Baby Pictures

The picture above is how we announced on Facebook that Dan was going to be a big brother. He normally loves reading books, but when we took this picture it was later at night and he was getting ready for bed. The look on his face was perfect though! (Side note: that is my Dad's - Dan's grandpa's - sweater. I'm pretty sure my Grandma knitted that, but I could easily be wrong on that. She did know how to knit so I have that going for me!)

When we were expecting Dan, we were much better at getting those early weeks documented by taking belly pictures. With this pregnancy, I decided that I wanted to compare the two with one another. We didn't take our first belly picture until a few weeks ago when I was 18 weeks pregnant.

My pregnancy with Dan is on the left and the current pregnancy is on the right. It does seem like I'm carrying a little different. Not sure if it's a baby gender thing (myth of carrying girls high and boys low), me knowing how to use my core muscles more efficiently, or if there's something else at play. I will say that this pregnancy is different than Dan's in regards to aches and pains. With the two pregnancies being so close (and my body knowing how to BE pregnant), the relaxin hormone is in full force already. This is making my hips ache and creating challenges when teaching and practicing yoga. Thankfully I am very in tune with my body and how to properly practice yoga that the hip aches are tolerable.

Just a few days ago we went and got my mid-pregnancy ultrasound to check the fetal anatomy. I'm happy to report that baby looks healthy! Yes, I said baby. We did get the gender information, but it is sealed in an envelope. We do NOT yet know if we are having a boy or a girl. We do plan on finding out with a gender reveal party with family. I have a guess as to whether Dan will have a baby brother or sister, and I have a 50% chance I'm right!

Profile

Feet

Arm

One big difference between the two ultrasounds (the one with Dan and this one) is that we actually got good 3D pictures! With Dan, he was snuggled into my placenta when we tried we only got one good side of his face. When one side looked good, the other was hidden by the placenta. When we moved further down and got past the placenta, the other side then looked like a skeleton. Definitely not cute. It is so neat how technology has advanced so we can not only check to see that everything is developing normally with baby, the umbilical cord, and placenta, but now we can even get 3-dimentional pictures as you would with a normal camera!

I think they're a keeper :)

I really enjoy being pregnant. I enjoyed Dan's pregnancy and I'm enjoying this one, too - achy hips and all! Coming into the second trimester makes it even more fun as baby is getting bigger and you can start feeling them move. With Dan, I felt him move for the first time around 15 weeks. This baby, my first flutter was around 12 weeks! Yes, crazy! At this point I'm feeling movement almost daily, especially when I take a few moments and focus on baby.

Elsewhere with the family, Jason's basketball team came in 2nd place in a tournament last week! This was the first year he was in the winners bracket. I'm so proud of him for coming in 2nd place! He will grumble about it as the kids weren't playing the best they had been, but this is the first time in 6 years that he made it to the winners bracket. That is something to be proud of.

Dan is still doing his thing. I'm really hoping that he'll start getting words out. He's babbling quite a lot, and does know some sign language, but he is getting frustrated that he can't communicate well enough what he wants without me having to guess what he wants. He has been so physical - crawling at 6 months, walking at 10 months - that the language has been a little slow to develop. Nothing to really worry about, just would be nice if it would come in soon so we both can reduce our frustration in our communication!

That's all for now. I hope everyone is doing well! Take care.

New Year, New Opportunities

Yes, it's been a long time since I last posted. I apologize for that. Things have been rather crazy over in the Pollard household. We've seen Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day come and go. So let's recap...

November:

November was really stressful for me professionally. At work this was the second year that they were mandated ALL employees regardless of patient contact get the flu shot. I had been working HARD since September to get an exemption. I was granted one for the 2013-2014 season by way of me nursing Dan. He was under the age of 6 months throughout the flu season and there are zero flu vaccines that are approved for under the age of 6 months.

So what? Dan wasn't getting the vaccine.

Well...indirectly he would be. We are told as mothers that everything we ingest can make its way into breast milk. So giving the vaccine to me would be giving it to Dan. Am I being paranoid? Possibly, but for good cause. While I don't want Dan to get sick, I also don't want to expose him to unnecessary toxins that can have long-term negative effects.

I figured this year it would be even easier to get an exemption, specifically a medical exemption. Why? Well, in September we found out that Dan is going to be a big brother!

