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/.

Not Quite Crawling...

A month ago Ryan could roll over but generally stayed in the same place where you left him. A lot has changed in a month. While he's not quite crawling yet, he has figured out how to sit up, roll to the side, get up on all fours, lunge forward, then sit up again in a completely new place. We're still faster than him (for now) but we have a lot of babyproofing ahead of us. Let the fun begin...!

Here's a video of Ryan at the starting gate getting ready to crawl...

A Day in the Life

We haven't posted a video in a long time, so here's one of Ryan and Daddy playing...

The end of breastfeeding...

I stopped nursing Ryan this week. Due to my milk supply (or lack there of) I had been nursing him in the mornings and evenings, but giving him formula at daycare. We started doing this around 2 months ago because no matter what I tried, I could not pump more than a couple of ounces. And the bigger he gets, the more he wants of course. I kept doing the morning and nighttime nursings because 1) I wanted to give him as much breast milk as I could and 2) once I got past those first hard weeks, I had really come to enjoy it. We were going pretty well, but lately he has been so hungry that after I nurse him, I have to give him a bottle too because he's just not getting enough. Then on top of it I had a business trip to Houston this week so I decided to stop. I'm happy because I made it past my goal of 6 months, but I'm sad because I really loved cuddling with him in the mornings as he ate. I can cuddle with him as he takes his bottle, but it's just not the same.

On a positive note, I drank 4 cups of caffeinated beverages on Wednesday just because I could. It's nice to have my body back for the first time in a year and a half!

Ocean City

Last week we took our first family vacation to Ocean City, NJ! We've been on weekend trips with Ryan, but this was the first time we went away for an entire week. We rented a place on the boardwalk and it was a full house - a total of 9 adults and 5 kids ranging from 7 months to 5 years old. Ryan had a great time watching all the other kids play and got to do a number of things for the first time: first time at the beach, first dip in the ocean, first ferris wheel ride, first birthday party, first water park, and first lazy river. It was a jam packed week!

Going on vacation with a 7 month old wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We drove down to Ocean City and Ryan was great in the car. And eventhough we had to be back at the house in the afternoons for his nap (he doesn't nap well if he's not in a crib or pack n play) it was kinda nice. It gave us a chance to unwind and get out of the sun during the really hot part of the day. The only thing that was hard was that we got a lot less sleep than we're used to. We all shared a room and Ryan woke up more during the night than he normally does, probably because he could hear me snoring. Plus Ryan STILL does not understand the concept of sleeping in! So we would go to bed late after hanging out and he would insist on waking up at 7:00 (or earlier).

But all in all, it was great getting to do all these fun things with Ryan and made us excited for when he's older and can really enjoy places like the beach and waterparks.

Click here for more photos from our trip!

The Boys are Sick...

We just got back from a great vacation at the Jersey shore which I promise to post about and upload pictures from later this week. Right now I'm busy taking care of my boys... :-( Ryan and Justin both caught a bug from one of the other kids on vacation. While Ryan has had the occasional cold here and there, this is his first true illness. He has a bad cough, mild temperature, and an ear infection. He's absolutely miserable although the one positive side effect is that all he seems to want to do is cuddle in my arms.

The one thing we've learned so far is that Ryan HATES medicine. (Which by the way is "medicina" in Spanish and not "drogas" as I learned when I apparently told one of the daycare assistants that I was picking up hard drugs for Ryan.) Last night we tried to give Ryan antibiotics for his ear infection with a spoon which resulted in pink sticky stuff everywhere except in his mouth. So this morning we tried to mix it into 1 oz of formula. Ryan, who eats everything, refused it. Since they only give you enough medicina to give the entire 10 day dose, we had to get him to take it. If you haven't had to do this yet, let me say that holding your baby down while you dropper in an ounce of pink formula .8mL at a time is NOT fun. The poor guy screamed the whole time but managed to get it all down.

So, not a fun "baby first" but I guess we should be glad he waited until 7 months to get sick.