Mom's Night Out

Tonight we went to LaCasita for supper with my Mom's Club. It's supposed to be mom's night out, but since Dan isn't home at 6pm, I just bring the kids. There was one other baby there too. They were very well behaved considering we were thee for 90 minutes. We were the first to leave, Dawson lost his patience and quickly let it be known to everyone in the place. But it was fun and everyone commented on how good he was being the whole time.

I spoke too soon about Tyler's reflux being better. He spit up all over him and the jumperoo last night. Though he was going pretty crazy in it and he'd eaten not long before that. I should've waited a while before putting him in it. But he usually doesn't go so crazy bouncing, he just sits there. He's discovering what it's really meant for! Here he is in the jumperoo. It's one of his favorite things.

The boys watching some Baby Einstein while I get stuff done. Tyler never used to like being on the floor at all but recently he's been tolerating it pretty well. Especially if there's a movie going or toys to look at. He's been taking interest in more stuff lately.

Dawson saw me with the camera and kissed Tyler. Camera clicked a bit late though. He's more interested in Tyler lately, and he's still pretty gentle with him. Yesterday I came in the room to see him leaning over Tyler, poking at his cheeks and Tyler was grinning at him. It was so cute!

Tyler laying on the floor. I think he looks more like Dawson in this pic.

Here's Tyler in the Bumbo seat. There's a thread on Tyler's message board about Bumbo pics. All those babies are so little, their legs are only about half the size of the leg holes! I about had to stuff him into it just to get a pic. His thighs are so big, he really doesn't fit it anymore. So I think this is the last of the Bumbo seat, unless he starts running sometime soon!

Dawson's WIC Appt & Tyler Update

Dawson got measured at WIC today. He was 29 pounds and 34 inches. They said his height is on a very steady line and his weight had a big jump this time. I think it's because he's been eating dairy since last time we were in, that makes a huge difference. He loves his yogurt!
I couldn't get him to hold still for a pic, but here he is on my lap.
Tyler is doing good. I haven't given him his Zantac in about 4 days now. I had cut back to just once a day and he was doing good. Then after a week or 2 I just started giving it to him if he started having problems. So hopefully this is the end of his reflux issues. They say it often goes away around 4-5 months.
He's really getting into his toys lately. He loves his jumperoo. He was going crazy in it last night. It's fun to see him get excited about doing stuff. He's been playing with his toy bar more lately too. He reaches for things a lot more and has a lot more control over his movements. He fell asleep in his exersaucer last night! Just had to get a pic.

New Carseat

Tyler was getting scrunched in his infant carrier. It was getting tight around the shoulders and his weight is getting up there too. I weighed him last night and was 18lbs. The carseat goes to 22 pounds and 26 inches. So I found a Graco SafeSeat on Craigslist. It goes to 30 pounds and 32 inches. It's a lot more roomy and gets bigger around the shoulders as baby grows. He used to cry when I put him in his seat. I thought he just didn't like being strapped in. The first time I put him in the new seat he was smiley the whole time! Despite it being bigger and longer, it doesn't take up any more room in my car than the old one. I thought for sure it would, the new base is a good 3 inches longer than the old one, but it sits on the base differently. The old one hung over the back of the base more than this one does.

Old seat

New seat

Dawson still fits the weight of the new seat but is 2 inches too tall. He fits comfortably, he just wasn't thrilled at being put in the carrier!

I got a free double stroller off Freecycle the other day. It was really old and the fabric was ripped up, it'd been in the garage for a while. But we needed a new axle and wheels for the double stroller I'd bought off Craigslist last summer, so I took it home and Dan used the good parts to fix this one. Dawson loves sitting in the back, it sits up higher than the front and it's big and comfy. We use this one for walks and stuff but I think it'll be better for crowds than my side by side one. So we'll take this one to the zoo and stuff like that I think.

Grad Party and my Grandma's House

Today was a busy day. We went to my cousin Jason's graduation open house. Dawson ate cake, pet their dog and played with some little cars. Tyler got passed around a bit so I got to focus on Dawson mainly.
After the open house I went to my Grandma's house. Dawson played upstairs and tossed balls, trucks and other things like all her pretty gift wrap down the stairs. We had some meatballs for supper, Dawson ate his McNuggets. Wouldn't even try the meatballs. We got there around 3:30 and left around 9. She said it was nice having someone to eat supper and watch tv with for a change.
We got home and Tyler choked on some spit, he was sucking on his hands a lot. He ended up throwing up all over the Jumperoo. That was a huge mess, I ended up giving him a bath. Then Dawson climbed in the tub with his clothes on, thankfully there wasn't a bunch of water in there since it was just Tyler's bath. Then he decided to smoosh his potato chips into his hair! By the end of the night I was very ready to put him to bed!
Dan looked at his sister's van and discovered it was just an axle shaft, not the transmission so he fixed that, got the air conditioner and my thing from Craigslist. I'll post about that tomorrow since I want to include pics. I also need to develop some pictures, I keep running out of room on my camera card! Here's Tyler ready to go today. He didn't like the sunglasses though, so we ended up just taking them with and not using them. They are so cute though!!!

