I found my camera

First and foremost, two cute videos. Second, yes we are still alive. This summer has gone by and I haven't posted many pictures of our adventures. Mid-July, Sawyer's cousins from Yakima came down to visit. We visited the zoo in IF. It rained, no downpoured, so we had to hang out under a tent for twenty minutes. I let Sawyer explore the puddles because it made him so happy.

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I told him to "SMILE!" and this was the result.

Two weeks ago we packed up and flew out to Virginia Beach. It was an awesome break-exactly what I needed. The plane rides were a ton better than our Chicago trip. Unfortunately, pictures are being impossible to upload at the moment. When I can find what folder they're in, I'll post pictures of Sawyer playing at the beach, which he loved.

woof

Oh my gosh.
Ignore my barking, but I had to share this video with the world wide web.





For the 4th of July, we started bright and early at the parade in old town.

Towards the end, we couldn't stand the sun for one more second. I dumped water on Sawyer's head and he happily sat there as the parade finished up

This is the house from Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

After BBQ at the parent's, we came home and set up camp in the front yard.

It was a great 4th of July this year. I'm so grateful to be where I am and enjoy the freedoms I have. Now, if it would just RAIN.

The makings of a little boy.

a year since surgery

This past weekend, Sawyer decided to walk. Now he walks all day long and gets so excited with being able to come and go as he pleases.

On Memorial Day he was aggressively putting his hands on my plate of BBQ food. I fed him some of my potato salad. He looked at me and said "mmm!" So he kept opening his mouth, and I'd keep putting bits of potato salad on his tongue. Then as I was eating a brownie, he did the same thing. When he took a bite of the brownie he said "mmm!" again. Part of me thought he was taunting me, and part of me was convinced this was his way of telling me he's ready to eat food like a big boy.

The  next day I was determined to skip tube feeding as much as possible and have him eat all the baby food that's been sitting on a shelf in the pantry. We tried a jar and ten minutes later, it looked like this:

I decided to bake a pan of brownies, just for him. Perfect form of calories, in my opinion.

I was able to skip all of Tuesday and Wednesday's daytime tube feedings!! I run the pump at night, every three hours. I offer something to him about every two hours throughout the day and go off of his mood. Sometimes he wants baby food, sometimes he just wants fruit loops. Sometimes he wants cheese cubes, sometimes he wants chocolate milk. All in all, he is being really cooperative with this new adventure. He is more smiles, he has enough teeth to conquer textures and crunchy food, and of course, his ability to cruise around the house on his own two feet gives him the most joy I've seen yet.  It's encouraging to me to see him take huge steps like this.

walking Sawyer boy!

Chicago town

I have always heard a lot of great things about Chicago, but never thought I'd be going there any time in the present or near future. As soon as I learned when Taylor was graduating, we bought tickets right away. I let my mother-in-law do all the sight-seeing planning, as I was strictly on "baby duty," and my sister-in-law was strictly on "navigation" and "deep dish pizza" duty. In a span of 72 ish hours, we covered a lot of ground. Impressive, considering we were total tourists and had a baby in a crappy collapsible stroller to tow around.  Chicago is amazing. However, we had a lot of adjusting to do; we were in a new climate (wet and freezing in May), were in a different time-zone (we were sleep-deprived), we saw millions of people traveling in droves (while we had to weave in and out of groups) and were away from home (that's always hard on Sawyer, no matter what the situation). So, given that premise of our well-intentioned, carefully planned trip, I'm happy to say we hit every attraction on our list and went to bed exhausted each night, ready to wake up at 5:00 am to catch a plane or a shuttle or to skip morning traffic. As I write this I realized I did, indeed, take a two week vacation from this three-day vacation. Worth every second, though.

Right before saying our goodbyes

SIL and MIL

Millennium Park

"meh" he says

It was the Polish Constitution Celebration that day. However, I don't think these guys were celebrating for that reason. Very cool, though.

At the Art Institute. Loved it. Sawyer didn't care for it. This is us taking a little breather.

The famous Cloud.

We got brave and got pretty close.

this pretty much sums up the entire trip.

Navy Pier. Major tourist attraction. Busier than Disneyland, almost.

And finally, Geno's East. Authentic Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Amaze-zing!

oh, yeah. Had to wait 45 mins for pizza to bake. More fun times corralling Mr. S. Desperate enough to let him play with the fork. Yes, the fork. I was exhausted and hungry. Don't judge. 

Fun times, yummmy food, and decent bathrooms. Can't complain.