Walking...

It's official. Rachel is a walker.

In the last couple of days, she's started just letting go and cruising across the room. Sometimes she still falls down after a few steps, but she's taken more than 15 steps in a row, stopping in the middle of the room and then continuing on.

And she knows she can walk

And she is SO proud.

And Anida was right, and wins the bet that she'd be walking by Christmas.

Christmas is going great, by the way. The cousins are a lot of fun, and we had presents this morning, but that's a whole blog topic on its own.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Almost, almost...

Friends

It's almost Christmas. And Rachel is tauntingly close to walking. Several times in the last week, there have been little three-step attempts -> step, step, step followed by either sitting down or falling forward. So it's close, but not there yet.

One of the side effects of having cats in the house is that occasionally, they'll bring mice inside. Daniel's seen his fair share of mice, both alive and not-so-much. The other day there was a half-eaten mouse right in front of the Christmas tree. It led to the following: "I found a mouse! Another one! It has a blue tail! It doesn't have eyes - it's sleeping..."

D's still a skinny guy, but he is growing, and is now up to 27 lbs. Food just isn't that important to him. He'd rather play. His latest excuse "the food is too hot, I'll play for five more minutes". It hasn't ever worked for him, but he keeps on trying. Rachel is also growing like crazy and topped 20 lbs the other day.

Oh, and D obviously has a haircut. This picture doesn't do it justice - it's a very cute cut. We're biased of course, but he's quite a charmer. When we're out in public, women (mostly) just can't help but coo over him, and he responds to their questions in a polite way, so he's quite popular.

The tongue? We just had to document it. It's constantly sticking out now. Three of the upper teeth are out, but there are still three more that are close, so Rachel's always rubbing something against her gums.

Daniel's potty training is complete. He'll even wake up in the middle of the night, go on his own and go back to bed. Sometimes he feels compelled to wake us up: "Mama, I have to go potty!' then you tell him to just go and three minutes later he returns to tell you of the success. It's awesome, of course, but at 3am you kinda wish he'd lay off the newsupdates.

Tomorrow, the madhouse begins as Grampa and Farmor, Sara, Michael, Leo and Jacob all come for Christmas. This is going to be fun. Happy holidays everyone.

All better now...

Friends

What a difference a week makes. Last week, everyone was "blah", and this week, everyone's spirits are back on top. Rachel is completely cured from her cold/ear infection, and Daniel is still on antibiotics for his, but shows no symptoms anymore. So life is a lot calmer.

Daniel is ready for Christmas. He sees the lights, the decorations and (as of today), the christmas tree and says "is it christmas?" constantly. He has a little advent calendar he opens daily, and the other day he got a piece of candy and said "It's like Trick or Treat"...

He also likes to "Visit Santa" - though Rachel doesn't share his enthusiasm. The city we live in did their Holiday party last Friday, and it was really well done, with activities for the kids, lots of lights, cookies and a santa. Last year they had a "winter father", who was downright scary, but this year it was good.

Potty training is effectively complete - he's gone a couple of times on his own, even in the middle of night, which is awesome. A few, small, accidents here and there, but amazing progress in just a couple of weeks. He was ready.

We had this great picture of Rachel showing that she has two of her new teeth, and also that the other are just days from popping out. Something went wrong when cropping it down to blog-size, though and now it looks like an overexposed cellphone picture. Very sad. It lost all of the great detail, the sparkle in her eyes and everything. If you look closely, you can still see the teeth, though.

She's not walking yet, but she sure wants to. She stands all the time, cruises from object to object, and just wants to be like her brother.

We're slowly introducing Rachel to additional foods that she can eat on her own. Oatmeal is not one of these yet. We knew it'd be messy - and it was.

And that's about it for now. We're all glad to be out of the colds/infections, and starting to look forward to Christmas - we'll have Farmor and Grandpa, Aunt Sara and Uncle Michael and cousins Jacob and Leo all staying here. That's going to be a lot of fun all around.

Until next time.

ADRE.

Rachel is a booger-face!

It might sound like Daniel has started calling his sister names, but he was really just stating a fact. That poor little girl has had a snotty nose, crusted-up eyes, a cough, an ear-infection AND she has six teeth coming in at the same time. It hasn't been a good week for Rachel.


The cold is better, the ears are getting treated with antibiotics and one tooth is finally through (though there are 5 others that we'll see in the next couple of days/weeks). So she's not as bad as the first picture would suggest.


