family news – Page 57 – Out Of Their Minds Design

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Epilogue

Here is some video I shot at Connor’s baseball game, enjoy! Some of it is Connor playing, and about as much of Kaylee and Ian running around…

Click here to view it, it could be a little long, it weighs in at 5.9MB so dial-up beware. (This is that nicer format though, so it should work fairly quickly.)

EDIT – the quality of this video is horrible… I’m looking into making a nicer looking encoding at the moment, but it’ll probably be even bigger. 🙁

EDIT – ok so I needed to trade off some different things to make this work… you just can’t have a long-length video AND have it look good AND have it take up a generous portion of your screen. The following link will take you to a slightly smaller, but MUCH SHARPER version of the same video, above. Eventually I’ll find a happy middle ground, I swear!

Click here to view it, this one is 13.5MB in length.

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Part V

The final part of the 28th, I’m hoping to get some baeball video up for the “epilogue.” We shall see, big deadlines for Daddy this next week. Have patience please!

Some final moments with the cousins and the swingset before bedtime… Ian’s all grins! See this image larger.

I won’t lie, the only way I got Ian and Kaylee to smile during this series of pictures was to let their feet graze my belly as I was pushing them. For some reason one’s grown daddy or uncle making an “oof” face and crossing his eyes is comedic gold. Can’t help myself sometimes. See this image larger.

*My turn?* See this image larger.

Weee! See this image larger.

Carefully watched by spotters, Ian climbs the slide like a mountaineer. See this image larger.

*I can see Kaylee and Connor’s house from here! No seriously, I can!* See this image larger.

*I don’t wanna go home, Grandma.* See this image larger.

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Part IV

The latter half of the 28th, which was the Sunday of our extended weekend… Are you ready for a image avalanche? Gooooooo!

*Hey! We heard you have popsicles in there!!!* See this image larger.

In what is probably going to be a moment that little Ian will carry with him until the next time he gets to see his cousins, Connor teaches Ian the importance of follow-through. See this image larger.

A quick study, he was off to find a club of his own to borrow. See this image larger.

Cute. See this image larger.

The speed of this kid has done nothing but impress me. Well ok, it has also made me very tired, and old. But yeah, impressive little man! See this image larger.

Melissa and Melanie’s Uncle Jim dropped off some presents for the little ones; here Grampa Ray kindly lends a hand in opening a nice set of Matchbox cars. See this image larger.

*Sorry Daddy, Thomas is full at the moment, you’ll have to come back later.* See this image larger.

Ian apologizes to Kaylee for playing a little rough while establishing which part of her swingset belonged to him. See this image larger.

“Like a diamond in the sky…” See this image larger.

Earlier in the week Mr. Brandon taught Ian to give a thumbs up, and say “sweeeeeet.” Ian showed off this talent to his cousins while still in Ohio. See this image larger.

Aunt Melanie tasked me with getting a picture of all three of the kids smiling. This is maybe about as close as I got this night… See this image larger.

…but oh how we tried… See this image larger.

and bribed… See this image larger.

Ian: “Reeeecycle!!!” See this image larger.

Looks like we’re still going pretty long on photos!!! I’ll continue the same day (the 28th) in Part V!

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Part III

We awoke Sunday, the 28th, to discover we were still completely out of energy. Melissa still on bedrest, and me there to watch her… the Orr reunion could happen without us. That’s what pictures are for!

I just know somebody said to Ian “Eat your Cheerios over on on the linoleum so that you don’t make a mess on the carpet.” He got half of it right, I guess… See this image larger.

A quick grin with the cousins. See this image larger.

Kaylee takes a swing! See this image larger.

Ian happily enjoys a push from Grampa Ray! See this image larger.

Ian dines on some of the traditional Orr reunion delicacies, with his favorite cousins and Grandma Barb! See this image larger.

The day isn’t over yet, but I’ll save the rest of the pictures for next entry… cya soon!

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Part II

June 27th, Melissa and I awoke, pushed Ian out the bedroom door, and fell back asleep immediately. We went into recovery mode, more or less.

That evening, Connor had a baseball game and Grandma Barb stayed home with Melissa so that Ian and I could go root for “the Bakers.”

Ian is ready to cheer Connor on, and can’t wait to see a live game after watching the same double on the Kunze blog 462 times. See this image larger.

Shortly after this picture was taken, the most hilarious conversation I’ve ever heard occurred in the two seats behind me. “Ian, see water?” “Yes Kaylee, I see water….(pause) Look at trees, Kaylee!” It was like some horribly scripted after school special, but the cutest thing on Earth. See this image larger.

Ian and Grampa watch from the sidelines as anticipation builds! I’m putting together a compilation of the video footage I took during the game, and that will end up on the blog in a few days. See this image larger.

He was pretty happy here watching the game, although I had to stop him from running around a bit. Thanks to Grampa Ray, Aunt Melanie and “Ronnie” for watching him. Ian was also happy about the after-game victory tradition of ice cream! (I understand that if there’s a loss the tradition to help cope mysteriously also involves ice cream.) See this image larger.