Wait - doesn't the medical community recommend all pregnant women, regardless of trimester, get the flu shot? Yes they do. I don't agree with the recommendation. One: there have been no studies showing the safety or efficacy of the flu vaccine in pregnant mothers. Two: there have been no studies determining whether the vaccine is carcinogenic or mutagenic. That means they don't know if the vaccines can cause cancer or mutations in the DNA. So knowing that, why would I inject myself with a vaccine that may or may not work, that may or may not be safe or effective, that has the possibility to cause cancer and mutations when I am nurturing a growing fetus? Especially during the first two trimesters when cells are dividing rapidly and differentiating into all the tissues of the human body.

I submitted three medical exemptions. The first exemption was based on allergy to the ingredients of the vaccines and a history of autoimmune diseases in the family (my mom and two of her sisters all have autoimmune diseases). This is important to note because there is a condition being recognized in the medical community called ASIA: Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvents. Adjuvents are the "inactive" ingredients in vaccines that help induce an immune reaction to the antigens present in the vaccine. This was denied because I don't have documented allergies to the adjuvents.

Once that was denied I went with the pregnancy exemption. I had a family physician sign the exemption form. This was denied because even though he was an MD (which was a requirement for the medical exemption) he was not an OB/GYN. I asked if my midwife could write a letter. This request was approved. So I submitted my midwife's letter and that was denied. The reason I was given was because she was not the "right kind" of midwife. The medical director wanted a certified nurse midwife and not a certified professional midwife to sign off on it. It didn't matter that all midwives need to be state-licensed in order to practice in the state of Wisconsin.

At this point I put together a religious exemption form. This was also denied. No reason given. I can't tell you without going through all my emails how many people I contacted and asked to get the reason. All I got was "it is not policy to give out the reason why religious exemptions are denied." Can we say lawsuit? I couldn't even get a copy of the policy that states that they don't give out reasons why a religious exemption was denied.

Needless to say, I contacted the EEOC office in Milwaukee and filed a complaint. I also contacted HR and filed a complaint with them as well. HR found there was no discrimination that happened. The EEOC found otherwise and has filed a charge against my former employer. My last day of work was the day before Thanksgiving. My official last day was December 1st. The communication with all the people involved was abysmal. My supervisor even went down to HR and directly complained to the guy who looked into my discrimination complaint over the lack of communication. The only reason my supervisor knew what was going on was because I was keeping him informed of the progress. It's pretty sad when the supervisor doesn't know what's going on except from their employee.

We went to see my side of the family in Minnesota for Thanksgiving. That weekend away visiting family was very much needed. We went to see my sister's new store that she's managing. If you want to check it out (please go and check it out!) she is working at The Dance District at the Mall of America. While at the Mall of America, we also checked out the Sea Life Aquarium and took Dan on the Merry-go-Round. Before we left, the entire family stopped by Rachel's house to help put up her Christmas decorations. Dan did pretty well not throwing anything around. He did want to play with her cat, but the cat isn't a fan of Jason nor myself. We smell like the dogs.

Funny story while decorating Rachel's place. My Mom had found some battery operated candles at a local thrift store. We pulled them out of their packaging, put in fresh batteries, and turned them on. They had a setting for a steady light and one for a flickering light. Neither one really worked very well. I don't remember who figured it out, but it was a good 20 minutes before we realized that there was a light sensor on the base. When the sensor was covered (thought it was dark out) the candles worked exactly how they were supposed to! Yeah, we all felt a little dumb after that.

November was also the first weekend of my prenatal yoga teacher training. I had gotten into yoga in the first place because I knew when I got pregnant for the first time I wanted to take prenatal yoga. During the months that we were trying I fell in love with yoga and became a certified yoga instructor. The last months of my teacher training Jason and I got pregnant with Dan. I had expressed interest to complete a prenatal teacher training and thankfully other yoga instructors also were interested. There is a total of three training weekends that I must complete (with the required homework) followed by 30 hours of prenatal yoga classes and I can then officially upgrade my qualifications to include prenatal yoga through the yoga alliance.

