Charlie's Eyes

So, When Charlie inherited my brown eyes, he also inherited my not-so-perfect vision. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 15 months old...before I had hair :) Because of this, I was asking Charlie's pediatrician how soon we could check Charlie's eyes when he was only a couple days old.  I don't even really remember the answer he gave but basically we could wait a couple years if we didn't see anything concerning. As Charlie grew we he seemed to be focusing on things fine, even watching tiny ants crawl across the ground. We hoped this meant that he got his daddy's eagle vision. I was still very interested in him getting checked as soon as he could and definitely before he started school. I had an optometry appointment shortly after Charlie turned two and I asked that optometrist about his eyes as well. She recommended that kids get checked around 3 years old. He still had a year before he could be checked unless I saw anything concerning. He seemed completely fine, I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything. In August this year, Max started to notice that Charlie's left eye was wandering a bit. This was usually at dinner time so I just assumed it was because he was tired and just didn't feel like making his eyes focus. We finally decided to make an appointment with the pediatrician, we would have to have the pediatrician looks at it and then refer us to an ophthalmologist if something seemed wrong. I was able to see the pediatrician soon and of course, Charlie's eye didn't wander at all at the appointment but he is also two years old and it's hard for him to focus on anything. Two pediatricians looked at it and didn't see anything concerning, one of the doctors even said he probably just had an extra fold of skin that was basically making it appear like his eye was wandering (optical illusion...we were pretty sure that wasn't it) After all that, they still referred us to the ophthalmologist since I was still concerned.  

 It's kind of hard to tell but his eye is wandering in both of these photos.

This is me with my wandering eye. 

The bad news is that it is a 2-3 month wait to see the ophthalmologist and it was quite the long wait seeing that his eye was getting worse and wandering more frequently.

We finally were able to see the ophthalmologist which was an awesome experience, just as I remember it as a kid. You get to play with toys and watch cartoons...
We found out that Charlie is far sighted just like me but not nearly as bad. His Perscription is +2.75 in each eye and mine is +7.5 (the farther from 0 is worse, negative is near sighted and positive is far sighted.)They said he would need glasses and after wearing glasses for 2 months they want to check him and see if he needs a patch on his strong eye to strengthen his weak eye. (I wore a patch as a kid too.)

When Max got off work we went to the Eye clinic to pick out Charlie's glasses. At first he was excited to try on glasses but he quickly had the biggest meltdown of his life. He had a long day and after a long nap he hadn't eaten in quite awhile.

I liked these glasses a lot but I felt like they distracted from his cute baby face too much.

Miles got in on the action too.

And here was the meltdown.

It took almost a week but we were finally able to pick up his glasses. He has moments where he's excited to wear them and moments when he hates them, so we are still working on it. My strategy is to put them on him while he's watching a movie so he forgets they are on. Eventually, he will realize he can see so much better with them,  If anyone has tips on children keeping their glasses on...let me know. 

We don't know how this will affect him in his future with sports or other activities but we will find out. In the meantime, we think little kids in glasses are absolutely adorable so there's that.

And that's me with glasses many years ago, 

The point is...if you are concerned about your child's eyes...check them out, even if the pediatrician says it's just an optical illusion. :) 

Flying Max!

For the last couple years  Max has talked about wanting to skydive. A couple weeks before Max's birthday, his brother, Brent, asked him if he wanted to go skydiving. We had just set a strict budget to start saving more for our future home so Max said it probably wasn't a good time, then Brent offered to pay for Max as a birthday gift. What an awesome brother! They got a group discount because 2 of Brent's coworkers and Max's brother Justin and a friend decided to go too. 

On the day of skydiving they had to do a bit of training, I met up with them when the training was done and they were sitting outside, waiting for the wind to die down, it turned out that they weren't able to go because of too much wind. So they had to reschedule. The rescheduled date was super rainy so they didn't even bother going in. Then, one day, Brent happened to be in town. and the weather was perfect. The whole group wasn't able to go but Brent, Max, and Brent's coworker, Sam were able to go. We were excited to meet up with them.

