swimming!!!

It is safe to say the boy loves his new swimming pool.He liked it so much he forgot to notice he wore a hat for most of the time.

He really liked the sun and rainbow shade maker. The sun shines through and made his hand look the color of the rainbow stripe---that was fascinating for quite awhile.

After awhile he even got on all fours. I thought he may try to drink the water like a dog.

Now we are safely tucked away in our cool basement. According to Weather Bug we have an advisory:

ALERT 1 - Non Precipitation Advisory

Urgent - Weather Message National Weather Service Seattle WA 820 AM PDT Sat Jun 28 2008

East Puget Sound Lowlands-Everett And Vicinity- Seattle/Bremerton Area-Tacoma Area-

...Heat Advisory Now In Effect Until 9 PM PDT Sunday...

Oh no! 80 degrees and no rain! We need an advisory since the locals have no idea how to behave in such weather.

Reesie loves dogs

Reese had lots of fun playing with dogs on Thursday. We hung out a bit at Mimi's where Reese fed Maddie lots of dog biscuits. He thinks she's pretty cool and she is tolerant of him.Then we went to visit Miss Susie and played with their 2 itty bitty miniature dobermans. One licked Reese's nose. At first he wasn't too sure what think but he quickly swiped his hand over the slobber to dry himself off. He had tons of fun playing with their Ocean Shores rock and shell collection with Susie's daughter Amanda.

Today we're off to Walmart to buy a pool for our 88 degree weather tomorrow!! Woo HOO!

milestones, milestones

On Father's Day, June 15, a new tooth appeared. i failed to get a good photo of it. In fact I couldn't even get one without Reese grabbing the camera. So you'll have to look real close. It's on top between his hand and his front tooth.

On the 22nd he took 2 steps. He has not really repeated the effort. He kind of tries but then he changes his mind and crawls instead. LAZY BUTT!!!
He officially sleeps through the night!!! Well, for almost 2 weeks minus the 103 fever nights. I must say it is absolutely glorious to sleep for more than 4 hours in a row. I actually have enough energy to get on the treadmill--2 days this week and it's only Wednesday!! Woo hoo! Although I think it's unlikely I'll reach my vacation goal of losing 20 pounds by July 10--I piddled away most of June.
We had our phone interview with Holly Ridge for "services" for developmental delays. They do not correct for prematurity so he actually qualifies across the board as 25% or more delayed. So they sent us some papers and we signed and returned, now they'll call us for an appointment and we'll go from there. Really I think his gross and fine motor skills are fine if you count from corrected age. But verbally he is not doing what he's supposed to yet, really I don't think that's a major issue at this point either. I do expect he'll catch up shortly. However I just read our friend, John Paul, is Mr. Know all his noggin parts! So maybe we better bust a move.

latest stats

I just realized I've been remiss about keeping track of Reese's growth stats. The latest measurements taken 6/11 were 18 pounds 15 ounces for weight. 30 3/4 inches for height.

what have we been doing?

Monday morning we headed down to Vancouver, WA. We stopped at the Chehalis Walmart on the way to potty and buy diapers since we left home without. We also forgot Reese's pack and play so he slept between us on the fold out couch--that was an error. The sweat ball moves a lot and makes a bunch of noise. The next morning (Tues) we had a "Sunday" breakfast. Reese was too distracted laughing at his great grandpa to focus on eating. Here he is Tuesday morning laughing in his booster seat .Shop Hop began on Wednesday. Great Grandma Joyce and I left at 9 am sharp to hit the quilt stores. Daddy, Reese and Great Grandpa Bob followed a couple of hours later and joined us at the Chehalis shop then on to lunch in Centralia. The boy was feeling a bit feverish and sleepy on Tues/Wed so here he is cooling off with a double strawed milkshake with Daddy.

Wednesday evening Kyle called me to say the boy's temperature was 103.5---I am still at shop hop of course, so I called the on call nurse for the pediatrician who advised that he could wait to be seen in the office tomorrow (no signs of dehydration, responsive though rag dollish). Thursday am his temp was 98.8 so GG Joyce and I headed off to meet my friend Laura in Kingston. We hopped the Kingston ferry and did the stores from Lynden to Everett. Candy Gram and GG Bob kept Reese while Kyle went to work. He called again to say it went up to 102.8, so Kyle took Reese in to the doc who determined the fever is a result of the vaccines he got last week. You recollect those perfectly safe ones we got on June 11th right? GRRR.....So Thursday I stayed home with the boy. Late in the afternoon Candy Gram and GG Bob took us (Reese, me and GG Joyce) to the stores in Silverdale, Poulsbo and Bainbridge Island. Here is Reese playing with his hairy ball and laughing at GG Bob while we drove to the stores.

Back at home and 102 again (by the way in case you're wondering yes we were giving him both tylenol and ibuprofen, but they only mildly helped) I put the boy in the tub. We generally let the faucet run and he plays in it. He had pushed the plug in so the tub started filling and then the grunt started. There wasn't enough time for the tub to drain so I snatched the boy up and stuck him on the toilet. Then I realized his penis is pointing at me so I situated him to let it point down. By now he was getting a little distressed so I bent to look around behind and see did any fall in the toilet and realized, no actually all the poop fell on the floor between the tub and toilet during the transfer--YUCK!!! So Reese had his first poop on the floor experience. But the bath did cool him down. He had a bottle and some cuddle time and went to sleep.

pears!!

Our pears are starting to grow! There are tons of teeny tiny pear sprouts.

There's actually nine in this bushel but some are hidden by the leaves.

Reese is not too sure what to make of it, but Mommy is getting excited for canning season!

Playtime on the Jungle Gym

We had mommies group at Anya's on Friday. Seven mommies and 11 kids under the age of 4 (and one still cooking for a couple more weeks.) We enjoyed some mom gabbing, baked potato bar, cake, brownies and outside playtime. Reese at the top of the slide.