December

December brought my first days of being a stay at home mom. I did have a couple of interviews the first week of December. The first one was with Bankers Life and Casualty. This was a sales position selling life and health insurance. The second was with American Publishing and Marketing. This was also a sales position that catered to small businesses selling various advertizing opportunities. For a while I was pursuing the sales position at Bankers Life and started working on the classwork needed to take the state licensing exams. Over the next few weeks I decided that the position just wasn't going to fit with what I was hoping for in a new job. The position required three days of traveling. Granted, it was all local which wasn't terrible. However, I already hated my drive to and from Milwaukee and I really don't want a job that requires travel even one day per week. Another reason why I decided not to pursue the position is that in less than 6 months I'll be delivering our second child and taking at least 2 months off to recover and adjust to life as a family of 4. That would mean less than 6 months on the job, 2 months off, then trying to get back on the saddle in a field that I'm not familiar or very interested in.

Early December I also took a Reiki level I training with one of my dear friends. I had been having Reiki sessions with her leading up to and throughout my pregnancy with Dan. It was through one of those early sessions that I learned that our first pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage that we were pregnant for those few short days with a little girl. She was being held by my Dad, which most of you know passed away back in 2008 after a car accident. Both were smiling and very happy. Once my homework is done, I can offer Reiki to close family and friends.

Between November and the end of December, Dan cut 6 new teeth. By the end of December he now has the four lower center teeth, the four upper center teeth, and two upper molars. There were quite a few nights when the teeth were cutting where Dan could not get comfortable. Thankfully during the day he was mostly fine. Looking back at the early pictures it's so strange to go back and forth between no teeth and teeth.

Jason had to work Christmas Day and the day after Christmas this year. So our plan was to visit my family the weekend before and visit Jason's family the weekend after. We ended up in Minnesota for almost a week, which was really nice. We didn't see all the family, but it was nice to get together and enjoy the holiday (and not worry about how many cookies I was eating!). I think we went to the Mall of America at least 3 times while we were there. One of the times was just to mall walk with our good friend Jac. She had flown in from Oregon to spend Christmas with her family in Eau Claire. We said we would pick her up from the airport so we would spend some time with her. It had been a while since we last saw her so we weren't upset when the flight came in at 6am.

Christmas Day I made supper for Jason, his brother Joe, Dan, and myself. Last holiday meal I made I ended up in the ER as I had plunged a steak knife through my left index finger while shutting our busted silverware drawer. I can proudly say that there were no injuries this year!

Unfortunately we didn't end up visiting Jason's side of the family in Indiana like we had planned. Jason came down with a nasty cold on top of some of his family being gone over the same weekend. It was a good thing we stayed home. We were able to get stuff done around the house plus take care of our sniffles. I ended up catching Jason's cold a few days after he came down with it. Dan never caught the cold, but he did end up with a 36 hour fever New Years Day. Poor kid was so miserable. He didn't eat much, but thankfully took in plenty of fluids. He's still nursing a few times a day, but that weekend when he had his fever I really wanted to stop. Major mama guilt going on as nursing not only comforts him, but it also was giving him plenty of the nutrients he needed while his appetite was suppressed. After his fever broke he really only nurses to sleep. He's been fighting nap time lately and that's the one way I can get him to fall asleep. Otherwise he has water in his sippy cup. I'm still working on getting him to drink the milk I pumped for him while I was working. So far it's a battle I'm losing. Next trick is to get smoothies made using the milk.

January- so far

The first weeks of January have been uneventful and a little crazy at the same time. Basketball season has started and I'm teaching yoga 2 nights a week. By the end of the month I'll be adding a third day of teaching yoga with a prenatal yoga class! I'm really excited about that. I have one I'm teaching now, but I've been having trouble getting mamas to class. So far there has been work conflicts, a miscarriage, and a baby who wants to come out too soon. I have a few more ideas to try getting mamas coming in before I scrap that class.

The sitter that we had while I was working doesn't want to do evening hours so finding an evening sitter has been challenging. I did get some numbers from friends of ours so hopefully one of them will work out. Dan has also cut 2 more molars on his bottom jaw since Christmas. That makes a total of 12 teeth! He's also been eating like crazy. One of these days he is not going to fit into his 12-18 months clothes and will be solidly 18 month. Oh, and his feet. Yeah, he's wearing 2T-3T size socks. Crazy! So even though nap time has been frustrating most days, he is a lot of fun. He gives hugs, kisses (open mouth to your nose), waves "bye" when leaving the room, HAS to have the gate shut at the bottom of the stairs, throws his head back when he thinks something is REALLY funny, loves the theme song for "The Big Bang Theory," and loves books and throwing balls. Oh, he also likes chasing Trooper with some of his toys. He gets a big laugh when Trooper (or Khail) run away from him.