They were able to get ready to go in the plane shorty after we got there. I was happy that Miles was happy sitting on a blanket in the grass...then I was able to chase Charlie and take lots of pictures.

From the moment Charlie saw the airplane up close, he was completely enthralled and sat still through the whole ordeal.

The plane went high enough that we lost them for a little bit but then we found it and eventually saw some colorful parachutes appear. Max's parachute was purple. (He was able to tell me this before he went so I knew what to look for)

Brent had the yellow parachute and Sam had the green one.

Max was spinning in circles .

 Max loved the experience. As he was free falling he was able to control where he turned by moving his hands. He said the free falling wasn't too scary as it didn't really look like the ground was coming up at him. I still don't have much desire to try this. I don't think I could jump out of the plane. Hooray for Max!

6 months.

Miles is really excited to grow up faster than I am ready for him to grow up. 

At 6 months he is sitting strong enough that I can walk away and not worry too much about him falling and hitting his head. 

He loves attention still and will give the cheesiest grin to anyone that gives him that attention. 

He decided to wake up more during the night. At least it's just once, and sometimes twice now right? 

He loves to push up onto his knees and act like he is about to crawl. He recently discovered how to get to his knees from sitting. 

I've never seen him actually crawl, but he gets around. He is usually pushing himself backwards or rotating in a circle on his belly.

I'm pretty sure he will be crawling in the next month and I am definitely not ready for this, I really wanted to savor the sitting up stage a lot longer. It's like he has happy sitting up for a minute but now he's only happy moving around the room and grabbing things, but then getting frustrated because he's still limited. 

He likes to dive to grab anything that catches his eye.

His naps are improving but still not excellent

He has his two bottom teeth. 

He has started eating some solids. He LOVED rice cereal from his first bite but the green beans and squash that he has tried will need some more practice. He loves sucking on frozen mangoes through those mesh pacifier things. This is usually how I get dinner ready. 

He just had his 6 month appointment and he is 15.6 pounds and 26 inches tall, both about the 15th percentile. 

I took these photos a couple days before he turned six months but I liked them better than the actual ones I took when he was officially 6 months. 

These two pictures are of Charlie at 6 months. I think they look quite a bit different, mostly because of Charlie's massive cheeks. Charlie also had more hair (fuzz) at 6 months.



These photos were from his actual 6-month day!

We love out little Miles even though he isn't wanting to be a baby much longer. He really is a joy to have around, it's so easy to get him to giggle and smile!

The beginning of the end of my 20s

Look at me getting behind in my blogging again. We've been busy and adventurous over here. 

Some blog posts to look forward to are Charlie's glasses, Max skydiving, and Miles' 6th month stats. But I need to share about my birthday first!

I turned 29 this year. That's the last year in my 20s! I'm almost 30! When did that happen and why do I not feel mature enough to be almost 30? I vividly remember my mom's 30th birthday. We came home from going out as a family and our neighbor had decorated our front door with the number 30! I also remember my mom mentioning that 28 was her favorite age. Well, 28 is done for me and there is no going back, I really don't feel like getting older is such a bad thing, in most cases my life just keeps getting better, and I'm gaining more knowledge and developing more talents. Max and I both have a goal that we want to be the most healthy we've ever been by the time we turn thirty. We are well on our way, anyway, I eased into 29 pretty naturally. My day was spent like most days, playing with my little boys, we ate lunch out on the deck so that was pretty exciting. But then Max came home during his lunch break and it ended up being perfect because both boys took a nap when Max came home and I had him all to myself. 

After lunch,Max went back to work and I got the boys ready to go play with Grandma, I decided that a date with Max would be the ideal birthday. We were planning to go swimming together (I've really been wanting to swim more since the triathlon and I don't get the chance very often) then out to dinner. It turned out that my mom had to work late, so we decided to skip the swimming and just go out to eat. 

