Moving & Rolling

Time for an update! Zac has begun rolling over on his own and is moving around really well. It's exciting getting to watch him grow and learn new things and pay attention to more stuff. I added a video today to the right side showing Zac moving around a bit. I didn't catch him rolling over, but we'll document that and add it once we catch it. This pic was taken on the 19th of this month. Zac is very proud of his tongue at the moment. :)

A Tooth...And More Sickness

I had hoped to have a pic up tonight, but we'll have to add one later. Zac finally has a tooth coming through. Katy found it yesterday as it hadn't quite fully broken the surface, and today it's a little further through. He's doing quite well with it, just having the typical runny/stuffy nose and all.

Also, today we tried green beans for the first time. We were prepared for him to fully reject them, and thought he would given how bad they smelled, but he didn't seem to mind at all. We were a bit shocked. We've been buying jar foods to send to daycare lately, and included in that mix have been some fruit and granola mixes, along with a yogurt mix and some that have multiple fruits with either rice or oatmeal, so he's handling all of them fairly well.

And, Katy and I are under the weather again, both fighting massive sinus drainage. It's very frustrating, because neither of us has had to deal with this much at all over the past year or more, but this is twice within two weeks for each of us. I know we each have allergies, but honestly, we spend most of our days inside and use air conditioning in the vehicles at all times. I'm concerned it may have something to do with our townhouse, so today I picked up some vent filters like we used in Omaha. They're too small to fit these vents, which are on the walls, but I'm hopeful I can make something work out of it. Please pray that our house sells soon. We have to get out of this place for our mental health as well as physical health.

Found Us A Church Home

Well, we have found a church home. You may recall a previous post where I mentioned we'd narrowed it down to two churches. We had intended to visit both of them again, but decided after re-visiting Crossroads Fellowship this past week that it is where we feel the most comfortable.

From the moment we checked Zac into the Nursery, which I can only describe as ridiculously high-tech, very well organized and full of enough play areas that Katy and I seriously considered skipping out on the service, we felt this was the right fit. While we had enjoyed the worship the first Sunday in August when we first visited, it felt like even more of a fit this week. Great band, great message and service, and of course the most important part, movie theater seating. See, after spending almost a year at Heartland Church in Omaha, which met in a movie theater, we've become a bit spoiled and now seem to feel as though we "deserve" this seating design. While they aren't as wide or comfortable as the ones in the actual theater, don't rock and don't have cup holders, they do the trick. :)

Size Update

I just went to a baby size chart online and entered Zac's current measurements; 27.5" long, 17 lbs, 12 oz, and a head circumference of 17.5 inches. Here's what got me. In terms of length, at 7 months he is in the 50-75th percentile range for length. And he was 9 weeks early! Everyone seems shocked when they find out he's only 7 months, even more so when they hear how early he was born. I guess we didn't realize just how big he was becoming. :)

Zac A Bit Under

All week we've been battling something with Zac that we thought was related to teething. He's had all the classic symptoms, but no teeth, and it continued beyond when we thought it should. Today the daycare called Katy at work this afternoon and let her know he was in OK spirits, but every time he had to go to the bathroom he cried, and he wasn't taking his bottles well.

So Katy left early, picked him up and took him to an urgent care, where they diagnosed him with a yeast infection. I checked with one of my employees and she advised her son had the same thing happen when he was close to Zac's age. They also weighed him while he was there and he came in at 17 lbs, 12 oz. I know he was still wearing a clean diaper and a onesie, but that doesn't add up to much, so that's a bit more weight than I thought he'd put on. Katy just returned from picking up his prescription, and we're going to feed him bananas daily to try to solidify things. Hopefully we can make him more comfortable and help him heal.

Please keep him in your prayers this weekend, and if you don't mind, continue praying that our house sells soon. It'd be a big help to stop paying two house payments! :)

Claire's Birthday!

