Florida

We're halfway through our trip to Florida and I thought I'd post a few pictures:

Saturday we got to see Susie's brother Dustin graduate from the University of Central Florida. Congrats Dustin! He's now off to work for Direct TV selling sports packages so if you're in that market let me know and I can get you in touch with him for a sweet deal.


After graduation we went back to the hotel (in Orlando) to do a little swimming. Cade has this hilarious looking, but highly effective swimsuit. It's like a little wrestling singlet with a foam pad sewn into the chest and back. He seems to really like water, and this thing helps him stay afloat.

I don't have any pictures of it, but I got to see another shuttle launch from my company's plant in Merritt Island. This one was during the day, but it was no less impressive. I wonder if seeing it ever gets old for the people around here. Doubtful. I have a long video of the launch, but it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped it would.

Last night Susie and I had a great dinner with one of my coworkers and his wife at this outstanding seafood place on Cape Canaveral. We got out to the coast a little early so we drove down toward Cocoa Beach and found a spot to take Cade out to the water for the first time. He was smiling the entire time. We think he really enjoyed the beach time. Here's a picture of his first time putting his toes in the sand.

And his first dip into the waves.

My good looking family.


Cade's turned into a pretty good ham when it comes to picture time. He's always cheesin' it up.

Our son is still a baby, but he's almost half as tall as his mom!

Here's a short video of him getting his pants a little wet (Dad's fault). He cracks a pretty good smile at the end of the video. That kid is so much fun.

This Friday we're actually going to be able to get together with my sister Amy and her husband Paul, who will be down in Ft. Lauderdale for a short vacation. We're looking forward to that and I'll be sure to post some pictures of the rest of the vacation.

A new trick

The very first piece of baby clothing we ever bought for Cade was documented here. Well, he's over 10 months old and it finally fits! It looks great with the doggie hat the Keatons bought him. Pictures below.

I read the post I linked above and it reminded me of my need to be a good example for Cade. He's only 10 months old, but you can tell he's already starting to try and repeat some of the words we say. He has "dada," "mama," and "ug" (dog) down pretty well. But you can tell he's working on other sounds that he hears. So wouldn't it be a bummer if I said something improper and the next thing I hear is my infant son repeating it? Tame the tongue daddy.

In that post I also noticed how naive I was. I feel like Susie and I have learned a LOT in the last year. Our breadth of life experiences continues to expand at breakneck speed. Despite the multitude of lessons constantly presenting themselves in new ways I still feel very unknowledgeable (is that a word?). Don't get me wrong, I know how to change a diaper now. Cade has even made sure we've graduated to phase two and three of diaper prowess with all his wiggling and crawling and his occasional curious hand that gets a good grip on some poo every once in a while. But having a kid makes you feel completely helpless sometimes. It goes back to the worry issue Jesus addresses in Matthew 6. Where is my focus?

Last Sunday I had a pretty intense aha moment. I play in the band at church, so I get to see the response time at the end of each service from a different angle than most of the people in the room. Last Sunday our pastor gave an invitation at the end of the service and as we played I noticed a kid who looked about 9 or 10 years old come walking down and talk with our youth pastor for a while. After talking for a while he pointed out his dad and his dad walked down and joined them. As the song ended the dad sat down with the kid in the front row and put his arm around him with a humongous smile on his face. That is exactly what I pray for regarding Cade every day. I long to experience that within our own family. I've prayed for that for quite a while now, but actually seeing it take place within another family right in front of me was a stark reminder to stay vigilant. Cade's life is pretty basic at this point, but I pray that at some point he comes to terms with his humanness and that reality leads him to a relationship with Jesus. There is no greater decision than that.

In other news, school is now over for the semester. I'm looking forward to no classes until June while Susie's summer classes start next week. Her classes are primarily online this summer though, so we look forward to a lot of time together at home.

This Saturday we are flying down to Orlando to see Susie's brother Dustin graduate from college. We're taking advantage of Allegiant Air's direct flight from Owensboro to Orlando. Kind of random, but very handy. It will be Cade's first time to the beach. We'll take lots of pictures and you can see them right here.

One last thing: Cade has learned a new skill. Every night we have a pretty standard routine: bath, bottle, and bed. Either Susie or I will take a bath with Cade and then the other will give him his bottle and put him down. It usually works pretty well. The other night I heard Susie say, "Matt, come in here and check THIS out." We have a basketball hoop that sticks to the side of the tub with suction cups. For a while now we've showed Cade how to put the ball in the hoop and then we'll give the ball to him. He usually chews on it or splashes it around. Not anymore. He slam dunked that ball like a pro over and over. We cheered and made a big deal about it each time he put it in the basket. He even tried to get sneaky. A couple times he'd put the ball over the rim so we'd cheer for him and then he'd pull it out at the last minute to try and trick us while giving us a big smile. The next night when I got in the bath with him I wanted to see if he remembered. Sure enough, I handed the ball to Cade and he dropped it right in. It's pretty cool seeing him put stuff together in his head.

