It's been so long since my last post that I actually had some problems remembering how to post an article... Twitter is leading to the slow death of this blog...

Anyways, I've posted some pics from our vacation to Cabo in the first week of May.  The Yans were able to join us on this trip and we had an awesome time hanging out with them on the beach and by the pool.

Dex enjoying his first taste of Mexico

I can't believe it's been two months since my last post!!!  To say I'm behind in posting pictures is an insult in being behind - I've got pics from maaaany events in December, January, and February, not to mention just not having any pics of Dexter up for you to see his growth.  I'll try to rectify that soon, in the meantime I've had a chance to capture a short video of Dexter laughing.  Finally, Dexter has his own video!  :)  Enjoy!

We had broccoli for dinner today.  Usually we have to cut it into smaller pieces for Cam and sometimes we have to 'hide' it by mixing it into his rice or whatever else is on the plate, but today he was grabbing them on his own and eating them whole.  At one point, he popped an entire piece into his mouth, chewed it all, swallowed it, looked at me, and said "Booyah."

There have been many awesome moments with Cam, that may have been the most awesomest moment to date.

I'll be right here waiting for someone to play with me

Dex is a very laid back, low maintenance baby.  He'll sit on his bouncer without a peep while we are doing some chores or keeping Cam occupied.  Ten to fifteen minutes later we'll go to check in on Dex and he'll light up with smile and start kicking his legs and waving his arms excitedly.  Poor little guy, he was just waiting for someone to attention to him.  No complaints, though, just sitting there waiting patiently.

He is a laid back baby, but when he gets upset he'll let you know with a mega put where his lower lip engulfs his upper lip and his eyes portray such a pained look.  I find it quite endearing.  :)  He pouts for a few seconds then resumes his laid back self.  But if Dex transitions from being merely upset to actual anger, watch out - when he gets mad, he gets really mad.  He follows the mega pout by unleashing an ear-drum shattering cry.  It's actually difficult to hold him when he's crying since he's close to your ears and it's just plain painful on the ears; I now understand where the term 'ear piercing' came from.  Luckily he doesn't cry all that often so it's not something we have to deal with too often.

Dex is also quite a chatterbox, he'll happily babble away in his baby talk with you when you play with him.  He says lots of different things as he's capable of several different sounds and syllables, but not just sounds - he's also physically expressive.  There are head bobs and shoulder shrugs and chin dips and making "O" shapes with his mouth and jutting his head out... it's a lot of fun to have a conversation with him.

We've also discovered that he's ticklish.  When you tickle his neck, he'll shrug his shoulder into his neck and his face gets all scrunchy and his tongue sticks out.  I love seeing Dex's toothless grin and the way his little tongue sticks out just a bit.  He's recently started to laugh, too.  It's not the long uncontrollable laugh that Cam had at this age, instead it's a quick burst of joy.  :)

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A couple night's back, Dex slept from 11pm through til 9am without waking up.  We were completely shocked and utterly amazed - was Dex about to turn into one of those mythical babies that sleep through the entire night from an early age??

It turns out that that was just a one time occurrence.  Dex does wake up in the middle of the night to feed, but he only wakes up once.  Sara's very happy that he sleeps for at least five hours at night - it's soooooooo much easier than the painful ordeal that we went through with Cam waking up every hour to eat.  I'm even happier about it since I'm not much help at night; Cam is still not sleeping through the night and needs somebody to sleep with him so I'm down in Cam's room while Sara's on her own with Dex at night.

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I'm still behind with posting pictures, but I've been able to post November pics, through Dexter's 10th week of life.  Enjoy!

New Year's Eve was an extremely low-key event for us.  We were trying to get Dex used to a bottle in preparation for going to daycare so we decided to stay at home to make it easier to stick with the program.  We let Cam stay up all the way til midnight... EST.  We watched the ball drop in New York at 9pm and then we all went to sleep shortly after.