Rachel passed 10 months in the last couple of days, and will now stand independently for 10-15 seconds. The other day she tried to go from standing to walking and discovered gravity, but it's pretty clear she'll be walking before she's one. She loves to explore, and crawls all over the house - going up (and sometimes down) the stairs. The new house is a little harder to babyproof than the old one, but it's OK as long as we remember to close doors and put the gate on the stairs.

Daniel was over the colds, or so we thought. On Thursday he started to get another round of it, and yesterday he had a high fever again. And with that, another febrile seizure. Gosh those are scary. This one only lasted 2 minutes, and he recovered pretty quickly, but in the meantime we'd called 911, so there were firemen and paramedics and a trip to the ER.

We didn't really think the ER was going to be warranted, since we know the drill -> they observe him for a while, then send you home. Turns out he has an ear infection, though, so it was a good thing to get checked out and get some medication for it. We thought we were done with the seizures, but apparently medical literature now suggests that they can last until age 5.

Daniel had pictures taken at playschool, and we didn't think they were all that special, so we're not ordering any, but I thought - why not post the proof here, in case any of the fans want a copy? If so, let us know.

Daniel has figured out christmas is coming. Partially it's the decorations, but someone (probably at playschool) clued him in that there are presents involved. So he's been angling for some. The other day he carried his "tow-Mater" car to Anida and said in his tow-mater voice "Tow-mater says that Daniel wants Mack for Christmas" If you don't know that these are characters from the Pixar movie "Cars", you may be lucky. Daniel also has this obsesion with all things with wheels, and while in Houston, he saw a mini scooter at the Sharper Image store. Now every time he goes to the mall, he wants to "visit the scooter". He's not getting one - who the heck gets their 2-year-old a scooter that can go 15mph? But he sure likes to play on it.

That's it for now. We hope to be in better health next time.

D.A.R.E

Thanksgiving 2008

Friends

Turkey day came and went, we did our best to help the economy on Black Friday, and now the holiday is drawing to a close. At the risk of sounding cheesy, we have so much to be thankful for - the kids, our friends, the health and wellbeing of our extended family. There's so much good right now, and very little to complain about.



We spent a couple of days down in Houston to celebrate an early thanksgiving with Kayla, Chloe, Brayden, Aunt Erin and Teresa and Grandma Babe. Everyone had a good time playing together, which is fun given the age difference of the kids.















Then we came back to Denver and had the annual thanksgiving party with the Bliss and Finch families. Last year that party was, quite frankly, rather chaotic, but this year the kids ate and played on their own merits, leaving the adults the chance to actually have conversations - it was nice. Daniel, Harrison, Ethan and Reid more "play around" eachother than together, but there is some interaction and negotiation over toys.






What's up with Rachel? Well, we all have had this rather nasty cold, but Rachel has it the worst - she's coughing, all puffy-eyed, runny and generally miserable. Adding to that, she's teething. So she slept through the party last night. She seems to have hit a growth spurt lately, and her hair is finally coming in strong -> hopefully we'll get to the point where people stop thinking she's a boy. Oh, and her vocabulary is increasing. She definitely said "Papa" the other day, and today we got "Cat".

We got some snow, and Daniel has a new snowsuit, so he wants nothing more than to play outside now. He found an icicle and thought that was neat. His cognitive skills are outstanding for his age, and he just says what he's thinking, so he can be a lot of fun to be around. Yesterday, while driving home from the mall, he wanted to drive the car. He didn't just say that, though, he tried to make it my idea: "Papa, can you say "Daniel, come drive with me"? and was upset when I wouldn't say it.



Speaking of which, Daniel knows how to drive my car - at least partially. He knows to turn the key in the ignition, release the handbrake and open the garage door. Luckily he doesn't currently have the strength to release the brake on his own. Potty training is still going very well.

And that's about it. Here's hoping that all of you had a blessed thanksgiving too.

D.A.R.E.

Cruising...

Friends

What's new around here? Well, the big news has to be that we're on another round of potty training for Daniel, and this time it seems to really be working. He's has a couple of days now without any accidents, and he's pretty proud of that.

The secret? Well, it could just be that he's older this time, but the other variable is that we ditched the pull-ups this time, and went straight for underwear. When he made a mistake with pullups, it was pretty much absorbed, and "no big deal". but with underwear - well, it's noticable. Plus, he has "Cars" underwear, so it's rather devastating. "I pooped on lightening McQueen..."

