Logan is 1!!

Logan is a toddler now!

Stats

Weight: 21 lbs. 4 oz. (25th percentile)
Height: 31 3/4 inches (90th percentile)
Head Circumference: 47cm (70th percentile)

As you can see, Logan has stretched out quite a bit (going down from the 95th percentile to the 25th while maintaining his high-percentile height). He has lost that big 'ole round behemoth baby look and now his body type is much like RJ's was at the one year mark. He hasn't lost any weight, just plateaued in his gain, which breastfed babies tend to do in the second half of their first year. If he's anything like RJ, he'll creep back up to about the 50th percentile in weight as he builds toddler muscle, while staying at the 90th for height. He is a very healthy one year old!

Motor Development:
We have a walker! Logan took his first steps on December 15, got up to about 8 steps later in December, and then took off across the house the day of his First Birthday Party (January 22, 2011), one day before his actual birthday! He loves walking and gets a big goofy grin on his face when he's toddling along. He is also a climber and enjoys scaling the stairs.

In terms of fine motor development, he excels at grasping tiny objects and putting them in his mouth. Typically these are tiny bites of food, but also cat food, little bits of paper, fuzz, or other random crap he finds. This makes going to the park tiring because I have to watch RJ AND make sure that Logan doesn't eat stones or bark. He also enjoys stacking toys with pegs and stacking blocks (or canned goods).

Language Development:

Logan can sign "all done", "milk" (meaning nursing), "more", and most impressive at this age, "diaper". He also waves good-bye. He babbles constantly and says something that I am convinced is "RJ". Other words:
"doh" which we think is door/window
"dat" which is almost anything. I interpret it as him asking, "What is THAT?", but also could be "cat" since it is sometimes directed at Boca.
He also babbles a ton - dahdahdah, mamamama, babababa...etc.
Logan will also imitate some non word sounds, like squealing, laughing, huffing/puffing, and roaring and cars vrooming. Basically anything RJ does, Logan tries to do too. He also randomly yells when he's mad or frustrated. He squeals when he's happy or excited. Mostly, he's loud.
It's pretty clear that Logan understands a lot more language than he produces (which is pretty typical at this age) because he can follow simple directions (put this in the box, hand me the ___, come here, where's momma?, etc.) I'm sure that normally I model and point while giving these directions, but I've tested some without gestures too.

Socio-emotional Development

Logan is definitely not the drama-queen that RJ is, but he does let us know when he is unhappy by complaining when he's angry with the situation and generally throwing things to the floor that he's unhappy with. He cries when he's hurt or tired, but generally he's a very easy-going kid. He usually has a big goofy grin on his face. He loves being around other kids (people in general too), and smiles and plays peek-a-boo around objects to get attention. He likes to be in on the action, which often frustrates RJ because he practically sits ON his big brother or his big brother's toys sometimes. He also likes to find RJ's favorite toys, wait until RJ puts it down and then speed-crawl or run away with it. He knows what he is doing too - the mischievous look is unmistakable. I foresee that he will be the "class clown" type when he's in school.

Cognitive Development

Logan is doing great with his problem solving. He loves opening and closing things, putting things in containers and taking them out. He is in full-blown exploration mode and fully examines whatever he can get his hands on. He is still my little music man and loves to play around with how to make different sounds with the instruments. Shakers and the kazoo are probably his favorites (and yes he actually figured out how to play the kazoo). New in this area is stacking objects.

Eating

At one year, Logan was nursing 5 times a day (5/6am, 9:30/10am, 1:30/2pm, 4:30pm, 8pm). For breakfast, I usually make him baby multi-grain cereal mixed with whole-milk yogurt and applesauce (or another fruit puree if I have one around). For lunch and dinner, he basically eats what we do, cut up super tiny. If we're eating something not very baby friendly, I still have some baby food that I'll break out of the freezer or cupboard until it's gone, but we aren't going to make or buy more at this point since he loves to eat table food and will grab whatever food is close by and shove it in his mouth. He ate his first California Roll on December 7 and loved it! He also finally started drinking a little whole milk from a sippy cup and we're hoping he'll increase the amount so that I can wean him from the daytime nursing. I plan to nurse him first thing in the morning and at bedtime as long as he wants to, just like I did with RJ.

Sleeping

Logan has made some progress in the sleep department. He CAN sleep through the night and has from 8:30 - 6, but usually he has been waking once or twice (at 1 and 5 or just at 4). He also CAN take a morning and an afternoon nap, but normally one is a good nap over an hour and the other one is a crappy short nap. I think a lot of the crappy sleep lately has been teething related though since he has been working on teeth for the last two months with nothing to show for it.

