Reagan Updates

NOTE: The previous post was actually written today (8/31/07)

Talking:
Yesterday, eyebrows, "eyeboos". This morning, juice, "doos". She really watches our mouths sometimes and tries to mimic the sounds. She also said her first 2 word phrase a week or so ago ... daddy hum. She was asking me if Daddy was home or coming home or something. Since then, she constantly points out Dada in pictures and any sound we hear, especially at the front door, she says "da da!" She's definitely missing him when he's not here now instead of only being aware of him when he's here. She also does a high pitched "mee" for meow and "oof" for woof.

Fever:
She's had a low grade temp at night on and off this month. I'm hoping it's just been a few little bugs in a row. Maybe the camping trips didn't help. Maybe taking her to the gym daycare in the mornings sometimes (her temp's alwasy down then and she seems fine) wasn't helping her get all the way better either. We went to the doc on Tuesday and turns out she has a sore throat. We've layed low this week. The last two days, she's also had 3 poopy diapers (it's usually 1 or 2 max) and they've been a bit softer with undigested food. Her fever's continued to be up between 100.3-100.6 each night since Tuesday and back down in the morning. The doctor has me keeping a record of her evening temp for 3 weeks so we can see if it's just related to the sickness right now or something else going on. So, a little worried in general about all this, but we'll just wait and see for now.

2 Cool Gifts:
Cam's Aunt Patti sent a huge box of books for Reagan and Aunt Bethany knitted an adorable dress that Uncle Danny brought along with a Dr. Suess book that she loves too. Here she is in the dress checking out her new cool stack of books. She really loves the one where you slide the wheel to find the baby animal to match the mama animal.

Camping Adventures

We took 2 camping trips this month, one in Tahoe Aug 10-11 (1 night) and one on Angel Island Aug 23-25 (2 nights). The Tahoe trip was just the 3 of us and was our practice for Angel Island where we wouldn't be able to bail to our car (30-40 min hike and ferry ride from car). My Dad (Grampa Martin/Galieber) flew out on a free Southwest voucher and joined us for Angel Island and we all had a great time. Reagan enjoyed both trips as long as we were hanging around the camp site or exploring rather than stuffing her into the hiking backpack or bike trailer.

We lost a bit of sleep the first night in Tahoe, waking up every few seconds to make sure she didn't need another layer or to put her hat back on her (still) bald head. We had plans for 2 nights in Tahoe but decided there was no sense losing sleep again ... we knew she could sleep fine in the tent and we'd already done everything we planned to do - gondola at Squaw for dinner with a view, hiking part of the trail to Mt. Tallac, and a buffet dinner at the top of Harrah's Casino in South Lake Tahoe - but I like buffets! Notice a lot of eating and a little hiking in our plans ... and I wonder why I can't drop the rest of the weight!!

Here, we stopped hiking to let Reagan have some fun... little rock climber

Good morning ... this fun jumpy bed is still here!

Anyway, on Angel Island, our view was fantastic and it was really wild to look at San Francsisco and both bridges and Alcatraz while we sat at a camp site roughing it. We saw tons of Deer (or as Reagan calls them, "Dee") and they were so much less skiddish than usual since they don't have any predators on the island. We also saw lots of birds (Reagan flaps her arms for them). Since Reagan wasn't willing to be in the hiking backpack that long, Cam stayed at camp while she napped in the tent and my Dad and I hiked to the top ... even greater view. It took about 45 min to go up and 30/35 to come back down.