Dr. Update and Silly Children

I went to the Dr. on Thursday. He pushed and poked and didn't find that I was sore to the touch anywhere. He said it could be a muscle but ordered an ultrasound done anyway. So he showed me some stretches to do to loosen up the muscle and see if it helps. The receptionist told me to head right over to the other clinic and to drink 32 ounces of water before the ultrasound. Well I'd just gone to the bathroom so I drank a bunch at the drinking fountain and hoped for the best.

Got there and waited for at least 15 minutes. I'd been gone 90 minutes and I was hoping the kids hadn't woken up yet! Dan was home but they don't do well without Mommy in the morning. I got in there and it was really weird being in there for something other than pregnancy! I about had to remind myself that there's nothing to get excited about. Turns out I didn't have enough in my bladder, but no surprise there. So she had me empty what was in there and come back for an internal ultrasound. That was no fun. It's like a long stick with a camera built in. She kept moving it back and forth and feeling my insides moving around was making me nauseous! I did get out of there without puking so I was relieved. She said I'd hear from my nurse in 2-3 days.

The nurse called me this morning and told me that everything looked normal, so it's probably a muscle. So I guess I'll just keep stretching and hope for the best.

Dan is gone this weekend again. He left late Friday evening and is coming home Saturday evening. He has someone coming to look at his truck. Hopefully he'll get it sold. He's also helping his sister install an air conditioner and is picking up something for me that I found on Craigslist. More on that after he gets home I hope!

Dawson likes to do the things Tyler does. Like sitting in the Bumbo. He's also climbed into the exersaucer, likes being in his crib, chewing on pacifiers, playing with the baby toys.
Getting out of the baby stuff is usually the biggest issue!
Tyler has been a lot more vocal lately. He coos and plays with his voice. He even giggles some, it's really cute. He loves being in his exersaucer. He's learning how to turn around in it and he loves being up and able to see everything that's going on.
Also, Tyler is the best sleeper ever! I really couldn't ask for a better sleeper. I feed him, put him on his tummy in his crib, cover him up, turn on his crib music and lights toy and he lays there until he falls asleep. I almost always put him to bed while he's still awake and I rarely ever hear a peep out of him! Even last night, I changed him and he was crying a lot. I decided to try to put him to bed anyway and he quieted right down and fell asleep. He sleeps 8-10 hours too! Dawson wakes up before he does, but then Dawson goes to bed before Tyler also, so they both get about 8-10 hours of sleep. I think it's well deserved after fighting with Dawson for 18 months to do the that! Hopefully it will continue.

Having Flashbacks

I just had to share. Here's some pics of Dawson when he was about 6 months old.
Here's Tyler in the same outfit at 3 1/2 months old! You can definitely tell they are related too!

Family Update

Dan has been working on his truck. He had someone stop by his parent's house and ask to buy it, so he went down and worked on it last weekend. He's going back this weekend too. He has a lot to do and not enough time to do it all!

I went to the dentist on Tuesday for some fillings. Not fun, but at least it's over. I go in on the 25th to have my wisdom teeth removed. They are putting me under for that, so I won't be able to nurse Tyler for 24 hours. My mom and sister are coming to help with the kids since they said I'll need someone with me for 7 hours afterward. Not looking forward to that!
I've also had pain in my lower abdominal area. I thought it was from too much exercise, but it's getting worse now. I called the nurse the other day and she said to make an appointment to come in. I go in Thursday at 9:50am. I've been pretty much just sitting around the last few days, it gets bothered when I'm up and around too much. It also hurts when I'm sitting, so there's really no pattern to it. I hope they figure it out and it ends up to be nothing major.

Dawson is loving the nicer weather and playing outside. He's allergic to bug bites, so we give him Benadryl when he gets hives. I hate to keep him locked up in the house, he really enjoys being outside. He's getting big into playing with cars now. He drives them all over the floor, couch, people, anywhere he can think of. His latest is driving them across my keyboard, which drives me nuts when I'm trying to type! I weighed him last week and he was 31 pounds! He definitely went through a growth spurt in the last few weeks. Here's him eating an apple. He's becoming quite independent. Doesn't want anything cut up for him!Tyler is doing good. He's up to 19 pounds now! He's been finding his voice the last couple days. Cooing and making cute noises. He's not much for cuddling, he'd much rather be in his exersaucer or jumperoo where he can observe and be upright. He doesn't like tummy time or being on the floor at all. He's not able to see as much so he gets mad. Dawson does really good with walking around him when he's on the floor though. He's been sleeping great! I can change his diaper and put him to bed awake and he'll fall asleep. He falls asleep on his tummy with his musical crib toy on. He sleeps for about 8-10 hours. Sometimes he'll sleep for 8 hours, nurse and sleep for a couple more hours. It's been really nice!