Teeth

Teeth are the bane of Logan's, Lance's, and my existence. At present he has 6 teeth, 4 on top, 2 on the bottom. He is working on another 6 - he has bulges for the next two on the bottom (these are the most prominent and closest to eruption), and some evidence that he is working on all 4 canines.


We can't wait to see what Logan's 2nd year has in store for us all!

DeLancey Family Winter Travels Volume II: Pittsburgh

Lance was scheduled to arrive in Buffalo a week after the rest of the family.  Anticipating some gifts for the kids to be transported back to California, he brought an empty carry-on suitcase and the santa hats we had forgotten.  Unfortunately, his flight was delayed out of SFO for mechanical issues which resulted in a missed connection and a night at the O'Hare Hilton.  Suddenly the empty suitcase except for two santa hats was not as amusing.

The next day we were all reunited in Buffalo and rented a car to drive down to Pittsburgh a little behind schedule.  We met up with the grandparents at Uncle Jim and Aunt Helen's house for some Della Sella's pizza.



RJ would probably list his highlight from Pittsburgh as going to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, home of "Dippy", Andrew Carnegie's pet Diplodocus carnegii and it's cousin the Apatosaurus louisae, named after his wife. The museum also has the holotype for Tyrannosaurus Rex

  amongst other dinosaurs. RJ really enjoyed seeing the dinosaurs, and playing in the Bonehunter's Quarry,

  but I think he got the biggest kick out of getting to touch fossilized dinosaur poop.

 
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he is a quintessential 3 year old boy. When we were in Oakland, we also headed to The Original for some O-fries,

  and then to the Cathedral of Learning to check out some of the Nationality rooms dressed up for the holidays.

On another day, we met up with the Vargos at Primanti Bros., where Logan devoured his first roast beef sandwich!


If RJ's highlight of the trip was the dinosaurs, then Logan's had to be meeting his future girlfriend, Cassandra when we met up with our friends, Carl and Lisa and their kids.



It wasn't as much time as we would have liked but we were glad to see Grandma and the rest of the family in Pittsburgh before heading back to Buffalo for more Christmas activities.

DeLancey Family Winter Travel Volume I: Momma and the Boys in Buffalo

When I mentioned that I was planning on flying with both children (with a layover at JFK) a week prior to Lance joining us, the general consensus was that I was either incredibly brave or incredibly insane. There were definitely some trying moments, like when both my children managed to piss themselves en route (Logan peed all over himself while I was changing his poopy diaper on the airplane), and RJ got quite upset about his accident that occurred when he had to pee as we were landing and then couldn't get off the plane in time because of the 13 rows of people in front of us. Luckily I had packed a change of clothes for both of them (even though RJ hasn't had an accident out in at least 6 mos, maybe longer). RJ did not like my plastic bag fix for his completely soaked sneakers though, but at least they kept his new, dry socks dry. Generally speaking the trip was much more pleasant than I had thought it would be. RJ did some coloring thanks to a Cars "Pack Up", and watched more TV than he is typically allowed thanks to Jet Blue's Direct TV. Logan flirted with everyone around us, nursed a little more often than usual since I put him on the boob when he got fussy (and it still works like a charm for mood improvement), but he took his normal naps, albeit on my lap. I will take holding a sleeping baby over containing an awake squirmy baby in a small space (even with Jet Blue's extra leg room) any day! Both kids slept on the flight from JFK to Buffalo. AND on both flights, we had the 3 seats to ourselves! The women seated next to us on the long flight chose to take one of the open middle seats over crowding our little circus with her assigned aisle seat and no one was seated in our row on the second flight.



Once we were in Buffalo, we had a rough sleeping week, but otherwise had fun.

There was the snow, of course. RJ helped Grammie shovel her deck and I took the kids out to play in the field in front of Grammie's house. RJ and I made a snowman and a snow-Logan (Logan buried in snow up to his waist), and some snow angels.

We also made cookies and decorated Grammie's tree (and the boys decorated each other a bit too).
*As a side note, I'm not sure why all our pictures are incredibly blurry. The lens of the cameral might have been smudged or there is something else wrong, but it unfortunately plagued most of our holiday pictures :(

Early December Pictures

We didn't spend much of December at home, but there is some photographic evidence of us being home for the first 9 days of the month.

