One Month Old!

Time flies when you're having fun. . . and taking care of two kiddos under two. It's amazing to think Declan is officially one month old today (and it's amazing we've been parents of two kids for a month now and haven't totally screwed anything up yet). It has definitely been a crazy, busy, and extremely emotional last month with a lot of things we could do without, but we wouldn't trade it for the world since we have such a great family:

I'm not sure how tall Declan is now, but on Friday he weighed 6 lbs., 10 oz. Definitely a slow gain for the month and he's still a tiny peanut, but I have to remind myself it's not too bad considering how far we've come in the past month.
From this:

To this:

We still have a ways to go in some areas, but right now he's pretty much hitting all of his one-month milestones with flying colors except for the always waking up to eat on his own. He effectively poops, pees, follows people with his eyes, practices holding his head up, hates cooperating with diaper changes, and spits up with the best of them. He very rarely cries, but when he does, it's quite forceful. And he very patiently puts up with his older brother's antics--who adores him, by the way, but doesn't always understand that Declan is an actual person that we have to be careful with. But more on that another time.

In traditional fashion, Declan now has his own Build-A-Bear animal, appropriately named Squeaks for Declan's often squeaky noises.

Getting acquainted

Official one-month photo

In other news, Declan will be having heart surgery on Thursday, so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers (and poor Callum who will have his normal Mommy and Daddy time interrupted again for a few days). They have been monitoring his heart since just before he was born, and the surgery is for closing the valve that is open before birth and should close after birth, but his hasn't. He is having some other issues possibly related to this still being open, so they need to take care of it ASAP so we know if it's related to know how to work on the other problems. It's not an open-heart surgery and in the world of heart surgery is relatively minor, so we're hoping for a very positive outcome and a fast recovery!

The newest Green!

I began working on a lengthy post about our newest addition, but can't seem to find the time to finish it. So lest he feel slighted, I figured I should go ahead and add a quick post in hopes I'll get to a longer one later. So without further ado:

Declan Rupert
August 24, 2011
12:40 a.m.
6 lbs., 18.5 inches

It was a rough start for him with just over 8 days in the NICU, and we still have a lengthy list of doctors to visit (too bad they don't have something similar to a frequent-flyer program for that!) due to some potential problems, but we are thoroughly loving our time at home with him! Callum loves having him around and often likes to hold him and try to burp him. We just have to keep a close watch since he doesn't yet understand the meaning of being gentle.

4th of July!

We had a nice relaxing 4th of July attending my aunt and uncle's annual party. Callum was able to go swimming for the first time this summer. He wasn't too sure of the idea of swimming at first, I think because the water was still a bit cool, as you can see.


After a few minutes, though, he warmed up to it and loved it.


Hopefully we'll have a chance to swim a couple more times this summer.

Summer!

It's been a fun summer so far in the Green house. We've been busy the last few weeks trying to organize and slowly get ready for kiddo #2. Hopefully he/she doesn't come very early because we have a lot to do still to get ready, it seems. On the plus side, we have managed to move the furniture around and the new nursery is now painted, so it's definitely coming along.

Since I've been extra neglectful to the blog lately, I thought I would do a snapshot of Callum at 20 months, so here goes.
Loves:
-Trains--every time he hears one at home, we have to go outside to watch, which is great except the trains that go past are usually really long and slow.
-Books--he's always been a reader, and this has not changed as he's gotten older. He loves to stall for naps/nighttime by insisting on more books.
Sometimes he likes to find unusual places to read.

-Comics--he loves all books, but he especially loves the comics section of the newspaper. This is how I found him one morning as I was trying to clean up the kitchen.

-Talking--he will talk to anyone and everyone and is definitely not shy about people. He has an extensive vocabulary, which can sometimes be both a good and bad thing at the same time. It's great when he can say what he wants, but it's not so great when he says it over and over again.
-Eating--he especially loves bananas (he usually asks for one the first couple of minutes of waking up every morning), crackers, cheese, green beans, spinach, pasta, pizza, and beans. He's generally a great eater and we can't complain about most of his choices.
-Drawing--he loves to use pencils/pens/crayons, and whatever other writing utensils he can get his hands on. He likes to color, but he also likes when we write down letters and he points them out. He can recognize several of them, including A, C, F, G, O, S, T, W, X, Y, Z. Colors--now that's a different story.