I have my second weekend training for prenatal yoga coming up this weekend. One of the things I had for homework was to watch the documentary The Business of Being Born. It was a pretty decent documentary. Nothing that I didn't already know through my own research while I was pregnant with Dan. I did appreciate the OB/GYNs that agreed to be interviewed for the film. I felt sad that they were so dependent on technology that even the thought of not having continuous fetal monitoring was scary (even though the studies conclude that continuous fetal monitoring does not improve outcome). Anyway, it was a good documentary to get anyone started into researching current maternity care practices in the US. When it comes to evidence-based practices, I've seen numbers as high as 90% showing that most hospital policies are NOT evidence-based. It's rather sad especially considering how poor the US mortality and morbidity rates are for women and babies in the first year. They do touch on those stats in the documentary.

Next Tuesday we go in for our ultrasound! I've had two prenatal appointments already with my midwife and everything is looking and sounding great so far! I'm using the same midwife that I had when I was pregnant with Dan. If all goes well I'm planning for another home birth. Less than a week and we will know whether Dan will have a little brother or sister to terrorize! Any guesses? You have a 50% chance of getting it right!

Anyway, I guess that's plenty to catch up on for now. Sorry for the lack of pictures. We have been taking them, but just not as many as I would rather be present with Dan and Jason while making memories. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the snow!

Life With a 1-Year Old...

...is crazy! Dan has been a lot of fun these past several weeks since my last post. He has been working on some sign language with the sitter and can now sign "more," "all done," "milk," and "food." Although "food" isn't extremely clear at all times, we get the picture. Also, "more" is more like clapping than the actual "more" sign. It works. We know what he's saying. We're working on "please" and "thank you" right now. I still can't say enough good things about our sitter. She has been doing a fantastic job with Dan. She brings him and her son to the park when the days are nice, does art projects to keep them busy, plays with the neighbor kids when they're home. We are definitely lucky to have found her.

So, what have we been up to since Dan turned one. Let's see, the day of his birthday Dan came down with Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. No, not the same thing deer get. This is one of those childhood rashes like chickenpox or measles. Typical symptoms start with a fever followed by a few days without eating followed by the spots/blisters that center around your hands, feet, and mouth (hence the name). Dan caught it from the sitters son, who caught it from a neighbor kid who had just gotten over it. While the sitters son expressed your typical symptoms - fever, little appetite, blisters - Dan only developed the blisters. There are several reasons why I think that was the case, but the two big ones are that he is still breast feeding and that he hasn't been vaccinated. Strong immune system that hasn't been compromised due to vaccine ingredients plus the extra boost from breast milk makes for mild diseases. If you would like to know more why I haven't vaccinated Dan, please comment below.

We had Dan's 1-year pictures taken just over a week after his birthday. Here are some of my favorites.

The look he has in the last one is priceless! If you are a fan of the show "Friends" you can almost hear him saying "How you doin'" just like Joey.

That was September. In October we celebrated the end of football season. Jason's team won a few games this year which is a vast improvement over last year. I don't think the varsity or JV teams won a single game last year. Congrats to Jason, the rest of the coaching staff, and the players for a successful year!

Towards the end of October we also spent the day at a local pumpkin farm. They had a bunch of activities for the kids and you got to go pick your own pumpkin. It was a pretty nice set up. A little pricy ($10 per adult), but it looks like Dan had fun.

Playing in the corn pile

Sliding down the big slide with Mama

Time to pick out a pumpkin!

With fall also comes leaves. Now for those who have seen our house, you know how big our trees are, and how many we have. For those who haven't visited (and why haven't you?!?!?!), we have 5 very mature silver maple trees and one mature Norway maple tree. That equals a LOT of leaves. Here's pic of our first fall at the house. The pile of leaves spanned the entire front of our property.

Fall 2009

That is me standing in the street! And yes, we can rake our leaves into the street as the city picks them up for us. SO thankful for that! I can't imagine how many bags we would need to use to pack all that up! This year Dan decided to help out. That's Daddy's empty can he's lugging around with him. Working like a true 'Sconie already!

