Great News!

Phil (formerly known as Woogie) and Danielle adopted a baby boy on Friday! According to Phil's facebook post: Michael Lee Alexander Lychak "Cael" was born on August 19th at 12:13pm...he weighed in at 6 lbs 9 oz...and 19 inches long. We could not be more thrilled, congratulations!

A Rude Awakening

So here was our morning...


Alarm goes off at 7:15.

Me: "Wow he slept late again great! What a good boy. You want to wake him up?"

Saru, after coming back from a 2 day business trip, "sure!"

30 seconds pass...

Through the monitor and down the hall I hear, "Oh my god." Not in an alarming way, but more of a surprise.

Then 5 seconds later, "Oh my god."

[Pause]

"Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god." Again, all said more in a surprised way than alarming. I still wasn't sure at this point if something was wrong, or if maybe he had done something new, like he was doing a handstand on the back of the crib. (I'm just waking up here, so cut me some slack)

Me: "What?"

Saru: "Oh my god." (x6)

Reluctantly, I ask, "Need me to come in?"

Saru: "Oh my god." (x10)

I think....guess I better get in there because this is going nowhere.

I walk in and Saru is standing back from the crib just staring at Ryan who is quite happily standing with his little hands on the rail and peeking over the top.

I take a closer look, and realize there is poop.

"Where?" you may ask? And I would say, "Yes."

It was everywhere. An area on the sheets with about an 8" diameter was clearly 'ground zero'. From there he had rolled, stepped, and mashed his hands in it multiple times. It was all over the sheets, his book, 2 stuffed animals, a rattle, his feet, hands, face, back, shirt, pants, crib railings, mesh bumper, and probably several other places we will discover over the next week.

Nasty.

So, instead of our usual routine of feeding him, showering and setting off for work/day care, Ryan got a couple of baths, we did a load of laundry and I attacked the nursery reminiscent of Tony Soprano's crew after a murder scene clean up. 45 minutes later, Ryan was clean, the poop covered items finishing up in the washer, and the crib lavendar fresh and with new sheets. And I managed to get to work just 10-15 minutes late after dropping him off at day care - not bad. It's like it never happened, or so we wish to believe.

But it did. And will forever be remembered The Great Poop Incident of '08.


Lessons learned:

1. Use bigger/night time diapers, especially if over the last month he's had a smidge of poop sneek out once or twice.

2. Don't voluntarily come in until specifically asked, no matter how many "Oh my gods" you hear.

3. If your kid is quiet, it's not because he is behaving properly. If it's too quiet, its a clear indication that something is wrong.


Sorry, no pictures for this post! Though for a split second I did consider grabbing the camera.

Standing and Pictures

This picture pretty much encompasses everything Ryan is doing these days - gnawing on everything and standing. Ryan loves to pull himself up to standing, which is nice and all for him, but I swear it's giving me angina. See, he doesn't know how to fall yet. I've been trying to teach him to bend his knees and fall on his butt, but he doesn't get it. So no matter where you put him in the living room, he will automatically crawl over to the table, pull himself up, stand there looking all proud for long enough that you have a false sense of security, and then topple over banging his head on the floor. "What to Expect in the First Year" says to let him fall as he's learning to stand and walk but seriously, am I supposed to keep letting him bang his head? Won't he damage his brain? Justin and I can cushion his fall in the living room, but he does the same thing in his crib, and I can't stand there all night making sure he doesn't fall over. Ugh. And he's so manipulative already too. Justin swears he only cries after falling when I'm in the room. Cause I'm the sucker.

Anyway, we've been delinquent in taking and posting pictures, mostly cause we're too busy trying to catch Ryan. But here are some pictures from the last couple of months: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmwade/Ryan7And8Months. Enjoy!

Random Musings

Ryan is officially crawling. On his 8th month birthday yesterday, he crawled halfway across our living room which is the farthest we've seen him go. Justin is in the full swing of baby-proofing, installing cabinet latches, gates, etc. We tried the magnet locks for the cabinet yesterday and like them so far. I guess we'll find out what works and doesn't work after Ryan gets his little hands on everything. We'll also have to have Jace, one of Ryan's friends, over to test us out. Jace just turned 1 and I'm assured he'll be able to let us know if we missed something. We've decided to only babyproof the downstairs and just not let Ryan roam free upstairs. We were originally going to do the nursery, but since it also doubles as our office, it's just a bit too difficult. Plus we need somewhere to put all the stuff from downstairs like multiple laptops and DVD towers. It's funny, we went from having so much extra stuff downstairs to it being very clean and empty.

Ryan also likes to stand at the living room table recently, but can't seem to figure out how to get down. Yesterday he stood there for what seemed liked hours until his little legs started to shake and he got all upset. I wanted him to learn to fall on his butt, but I guess that will come in due time.

I know it's a cliche, but he really is growing up so fast. I look at the pictures of all the newborns and can barely remember when Ryan was that small (not that he was ever really THAT small). We're having such a great time with him now: he thinks we're absolutely hysterical, he reaches for us when we go to daycare to pick him up, and he stares so intently when we try to teach him something. I keep hearing from people that it's only going to get better, but I really can't imagine it better than this.

Welcome Aria!

I am very excited to announce the newest member of our family, Aria Bharadwa! My sister Anjali delivered Aria on August 3rd. She was born at 5:37am weighing 6lbs 11 oz and 20.25 inches.



The picture is showing up really small so I'll have to ask my sister for more photos. But for now... yay! Ryan is totally excited that he gets to be bigger than someone now. Or he would if he could understand it.

Welcome Lucas Orlando Milliken!

Congratulations to our good friends Jamie and Cate Milliken on the birth of their beautiful baby boy Lucas. Yay! Here is the happy mother and baby:

Incidentally, the name Lucas was on our list for a while. When we found out Baby Milliken's name, Justin became very jealous of Jamie that he gets to say "Luke I am your father". Oh boy.

For more Lucas pics, check out his blog (his parents are way more on top of things than we were) at http://millikenbaby.blogspot.com/.