Splashing in the tub

Grant learned how much fun tub time can be the other night! He's been enjoying it for a while, to the point where I won't bathe him right away, but will let him play for a while first. He loves playing with water bottles, cups, and his little waterproof book. And now since he's learning how to crawl and move around a lot more, he looks up on the shelves and tries to pull himself up to see what's up there!

Anyway, he also learned to splash the other night. He mostly just hits the top of the water with his hands, but water goes everywhere and he seems to enjoy that!Amminadab always has to come in and lay on the window sill while Grant is bathing!

Watch out, here I come!!

Grant officially started crawling last Saturday! We were staying at a hotel because Dean was the best man in a wedding in Spring on Saturday. That morning, Grant and I had just gotten back from the pool. I sat him down in the hallway area, just outside the bathroom, and Dean and I were standing in the bathroom. I said (as I do a lot of times), "come here, Grant!" and he started coming towards us! He finally got the hang of moving his knees, and he scooted on over to us! Since then, he's gotten better and better.....the other night, we were in his room and Dean was lowering the mattress in his crib (another story), and I noticed that he was making his way out of the room in pursuit of Scooter (the cat). He went pretty far in the few seconds that we weren't watching him! And every day, he seems to build up more endurance and he's able to go a little bit farther before giving up and putting his face into the floor! Today he was trying to chase Scooter again, and he figured out how to climb up onto our raised dining room floor (which I'm sure doesn't feel very good on his legs, since it's all tile!). He definitely has the markings of a crawler, though.....he has red knees all the time!

Here's a picture from last week in front of his little singing doorway (which he's still a little too young to enjoy by himself....he just enjoys chewing on the little component parts, like the letters that go in the mailbox, for example).Enjoying some tickle time with Daddy! He's really enjoying playing with Daddy these days....I think he gets a little bored being with me all day! He loves for Dean to jump with him (and to throw him in the air, which scares me every time he does it), take him around the house on his shoulders, and play this game where he turns and says "boo!," scaring Grant and making him laugh at the same time.
Another funny laughing picture.....
He had so much fun playing with Daddy here....Dean was holding his hands and would look away, then all of a sudden look at Grant and say something loud....Grant got SUCH a kick out of it!! In the second picture you can see his little single tooth pretty well!

Rainy Day

Grant and I were supposed to go out today with our realtor to look for new houses, but it's SO rainy outside! So we decided to wait until next week. And Grant took a nap at around 10:25, and he's STILL asleep (at 11:38), which is amazing! I actually went in there a few minutes ago, just to make sure he's still breathing!

He's been sleeping much better the past couple of nights. Monday he slept all the way through, then Tuesday he woke up only a couple of times....the first time I went in to comfort him, then the second time I just let him cry. He only cried for 10 minutes before going back to sleep! Then last night he woke up one time before we went to bed, but then slept through the night. This is at least good progress compared with a week ago!

Here are a couple of pictures of Grant enjoying his mango dessert a few nights ago:"Can I please have some more??"
Later that night, he was so exhausted....I sat down with him on the couch to give him some apple juice before taking him in to his bedroom to go to sleep, and he fell asleep while he was drinking his juice!
Here he is trying to crawl across the bed. I really can't leave him on the middle of our bed anymore and walk even a few steps away....even though we have a king sized bed, he's really good at lunging towards the sides. It's amazing how, even though he can't officially crawl yet, he can move from one place to another without much trouble!

Center of attention

Grant is getting into a stage where he LOVES attention, and is just delighted when people look at him and talk to him! Sunday we went to meet one of my good friends Elizabeth and her parents for lunch while they were coming through town. Grant had so much fun when Elizabeth and her mom would talk to him.....I wish he'd get that excited when he sees me!! I should've taken our video camera, because he was really putting on a show, waving his arms and making noises and smiling at them. He didn't mind at all when they held him either! It's so interesting how sometimes being held by other people doesn't bother him at all, and other times he looks at me with a panicked look like, "what are you doing to me, handing me over to this person I don't know??"