Tyler asleep in the Bjorn after we were outside. He's getting a bit heavy to carry in there!

Tyler in his Jumperoo.

It's been really cold this past week, especially in the mornings. The apartment shut off the boilers and won't turn them back on, so I turned on the shower and that got the place warm. Dawson had fun drawing on the patio window!

Tyler in our bed. He was sleeping between us, staying warm.

The boys in the stroller. It was Tyler's first time sitting in the actual stroller rather than in his carseat on the stroller. Dawson was having a hard time being patient though, he just wanted to go play!

Weekend Vacation / iVillage Get Together

This weekend was so much fun! We've been planning it since winter and have been looking forward to it all year. The board I'm a community leader on, which has kids all born around the same time as Dawson, gets together every summer. At least the midwest moms do. Last year we did Mall of America and the MN Zoo. This year it was Madison, WI. I suggested that so we could meet Megan and Jennie, who live near Chicago and aren't able to come all the way to MN. So we had 6 moms able to go in the end, which was about half of who wanted to go but still a good turnout.

Thursday evening I got everything packed and ready to go. It's usually Dawson's quiet time, but since I was doing something, he decided he was gonna take the opportunity to mess things up. First he just jumped on the bed and took things out of the bags as I was putting them in.Then he decided to unroll an entire double roll of toilet paper and get it wet so we had to throw it all out

The drive to Madison went pretty good. Tyler slept most of the way, Dawson was awake for at least half of it. We stopped to feed Tyler and let Dawson play at rest stops twice and got gas and fed Tyler there once. We got there in 7 hours, we left at about 6:15am and got there around 1pm. We met Sarah for lunch at McDonalds. She lives near there. Then we headed to the Children's Museum. Here's the view of the State Capitol building as we headed into town.
Here's Dawson and Declan at the Children's Museum. We were the only ones able to make it on friday. It was lots of fun though. They have some really interesting stuff there. Wish we had one closer to us! This was a boat they played in. They also had a car, some musical stuff, sandbox, too much to mention. It was really neat.
Here's our hotel room. We had to get a 2 bed room since we had over 3 people. I guess they're strict about that, even for infants. Turned out to be a good thing though and it was only a few dollars more. Tyler slept on the 2nd bed, he doesn't roll yet (only did once a while back) and Dawson slept in the playpen that Sarah borrowed us so we didn't have to pack up ours and bring it. Thank goodness for that because we had no extra room at all!
On Saturday morning we went to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. That place is HUGE and very pretty. They had streams, waterfalls and lots of different trees, plants and flowers. We saw someone getting married there that morning, that was neat. They have sections, like the Rose garden, Tai garden, and a bunch more. We walked fairly quickly through the place since we had limited time (1 hour) and we barely made it through the whole place in that hour!
This was in the Tai garden. It's a royal structure from Tailand, made with real gold leaf. We weren't supposed to touch it, the oils on our hands can ruin the gold. We could walk in and around it though. Was cool to see all the detail that goes into it.
We went from the gardens straight to the zoo. Tyler made us late by pooping a ton and needing a complete outfit change in the gardens parking lot. Thankfully we weren't the only late people! The zoo was a free zoo, so it was pretty small but still lots of fun. We saw monkeys, seals, camels, buffalo, penquins, giraffes and many other animals. Dawson seemed to like the seals the best. They also had a play area with slides and climbing stuff, so we stopped there. Dawson loved it, he went down the same slide over and over. Was nice to wear him out, he was getting pretty wound up after being in the stroller almost all day. There was also a merry-go-round with zoo animals. Since he likes spinning things, including himself, I thought he might like it. So I sat him on a camel that just stayed in place. He wasn't so sure about sitting there, he was bored until the ride started, then he was looking around. I think he liked it, hard to tell, he doesn't always get smiley when he likes something. He didn't cling to me or want to get off, so I'm assuming he didn't mind it!
After the zoo we regrouped at the hotel and all went to Old Country Buffet. Amber went straight there and had them set up a table. They were very accomodating. We had 7 highchairs and a baby carseat sling thing. That was cool, didn't know they had those. The carseat just sits in it. I always thought they just sat on the highchairs! Dawson just picked at his food but he had no problems once I brought the dessert plate! He wasn't sure where to start, so he tried to put 2 cookies in his mouth at the same time. I finally convinced him they would be there once he's done with the first one. For having 7 over-tired toddlers and a baby, the restaurant went really well! We had no melt-downs or loud embarrassing incidents. I can barely say that for when we just go out with our 2 kids! Tyler slept, and once he woke up, Jen took him so I could eat and he got passed around to her older kids. It was nice, makes me wish I had some of those!