Enough talking. Here are the pictures. Thanks for keeping up with us!

This is Why I Give Blood

I gave blood for the first time back in 2001 or 2002 shortly after my late Grandpa had surgery to remove his kidneys. As a result of that surgery he had to go to dialysis three times a week to have his blood filtered. There were many times when he needed someone else's blood given to him because of his condition. My dad's dad was an amazing person with a big heart, a big smile, and an outgoing personality. I miss him a lot. He was someone I looked up to in so many different ways and he was a joy to everyone he came in contact with. One thing that really makes me sad is the fact that Cade never got to meet him. Sometimes Cade will make an expression (usually a smile) and it will remind me of my Grandpa.

So I started giving blood as kind of a tribute to my Grandpa who was on dialysis. It was my little way of symbolically giving it to him even though we lived in different states. Even now that he is gone I still try to make it to the blood center every eight weeks.

I went a couple days ago and I was pretty overdue (last donation was in January). During the process of donating, I asked the nurse (phlebotomist I believe?) if they were in short supply of any particular type of blood. I am B+, which is a fairly rare type; according to this website, only 9.4% of the population has B+.

Since we had been out of town for a couple weeks we hadn't heard about the stabbing that had occured in Owensboro the week before. Stories here and here. Apparently this guy is type B+ and at the time of my donation the hospital was asking the blood bank to keep a large number of units of B+ on hot standby because they were still going through a lot of blood.

It had never hit home like that for me. As she took the bag of my blood out of the room I watched it and knew that there was a good chance it would be pumped into a person about my age that was fighting for survival. I haven't seen or heard any reports about him in the last couple days, so I don't know how he's doing. The reason it hit home is that every other time in the past I just knew it was going into this amorphous "bank" of blood that would eventually be used. I never had a face or name, which is what made it more real and a little more intense for me this time.

My resolve has strengthened to not be delinquent in the future. This experience also made me want to keep myself as healthy as possible in order to donate blood of the highest quality. And I hope that by reading this some of you will decide to go give blood. Just because a name or a face isn't available doesn't mean every drop isn't needed.

Pictures and Videos

I decided that we've not been using our camera enough lately. It takes pretty good videos, and we really don't have any excuse not to preserve as many images of our kid as possible. Don't get me wrong; we have hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures and short videos of Cade, but we've been lax lately. So here are some more pictures and videos for you out-of-town family and friends who don't get to see him on a regular basis.

In the last few days Cade's figured out how to spread what he's eating into his hair. It's pretty funny, as long as it's easy to clean up. I guess he just wants to make sure we remember to wash his hair every night. One food he's really taken to is avocados. Susie and I eat them a lot, so we pass Cade a few pieces to chew on pretty frequently. They're great: they're soft, easy to chew, have a great mellow flavor, and as a bonus they have wonderful oils for your hair. Last night Cade really seemed to latch onto that last advantage of an avocado. We went to take a couple bites of our dinner and looked over to see a baby covered with avocado and the rest of his meal (avocado makes a great paste as well). It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but he'd spread it all up in his hair, which is why it's standing up. You can tell he was enjoying it.

Another thing he does that cracks me up is constantly find a way to put his feet up. When he's eating he always has his feet up on the underside of his tray like he's just chillaxin'.

Today was a great day. Cade and Susie are going back up to Bloomington this week so Cade and I got a lot of daddy/son play time today. He's developing preferences between some of his toys, and he really likes these interconnecting blocks. I think I had some of these when I was a little kid. When you make it wiggle around like a snake he laughs uncontrollably.

He's still not crawling up on his hands and knees, but he's definitely moving around better and better all the time. He still does the armyman crawl along his belly. A game he's recently started playing with me is crawling away from me and checking to see if I'm coming after him. He'll crawl a few feet and then roll over on his back and look at me and grin. If I start asking him where he's going he starts squealing and crawling faster. Eventually he'll get somewhere where I need to get him and he'll just collapse in giggles when I catch up to him. (I like that game too.)

Check out the stylin' cargo shorts with frayed hems. He wasn't supposed to wear them this morning. Susie had him all dressed up in a smooth plaid pair of overalls. I think he didn't wanted to wear them because he dropped a bomb I would have been proud of in that little diaper. It may have been his biggest turd to date. It got everywhere. That diaper definitely required a 2-person crew to clean up (not counting Cade). So we tag teamed it and cleaned him, his clothes, the changing pad, and the exersaucer up.

Here's a video of Cade showing off his pipes. He loves to sing and if we break out the guitar, the piano, or even just play music from the iPod, he'll start singing along.

