Happy 7 months Beckett!

Our little baby is seven months old today! I'm in shock. There's no way that seven months have already gone by since our sweet boy was born. It's been the most exciting, frustrating and joyful seven months of my life. He is growing and changing every day and while I'm feeling extremely sad that he's growing so fast, I'm also so excited to see what new things he will do next. Here are some of his seven month highlights:

• Beckett is eating two solid meals a day (mostly homemade unless he's at daycare). He loves Puffs and anything along those lines. He's not the best at feeding himself, but sometimes he gets lucky and one makes it into his mouth.
• He loves to be outside. Whether it's in his swing, swimming in his pool, or cruising around in his jogging stroller, he is definetly happiest when he's outside.
• He's not crawling yet, but he gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth. He rolls from his belly to back, but not from back to belly. He somehow flips himself around and upside down in his crib at night. Not sure if he does acrobatics once we shut the door or what, but he is never in the same position as when we put him down for the night. My prediction is that he will be crawling in the next couple of weeks.
• He doesn't exactly sleep through the night yet, but he comes awfully close. Most nights he wakes up once to eat a little bit and have a diaper change, but then will go right back to sleep.
• He is so ticklish and loves to laugh. Daddy is the best at making him laugh. He laughs and laughs so hard when he is with Dad. I try to do it, but I guess Dad is just funnier! He likes to dance with me though, and will smile and laugh as we dance around the room to our favorite songs.

If you've made it this far, you deserve some pictures. I'm going to show you how he's grown over the past seven months. Every month we take a picture in the same chair with the same stuffed animals.

He has a cold right now, and is battling a stuffy nose, but otherwise is usually a very happy baby. We are so blessed to get to raise this amazing boy, and I thank God every day for him. We are the luckiest parents ever! Here's some more pictures, just because he's so cute.

Airshow!

It was Beckett's first year at the airshow! He had no clue what was going on, but he loved sitting in the grass on the blankets with his cousins and second cousins. I can't wait for the years to come where we can point out the planes to him and watch him get excited as they fly over.

Beck with his sound proof headphones on to make it not so loud. We weren't even there when the super loud planes were flying but these headphones were so cute that I didn't want to take them off of him!

Beckett with his cousin Emily.

All the kiddos at the airshow this year. It was impossible (as you can tell) to get them to all look at the camera at the same time. Still a great picture though! I left my camera at home even after specifically setting it out so I would remember it, so these were taken on my phone. Thank goodness for smartphones.

Beckett's new things

About a week ago David bought Beck a swing for outside. He LOVES it so much! He would be content to swing for hours in that thing. Plus he gets to watch the dogs run around.

I had been researching amber teething necklaces for a while and finally decided to just buy one. I've heard awesome things about them from people who swear they help calm down their fussy babies while they're teething. It's supposed to release succinic acid which helps ease the pain from teething. I figured all it can do is help. Beckett hasn't been too terrible with teething yet, and he has no teeth, but he drools like crazy and is always chewing on everything so I think it's coming soon. Even if it doesn't help, it looks super cute!

You wouldn't believe how many tries it took to get these two decent pictures. He was very busy tonight.

Messy boy

Beck is usually a very clean eater. Clean for a six month old, anyways. Well tonight for some reason, he wanted to blow bubbles every time the spoon went in his mouth. As you can imagine, this made a huge mess and his veggies went everywhere. He was having the time of his life, though!

Arrows to Aerospace weekend

Every year there's a parade in Olde Towne Bellevue. We have never gone in the past, but this year we had a reason to go. To take Beckett to his first parade, of course! Grandma Cheryl went with us and Beckett really enjoyed looking at all the fun floats and listening to the bands play. Afterwards we got a couple pictures.

I also felt like getting crafty this weekend. I've been wanting a ring sling for a while now, but couldn't bring myself to spend the money on it, as they can get pretty pricey. I found a tutorial on Pinterest and that inspired me enough to try it. I did much better than I expected and am very pleased with the results! Plus I think Beck really likes it too :)

Family photos

We decided to get some family pictures taken this past week. Our wedding photographer, Tammy Muecke, took them for us. She tried to get some newborn pictures but Beckett wasn't cooperating that day. He did good for these pictures though! She gave us a sneak peak of the pictures so here's what we have so far. I love them already and can't wait to see the rest.

Let's catch up

Well, let me start by saying I'm new at this blogging business. I figured it would be a great way to express some of my thoughts and feelings while making a record of our lives as well. It's an exciting time in our lives right now. We had our first baby almost 7 months ago, and we are having a great time!
(Disclaimer: This is going to be super long as I'm about to catch up on the past seven months)

Beckett Allen Dunaway made his entrance into this world on January 29th, 2011 at 1:25pm. He weighed 7lbs 13 ozs and was 20.5 inches long. We gave him his middle name after David's dad who was sent to heaven three years ago. Hopefully someday Beckett will realize how lucky he is to share a name with such a great man. 

