Nathan is 6 months!

     Whenever I was pregnant with Nathan, everyone told me that time would fly and that babies grow up so fast.  This statement was usually followed up by them telling me how old their "baby" was.  Usually, their "baby" was in their 20s or 30s.  By the time I was over 41 weeks pregnant and gigantic, I remember thinking that based on how slowly time was passing at that point, that saying that "time flies" must just be a cliche thing that you say, but isn't necessarily true.  Well, as I peek in on my sleeping 6 month old and I think about all that has happened in our lives in the past 6 months, I realize that all of those well-wishers and advice-givers, were right.  Time flies.

     In 6 months, our lives have completely changed.  While we loved Nathan overwhelmingly from the first moment we heard his wail behind that big blue sheet and held him in the OR,

I have found that I love him more and more every single day.  As he grows and changes, and he interacts more with us and with his environment, I find myself thinking often that is so much fun being his mom.  Yes, we have many challenging days of no naps and some nights of waking up all the time, and days of me thinking "what in the world am I doing?  I have no idea how to be a mom!" Those moments almost always are followed by a sweet smile from Nathan, or a precious snuggle, or an exciting milestone moment for him, and I realize again how that God's grace is bigger than my uncertainty of how to parent, and that I am incredibly blessed and grateful to have this sweet, joyful baby in our lives.
    Nathan is changing every since day it seems!  We are just loving watching and cheering on all of these changes.  While we were in DC last week, we were playing with him on the bed and couldn't believe it when that little guy was laying on his stomach and pushed up on his hands, got up on his toes, rocked a few times and lunged forward.  Since then, he has loved further discovering this new skill.  Gone are the days of laying him on the floor in his room with some toys and hopping in the shower.  I figured that out yesterday when I laid him down with a mound of toys, and after a few minutes or not hearing him (never a good sign) I found him scooting his way out of his room.

He is also continuing to be more solid at sitting.  We have the occasional crash but he is getting much better at balancing and grabbing for toys.

He loves music, riding in the jogger how without the carseat, chewing and grabbing anything and everything,

and most of all, people watching!  He is such a curious baby and thrives on being out and about and discovering new things.  He also has two teeth now and just started solids!  Some of these are out of focus, but they are so funny, I had to add them.

He can't decide if he loves them or hates them.  He opens his mouth wide when we offer them and then shudders, gags, and blows raspberries until his food is everywhere.  At least he is enjoying himself, I suppose!
     We can hardly believe it's been half a year already and are so excited to experience many other  changes with Nathan as he continues to grow up.  We continue to be overwhelmed by the blessing of this little boy in our lives.  Being a parent is by far the most challenging and the most rewarding thing we have experienced thus far and know that those feelings will only grow as life moves forward.    

 
     Nathan, buddy, we are so thankful for you and the joy your beautiful smile brings to our lives.  We continue to pray that you will grow up to be a man of God that loves Him above all else, that you will never know a time when you don't know Him, that your joyful spirit will never fade, and that God will give us grace as we learn to parent you.  Happy half-birthday, my little love!

We Survived

     Well folks, we have officially survived our first cross-country plane ride with a baby.  David won Junior Officer of the Year (good job, Babe!!) so they flew us to DC along with the other guys that won the award.  We got lots of helpful tips on flying with a baby from my sweet friend, Rachel, and decided to attempt the trip.  The Navy apparently doesn't take into consideration flight times when scheduling flights, so we had the 6:30am flight out of San Diego.  We woke up around 3:00am to make sure we had plenty of time to deal with parking and checking bags, etc.  The flight there was overall, pretty good, with a few eventful situations.  First of all, we woke up that morning to see two tiny little teeth starting to poke through Nathan's gums.  Dead giveaway, both hands in the mouth, constantly chewing.

