I am thrilled to announce that I have finally achieved the most exciting personal endeavor yet in my almost three months of existence- after more than twelve weeks of tirelessly focusing day in and day out on trying to muster control over my fine motor skills, I have officially FOUND MY THUMB this weekend and am happily sucking away to my heart's content.

Now, on to world domination...

I apologize that I have yet again been remiss in posting updates on what has been going on in our lives. Once upon a time I used to be very punctual about this type of thing, but those days may be long gone, at least for the foreseeable future. I've even gone from always being 10 minutes early everywhere to being perpetually 15 minutes late. If 25 minutes is all an infant holds me back though, I suppose things could be worse!

Drew and I spent the majority of last week up in Oregon visiting Auntie Laura and the family. He was, yet again, a very easy traveler and we had a wonderful time. The most exciting development while we were there was that he finally noticed another baby for the first time! He's gotten really into observing adults, particularly me (I would have thought he'd get bored of staring at me by now but he still thinks I'm the bomb, which I will continue to appreciate until he changes his mind and decides that I must be lame because I'm his mom), but despite my attempts to put him in front of as many other kids as possible, he has mostly stared through them or looked around them until now. It's very cute to see him checking out other kids and getting all smiley, something that he does for large portions of his waking hours these days.

We weighed Drew on Friday and he was already up to 15 pounds 4 ounces- he's close to doubling his birth weight! All the 3-6 month clothes have been tucked away in the closet for our next and perhaps slightly more petite child- at 11 weeks, our little guy can only wear 6 month outfits. He doesn't look too insanely chunky, however, because he's quite long for his age- everywhere we go people ask me if he's 4 or 5 months, and seem shocked when I tell them he's only 2 and a half. Seems like he'll take after his Daddy in size, as he also does in looks. Thus far he seems to have gotten his skin tone from me and that's about it- although it appears to change significantly as he develops, so stay tuned for Mari attributes. One thing that I have started to see when I look at him is my dad- there are some cute pictures at my parents' house of him as a small child and I actually think Drew looks a fair bit like him- so maybe we'll have an Al junior in the future, who knows...

Drew and I have been hard at work over the past month hanging out with mommy and me groups and trying to build him some good social networks so that once he eventually does realize that other kids are cooler than Mommy and Daddy, he'll have some to play with. It's exhausting- kind of like dating all over again! We're having a great time though and it's nice to hang out with other kids and moms instead of just with Manu and Webby (not that there's anything wrong with that either). We'll get our rhythm down soon and figure out how active we want to be and then things will calm a bit. The next couple of weeks should be mellow and laid back- no more travel plans for a while which is just as well since they can prove to be quite tiring with this little guy!

That's pretty much it for us these days- a couple of new pics of Drew:



Loving the exersaucer



Chilling at the Samoan festival



Too much fun makes for tired babies

Just in case you didn't already know, or if you had any doubts- Drew, our son, is the cutest baby EVER!!!!

Proof:

EXHIBIT A



EXHIBIT B



Case closed.

We arrived home from our week in the midwest late on Monday night. We had a WONDERFUL time visiting with all of our family and friends there- we know that we're very lucky to live so close to so many of our family members, but it was a poignant reminder how far away others in the family live, and we really enjoyed the opportunity to visit. Drew loved meeting everyone and was very good-natured in general about being dragged about all over so that people could ooh and aah over him.

Here are some favorites from our latest adventures:



Yaya making a great pillow



Meeting Aunt Shoshie for the first time



Getting to hang out with Great Great Aunt Moe!

For more photos of our visits with family and friends click here.



Sam and Shosh are now pronounced husband and wife



Not quite sure how we feel about Dan yet...



Dancing with Shoshie at the party

For more photos of Shosh and Sam's wedding click here.

Drew and I are now in Chicago visiting family and friends on our way to Shoshie's wedding- we will post lots of photos once we've returned home. In the meantime, in addition to becoming a nation-wide traveler, Drew has continued to have many exciting life experiences.