In this video Cade's doing his best Chewbacca impression. Very good if you ask me (but I'm his dad).

I guess it was about a month ago Cade started doing this little chuckle, or chortle, if you will. It's kind of a half cough, half laugh. The faces he makes while doing this reminds me of expressions Darrell Hammond might make in an SNL skit. He follows the chortle up with a dead on impression of a squeaky screen door and a reprise of the Chewy bit.

The grand finale video of this post (and possibly the funniest on this blog so far). You will soon be rewarded for reading all the way down to here. I hate to give away any of the plot line on this one, but listen closely at the 13 second mark. He's already figured out how to strategically place a cough. I'm so proud I'm tearing up.

As you can see in the pictures and videos, we've been incredibly blessed with a super happy baby. He is so much fun to be with and take care of. It's hard to believe he's over ten months old. It doesn't feel like that long since I was driving Susie to the hospital. Everyone I talk to tells me to savor every bit since it will continue to fly by. So that's what we're trying to do. Hopefully all of you enjoy looking in on us as Cade grows and grows. I've said it before, but thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers for us and Cade.

Good to be back

I've been in Norfolk, NE, since last Friday for work. The work was good, but I missed the family. I got back kind of late last night, but Cade was wide awake and was super excited to see me. He had a hard time calming down and going to sleep after that. It was cute and it made me feel good to see him get so excited. Here are a couple pictures of him this morning when I was feeding him breakfast. He was still excited. I love that little guy.

We think he's starting to associate Susie, Chili, and I with certain sounds and is able to identify us. He's definitely got "dada" and "mama" down. He calls for "mama" more when he's upset. I can calm him down most of the time, but "mama" has the touch all the time. We think he's started identifying Chili too, which is pretty cool. Cade absolutely adores Chili, and Chili's coming around with Cade since he's been identified as a food scrap source at meal times. Cade's learned to say the hard "g" sound (like in the word bug), so instead of "Chili" we've been trying to teach him to say "dog." He sometimes gets the word out, but then other times it just comes out as "ug." But lately when Chili walks up he'll say "ug" over and over. Pretty cute. It's amazing to watch his development.

On the move

These last couple weeks have been pretty busy ones, so I haven't been posting as much as I've wanted to. I've been traveling a little, and school is heading toward the stretch run for Susie and me, but that doesn't mean it's been calm on the Cade front.

A couple weeks back Susie's mom came in and stayed at the house with Cade and me while Susie went up to school for a week. It was fun to have Cade around during the week, and it was the longest break Susie had had since Cade was born. I know she appreciated the rest and time to herself that week and I appreciated the company, the help with Cade, and the great meals Velma made. I know we told you thanks back then, but here's a public thanks for all that help Vee Vee! You truly are appreciated.

Cade spent his first Easter kind of sick. Susie and Cade were up in Bloomington on Good Friday and she called me around 4am on Saturday morning to tell me he was just moaning and had thrown up all over himself and her. It's tough getting that call in the middle of the night and not being able to do anything about it from 3 hours away. In my new job I don't get called in the middle of the night anymore, so I've kind of lost the touch of being able to become instantly wide awake when the phone wakes me up, but it wasn't too tough when it was Susie and Cade.

It turns out he had an ear infection and a pretty rough sounding cough and chest cold. Susie ended up taking him to an urgent care clinic in Bloomington Saturday morning, and the doctor gave him some antibiotics. He's doing pretty well now; his cough is lingering a bit, and he's pretty clingy to Susie but you can tell he's feeling better. We're hoping tonight he'll sleep through the night because since he's been sick the nights have been rough.

Other than the sickness, you can't really compain much when you have a kid as fun and cheerful as Cade. He's still a big time swing-lover. A couple nights ago we took him and Chili on a walk down to the park. As we were getting nearer to the park Cade started getting kind of fussy. We weren't sure how fast we needed to get back, but once we got on the swing he forgot whatever was making him upset.Here are a couple pictures we took tonight of Cade eating some squash. He liked it so much he put it up in his hair and all over his face. These small pictures don't do the amount of squash that was on him any kind of justice.

He's not quite "crawling" yet, but he has the army crawl down pretty well. You definitely have to keep an eye on him because he's really learning how to move around. Here's a video of him trying to get Chili tonight. The video's kind of dark, but you get the idea. Never a dull moment!

Visits

Last weekend was a great one. My mom and dad came out to visit us for a few great days. But before I saw them I was out in South Carolina and Georgia for work. While in Savannah I was able to see my Granny (my mom's stepmother), who I hadn't seen in over ten years. It was great to get to see her and talk with her and spend time with her. She's getting along very well, and we had a good time eating at a little English pub and walking down on the river. The waitress didn't do a real good job of centering the picture - oh well....