My pregnancy was a pretty miserable one. I was diagnosed with mild pre-eclampsia and was forced to be on bedrest for two and a half weeks until I was induced at 37 weeks. The induction was long and boring. 30 hours total from start to end. It took five and a half hours of pushing before the doctor decided to take matters into her own hands to get Beckett out. His head was stuck on my pubic bone so she had to use forcepts to get him out. He was taken to the NICU shortly after he was born because he was having breathing problems. He also had Bells Palsy from the use of forcepts. The left side of his face was paralyzed. This made feeding difficult for him and once his breathing problems resolved, we then had to worry about getting him to eat. He also was jaundiced and needed the bili blanket. We spent four days there with him before we got to take him home. It was both the best and worst four days of my life. I felt so many emotions during this time, but the ones I remember the most vividly were extreme anxiety and stress. The day we got to take him home was so amazing, and that's when the real fun began.

This is the first picture of us as a family. They had to take him away to the NICU so fast that I barely got to hold him, let alone get a family picture.

Grandma Cheryl

Grandma Judy

Grandpa Scott

Beckett was not the easiest baby. He was extremely fussy all. the. time. I breastfed him and that was a struggle. He didn't want to latch on, and when he did, he would pull off a lot because he would choke. So I resorted to mostly pumping and bottle feeding him. I can honestly say that breastfeeding is the hardest thing I have ever done. I have so much respect for the women who are able to do it for a year+. We made it to three and a half months with Beckett getting exclusively breastmilk. We then switched to half breastmilk/half formula until a little after four months, and he's been getting mostly formula since then.

Our little man ended himself back in the hospital when he was five weeks old. His pediatrician thought he had pneumonia so he was admitted for a chest x-ray and to have some tests done. It just turns out that he was admitted the day before he was supposed to be baptised. We had some family driving in to be there for his baptism and luckily we were able to stop most of them from coming. Beckett's great-grandma Marge was already on her way so she came anyways. She got to meet Beckett in the hospital for the first time. It was such an awesome moment having four generations together. Beckett, me, my dad and my grandma. Thankfully Beckett was discharged the next day after he was diagnosed with RSV (no pneumonia!) and we missed his baptism by just a few hours. It went off without a hitch 3 weeks later though, and a lot of family was able to be there for his special day, including his great-grandpa Russ on my mom's side of the family.

His baptism outfit was ruined by a major blowout so luckily Aunt Jaci and Uncle Dan gave him this outfit as a baptism present otherwise he would've been wearing a diaper for the rest of his party!

His Godparents, Kristen and Jesse

His first big holiday was Easter. The Easter Bunny visited us for the first time and left Beckett his goodies in a soccer ball basket (of course). No Easter egg hunts for us this year, but we look forward to them in the years to come!

Once Beckett hit about four months old, he became a much happier baby. He started sleeping longer stretches at night and got to try solid foods for the first time. I was already back to work and finally feeling like I could handle everything now. He started going to daycare and loved being around other kids. Up until this point, Grandma Judy had been watching him during the day. She was a saint for putting up with our fussy, crabby baby for several days a week!

At the end of June, we got a new nephew, and Beck got his first boy cousin! He already has four girl cousins, so he was happy to get a buddy to play with in a couple years. Oliver was born on June 30th (my birthday also!) The weekend after Oliver was born, we took our annual trip out to the cabin for the 4th of July. It was Beck's first time at the lake, and he did really well. He got to go swimming with Dad in the lake and loved it, despite the cold water. He loved watching the boats go by and seeing the outdoors in a whole new way. I can't wait to take him out there next year when he will be walking and able to explore a little more on his own.

Right around this time we decided to put our house on the market. We are in need of more space for our growing family. Two adults, a baby, and two big dogs takes up a lot of space. Our house hasn't sold yet, but we are optimistic about it. It will sell when the time is right.

That brings us to now! Beckett is a thriving almost seven month old. He is wearing mostly size 12 month clothes! At his 6 month appointment he weighed a little over 20 lbs, which put him in the 87th percentile for weight. He's in the 85th percentile for height, so he is big and tall! He is such a joy to have. We love making him laugh and nobody can do it better than his daddy. He is "talking" up a storm and we love to listen to his stories. He has been sitting up on his own for over a month now, but isn't crawling yet. He can get into the right position, but has yet to figure out he needs to move his arms and legs to go anywhere. He loves both of our dogs, Lola and Clifford. Lola acts like she doesn't care for him much but we know better. Most nights she will sneak into his room and sleep next to his crib. Clifford just loves Beck. He loves to lick every part of him and make him laugh his head off. He loves being outside and he really loves swimming. I can't wait to see what amazing things Beckett will do in the months to come. There is never a dull moment at the Dunaway residence!