Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

Happy birthday!

This week Ty and I went out to West Sacramento to see my dad at work and deliver him some cookies for his birthday. Ty wore his CHP shirt proudly! As I was getting Ty out of the car and heard shots coming from the shooting range and screeching tires from the driving track I was reminded that in a few years Ty will probably LOVE going to the academy and seeing all the cars and the shooting range (something I have to get over: boys and their love of guns). In the meantime, I feel like quite the intruder whenever I go because I walk across the campus in civilian clothing with a baby strapped on my chest!

Two happy guys!

A Day of Family

One of the nice things about where we live is that we are less than 30 minutes away from Eliot's parents and my dad and Maria, an hour away from my grandparents, and about two hours away from any of our other California family (bay area, Chico, etc.). And while he is not yet aware of how special it is, Ty gets to see four of his six grandparents regularly, as well as his three great grandparents and lots of great aunts and uncles!

Today we went to my grandparents' house in Stockton and visited with them, as well as my aunt Frieda. Then we went to my great grandpa's house with my dad and Maria and visited for a bit. I hadn't seen my great grandpa in at least 10 years so it was a special day for all of us! From there we went to Lodi to see my uncle Pete and aunt Lynette. So today Ty saw his parents, grandparents, great aunts and uncle, great grandparents, and great great grandpa...pretty impressive!!

With Great Grandma Honey

All smiles!

Ty with Grandpa and Great Great Grandpa

Grandpa "Grover"

I grew up very close to my grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins, so family is very important to me! It's important to me to call my grandparents each week and enjoy the time we have with them. It's my hope that as he gets older Ty grows to appreciate and enjoy family. I was not ever close to my great grandfather, but I remember visiting him and how I have always called him "Grandpa Grover" (no idea why...his name is Gilbert). I loved our visit with him today and enjoyed hearing him talk about where he is from in the Philippines and his experiences when he came to the US in 1929 at the age of 14. He said he worked for "10 cents an hour, a dollar a day!" leveling the ground. He went into the Army in 1943 and served for two years in the Philippines. He spoke very clearly about his love of the New England Patriots and said he was waiting to watch them at 5pm :) He takes a blood pressure medication and a daily vitamin...my dad said he takes more medicine than that and Grandpa Grover's response was, "No bullsh*tting?" When we asked how you can live to be 97, he said, "Take that!" and pointed to his vitamin :)

5 Month Update

Another month has flown by! Ty is cute, smiley, squawky, squealy, drooly, squishy, roly poly, and just plain perfect! As usual, we can't seem to just get a plain old cute sitting smiley picture of him because the kid NEVER STOPS MOVING, but we got some cute smiles this month. Ty is growing like crazy and doing new things every day! He is thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis close to crawling....he army crawled on Friday (on his elbows and knees) and spends most of his time on the floor on all fours rocking back and forth. He just hasn't quite figured out the next step. When he wants to get to something he gets on all fours, rocks back and forth, and then throws his whole body forward. It's very dramatic! I maintain that the thing that will get him crawling is the cats. He wants them...BAD! They politely sit just out of his reach he goes bonkers trying to get to them. And sometimes he does get to them, but so far they've been pretty tolerant of him. We do a lot of "gentle, Ty....gentle" as we run his hand over their fur. He has pulled a few ears and done some arm flapping on them, but miraculously they haven't reacted! He continues to work hard on his teeth, but nothing has cut yet. You can see the top two through his gums, though. He doesn't seem to be in too much pain from teething, though some days he does seem to be very uncomfortable. He loves his frozen teething rings! He is experimenting with a sippy cup by playing with it and every now again sucking to get some pumped milk. He goes down around 7pm and is up at around 7am with nursing around 1am and 4am....but the 4am feeding usually happens in our bed and continues on and off until he wakes up in the morning. He usually takes three naps each day and continues to be an on-the-go kind of guy. He loves a change of scenery so we usually go to the park every day and supplement that with our play group, the Mommy and Me group through Kaiser, the books and babies program at the library, and the program for 0-6 month old babies at a local gymnastics place. Whew! Re-reading that sounds like we are crazy, but he loves it and if it keeps him from getting bored, than I love it, too! He sits on his own but needs grown up hands close by because after a few minutes he usually wobbles backwards. He's also really close to getting himself into the sit position on his own, but for now he needs help. He continues to do new things with his voice. He has a very sing-songy coo and loves to squeal and make loud noises. He cracks himself up in the car, but I can never tell what he's doing back there! We love watching him grow and can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! Enjoy some cute pictures :)

Gotta love that laugh!

Four Months!