After we went outside the restaurant we were going to go seperate ways from there so we decided to stop for some group pictures. I'm impressed, 6 moms, 7 kids and we are all smiling and nobody is crying!! If that isn't sucess, I don't know what is!

In this pic is Jennie, Owen & baby girl due in July from Illinois, Amber & Katelinn from Iowa, Jen & Reese from MN, Megan & Henry from Illinois, Sarah & Declan from Wisconsin, and me, Dawson & Tyler from MN.
We were trying to get a pic of them all standing by eachother. Wasn't working out so well!
Then someone suggested they sit in the rocks and play. Worked great! They played in the rocks for quite a while and we got a bunch of good pics.
After the restaraunt we went swimming. No pics of that though, we all pretty much said we'd put on a suit if nobody takes pics! After swimming we watched tv and a movie. Here's Dan and Tyler hanging out on the bed while I gave Dawson a snack.
Sunday morning we all decided to go to the gardens. It was originally scheduled for Saturday morning, which was why we went, but nobody could make it then. We didn't mind going again, it was free and it was nice to spend more time with everyone and to be able to walk through it slower this time. Dawson did more walking. He's so good around the other kids. He sees them walking nice and listening instead of running off and he did the same! I was impressed. Here he is walking with Reese.
Here's Jen's middle son, Ethan holding Tyler while we rested by some fountains.
Jen took a family pic for us. Nice to have one! We each took turns taking a family pic so everyone got one. Since Tyler was sleeping, we decided to just take the pic with the stroller. Didn't want to bother him.
The drive home took a lot longer, but we weren't in as much of a hurry. We left at noon and got home at 11:30pm! We made more stops since both boys were awake for more of the trip. We were also way more tired, so we switched off every hour. That helped a lot. We got to MN around 6pm and had to go to Dan's sister's place to change the belt in her van. We needed a tool so we went and bought that. Ended up spending almost 2 hours there. Afterwards we went out to eat. By this point the boys were so crabby. Tyler just cried and cried, didn't even want to eat for a while there. Dawson didn't want to eat anything either, he just wanted to run around. It was pretty stressful. They finally fell asleep on the final 2 hour stretch home, and so did I! I was glad that Dan was awake enough to finish the trip. I woke up as we were pulling onto our road! I've never been so happy to be home! It was a lot of fun but it gets to be a long stressful weekend with small children! They are already talking about next summer, thinking about Chicago. It makes me cringe just thinking about it!!

Cloth Diapers

A couple weeks ago I decided to try cloth diapers. So I bought some prefolds, got them all washed and "hung" to dry on my indoor clothesline aka my playard gate opened into a zigzag.
It's going great with Tyler, but Dawson kept getting bad rashes every time he wore one. So I stopped putting them on Dawson and just had Tyler wear them. I still did disposables while out and about. Here's a pic of Dawson wearing one. This is the only colored plastic pant I have, the rest are white. These paid for themselves within a week! It's nice knowing that everytime I use one, I'm saving 20 cents. That adds up pretty fast!
In search of a good deal on some more prefolds and mostly plastic pants since the store ones are just awful these days (they crinkle like grocery bags!!), I posted a want-ad on Craigslist for cloth diapers and supplies. I got a reply from a lady trying to get rid of her BumGenius diapers. Those are the "new age", top of the line diapers. They have velcro tabs just like a disposable and they are one size fits all. The legs and body of the diaper are adjustable by snaps. So I asked her how much she wanted for them and she said these were barely used at all and she only wanted less than half what they are new! I've never seen them that cheap, and I've looked around for them at a lot of used diaper websites.
So I told her I'd take them, all but the pink. I just can't put my boys in pink! I picked them up today, they are as nice as she said they are, they look brand new! Not a stain in any of them. I have a couple blue and orange like you see in the pics, and also some lighter orange, medium green, light green, light blue, yellow and white. They have microfiber inserts that you put inside the diapers, so the pee goes through the diaper, onto the insert and keeps baby pretty dry. Dawson isn't bothered at all! I felt the diaper and it felt almost dry, but the insert was soaked! I'm impressed. :)
I'm gonna try to keep doing the prefolds with Tyler since I only have 18 of these. I'm gonna use these for Dawson at home and both of them while we're out and about. So hopefully I won't have to buy any more diapers. I have twice as many inserts, so it's not a big deal I'm hoping these don't take too long to dry. if those don't dry really fast. I think the diapers will dry pretty quick though. I'm handwashing to save on the cost of laundry. It's $3 per load here, which makes it a big hassle and still would cost me a lot of $$ for diapers. I do wash all the poop diapers in the machine though. I do them quick by hand so they don't stain, then put them in the laundry. Here's some pics.

Hard to believe that's the same size diaper!