Last week, Drew's cousin Hayden came over to visit with his brothers Brandon and Ryan and his mom Jessica. (See photos Andy uploaded last week.) Hayden is 16 days older than Drew so we're very excited for them to get to grow up together. Scarily enough, Drew is rivaling Hayden in size despite their age difference- our little tub is continuing to grow, blowing away all myths that breastmilk is less likely to make for large babies than formula!

Drew also slept through his first fireworks party at Grandma and Grandpa Durkee's house on Friday- a full hour of the most impressive fireworks we could get our hands on this side of Mexico didn't even phase him as he slept contentedly in Great-Grandma's arms. I think his obliviousness to noise combined with his thrill-seeking nature means we might have a troublemaker on our hands come future fourth of July celebrations!

Drew and I flew to Chicago with my mom on Monday to spend the week here before traveling to Lansing for the wedding- he was great on the plane: sleeping, eating, and flirting with the little old ladies who found him adorable. We've been doing the whirlwind tour of the greater Chicago-land area and have really enjoyed hanging out with cousins Mia, Ben and Naomi, the latter of which at 8 months old is ADORABLE and thinks Drew looks like some kind of delicious snack food she wants to gobble up! After seeing her pictures where compared to most infants she looked quite the chub, I was startled to see how close in size to her Drew actually is. When Andy sees him again this weekend he'll be shocked at how much our little guy continues to beef out. I swear I'm not passing on any steriods in my food!

Tonight we went to Aunt Jackie's birthday where he slept through the entire meal and tomorrow we head to the cottage on our way to East Lansing. Drew sends his love to all his fans and promises that he'll post cute photos with more members of the fan club asap.

Uncle Jeff and Aunt Karen have a great tradition of planting a tree whenever someone is born. They decided to give Drew a tree to celebrate his birth. Mari and I chose an Alexander Magnolia for him. It's a deciduous tree that blooms in the early spring with bright pink tulip shaped flowers. We have seen them around the neighborhood and think that they look great. Here is a sample of what Drew's tree might look like when he has kids of his own.




Drew planted his tree in front of our house the other day. Here is a photo of him with us after all his hard work. We had to hold him up because he was tired. He is an infant you know.




Thanks Uncle Jeff and Aunt Karen. Drew will love to come back to our house and see how big his tree is as he grows.

I want to apologize first for the fact that I have been remiss in writing again sooner- we've been out of town for a fair portion of the last couple of weeks and I haven't had good access to computers. I noticed that our last post had more than 650 views- I find it hard to believe there are that many people who are following our day-to-day lives, which means apparently someone or someones have been trying to find an update on what's going on by continually checking in, so here you go. (I'll do my best to work on making my supply meet the market demand from here on out.) Since I've last reported, Drew has gone on his first two big trips and had his one month check-up with his doctor. Andy and I were placing bets on whether Drew would be in the double digits weight-wise when we went in last week (I thought he would be just over ten pounds)- and it turns out he was 11 pounds 5 ounces!!! Our little beefcake is clearly well-nourished and growing like a weed. Doctor says he's in great health and looks wonderful, so all is good on that front. His next check-up will involve his first set of vaccinations, so will probably be a slightly more traumatizing experience for us all...

Drew's first big vacation was to spend the week up in Los Alamos with the family at Grandma and Grandpa's place there. Other than the 120 degree heat it was fabulous (actually, to be honest, Drew loved the 120 degree heat, it was just Andy and the dogs and I that refused to wallow in it with him). We hung out playing scrabble, swung in the hammock swing in the front yard (which Drew loves) and discovered the joys of swimming. We set the hot tub to 95 degrees and took Drew in for his first non-bath related water experience. Apparently, Drew is interested in becoming a fish when he grows up- he LOVED the water! We have never seen something that so consistently elicits huge grins and giggles from him, so have determined this must mean it's his current favorite thing in the world (sorry to Auntie Laura for having your stained glass window usurped- although you had a good monopoly on favorites for about a month).



Drew was so tickled with the experience that we went out and bought a little crabbie plastic pool/sandbox for our backyard. One of the great advantages of living in this hot stuffy valley is that with 100 degree temperatures consistently throughout the summer, all we have to do is keep the pool full and it is a very pleasant temperature for swimming in the evenings. So our current ritual is to wait until the sun starts setting and then let Drew float around on his back in his own private swimming pool, which he adores. Manu also thinks the swimming pool is the bomb, and is quite peeved that we won't let her jump in with him. We think it's just a matter of time before she figures out how to remove the lid in our absence and we come back to find her wading in it.