Rachel is cruising like no-one's business. She walks along couches, transitions between chairs and crawls up stairs. And she loves being in control of her movement. Just knowing that she can get to anywhere she wants cheers her up, and there's nothing that makes her angrier than if she slips or falls. She'll be starting sign language courses in December, but we've already introduced a few words. We're pretty sure that she knows "light", but there's a chance that she thinks it means "Mama". But she'll copy gestures, and is just pleased as punch when she is communicating.

Anida's camera is back for repairs for the second time in 6 months (don't buy Canon, they're nice, but break), so the pictures are somewhat sparse. This is from a goofing-around session at the kitchen table the 0ther day.
There are, of course other things going on, and it's probably due to Rachel being a second child that we're not noting everything down. Long-time readers will remember that we noted every new food that Daniel ate - not so much with Rachel - she'll have bites of most of what we eat now. For the first-child perspective, we read and adore both Sean's blog and Claire's blog - both of them within weeks of Rachel's age, and the same things are going on. So we feel a little bad for not celebrating the milestones in the same way, but Rachel's doing just fine by any measure.

Going to visit the Texas cousins (and aunts, and Grandma) for Thanksgiving. More after that.

Love, A.D.E.R.

Two-and-a-half and 9 months old

Friends

We've let a couple of anniversary dates fly by without an official posting. Back-to-back, first Daniel turned 2-and-a-half, and the next day Rachel hit 9 months.

This is a fun time.

In the last couple of weeks, Rachel has really discovered what she can do with her new mobility skills, and it just makes her so very happy and proud that she can move around. She's pulling up on everything now, and while she still needs to keep a hand on "something" when she's standing, she's getting pretty confident about moving around. She climbed up a couple of stairs the other day trying to keep up with Daniel.

There's nothing she loves more in this world than Daniel. She will say "da-da", and we're pretty sure that she means Daniel, not papa. That's OK. She'll crawl over to her toy box, dump it out all over the floor and sit there and play perfectly contently. She's a very enthusiastic and happy kid right now, and it's fun to see.

Daniel's changes are more evolutionary. He has an amazing vocabulary and solid pronounciation of most words - the ones that start with "S" are still a little tricky. He can string together long, multi-sentence thoughts. Today while trick-or-treating, a neighbor said of him "you're a little parrot, aren't you?' and he indignantly said back "No! I'm not a little parrot, I'm a little pirate."

And so he was, Rachel was the parrot.... They both came to Eric's office, and Daniel went around the neighborhood and was a great hit.

Occasionally, Daniel can give us a hint of what the saying "the terrible twos" is all about, but it's really fairly rare, and usually related to being tired or hungry (and not wanting to take a nap or eat). If he doesn't get a nap, he is a very crabby little boy by the time bedtime rolls around.

Speaking of which, we have been meaning to comment on Daniel's truly excellent nighttime routine for a while. After a bath, he'll ask for 2 books (usually trying to sneak in a third). Then he'll crawl into bed and he'll read the thank you prayer book, then go to sleep. This even works when his routine should be disturbed because we're travelling.

Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you God, for everything
Thank you for my family
Thank you God for loving me
For each and every child I pray
And thank you for this Special day
Amen.

We went to a corn maze with Farmor and Grandpa before they left, and Daniel had a good time. He was very excited by the corn cobs, exclaiming 'look more corn' everytime he found a piece - which, given the location, was about every 2 steps.
Oh, and it appears that the raccoons are back

And that's about it for now. Hope everyone had a fun Haloween.

R.E.A.D

Intussusception

Friends

A lot has happened since last time. Lots of developments and activities, and it's just been too busy around here to sit down and write about all of them.

So we had our first trip to the ER on Rachel's behalf. The weekend of October 21, she was showing signs of stomache pain, and combined with vomiting and blood in her diaper, it was time to visit the friendly pediatricians. It didn't take them long to diagnose her with intussusception, which I'd never heard of before. The long version is under that link, the short version is that the intestine folds in on itself, cutting off all digestion and bloodflow. Luckily, the folks over at the new children's hospital were able to resolve it without surgery, and she's been as right as rain since then.

Grandpa and Farmor were visiting here for the last 10 days or so, which is always a nice treat. We had planned an excursion down to Santa Fe and Taos which looked for a while like it might be cancelled by the trip to the hospital or the snowstorm we had the day of departure, but it all worked out well. The kids were superstars on the longish car ride.

Santa Fe - well - you have to really love art galleries to get the most out of that place, but we stayed in a nice B&B, and it was relaxing.

Daniel is really taken by the Pixar movie "Cars" right now, and can portray all the characters. His favorites are naturally enough "lightening McQueen" and "Tow Mater", but he does a hillarious rendition of being a tractor, from the "tractor tipping" scene.

