Random Fun Pictures

Mommy and Alia doing "three goggles" ... it's a Blazer basketball thing for you out-of-towners!

What a little charmer!

Mommy's little rascal!

Alia loves to play in the laundry when I'm folding it. She likes to put my underwear on her head. She calls it her "underwear helmet".

Big sister keeping an eye on little brother!

Snow Day

Today we had a "snow day". Family and friends from the midwest, you'll laugh when you see how little snow it takes to shut things down here. All of the school districts around us were closed today. It's about 1pm now and pretty much all of the snow has already melted, but it sure was a nice little change of pace to wake up to it this morning.

Here was the view out of our front window when we woke up this morning.

Alia started out her day by playing with her Dora cards and having some undies time.

Max spent some quality time in the jumperoo bouncing and playing.

Alia needed to have a turn too, of course.

Then we went over to Jamie and Carson's house to play in the snow with them. Alia wasn't so sure about it and didn't want to touch it. But she did enjoy a ride or two down his driveway in his saucer thing.

Max, Carson and Alia playing outside :-)

Max - 5 Months

My "little" guy is 5 months old today! He is charming, flirtatious, active, silly, ticklish, hungry and sleepless and I love him to pieces. Right now, Max is in LOVE with his jumperoo! He just can't get enough of it and when you try to stand him up he just wants to jump and jump. He is now able to roll from tummy to back and back to tummy. His newest move is this funny little scooch thing on his back. He can scooch from the bottom to the top of his crib and probably all the way off of his changing table if he wanted too. He also loves taking his socks off and putting them in his mouth when no one is looking. Max has really taken to the whole solid food thing. We have already noticed that we need to increase our portion sizes for him. We think he's done, but he's ready to keep on eating. So far he has tried rice cereal and homemade sweet potatoes and butternut squash. He loves them all! Max was weighed on Monday at his MRI and was about 16.5 pounds!

We did get the results of his MRI back and his little bump is a dermoid cyst, as expected. Our pediatrician will now be referring us to a specialist of some sort (not sure who yet) who will talk to us about if/when it needs to be removed and what we should do next (if anything) about it. We are so glad that everything went as well as it did!

MRI - Complete

Max's MRI went very well today. It was a very stressful day for Jason and I however. Lots of nervous energy, waiting and worrying. Max was a real trooper. We were absolutely amazed with him. He did great with the not eating part ... a little sugar-water on the pacifier helped him through the hardest part. He hardly made a peep when they put his IV in. He was more upset that they were holding his arm down than the actual needle part. He flirted with all the nurses and let them hold him while we were waiting for the sedation. It was incredibly difficult to watch him be sedated. He fell asleep hard and fast and it was a little scary, but the nurse and anesthesiologist warned us that it would go like that. After the scan, it took him a little while to wake up, but after he woke up it didn't take long for him to start talking, flirting and eating :-) We should hear the results from our pediatrician sometime in the next few days. We will keep you all posted.

Happy Valentine's Day

Fun Times with the Douglas Family

Max and Mommy hanging out at Munchkin Playland. Please ignore my crazy hair, but notice my bulging biceps :-)

Alia posing for a picture at MP.

Daddy and Max at MP

Alia playing with a pretend cupcake and waffle while climbing on a fish!

Awesome family photo!

This is what play time looks like around here ... pretty entertaining!

Never a dull moment :-)

Uncle Monkey

Jason's brother Mark (aka Uncle Monkey) came to visit for the weekend. We had a great time but the visit was much too short. On Saturday, we talked him into going to the gym with us and then we did our usual trip to Panera. Alia is a HUGE fan of bagels! Later that day there was a brief stretch of sunshine and Uncle Monkey and Alia headed to the park behind our house to play on the slides. Saturday evening, we got a babysitter for the kids and took Mark to Toro Bravo for dinner. We had a great time and ate way too much yummy food. Sunday morning we went to Munchkin Playland for some breakfast and play time.

MRI Update

Just wanted to update everyone. Max has an MRI scheduled for Monday, February 14th to take a closer look at the little bump on his head. We will be going to OHSU Hospital to have it done because they have a pediatric sedation unit there and Max will have to be sedated for the procedure. His sedation is scheduled for 1:30 and his MRI is at 2:00. One of the hardest parts is going to be that he can't eat for 4 hours before the sedation and for those of you that have met Max, you can appreciate what a struggle that is going to be. The MRI results will determine who we get referred to next. Our doctor feels pretty certain that it's just a dermoid cyst and nothing serious, but because it is on his head, he wants us to get it checked to be sure. Please keep little Max in your thoughts and prayers on Valentine's Day :-)

Alia's Art Class

Yesterday, Alia took a little art class through our Parks and Rec. department. They basically just get out all kinds of art supplies and let the kids have at it ... and they clean up the mess. Alia really enjoyed using the sparkly paints, heart stickers and playing with play dough. We had a great time until Alia melted down when it was time to go home. You can see the stroller in the background of some of the pictures where Max SLEPT happily the entire time :-)

Max's First Food

Last night we decided to give Max his first solid food experience. We had been wanting to wait until he was closer to 6 months old, but he seemed ready and excited about food so we thought we would give it a try. We think he is picking up on the whole spoon concept pretty quickly. I'm pretty excited that he'll be able to test out some of my home made baby food pretty soon!

Talking Max

Max has a lot on his mind these days ....

Jumperoo

We pulled the ol' jumperoo out of storage for Max last week. Alia enjoyed reliving the glory days and Max really enjoyed having a new toy to play with.