Nic Talking in the Morning

Nic is 4 Months Old!

Our big man is now 12 pounds 10 ounces and 26 inches long. His weight went down to the 25th percentile while his height jumped up to the 75th. We have a very tall and skinny baby on our hands!

He is getting over his cold that led to his ear infection, but is still quite smiley most of the time. He is laughing more and more now and loves to hear the sound of his own voice. We'll upload a video of him talking soon!

Give a daddy a camera...

Today was an eventful day. Nora had a dance recital this morning, and so I came to watch, equipped with an arsenal of photographic equipment which I borrowed from a friend. Despite my lack of expertise in properly setting up the camera, I was pretty happy to see how some of the pics turned out.

After the dance recital, we headed to Golden Gardens park in Ballard. We met up with an old friend who is visiting from Wisconsin and had a picnic on the beach. It was only about 40 degrees when we got there and we almost decided not to do it, but then our friends showed up with firewood and all was well. April made some amazing picnic food and Nora spent the afternoon flying kites and playing in the sand.

Here are some of the highlights:

Playing Outside

 
After a day of staying home with Daddy, Nora is feeling much better. I knew they had fun together because when I got home the house was trashed. Every fun activity imaginable must have been played! Nora finished out her day with some fun in the yard climbing our Japanese Maple and playing in the dirt.

Thank goodness for antibiotics!

Feeling Better

 

Nora has STREP!

Now both kiddos are going to be on antibiotics! Hopefully no one else in our house will get it. Nora is a mess. High fever and feeling terrible. No wonder she was up in the night five or six times!

Going to sleep all by herself

We have finally reached an important milestone in our house. This is the third consecutive night that Nora has gone to sleep by herself.

The bedtime routine around here has been quite complex for the past several months. Roles were divided up between April and I. There was the "reader" (usually me), who was responsible for reading Nora's bedtime stories to her, and then the "sleeper" (usually April), who would sit in the beanbag next to her bed and read a magazine until she fell asleep. On certain nights when she was feeling particularly gregarious, Nora would chat April up until well after 9:00...at which point April would come out into the living room and designate me the "Backup Sleeper".

With April's impending return to school, we knew we had to put this to an end. Previous attempts to do this had met with spectacular failure so I must admit I was not optimistic at first. But tonight, I think we have finally made a breakthrough. I only hope that by writing this I am not going to jinx it.

EAR INFECTION!!

Yes you read that right, Nic has an ear infection in his right ear. Here we go!

Sleep Routine

We've started a new sleeping routine around here. We've got to get rid of these 9:00 bedtimes around here! Nora and I made a visual chart last night that she puts stickers on after she completes each part of the night time routine. The biggest goal is for her to put herself to sleep. She was in bed at 7:00 and asleep, on her own accord, by 7:20! I guess the promise of going to get an ice cream cone today worked! Now we'll move to two nights before a big reward, then three, and so on.

I think we've always been pretty consistent about the getting-ready-for-bed routine, but the time we start it has been too late. I think that maybe we've just been missing her 'window' and then she's so tired that she wants to stay up and protest going to sleep for two hours. Because she will only go to sleep with me, I needed to make a change for my sanity.

For those of you that have children that want to go to sleep at night, you are SO lucky. I'm sure there is more than luck that goes into it, so we're trying something new. I go back to work on Monday and we need to have her sleep time be long before 9:00 at night. My sanity is not going to handle a three year old protesting sleep and 5th graders at the same time ;-)

Auntie Nessa

 
Whatcha think?

Blowing in the wind

Petrified Forest

On Saturday we drove out to Ellensburg to have lunch with Auntie Pea. After lunch we continued east to the banks of the Columbia River, and stopped to take a look at the scenery. It's hard to believe that only 2 hours in the car could take us to a place that looks so much different than home. We even saw tumbleweeds blowing across the highway.

This picture is from the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. A few million years ago, this part of the state was covered with trees. The wind was blowing like crazy...Nora and I were struggling to walk against it.