me.  I got some on camera here from his repeat performance later that evening.  He was being a little camera shy, but he warms up a bit towards the end if you stick with him.

Grady continues to really love little Clara.  He loves to hug and snuggle with her, an activity for which Clara does not have quite the same level of enthusiasm.

Grady's been having lots of fun playing make believe.  Here he is making "pancakes."  Flavors included orange juice, blueberry, chocolate chip, and worm.

He's been singing lots of songs and making up rhymes too - "Twister, twister, that's my sister!"

Grady and Clara had their checkups last week.  Grady measured in at 31 pounds (80th) and 36 inches (86th).  The height at the two year appointment is supposed to be roughly half of final height, so we're possibly looking at a 6 foot tall Grady.  Clara measured in at 14 pounds, 3 ounces (99th!) and 23 1/2 inches (84th).  Here she is modeling her 99th percentile tummy -

Urology appointment and other odds and ends

I'll get the urology appointment out of the way first so we can get to the good stuff.  We had our appointment with the urologist on Wednesday to go over the tests that Clara and Grady had done about a month ago.  The good news on Clara is that the ultrasound came back looking completely normal.  The bad news is the doctor wants to have her go in for a VCUG to make sure she doesn't have reflux too.  There's apparently a 40% chance that a sibling of someone with reflux will have it too, and the ultrasounds rarely capture it.  So, back in for her.  Grady's is a little more complicated.  He continues to have level 5 reflux and will need to have surgery on it eventually.  The right side, the bad side, continues to be the same - not getting worse but not getting any better.  The one good news on that side is that the upper kidney has now completely vanished, so we won't need surgery to get rid of that.  This time though the ultrasound caught a bit of dilation on the left ureter, which has previously been pretty well behaved.  Grady has to go in for a test to see overall kidney functioning, for which he will need to be sedated.  We had this one once before, but it's never fun.  Depending on the results, he will either have surgery relatively soon (if the left side is starting to lose functioning) or at about 3 years old.

On to the more fun stuff.

Clara's demeanor has continued to improve.  At this point, I think she is fussy mainly when she is tired.  She's at the stage now where she is more interested in figuring out the world than sleeping, so napping has been a challenge.

Hm, not the intended result

Her night time sleeping has plateaued at about 3 hours at a time from 9/10ish to 6/7ish.  She is a very loud sleeper.  The good news is that she is now sleeping well in the cosleeper for the most part, although she is doing her napping in our bed.  Here she is, looking sweet.

She's also doing some social gooing and aahing, which Grady is pretty taken with (mommy too of course).

And she continues to gain strength.  She is rocking the tummy time, and weighed in at an ounce shy of 14 pounds at the urology appointment (with clothes).

As Clara mellows out, Grady has become more of a challenge.  The kid really knows how to push our buttons, and it's harder to stay calm when sleep-deprived - although we are trying. Luckily his sweetness far outweighs his two-ness, so we will keep him a bit longer. A couple highlights: I was reading Grady a book about animals before his nap.  A page will be something like "I paddle in the water and have webbed feet, what am I?" And Grady will say "A duck!"  We got to the frog page: "I make loud croaking noises and keep others up at night, what am I?" to which Grady enthusiastically replied "Clara!"  Can't argue with that!

He also cracks us up with his word mistakes - like instead of chick peas, chicken beans.  Instead of "na na na na na na na na na bat man!" he sings "na na na na na na na na na na THAT man!"

He is super chatty, especially after swimming.  He got a little camera shy, but you can get the idea here.

He also decided this morning to climb down the stairs without holding on!  By the time I got the camera out he was a bit tired, but you can see him do 2 of the 3 here.

And here are some other odds and ends from the week.

Checking out the levitating goat in downtown Sellwood

Everyone chilling out and watching monster trucks

With the nice weather, we've been spending lots of time with the sandbox!

Running to see the excavator down the street - with shopping cart of course

Excavator!

But the pace was unsustainable....

Hooray farmers market season!

Grady went all the way down this big slide - 3 times!

First Oreo - or as Grady called it, ice cream cookie

Finally, our house is now looking beautiful thanks to some landscaping and the help of Grandpa and Nana.  Here are some before and after pictures.

before

before

after

after

after

after

after

Happy Mother's Day!

Belated Boys Weekend Update

Grady and I had a very busy weekend with Ali and Clara travelling to attend Grandma/Great-Grandma McAllister's memorial service.  We'll all miss Polly a lot, and I'm grateful she was able to make a couple of trips to Portland to meet Grady and see our house.

While sorry to not be with the rest of the family, it was really fun getting to hang out so much with Grady.  He really is a cool little guy!  Here are some phone pictures I took of our many activities.

This picture is actually from a couple of weeks ago, but I still had it on my phone and think it's worth showing.  Grady loves to walk through puddles, and puddles don't get much better than this one in front of our house when it rains!

The weekend's forecast called for what is near-apocalyptic weather in Portland:  sunny with temperatures in the upper 70's!  Whaaaat???  We excitedly got out of the house early (I was wearing shorts) only to be reminded that things don't really start warming up until late afternoon here.  Our trip to the playground was cut short after Grady went down the wet slide one time and soaked through his pants.

It's only 50 degrees out here!

 A little later in the day the sunshine finally did arrive and we ventured out to Sellwood.  We stopped at the new running shoe store in the neighborhood, and Grady helped me shop by trying on every pair of shoes that I did.  Afterwards, we went to Sellwood Park where Grady continued to practice his new ladder climbing skills.

After nap, we made trip to catch Grady's favorite band at my favorite Portland pizza shop:  The Alphabeticians had a 4:30p show at Mississippi Pizza in North Portland.  Here is Grady enjoying the music while chowing down on some delicious pizza with a huge bottle of apple juice.  Since his chair was a little low and the juice bottle so big, he needed some assistance every time he wanted a drink:  "Daddy help you, juice!"

After the show, we headed straight to the Children's Museum for a special nighttime event that we received some free tickets for.  I had only been there once before but Grady knows it like the back of his hand and led me through all of his favorite spots.

In the miniature children's theater.

Look at the size of that Lite Brite!

Doing a little hydrodynamic research.

Hard at work transferring and funneling water.

Grady's first rock wall!

What a busy Saturday!  It was up and at 'em on Sunday morning for a special Earth Day event at the preschool house of Grady's daycare.  I had a fun time operating some power tools with the other dads in helping to build a couple of new garden boxes in addition to doing some gardening.  Grady had a fun time hanging out with his friends as well as helping with weeding.

Meticulously weeding.

Enjoying a refreshing popsicle!

We both needed a good cleaning-up after spending the morning working outside.  Grady is fully aware of how cute he looks when donning one of his fancy towels post bath, and this time he specifically asked to show Clara.

Show Clara!

The rest of the Sunday afternoon was spent relaxing at home - we were pooped!  But between the beautiful weather and our busy schedule it was a really fun weekend for both of us.