That night, hopped up on sugar and bolstered by his own youth, Ian attempts the popular sport of block jumping. Is he going to turn down a double-dog dare? NO WAY! (Love Ian’s body language here… you can see from his toes and his left hand that he’s pretty much bursting at the seems.) See this image larger.

We have a winner! (But I’m not sure who.) See this image larger.

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Part I

LATEST NEWS: After our appointment. Our physician was still a little hesitant to give us much of a prognosis for how things should or will go in the future, because she can’t. If you think about it, obviously any baby is a possible miscarriage. She did take Melissa off of bed-rest, give her the ok to go to work, to perform tasks such as lifting Ian, and even said she could go up to Fawn Island. She answered our extensive list of questions with what I will call a positive outlook… using words like “hopefully,” and said she did not consider this a “high risk” pregnancy. I guess what I would say is that our doctor mostly approached this from the standpoint of normalcy. For us, that’s awesome news!

NEWS: Today we go to the doctor and finally get a chance to discuss this pregnancy with our physician at length. We did actually get to talk to her yesterday on the phone, huzzah!

Ian graduated to the “Early Preschool” room today! I’ve got footage and will show it off in a few days!

Alright so back about a week ago, the Ohio trip…

The night we showed up at the Kunze’s, and everybody was out and active and running around! Here Ian stares in awe as Connor shows off his driving technique. See this image larger.

I added this picture after the entry was published, I got the pictures out of order, chronologically: Aunt Dissy helps Kaylee with he swing! See this image larger.

Ian and Kaylee discover home shopping is a toy cart and cash register away. See this image larger.

She’s a cutie, that Kaylee! See this image larger.

She’s a couple inches taller than Ian, and with that weighs a little more… Connor is ridiculously tall and a rail, but fit as a fiddle. Here he shows off his muscles! See this image larger.

I love a picture with narrative. If you can’t read this one, I’ll help you. Connor is saying “I don’t like little kids in my room because they cause chaos.” Ian is saying “Chaos, what chaos? WHOA!!!!” See this image larger.

More play while the moms watch with folded arms… See this image larger.

Yay, smiles!… Hey, no shoes on the bed! See this image larger.

Pre-sleep tea party for two! See this image larger.

Just to kind of keep you on the timeline… THIS night and on to the next morning we ended up in the ER… again I want to thank everybody for picking up Melissa and I’s slack while we slept in the whole weekend.

Our story continues soon!

June 2009 Ohio Trip, Prologue

We had a great time in Ohio seeing family, but a really tough week overall.

The short of it is this… we arrived in Ohio after a long trip, and announced that Ian was going to be a big brother. Huge and awesome news. Hours later Melissa developed symptoms of a miscarriage, and we ended up in the ER. We spent many hours waiting and making ourselves sick with grief. At around 4am Melissa faced the ultrasound portion of the morning alone, or so she thought. A seemingly healthy fetus waved from the monitor, and we discovered the fetus was about 3 weeks older than we thought, around 11 weeks old.

The weekend progressed, Melissa was on bed-rest. Grandma Barb, Grampa Ray, Aunt Melanie, Uncle Ben, and Cousins Connor and Kaylee stepped up to the plate and watched, fed and entertained Ian for us while we slept, and we can’t thank them enough for that! Don’t be surprised if I mention that a few more times, we were out of energy and I don’t know what we would have done without their thoughtfulness.

We got back to Michigan, the next day got some bloodwork done, and then waited yet another day for the results. We had a scare when some hormone levels dropped in the results of the bloodwork, (but again long story short,) it turns out that a healthy ultrasound trumps said results. We had a second ultrasound here in Grand Rapids, and we were exhausted, scared, and it was a cold, grey day in July — we tried our best to have faith and were extremely thrilled to find out the baby is fine, and 12-13 weeks in development. This is according to the ultrasound tech, of course, we’ve still not spoken to our physician person-to-person. (No, not even on the phone.) We’re not happy about that. Wednesday is our appointment, I’ll update this then, hopefully our list of questions will be fully answered.

Ok, now that you’ve got some background, I will tell you how the visit with the family went with pictures, next entry!

In the meanwhile, this is the picture we planned to use to joyously announce the coming of our next child…
Big brother-to-be… we hope and hope and hope! Thanks for your thoughts, wishes, prayers and help! See this image larger.

Miscellaneous Ian

Ian is Very Trying lately. From other parents I’m hearing that we’ve got things great, but if you could see the sinister glee in his eyes as he does something you’ve told him not to do in precise and clear words a hundred times. It was enough that I picked him up the other day just so he could look at me right in the face after he did something wrong. I think it must have been the classic “I’m about to shake my baby” pose, because I looked over at Melissa and she was staring at me like she might have to use pepper spray and call 9-1-1. Of course I did NOT give him the slightest shake, I just wanted him up at my level so he could see that we need to mutually respect each other. It actually seemed to work, but nothing gets the message across for very long. In moments he’ll be off doing something… biting the tablecloth hard enough to rip it, tipping back in his chair. Putting feet on the table. And about once a week, not trying a single bite of his food, even when a bribe is offered. (It is easy to accidentally reinforce this kind of behavior, so I’ve actually been making deals with him even when everything on the table is something he’ll easily eat… I’d love to get out of that entirely at some point.) You’ll also notice the dinner table in particular seems to attract the nastier side of Ian. Generally we believe this is because we aren’t paying rapt attention to him, instead trying to eat or ask each other about our day.

