Happy Halloween!

What a cutie!  Look at all those teeth, 6 of them :).  Robby is on a massive walking kick, all he wants to do is walk but he can not yet do so independently.  Translation:  lots of finger holding loops around the house and sore backs!  

He is trying to get up on his hands and knees(finally!) and beginning to push himself to a kneeling position.  He stands holding furniture and occasionally pulls himself up to standing on his own accord.  

His 9 month check up went well:

18lbs 6oz or 17th percentile

27.5 inches or 25th percentile

What continues to amaze us is how much food this kid can consume.  He eats every two hrs either a bottle if mama is at work, nurses or has a massive meal!  We are not talking small meals or bottles, 6-8 oz of food or milk at each 2 hr interval!  Gah!  And still in his 6-9 month clothes.

Almost 9 months!

Our little baby is growing so fast!  He is going to be 9 months in two days! Robby has cut 3 more teeth since our last update, began eating solids and has been army crawling everywhere.  We are glad the top 3 teeth all came in at once to get over with the drooling, unhappy peanut.  Since he cut his teeth we noticed a huge increase in talking. It is nonstop bababa, screeching, squealing and, most recently, MAMAMAMA!  He has no idea what he is saying but he says it!

Robby is still on the small side but does not lack for food.  He has 5 feedings of milk each day in addition to three meals of various puréed or small bits if veggies and fruits.

The army crawl.  It began right after the 6 month mark and has continued since.  I believe it has been perfected as he scoots quickly, can turn on a dime and can make it around our house easily.  We can't decide if he will crawl-crawl or skip to walking!  He has, just recently, been trying out the hands and knees thing but usually when he thinks no one is watching.  Robby also demands to stand by army crawling to our feet or legs and whining, gah!  He is able to do most of the work to get to a seated position by leveraging our fingers and likewise from a seated to standing position.  If he does decide to crawl our best guesses are he will quickly progress to standing and walking!  Scary!

More to come after his 9 months appt!

6 Months & Full of Smiles

6 whole months!  Our little peanut is a smiley, happy little guy.  And he is a peanut!  At his 6 month appointment he was a whopping 26 inches (32nd%) and 14 pounts 13 oz (8th%). 

Robby continues to perfect his rolling technique, is working on sitting (he sits on his own but can't get himself into a seated position on his own yet), loves hair and glasses and lets us know when he is ready to move on to the next activity.  I'm afraid a bit of the laid-back daddy personality is fading away in favor of mommy's more forceful nature.  Robby's greatest talents are sleeping (12 hours, uninterrupted!) and smiling.  He continues to flirt with any and all.  However, a bit of the stranger danger is begining to show itself.  He sure does know his mama & daddy!

Along with the 6 month mark comes first foods - so far that has only been avocado for our little guy but we have carrots, peas, beans and sweet potato on the menu for the next few weeks.  Given the small portions Robby recieves, Ryan and I are going to be chowing down on a lot of veggies along with our baby boy. 

Ryan and I will be running the Twin Cities 10 miles race in October so are preparing our training plans (ok, lets be serious, I'm preparing them).  We're excited to be able to start bringing Robby along with us in his jogger as he is finally strong enough to handle some of the bumps of the road. 

We also managed to help pull off a great surprise 55th birthday party for my dad a few weekends back (no he is not 55 and no his birthday is not in July....?....).  The theme was "Star Wars" in honor of the hobbies my dad and his college roommate had during their time at the U.  If you can imagine, arriving and expecting to have a few "blue footed booby" drinks to celebrate a great Galapogos cruise only to see a room full of people dressed in their best Star Wars garb (lots of graduation gowns) might have been a bit shocking!  A good time was had by all and pulling off the surprise element worked perfectly.

Happy Anniversary!

We made it to 3 years!

 I can't say we had the best anniversary ever though it was memorable.  Our anniversary happened to fall on the busiest day of the season for my job - I had to complete at powerpoint for management presentation but was not to get the information necessary until 4pm or later.  To make this bearable Ryan and Robby came to visit me and bring me dinner at work.  It was fun to see them and take a break from number crunching and deck building.  We are not really big on presents in our household - we mostly don't buy them for eachother for birthdays, holidays or anniversaries.  Knowing this, you can imagine my surprise when Ryan showed up with not only dinner but flowers and card with a gift certificate for a spa day - YAY!  well....I had no idea we were giving gifts so I didn't have anything to give him - now does that make me the crappy wife or what?  I better make it up for his first (technically second) Father's Day!!