Drew also attended his first bluegrass festival/wine-tasting event while we were in Los Alamos. All of the other attendees were quite impressed that he was already working on developing a refined palate He definitely enjoyed the sunshine, the heat, and the loud jamming music (as he always does), so we termed the festival a huge success. Andy and Jake spent the weekend hard at work making some really great scale models of the solar system- Drew is going to have a LOT to learn from his big cousin once he gets older! The rest of us just spent our days eating a lot (one of the main prerequisites of staying up there), laying on the cool tile floors, and vegging out.



Our second exciting trip involved Drew's first plane flights- we went to Texas for the Durkee family reunion. Drew was a great flyer- slept through all four flights- and a great traveler overall. It's great to know that he's easygoing about being in new surroundings and being dragged to different places (not that we had our doubts). It was really fun to meet all of his distant Durkee relatives and a really amazing event- almost 150 people from all over the country were there, and a whole mess of babies! The last time the family had a big reunion was in 1934, so it was a pretty big deal. Drew also got to meet Great-Grandmother Billie's brother Uncle Ed and his wife Aunt Billie. While we were at the reunion, one of the largest thunderstorms Texas has seen in a while struck the lake we were at- and a tree right in front of us on the lawn! It was wuite impressive and the deluge made Andy nostalgic for the crazy rainstorms we used to get in Samoa- although it was nice to have this one only last an hour instead of 4 months.



We are enjoying this week of down time- Andy's last before returning to work at Decore on Monday- before Drew and I again hop on a plane to go visit family and friends in Chicago and Michigan for the week and to share in the joy of his sort-of-Aunt Shoshie's wedding. It's proving to be an exciting and incredibly busy summer for all of us, and we're having a great time. That's all for now but we'll try to post again before we take off.



Andy put up lots of great new photos of our adventures as well- check them out!

"Drew and Friends" has been updated (and we finally got some good photos of Grandma Rudi to add!): click here to see.

For photos from our trip to Los Alamos, click here.

For photos from the Durkee family reunion, click here.

Tomorrow Drew will be three weeks old! It's amazing that time is going so fast- we're definitely starting to notice the change in him as he has gotten little wrinkles on his arms and legs from new fat stores. He's starting to look much more round and much less like a scrawny newborn- soon he'll be roly poly! For the most part though he still looks pretty similar- long and lean (he was born average for weight but something like 99th percentile for height- again, definitely Andy's genes kicking in over mine).

We had an eventful week here- lots of trips to visit folks and be adored by all. He even took his first trip to Decore to meet all of Daddy's coworkers and to check things out. He wanted to explore the shop floor, but sadly they don't make safety goggles or earplugs for infants, so that will have to wait. Drew went to his cousin Jessica's graduation where he peacefully slept through the insanely loud organ music and screaming hordes (as I said, the dogs seem to have done wonders for his general chaos threshhold). He also really enjoyed being the center of attention at her party- all of the women fought for turns holding him and he has continued to evade being put down pretty much ever, since everyone always wants to hold him. (I have a feeling this one will come back to bite us when he's older, but it's hard to deny him at this point, especially because he's SO sweet when he curls up in a ball and sleeps on your chest- who could resist?)



We also went to his first professional sports game on Saturday- the Dodgers kicked Cubby butt and we were there in person to witness! Drew was really good and slept through most of the game, but woke up in time for the big 7th inning upset in which we scored 5 runs. He liked checking out the crowd and people watching. Proof he was there:





Drew has still been trying very hard to find his thumb- this seems to be the biggest obsession of his waking moments these days and is, sadly for us, the one thing that can reduce him to hysterics relatively consistently. (Who wouldn't be frustrated at the fact that they cannot do the ONE thing that will complete them and make them happy all the time?) We're trying to be as encouraging as possible of his attempts and to give him pointers whenever possible, but know it's also somewhat a matter of time, since his fine motor skills still leave a bit to be desired. Hopefully by the next time I write I'll have more victorious news on that front. Drew says hi to all and sends love and kisses (well, more like licks, but they're still very sweet).