RJ tried out his new (to him) hockey stick at the park with Daddy.

Logan tried a California Roll for the first time (and loved it). RJ reached across the table and attempted to steal my smoked salmon nigiri in its entirety, so I shared a little of it and he loved it and the yellowtail too. I sometimes can't get him to eat macaroni and cheese, but sushi he will eat without any fuss. (I'm not complaining though - it's an excuse to get sushi more often!)

Co-op was in full swing until the day before we left.
And we managed to get a few of our friends over for a last-minute planned holiday party! We all had lots of fun, and the kids had a cute little pajama party at the end before everyone headed home. RJ of course waved goodbye to everyone in tears. Its hard for the fun to end!


As always, clicking on the pictures will take you to the respective picasa albums (there are two this month - December 2010 and Holiday Party)

November Pictures

November was a slower month for pictures for some reason, but we did have some beautiful days early in the month that I enjoyed with the boys.

I got a couple of blurry action shots of the boys with friends Madeline and Dylan at Super Frank's too. My phone takes crappy pictures there though because the lighting is weird. Next time I'll try to bring the real camera and see if it fares better.

We attended RJ's friend Stella's birthday, where Python Ron showed off a variety of reptiles and amphibians.

And of course, Thanksgiving!

Mostly, there are just a bunch of pictures of the kids doing random things, like RJ picking a mandarin off our tree in the rain (he insisted on needing a mandarin and I wasn't going to go and pick one when it was raining, so he got on his boots and coat and got it himself).

When you see random pictures of the cat or other objects, it's usually RJ's handiwork. That kid needs his own camera! Except for this one where Velociraptor was spending some time in jail because he had eaten Brachiosaurus. I thought that was pretty creative play and a creative use for the shape-sorter, so I took a picture.

Enjoy! (Remember, clicking on the pictures takes you to the full November album.)

Logan's First Thankgiving

For the 9th year in a row, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner. It's a good thing that I enjoy making our feast!. RJ and I made our pies on Wednesday. We made a pumpkin pie from an actual sugar pie pumpkin and a pumpkin cheese pie. And, since we were making pie crusts, we made a spinach quiche for dinner Wednesday night too. RJ enjoyed being my special helper and when I took a picture of him, he decided to photo document himself, and filled the entire memory card with pictures of random things around the house. I deleted most of the unfocused closeups of the wall and the cat, but I did save a few of his masterpieces! Logan helped out by actually taking both his morning and afternoon nap, during which RJ and I did our work! When he was awake, he was content to crawl around the floor and be occasionally sprinkled with flour.
On Thanksgiving, RJ watched the parade, Logan played with Lance, and I cooked. Then in the afternoon, when all the food was in a stable holding pattern, we drove over to the Tracy Municipal Airport to pick up our dinner guests, Laura and Jesse, who flew in for the evening from Santa Cruz. This was clearly the highlight of the day for RJ, because he got up close and personal with Jesse's airplane and got to talk to a real live pilot.

Captain Jesse showed RJ how the ailerons went up and down (and what the yoke inside the cockpit did when he moved them on the wing), and RJ got to go around the plane naming the elevators, fin, rudder, and wings before we climbed in for our Thanksgiving ride! Jesse took us up and circled around our house and the Altamont Hills. During our flight, RJ got to wear a headset and listen to Jesse as he went through the safety check and talked about how he was flying the airplane. It was a perfect ride on a beautiful day, and RJ was thrilled. He's been on countless airliners in his three and a half years, but being in a small, private airplane is much more interesting! After landing, RJ got to sit in the cockpit and move the yoke around while Jesse showed him what the instruments did and how to adjust the wings for takeoff and landing.

Then we headed to the house to finish up dinner prep and give Logan his first Thanksgiving feast. We had our free-range turkey, sausage sage stuffing, mashed potatoes, glazed yams, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and homemade dinner rolls. I didn't turn anything into baby food and just cut it all up in to tiny pieces for him to eat himself (we've been doing this a little every day for practice, but haven't done a full meal of finger food). Logan, being the eater that he is, LOVED Thanksgiving. He chowed down and loved every minute of it! I even shared a little pie with him, which also thrilled him since he doesn't normally get any food with sugar added. I think Thanksgiving has the potential to be Logan's favorite holiday so far!

Sadly all good things come to an end, and Jesse and Laura had to fly back, after scaling a fence to get back into the airport to their plane! I wish I had a picture of that to post here, but Lance forgot to bring the camera when he dropped them off.