Secondly, Nathan hadn't pooped in over 8 days, which would later present itself to be a huge issue.  He did pretty well with the teething, but about halfway there, he decided to poop 8 days worth of poop. Sorry for the TMI but it was awful.  Changing a baby who has poop everywhere, in an airplane bathroom, when your baby is quite possibly the most squirmy and curious baby on the planet, is something I hope never to have to repeat.  Sorry, fellow passengers for occupying the bathroom for 30 minutes, and making the whole plane smell.  I hope I got all the poop off of the walls and changing area.  Oh yea, and sorry about the spit up covering the floor of the bathroom and the counter.  I promise I really tried to clean it up while holding my lunging, hair grabbing, 6 month old, the diaper bag, and the soiled clothes.  Thankfully, we had very gracious neighbors sitting next to us, and overall, Nathan wasn't very fussy.  David was convinced post-flight, however, that Nathan was intentionally spitting up on David.  Every time David would play with him, Nathan would spit up on another clean area of David's clothes.  If it wasn't so uncomfortable for David to be soaked, it would have been a little bit funny. :)
     So we finally arrived in DC.  Completely exhausted.  Thankfully, the hotel was only one metro stop away, so we grabbed some dinner, and crashed for the night.  We really enjoyed our time in DC.  Nathan and I got to join in on a few of David's scheduled events, which we really enjoyed.  We got to take a tour of the Pentagon, the Library of Congress, the Capitol and the tunnels that run underneath, and go do some sightseeing with the group.

 Sadly, we decided for Nathan and I to pass on the meetings.  Nathan is great when he is moving and interacting with people, but we were a little nervous about how he would do for several hours of meeting important people.  So we hung out at the hotel.

David, however, really enjoyed getting to meet several admirals, senators, representatives, and important heads of Naval operations and Nuclear Submarines.
     We loved getting to see my family and some of David's family while we were in DC!  Mom, Dad, and Sarah drove up on Thursday and stayed through Saturday.  We had a fabulous time going to see the gorgeous cherry blossoms, eating out at some yummy restaurants, and touring several monuments.

It was such an unexpected blessing to be able to see them.  Nathan had a blast being so loved and playing with them!  David's brother, Caleb, arrived home from deployment on Tuesday, and were amazing enough to drive up to see us!  Caleb has been gone for over 6 months, so he hadn't met Nathan yet.  We had so much fun introducing Nathan to him.  I doubt that Caleb will ever forget this meeting.  Shortly after meeting Nathan, Caleb went to hold him.  Nathan gave Caleb a huge smile and projectile spit upped all the way down the front of poor Caleb.  He was covered.  Jennifer didn't fare much better!  On our walk to dinner, it was extremely windy.  Jennifer and I were walking and chatting just a bit downwind from Nathan.  Out of nowhere, Nathan spit up and because it was so windy, it flew backwards right into Jennifer's face. Talk about mortifying (but a little hilarious!).  Jennifer and Caleb were incredibly gracious at their totally disgusting encounters with their nephew. (Pictures to come of Nathan and Jennifer and Caleb.  I think they're on David's phone)
     Saturday, Caleb and Jennifer headed out for Jennifer's family, after an enormous, and delicious breakfast at a the highly popular restaurant, Founding Farmers.  The rest of us headed out to see David's brother, Joe at the Naval Academy!  It was a gorgeous day, and we loved getting a detailed tour by both David and Joe.

 It was so much fun hearing David's past stories, and Joe's present ones of life at the Academy.  Late in the day, Joe had to go back and do homework, so we headed back to DC.  We got back, grabbed some dinner with my family, and sadly, said our goodbyes.  We had such a fun time with all of the family that came up.  It was so refreshing, and also hard to say goodbye.  We hope we will see all of you again soon!!
     Our flight home was really long.  It was a little under 6 hours.  Nathan was a champ for the first 2.5 hours and then woke up and the next leg of the trip was fairly challenging.  He had so much energy, but his teeth were also really bothering him.  He had barely eaten since around 2:30 that morning, and whenever I would try and feed him he would thrash around, arch his back, and cry.  It was so frustrating.  Finally after about two hours of trying, he finally ate a little bit.  Sitting in the airplane bathroom on the toilet with a blanket over his face. I realized today, after doing some research, that for some babies, it's really painful to nurse when they are teething.  It recommended icing their gums intermittently during feeding.  The articles I have read also said that babies that are easily distracted, tend to struggle even more because they are already distracted easily by their surroundings so focusing on nursing when it's uncomfortable at all, is much harder for them.  They would much rather be hungry and look around.  We have tried icing the gums and nursing in a dark room today, and it's gone much better.  I wish I would have known that yesterday.  Poor guy.  Hopefully, this stage passes quickly!
     We had such a nice time in DC, and we are glad to have survived our first cross-country flight with Nathan.  Now, it's time to get back into the swing of things here, regain some order in our lives, and tackle trying to get Nathan into some kind of nap schedule!  Let's see how this goes...