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.

Pictures from the weekend

We had a busy weekend! We did some yardwork on Saturday, and Dean painted cabinets in our kitchen. He painted most of them in November before Grant was born, but we didn't get a chance to finish painting inside all of them....we didn't anticipate Grant coming two weeks early! Here are some pictures from that day....he's sleeping in his Papasan chair in this picture because of his cold (see below). "Look at me pushing myself up with my arms!!" He's getting a lot more comfortable on his tummy these days, now that he can reach for things. He ends up on his belly all the time and now has learned to push himself up from his tummy pretty well.
It was SO hot on Saturday morning, but we got some rain that really cooled things off outside. So Grant and I went outside with Dean and did yardwork with him. Grant had a pretty good time sitting underneath the shady tree.Unfortunately, Grant came down with ANOTHER cold! I thought breastfeeding was supposed to help in preventing babies getting sick! I know other moms who say their babies always seem to get colds too, though, and I think it's somewhat unavoidable when you take them places where there are other kids around. We take him to church once a week, and I usually take him up to the library twice a week for Book Babies. Just last Thursday, I noticed an older baby crawling by us who had a really runny nose. So who knows if that's where Grant picked it up, but I guess it's better than getting the flu!

Anyway, he seems to feel pretty much normal in spite of his runny nose. The really bad part is just that he doesn't sleep as well at night. Dean ended up running to Walgreens on Saturday night to get some decongestant for him, because he woke up and was having a hard time breathing through his nose. But he's actually been waking up A LOT lately in the middle of the night, which is something we haven't really dealt with in the past four months or so! The books all say that it's common for babies to start waking up in the middle of the night again when they start teething or are learning something new, like crawling. And sometimes all I have to do is give him his pacifier and he'll go right back to sleep. But other times, like for the past week especially, he'll settle back down and go back to sleep, then wake up and cry again 20 minutes later! Or I'll set my hand on his chest and it seems like he's going to sleep, but then I walk away and he'll start crying because he doesn't want to be left alone!! So it's quite frustrating.....I hate to just let him cry it out, especially because that's never worked in causing him to go to sleep. But I also don't want him to think that any time he cries, I'm going to be right there. So I hope this is just a stage that he gets over soon!!

For anyone who has read all of this, I'm sorry it was so long and detailed! I'm doing this blog somewhat for myself to look back at later, so I apologize if it's more than you care to read!