Milestones during the marathon

The last two months have been extremely intense for our family, including Dane's second surgery, a move to a new house (with yardwork!), and Mark working nights, not to mention my many OB appointments and doctor's appointments for Dane. Whew. We're all beat and hence, haven't had much time to update the Dane Blog. However, I wanted to mention some of the more exciting milestones that have happened during this super busy time.

Dane spent the week with my parents and came home with a new love for any kind of dog, including his first stuffed animal buddy, the NIU husky. To this point, stuffed animals have held no real interest for him, so it's really fun to see him hugging and trying to feed his buddies. In the morning, he doesn't like to leave his crib unless "DOG!" is with him.

He finally learned to crawl! Like super speed crawling! It just needed to happen on his schedule. One more thing off the PT/OT checklist.

He's starting to try and stand/walk by himself; we're praying it'll happen before Dos comes along. I don't think I could handle two non-walkers by myself!

His language skills are increasing every day. He loves to imitate us, his favorite words being "boom" "ow" and "ah ah ah" (like the Count from Sesame Street). He's so proud of himself when he successfully masters an action or word we say. Very fun to see!

Despite the challenge that feeding time has become over the last couple weeks, just today, he used a fork all by himself for the first time. He got a bite into his mouth and looked over at me with the biggest grin on his face. He hasn't shown a ton of independence yet, so it's good to see him starting to try and master skills like that.

He's also become a stair machine since we moved into the new house. The house is split level, so it has 6 steps up and 4 down, perfect for learning about crawling. He's got up covered, but down is still confusing, most often ending in a face-first dive, to be caught by whichever one of us is guarding him:)

Challenges lately include his mealtimes; he's stopped eating pretty much at all during the day. We can still get him to drink a smoothie in the morning, but as for anything pureed or fed from a spoon, he's not interested. I get so worried he'll be malnourished and Mark tries to remind me that when he gets hungry enough, he'll eat. *breathe, larissa* Another challenge is that he's started to have temper tantrums when he doesn't get to do what he wants. Not fun. Related to that is just keeping him busy without breaking things. He is SO curious and active! Finally, he's started waking up every morning between 5 and 6 am. I'm pooped and these early mornings are starting to take a toll! We're hoping it has to do with the fact that he's had 3 teeth for about a month. That 4th has to be on it's way, right?!

Dane is still a joy around others, making friends and hamming it up everywhere he goes. He makes us laugh every day, and we can hardly wait until he begins to talk so we know what's going on behind those huge grins.