Monday update

It snowed here Friday night and Anchorage woke up to a winter wonderland. Of course I forgot to take a photo because we're all sleep-deprived and I'm not running on all cylinders, ha ha. It's been getting a lot colder at night too. Last night it got below freezing and my outside plants are all dying off. Lots of frost in the morning - BRRR!

But today is a beautiful day and I dropped Boyd off at my mom's new house! The 2 moving men were there unloading her household goods (which took just a couple hours). They were very nice, quick and efficient - and even offered to come back to discard the mountain of boxes she'll have after unpacking. Alaska Terminals - we highly recommend them.

The house is a newer ranch in a quiet part of town, not too far from my house or Risha's rental. I think my dad would have approved. It'll be a nice fresh start for mom after so many losses over the last year. Risha, Gabe, D and I helped mom move some boxes and furniture in on Saturday, then we had a nice family dinner. Boyd got to hang out with his Grandma Ann on Sunday while D and I went to see the movie "Looper." So nice to have some quality time with my husband. :-)

Now for some photos...

Oh how I love my son's utterly adorable, squishable little face and cheekies.

Bath time with Grandma Ann. I bathe him in the bathtub while using a baby tub, but I guess this is easier on my mom's back.

His little hands are so fast!

What a smile! He was getting fussy in Costco, so D gave him something to hang on to. Loved it! Side note: we go through a TON of food saver bags. We use them for everything, from wild game and fish to bulk foods like cheese and bread. 

Fall walk

Last Sunday was a beautiful fall day. It stopped raining and the sun peeked out a bit, so Boyd and I geared up for a long walk around our neighborhood. All in all we were out for 3 hours and managed to cover 4 miles during our leisurely stroll.

A beautiful tree along our route. Love the color.

This is a new subdivision going in near our home - one street over. There are two short cul-de-sacs and both roads are paved, curbs/gutters done, street lights in, and utilities done. The builder will be back in the spring to start work on the homes, which will start in the low $330,000's.

A view of the new subdivision from the main road.

A nice sized birch tree that blew over during the first windstorm.

Nice day for a walk!

My favorite little man! It took 30 minutes of strolling before he conked out. The day was super warm (low 60's) so he just needed a light cap and blanket.

This is the Chariot I bought used off of Craigslist. Boyd is still a little young to be pulled in it while we ride our bikes and we can't try the skis yet, so I got some stroller wheels and they work great! Here you can see the mesh screen - there is also a plastic rain cover that I have rolled up.

Rainbow!

Fall leaves are everywhere - winter is coming.

There is an equestrian center down the road from our house - many people in our area (lower hillside) have horses on their property. It's fun to see them walking down the sidewalks and onto the wooded trails.

Well it's difficult to see here, but these two trees have CD's hanging from the branches. I'm not sure what that's all about.

Video: Puppy dog tails - 7 months

Boyd sure does love his pets. In this video he is fascinated by Drift's sweeping tail...

Mealtime

Boyd is still nursing, but we have eliminated the middle of the night feeding for the most part. It was surprisingly easy. He slept through the night a couple times and didn't eat, so the next few nights I would put him back to bed after waking without a nursing session. He was fine and boom, just like that we had night weaned!

He still eats 4 times during the day. During the workweek I nurse him in the morning and after work, and he get a bottle 2x per day, plus 2-3 solid meals (pureed foods).

Boyd - 7 months

7 months!

