Happy Birthday, Dear Chadwick, Happy Birthday to You!

Happy birthday, Chadwick! Thirty-one years young and still going strong. I am so grateful that you were born in a time when we could find one another!

We had a mini celebration that evening (Steve and Nancy joined us for dessert) and will have one with the rest of the family this afternoon. He came down with a head cold on Wednesday so we decided to keep it low-key. My mom sent him a cookie bouquet at work and for dinner we ate lasagna with French bread! Yum. Pillsbury and I worked together to create a chocolate cake to accompany our ice cream. Complete with candles! He was kind enough not to blow them out and spread his cold germs in the process...

Morgan didn't like the ice cream I offered her to celebrate. Too cold.

Many of his family members called to wish him happy birthday. When his twin, Stephen, called my phone, I happily chatted with him for a moment before passing him to Chadwick. It didn't occur to me until later in their conversation that it was also Stephen's birthday as well. So happy belated birthday, Stephen!

Here's to many more!!

Morgan's Numbers

Time flies when you're having fun! Last Thursday, Morgan turned 6 months old. Hard to believe! This is a photo of a cross stitch my Nana made for the little lady at birth.

Here are some other numbers:
Dozens of smiles per day
15.8 pounds
25 1/4 inches long
3 feedings of cereal each day - oatmeal and rice
2 veggies - sweet potatoes and green beans
1 fruit - pears



This was Morgan when I went in to wake her from an afternoon nap several weeks ago. Total faceplant! She woke up happy and with lines on her face from the linens....




Our little garden is trying to grow. There's only about a month left in the growing season, so we'll see what, if anything, we reap. We have lots of green tomatoes, we've eaten 4 little green beans, there's 1 ear of corn starting to appear, and the beets and carrots are doing well. The peppers....are growing tall but not producing much. So we'll mix in more horse manure and try again next year!

Changes

In the last two weeks, Morgan has blossomed. She's confidently rolling all over the living room (depicted here, the first photo is where I laid her, the second is where I found her).









She loves her oatmeal and rice cereals, though she's not sure she's fond of sweet potatoes. She is starting to drink from a sippy cup and loves to hold the handles herself. Anything within grabbing distance is fair game. And in the last few days she's started sitting up on her own! She still turfs over backwards when she gets excited, but she's doing super well on the other three sides. Each of her stages amazes me, and I'm continuously surprised at how quickly she tries and then masters things.

Several weeks ago the three of us drove to Belgrade, MT (near Bozeman) to visit a vet school classmate who is working with his dad at a mixed animal practice there. On the way up we had dinner with a vet friend working in Dillon, MT. The weekend was one of fly fishing, and Nick and Chadwick did as much as they could! The fish weren't biting tons, but they had a good time getting out for a while. We went for a hike Sunday morning - boy am I out of shape! Luckily, Chadwick carried Morgan or I would have died.
She promptly fell asleep.

The animals are doing great, though I caught Darwin playing with a rock in his mouth the other night....we'll see where this leads us. Never a dull moment here!

Vet School "Family" Reunion

Over the weekend, we had the opportunity to travel to SW Idaho for a mini reunion with several of our classmates and their families. These people are most of the main crew Chadwick and I spent time with, both in and out of the classroom, for 4 years. How to describe this group? Wonderful friends, hard workers, devoted to family, strong testimony, upbeat, fun-loving....and the list goes on. I look up to each of these individuals more than they know!

Each family has had a new addition since graduation in 2008 and it was fun to meet the little girls. Yes, all of our families have girls, with another little lady on the way in September. Perhaps it was something in the vet school drinking fountains? Very few of our classmates in general had boy children.....

Here's to great friends! They make my world a better place.

She's Over!

Yesterday afternoon, Morgan rolled over for the first time from her back to her tummy! She's been rolling onto her sides for a while now, but this was a first! And she's been doing it all afternoon. The only problem is that when she gets tired of being face-down, she can't roll back. When you're almost 5 months and you want something, what do you do? Yep - holler. And if no one comes? Holler louder. =)

She's also been grabbing objects and bringing them to her mouth with great consistency and growing accuracy. It's so much fun to watch them grow! I swear she changes daily sometimes....

As an update from the last blog, the rock-eating dog is doing really well! He should be in for suture removal this week. Morgan has taken no more bottles easily, and we're holding off on cereal for a few weeks to give her tongue some time to mature.

Here's a video of my little Peanut rolling over! She's pretty proud of herself, not gonna lie.

Four Rocks, Two Bottles, and Oatmeal Cereal

Last week was quite eventful and full of numbers (just for you, Beth).

First, I started offering some oatmeal cereal to Morgan. I'm not sure how much of it is being swallowed - judging by the amount of cereal on her bib after our first experiment - but she seems to like it! She gets a kick out of sitting in her chair like a big girl. However, she does get distracted with the toys on the tray.....once she can sit up in her high chair, I'll switch her over. I was so excited about her first cereal that I set up the tri-pod and put the camera on that so I could feed her and take a picture at the same time. Nerd-much?

On Thursday at work I saw a patient, a 2-year-old Labradoodle with a great personality, for vomiting and not feeling well. His owner brought him in as soon as he started acting funny because he has a history of eating things he shouldn't - granddaughter's pink undies, socks, rocks, the basket muzzle his owner bought to prevent him from eating rocks....he had surgery 2 months ago to remove a sock and rock from his stomach. (Sounds a bit like Darwin, eh?) I had the techs take an x-ray to see what he had consumed, and he had eaten 4 rocks! His owner was devastated but elected to do surgery. My big dilemma - what to do with my little Morgan who still isn't drinking well from a bottle? Leave her with her grandparents? Send her out with Chadwick? Feed her at the hospital before surgery or show some tough love and let her and the bottle duke it out? I was quite stressed, but I am blessed with wonderful in-laws who were willing to keep her and offer her a bottle so I could proceed with surgery. And my baby girl took two bottles without fussing!! While she was drinking, I was sewing. I got home about 11 that night, fed her one last time, and we all went to bed. The dog was doing well Friday morning, I am happy to report.

Just for an experiment, I have inserted a video from my camera of Morgan eating her cereal. If it doesn't work, you won't see any more of these, but I have to try.

Living the Dream

Since the weather has turned warmer, we have started letting our cat, Cleo, outside in the backyard. Until this point, she has been an indoor-only feline. She has no claws on her front feet (it was either the claws or the cat that had to go; I was tired of her shredding my couch) but the ones on her back feet are intact. She was very cautious at first - she didn't like the feel of grass between her toes, she moved more slowly than an old woman, and she didn't stray far from the porch.

Now, she hollers at me in the afternoon to let her out where she roams all over the yard, snacks on blades of grass, pounces on low-flying insects, and has made it up two trees! In these photos, Cleo is in the low branches of the apple tree. She was extremely proud of herself for being such an accomplished outdoor cat!

The first tree she climbed was the pine tree - and not of her own will. She was out roaming when Darwin decided to play a game of tag. Cleo didn't stick around long enough to see if she was going to get eaten or tagged. She made it up 8 feet into the lowest branch on adreneline and back claws, where she remained until Chadwick scaled up the tree to rescue her. Needless to say, we don't let the two of them out in the yard together anymore.