At the softball fields

Dean's softball team had their playoffs on Saturday, so he was up there for most of the day. They won two out of their first three games, so they stayed in the tournament longer than they were expecting! Grant and I went up there for their 4th and final game. It was so steamy out there, but Grant loved sitting in the grass and grabbing it with his hands. And he loves to lounge in his new stroller too.....sometimes he'll prop his leg up on the snack tray and leave it there!

Here's that tooth!

You can barely see it, but here's a little bit of his tooth poking through. I took this two days ago....excuse the runny nose!Here's another funny face:

Sleeping Woes....

This past month or so has been tough on mommy and daddy in the sleeping department! Grant's still having a hard time with waking up in the middle of the night, sometimes multiple times in one hour!! For a while I just lived with it, thinking it was maybe just a short phase he was going through. Then two weeks ago, he developed a cold, so I thought maybe that's why he was continuing to have problems (because he was having a hard time breathing through his nose). But now that we're home from our trip and he's pretty much over his little cold, we've decided that we need to try to break this habit. On Friday night, I had already gone in his room two or three times, and I figured out that there really wasn't anything wrong. When I go in there, he grabs my fingers and holds on so tightly, and when I break away from him to leave, he'll just SCREAM!! But realistically, I can't stand there over his crib until he goes to sleep every time he does it, especially when it's five times per night! So on Friday, I just left him, went back to our room and turned the volume on the monitor down, thinking I'd just let him cry for 20 minutes or so. Well, I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew it was hours later! I looked at the monitor and he had moved up to the top of his crib and was laying on his side. He was asleep, but I felt awful not knowing how long he had cried. But he still seemed to like us just the same that morning, so I guess we didn't cause any permanent damage!

So the past couple of nights I've done the same thing....I've gone in there once or twice, just so he knows I'm here, then I leave and don't come back. I wonder if it's a bad idea to go in there at all, and whether I just confuse him by not reacting the same way consistently. I guess I'll see if this method works, then get more harsh if I need to!

Anyway, the cutest part about the whole thing is that Grant is now COMPLETELY hoarse after crying so much for the past few nights. I've never heard him sound this way....every noise he makes doesn't quite sound normal, and his little cry is so cute! I just hope that he doesn't have a sore throat from it all. Hopefully he'll just give in and realize that it's much easier to go back to sleep than to work himself up by crying!

First Tooth

Grant's first tooth (bottom left) officially started poking through on the 4th of July! On the 3rd, I was pretty sure that I saw some differentiation that looked like it could be a tooth poking through, and sure enough! The next day, we could barely feel it starting to come through. Over the past 9 days, it's become more and more apparent, although it's coming in slower than I would've expected! I don't have any pictures of it yet....he's given me some chances while he's been smiling, but I haven't had the camera battery charged since our trip. I will post one as soon as I can.

Trip (part 4)

After leaving Neil and Cindy's cottage, we drove down the coast a little bit to Grand Haven, where my uncle Jon's parents have a cottage. We went to the beach again, and we spent another couple of hours down there. Grant tried his first plum.....he enjoyed sucking on it!
That evening, we had a wonderful dinner and sat outside on the patio. Grant was pretty preferential to mommy that night, but he'd forget about me every once in a while and allow other people to hold him! This is my uncle Jon and aunt Nancy, and my cousin's girlfriend Andrea. Grant just LOVED Andrea....he smiled at her and loved for her to talk to him!
Here's a picture of the gorgeous sunset on Lake Michigan, from the cottage deck:
Here's Grant playing with Grandma the next morning:
That day, we drove back to Grand Rapids, where we saw the rest of the family again. This is my cousin Todd, his adorable 3-yr old son Louis, and my aunt Linda.
Here's my dad and Nancy in their Beatles (and Beatles cover band) shirts:
The next day we drove down to Chicago to catch our 5:55 flight home. We encountered a series of delays that put our departure time back to 11:05, with a possibility that our flight could be canceled altogether! Thankfully Grant was in a wonderful mood through it all....he was cheerful and wanted to play, so we had a good time in spite of the circumstances! He went to sleep at around 8:45, and only woke up briefly when we boarded the plane. I was able to keep him in his carseat since the flight was no longer full at that time of night, and he slept the entire time! We arrived in Houston and were in our car when he woke up....around 2:15am! He was ready to play, so it took us a while to wind him back down once we got home. I was hoping that he'd sleep past his normal 6:30-7am, but no such luck....he woke up at 6:45. So I felt like a zombie on Wednesday, only operating on 3 hours of sleep! Dean was able to sleep in until 9:15 and went into work late. Anyway, here's a picture we took while strolling Grant around the airport that night while we were waiting to board. There's a Blues Brothers store at Midway....I guess it figures!

