Kaden Travels to Washington DC

Kaden had his first overnight trip where we stayed in a hotel last weekend, and he had a blast! My boss helped get us a GREAT deal on a hotel (her husband works for the hotel chain) and we got to visit Washington DC. We have TONS of pictures, but I'll just post a handful here. I'll post again soon once I get some video of Kaden's newest trick- sticking out his tongue! Sometimes it gets caught on his lower lip and the lip comes out with the tongue, but it cracks me up! You would have thought I won the lottery by seeing how excited I got when was able to copy me and stick it out!

Faidley's Seafood in Lexington Market, Baltimore. Best crab cakes & Rob enjoyed the oysters from the raw bar.

And they even had a sale on Rob...I mean hard heads :-)

We've discovered that the very hungry caterpillar is very fun to chew on

We couldn't get to the Capitol Building because they are building the inaugeration site for President Obama!

Our little family on the steps of the Supreme Court

Our little family in front of the Capitol Building

In case you forgot where the Capitol Building is located, Rob has a sign for you.

That hat was TOO CUTE!


My boys with a view of the Washington Monument

Rob & Kaden took a break at the base of the monument...

and this is the view from where they were laying

Part of the huge World War II Memorial. My Great-Grandpa served in the Army in WWII.

They had these big signs congratulating President Obama and people from all over the world were leaving messages of hope- it was really cool!

Korean War Memorial- My Grandpa served as a Marine in the Korean War and the memorial was beautiful.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

In front of the White House right before the guards kicked everybody away from the fence. The President's dog was playing in the front yard and apparently somebody important was going to be in the area and they wanted people to leave immediately. I though 1 guard was going to arrest Rob when they split the crowd in half and Rob tried to walk towards the group headed in the same direction as our car! Thank goodness there was a nice guard who rode his bike over to us to tell us where we were allowed to go.

Finally, a new post! Something has been weird with my internet and I haven't been able to post pics, so this post is actually 2 weeks late. Rob's mother (Nainai) and sister (Gugu) came to visit from Taiwan and met Kaden for the first time. We had a very nice visit and Kaden loves his Nainai and Gugu! (Nainai and Gugu are not their names, but those are the Mandarin Chinese words for paternal grandma and paternal aunt). Gugu was very good at getting lots of great smiles out of Kaden :-) And of course we made a trip to New Jersey to visit Uncle Frank and into New York City.

Liberty Bell

Nainai

Gugu

At the Statue of Liberty...it was windy, so I was covering Kaden's head with the blanket.

Uncle Frank

He LOVED talking to his Auntie!

Aunt Maria

The whole gang at Outback Steakhouse...my first steak since having Kaden. It was so nice to eat meat that wasn't cooked to the point of being jerky again!

2 Months Old Already!

I can't belive it, but Kaden is already 2 months old! We celebrated the occasion by going to the doctor for his 2 month check up and 2 month shots. He is now 24 inches long and weighs 15.2 pounds- that's right, 15.2 pounds! He is in the 75th percentile for height and 97th percentile for weight. Taking his size and the amount of formula he is eating every day, the doctor recommended that we start incorporating cereal into his diet.

When we got home from the doctor, however, Kaden passed out and only woke up to eat until the next morning, when he woke up with a big poopy diaper and an even bigger grin on his face. I got a pic of him passed out, but I was not prepared with camera for grinning poopy Kaden in the morning!
















The next day we tried out the cereal. He did really well, too! The first time we put it in his mouth he just looked at us like he was trying to figure out what we were doing to him. After that he seemed to like the cereal. The only thing that made him mad was when I kept taking that darn spoon out of his mouth before he was done eating. How rude of me to take it away when his belly wasn't full yet!

So the meal went like this: Mama put the spoon with food in Kaden's mouth. Kaden got all the food off the spoon. Mama takes the spoon out to get more food. Kaden gets mad because he is not done eating yet. Mama puts the refilled spoon back in Kaden's mouth. Kaden is immediately happy and eats more food. Repeat until all the cereal is gone.

We had a visit from Kaden's grandma and aunt from Taiwan these past couple of weeks, so I will have lots of pics from their visit to put up soon!

Time for a Chat

This is my first time posting a video, so it's a nice short one. I was having such a nice chat with Kaden this morning that I had to capture some of it on camera. He is still figuring out how to use his voice, but he's getting better and better at it.

I just love those cheeks!!