Today, September 10th, is Claire's 12th birthday. Twelve. Am I really that old? Is SHE really that old? I am blessed to have two beautiful children. You know how they always joke that a child looks like their mother? I'm wondering if, since the link between Claire & Zac is me, maybe it's ME that is responsible for these two great-looking children. Although, if I espouse that idea too much, I might never hear the end of it. :)

I thought that in honor of Claire's birthday I would put up several pics, starting from a long time ago until something more recent. Unfortunately I don't have anything super recent on the computer, so this will have to do. The black and white one is Claire at a little over a year old, as if you couldn't guess. It's one of my favorite pictures of her to this day, among the many that are ridiculously cute.

The second is in 1999 when I lived in Jackson, MS. This is her with her Uncle Dan's cat, Zoom. She was a little over 2 1/2 in this picture, close to 3. 1999 was a very lucky year for me, as God had told me to move to Jackson even though I didn't want to go. Little did I know He would bring Claire to Mississippi!

The third pic, with frosting on lips, is from Claire's 4th birthday in 2000, held at a church in Omaha. She always has been extremely photogenic. I must say that her little brother also seems to carry this ability.

In Fall 2006, I had a little fun with Claire's hair color in anticipation of a spirit day at school, if I'm not mistaken. Either that or I found a great deal on colored hair sprays and REALLY wanted to try them out.

And then this last picture is from several months ago, as Claire was able to spend some time with her little brother Zac over a weekend in Omaha. I know she misses him as much as I miss her.

Teething?

Well, we've been waiting for a tooth to pop through for a few months now, but Zac is definitely showing all the signs associated with teething. Over the weekend he had a sporadic fever, runny nose, and has continued to have some pretty awful diapers to deal with, and those are multiple times per day.

Last week I was fighting off a cold the entire week, so I thought maybe Zac had just caught a bit of that bug, but then again, there was one child in his room that had a runny nose as well, so possibly that was it. But then again, :), a lot of people here are getting sick at the moment, so I know something has been around. Katy is not feeling as well tonight, and went to bed early to try to get a handle on it.

All we know is we hope Zac is actually going to produce a tooth sometime here because he seems more than ready and we're ready to have him stop being bugged by his gums. Since every child in his room currently has a runny nose, maybe they are all going through the same thing. :) And, at his present rate, we'll go through diaper rash ointment at an alarming rate. Poor little guy is not too happy when a diaper change occurs at the moment. This is the first time he's had a rash of any sort or even been under the weather!

Big Zac

I've been so bad about posting more often than once a week that I thought I better get another picture up here. Took this picture tonight just to try to gauge how big Zac is getting. As you can see, he's suffering from a little bit of sinus action, but he's alright. I measured him Saturday, unofficially, at 27 1/2". If that's true, it'd mean he's grown 1 1/2" since the end of July when we took him in for his 6-month checkup.

Zac is doing all the fun things parents look forward to like beginning to hold his own bottle when he takes it, grabbing onto things and using his hands more, and he is just about rolling over. He's there, and sometimes will push himself onto his back using his face, but hasn't quite grasped the idea of rolling completely over to his tummy and then back, and using his arms to help out. It's fun to watch, and hopefully we catch it the first time it occurs on video so we can share with everyone else. :)

So football season is upon us, or as some parts of the country call it, "Fall", and I'm super excited. People down here are excited about the high school season, but I guess if you're not a part of it, it doesn't seem any different than it does up in Omaha or Lincoln or anywhere else. While fall temps have hit Omaha and even Kansas City this past weekend, it's still in the 90s down here. Woo...hoo. :) Actually, I know I'll be very grateful for warmer temps once the snow and ice hit everywhere else but here. Then again, they said it never rained and as soon as we got here, it began raining consistently. They say it rarely snows or has ice, but how much do you want to bet this year will be some type of record? That would be just our luck. :)

Last, I know that since I've not updated the site as often, we're getting fewer comments and yet I know people are reading. We were a little surprised not to receive ANY comments to the last posting, especially. So do us a favor and, if you do read this, drop us a note here and there so we know we're getting through. We'd sure appreciate it! Thanks all!