Whew! That was a longer recap than I was expecting to write!

Trip (part 3)

Continued from previous post.....
After coming up from the beach, we sat on Neil and Cindy's back porch and Grant had a fun time being held and playing with everyone. Here are pictures of Great-Grandma trying to teach him how to walk!!


Here's a cute one with Grandpa:
This is my aunt Cindy (we've discovered that Grant always enjoys being held by pretty blonde girls!):
Here's my uncle Neil and my cousin Ryan:

Great-Grandma held Grant while we were all eating dinner, and he did so well with her! She carried him around the cottage and showed him all the neat decorations, like the bearskin and the moose on the wall! She'd ask him what noise a bear makes, and she'd growl, and it sounded like he was trying to copy her! I don't think he probably really was, but he'd always repeat her and the sound he made sounded different than his normal sounds. We got such a kick out of it.

Here's a cute picture with Great-Grandma the next morning:

Trip (part 2)

After leaving Chicago on Friday morning, we drove to Grand Rapids. Then the next morning, we drove up to a cottage that my mom's brother Neil and his wife Cindy own near Lake Michigan. Grant didn't quite appreciate the lake quite as much as we all did....it was SO windy and bright, and he couldn't settle himself down enough to go to sleep out there. So Dean and I took him back to the cottage after probably an hour and a half. But Dean took his first Kayaking trip too.....Neil took him out quite a ways, and he did great! Here are some pictures at the beach that day, then later that night when Grant took his first bath in a tub (without sitting in the baby tub!).

Trip to Chicago and Michigan (part 1)

We got back VERY late Tuesday night from our vacation to the midwest to see my family. We had a good time, and Grant did fairly well with all the traveling. First we flew in to Chicago and spent the day there. I was nervous about the airplane ride (his first!), but he did very well! He fell asleep just before we took off, and slept for 30 minutes. He woke up and drank his bottle, then just played and looked at people across the aisle for a while. He went back to sleep probably 25 minutes before we landed, so he slept through that too! I took a bottle of apple juice, just in case he got fussy with his ears hurting on the way up or down, but it didn't appear to bother him at all. There were just a couple of moments that he let out an unhappy sound, but we were able to divert his attention and get him happy again!

We got to Chicago and drove to our hotel in the middle of downtown. It was too early to check in, so we put Grant in the Baby Bjorn and walked around the city. He got a lot of looks and comments from people, especially when he was wearing his hat and sunglasses! We walked down the Oak Street Beach and gave him his afternoon snack, then started walking back towards our hotel. Grant did so well....he took a couple of naps along the way in his stroller, and otherwise enjoyed being held or carried in the Bjorn!
After checking in to our hotel, we went out for pizza at a nearby place called Giordino's, which specializes in stuffed pizza. The waitress recommended the small (8 inches) for the two of us, and I'm glad she did! We only ate a little more than half of it in the restaurant, and saved the rest for later! Then we walked over to Millenium Park and walked around for a while....and we managed to see some fireworks that they were apparently shooting off through the entire July 4 weekend. Here is a picture of Grant enjoying watching himself in the full-length mirror in our hotel room, and another of a crazy mirrored sculpture in Millenium Park.