5 Weeks Old!

The past month has been so busy, but I don't feel like I've really done anything! The only thing I did was start to run again and bought a pair of non-maternity jeans (exciting!) Kaden, on the other hand, has been very busy. Very busy eating!!! He is a BIG fan of food and is not picky about how he gets it. He will take any type of food in any type of bottle- as long as it goes in his belly he wants it. And when he decides he wants food, he wants it five seconds ago...he definitely has some of his Great-Grandpa Van's blood in him (or maybe he just hasn't learned patience yet).

He has been growing like a weed and no longer fits into newborn clothes. Thankfully he still fits into the 0-3 month clothes, but I think he is going to be in the 3-6 month size before he ever turns 3 months old. He has been practicing talking and for the past couple of weeks works really hard to make little noises. Last week, he smiled at me for the first time, too. When my Dad, his Grandpa, visited this past weekend Kaden smiled and talked to him a little bit. Then last night all of a sudden he started talking up a storm and smiling at his Daddy! All day today he has been doing the same thing! It seems as if he has woken up a bit and can interact with us. It's so cool and I get so excited whenever he talks to me. I am sure I look like an idiot trying to get him to keep talking and smiling. I'll do anything to get a big grin out of that boy.

Sunday night we had another amazing thing happen...Kaden slept for 5 hours...in a row!!! He didn't repeat that miracle on Monday night, but Sunday night was pure bliss :-)

3 weeks old- he can wiggle out of a swaddle already

4 weeks old- grinning for Momma














Tummy time on his surf board














Lady Belle kind of likes him














1 month old!



















Visiting with Grandpa- Lady Belle doesn't understand why he isn't playing with her














Having a chat














USMC!! Wearing the uniform from Great-Aunt Robing in honor of Great-Grandpa Van

New Pics

These are the last of the pics that my sister took before she left this week. I have big shoes to fill as far as picture taking goes, but I will take as many as I can before she comes back in October. We also have a visit from Rob's Mom and sister coming up, too, so there will be lots of pics of that.

Kaden smiles a lot in his sleep, a big goofy grin. I know that technically he isn't smiling because he wants to right now and it is probably gas, but it is so incredibly cute & he does it every time he falls asleep...I like to pretend that he's smiling because he's just so happy!

Goofy grin!


















A nice wink to go with the goofy grin













Aunt Lori













Gramma













Playtime on the floor, chatting with Momma

To Eat or Not to Eat...

The biggest challenge we faced was breastfeeding. I really wanted to nurse my baby, but we learned that the two conditions that made it so impossible to get pregnant also delay the milk from coming in. So baby was trying and trying and just getting frustrated from being so hungry and not getting enough to fill his little belly. The nurses kept telling us to just do it and we had to teach him what to do, but he seemed to know what to do and I was convinced he wasn’t getting what he needed. The lactation consultant kept reassuring me to keep trying, that I was doing what I was supposed to do if I wanted to nurse and it would take practice for both of us. This wreaked havoc on my emotions which were already overwhelmed with all the hormones. The night before we were discharged the baby’s weight was down to 7 pounds 1 ounce. But we made it home safely along with 3 of the ready to eat bottles of Enfamil that a nurse gave us in case we gave up on nursing.

That afternoon, we saw a drop of blood in Kaden’s diaper. A little bit later, we saw another drop in his diaper. Obviously on our first night home I was freaked out and we called the pediatrician. The pediatrician looked at the discharge records and saw that the baby was not weighed the date of discharge but the night before. He thought with the weight loss he already had that he was actually more like 6 pounds 15 ounces at discharge. This with the blood indicated dehydration- the baby wasn’t getting enough to eat since I had no milk yet! He told me to supplement with formula overnight and see if that helped. We had an appointment with them already for the next morning, so he wanted to see how he did overnight. If the blood increased or continued, we were instructed to go directly to the emergency room. Amazingly, we gave the baby a bottle and he gulped the whole thing down in record time. He was starving! We continued to try to nurse and followed up with a bottle of formula. His doctor’s appointment on Saturday showed his weight to be 7 pounds 1 ounce, by Monday’s appointment he was up to 7 pounds 5 ounces, and at his appointment on Thursday, August 28 he was up over his birth weight to 7 pounds 13 ounces. Thankfully my body started to work, but we will probably have to continue supplementing with formula to fulfill his appetite. I’m just incredibly relieved to finally be able to give him what he needs, even if it isn’t quite how I had planned.

The moral of the story- listen to your instincts. Even if you are an overwhelmed new mother, your gut instinct is not always the result of hormones. God made us with instincts to help us survive and without them, your baby may not get what he needs to survive.

He loves his swing!

Watching his first UCLA football game with Daddy

No more stump- just a big boy belly button. He's already changing so fast!