That week Susie was able to visit family as well down in Baton Rouge. Some of her extended family hadn't met Cade yet so it was good for her to head down there and introduce him. The way our flights lined up, my parents actually flew into Nashville before we got back so they picked us up at the airport. We went by the Opry Mills Mall to eat lunch and Cade got to watch the fish in the Bass Pro Shop there. He had a ball seeing them swim around. It made us want to get an aquarium at home for him to watch. It's a little hard to see due to the reflection, but there is a pretty big fish at the glass looking right at Cade and I.

My mom and dad got a lot of holding and playing and feeding and cuddling time with Cade, but I don't think any amount of time is ever enough for grandparents. :)

Cade was all about trying to eat the zipper on my dad's jacket.

You think your baby is pretty cool? Well, can your baby shake a toy with his left hand while making a foam block levitate with his right hand? (Ok, I'm actually holding it.) And as you can see, Chili takes his guard dog duty very seriously. He likes the upstairs sun room because he can keep an eye on the entire backyard as well as most of the block. Squirrels and birds don't dare enter our yard for fear of the verbal scoldings Chili hands out. The only animal that doesn't seem to care much is the neighborhood possum. He mosey's around wherever he wants. One time Chili had him up a tree and it was hissing at him and baring his teeth pretty menacingly, but that's about it for him. It drives Chili bonkers if he's in our yard (and yes, I realize I sound like a hick talking about a neighborhood possum, but we really do live downtown, it's just a downtown in Kentucky).

It's a little tough to tell, but Cade's front four teeth are in pretty well and they're anything but straight. Honestly, they look more like tire treads. I guess as his mouth grows they'll have more room to spread out and straighten out (we hope). Susie needed braces, I didn't. Hopefully his teeth take after Daddy's.

Rolling around on the floor with Grandpa. Lots of fun!

If you want to hold Cade you'd better be aware of the risks involved. He loves to grab things, and I mean anything. If you aren't wearing a hat, glasses, necklace, earrings, or a hoodie with drawstrings, he'll go right for your ear, nose, lip, eyebrows, cheeks, throat, or chin. And you'd better hope he'd recently had his fingernails trimmed or he can definitely leave a scratch with his strong little grip. Sometimes if I'm talking to him he'll put his hand in my mouth and stare at my face like he's feeling what my tongue and lips are doing to make the different sounds.

He's always been super ticklish, and I test him a lot to make sure he retains that quality.

Cade and Grandpa share a deep love for Cheerios. Susie found this Cheerios container at a garage sale, and it's perfect for stashing them in the diaper bag for a quick snack on the go. And my dad is the most consistent Cheerios eater I've ever known. It's what he eats pretty much every morning. I think he's got a jealous eye on that Cheerios holder. Oh, and if you look at the end table in the background, you can see the trophy my dad won for winning his age group in the local 5k we ran in last weekend. Cade and I have large shoes to fill.

Cade up in the branches of a cherry tree down on Griffith. My parents have similar pictures of both my sister and I when we were this size. He was pretty tired during this photo shoot. That bear hoodie cracks me up. He looks great in it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Cade LOVES to swing. This time he's holding on and smiling in the breeze. Check out the post to see a picture from last July in the same swing. He sure has grown a lot.

As one of Susie's friends pointed out on her facebook page, he really looks like Mommy in this picture.

All that activity and fun with Nana and Grandpa sure tired Cade out.

I don't know how long it will be before he's crawling, but he's scooting himself along the floor on his stomach and pushing himself up onto all fours. It's just a matter of time before we have to learn to sprint while bent at the waist. He's also developed this super cute laugh. It sounds like a half cough, half laugh/chuckle. HIGH-larious. I think he's just learned to make that sound and likes to do it to make us laugh. Something else he's started doing is showing preference for certain things. If we give him a something and he's got his eye on something else he'll just shove the first thing off to the side.

He's eating great, he's been sleeping very well, and he's growing like a weed. We sure are blessed to have a super fun kid in our house. The other day "Wires" by Athlete (hear it here)came up on my iTunes shuffle and I hadn't heard that song in months. The last time I heard it I couldn't stop a couple tears from leaking out. But the lines that stood out to me this time were "I've seen Christmas lights reflect in your eyes," and "Looking at you now, you would never know." The first week with Cade was scary and stressful at times, but God is good and he provides health and growth.

Speaking of growth, Cade has his nine-month checkup on Monday so I'll update with measurements soon after. I think the oddsmakers in Vegas currently have the over/under for when he passes Susie's height set at 2 years 7 months, but I haven't checked lately. Lately he hasn't been growing as fast as he did the first few months, but in the last couple days it seems like he's eating more, so maybe he's starting another growth spurt. Thanks so much for all your prayers and thoughts. We appreciate them all. And thanks for checking in on us.