What about the baby?

There's a lot going on with Elias too! I didn't think it was possible, but he just keeps getting cuter. Almost every day he is making new discoveries and having new experiences. A couple of days ago we took him out to the apartment swimming pool and dipped in his feet which he really enjoyed. Now we just have to take him on a real pool trip, bathing suit and all. I haven't been able to be with him a whole lot during the week because I've been in the hospital during the day with Ryan, but I always end up looking through pictures of him and it helps me with the babysickness. So if you see a lot of baby-pic posts, you know why.



There are a lot of things that he likes. He really likes taking a bath



I'm currently knitting him a little blanket and in knitting next to him we discovered that he loves playing with the yarn. He looked like a little cat!





We like to do a lot of different things to him in a very non-guinea pig sort of way. We plopped him in the laundry basket to see if he liked it

I guess he liked the smell of clean laundry.............

We also stuck him in a bowl because he fit and he liked it for a little bit, and of course it was really really cute:

Baby recently got his new crib mattress!! Hooray! He tried it out shortly after and I think he liked it. We don't quite have a handle on sleeping through the night (at all), but he does like his crib enough to initially fall asleep in it all by himself!

Before his 4month shots, he started doing this weird, funny thing with his mouth where he would suck in his lower lip and start talking like that. I thought it was kind of weird, but it was cute so I took a picture. Funny guy. He hasn't done it since he got his shots though, which makes me think that is scared some of the funniness out of him :(

Baby Elias likes to act like a big boy. When he is carried, he likes to be carried sitting up, like a big boy and not lying down like a little baby. He also really enjoys sitting (carefully) in big-people's chairs.

The curved bars on the back of the chair helped keep his head in place and he had a LOT of fun acting like a grown-up.


And last of all for this post, but certainly not least, he has finally started to keep his shoes on. Which makes his mommy very happy because they look so stinkin' cute.

I love this little guy

Ryan's New Look

I forgot to mention that while we were visiting my parents in Hagerstown, we noticed that Ryan's hair started to fall out. So instead of letting it fall out and making a big mess everywhere, we decided to shave it off and make a big mess just in the bathroom :)

We took the opportunity, of course, to give him a mohawk, which looked really funny and I just had to take a picture.

That's Ryan's warrior face, haha



I think that Ryan looks really cute now, even as a bald man, haha. I didn't really know what to expect, but he really does look good!

Stanton Happenings

Well I had a goal to update this blog pretty often in order to improve my communication skills. I am possibly the worst writer ever. I don't mean of course that my writing is bad (I say this humbly, of course, haha!), but that I never do it. I am terrible at writing letters and when I do write them I'm terrible at actually sending them. Let's not even mention phone communication. I figure though, that if I can keep up a blog then gosh-darn-it I can write letters. This is the first step.

In Stanton news, Ryan's first cycle of chemo went pretty well! Sure, it wasn't pleasant. He got really really tired, but after a few days he started feeling better and even got to the point where he creamed me at wii skateboarding....at least for a little while. His tumor markers thankfully went down, so things are looking pretty well in the health department. Yay!!

He just started his 2nd cycle on Monday. We are trying out out-patient treatment this time and our first day went well. It was nice to have him home at night and I think being home makes him happy. That and I've gone to Georgetown Cupcake everyday to get special treats and that keeps everyone happy.

Our 4th of July weekend was very fun and eventful. Ryan's wonderful co-workers sent him and edible arrangement on Thursday, which we picked up on Friday when we were back in the DC area for Ryan's Dr. appointment. It ended up melting a lot cause we were pretty much in traffic all the way to Hagerstown and then it melted more cause we had to go to the hospital in Hagerstown. Baby had his shots the day before and he was not reacting very well to them and my parents took him to the hospital while we were in DC. I was a bundle of nerves. Luckily, all is well and he enjoyed the edible arrangement too!

We didn't think he would try to eat it, but he did and it was really cute. Ryan of course enjoyed it too:

We spent the 4th of July at my parent's house in Hagerstown, which is always lots of fun! We grilled all sorts of yumminess and baby enjoyed his first Independence Day with lots of patriotism. I hope he will grow up loving and respecting this country and the sacred way in which is was founded. He's off to a good start.

Silvia played with sparklers:

And Ryan had fun with his tiki torch:

We thought the excitement was over after the fireworks that night, but we were wrong. Ryan and I decided to spend the night in Hagerstown and leave for College Park in the morning so Ryan could go to work on Tuesday. My mom came into the room at 3:00am telling us to get up because the house next door was on fire. We got up in a hurry and I picked up the baby and grabbed my purse and camera and ran down the hall by the main living room when I looked through the window this is what I saw:

My dad took these pictures cause I was in the "let's get outta here" mode. We couldn't really leave the neighborhood though cause we would run over the fire hose. The house burned for abotu 2 hours before the firefighters could completely extinguish the fire and it looks like there was very little left of the house. Luckily all 5 people who were in the house were able to get out of the house. We talked to another neighbor and she said that they all got out 5 minutes before the house burst into flames. The fire was started by a sparkler that they left in a trash can. It's kind of scary too because that night we saw that they were setting of fireworks on their deck. My dad mentioned something about how that wasn't safe because the weather has been so dry lately and the grass was dry. I really didn't think anything would happen though.

So, it was a very eventful weekend.




Yup, that's my parent's house being hosed down by the firefighters. That's how close the fire was.