On the other hand, he’s SO awesome right now. I can’t believe that this is our little baby when I hear “Ouchie! (scampering feet) Daddy kiss it! My hurt my pinger.” and there he is, looking up at me, three feet tall, finger extended and waiting impatiently. Or when he tries to read a book to us based on memorization. Or when he says “WEWKUM HOME, MOMMY!” standing just inside the garage door. The way he’s become so much more responsible about his pacifier… leaving it on the dresser without a word — not asking for it in the car. Small steps toward giving it up for good.

I want to sort of circle and highlight something that I noticed about the blog. Melissa is busy. Melissa has all kinds of fun with Ian and takes him to fun places… but Mommy does not always have a camera handy — and when she does she may not remember to give the photos to Daddy. So keep in mind that you’re seeing an inordinate amount of Father/Son pictures, but that is not an indicator of how our time is actually spent. I just used “inordinate” in a sentence. Woohoo!

And now some pics to catch you up to present!

There’s an ice cream truck that drives through our neighborhood that plays a notes-only rendition of the theme to “Popeye the Sailor Man.” We have yet to treat Ian to an ice cream from said truck because he gets so much joy out of just watching it go by. We know once we get him the first ice cream, his enjoyment will be marred with thoughts of “why can’t I?” Ian and I both have good hearing, so we typically look at each other and tilt our heads like curious dogs, while Mommy wonders what the fuss is all about… then Ian says “PINK TRUCK!” and runs over to the window (or his lion) to wait for it to appear. See this image larger.

At home, Ian is booster-seat free. We’ve decided that part of his behavior at the table is brought on by being done with his meal, getting bored and not being able to do anything about it. Also I erroneously thought that he would not be able to reach high enough to put his feet on the table. See this image larger.

On the 22nd Ian and I went to another park, this one is called Frog Hollow, and it is the only Dad’s Group location that I haven’t really liked so far. The parking lot was very small, and there were a lot of people there. See this image larger.

This park was close to a hospital, so they made it handicapped accessible in a number of ways. You can see a sort of walkway over to the left for wheelchairs… they get up there through a path that winds through the tall grasses of a hill nearby. See this image larger.

“Woodchips are lava!” See this image larger.

The children at the park were meant to be able to climb up the inside of this tube with the hand-holes. It looks to me like a really steep slide combined with a cheese grater. See this image larger.

This is the hill I mentioned earlier that allows wheelchair access to the slides. See this image larger.

They had special swings with a 5-point restraining system. I’ve got a number of shots, I’m wondering if I could make it look like Ian’s piloting a jet fighter or something. See this image larger.

Another Monday, Another Park with Daddy

On June 15th, it was time to get back to the Dad’s group with Ian. The destination this time was Millennium Park, which was a really nice place.

This is Ian. Perhaps you’ve seen him before. See this image larger.

On the way to the park, we passed the exit to the museum, and he said “dinosaurs!” He did this again just the other day. Good memory on that kid, unless Mommy’s at work. “Where Mommy go?” “She’s at work…” “Where Mommy go?” “She’s at work…” See this image larger.

The Statue of Liberty would probably not miss her contact lens. See this image larger.

Everything at this park was top-notch. Nothing looked worn and everything looked clean. They took care of it nicely. We’ll be going back here again. Plus dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are a big hit. See this image larger.

He can be such a sweet boy. Look at all the cool stuff to play with in the background! Something to keep in mind as he gets older. See this image larger.

I like this smile on him, I don’t think I’ve caught it on film until this point. Shame about the lens flare, but I’ll take what I can get. See this image larger.

Another big slide! I think it was about at this point that I realized I could not find my phone. Panic set in, and eventually we ended up leaving so I could check to see if it was at home. (It was.) See this image larger.

Slip Slidin’ Away

On the 14th of this month, Ian and Mommy and Daddy decided it was hot enough to get out the slip n’ slide.

For some reason this hose nozzle got his attention. I know, I know, the shirt says “birthday boy” and it is the middle of June. I think Mommy was just trying to make life difficult for Daddy once he looked back at these a few years from now. 😉 See this image larger.

Ian can’t seem to find the words, so I’ll help him “HOLY CRAP THAT’S COLD.” See this image larger.

That didn’t stop him from giving it a try or two — although what you see here is about as far as he ever got. See this image larger.

Maybe it is warmer now? Nope. See this image larger.

Get that tongue back in your mouth while you’re running, goofball! As I’ve heard just about every grandparent say: “He’ll learn the hard way.” Speaking of which, Daddy thought it would be a good idea to show Ian how the slip n slide worked, so I dove in and tried it. My conclusion is that Ian was smart not to dive onto it, but the ground is probably a lot softer on his bones than mine, and it was still pretty cold! See this image larger.