We had Dexter's one month checkup.  He feels like a big and heavy baby, and I guessed him to be 10lbs 8oz... after weighing him, it turned out he was 11lbs 14oz!  Almost 12 lbs at one month!!!  Crazy giant baby!

That's 93%ile, from 35%ile at birth.  Another 2 percent and Dex woulda been off the charts!  For comparison's sake, Dex was half a pound heavier than Cam was at one month (maintaining the same half pound weight difference from birth).  Dex's other one month stats:
Length: 22.5 innches (70%ile, compared to 30%ile at birth)
Head circumference: 14 inches (50%ile, 30%ile at birth)

Dex is already bigger than Cam.  I was holding Dex for a lengthy period the other day, and my shoulders were aching the rest of the night.  I wonder just how big Dex is going to get...

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Dex all dressed up

For Dexter’s one month celebration, we had a small gathering of family at our home. Sara's mom cooked up a storm and we all enjoyed a delicious celebration, complete with red eggs :) The only regret is not taking a picture of all the food!

It was really nice having the 2 boys all dressed up. When we put Cam in a collared shirt, he said "Dada clothes" - that stuff'll melt his Dad's heart.  :)

Since Dex was in his Sunday-best, we took the opportunity to take some passport photos. Although we have decided not to go to Toronto for the holidays, we wanted to be prepared should we change our minds or decide to escape to a Mexican resort. Taking Dex’s picture was easier than it was for Cam, probably because Dex is older and not as giggly or perhaps it’s because we are experienced now ;)

Enjoy the pictures of Dex from two and a half to four and a half weeks.

It's been over 2 weeks since my last post - almost half of Dexter's life!  It's been very busy the last couple weeks; I'm typically up at 6:40am, get myself and Cam ready for the day, then out the door at 7:20am, drop off Cam at daycare, head to the office, back home by about 6pm, have dinner, bathe Cam at 7pm, get him in bed and asleep by 8:30-9, usually fall asleep with Cam and wake up at 9:30, then do whatever household cleanup/chores, then it's usually past 10pm by the time I get to get on the computer, and the past couple weeks that time has been devoted to doing work rather than blogging or posting photos... but anyways, enough about me.

We're in the middle of a one week vacation to South Lake Tahoe right now.  We're staying at the Marriott Timber Lodge which is a ski resort and is located in a little ski village centered around a big gondola that heads up the mountain to the ski runs.  It's not yet ski season, but past the summer tourist season, so it's pretty dead out here.  The ski village feels deserted but it's actually kinda nice - we've got the run of the place and there are no crowds anywhere.  Cam has loved climbing all over the rocks and jumping everywhere, and he yells out "Ah-bot!" (his word for 'robot') when he sees the gondola.  Sara and I were here three years ago (gosh I can't believe how young we looked before our kids) and enjoyed riding the gondola; too bad it's closed til ski season starts this time, we were looking forward to taking Sara's mom and kids up there.

Enjoying the firepits

We've had fun so far; the weather's much cooler here compared to San Francisco so we've enjoyed sitting beside some firepits at night while munching on smores.  We walked to a beach which was completely empty - it was so quiet and peaceful, I could have gone down for a long nap in the sun - which Cam did.  We've also gone on a nice hike through the woods, and we saw salmon attempting to swim upstream to spawn!  That was seriously cool.  Spawning season runs from mid September to the end of October, so we only got to see the tail end of it - the resort concierge described it perfectly: "you'll probably see more dead than live fish."

We're only halfway through our trip so far.  Tomorrow we're hiking to some waterfalls, so I'd better get to sleep and get some rest.  Enjoy the pictures!

Dexter was born on Wednesday, we went home on Friday evening, and then on Saturday had an in-home visit from a nurse, who did drew some blood from Dex to check his bilirubin count. We got a call later that day from the doctor: Dex's bilirubin was high and we had to get him back to the hospital for jaundice treatment.

Dex was home for less than a day.   more »

We had Dex's two week appointment today, and he's getting B.I.G.

To recap, his birth weight was 8lb 3oz
Leaving hospital three days later: 7lbs 7oz
One week old: 7lbs 15oz
Now, 1 day shy of 2 weeks after birth: 8lb 11oz!

The average baby gains between 0.5 and 1.0oz, and Dex has been gaining 2oz a day!!  Dex is going to be humungo, even bigger than Cameron!  If you don't remember just how fat Cameron was, here's a refresher:

Cam at 3 months. No he's not wearing a sumo suit

I'm thinking maybe we should sell Sara's milk - that stuff is potent!

I just whipped together a quick video of Cam's reaction to seeing his train set, plus a few clips from his birthday party.  Enjoy!

Finally got around to posting pics of Cam from right before Dexter was born, including Cam's 2nd birthday.  Dexter was predicted to arrive right near Cam's birthday; we didn't want to have to rush to the hospital in the middle of Cam's birthday party so we had Cam's party a week early, on September 13 (Cam's bday is September 19).

Choo choo!

Sara and I decided to splurge on a gift for Cam's 2nd birthday - we bought him a toy train set table.  We actually played with this train table last Christmas when we stayed with Winston and Margaret, and we liked it so much that we decided to get it for Cam.  It was a huge beast of a box, barely fitting into the backseat of the Lexus.  I really should have used the Rogue to pick up the toy but I bought the train set from a Toys'r'us near my work and I use the Lexus to commute.  Anyways, we wanted to surprise Cam with the train set so we left the box in the car until Cam went to sleep.  Then I lugged it into the house, and two and a half hours later, the train set was fully assembled.  It was soooo much bigger than I remember, and we don't have the proper space for it.  We had to stick it against a wall so unfortunately there's a side of the train table that Cam can't really reach and trains sometimes get stuck there.

The next morning, when Cam climbed to the top of the stairs and saw the train table, he yelled "Choo choo!" and ran over to play with it.  At one point he was jumping up and down with excitement and said "Awesome!"  We made sure to give Cam a full day of the train set on his own, then the next day was his birthday party and it was a big hit with all the kids.

Cam blew out the candles on his own

Cam had a great time at his party, running laps around the house with the other kids and batting balloons all over the place.  He loved his Cars-themed cake, and when we brought it out all lit up, I leaned in to help blow out the candles but Cam didn't need me at all - he blew out the candles all on his own!  That kid constantly amazes me with what he does and says.

The train set was expensive, but we figured the cost will be amortized over the multiple kids that we will have.  :)  Cam has shown no signs of losing interest in the train set, which is good.  If anything, Sara and I have lost the novelty of playing with it and we don't spend as much time playing with Cam on the train table as we should, considering we've have it for less than a month.  I suppose having a new baby had something to do with that... :)

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We're starting up potty training for Cam.  The first couple days went well, as Cam did not fight sitting on the toilet.  In fact, when I was putting Cam to sleep, he would suddenly grab his butt and ask to go to the toilet!  That was just the first couple days, however.  He's fought it since then, and now I've fallen off the wagon in trying to potty train him.  In truth, I have no idea what to do, other than to encourage him to sit there.  Sara ordered a free potty training DVD and we've watched the first few minutes of it - just enough for me to know to use stickers as bribes-er, I mean rewards for using the potty.  I need to watch the rest of the DVD to really learn the science of getting Cam fully potty trained.

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That's it for now.  I've got one more set of pre-Dexter photos I want to post - our vacation to Scottsdale from May.  That's pretty much ancient history when it comes to the kids, but there are some great pics in there that I want to post... hopefully I'll be able to post that some time soon.