Picture Update

The October Pictures Update is now available! This was a busy month; you will see pictures from the Sanders' triplets' fourth (my, how time flies!) birthday party, our trip to the Texas Renescaince Festival, and of course, Halloween!

Roll Over

Devin is cooing up a storm and doing so many amazing things right now. He's also drooling a lot. The drooling is also amazing, if only because of the volume. But this isn't exactly the amazing part I was wanting to write about...

Renee had set Devin on the floor for some tummy time. Of course, because of the drooling, Renee had also set a towel in front of Devin, so the floor wouldn't become soaked.

Devin was generally not enjoying his tummy time (not too unusual for a baby his age). Renee had, at this point, continued on to some other activity; I was now in charge of the babe.

After a few moments, I had realized that the towel was no longer under Devin's head; he had rotated about 30 degrees to the left! Wow! He's starting to become mobile.

"Renee, Renee!" I called. "Come see this, Devin's moving!" Renee didn't answer right away, so I got up and looked for her down the hall. I found her in the laundry room.

"Renee, check this out," I said, as I encouraged her back to the living room floor. "Devin's ..." I stopped short. He wasn't rotating. Or, rather, that wasn't the big news anymore. By the time Renee and I had returned to the scene, Devin had turned over on his back — all by himself!

TexRenFest

We headed out early last Sunday morning to the Texas Renaissance Festival, which is near Houston and about a 2.5 hour drive. For that reason, we wanted to leave as early as possible in hopes that Devin would be able to sleep through as much of the ride as possible.

Despite leaving the house later than expected, we were able to drive about 90% of the way there with Devin asleep. It was that last 10% that took us a while to cover, as we pulled over every couple miles to soothe the crying babe.

We arrived a little after 11 a.m., which was right after one of the events we wanted to see. Nevertheless, Aidan was unaware of what he was missing and instead jumped right into the festivities.

Our first stop was a ride on the elephants, then on to the Dizzy Dragon, which I can atest is not some little kiddie ride. The Dizzy Dragon is a bigger version of twisting ropes around a pole. When we first started to spin, Aidan looked a little green, but I reminded him that we were supposed to pretend that we were riding on a dragon, which pepped him up immeadiately.

We then saw the knights joust. Our seats were in the black and blue section, which happended to be the representative colors of the "German" knight, Sir Otto. It was our duty to cheer him on. Thus, we bought a black and blue pennant for Aidan to wave around whenever Otto did something worth cheering for. After the joust, we took the flag over to the side of the arena, where Sir Otto himself was waiting and happily signed the flag for Aidan.

Aidan then rode several other rides, including his very first pony ride. Devin, on the other hand slept though much of the day....

I'm sure you can come close to guessing how the ride home was. When we arrived back at the car, we got everyone situated and ate some sandwiches we brought with us. Aidan, who was running around all day, ate half of his sandwich. As he took a bite of the second half, he feel asleep. I tried to put the sandwich away for him, but as I moved the sandwich bag out from under his hand, he woke up, took another bite, then nodded off again, with the food in his mouth. Renee and I did everything we could to laugh quietly.

Devin, on the other hand, was well rested after sleeping most of the day in the sling. All he wanted to do was to be held and play with us.

So, our first 20% of the ride home was much like the last 10% of our arrival: at approximately 2 mile intervals, we'd pull over and try to soothe Devin.

All-in-all, it was a wonderfully fun weekend, especially watching Aidan have so much fun and getting so excited about the festival in general (and the rides specifically). Here's to next year!

Renee's Back At Work

Renee started back to work on Monday and updating the Web site had been, well, a difficult thing to get accomplished. Our days usually start around 6 a.m. and we don't generally get a chance to do any "extra" stuff until after we get Aidan down, which is usually sometime after 9 p.m. At that point, we too drained to do much of anything else. If we do have any energy, it's usually spent on preparing things to help make the morning go a little easier.

However, Aidan (much as we predicted) has been very excited at the prospect of Devin going to school with him in the morning. We no longer have to struggle with getting him out the door. In fact, it's almost quite the opposite.

Devin has been making the transition to school very well also; his teachers have said that he's a very good baby — he only cries when he's hungry or tired, which has been pretty much the same experience we have at home.

Renee visits Devin everyday for lunch, which obviously allows her to continue nursing, but also has the added benefit of helping Renee with the transition back to work. We are proud to say that she, too, has been having a decent time with her transition.