We're all doing quite well here at the Lansford household fully into the second week of life as a family of five. Webster and Manu seem to have reconciled themselves to their new roles in the hierarchy and accepted Drew as a full-fledged member of the pack. I'm finally not carrying around a donut-shaped pillow for sitting on everywhere I go (I cannot quite describe in words how exciting that is, but I am VERY happy about the change). Andy is enjoying his time at home and has been trying to turn Drew into the world's youngest musician by playing non-stop music and dancing around the living room with him each day (which Drew LOVES, so apparently it's working).

Drew is both a good sleeper and a good awake member of the family. He has figured out that he should try to sleep a bit longer in stretches at night since we might ignore him if he pulled anything different anyways, and usually gives me about 3 hours in a stretch, which I appreciate. He has also started to spend long periods of alert awake time during the day. This morning he got up at 8 and actually stayed awake until about 12:30! He's very curious about the world around him when he's up and gets quite grumpy if someone has the audacity to try to make him sleep during his big boy time. ("Quite grumpy" is extremely relative- he's an incredibly good-natured baby and is super easy, and hardly ever cries. Thank goodness for genetic recombination and my having married a mellow man with deep sleep tendencies!)

Drew really enjoys his swing and bouncer and basically movement of any kind in general. He's particularly taken with it when Andy rocks him as hard as his little machines will go- his eyes open really wide as he realizes he's being rocketed through the air. (I sense an adrenaline junkie in the making.) He also seems completely at peace with being devoured on a regular basis by loving dog tongues and doesn't even bat an eyelash at the general level of chaos our canines create in his world.

I think both Andy and I were bracing ourselves for the worst- imagining NO sleep, trying to function as walking zombies with a constant high pitched screaming in the background (I'm hypothesizing that they try to terrify you in baby care classes so you end up thinking you've won the lottery when your child isn't totally miserable all the time). On the contrary things have been very sane and manageable and dare I say low key hanging out together. At least thus far we're not nearly as tired as we thought we would be- hopefully that will continue to be the case! We are so incredibly lucky that Andy is taking time off of work so that we can all spend these precious days together. We're so happy and feel so very lucky to have Drew in our family! And he seems to be pretty amenable to hanging out with us as well- at least for the time being. We're trying hard to enjoy that while it lasts...

Thanks so much to everyone who is sending congratulations and best wishes. We've been home from the hospital for a few days now and are enjoying getting settled into the new version of the Lansford family. Drew is adjusting remarkably well. He clearly heard the dogs barking regularly in utero because he doesn't even flinch when they cause a ruckus (fortunately for him, since they're going to do so whether or not he's amenable). They have been very interesting in their attempts to reconcile this new member of the pack into their pecking order. Much like any older sibling, each has taken their own approach to his arrival...

Manu reminds me of the five year old sister who wants to help out in caring for her new baby brother- she stands up with her front paws on the dresser to examine our work when we change him and ensure we're doing it right, and when he starts crying she runs into the room and kisses him on the head to reassure him.

Webster, on the other hand, is acting more like the indignant toddler who cannot BELIEVE his role as the baby of the family has been usurped. He's a bit sulky and refused to look at Drew for the first day and a half. He does seem to be coming around, however, and has even licked Drew's toes a few times when he thinks no one is looking.

Despite the fact that both Andy and I are covered in pee and poop pretty much 24 hours a day, we're loving every minute. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that my ability to sleep became so poor by the end of my pregnancy that I actually have not been finding spending half the night up feeding to be difficult, but it's nice that I'm less exhausted by that than I expected thus far. It has been a delight to begin to experience and create lifetime firsts for Drew- today he had his first:

- bath (despite the fact that it was chilly and humiliating he actually tolerated this much better than I expected- he really hates being cold so I was surprised that he wasn't screaming in agony the whole time)

- manicure done by yours truly (he discovered the joys of thumb-sucking on day one but thus far has had trouble figuring out how to get that little thing into his mouth- in his many attempts, he has been doing a number on his face with his nails so I did my best to try to get rid of the jagged edges)