Callum's pretty easygoing usually, so there are definitely a lot of loves on his list right now! I'll try to update again soon with the not-as-fun dislikes :).

18 months!

The 18-month mark has quickly come and gone, which is about how Callum moves these days, so it seems fitting. He had his check-up last week, and the doctor said he was perfect. We mostly agree, but we also know he has his share of faults. As soon as the doctor came in, he was showing her a giraffe puzzle piece and saying "giraffe." We laughed when she then asked if he was saying at least 10-20 words since he usually says that many words in a two minute time span. He also weighed 25 lbs., 12 oz. and is 31" long, so he's growing quite normally.

Getting a good picture with Hey Hey was almost impossible, but it is an accurate representation of Callum's current adventures.

We spent Easter with the Green family, and were able to get a few good pictures of the weekend and his Easter festivities at home.

In other news, we've slowly started preparing for Callum's little brother or sister to arrive at the end of August. We just got a double stroller that Callum loves to climb in and out of, and we may have finally settled on a paint color for the walls in kiddo #2's room. Everything has been going well with the pregnancy so far, and other than trying to survive the last few weeks of school and having extra allergy problems, I've been feeling well.

Here's our official sharing of the news:
Callum obviously approves of the new stroller:

I do it!

For the last couple of weeks, Callum's favorite phrase has been, "I do it!" He usually says it most often during mealtimes and teeth brushing, which is then followed by an ordeal of him trying to do it himself and being a disaster in the process. The last few days, he has taken to saying it about ten times in a row whenever he wants to do something himself.
He says a lot of other words and phrases, and knows most animal sounds. He also takes to repeating some of what we say. Some of the funnier ones he says are "How 'bout?" and when he matter-of-factly says, "Nope." He's also been on a kick of saying, "Hi" to everyone, especially Lola when he gets up from his nap.
Callum has been so active lately it's been hard to get good pictures of him. Hopefully I can get some good ones in the next few days. I tried over spring break this past week, but every time I get the camera out, he then has to go find his camera and pretend to take pictures. These are from a couple of weeks ago.
Bath time is still a favorite, and he loves sticking his head under flowing water.
I went to pick Callum up one day after school, and this is what he was wearing. It was quite a sight to see since the pants are actually pj pants and say sleep tight around the elastic.
I had the last week off with Callum for break, and it was nice just to hang out and relax. He definitely has changed my attitude of spring break, though. It used to be I could work on some house projects and do some good cleaning, but I'll take reading a lot of books and chasing him around the house over that any day. Although, he's been having one font tooth and two bottom molars coming through, so I could have used a bit more down time with naps, but he has still been pretty happy even with dealing with that. We also met Scott for lunch one day, so that was fun.
Hopefully more pictures will come soon!

It's finally warming up!

Now that the ice and snow is finally melting, it makes me a bit more energetic to get things accomplished instead of huddling on the couch to keep warm. It's been a pretty basic winter for us, and Callum is definitely keeping us busy. He's been walking steadily for over a month now--once he realized he could walk faster than he could crawl, he decided it was worthwhile. Now he tries to run lots of places, although that means his top half and bottom half don't always coordinate so he runs into things like he's a bit tipsy. Last weekend was his first big injury from it--he ran and tripped headfirst into the corner of the couch and had a nice knot on his head the rest of the day, but it was gone by the next day and now he just has a light bruise.
I realized I haven't updated since Christmas, so just for the sake of keeping this sort-of accurate, here are a few pictures. It already seems so long ago!
Here is Christmas at my parents. Callum was definitely overwhelmed after a few presents, but he was a trooper and made it through Chrsitmas there and at my grandparents' house.


Next up was Christmas at home. Callum was so pooped out from all of the other festivities, we waited a few days. Notice the large blank space in the background? That's where our Christmas tree was, but by the time we recovered enough to have yet another Christmas, we had already put the tree away. Callum didn't seem to care, though.

We used some Christmas money to get Callum his very own chair since he was always trying to sit in his travel high chair. So far he loves it, and he will entertain himself for ages by taking books to it and reading in it.
He's definitely gotten more fearless as he's become more mobile. Apparently, climbing into the bottom shelf was just too easy.
We're not doing a picture every month for an update, but here's his 15-month picture with Hey Hey. The Foot Book had to make it in the picture too. It was a favorite for quite a while, but has decreased on the popularity a bit in the last few days.