Our Family: June 2011

Better late then never! Our boy is well into being 21 months now and amazing us every day! Some new favorite words are "Oh NO", Choo Choo, and Doc (Gigi and Papa's dog).

Within the last few days Sawyer is now obsessed with the movie Cars! He loves it! He will bring you the tv remote and playstation remote if it is not playing. It's pretty cute. Wonder how long we will feel that way, haha.

We have been spending the nice weekends outside and trying our best to wear out our boy! He loves to go for walks and really likes to ride in his Cozy Coupe car. When we go outside he goes to the garage to get it out. When he is done he will push it back into the garage.

Our biggest news of the month I think though is Sawyer can count to 10 and does his ABC's with help! It is super cute to hear him do it and he is so proud of himself. Our boy is so smart! :)

Today we had an appointment with Dr. Rotenberg (ear, nose, and throat specialist). Sawyer has had 2 ear infections since March. 2 isn't a lot but we have felt he isn't really speaking too well for his age and since he was in the NICU after being born and he failed his first hearing test as a newborn he needed to have it rechecked.

Going to the doctor with Sawyer is not fun. For some reason he gets super upset even if they aren't really doing anything with him. It starts with the nurse checking his temperature and listening to his heart and lungs. Major meltdown!!! Then two girls came in to take us to another room to do a reading on his ears. More screaming! Now back to the original exam room and here comes the doctor. Mommy sits in the chair and holds Sawyer on her lap. I now have to hold his legs with one of my legs and his arms with one of mine so Dr. Rotenberg can look in his ears, mouth, and nose. Thankfully he got a sucker after that drama but boy he was ticked!!

The doctor told us he has fluid in his left ear but it's not infected. He wants to wait a few months to see if it clears up on its own. He also agrees that we should do a hearing test to make sure Sawyer is hearing well. He said that if he has anymore back to back ear infections we will probably need tubes in Sawyer's ears and if the fluid is still present in a few months tubes will be likely. So now we will wait for them to call us to set up a time to do the hearing test and hope all is well!

As always a few recent pics of our growing boy!

He LOVES Scout!

Mmm a Raspberry Lemon Love Cupcake from Scratch

Watching the movie Cars!

At the McDonald's play land in Waverly

This past weekend we took our first family vacation! I had been so excited for this weekend to come since we first started talking about it back in January. We decided this year we wouldn't go to far or do anything to extreme since Sawyer is still pretty young. We thought someplace close to home would be best so what a better place then Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines.

We left Saturday morning, June 11th after breakfast. Sawyer was up at 5:30am! It worked out perfectly though because we left our house around 8am and he fell asleep and slept almost the whole way! We met Ashlee's brother Travis, his girlfriend Sarah, Ashlee's sister Kayla, and her friend BJ at the Zoo. It was a family packed day!

We arrived around 10:30 and starting walking around checking out the animals. Sawyer wasn't too interested and just hung out in his stroller. I think he was more interested in people watching then looking at the animals, lol. Around 11:30 Sawyer was restless and cranky so we headed to the picnic tables to eat lunch. We packed our own that way we had control over what was available and a lot cheaper! Of course Sawyer wanted to run around and not eat. He ate a little bit of sandwich and then an oreo. He was quite the crankster and got upset when we wouldn't give him another oreo.

After lunch we went back to walking around the zoo. There was a petting zoo and they also had fish and ducks which Sawyer was pretty interested in. There was a gate around the pond and Sawyer kept taking my hand and putting it on the gate thinking I could open it and let him in with the fish and ducks, lol.

The last thing we saw was the dinosaur exhibit. Sawyer LOVED it! The dinosaurs roared and moved their heads around. Sawyer just walked around looking at them all laughing and smiling. It was super cute!

After the zoo we headed to our hotel. We stayed at the Ramada Inn on Merle Hay Road. It was before check in time but thankfully they had a room ready and let us in early. We lugged all of our stuff in and then
decided to check out the water park. The water park was very neat! Sawyer wasn't so sure about the pool at first but when it was time to leave for dinner he didn't want to go.

We met up with Ashlee's siblings at Spaghetti Works for dinner. Sawyer was starved and almost ate his whole cheese pizza! Glad he finally ate some real food! :) After dinner it was back to the hotel for more water fun!

This time at the water park Sawyer loved it! He was walking all over in the kiddie pool and loved the ground water shooters! He wasn't too impressed with the sprinklers shooting from the pirate ship though. He was getting brave and even stuck his face in the water a couple of times. He also thought he could run in the pool and went under water but it didn't phase him. Then the fun began. Someone figured out they could get out of the pool and walk around the other pools.

Sawyer had spotted the hot tub and kept trying to climb in. Thankfully I grabbed him each time and we went back to the kiddie pool but he kept getting out and walking around. Finally I took him into the big pool. He wasn't too sure of it at first but then decided he didn't need Mommy and was trying to push me away. So back to the kiddie pool. Finally after an hour of getting in and out of the pools Mommy and Daddy had enough.

We went back to our room where a melt down began, Sawyer, not us parents. :) We got dressed but Sawyer was MAD and kept taking us to the door. It was around 8pm and we had a tired, and very cranky toddler! We decided we should head for home. We knew there was no way he was going to sleep without a big fight! So we packed up, loaded the car and headed for home. We hadn't been driving for even 5 minutes and Sawyer was passed out! We arrived home shortly after 10pm and we were able to put our sleeping toddler in his own bed.

Hopefully we can try again next year with better results. :)