The wooden blocks came off the tricycle pedals - Daniel's finally tall enough that he doesn't need them.

Some milestone dates are already upon us as I write this, so I'll stop this update and move to the next one.

Love -> R.E.D.A

Are you happy?

Friends

Don't you think it's been too long without a video? So do we. These aren't the "best videos ever", but they're new...
We particularly like the Texas accent when Daniel says "Hi" to grandma babe. Rachel has walked with the wagon, but not in the grass. There is really nothing that she wants to do more than walk, and she's making great strides towards it.
The title of today's blog is something Daniel has started to say when he understands that he's done something we don't approve of. "Are you happy?" and "can you smile?" Daniel has been on an independent streak lately. He wants to do everything himself, and that's a good thing. Today he hung up his jacket and pyjamas on his own.

Rachel - well, the big story there is that she's crawling all over the house lately. Not the crawl-fall-crawl version from last week either - she'll go from room to room and today she crawled up a step from the playroom to the kitchen. It makes her so very happy to be able to move around on her own terms. Still, she wants to take it up a notch, and now she wants to walk around while holding someone's fingers. She'll also transition between pieces of furniture.


Oh, and there was an early 9-month visit to the pediatrician for Rachel. At 6 months they were a little worried about her weight, so they wanted to see her early. We're back on track. She clicked in at:

• 17lbs 10.5oz (40th percentile for weight- up from 10th at 6 months)
• 28 3/8" (85% percentile for height)
• 17.25" (50th percentile for head)

So all is good there. Both kids got flu shots and Daniel was a champ - didn't cry at all.

We had the annual gathering of friends for the GABF last weekend, and Sean was in town with his parents. It was good fun to watch the kids play together. Øystein and his father Rolf also stayed with us, and Rolf had a good time playing soccer with Daniel (one of the above pictures)

That's about it for this update. In a few days, Farmor and Grandpa come to visit. Woo-hoo.

Until next time. Love, D.A.R.E.

That was fun.

This weekend was a lot of fun

On Saturday, the town we live in organized a "Fall Festival", with games and activities for the kids. There was a mechanical bull, horseshoe tosses, beanbag tosses, an egg hunt, scarecrows, free pumpkins and a lot more. It was just really well done, and Daniel had an absolute blast.

He was probably the youngest kid to try the mechanized bull, but he hung on, and really had a good time on it. He painted a piggy bank and showed that his art skills and proficiency with a paint brush have really come a long way. It may look a little random, but every single stroke on that pig was deliberate, and he was quite clear on what colors to use.

Rachel has reached a couple of significant milestones in the last couple of days. She can now crawl forwards consistently, and can go from crawling back to sitting up.


More importantly, though - she's now figured out how to self-soothe. Experienced parents will know that this is the biggest thing to happen after "sleeping through the night" - when she's tired, we can now put her in the crib and she'll fall asleep on her own. This is huge.

After the fall festival, our friends Harrison, Harrison and Gretchen came over and we had a nice dinner and carved pumpkins. Daniel liked the experience, but wasn't so big on the "Goo" in the pumpkin.

The Social calendar is getting busy. This weekend we host the annual gathering for the Great American Beer Festival, and next weekend Farmor and Grandpa come to visit. If you read the blog, you're welcome to come over before the festival for the chili cookoff. Saturday - open house between 1pm and 4:30pm.

Until next time.

Love, R.E.A.D.

Eight is Great!

Happy eight-months old to Rachel!

The drool-goatee is pretty much a permanent feature right now. Today, there was some hint of upper teeth, but they didn't materialize.

Rachel loves to stand - whether supported by a finger or two, or leaning up against her little activity table. Today, she pulled up to standing from sitting next to the table and was proud as punch - until she lost her balance.


Crawling forward remains a challenging activity, but she can get just about anywhere she wants to be by scootching, rolling, lunging and rotating herself around. She's so close.

She's pretty much off of breastmilk at this point, and has chunked up quite a bit in the last couple of months. We have a feeling her weigh-in in a couple of weeks will be an eye-opener.

As for Daniel, he's doing well. He appears to be going through a little bit of a growth spurt - or at least an eating spurt. It hasn't been a battle to get him to eat for the last week, which is a change. He ate a whole, big bowl of popcorn shrimp the other day. Every day when you ask him what he's going to do that day he says "Playschool".

