Bath Time

Nolan loves bath time. The first few attempts were not so great, I think the water was too cold. Now he enjoys long warm soaks. He will splash the water all over the place if I'm not paying attention. We have even taken him in the big tub in the master bathroom. In there he can swim and float and kick. Once he even fell asleep. Afterward we wrap him up in his ducky bathrobe and cover him in baby oil. Bath time is fun.

Baby Sunscreen

Sunscreen has come a long way.  I used to hate putting sunscreen on.  I still don't like it, but will tolerate it if it means I can avoid skin cancer.  I always hated the smell, and if would feel so oily, sometimes even burn.  So I looked at a lot of products for Nolan before buying any sunblock.

Before we came to camp I purchased two different kinds of baby sunscreen, one was Nutrogena pure and free sunscreen/ stick combo, it had a small tube of sun lotion, and a stick as well.  The other was Hawaiian tropic Baby sunscreen in a stick form.  The Nutrogena is a white pasty sunscreen, Nolan squirms and squirms when I put it on, I don't think he likes it much.  The Hawaiian tropic looks more like chapstick, it is a clearer looking lotion, and Nolan loves it.  I think it is the smell.  He will lay there and smile as I rub it on his face.  I know he is getting more lotion on with the Hawaiian Tropic, but I feel safer about the Nutrogena.  I just don't want him to end up hating sun lotion as much as I did.

Back Update

My back is not doing very good. When Nolan was 3 weeks old I tweaked it and it continued to hurt a lot, so I went and had an MRI done. It showed 2 herniated disks and 3 bulging disks. Just before we came to camp I had a cortesone shot in the worse of the disks and it really hasn’t helped at all. We are doing a lot of walking here, about ½ a mile down to the dining hall for each meal so about 4+ miles a day. It is great exercise, but I’m really stiff by the end of the day. I even have the Ergo carrier, and it is great for me, but Nolan isn’t a huge fan of it. I have an appointment set up for the 20th of July with the surgeons office to see what the next step will be. Malibu is from July 31st -August 7th and then Soccer starts back up a week or two after that. There will never be a good time to get this fixed, but we will figure it out. The sooner the better.

Toys

Nolan can hold onto a rattle now and even pass it from one hand to the other. It is really cool to watch, his main objective is to get it into his mouth, but it’s not possible with the design of the rattle. It was a great $2 purchase.  I also got him a small apple toy that he loves to bat at while in his car seat.  It is fun to watch him interact with the sounds and textures of the toys.

Sucker

I think Nolan is having a love affair with his thumbs. He found his fingers early on and would shove his whole hand in his mouth, but just in the last few days he has discovered that he can suck on his thumb. He will thrash his head from side to side and switch which hand he is sucking on. Sometimes he even prefers his thumb to his pacifier. Speaking of Paci’s I just got some bigger size pacifiers and tried to give them to him, he really doesn’t like them, it may be the clear silicone, the others he has is the darker rubber, but he spits them out with a disgusted look on his face. Its pretty funny.

Young Life Assignment at Washington Family Ranch

We're at Big Muddy, I mean, Wildhorse Canyon, I mean, Washington Family Ranch, I mean, WaFaRa, I mean, The Canyon. This place is having a serious identity crisis I wasn’t sure what to expect for an assignment here, we have always been at Malibu in June. It is beautiful here not too hot, yet. The camp is huge so there is a lot of quiet and alone time, which I like. I’m able to just play with Nolan and work on some projects. We take naps in the late afternoon and stroll into camp for meals.

The Program team is doing a great job, their main characters are stunt men, and they have two other sets of characters, Mario and Luigi and also Techno Dancers. I’m really excited for the opera in a couple of nights to see all of the characters interact. Maybe I can film it and put it on the blog too.

Keith is enjoying his role as a Summer staff coordinator. He has been connecting with the college guys and helping them in any way he can. So far this has been a great little assignment for our family.

Is that Normal?

You can’t talk about babies without talking about poop. Recently Nolan has gone to a 5 day stool schedule. I’m not complaining, but it does seem like a long time in between. I’ve read that breastfed babies can go up to 14 days without pooping when they are in a growth spurt. They literally use every last drop of nourishment that they get. Since June 7th he has pooped 3 times...

Arlington Airport Run #2

I put on the second annual Arlington Airport Run on June 5th. We had about 100 runners, and raised about $2300 for cap scholarships. It was a stressful day, but I think we made some great progress this year, and learned a lot about how to make this a huge success in the future. I got to the course at 9am and there were runners waiting for me there so excited to get going. The race started at 11am and although we felt like chickens with their heads cut off, everything went very smoothly. I’m so excited to be able to give camp scholarships out again this year. Next year we are going to do the race a little closer to the camp date so that the kids feel a little more urgency in getting people to sign up for the race.

Bargain Shopping

While I was in Portland my mom and I went to some baby resale shops. And while I still have a hard time with used baby clothes, I found some great deals on toys. We got Nolan an activity gym with dangling toys. We got a Bumbo seat that he can sit up in. And we got a bucket tub that he will enjoy a lot when he can sit up a little better by himself. Everything was more than 50% off of the retail prices SCORE.