Hiking up to camp from the Ferry dropoff point (Ayala Cove)
My Dad at the top, Tiburon in the background Our site
View of SF from our site (enlarge this or you can't really see SF in background) (it was really cool at night all lit up)Reagan's make-shift high chair ... she only lasted a couple minutes like this, but it was funny :-)
Morning hike down to the beach (where we saw a lovely sea lion carcass washed up on shore ... that smelled good!). "So, we sit on this like a chair, huh Grandpa?" Took her a while to go down for a nap, but checking out the iPod & making a few calls on my cell wore her out.
As soon as she realized this water spicket was here, it was non-stop "hand-washing" time
Heading home ... with less stuff, so we were able to squeeze Reagan into a bike trailer and all ride our bikes down to the ferry. Sooo much faster than the walk up! Here's the happy camper:
Ferry ride back to Tiburon
Reagan zonks from a tiring weekend
Still zonked through half our lunch at Cheesecake Factory
We also encountered the "smart" racoons, as the ranger put it with a smirk. We put our food in the food locker thinking it was there to keep food safe ... ya know, like the bear lockers do at yosemite, right? wrong!! They managed to pull 5 bananas, 2 apples, 3 peaches, and 6 hot dog buns through the 1/4 inch gap at the bottom of the food locker door! I am not joking. It certaintly wasn't an easy task ... they obviously struggled based on the insane sounds we heard ... a half shrieky, half growly, really frustrated/mad sound ... we could have swore a pack of lions were fighting outside our tent. We finally heard my Dad unzip his tent (he later told us he sat and contemplated this for a while though) ... and good thing, cause we weren't going out there! :-) ... and he yelled and threw a couple rocks to scare them away. He only saw one racoon ... found it had chewed into the baggie holding the dish sponge. So, he wedged the food locker door shut at the top with a thick stick. There. Now they won't be able to get anything. Ha! That was before the afforementioned feast. After enjoying our bunless hotdogs for lunch the next day, we meant business the second night. They were trying to get serious too... approaching our campsight before it was even dark! One of them was really daring and would come within 10 feet of us. Holy crap, this is war! We wedged a tent stake in the food locker door, wedged a huge log against the front doors so they couldn't be pulled open at all - no 1/4 inch gap this time! - and we didn't store anything on the bottom shelf this time... oh and my Dad rounded up an arsenal of rocks to throw to scare them off. We never heard a peep and everything was untouched in the morning. Ha, we won!

I'm Hooked Up!

Happy Birthday to me! Cam got me an iPod nano, an arm pouch so I can run with it, and a wireless pedometer that tells you your progress on your ipod, both visually and audibly - calories, distance, pace. Then, when you sync with your computer, it logs your workout data and tracks it for you over time. So cool and definitely helping in the motivation department for running!

Last weekend, we camped in Tahoe as a practice run for our upcoming Angel Island trip. I'm falling asleep at the computer, so I'll blog separately about that later... oh, and all the chatting Reagan's been up to too.

"Hum" = Home

She repeated this back to me several times when I said we were going home to see Dada.

"Da-doo" = Cracker

We've been able to discern a word from the strange new language Reagan speaks! She's also started calling us by name and Dada is even Daddy sometimes.

She also seems to heading in the direction of weaning from nursing ... which would be good, I was really hoping she'd do it on her own ... I didn't want to force it on her, but was starting to lay down some deadlines in my mind ... 18 mos... 2 yrs ... I wasn't sure. We've been down to 4 times/day (morning, nap 1, nap 2, and bedtime) for a while now and she's almost 100% down to 1 nap a day, so by default, that took it down to 3 times/day (morning, nap, bedtime). Today, however, a real sign that it's becoming less important and needed ... when I was feeding her before her nap, she sat up after maybe 1 minute - literally just over the time it took me to sing Rock-a-by Baby - and put her hand to the side of her face (her sign for "sleepy") while saying "dat" in a long drawn out, tired sort of tone. I promptly stood up, walked her over to her crib while saying night, night, love you, give mama a kiss (she did), have a good sleepy, etc and she did her usual ... sat there, stuck her passy in her mouth ... paused a minute ... then layed down and snuggled teddy bear. and that was it! She really did just wanna go to sleep and didn't need to nurse... Crazy!

Longest July Vacation Ever ... that began in June

Originally planning to leave on July 5th, Reagan and I headed to Illinois a week sooner to attend Matthew's visitation/memorial service. I was so glad I could be there for Rikki and Chris, who are so amazing, they consoled me when I arrived. They had the most wonderful pictures of Matthew displayed. Here's one I love ...

We spent the rest of our additional week in Peoria after staying a couple nights at Morgan and Bobby's (which was all it took for Cameron (aka Beans) to teach Reagan how fun it is to jump on beds). In Peoria, we mostly relaxed with all gazillion of Reagan's grand and great grandparents ... unfortunately, we had to miss seeing Grandma Connie though, who was in Wisconsin caring for Great Grandma and Grandpa Kirchhoff. Otherwise, we went out a couple nights to my brother's company's bar while Grandpa Martin and Grandma Laurie stayed home with a sleeping Reagan ... except one night when "Grandma" came out with us to "pop into the bar and go out for dinner" ... well, we all had such a great time, it turned into "go out for drinks and pop into a restaurant" ... at midnight ... after I had 2 and 1/2 "Killer Kool-Aids" ... on the house ... how can you pass that up? Well, Steven informs me afterward that those were equivalent to about 8 drinks ... that explained things! Either I found the best burger in the midwest ... or it was midnight and I had 8 drinks on an empty stomach! Some warning about the Killer Kool-Aid woulda been gr-reat! I wasn't nearly as bad as I'm making it sound, don't worry.

