Happy January!

So I've not been good at posting lately. I promised more pictures of Cade from December and I've let school and work and busyness take up my time. I've got those pictures as well as some new Cade information for you today! We took Cade to the doctor yesterday and he's definitely grown. It's safe to say that he has caught up (and in some respects passed) other kids his age. He weighs 17 pounds, 12 ounces, which puts him slightly above the 50th percentile. His head is 17.5 inches around, which puts him in the 75th percentile and right on track to have his dad's large melon. And he is now 28 inches tall, which puts him in the 95th percentile! Tall and lean (and strikingly handsome, if you ask me). I told Susie he's a mere 4 inches away from being half her height. We're very proud of him and how well he's eating and growing.

We've decided that six months is definitely a very fun age. He's becoming more interactive every day. Just this morning I was saying "dadadadada," "mamamamama," "dogdogdogdogdog," and other things to him like we frequently do and he looked at me and said "doydoydoydoy." I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but it made me smile. He's always trying to communicate and speaks his mind quite frequently. Maybe it will be with real words soon? And he's not crawling yet but he can kind of inch around. He can't lift his head and upper body off the ground with his arms, but he'll push his rear end up in the air with his legs and then kind of slide forward like an inchworm. It's just a matter of time before we're chasing him around.

We would appreciate your prayers for our health in the coming week or so. Yesterday Cade had his latest round of immunizations. One of them was his last round of the Rotateq immunization. When Cade received the last round of the Rotateq he was sick and threw up for a couple days and then passed the rotavirus to Susie and then on to me. It was like death had fallen on our household. We couldn't keep anything down and had fevers. We wondered if it was a coincidence but when relaying our stories found that other families had experienced the same thing with their kids. I grudgingly allowed Cade to have his last round yesterday, but I honestly couldn't recommend this immunization to other families. The doctor told us not every insurance covers this immunization (our does), so not every kid gets it. If not every kid gets it, then it must not be a life or death thing. If I had it to do all over again I'd turn it down. So we're kind of bracing ourselves a little, washing our hands like maniacs, keeping the bottle of Lysol handy, and praying for good health.

Another thing the doctor told us was that we could start mixing solid foods into Cade's diet along with milk, cereal, and baby foods (sweet potatoes and carrots are his favorite) we've been feeding him. So when we went out to eat last night we gave him a couple little soft pieces of bread for him to work on. Susie was holding him and took her eyes of him for a second and he grabbed a piece of prime rib from her french dip sandwich and had plans for that as well. I grabbed it out of his hand; we were laughing pretty hard. Here's a picture of him eyeing Susie's sandwich.

He's also recently taken an interest in his feet. He loves hanging onto them and rocking around. It makes changing his diaper a little more challenging because his hands roam around south of the border while we're trying to clean him up. He spends half the day with his hands in his mouth and we don't want him recycling anything, so it takes a little more vigilance to watch his hands while changing him. That and the fact that he's so wiggly have moved us up the diaper changing/baby dressing difficulty scale a few notches.Last weekend was Susie's birthday, so her parents and her Aunt Fran came in. We had a great time with them. We went to Shogun, a hibachi-style Japanese restaurant, on Susie's birthday and Cade really seemed to enjoy the show (that shirt is definitely going in the too-small pile; it seems like he's growing out of everything!). Cade's been sleeping a lot better when he's at home. It's still a little bit of a challenge up in the apartment in Bloomington since Susie tries to be mindful of her neighbors. We think he's picked up on that and uses her courtesy as a way to get more snuggle time in bed at night. That makes for some very tired mornings at school. But he has been doing better at home and has even slept through the night a four or five times since the new year. Last night we tried a suggestion from the doctor. He told us that he's definitely big enough that nutritionally he doesn't need to get up and eat in the middle of the night, but it's probably just a habit for him now. He suggested putting him down when he's ready and then waking him up to feed him right before we go to bed. So Susie fed him around 11 and he slept until 7! Hopefully that isn't a one-night deal and he can start making it more routine. Sleep is good. :)

Well, here are some pictures of Cade and Susie's photo shoot in Colorado. There are too many good ones to put up here, but here are some of the best (and thanks Amy and Mom!). (The first picture is of him in a sleepsack. He sleeps a lot better in these and we're not sure why. Every night he's slept through the night he's been in one of these, so they are standard procedure now. It also makes it easy to do a midnight diaper change. He doesn't mind diaper changes during the day but he HATES getting changed at night. The sleepsacks just have one zipper up the front so it's easy to get it off him and quickly change him which is another big advantage. Inventor of the sleep sack, thank you.)