We hope that you all had a Happy Thanksgiving too!

(All pictures link to the Thanksgiving album.)

DeLancey Family Holiday Gift Guide

RJ has reached the age for that annual childhood tradition -- making a wishlist for Santa. He's circled some items in catalogs and pointed at pictures on the laptop so now by popular demand we have prepared wishlists for everybody in the family.

We are transitioning from the Text-based family wish list we've used in the past and still has some items to Amazon Universal Wishlists. A few key points about the Amazon wishlists:

• You don't have to buy from Amazon, some items aren't even sold by Amazon anyway
• You can sort the items by priority or price, the default is date added which is not very helpful
  
• Some items have comments
  
• The wishlist can be filtered by what has not been purchased -- and there is a handy button to press even if you purchased something elsewhere so people don't duplicate, but still have the freedom to shop anywhere
  
• There is an option to make the list more condensed and printer friendly if you must
  

I also created a special list that is for things that would be joint gifts for the boys.

Send us your lists too or risk something random from Lance!

Merry Christmas!

RJ

Wearing mostly 3T clothing, some 4T items (all PJ's are 4T), 4T-5T socks (he's got big feet), size 11 shoes

RJ's Wish List

Logan

Wearing 18 month clothing (still fits in some 12 month clothes), I think his shoe size is a 4 right now.

Logan's Wish List

Cheryl

size 2/small, shoe size 6.5

Cheryl's Wish List

Lance

t-shirts, sweatshirts,etc. XL is best.  Shoes are around a size 10.  Waist 38", Length 30

Lance's Wish List

Logan at 10 months

Only 2 more months until Logan is 1 year old!

Weight: 21 lbs.
Height: no new data
Size: 18 mos.
Hair: Light Brown
Eyes: Hazel - they are mostly blue sometimes a little green, with gold flecks near the iris
Teeth: 6; 4 top, 2 bottom
Vocalizations: dadada, mamama, buhbuhbuh, grrrrrr, gah, uhhg, dat
Words: boob
Signs: Milk (for nursing, but it isn't entirely consistent yet, and he tends to label what he's doing rather than use it to ASK to nurse), He also signed "more" once, but hasn't used it since.

Motor Development: Logan has mastered crawling and creeping along furniture. If there is something to pull up on, he will stand at it for a long time. He also started using the baby pushcart to walk and likes to hold onto adults legs (or hands) to walk too. And Logan can climb stairs, which he makes a bee line for whenever someone forgets to close the stairs gate. He is a fast climber and can get to the top of the stairs if you blink your eyes too fast! Logan also has good balance and can stand unsupported for a few seconds before he chooses to sit down (slowly and controlled, not falling). In terms of fine motor development, he is very precise with his pincer grasp and good at picking up very small things and directing them (usually) to his mouth after examining them and moving them from hand to hand. He has a good deal of coordination.


Cognitive/Perceptual Development: Logan has shown that he understands a great deal of what we say to him, as is evidenced by him getting excited if I ask him if he wants to nurse, and also starting to use the sign for "milk" when he wants to nurse, or, more frequently, WHILE he is nursing. I think his receptive language is really good for his age. He also navigates through the house toward a voice, even when he can't see the voice, showing that his senses are working excellently. He is also working on his understanding about objects and what they do as he has started to manipulate toys more rather than just hold and chew them. Cars roll, blocks go in and out of the bucket, buttons get pressed to hear music, rattles shake, etc. Logan also enjoys sensory experiences. He will really examine different textures and loves to play with his food (and fingerpaints which we learned when I accidentally left one of RJ's paintings within reach to dry). He can also imitate us, showing that he is paying attention to what we do and learning from it. For example, if I tap two blocks together to make noise, he picks up two blocks and does it too. He also does this verbally. RJ was getting frustrated while eating lunch today and was making that obstinent/angry kid growl/grunt sound of protest. Within minutes, Logan started repeating the growl/grunt sound, which of course made RJ laugh, thus reinforcing the behavior. Guiding children's behavior is so much more complicated when an older sibling encourages the younger one to act inappropriately by finding it hilarious.


Relationships/Personality: Logan is pretty easy going and is happy when he's getting attention.He loves hugs and kisses, although he can get annoyed when RJ restricts his movement with his overzealous hugs for too long. He generally just goes along with whatever is going on and is pretty easy to adapt to new schedules/places. He is a very busy baby too - he gets into EVERYTHING very quickly. I'm also impressed by his ability to interact with RJ as they can play together. He seems to really pay attention to what other people are doing.