Fall 2014

 The local fire department had their open house mid-October. This was Dan's second trip to a fire station. Here's a few pics from that.

I think the coolest thing that happened during October was I got to attend a birth as a doula! This mama was pregnant with #2 and wanted a home birth like she had hoped for with her first before the doctor played the "dead baby" card despite her healthy pregnancy and baby. After a lot of hard work getting into a steady labor, she delivered a healthy baby girl in the early morning hours of October 22nd. It was extra special not only because it was my first birth, but October 22nd is also the anniversary of my Dad's death. To witness new life coming into the world the same day my Dad left was incredible.

Of course, with October we can't forget about Halloween! Jason really wanted Dan to go as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I really liked the idea, but never found a way to get the costume without spending a fortune. I probably could have made one, but the time just wasn't there. So instead he went as a minion. All we had to do was buy the hat. As you can see in the picture, he didn't really like the hat. So we went around trick-or-treating in just the overalls and shirt. The second picture is from a house down the block from us. I thought it was pretty cool that they set up the skeletons on their bike!

Otherwise, we are working on getting Trooper's allergies under control. We went ahead and did the skin test to see what he's allergic to. Turns out a lot of trees, some grasses, and dust mites. Oh, he also came out positive for human dander. I'm going to try and see if we can't manage the symptoms using essential oils and other supplements before we do the injection treatments. Not only are the injections expensive, they are life-long. The first month alone you need to inject them every other day, and you won't start seeing results for up to 3 months! Yeah, not fun.

Anyway, I hope one of these days to get pictures of our basement put up. All the big stuff is done, just need to get some pictures hung on the walls and find a desk and rug for the office. The bathroom is still under construction, but with all that we've been doing, plus me now having a regular yoga class, time goes by much faster than what we would like.

I hope to get back into regular posting here as the holidays are upon us. I hope fall has been treating you well!

A Fault in Modernity

The last few years I have been using traditional medicine to help maintain my health and wellness. I've used chiropractic care, acupuncture, herbs, flowers, and even Reiki. Through my own experiences and research, I have grown to respect the power of our own ability to heal. Why is it that honoring that ability and using traditional medicine a negative thing when modern medicine is not needed? Don't get me wrong, modern medicine has done wonders. Between improvements in sanitation and housing, modern medicine has helped bring people back from the brink of death. That being said, I believe that we have become over reliant on modern medicine. We have lost the belief that our bodies can survive without these chemicals. We have lost the belief that our bodies can heal themselves from most pathogens with little help.

There is so little known about the immune system and how it works. We have a general idea - a really good general idea - as to how it recognizes foreign invaders, tags them for destruction, and heals the point of insult. For years we have been cleaning and sanitizing and placing ourselves into protective bubbles to prevent us from getting sick. Slowly this idea is starting to shift away from this hyper-cleanliness. Scientists are coming to realize that we do need to eat dirt once in a while.

So why do I write about this? I do so because I believe that we are on the edge of a cliff. There is a growing number of bacteria that are becoming resistant to our current antibiotics. Not just one antibiotic, but multiple! We have the heaviest vaccine schedule of any developed country, and yet we are also the sickest. Heck, the bacterium responsible for pertussis (B. pertussis) has mutated to "survive" against the TDaP/DTaP vaccine! There is also an alarming increase of chronic diseases over the last 20 years. Megan, the author of LivingWhole.org, wrote a rather fantastic post about some of these trends.  You can read the post HERE. To save time, here is the list of chronic diseases we are dealing with today:

1 in 6 kids has neurodevelopment disabilities,
1 in 68 has autism (1 in 42 boys), 1 in 10 has ADD or ADHD, 1 in 10 has asthma, 
 1 in 450 has diabetes,
20% of children have eczema 1 in 5 has allergies 1 in 3 children are obese.  Almost 2,000 children die from cancer (the leading cause of death by disease in children) each year, and childhood disabilities have jumped 16% since the year 2001. Coincidence?

Each link is for a government website, so these numbers are recognized by our government. I'll say it again, modern medicine has done wonders to improve the health of the human race. But how far is too far? How much chemical processing can our bodies handle before we step off that cliff from health to chronic disease? 