Most Eventful Day: Friday, Jul 6th ... Reagan's 103.2 fever was diagnosed as a result of 2 inner ear infections AND she fell down 6 stairs and got a huge purple bruiser on her forehead. This was all happening as I frantically packed up to head to Springfield to visit Doug and Dave, where Erin also joined us with a 5 hr drive from Ohio and Heidi and Little Miss Hanna Banana, who Reagan loved and vice versa, drove from Peoria too.

She seemed to enjoy herself despite the fever still spiking a little, but the antibiotics were starting to kick in. The crazy part was that the 10 days of antibiotics she needed were still going to be done 7 days before the vacation was over AND we had already been on vacation for 7 days... "bejeesus, this is a long vacation"! Anyway, we had a great weekend eating way too much and swimming/sliding/diving/and lounging in their backyard pool!

Monday, July 9th, Doug dropped Reagan and I on the Amtrak to Chicago, where Rikki and Chris unfortunately waited an hour in the parking lot for our late train. After some lunch, Rikki, Reagan, and I headed to Morgan 's in Indiana where we spent 3 relaxing days on their 4 acre property in the country. Reagan continued to have a blast with little Cameron (Beans) and David (her birth buddy). We walked to "Narnia", went to a little petting zoo,



and Reagan and David had their first Dairy Queen cones all to themselves!

Thursday, July 12th, we headed back to Rikki and Chris's in Chicago to get Cam (big Cameron), who flew in late that night. Next morning, along with the rest of my family, we drove to Port Huron, MI to meet up with my brother Danny, sister-in-law Bethany, and Reagan's new cousin, Faire!

Cam and I had great workouts the next morning at the unusually nice gym for a hotel (1 of 4 workouts for me the entire 3 weeks! Yikes!). Later, we did some consignment shopping and ice cream eating and that night, went to a great restaurant with a view of the Huron River. Reagan enjoyed the dance floor and the teal suited keyboardist. Here we are before heading to dinner (minus Monica who took the shot):

"Holy crap, that flash is bright!"
Sunday, July 15th, we headed back in the direction of Chicago with 2 detours. One in Grosse Pointe, for a visit with my other grandparents, yet another set of Reagan's great grandparents, Grandpa Andrew & Shirley, who fed us all a great steak on the grill lunch. Here's Cam and Reagan sharing some corn on the cob :-)
After lunch, we headed to the Worthenbury Country House that I found on the internet and rented for 2 nights. It was a great place near Warren Dunes State Park, which is what we were looking. It wasn't step out your door onto the beach great, but it did have a hot tub in the backyard and couches and chairs with ottomans so big, we easily slept all 16 of us with only one floor air bed! The next day, after climbing the ~250 ft sand dunes, Cam admitted that he was impressed and that I was in fact correct that the place was "cool". He refused to believe that much "unflatness" existed in the midwest until he saw it. Someday, I have to take him to northern Michigan wher the "unflatness" is twice that size! He even jokingly admitted he'd like to live in Michigan ... don't get your hopes up or down about that. :-)

Morgan, Rikki, Beans, and I reaching the top of the dune.

Tuesday, July 17th, we headed back to Rikki and Chris's, where Morgan, Beans, and David joined us, and Bobby later in the week. We took the kids to the Brookfield Zoo, which they loved.

Who'da thought a 2-humped Camel would walk by right then! :-)

The final hoorah was buying the last Harry Potter book the second it was released at midnight on Saturday, the 21st (except Cam and Chris, who refuse to read the series. Whatever! Oh, and Rikki who drove us but was already having it delivered to her later that day). We somehow managed to still hang out and talk while sneaking in 5 chapters (ok, well, Bobby and Rikki did. Morgan and I were then instructed to catch up so they could talk about it with us and we had to go off in quiet rooms to manage that (some of us aren't as talented as others). We all went out to the Cheesecake Factory for one last glutenous vacation dinner that night and then our flight departed at 6:40 the next morning. Good thing they live 5 minutes from the airport!

Oh, and we were gone so long, Reagan had time to learn some geography:
Where are we now, Reagan?


... and where will we be when we get back home?

Excellent Job! A+

Thanks to all who hosted us, fed us, chauffeured/loaned their car to us, and entertained us. We had a great trip!

In Loving Memory

Matthew William Steinmetz

Born June 12, 2007

I'm so glad that he was able to meet his parents and that Rikki and Chris were able to be with and meet him as well. What a precious and adorable baby they got to spend this time with.

Love,
Melanie, Cameron, and Reagan