Eating: Logan nurses during the day, although he has started to reduce the number of nursing sessions during the day, some days. He always nurses around 6am, 9:30am, 1/1:30pm, 3:30/4, and 7:30/8. However, he still sometimes has the 11:30 and/or the 5:30, especially if he wants comforting then or when he has a cold like he does now. He eats most foods now, primarily pureed, although he is now enjoying puffs, along with small pieces of soft cooked veggies, fruit, bread, and meats. I don't think he will continue to enjoy the purees for long since he really enjoys feeding himself finger foods off his tray and starts to fuss when his tray supply is low, even though I'm spooning puree in his face. We are still careful about salt and sugar, both of which he rarely has at all. Logan is also still working on sippy cup skills. I pump every morning to put milk in his baby cereal breakfast, and have been putting what's left every day in his foogo sippy (its the only one that's working for him now). He will drink from it, but only if I am holding it for him. This is a breakthrough for him though since he wouldn't even drink from anything other than me recently. Now I know I can be away for a feeding if I need to be.

Sleep: I am hesitant to say that Logan has improved immensely because I don't want to jinx it, but he really has been sleeping better since we got the crib. I'm not sure if it was just that the crib was more comfortable or that once we got the crib, Lance started a new policy of him not getting out of the crib at night and would sooth him laying in the crib. In any case, after we had the crib for a week, Logan actually slept through the night without needing us to help him back to sleep. He figured out how to get back to sleep himself as long as nothing was really bothering him. He does still have a few rough nights where he does need help to get back down, but I think we're finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel where we won't be constantly stressing about his sleep or losing sleep ourselves. Logan typically nurses around 7:45/8 and I put him down when he finishes, around 8:15/8:30, by which time, he's usually asleep. If he's not asleep, I rub his back in the crib to help him. I've started reciting Good Night Moon when nursing him to sleep so that he has that as a sleep association as well as nursing. He gets up between 5 and 6 to nurse and typically falls asleep nursing in bed with me and wakes between 7 and 8:30 for the day. We're working on getting more consistent nap times, but his morning nap is variable depending on when he wakes up. Sometimes he naps at 9:30, sometimes not until 11/11:30, and sometimes he skips it altogether or just takes a quick snooze while nursing and wakes up when I put him down. His afternoon nap is also variable depending on the morning nap. Sometimes it starts at 1/1:30, and sometimes not until 3:30. I'd love if he could get this consistent, but at this point as long as he doesn't sleep past 5:30, we're usually okay for bedtime still. At this point, I'm just glad he has figured out how to settle himself during the night by himself!

Logan is really becoming quite the character now that he's more mobile and able to communicate.

Logan's First Halloween and RJ's First Jack-O-Lantern

Halloween started for us on Friday when our little lion and zoo keeper went to DreamWorks to have lunch with Daddy during the annual DreamWorks Halloween party. My favorite part of this outing was when RJ walked up to Frankenstein's monster and asked him who he was. Sadly, RJ did not want to be Alex the Lion from the DreamWorks Madagascar movies, but instead insisted that he was Simba from Disney's Lion King.

Then on Halloween morning, RJ carved his airplane pumpkin with Daddy while Logan and I carved the Baby Logan pumpkin.


Finally, I took RJ and Logan trick or treating with our friends Ashlan and Zach in their neighborhood. In past years, RJ has been fearful of anyone in a mask and some of the decorations. However, this year, we explained that to make scary things not scary, that we just laugh at them and the scary goes away. It worked really well! He fake-laughed at teenagers in hockey masks, at witch displays, and at a tall Frankenstein's monster, amongst a slew of other things. He was also a very polite trick or treater, saying thank you to everyone AND sometimes asking very nicely if he could have a piece for his little brother's bag when the porch was not stroller-accessible. He was really sweet and really enjoyed riding in Zach's wagon with Ashlan (Zach was too busy speed-trick-or-treating to go in the wagon!).

October 2010 - Pictures

October has been a busy month. In addition to the usual candid pictures (including lots of topless pictures of RJ, since he frequently requests to be "Mowgli" after watching The Jungle Book in late September), we also have pictures from RJ's friend Zach's Birthday party at Joan's Farm and Pumpkin Patch,


picking our pumpkins and popcorn from "Farmer Bob's",


and the Airshow during Fleet Week in San Francisco.