• Boyd was sick for the first time at 5.75 months and I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. He started sneezing a ton with some fussiness, and then was super stuffy and with a runny nose. He was miserable and I felt so bad for him. It didn't last too long - but then he passed the virus on to me! I was sick for less than a week. I think breastfeeding has been really great for his immune system and general health.
• No crawling yet but we're not stressing out about it. Bigger babies tend to move through the physical milestones a little slower than smaller kids, so he'll get around to it eventually. This just means we won't have to baby-proof the house as early as I thought!
• The sleep update: we had a couple amazing nights where Boyd slept 9 to 11 hours at a time. IT. WAS. HEAVEN. Then he went back to waking up once or twice, and now he's up all night and staying up for hours. I'm exhausted. D is exhausted. It's every parent's worst nightmare.Out of 7.5 months I can count on one hand the number of nights he's slept longer than 7 hours. I haven't slept longer than 5 hours at a time for 215 days.
• Lately he has been digging into the big rubber basket which holds all of his toys and picking the ones he wants to play with. Super cute.
• More sounds - especially the "bbbbb" one he is so fond of.
• EVERYTHING goes into his mouth. He'll grab something, give it a little look and then POP, in the mouth it goes!
• Really enjoys grabbing that left foot and putting that into his mouth too. Babies are so flexible!
• He gets SO distracted during the the daytime nursing sessions. I usually nurse him upstairs in his room but sometimes on the weekends I like to watch a little TV (since I never get to do so anymore) and I have to have the volume on low so he doesn't whip his little head around to look at the screen.
• It's weird, but Boyd loves hair - especially mine. He likes to grab it and put it in his mouth, but lately I've really tried to wean him off of this behavior.
• Every time I put music on he gets a huge smile on his face. We've been dancing and singing a lot.
• Still waiting for the top two teeth to make an appearance. He seems to go through a horrible teething stage but the teeth don't show up until months later.

Dreary & wet September

The crazy weather continues - we've had days of high winds (thankfully no additional downed trees) but now it's all rain, rain, rain. Lots of flooding across Southcentral Alaska, and creeks, lakes, rivers, etc., are all overflowing - some dangerously high and people have had to evacuate. It's all fine in most of Anchorage but in the Mat-Su Valley and Seward, parts of the cities are totally flooded out.

Here is a video from the Lowell Creek waterfall outside of Seward now: http://sewardcitynews.com/2012/09/flooding-at-lowell-creek-waterfall/
This is what is usually looks like!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7WVGoQ-EPc&feature=related

D had to jump my car before work on Tuesday morning. We accidentally jammed Boyd's stroller up against the dome light after running errands on Sunday. It took a day and a half to totally drain my battery! Oops.

Reading "The Lorax" with my little man. I had never read this Dr. Seuss book before but I love it. Sort of a sad story but a wise cautionary tale with a possible happy ending.

Another dreary view outside of my office window. At least I get to see the planes and helicopters landing and taking off.

Sleepy baby!

Heyyyyyyyy....

Play time

We're almost 7 months - sooo close!

Cheese!

New blanket from Grandma Mim! The bin-o-toys is never far from Boyd's reach.

Little brother and big brother. Boyd LOVES Drift and the cats. Drift has to be coaxed to hang out with the baby. He's an old grump now.

Hunting & windstorms

To all the vegan/vegetarians, look away now...

We have meat! D returned triumphant from his week-long hunt, with 180 pounds of caribou meat (on the bone). He shot the animal fairly close to the Dalton Highway and so was able to bring back more of the animal that he usually would. Normally he has to pack everything out for miles (and make more than one trip) so it's easier to leave things like the ribs behind. This time he brought the ribs back and we had a delicious BBQ dinner on Monday. D spent a couple days cutting up the meat and processing most of it into steaks, chops, stew meat, etc. We dropped 62 pounds at Indian Valley Meats to be processed into burger, hot dogs and deer bacon. YUM.

Very proud of my hunting hubby. :-) AND the caribou rack/antlers are big enough to be entered into the Pope & Young record books - for hunting with a bow and arrow. Pretty impressive! I forgot to take a photo of the antlers but will do so. Right now the birds are picking it clean, along with the cape (caribou hide).

What a week...while D was gone hunting, Anchorage was hit with a HUGE windstorm. Like the craziest, most powerful windstorm I've ever experienced - and I've lived in Alaska my whole life. It hit 130 mph at Glen Alps on the Hillside and around 60-70 mph at our house. We've had storms before but usually in the middle of winter. I heard that the damage was so extensive this time because the trees were heavy with leaves and sap, and the ground unfrozen. In winter, the wind just blows through tree branches and trees are rooted down in frozen ground.