Reese on the swingy thing that has it's own name I'm sure but I forget what it is--2 people can swing together.

Reese is the only big kid still not walking :( But he has fun playing with the other non-walkers--Austin born 5/24/08 and Abbey born 4/20/08. He does try to smack their heads sometimes. But he finds them quite amusing and giggles at them.
He's been a much better cooperator about wearing his glasses. I think he was really just too little to care about seeing far away before. Now he wants to see whats going on beyond his immediate area so he's been pretty good.from left: Heather and Reese, Julie (behind me), Jennica and Abbey, Cynthia and Ziva, Anya and Lincoln, Deborah and Devon.
Gabbing around the sandbox.

15 month well baby

I know he's almost 16 months and there's no such thing as a 15 month well baby, but we had one today. At the actual 15 month mark he had a cold so we didn't go. Of course I didn't know he would be snotty when I procrastinated on making the appointment. But ANYWAY we finally went today and got the 12 month live virus vaccines: measles, mumps, rubella, hep A, varicella. I've been dragging feet about it because I just don't whole heartedly trust that they won't have bad side effects and I think they give too many shots at once. So we split them--4 non-live virus vaccines at 12 months and 5 live virus ones at 15 months. He has a fever 100.4 and is a cranky butt, but he is sleeping quietly now.
He grew 1 inch since May 14 and gained 11 ounces. So he is 30 3/4 inches and 18 pounds 15 ounces. He is officially in the negative on the growth chart.
He does everything that's required to be considered "normal" except social communication. Though the pediatrician says she thinks he's very social and seems fine, since he didn't do the exact milestones: at least one word other than mama and dada that is for real a word (like not a grunt some crazy mother says is a word); follow directions to clap or peekaboo or wave bye bye without showing him the action---so yes he does all those things, but we do the motion first so it doesn't count as he has to follow the verbal command; give you one of his toys on command; point to what he wants..etc etc, so because he doesn't do those things he qualifies for "services", so we are getting a referral to our early intervention program---they do speech therapy, occupational therapy, feeding therapies etc. We'll get assessed and if they recommend a therapy we'll do it since even though he PROBABLY is dandy and will get around to these things in his sweet time, it certainly will not hurt to get some feed back and practice things he should be doing.
He's 5 days away from 16 months old. It's hard to believe he's this old and big already. And if we're so amazed imagine how the parents of typically sized babies feel. Their 16 month olds are even bigger!

out of the loop

wow it's been awhile since i've posted. here's what's been happening. Reese has mostly gotten the hang of the juice box---occasionally he squeezes it and juice spurts out--actually I think he does this for amusement. I'm sick of the sippy cup. He won't hold it for himself except to shake it furiously, so I stuck a straw in a tupperware sippy spout and he can drink fine.Mommy got all organized. Cleaned out the diaper bag and reloaded it so it is ready to grab and go for any regular length outing. The beast unpacked it all. and was pretty impressed with himself.

He loves to color. He can get up and down from his table on his own. He rarely tries to eat the crayons.

He's not much for sitting still though.

The table standing is great fun!

Monday am (hopefully early) we will head down to Vancouver to visit the Great-Grandparents then on Wednesday am we will start shop hop in Vancouver and work our way up. GG Joyce is also a quilter and first time hopper so I'll show her the ropes. Unfortunately with gas prices as they are we will probably do less stores than last year (Kyle and I did 48). Also I will be unable to boost my fabric stash as I would like but what are ya gonna do. We decided to go with the non-hybrid Dodge Nitro instead of the hybrid Toyota Highlander because we just didn't dig it. But I sure do wish we had hybrid mileage in our Nitro. On Wednesday I plan to hit 2 Vancouver stores, one in Rochester, Longview, Castlerock, Chehalis, Centralia, Olympia, Lakewood, 3 in Tacoma and one in Gig Harbor. If time allows we'll do Port Orchard and Silverdale too.
Following this path we will miss Morton--which is a good store with GOOD prices--ugh!, but I want the most bang for the gasoline buck, so I'm making the sacrifice. Normally I start North and work my way down. But the first stores are almost all the way to the Canadian border--3 of them in Lynden and Bellingham are so excellent I could not possibly get out without a purchase, so we''ll just skip those.:( Anyway. Updates to come!

Meal Plan Monday--little late

Monday: Barbecue Chicken, corn on the cob and sweet potato fries
Tuesday: Jamabalaya
Wednesday: quesadilla a la Kyle
Thursday: Asparagus chicken penne
Friday: leftovers
Saturday: pork chops on the grill, veggie medley, sweet potato in tinfoil on the grill
Sunday: fridge clearout
Monday we're headed down to Vancouver, then SHOP HOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

crazy gas

On our way to Costco we passed lots of $4.19 for 87 octane options, so we went ahead to Costco where the boy had his churro fix. We waited about 30 minutes to buy gas at $3.99 per measly gallon. It is just stunning how many morons can't figure out how to buy gas at Costco and where is the attendant you may ask? Yeah I'd like to know what he's doing too.On our way home from Costco one of those $4.19 stations had changed their price to $4.25. We were gone maybe 2 hours total. But then as we rounded the corner next to the station we used to buy our gas from we noticed their price had skyrocketed to $4.29 in 2 hours!!!!
This really blows for my shop hop excursion. I won't be able to buy anything because all my spending money will be in the gas tank!!!! I'm super annoyed about this gas issue. However I must note that in our effort to conserve we did quite well. The last time we bought gas was 15 days ago. We usually go about every 8 days for normal activity, more frequently if we go someplace far. So we almost cut our normal in half and technically I was not on fumes so we coud have made it 16 days but we were at Costco today.