Let it Snow

We had such a good morning. The boys and I slept in until 9:00 AND when we went to go get our milk and coffee we saw a beautiful blanket of snow on the ground and still more falling. We continued to watch it as we ate breakfast and then quickly put Grady down for a nap so Dawson and I could go play.

He started out by raking the snow. Made me think it will be nice when he's old enough to send outside to shovel the walkway and driveway.

Then we made snow angels.

Proof that I made one too :)

A little more playing before we headed in for Dawson to enjoy his first hot chocolate.

8 Months Old!

Grady turned 8 months on Christmas Eve. I didn't think it was possible, but time is flying by even faster the second time around. First, here is Grady's 7 month picture, since I never had a chance to post it. Here he is at 8 months :)

(I just noticed that he actually looks older in the above picture) Grady is doing great! We seem to have gotten all of his allergies identified and I've continued to keep those out of my diet. There is hope that he will grow out of the potato allergy very soon and they expect him to grow out of the egg, dairy and nut allergies before too long which is wonderful. Although, I'll admit that I haven't minded this way of eating. Of course there are times that I have a craving for cheese, caramel or a Reeses but at least I'm still able to make a lot of yummy baked goods just using a little different ingredients than I used to. Grady's eczema is also staying under control. He looks so good! It's such a comforting feeling getting to see clear smooth baby skin when I change him rather than the itchy dry rashy skin my poor baby had to deal with for so long.

I'm not sure if this counts, but Grady's first official word is "Yeah". He says it all the time! It comes out more like "Yee-aH". If we say it right back to him it will go back and forth for awhile and it's adorable. Grady has 6 teeth and the 7th is in the process of breaking through. He still isn't actually crawling on all fours (which could slightly be my fault for discouraging it when he looked like he was going to start early) but he manages to get around wherever he wants to go. It's a combination of rolling, scooting backwards and the army crawl that he's mastered. Grady is getting quite a little personality too. By that I mean that he's got attitude. If he doesn't like what we're doing he'll do this loud grunt and bat at our hands. He's getting better with sleeping, we get 4-6 hour stretches now and we're going to work on him falling asleep on his own soon.

Decorating the Tree

Dawson and Aiden got to help decorate Mooma & Poopa's (aka Chad's parents) Christmas tree this year. I'll admit, I decorated our tree while Dawson was gone so I could have it just the way I like it so I thought Beth was a little crazy when she asked for their help....but I was pleasantly surprised by how cute the tree turned out! They both took it very serious :) Putting on the beads and garland was...interesting.

Beth had a bunch of candy canes for the boys to put on the tree too. Dawson kept taking all of his and hanging them in the same spot over the side of the barrel.

I just now realized that I only took a picture of the "final product" with my phone and not the camera. Trust me, it turned out beautiful. Thanks Mooma & Poopa for starting a fun new tradition with the boys!!

It's Real!

Yes, that's right. We got a real Christmas tree this year! Chad's been bugging me about my fake tree for years but it's so much easier. The lights are already put on perfectly and if you want an ornament in a certain place, you just bend a branch to make it work. But I caved in this year mainly because I want the boys to have memories of going out and choosing our very own tree to cut down and bring home. I was also really looking forward to that wonderful smell a live tree puts off...but for some reason our tree doesn't have that.

On our way to the tree farm I knew I wanted a "Charlie Brown-ish" tree. I love the way they look and I figured that the more I can see through the tree, the less bugs that can be hiding in there. This was the first tree I saw when we got out of the car, right up front. After about an hour of walking up and down aisles of trees we ended up back at our first choice.

When I asked Dawson to pick out a tree he wanted to bring home, this is what he chose. Now I wish I would have asked the people to mark it for us and we could have got it in a couple years!

Shane, Lynn, Aiden & Owen with their Christmas tree.

Aiden & Dawson helped Chad carry our tree.

Dawson thinking he was totally helping by carrying the very tip of the tree.

Too short to put the star on this year.

I LOVE our REAL tree!!

Lately....

Lately I have been getting NO sleep thanks to Grady, we're talking 4-6 hours a night which is not near enough for me. Not really sure whats going on, he just wakes up and refuses to go back to sleep. So I don't have the energy to write anything but thought I would share some pictures of what we've been up to lately.

Riley & Dawson at playgroup

Grady getting ready to eat his rice cereal, which by the way he hates now!

Typical cuddle time: Dawson being crazy while Grady pulls my hair.

My 2 precious boys that give me so much love!

Dawson mesmerized by the caramel apple Grandma & Grandpa Gartner gave him for Halloween.

They also put Play-doh in his Halloween bucket.

Dawson was supposed to be napping. When he "woke" up I saw that he had taken everything out of his dresser. When he saw me grab the camera he went over there and posed all on his own.

Grady in the driver's seat - watch out1

Uncle Ryan!