This time we saw lots of power lines down, uprooted trees, belongings blown about, trees falling on structures/cars/yards, streets/etc. You need to check out this gallery on the Anchorage Daily News site - pretty amazing: WINDSTORM PHOTOS

The wind started up in the early evening last Tuesday and our power went out around 9:30 p.m. because of a downed power line. I was ready with my flashlights and battery-powered candles though, since the lights had been flickering for a while. It was just me and Boyd, riding out a crazy, scary storm! We had a pretty miserable night - Boyd was teething/sick and I had the beginnings of a migraine, due to the change in barometric pressure from the storm.

Drift couldn't sleep outside because of the weather so I got up a couple times to let him out for potty breaks. That stressed me out - he's blind because of the diabetes and I was so worried that something would fly by, hit him and he wouldn't see it coming. By 4:30 or 5 am the winds died down and I let Drift out again. It was eerily quiet and Drift's kennel was pushed all the way across the deck. I'm glad he didn't sleep in there! Everyone's power was out and I could see the night sky so clearly - the stars were very bright and twinkly. And I could have sworn that the Northern Lights were out, but I was pretty exhausted by that point so I may have been hallucinating.

In the morning I headed out to the shed to retrieve D's chainsaw for our friends who had 2 fallen trees on their roof, when I noticed that a huge tree had fallen into our neighbor's yard and THIS behemoth was leaning on our shed:

D's well-built shed - it held up 2 big cottonwoods for 5 days!

  

After the tree fell. We got tired of waiting for our neighbor to take care of it.

Our neighbor came over to help D out. They both went to town with their chainsaws! Nobody was hurt, thank goodness. Tree removal is no joke.

Of course, crazy things always happen when D is gone but baby Boyd and I made it through just fine. My mom was around to help while I dealt with our (extremely unhelpful) neighbor who owned the leaning trees.We're sad to see the big cottonwood missing from the skyline - it really changes our view.

Video: Tummy time in the crib - 5.5 months

More video! Boyd acting shy, playing around and generally, you know, being a baby.

Video: Blowing raspberries - 5.5 months

This was just after Boyd sprouted his bottom two teeth. He seemed to want to practice blowing raspberries constantly!

VIDEO: Boyd & Domo - 6.5 months

Having an iPhone is great - I take tons of photos of Boyd and can even record videos. The photos are easy to post but the videos take a bit more work. However, I'm trying to make sure you all are able to enjoy these videos too! So watch for more fun videos of the munchkin - like this one:

He loves this weird-looking doll called Domo. It's one of his favorites, probably because of the ridiculous look on the toy's face. Whatever makes him happy!

Sweet cheeks

It's true - Boyd inherited his chubby cheeks from his mama...

Grandparents

Boyd has the best grandparents ever! So much love for our little boy.

Summer wrap-up

I'm happy to report that this summer went a lot better than I anticipated. Having a colicky baby really limits your activities, so as Boyd matured it was wonderful to get out and enjoy Alaska. Of course we (I) didn't do nearly as much as past years, but that's to be expected with a little baby. I was able to fish the Kenai from Centennial in Soldotna, camp on the Russian River and bring in 2 reds, and visit Homer for my birthday. Not too shabby!

We're all pretty bummed that D's parents left town to make the trek back to Minnesota. It was really great to have them in Alaska all summer to spend time with us and Boyd. But they will be back next year for a big event, because...

Risha is getting married! Everyone is pretty excited about the happy event, which is tentatively set for July 5th - but of course that date is not set in stone. She and Gabe have less than a year to plan, but D and I were able to do it and they will too.

Boyd is teething again. Sleep has been awful - waking every 2 hours and staying awake for about 60-90 minutes at night, and taking crazy short 30 minute naps. BUT last night he slept for 9 HOURS straight! I know it's a fluke but the extra sleep for me was a godsend, especially since D is gone for 7-10 days on a hunting trip. Thank goodness my mom is here or else I would go completely bonkers.

Had coffee with some girlfriends this morning and we all managed to be kid-free! Was so nice to see them and catch up.

On to some Boyd pics - the vest is from Grandma Mim and I found the trapper hat on sale. So cute!