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" :)