Superhero Cousins

At the farm this past weekend, Eben (8 months) and his cousin, Logan (9 months), were both wearing superhero t-shirts.  They are kind of starting to play...well they steal toys away from each other, try to gouge each other's eyes out, and pull the socks off of the other one and eat them.  This is all progress.

 

















And yes, that is Dane sleeping in the background.

Happy Easter!

My Dad's coworkers created this Easter wonderland for their children and relatives.  The Easter Bunny was coming to visit, but unfortunately Eben was going out of town to the farm during the visit, so we brought him to take pictures before the big event.  Happy Easter!

A Little Reader

Eben seems to love books.  He looks like such a big boy looking through (and eating) this book.

Eben chews on the rings of toys a lot, just holding them in his mouth while he plays with other toys.  We think it's pretty funny.

ALMOST Crawling

Eben has sure become a little mover in the past week.  He easily gets up on all fours, scoots (and sort of crawls) backwards, gets into the sitting position, and back onto all fours.  He could entertain himself for hours doing this over and over again...well maybe not hours, but quite a while as long as someone is near him watching him work on his new skills.  We will see how long it will take him to move forward instead.

These new skills make the struggle of nap time a bit more interesting.  Before Eben would just lay there, talking, whining a little, and rolling around until sleepiness defeated his little eyes.  Now though, as he fights it, I constantly find him sitting up, playing with the bumpers that were finally put up in the crib, often rubbing his face in them because he is so tired, but just doesn't want to succumb.  Because of this, it took one hour for E to finally fall asleep today...and certainly not on his own. 




Eben's new mobility has certainly been so fun for him.  He beams with happiness as he moves around the room, ripping magazines apart, getting stuck between chairs and tables, and eating internet cords...

Home Away From Our Forever Home

Dane and I went to Ann Arbor (AA) this past weekend, which will be our new home for a few years.  I have been dreading the move...only because we will be leaving family and friends.  Since visiting AA, I am definitely feeling quite a bit better.  AA has almost everything in it I would have ever asked for...the only thing it doesn't have is our family and friends, which will be the reason why this will only be a temporary move...until Dane finishes up his residency and we can come home to our forever home of Fargo.

So, to get me through all of this, I find comfort in the invention of Skype, the two short flights to travel, and that AA is a perfect city in so many different ways:

1. We bought a home there!  We weren't even planning on purchasing a place... we were going to rent for the 3-4 years we are there.  We believe that we were meant to own this place and we LOVE it.  I would post pics, but you never know if a weirdo is looking at my posts, so if you would like to see it, I can email you a link.  I will post inside pics once we move and paint!

2. Amazing restaurants (mostly locally owned!) and shopping.  They have an H&M and Forever 21 to fulfill my cheap cute clothes cravings.

3.  Hills!  I have never lived anywhere with hills, so this is great.

4. Water Park!  Oh I LOVE water parks and I am sure Eben will too.  This is a huge thing Fargo is lacking.

5. Downtown is beautiful.  The campus is stunning.  Some of the buildings at U of Michigan campus remind me of the architecture of London.

6. Trees everywhere.  It reminds me of beautiful Minnesota.

There are so many other little things I really liked about AA.  I think this will be okay.

Fargo is still my Forever Home though.

First Sick Scares :(

Eben has been incredibly fortunate to not really get sick until he was 7 months old (about a week and a half ago) - and this I am SO thankful for.  He had his first fever and it lasted for about 4 days.  He slept and ate poorly and we had to keep pumping him full of Motrin and Tylenol (which he HATES), but other than that, all went pretty well during his first sick spell.

The second spell hit hard this morning.  He had been having barky seal coughs for about 36 hours, but he was still playing, smiling, and laughing like his normal adorable self, so we didn't take him in.  We knew it was probably croup and know that he can probably fight it and get past it.  Well, at 2:30am this morning, he got up for a feeding and had troubles going back to sleep.  Since we share a room with the little guy and Dane has to work in the morning, I took him into the living room to sleep with me on a futon mattress (yes we currently have a futon mattress lying in the middle of our living room for our sick boy...great decorating idea...really).  I woke up to him breathing rapidly and loudly.  I woke him up and he instantly started gasping for air and began to panic.  No more playing, smiling and laughing Eben anymore...he was now scared Eben.  We rushed him to the ER and they got him into a room right away and gave him a nebulizer treatment, which worked wonders right away.  He also had to get steroids, Tylenol, and another nebulizer treatment.  He was MUCH better after this, playing and smiling a little, but he was still a little wheezy, which concerned the docs.  So, he was admitted to the Peds floor for about 4 hours for more steroids and monitoring.  He is feeling much better now...thank goodness.  It was scary for all of us. 

I realize life will bring many more moments like this and I dread every one of them.  Few things are worse for a parent than seeing your little one sick, wondering if they will be okay.

New Trick

For the past couple of weeks, Eben has been able to balance on all fours and he has started rocking!  No, he can't get up on all fours himself, but with a little help, he can stay up for minutes at a time.   It's just a matter of time until we have a mobile baby.  The thought of this is very exciting, but also terrifying as we hope that our baby proofing will be good enough! 

 

 

My Little Marshmallow

 

Silly Sleeper

For the past couple of months, Eben has developed the weirdest sleeping position.  He lays on his back, pulls his knees up to his chest, and holds onto his feet while he doses off.  Eventually he lets go of his feet, his arms fall to the crib mattress, but surprisingly his legs often don't drop down like you would think.  His legs stay up, sometimes for his entire nap or for hours during the night time.  We sure hope this is normal!!

 From this angle it looks like we have a newborn in the crib with a giant head!