Daniel is a typical 2-year-old in that he's testing his limits a little bit. Unfortunately, one of the limits he's testing these days is "how much hitting of Rachel can I get away with?" - so there have been timeouts, and toys going away. That got his attention - for a whole day we had to hear "lightening McQueen...." in a sad/whiny voice. He hasn't hit her for a couple of days now, so that's a good thing.

And that's about it from here for now. Hope all are well.

Love, D, R, E, A.

Why?

Hey there everyone

Rachel is probably the one with the most updates for this last week, though it's been busy for both of the kids. The first two teeth are definitely here now, they popped out of the bottom gums about a week and a half ago. The drool hasn't slowed one bit, and we suspect that the next set isn't far behind. She's moving away from breastmilk, and doesn't actually seem to care/mind.



The tongue thing is new, and she does it a lot. In the last week or so, there's been a mobility breakthrough. She'll pop right up onto her hands and knees, and then - crawl backwards. The thing that changed is that she started realizing that she could "get places" by crawling - even if it means a combination of going backwards and rotating around now and then. She's VERY proud about this. She's also starting to walk her way up to objects and showing a little bit of willingness to move her feet to almost "cruise", but that's honestly a few weeks out. Oh, and she babbles up a storm. No distinct first word, but endless "dada", "vava" and other consonant-vowel combos. Theres' still nothing that will make her as happy as when Daniel shows her how to sing or dance.

Daniel's been going to playschool on Mondays and Fridays for the last couple of weeks. Here's the obligatory "first day of school" picture. We've noticed a few things that he's picked up - songs we didn't teach him (sticky-sticky-sticky-sticky-bubblegum) and some sharing behavior that we're very happy to see.



Eric was out of town all last week for work, and D did get a little stressed out by that. Even once Eric was home, D was very reluctant to go to sleep, take a nap or tolerate that Papa goes to work/leaves the room. At the same time, he was "punishing" Eric by insisting that Anida do some of the bedtime routines/bedtime stories that Eric normally does. We're getting back to a routine, but he was clearly affected and confused and isn't quite over it yet.



The blog title? Oh yes, Daniel has discovered "Why?". Why are we driving? (to go get groceries) Why are we getting groceries? (so we have something to eat). Why are we eating? (so that our bodies get strong). Why? And so on. it has no end.


(At the Walk for PKD weekend before last)


Which reminds me (because of the burley in the background) that we got a bike trailer for the kids. Daniel loves getting pulled around, and it puts Rachel to sleep, so it's a win-win-win solution.

Grandma Babe was visiting last week, which everyone enjoyed. On Sunday, we all went to the Colorado Railroad museum for the annual "Day out with Thomas". D was somewhat overwhelmed by the whole thing, and tired to boot, so it wasn't a bad day -it just wasn't an amazingly fun one either.



And that's about it from here.



Love, Rachel and Daniel

No, I didn't...

Friends

Sorry about the delay - wrote this a week ago, but neglected to promote from draft to final.

Most of the time, Daniel just amazes us with how he has picked up language or phrases and uses them in the correct context. It's just plain old fun to watch him string ideas and phrases together.

Though for the last couple of days, he's been in a mode where he'll deny something repeatedly, and no amount of logic, proof or argument will change his mind. "Daniel, did you poop?" "No, I didn't" (you can smell him 8 feet away). "Daniel, did you hit Rachel?" "No, I didn't" (she's bawling). I'm sure this ability to deny the patently obvious is completely normal and will pass.

Daniel started playschool on Friday, and he seemed to enjoy it, but we really haven't heard too much about his day. He made "an art", but he doesn't talk about the other kids or his teachers much. Still, he seemed to enjoy his day, and I'm sure we'll hear more as time goes on. Something in our PC caught fire the other day in the middle of videoconferencing with Farmor and Grandpa, and D was quite shaken and worried that the PC had crashed while Farmor was "inside" it. It must have just been some dust, because it was smoky, but everything is working fine now.

Rachel may have finally crossed a barrier to crawling -> she's been pushing herself backwards, but in the last couple of days, she has pulled her legs under her and "lounged" forward to get where she wants to be. It's not smooth, but it seems to work. There's also a hint of a first tooth.

Anida has been helping our friends Harrison and Gretchen at the Palissades wine festival this weekend, so Eric's been getting a taste of parenting 24/7. It's gone reasonably well, though it certainly is a full-time job juggling the two of them, and they've missed mama a lot. Sunday, Grandma Babe comes to visit for the week, and it's also the annual PKD walk, so Eric and the kids will have walked in it by the time this is posted.

And that's about it for now. Hope everyone is well.

Love, Daniel, Rachel, Eric and Anida