We dropped the boys off, and then went to Red Lobster to enjoy some seafood. It was delicious and we got a lesson on eating crab legs which we don't do very often or ever. 

They also brought me this and boy was it decadent. Max and I shared it and enjoyed every bite.

After dinner we went across the street to the mall and went to Bath and Body works until the Mall closed. 

We then picked up our boys and took them home to sleep. It was a great and simple birthday, spending time with those I love most who are the greatest gifts I have been given in my life. I'm lucky to have my 3 boys.

Here's to the end of my 20s!

Happy Birthday August

Apparently Fall is a big time for birthdays in our family. August turned 5 on October 3rd but we got to celebrate a little early. August wanted an Oaks Park birthday and they close down the rides at the end of September so Lisa planned it for the last Saturday in September. It was an excellent birthday celebration. We met at a park on the Willamette river just outside the entrance of Oaks Park for lunch and cupcakes.  Most of my photos are from that park since it wasn't super easy to take pictures on the rides. 

That's my sweet Miles, snuggling with daddy. 

Brent and Lisa prepared excellent lunch food.

Auntie Lisa was kind enough to let Charlie throw leaves in her face.

And I really liked this tree...so there about 50 pictures of Charlie on this tree.

And we got to go down onto the dock and see the progress on reinforcing the Sellwood bridge.

And there's the birthday boy!

Apparently it was already Fall at this park, We don't have this many leaves at our house.

After an excellent lunch we got to go to Oaks Park. Charlie has never really gone on any rides like this and he was SO excited.

This ride said adults could ride too, but once Max sat down in the tiny boat, he felt a little awkward. haha!

So much fun!

We took lots of cell phone selfies on the rides.



Charlie and I went on this very jerky roller coaster, he loved it, I felt like I had a little whiplash. Max went with him the second time.

Charlie and I also went on the Spider ride which was pretty fun. It went for a long time and the whole time it was going, Charlie was curled up to me and super still so I thought he had fallen asleep, as soon as the ride stopped, he perked his little head up and grinned.

Charlie;s favorite ride was the motorcycles. I got to ride in the side car, he especially liked to honk the incredibly loud horn, and he may or may not have thrown a little fit when it was time to go.

We met up with our cousins and we all headed to the carousel which was the one ride that Miles was allowed to go on.

While we were waiting for the carousel, Max and Charlie went down the BIG PINK slide.

It used to be all Pink hence the name Big Pink...in case anyone was confused.

We then got to get on the carousel...Charlie couldn't decide between riding a horse or sitting on the bench. Once the ride started I told him, he couldn't switch anymore and he was stuck on the bench. He was pretty bummed because once the ride started he spotted a zebra that we really wanted to ride.

I then got to ride on the Ferris Wheel with Charlie. We were some of the first people to get on so it seemed like the loading and unloading process was taking forever. Charlie liked looking around the park from up high in the air.

At this point he was getting pretty exhausted. He woke up too early and we just kept playing right through his naptime. 

Charlie curled up next to me but I didn't realize he was asleep until we were unloading and the worker pointed it out. I carried my big boy off the Ferris Wheel and put him in the stroller to rest.

Max went on the Go Carts with Brayden then I took Miles to nurse.

I met up with the rest of the family in the roller skating rink. Miles had fallen asleep in my arms and Charlie was still asleep in the stroller so I opted not to skate. We only had about 30 minutes before we needed to leave to meet some more family members for dinner.  Max skated while I stayed with the boys. I was bummed that Charlie slept through this part. I was excited to see how his skating has improved.

This guy is a pretty great skater.

Lisa and Auggie

We had to say our goodbyes a little earlier than we wanted to but we had an amazing time at August's party and we can't wait to go again!

We then hopped (drove) over the river to The Old Spaghetti Factory to meet with my Green Grandma and Dad and Brother to celebrate all the Fall birthdays in our family. It was an enjoyable dinner and we got the best table in the restaurant. 

Hurrah for Fall birthdays and a Saturday well spent!