- walk with the entire pack (I won't explicate but I have been sitting on a donut pillow since we returned from the hospital, so we haven't been able to get out and about much... it took us well over an hour to get around one block today thanks to my pacesetting but we all really enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air and the dogs were remarkably patient at the lack of actual movement involved in our outing)

- swing ride (we have a very cute little swinger chair that rocks him back and forward and sings to him that he seems to thoroughly enjoy- the dogs also love this because it puts him down on their level and they can examine him from up close)

- 4 hour nap (now I just have to figure out how to get him to take one of those at night instead of the middle of the day and we'll be set!)

We're doing great and cannot wait to see what tomorrow will bring. Please feel free to call or drop by to visit- Drew's a great snuggler and we're more than happy to share (plus the puppies love the extra attention). Here are a couple of pictures from his first few days at home (click here for others):

Okay, so the deal is that we have an induction scheduled to begin at 7am tomorrow (Thursday) morning- which (hopefully) means that this baby will be born by tomorrow night! Both Andy and I have been having very mixed feeling about inducing- we were hoping for things to be able to happen as naturally as possible- but it's funny how being 41 weeks pregnant will start to change your approach. At this point we both just want to have the baby already no matter how it happens! We're still hoping I'll go into labor in the next 20 hours before the procedure starts, but are quite relieved that he'll be here soon either way. The next time we post we should be a family of 5! (I tried my hardest to convince Andy that we should push to have Manu and Webster at the hospital since they're immediate family but I think it's a no-go, so they'll have to wait a few days to meet the newest member of their pack.)

for those of you anxiously awaiting an update, (my parents now answer the phone with "are you in labor?") I still have not given birth. I am going to see my doctor tomorrow. She said she doesn't want me to go more than a week past my due date so it looks like if things don't happen in the next couple of days we're going to be induced, probably on Thursday. That way the baby will be here for the holiday weekend either way. Hopefully something will happen on it's own between now and then so we don't have to go that route, but at least we know the end is in sight either way. We'll keep you updated!

Check out this video I put together of our baby being built.

11 days until Drew is officially due to appear on the scene...

Andy is scrambling busily at work trying to get as much taken care of before he goes on leave as possible, and hoping we go all the way to our due date so that he's able to get another full week of work in before that happens.

I'm hanging out washing baby clothes, sleeping as much as possible, and calculating the probability that I will go into labor at the dog park given that I'm there for about an hour and a half every day trying to get in as much quality bonding time as possible with Manu and Webby before they get knocked down the totem pole of my attentions.

They have thoroughly appreciated my pre-baby maternity leave and I hope it's not too rough a transition for them as a result. But hey, that's why there are two of them- if nothing, they can sulk in a corner together talking about how much it sucks to be cast aside for some silly bald monkey that doesn't do anything but scream and poop all day long. (At least they know how to catch and retrieve tennis balls!)

We've been going to the doctor weekly so that she can check how things are progressing. It's funny- even though I didn't plan to be early and don't really want to go into labor today, it still makes me feel like my body is doing something wrong when I go in and she says "well, it'll be at least another week- nothing particularly different happening..." Like I was supposed to do my homework and didn't so I got busted and now feel a bit ashamed of my lack of commitment to the process

We're also homebound now which means no more weekend trips to take our minds off of waiting. And I finally decided I should suck it up and pack a bag to go to the hospital. Our lamaze teacher told us we should have a bag ready by 3 weeks beforehand, but I think my theory was that if I didn't have my things together, then nothing would happen, so there'd be no reason to worry. (A bit in denial about actually having to go through the labor process, perhaps...) Once we hit under the 2 week mark though, I began to see the fallacy in this stream of logic, as well as to feel an increased sense of guilt at yet again not living up to the expected standard of crazed baby fever, so at least now I've remedied that and we could hypothetically drop things and go if it becomes necessary.

So now there's not too much to do on the preparation side of things but wait. And wait. And wait. And hope that guy at the mall was right and the baby will just sort of fall out as I'm walking around one day to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible so we can meet this kid already!