When you're pregnant you encounter moms and grandmas and they say things like, "Enjoy it...it goes by so fast!" and, "It seems like just yesterday that my children were small....it goes by so fast!" Now, I know I've only been doing this whole parenting thing for 4 months, but it really does go by SO FAST! Mr. Ty Kelly hit the 4 month mark and I did our monthly routine of slapping a cute sticker on a white onesie and posing him for pictures. Well....everyone else seems to prop their kiddo in a rocker or in the corner of the crib and get a sweet, smiley shot. Not me! These days Ty is so intrigued by the camera I can hardly get him to smile! He wiggles all over, sucks on his onesie, pulls at the sticker, and generally makes photo ops nearly impossible! Of course, if I held the camera down and started talking to him and making faces he was smiling and giggling all over the place. But the second that camera is out, it's all done! So I've included all the outtakes because that's all we had :)

Ty at 4 months:

--weighs 15 lbs 12 oz.

--is 26.5 inches long (90th percentile!).

--rolls every which way he can.

--is totally peeved that he can't crawl! He gets his knees up under him and pushes, but just ends up on his belly. He lays on his tummy and "swims" by frog kicking his legs and flapping his arms. He is quickly frustrated by tummy time because if a toy is out of reach and he can't quite get it....watch out!

--reaches for everything: cats, cups, computers, iPods, forks taking food into Mommy's or Daddy's mouth...everything!

--enjoys mealtime as a social experience. He nurses, sits up and looks around, goes back to nursing, sits up and talks to me, nurses. He also likes to "talk" with his mouthful, which is pretty funny. 

--went from sleeping very soundly for about 12 hours each night with two feedings to sleeping 12 hours each night with 3-4 feedings and LOTS of thrashing around and maybe even waking up just to hang out and make sure nothing exciting is going on without him.

--is interested in everything going on around him. He almost seems to get bored these days. He likes a change of scenery and will let you know when he's ready for one!

--still loves his favorite position: standing in my lap bouncing himself up and down. He does this for nearly all of our time at the Jiu Jitsu school in the evening. 

--enjoys bathttime more and more each day. He flaps his arms and kicks his legs so that I can generally count on being nice and wet, too!

--loves hearing the sound of his own voice. He does low hums and coos, high pitched squeals and squawks, and just likes chatting in general. It's all still vowels for now (no consonant vowel combos....unless he is crying, when we'll sometimes hear a very clear, "Mmmmmuuuuuuhhhh!").

--is working on teeth! He drools allllllllll over and sucks on his hands and anything else he can get his hands on. Well, anything but a pacifier. He loves his frozen teethers and enjoys sucking on cold washcloths. 

--has found his feet....and discovered how yummy they are!

--is still a sweet, easygoing, happy guy :)

Interesting camera, Mom....

Tried to get his attention by wiggling my hand around....clearly too high!

Tried the crib...no go.

Tried the Boppy, too.

Tried tickling, but that led to hand holding....

....and hand chewing.

Cutie pie :)

Even tried to get Daddy in on it, which made him laugh but also made him more wiggly!

Colorado Photo Dump

I've added some photos from various cell phones and other people's cameras from the day we went to Mission: Wolf, which is about 20 miles away from my parents' house. It's a short distance but it's up in the mountains and you travel down windy dirt roads to get there so it takes about an hour. They rescue wolves who have either come from private owners that have unsuccessfully tried to raise them or zoos that have bred beyond their capacity. They do a lot of education all over the country about wolves, how they benefit the ecosystems they live in, and why they shouldn't be raised by humans. They have a small staff that live on the land and do their own farming, etc. There are 37 wolves and a handful of them are ambassador wolves, which means that they travel to local places for educational outreach, as well as an east coast tour and west coast tour. When my family came to Westcliffe back in 2001 we visited Mission:Wolf so I vaguely remembered the setup. But on this trip we got to do a wolf "encounter" that allowed Eliot, Rachel, and me to go into an enclosure with three of the ambassador wolves. Needless to say, it was pretty cool! Rachel and I confided afterwards that the whole point may have been lost on us because we were so enamored by the wolves that we sort of wanted one at home :) 

Ty didn't do the wolf encounter and slept through the entire tour.

When I was pregnant I said that as soon as Ty was born I was going to look at his ears and see if he got Eliot's signature  "flap." I looked on the day he was born and there was no flap. However, he has grown into having some flap! Luckily he wears them well and the flappy ears are cute on him :)

With Auntie before the tour.

Two sleepy guys

This is while we took turns using the bathroom. The whole setup is highly "sustainable" with little carbon footprint, so when we used the bathroom we were all surprised to see that you weren't allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet, but instead had to throw it in a trash can! So the bathroom didn't smell so hot, but apparently when you build your own bathroom in a remote part of the mountains, you do what you gotta do. 

Meeting a wolf named Abraham! Before you go in the enclosure they brief you on wolf manners. One of the things you do when the wolf approaches you is let them sniff your teeth, which, the guide informed us, is how they tell "where you've been." Abraham could smell that I had most recently been with almonds and he wasn't too impressed so our relationship was off to a good start!

Not the best picture but shows how close we were!