Sleep

So of course I jinxed it with that last post.  Clara has lost her mind with sleeping.  Or more accurately, I have due to her lack of sleeping.  Up every few hours, every night.  And since she won't take a bottle, Matt really can't help.  It's exhausting. I hesitate to say the last few nights have been better with only 2 wake ups before her 5:45 wake up time, since we all know what happened when I said she was getting into a sleep routine last time.  But my fingers are crossed.

No swaddle can contain her

Despite the tiredness, we've had a lot of fun the past few weeks (and sorry for how long it's been).  We just said goodbye to my friend Alyssa who was out here for a few days after her "cancer camp" out in Hood River.  She has been breast cancer free for a few months now (hooray!) and is an absolute amazement with her energy.  We even went on a 3.5 mile jog together!  It was so great to see her, and the kids loved spending time with her too.

See how much Clara loved spending time with Alyssa?  :)

We've had a few pretty exciting events occur outside our window.  We saw two deer ambling by our side door.  Pretty exciting for everyone, including the neighbor dog who came and chased them away!

We also witnessed the after-effects of a "big green big rig truck" dismembering part of our neighbor's tree - a huge branch got stuck between the cab and the trailer. Needless to say, this was one of the highlights of Grady's young life!  Matt and our neighbor came to the rescue with some saws, and Grady got to work on "sawing" his own branch.

Some other highlights:

Grady and Rose went on a wagon ride together.

We went to Sunday Parkways, a Portland event where they close off the streets of a neighborhood to traffic and bring in entertainment, vendors, etc.  Here are Matt, Grady, and Clara watching some music.

My favorite totem pole ever

And trying on some costumes (courtesy of PDX Kids Calendar!)

And Grady still loves to show Clara the tummy time ropes.

Grady's conversational skills continue to improve.  It's easy to forget sometimes that he is only 2. (Sometimes, like when he throws a complete fit over getting a diaper change, it is easy to remember however.)  Some sample phrases from the past few days:

• "How is your pasta and your beer Daddy?  Tasty?"
• "Oh no, horse is stuck!  Maybe cow can help.  Cow is available." 
• "Mommy went to the kitchen to scoop me up some more pasta."  
• "Want to read a book or somethin'?"

He is extremely excited to be going to the ocean for a family trip later this month.  I think I told him about it too early, because he is raring to go.  I took Clara up to bed tonight and when I came back down he said "When Clara wakes up we can go to the ocean!"  Not quite yet!

He is still singing constantly - and becoming quite the multitasker.

Despite Clara's awful sleeping, she has become a real sweetheart.  Colic seems to be officially over.  And I am back to eating all foods without any effect on her.  (Hooray for cheese and ice cream!)  And it really is hard to get upset about her sleeping when she is so flippin' cute.

She and Grady have begun interacting more and more.  Grady likes to hold out things for her to grab (although he hasn't worked out the concept that she gets to keep holding on to things he hands to her, he can't just yank them back).  He likes to show her how to roll.  He's really very sweet with her.

It's been fun seeing Clara's personality come out more as she grows out of the colic.  She is very busy, but also an observer.  She can really stare you down.  She's also going to be a talker too I think - she's already babbling away.  And giggling a lot. Her giggles are pretty amazing.

Before signing off, a quick update on Grady's kidneys.  I brought him in last week for a procedure to check his kidney functioning.  This was pretty tough - it involved sedation.  They let me be there when they gave him the anesthesia, which I was glad for, but it was also very difficult to see.  When he had this done last time he ended up with 36% on the right and made up the difference on his left.  The urologist was a little concerned that the left side (his good side) may be losing some functioning because the ureter on that side appeared to be a bit swollen at the last ultrasound.  If that's the case, we'll have his reflux surgery sooner rather than later. If it's not, it will be when he's 3.  We don't get the results until the beginning of August when we finally meet with the urologist.  Grady was a total champ.  He was a bit of a grump for the rest of the day, and woke up upset the next morning, but has been fine since.

Well, I think that's about as much as my sleep-deprived brain can do tonight. Sorry again for the delay in posts.  I really am trying!

Has it been two weeks?

Sorry about that.  Time is just flying by.  Here are some of the highlights for us.

The best news is that informal reports are that Clara does not have reflux.  Because Grady has level 5 reflux from his bladder all the way to his kidneys, there was some concern that Clara might too.  But the doctor who performed her VCUG said everything looks good.  This will be confirmed hopefully by our urologist at the beginning of August.

On to cuter news.

We've been keeping pretty busy over here.  This past weekend we took Grady and Clara to Jamison Square to get our pictures taken and splash around in their fountain.  It was actually warm enough to do this - I swear! The pictures were technically for PKC, but here's a cropped shot of a pretty good family photo.

Matt, Grady, and Clara also got to have their photo taken for a PKC father's day feature - here's that one.