Earlier in the day, Sara said to Cameron "it's New Year's Eve Cameron, what should we do to make it special?"  It was a rhetorical question, but Cam spent a few seconds thinking about it and replied "Um, how bout cake?" to which Sara said "that's a good idea Cameron!" and it was indeed a good idea, something we would not have thought of.

Cam was obviously pleased with himself - he spent the next few minutes saying "good idea Cameron"  :)

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Cam loves the zoo, during the Christmas break we talked about the zoo often and Cam got all excited to visit the zoo.  We finally ended up going but on our way there it started to drizzle and by the time we got to the zoo it was completely raining.  We didn't want to walk around in the rain so we said to Cam "it's raining Cameron, we can't go to the zoo" to which he replied "use umbrella!"  Can't really counter with anything so Sara and I were quiet.  A few seconds later Cam follows up with "use hat!"  More undeniable logic from our two year old.  Seriously, this kid, he's gotta stop having such good responses.

We couldn't really counter with anything but didn't want to walk in the rain, so went with Diversion Tactic #1: "Cam, let's go home and watch a movie!" and he excitedly replied "okay!"  It never fails.  :)

Scenic hike at Emerald Bay

My first post about our trip to Lake Tahoe only covered the first four days of the week-long trip, and I only now got a chance to post about the remainder of the trip.

We had planned on doing three separate hikes over the last three days of the trip but it suddenly became extremely windy, making it too cold and uncomfortable, even in the sun.  We drove out to the hiking sites and could not last more than a few minutes in the wind before retreating back to the warmth of the car.

The wind finally died down on Saturday and we were able to make our way to Emerald Bay and hike down to Vikingsholm Castle.  Unfortunately it is off season so they did not have any tourist guides or information set up, so we didn't know too much about it, but it was nice to look at.  :)

The castle itself is really more of an old wooden mansion than an actual castle, though it did have some rock-based exteriors.  Due to it being offseason, the castle was all locked up so we could only wander around the grounds.  Cam and Popo took a look into the castle through some boarded up windows, and Cam got spooked out - he was scared and I had to hold him as we left the castle courtyard.

The hiking path to the castle starts near the top of a mountain and runs just over a mile til you get down to the shoreline where the castle is located.  It's a pleasant hike down with a few stop points to take some shots of the scenery.  The hike up is a completely different matter, as you're battling a climb that is much steeper than you realized on the way down, and of course you're tired from the initial hike down.  We had to take a couple rest stops and Cam only lasted about 20 feet before he was sitting in the stroller for the rest of the hike out.  We struggled our way out and then rested some more at the top before heading back to the hotel.

During the cold and windy days, we spent some time just hanging out in the hotel room.  At one point, Sara's mom was messing around with Cam and asked him "Are you Dexter?" to which Cam would respond with "No!  I'm Cameron!!" and that evolved into "Who's Dexter, who's Cameron" with Cam responding correctly, and then Sara's mom threw in a "who's Jim?" and lo and behold Cameron said "dada" out of nowhere.  We were absolutely amazed, and followed up with "who's Sara?" and he said "mama"!!  Holy cow Cam knows our names?!?  That's crazy!  We tried various different ways of asking who we were and he correctly identified us, either calling us "dada/mama" or even "Jim/Sara" - nothing's cuter than hearing your two year old refer to you by name.

I tried asking him our names again recently and it looks like he's forgotten our names.  I'm guessing that Cam picked up on the name association during Sara's mom visit but since she's left he hasn't heard 'Sara' or 'Jim' nearly as often so the association to us is not being reinforced and has probably worn off.  It was pretty cool while it lasted.

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All in all, it was a great time at Lake Tahoe.  It's too bad that we lost two days due to inclement weather.  I wish we had headed out for the hikes in the first half of the week when the weather was nice, but this just means we've got a couple of hikes waiting for us on our next trip to Lake Tahoe.

I've added lots of pictures to the Lake Tahoe album, new stuff starts at picture 71, right after 'Dex got to enjoy the great outdoors'.  Enjoy!