And what a fun day it was 3 years ago - and so many fun days since then and yet to come! 

 We did end up getting away to celebrate just the two of us - to my favorite place - the Blue Door Pub!   It was our first real date night since Robby arrived - can't wait to have a few more of those in the months to come :)

4 Months

We have now been parents for more than 4 months.  It has been an absolute joy to watch Robby grow, change and learn each day.  He is a very active, skinny and long, little dude.  As a happy baby, he enjoys smiling at everyone - aka "flirting."  Flirting better describes his smiles because he smiles and immediately looks away to hide in my shoulder.

The little munchkin has been quick to learn to roll over and we are finding him many feet away from where we set him down - I hear from more experienced parents to get ready and babyproof!!

Aside from rolling over (and over and over) Robby's learned blowing bubbles, putting his a hands, fists and arms in his mouth and is attempting to get at those feet!  He still loves his playmat and is beginning to enjoy his play center except that his feet hardly touch the floor!!

I seem to have a theme of discussing baby Nordy's bowel movements - we (I think) just completed of a phase of blow outs that were a result of once a week poops.  I happened to wake one morning to an entirely poop covered baby - AH!  In the bath he went right away.  Oh wait, you HAVE to feed Robby right away in the morning or he screams bloody murder so I had to hold and feed poop covered baby before I could bath him!!  I promised my dearest husband the joy of the next several diapers due to this experience.

I'm back at work fulltime now (though we have half-day Friday's so I am trying to work from home).  Going back was difficult, which was made even more difficult by Ryan's travel schedule, returning to work during the busiest and most stressful time of year and our daycare (Nonna) on vacation for 2 weeks as well!  Oh, and I had class, Ryan had a ridiculously big workload for one of his classes, finals and Ryan in a new job that required him to be on call and help with Go-Lives off hours.  I also returned to work in a new role, which I doubt will compare to my prior role.  My prior role was pretty much the best job ever - a combination of great leadership, cross-cultural involvement, challenging projects and interesting day to day requirements.  It was the type of job you didn't mind or didn't notice staying past 6pm for - simply because you enjoyed what you were doing and it was so interesting!

At Home Photos

Isn't he just so cute?

Exciting 1st Dr. Visit

Robby is a boy.  It is important to remember this as you try to visualize the events I am about to describe below.

Our first doctor visit was Thursday at 10am.  Since we've been home, we've lazed around and tried to figure out when and how to feed & change Robby.  In preparation for this doctor visit we packed up our diaper bag, got the car seat ready and made sure we had extra of everything we might need.

Also in preparation, I tried to feed Robby about 30 min before we needed to leave.  I also changed him at this time. He decided he wanted to dirty his diaper just as we were about to place him in his car seat.  You know, the nice squishy-squirty poopy diaper of a newborn. I attempt to start the changing process and wipe him up enough to get the second diaper underneath him,  as I am pulling away the dirty diaper to replace itw ith the clean the fantastic squishy-squirty newborn poo also makes a second, larger volume appearance.  The result - poop on the changing pad and on the carpet as he decided to do this at the same time I was moving his dirty diaper aside!!  AHHH!!!  As I am panicking about the nasty poo'd on carpet Robby proceeds to stream urine as if he were a magnificent fountain in Rome.  All over his clean clothes, changing pad and himself.  Since he just had a certain procedure done to his man-parts we can only try to stop the stream mid-air:  double AHHHH!!

Well, we were only 5 min late to the appointment and all was fine.  We were telling our tale of new parent hilariousness to our nurse as she and Ryan were working to undress and weight Robby.  Weight was good, 1 oz higher than hospital discharge weight.  During this discussion, Robby (who must not like cold air?) offers up another performance - hitting himself, the paper on the table and the scale!  As Ryan was getting him a new diaper and was applying vaseline to his injured man-parts Robby performed AGAIN!  We got a new diaper on him and had a good chuckle (this hurts quite a bit, post labor and delivery, I might add).  Of course, Robby wet his diaper (in the diaper at least) once more before we left the doctor office.

Not bad for a 30 min visit huh?

All his stats are good:
Length is 20.5 cm - 80th percentile or so (WHAT??)
Weight is 7 lbs 8 oz (50th percentile or so)
Head circumferance was high 80th percentile or so (can't recall the cm)

Doctor said he is doing well, and she was pleased with the fact that he had gained an oz since hospital dischage.  Well, little did she know that he lost about 2 oz in peeing performances post being weighed.  :)