This is how we roll in our house.

Gotta love the beautiful blue eyes, huge puffy cheeks and little bitty chin!

Grady Update

Grady had his 6 month check up with the doctor today. To fill you in, Grady had another appointment with the allergist earlier in the week. After originally discovering his egg, dairy and nut allergies in combination with his medications he looked great...for about a week. Then it slowly started to come back starting with redness around his eyes and mouth and then eventually broke out over his whole body.

The allergist did another test determined that their must be something else making his skin break out this badly again. To sum it up, Grady's basically more allergic to dairy products than originally thought. He showed a milk allergy at the first appointment but only slightly, so I was told to "limit" dairy but didn't need to completely eliminate it from my diet. This test showed otherwise. So the outcome is that I have to absolutely stay away from anything and everything dairy. I was surprised to find how much I ate that had trace amounts of dairy in it, from my bread to my "non-dairy" coffee creamer. Luckily after a trip to Trader Joe's I was able to find some breads and snacks I can actually eat. Just in the last few days I can already see a big improvement in his skin. Oh, and he's allergic to potatoes too, just in time for Thanksgiving-and no french fries either! Trying to look at the postive side of all this...I've passed my Grady pre-pregnancy weight and I'm only 3 pounds away from the weight I was before I got pregnant with Dawson :)

Back to the important stuff...Grady got the okay to try more solid foods but because of his allergies there is only a few hypo-allergenic foods their letting him start with: appesauce, sweet potatoes and plums/prunes. The only concern now is making sure his weight stays up with my drastic diet changes and him being limited on the solid foods he can have at this point. He's still obviously a big boy but he did drop quite a bit on the percentile chart since his 4 month appt. His stats are:

Weight: 19 lbs 2.5 oz (75%)

Height: 28" (92%)

Grady also just cut his 3rd tooth (all on the bottom) and he's starting to babble a lot. There have been a lot of "da da's" coming out of his mouth, another one of my boys that spends all day every day with me and doesn't say "mama" first :(. Grady has mastered rolling over. He just rolls and rolls to get to where he wants to go, it's pretty funny to watch him go. He is also sitting up on his own...but he still topples over a lot so either I stay close by or I surround him with pillows. I guess that's it for now!

Fellow Bloggers

Does anyone know if there is a way to copy blogs to cd? I was just realizing I have been way better at writing about the boys and marking their milestones on this blog rather than their baby books. Oooh, or it would be really cool to get the blog made into a book. Hmmm...I may be on to something :)

Happy Halloween

We had a lot of fun this Halloween! It started out the day before, we met up with Kate, Riley & Beckett and went trick-or-treating in downtown Bellingham (if you can believe it I forgot my camera, so no pictures!). Afterwards we went to Jeff & Andrea's church for "trunk-or-treating". It was great! If you haven't heard of that before, it's where a bunch of cars get together in a parking lot and decorate their trunks and hand out candy from there. It was perfect for Dawson since he just had to walk from car to car in a small parking lot rather than around neighborhoods up and down driveways and stairs.

When we got to the church there was games and music and then they let down this net full of balloons. This was Dawson's face when he saw all those balloons float to the ground. It was called "Monster Mash", once the balloons hit the ground all the kids had to stomp on them and pop every single balloon. Let's just say it got a little crazy and very loud in there but Dawson had a blast!

On Halloween night Lynn and Shane invited the gang over for dinner, treats and trick-or-treating. Here's a group shot of some of the kids that were there, from L to R: Riley, Dawson, Aiden, Owen, Luke, Mariah & Tyler.

Once we set out to trick-or-treat Grady, the dalmation decided he wasn't having it in the stroller and decided to keep me warm instead.

Lynn, Shane & Aiden were all pirates - they looked great!!

Tara, Jim & Tyler, the Harley Davidson biker dude.

Kate & Nate

Luke (the lion) & Beckett (the football) missed all the fun this year :)

The first thing I think when I look at this picture, besides how cute they look, is that they both have binkies in their mouths-lucky mama's!

Does it get any more adorable? Cousins Dawson & Aiden holding hands trick-or-treating.

This was Dawson's "thing" of the evening, when I wanted to take a picture of him and daddy, Chad crouched down to Dawson's level. So Dawson crouched down too, from then on he constantly crouched when he was ready to get his picture taken.

The Bennett gang!

My precious fireman

Note to self: Don't let Dawson choose costumes that require hats-he'll refuse to wear them.

Dawson laughing it up with Mooma & Poopa.

Leave it to Dawson, when we got back to Lynn & Shane's Dawson quickly discovered the cat door.

Dawson's 3rd Halloween was a blast!

Look at all that candy....mom & dad might have to help him out a little.

When Dawson saw Grady in this outfit he goes right up and touches the pumpkin and say's "pumpkin bum bum"