Modern medicine isn't the only piece of the puzzle. We have to look at our air quality, our soil quality, our food quality. We are the only industrialized nation that does not require GMO labeling. We are also one of the few industrialized nations that allow for certain chemicals in our food products when there are banned in European countries. Same manufacturer, two different products, because in one country it's banned while in the US, it's A-OK. Oh, but we couldn't ban those chemicals or require labeling. It would cost too much. I ask you this, if they're already doing it for Europe, where is the extra cost to make the same label in the US?



A large portion of our crops are Roundup Ready. This allows for farmers to spray this chemical that is laced with hormone disruptors all over the food that we eat. That in and of itself isn't too alarming, but the problem is that the weeds are becoming resistant. That leads to more herbicides being sprayed on our food. I wish I had taken a picture, but this weekend I was making apple sauce from some Sweet Tango apples that I bought from the grocery store a few days earlier. Like with all my produce, I soak them in a sink full of lukewarm water with ~1 cup of vinegar for roughly 15 minutes (less for berries) to help remove any lingering pesticides and herbicides. Much to my surprise, this film developed on the skin of the apples. The only thing that I could do to get rid of this film was scrape my nail over the skin. I'm not sure whether this was pesticide/herbicide residue or some funky wax to make the apples "look more appealing," the bottom line was that there was crap on the outside of my apples that shouldn't be there. We are eating this junk and it's effecting our health.

How our animals are treated is a whole other matter. They eat these crops that are genetically modified and fed medicines that increase their mass faster than conventional farming. The GMO crops have negative effects on these animals that aren't widely mentioned in main stream media. It would be "detrimental to the industry" to change their practice in order to produce healthier animals for healthier byproducts. There are more studies that the one I linked, but it gives you an idea.

Then we get to the grocery store, only buy fresh produce and meat thinking we're doing good to ourselves and our bodies, and we still see these obesity levels among other chronic health ailments. CNN posted yet another opinion article on how childhood obesity should have us concerned. Thankfully the author mentions the endocrine disruptors in our food stuffs and environment that play a role. 

The health of our soil determines the nutritional component of our plants, which then determines the nutritional and overall health of ourselves and the animals and animal by-products that we also eat. Add to that the chemicals used on our plants, the medicines used in our livestock and for ourselves, the materials we use to process and store our food stuff, and the air and water quality - we have a LOT of factors that go into the deteriorating health of our families.


So what can we do about it?

• Write to your representatives: local, state, and national.  
• Buy local and organic whenever possible - I know money is a huge factor. 
• Try making your own heath care products. There are lots of recipes out there for toothpaste, shampoo, face wash, hand soap, etc.
• Use as little plastic as you can.
• Try using traditional home remedies before reaching for that antibiotic or pain medication.
• Walk or ride your bike instead of driving as often as you can.
• Support local community gardens and conservation organizations
• Research, research, and research some more to figure out how to do better for you, your family, and your community.

We all want to leave the world just a little bit better for our children. No, these things are not easy. Yes, you could say I'm being a little paranoid. When you look at the numbers and how they're growing, shouldn't we all be a little bit concerned?

To your health and mine. Enjoy this first day of fall :)

Happy Birthday!

We officially have a 1-year old! Where has the time gone? Well, when you're busy learning how to hold your head, roll, sit, crawl, stand, and walk, time certainly flies by! So here are the stats:

Dan currently weighs in at 25.8 pounds and is 31 inches long. He can wave, clap his hands, and raises his hands up because he is "So big!"

I'm 12 months old!

Along with turning a year old, he also caught his first "big" bug - hand foot and mouth disease. Our sitter had a neighbor watch her son the previous Saturday. The neighbor's daughter had just gotten over her case of HFM that she got from daycare. Well, the virus was still in the house so our sitters son caught it, who then shared it with Dan. Isn't that nice of him, sharing at such a young age!

Thankfully, HFM is a pretty harmless virus. You can read more about it HERE if you like. I'm also thankful that Dan hasn't developed sores inside his mouth. Our sitters son didn't eat for almost 2 entire days for that reason. However, because Dan has an active infection, we couldn't go to a birthday party for my friend's daughter "L" who also just turned 1. She was born 2 days after Dan was. It has been fun watching the two of them grown and develop at the same time! It is also crazy how big the "normal" range is with infants. Dan is towards the head of the curve while "L" is towards the middle/back of the curve with certain milestones. For example, Dan started walking at 10 months and one week. That same week, "L" started crawling. All normal!