Anyway, back to the water park.  Grady had so much fun splashing around by himself and with his buddy Marshall.  His swimming lessons are really paying off!

What happened to his clothes?

Clara and Daddy had fun too sitting in the shade and checking out the sights.

Hi, I look just like my daddy.

We also went strawberry picking on nearby Sauvie Island.  Grady was really excited to go, and, after about 30 attempts, perfected the art of picking the ripe strawberries.  "Not the green strawberries, I pick the red strawberries."

 

However, the highlight for Grady was probably the tractor. 

 And by probably, I mean it was definitely the tractor.

Here's the before shot - 

and the after.  

Yes folks, I am now officially a Portlander.  The jam came out somewhere between jam and syrup, but is pretty tasty nonetheless. 

Mmm, jam!

Some other highlights.  Clara came pretty darn close to rolling from back to front a few times this past week. 

Just... put... your arm... down.  So close!

But the big milestone has been learning to grasp objects.  She is pretty studious about it!

Got it!

While Clara has been working on grabbing, Daddy and Grady have been working on their dance routine.  (The juxtaposition of these photos on my camera are pretty funny - Clara staring intently, Grady doing his acrobatics, Clara staring intently....)

Grady and Clara had their first moments of playing together the other day.  He would hand her  a little toy camel, she would grab it, and they would both laugh.  The image on the video is worthless (I was holding Clara up) but the audio captures the idea.

Grady went on a nature walk last week with his friend from daycare Soren and Soren's brother Kai.  At the beginning, the instructor asked each child his or her name.  Grady has never answered before, so I expected he would stay quiet. I gave him a few seconds to respond, and just when I was about to tell his name, he very clearly said "I'm Monster Truck."

Monster Truck and Soren plotting escape routes

Grady also continues to love to sing.  Here he is singing a made up song (sorry about the peep show).  It's pretty catchy -it has been stuck in my head for a week now.

He's also started changing lyrics to songs - usually replacing things in the songs with monster trucks, garbage trucks, etc.


Clara is becoming sweeter and sweeter as she leaves colic behind her.  She is giggling frequently and is rewarding us all with huge smiles.  I finally, FINALLY, got one of her full smile.

And a few other cute pictures from the past 2 weeks.

Clara humoring Mommy

Tummy time!

In the battle of boy versus cat, who will come out on top?

In general, things over here feel like they are coming together a bit.  I realize I am jinxing myself as I type, but it feels that way. Clara is becoming a somewhat more reliable sleeper - at least taking an afternoon nap and starting out with about a 5 hour chunk of sleep most nights before going into 3 hour stretches. I've even been able to start running pretty regularly again, often with friends, and am hoping to run a half marathon on July 4th.  (No goal time, just hoping to get through it.)  Grady is still testing limits of course, but he is two, and he continues to make up for his two-y-ness with his sweetness, cuddles, and the crazy things that come out of his mouth.  That's not to say we wouldn't like you all to move out here and help us full time. We would. Please do!   

Rock and Roll

Music is a big deal in this house.  Grady loves, loves, LOVES to sing.  Loudly.  And sometimes even on key!  Here he is singing the ABCs.

A few months ago he started making up songs - the first one was about a garbage truck and a huge tractor.  Recently he expanded beyond the car theme to a song about mallets....

Luckily, Grady's oldest friend Rose is quite the singer herself.  Grady politely told Rose to try jumping while playing the harmonica.  HUGE hit!

And singing Baa Baa Black Sheep - Grady rushes it a bit at the end, but I think they've got something good going here.

Unforunately the video of them singing Grady's original piece, Race Car, is corrupted and not uploading.  Boo.  That one is pretty amazing.


The other big news for Grady this past week is his transition to the big boy bed.  The transition went amazingly smoothly.  Having his monster truck quilt from Grandma Wilkinson helped a LOT.  He loves that quilt.

He has totally taken it in stride, and only today during nap has he tried to get out of it - he very quickly ran over to his couch, got a book, and brought it back to the bed.

trying to escape during nap today

He's in there now singing the race car song!  Not asleep, but at least he's in bed.

Clara also had a big milestone this week.  She has been increasingly enjoying - or at least not minding - tummy time.

And, after three rolls in the past few days, I think we can officially announce that she is rolling.  Here's videographic evidence.

We continue to struggle with getting Clara to sleep.  She will now take one long afternoon nap, but other than that if she's not on me, she's not sleeping.  We've regressed with nighttime sleeping because I pinched the sciatic nerve in my back and it's been too painful to get her out of her bed and sit to feed her, so I've been leaving her in bed with us all night and nursing her in bed.  I'm hoping it won't be too tricky to break her out of it.  My back is much better at least!  It's hard to get too upset when she looks so darn cute.

And here are the beginnings of a giggle!

Hope that wasn't video overload!  I'll try to take more stills this week.