Christmas

Wow!  Zach's first Christmas!  We took our first roadtrip with Zach and headed down to San Diego for the holidays.  We stopped in LA for a few nights and visited with friends.  Zach celebrated his 6 month birthday at Karen's house, complete with cake (sporting 1/2 a candle)!  

In San Diego we had a great time.  We made it out to the zoo, the wild animal park, a museum or two...  Zach really seemed interested in the animals, furthering my personal agenda to make him a veterinarian!  

Christmas itself was a lot of fun.  I think Zach's presents outnumbered everyone elses, but he got so much fun and useful stuff - clothes, books, a highchair, wood block set.  We have put the highchair to good use (pics to follow shortly).

Our drive back home was an adventure.  We decided to go through the Mojave desert instead of driving back through LA.  It took 11 hours and Zach fussed/cried for about half of it.  The car was absolutely stuffed, so there was no way to get to the backseat to comfort him.  I leaned over the seat several times to put a binky in his mouth...  We ended up stopped 5 times to either feed him or calm him down.  Poor guy!  I think 5 hours in the car is his limit right now.

It was great to celebrate his first Christmas and we are looking forward to the years to come, when he anticipates Christmas morning with as much excitement as we did at his age!

6 Month Video

Thanksgiving Part 2

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving!

Wow, I am really far behind in updating our blog.  As I type this, Zach is grabbing my fingers and making it very challenging to type!  Needless to say, the past few months have brought Zach many changes as he grows bigger every day!  Going back in time a bit, here are photos from our trip to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.  (Thanks to Google's release of Picasa for Mac, I can now upload pics much more easily!  I'd like to think my constant complaining to Tom about this had anything to do with the release, but I know that isn't the case!)

I admit I was fairly nervous about flying with Zach.  He is not mobile yet, which I think made the trip much easier than it could have been.  We used miles and were able to get three seats.  When we first sat down we had Zach in his carrier between the two of us, but the flight attendant informed us he had to be next to the window.  He barely even noticed taking off or landing on either of the flights heading out to Wisconsin.  I made sure we had a bottle and pacifier handy, but he didn't make a noise.  It felt like Tom and I had gotten to a point where we had everything figured out for trips - exactly what to pack, what to put in our carry-on, etc.  Now that we had Zach, I felt like I was preparing for battle and was grossly unprepared.  I had stuff crammed into every nook and cranny of our carry-ons and hardly knew where anything was.  We did make use of the "family" restrooms at the airports, which was very convenient for us to get Zach changed and get ourselves recombobulated.

Thanksgiving itself was a lot of fun.  Tom's whole family was there and we had a week to hang out with everyone.  Jon and Julie had a lot of baby stuff there for us to borrow, which meant we didn't have to drag all sorts of stuff with us, which was great.  Tom, Greg and Sonja worked on renovating one of the rooms in the house as a birthday present for Kay.  I wish I had thought to take before/after pictures.  We had a fantastic Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings!  It was Zach's first Thanksgiving and we had a great time!

 
 
 

Picture Post

5 Months

Yesterday was Zach's 5 month birthday! Amazing how quickly these months have flown by. Zach is really starting to get personable. He smiles so much now and has eeked out a giggle or two. He rolled over for the first time on 11/8.

His nursing strike has continued now for 3 weeks and we are starting to supplement with formula. My goal had been to breastfeed for at least 6 months. We almost made it! He is still nursing, but he is now getting 2-3 bottles a day of formula. It has cut down on his frustration and my frustration, too!  We've also started feeding Zach rice cereal, although "feed" is a stretch.  We put it in his mouth, he looks at us like we are torturing him, and he spits it back out.  It is a messy and amusing process so far.

We are headed to Wisconsin for a week for Thanksgiving. It is rather chilly there right now and it will be Zach's first time seeing snow!

Here is his 5 month video:

Some more firsts!

Zach has had a few new firsts this week. On Saturday he rolled over back to front for the first time. (At least, the first time we've seen. Not sure if he "rolled" when he fell off the couch...) Today he giggled for the first time!!! Video perhaps to follow...