Dan over the last 12 months

We are just about done with the basement remodel. Just a few more paint touch ups, some hardware on the closet doors, hanging pictures, then moving everything back into place. My Mom and Jeff will be coming down this weekend so maybe we can tackle some of the to-do list. Our downstairs bathroom is mudded and ready for paint. Tile is mostly picked out, as are the fixtures. Anyone want to come watch an adorable 1 year old so Mom and Dad can finish the remodel? Anyone? By the time you come he should be healthy again!

Oh well, you will just need to wait a little bit longer to see the after pictures. Take care, stay healthy, stay warm!

2 Weddings, 2 State Fairs, and a Party

Whew! What happened to August?! For us, it was 2 weddings, 2 state fairs, and a birthday party! So yeah, I suppose when you're that busy an entire month can go by pretty quickly. Warning - there are lots of pictures in his post!

First off is the WI state fair. Wisconsin has their state fair at the beginning of August. We headed off after work one evening and took in some of the animals (half of the barns were in the process of switching livestock so we only saw a couple barns), a draft horse competition, enjoyed some food, and checked out some of the vendor stalls. Dan was really interested in the animals, but couldn't take his eyes off all the people. It was pretty busy, but not as crazy as the MN state fair.

We went to the Minnesota state fair the last Saturday of the month. Again, we took in animal barns (the miracle of life barn is my favorite!), several art buildings, the education building, the dairy building (for a strawberry rhubarb sundae - yum!), a parade, and the pet building. Of course, the food is always what people ask about. I ate a bison kabob (yum!), chocolate milk, strawberry rhubarb sundae (yum!), and shared a red velvet funnel cake (yum!). Dan again did excellent at the fair, and even get in an almost 2 hour nap while we walked around. By the end of the day, walking around the fair was challenging to say the least. I come to find out that Saturday was an all-time record for a single-day attendance - 252,092 people! I bet the actual number was even higher considering kids under a certain age are free.

SOME of the people at the fair.

Dan not having the pig ear hat.

Checking out the tractor with Grandma.

Walking the fair with Daddy.

Having fun!

Sitting with Daddy and Grandma.

The first wedding of the month was for my (second) cousin on my Dad's side down in Kansas. We don't get to see them too often so I made it a point to make it to her wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and the reception site was adorable! They had converted an old barn into a reception/conference space. I loved the character! Dan had a blast dancing to the music. At one point just as we were about to leave, a Michael Jackson song came on. He wanted to get down in order to climb the stairs back to the reception room so he could dance. He even did a little dancing while on his way up the stairs! It was adorable!

 

Here comes the bride!

Sweet moment between Lauren and Bob

They're married!

Father/daughter dance.

Me, our cousin Tom, and my sister.

Lauren and Rachel.

The second wedding was for my cousin on my Mom's side of the family. Again, Dan had a blast dancing. He even made a little friend! I don't know what he liked better, dancing to the music or the photo booth. Once we took him in there, he kept on wanting to go back in! Needless to say, we couldn't put him down without him running off to the dance floor or to the photo booth.

 

Photobooth fun

Dan and his new friend.

Family picture :)

Lastly, we celebrated Dan's 1st birthday a couple weeks early with my side of the family. It was a really nice, small gathering at Jeff's place for brunch. We even had mimosas! What? Don't you have mimosas at your 1 year old's birthday party? Clearly you don't know how to celebrate! Dan is very loved by all his relatives and got some wonderful gifts: books, clothes, a star night light, a super fun sprinkler, a lego police man, and some college money - which we figure will buy half a book when he is old enough to get into college! He had a blast eating his cake :) A dip in the sink and he was all clean.

Opening presents.

We love books!

Mmm...cake!

All done!

Time to clean up.

Also during the month of August, we visited the Kansas City Zoo and had a private tour of the fire station that Jeff worked at. Jeff retired from the fire department after 29 years (and one month!) of service on Sept 1st. Thank you for all those years of dedicated service to the city of Brooklyn Park!

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time, stay well!

All the traveling makes for one tired kid!