i need your help...

picking a book for my book club...so come out of hiding and leave me a comment with your top book recommendations. pretty please? with sugar on top!

Morning walk

42 weeks

It's been quite some time since I've acknowledged the boy's age in weeks...in fact, the only way I've even kept track is because BabyCenter still sends me weekly e-mails updating me on what my X week old baby should be doing (prior to him being born these were weekly e-mails comparing my unborn child to unknown fruits and vegetables!). Today our boy is 42 weeks and this is significant to me because he has now spent the same amount of time outside of me as he spent inside of me (for those that didn't know...yes, I was 2 whole weeks overdue!). My how our lives have changed in these last 84 weeks. There are definitely things that I miss...like sleep, being able to leave the house on a whim, sleeping in, more 1:1 time with my husband, taking a nap, going to a movie, did I mention sleep...and these 42 weeks have definitely been harder than the first 42 weeks (pregnancy was a breeze for me...even those final 2 weeks weren't so bad!)but I certainly wouldn't go back because this boy is simply amazing (and I'm counting on those things above to come back to us/me eventually!!).



Here's a shot of Aa and I the night before I was induced and some of the boy tonight (those finger and toes are just delicious to me!).

(those blue eyes...just melt my heart! if you click on the picture you can see it bigger)

(Yeah, Kellen! The boy loves to clap now! Oh and he's starting to dance now...must catch that on video soon!)

a couple of highlights from the last couple of weeks...

wow - this working thing really gets in the way of my blogging! i'm so behind, but i want to try to capture some of the exciting things we've been up to the last couple of weeks. there have been a few firsts for the boy.

to start things off a couple of weeks ago kellen attended his first tailgater and duck game! i wasn't sure how it would go and was prepared to spend much of the game in the moshofsky center - but boy was he just the perfect little guy! he enjoyed some burgers and beer, er i mean rice cereal, green beans and milk and he did suck on a bit of canteloupe at the tailgater. bry did grill up some mean bacon cheeseburgers for the rest of us to enjoy! we then ventured in to the game with the sound reduction head phones ready to go. since he'd been yanking them off the second i put them on his head prior to the game, i was a bit worried that he wouldn't tolerate them. but once inside the stadium, he didn't even realize that they were on his head. i think that there was so much to take in that he was simply in a zone! he even took a nap during most of halftime and the third quarter. fortunately the game was never in question and we were able to leave a bit early to beat the rush out of the parking lot. all in all it was a big success.



we then headed back to salem where he took a bath in his grandparent's sink - which he thought was just great fun!

Here are a bunch more pictures if you are interested: http://picasaweb.google.com/adgassner/KellenSFirstDuckGame#

last weekend kellen took his first plane ride to visit my mom, his meme, in vegas. traveling with an infant is MUCH different than traveling on your own and we didn't even need to bring a bunch of his things, as my mom had borrowed some gear. the airport and flight there actually went super smooth. aaron dropped me and the boy off with all our stuff and for the first time in our lives we actually paid for one of those luggage carts! i always wondered who would actually pay for the cart and now i suspect we'll be regular purchasers of the cart!! aa parked the car and rode the shuttle back to the airport while i fed the boy and then we all strolled fairly easily through security and onto the plane. the flight wasn't full, so we had our own row. kellen fussed just a bit and then fell asleep for over half of the flight! whew...i was a little worried about what we'd do if he melted down. once in vegas, things started going a bit downhill. as i fed the boy his dinner that night he was being a bit fussy and not wanting to eat. being the good mom that i am, i kept trying to feed him when he really started wailing and promptly threw up for the first time! hmmm...not such a good start to the vacation. he rebounded fairly quickly, but around 3am that night/morning aa started feeling not so hot and proceeded to be hit with a bit of a stomach bug for pretty much the whole trip. the next morning, i fed the boy a jar of prunes and oatmeal without thinking about what that mean - kellen promptly had a blowout in the highchair before he even finished the jar. i'm sure my mom was thrilled to have to clean up vomit and then poo all in the first 18 hours of our visit! we did have lots of fun and finally got to see my mom's (not so) new condo, meet many of her friends, watch the ducks pull out a double overtime win against purdue and spend some good quality time with my mom. the flight home was pretty much the same, only this time the flight was full. fortunately adam and sarah (aa's brother and our sister in law) and her family were in vegas and they happened to be on the same flight home as us, so auntie sarah sat with us and helped to entertain the boy! unfortunately i didn't take my camera out very much - so we are lacking in evidence that we were even in vegas. here are the few that i took:

(you made the blog, ken!)

9 month check up stats and some firsts

the official numbers are:

length - 29.5 inches (2.5 inches in the last few months!) 85 percentile
weight - 19 pounds 0.5 ounces (1 pound 5 ounces in the last few months) - 25 percentile

the weight was a bit concerning to me, but the good dr assured me that babies can't grow aggressively in both length and weight - so i won't (at least i'll try not to) worry about it!

the boy is now saying dada and mama (dada came first!) and he just started clapping his hands yesterday. super fun!

wordle schmwordle...

if you peruse the blog-o-sphere...you'll see lots of people referring to a cool website called worldle. there are a couple of ways to do it - you can either enter a bunch of your favorite words and it'll randomly create a "word cloud" OR you can also enter your blog address and it'll create a cloud from the words on your blog, with the biggest words being the ones you use the most. you can then change the settings to get a different look. it's really fun to play around with and can be yet another major time suck...but i can see all sorts of fun ways to use this - would make cool custom cards, print for a nursery or child's room, shower or party invitation, t-shirt, etc. Meg finally prompted me to actually give it a try - so interesting to see the words that i use the most (although i question whether those are really the words i use the most!) and i see that i tend to overuse the ... !!! check it out!

9 months!

PEEK

A BOO!

Thanks for dropping by!!

Pooped!

Cashed out after his first day of school! 45 min total of napping is not a good thing!