Success!!

For any of you who remember the bread fiasco of last winter (see here), you'll be happy to know that I didn't give up!  It only took me almost a year to try again, and the bread turned out....the same.  Dangit!  At least we got to play some more football with it again.  I had just about decided to give up for good, but decided to give it one last shot!  After multiple phone calls with my mom, I carefully reread the recipe and noticed a sentence that I apparently skimmed over the last two times.  I forgot an entire cup of water that I was supposed to add to the oatmeal before I put it in the mixer.  A whole cup!  No wonder my dough was so dry and dense!  Anyways, I'm pleased to present my successful venture at baking homemade whole wheat bread.  I'm much more excited to eat bread now (toast every day!) and I know buddy is relieved-he doesn't ask for much, but had been mentioning how much he likes homemade bread:

Now, on to Chase!  Did I ever update after his 6 month appointment?  He weighed only 14lbs 9oz (10th %), so the doctor was a little concerned that he dropped to a lower percentage group.  I don't think it helped things when we went on vacation and he wouldn't really eat well the whole time, but he's doing much better now and is still gaining some weight.  I'm not too worried, since he seems happy and is hitting his milestones pretty well.  Speaking of, he now knows how to roll over from his back to stomach on both sides (left and right), and though he's not crawling yet he likes to scoot by pushing off of my hands while he's on his tummy.  He's also started to stick his bum up in the air, so I think he's trying to push off the ground a bit.  He's pretty good at grabbing everything and sticking it in his mouth-he can even put his own pacifier back in!  In the past week he's started pushing himself out of some of his seats (i.e. the bumbo, and his stroller-if I don't snap him in):

He can sit in a shopping cart without a car seat, and can sit by himself for an extended period of time!  He's started squealing at high pitches instead of laughing lately, so I hope that's just a phase :)  We got him a jumperoo for Christmas, and I think he'll be jumping around in it in no time--right now he mostly plays with the toys connected to it.  Enough of the baby talk--here are some baby pics instead:

p.s.  These next two pics are from when we went to a little park by our apartments, and we were the only ones there, except for a creepy white van parked nearby.  There was a guy just sitting there in the van reading the newspaper.  We didn't stay long.  And don't worry, before we got out to play I made sure to text Buddy with the license plate # of the van in case something happened to us.  I think I've been watching too many episodes of "Criminal Minds" :)

The Best Medicine

Getting Chase to laugh is always a challenge, but definitely a rewarding one :)  The first video is dedicated to Kent, who will be so proud to see that Chase has such a refined sense of humor.  (sorry the video isn't very loud.  I'm not sure why it uploaded at such a low volume).

Thanksgiving in Atlanta

 Happy Thanksgiving (two weeks ago)!  Since we didn't carve our jack-o-latern in time for Halloween, we carved it into a turkey!  We're pretty pleased with how it turned out, too.  We didn't even use a pattern!  Unfortunately, I only remembered to light it once for this picture, so it was still kind of a waste.  But a fun waste!  I always like carving pumpkins :)

For Thanksgiving vacation, we drove to Atlanta to stay with Buddy's sister and her family for a week.  We had a great time there and ate some delicious food!  Chase got a lot of attention from his cousins, especially his cousin Kami.  She was always excited to feed him or bathe him, or just hold him.  Those guys are going to be such good siblings to their new brother that's coming.  Here Clayton and Kami are mimicking Chase-lying on the floor spread-eagle like he does.

 While we were there, we got to spend a few hours at the atlanta zoo :)  Too bad Chase can't appreciate all of the animals yet, but I think he still loved the nice long walk!

 This is a big "bird's nest" that was part of a zoo exhibit.

 On one of the days we went to the park.  I actually like going to the park now because Chase can actually do something there:  swing on the swings!  Luckily, Lyssie was good enough to share the swing with him :)

Too bad I didn't take any pictures of the delicious feast we had!  Buddy's sister made some wonderful rolls (they call them 'buns'.  Is that a Canadian thing?), and the turkey turned out great!  I never knew that my mom cooked the turkey in a turkey bag, but that's what she told us we could do, and it was delicious.  I totally recommend cooking it that way-it wasn't dry or anything!  We'll be sad to move away from Memphis next May, since we won't be close to Buddy's sister anymore, but we'll be back in September!