Grayson Stanley Harding

The day has arrived... er... had come?... was Wednesday!  Yeah, that sounds good!  Grayson Stanley "Dobyestos" Harding joined our family on October 21st, 8:03 am.  He weighed 8 lbs 10 oz and was 20 inches long.  He has great vocal exuberance and enjoys a good cry... starting at midnight.  I'm currently holding him, and typing one handed, so I may be brief in my writing, but I was verbose in my picture inclusion, and that's probably more of what you care about.  Also, if you don't know, Dobyestos is the name that Winry came up with to name her brother, and she has been very adamant about it.  Even since meeting her brother and knowing we named him Grayson she still says she is going to call him Dobyestos.  Here he is dressed and ready to come home from the hospital.

Last Sunday Jelly helped do final checks on our baby things to make sure we were good to go.  One nap at a time everything passed.

Here's Monica ready to have a baby.

We're all together in the OR.  Grayson got to come back within like 5 minutes of being born and even got to start nursing right there in the OR.

Here I am burping him.  He's a good snuggler and leans right up next to my head.  That's great for now, however he'll start spitting up soon and that will be no fun!

And here we are both looking at the camera!

Here's Monica and Grayson loving hospital life.

We got Grayson some carrot cake for this birthday.  We ate it for him, though technically, the cake Monica ate probably did get to him.  We all did our part.

That night, he had to get his hands up to his face, and he eventually started sucking on his fingers.  Things worked best when he found his thumb.  He's Brooke's kindred spirit.

After 24 hours, they do some tests.  They checked his weight, measured his biliruben, and checked his oxygen levels.  Everything looked great!

Then he came back to our room for his first bath, which he... loved?  Okay, okay, he screamed the whole time.

He did seem to like his hearing screening though, and enjoyed jamming out to a slightly clicking sound about the level of a whisper.  He double passed the test when he jumped at the end when the printer kicked on to print his results.

Here's Grayson sleeping in one morning.  He loves his little blanket we brought him, good call Monica!

And here is a GREAT BIG YAWN!!

The girls would come to visit, but the hospital rules were that Monica could only have one visitor per day due to covid, which means there was no swapping for me.  I was, however, allowed to come and go from the hospital, so Gram and the girls would drive over and I'd come out to the car and we'd hang out for a little bit.  Brooke loved to look at the fish tank outside the baby ward when Winry was born, so I took some pictures of the fish, and even a video to show the girls.

When I'd get out to the car, I'd sit in the front and talk to the girls in the back.  The girls were always so excited to see me and we had fun talking and catching up on their days.  They even brought me Wendy's for dinner one evening.

Since we had a baby, the weather had to turn as it always has in the past.  Overnight on our last night at the hospital it was very rainy and got cold cold cold.  It probably snowed a little, and there was definitely freezing rain as the car was coated in ice when I went to pull it around to pick up Monica and Grayson.

We got a few more pictures before putting Grayson in the carseat and heading home.  I really liked this one.

And I made sure Grayson had a chance to see the fish before heading home.  He was totally transfixed... or asleep.  On the way home we started playing Hey hey the baby's coming on our echo at home to announce to everyone we were on our way!

The girls were so excited when we got home and quickly crowded around the car seat to see their new brother!

They immediately wanted to hold their brother!  Brooke did an amazing job and loved it!

It was a little harder for Winry to hold Grayson, but she still enjoyed it.  She didn't hold him for too long before she was done.

However, Grayson did grab Winry's finger while she was holding him, and Winry pulled her hand away and was really excited/surprised.  I guess I'm not 100% sure, you look at her face and tell me what you think.

Brooke held him again, and she just looks so cute doing it!

While Brooke was holding him Winry started to rub and pat Grayson's head.

The girls also flooded him with gifts.  Winry got Grayson a wubbanub pacifier with a fox attached to it, and Brooke got him a big stuffed fox!  We've had to talk to them about not just dropping their presents on Grayson, and they've been good listeners.

Also, as we were leaving the hospital the nurse that walked us out gave us a freezer meal.  It was from a meal company that does pre-made meals that you freeze and put in the oven for dinner.  It was really good, and really nice of them to do that!

Saturday morning, Grayson was really out in the morning.  He was laying completely straight when I unswaddled him!

And Winry wanted turn two at holding Grayson again.

During the day, Winry started listening to books with the reader, and wanted me to help her, so she brought it over and put it on my lap.  She looked really cute with the headphones on, and while we were reading books, she kneeled down and started rubbing her chin up and down my leg...

Meanwhile Grayson and Monica were having a snuggle romp!

I took the kids outside to play for a while before dinner.  First we went out to the sidewalk to ride the scooter back and forth.  The girls took turns, with Brooke riding one way, and Winry the other.  When it was Brooke's turn Winry would walk behind and cheer for her.

After some scooting, we headed to the backyard to make another leaf pile.  The girls helped rake, and they both did a really good job.  I got a new phone this past week (I think I wrote last week about how my phone randomly rebooted and never came back), it's a Note 9, and it has a super slow motion video mode that I was trying to figure out while the girls jumped into the leaves.  It will take up to a 0.4 second video, and I basically missed what I was trying to capture every time, however I did get two good videos.  One was jumping in, the other throwing leaves in the air.  I didn't end up with any pictures or normal videos because Winry came in the house for a minute and fell down the back steps on her way back out and hit her head.  That ended our leaf pile play time.  Winry was okay, and I don't think she hit her head too hard, but she was still very sad.  I scooped her up and we came and snuggled together until she felt better.

Once Winry had calmed down, Brooke joined her on my lap and we played Pokemon Playhouse together.  It was almost time for dinner, so I was mostly aimed at cheering up Winry before dinner.  The Smiths brought us dinner Saturday night, and it was some super great barbeque!  Thanks a million!

I don't remember why anymore (sleeping has been rough the last few days) but I was holding Grayson last night when I sang the girls their bedtime songs.  After they were all ready for bed, Grayson helped me say good night to each of them.  Here we are saying good night to paci-twin Winry.

And Brooke held him up in her bed to say good night.  This picture is a little hard to see, but I'm pretty happy with it as my phone screen looked completely black when I took the picture as there were only night lights on in the girls room, and they are all under Brooke's top bunk.

Sunday morning I woke up to the girls helping Gram make some pumpkin pancakes for breakfast!  I have definitely not worried about waking up to my alarm.  To be fair, I am usually up before my alarm (Grayson, I'm looking at you) and cancel it, then fall back asleep until who knows when.  I think I woke up around 7 this morning, and maybe got as much as 5 hours of sleep last night.  Anyway, the girls have also been really good about being quiet when they come down in the morning!  I'm very proud of them.  And, the pancakes were amazing!

Today it's been snowing all day long!  It's quite nice outside, and the girls really want to go play.  I told them we could later this afternoon once there was more snow, so look forward to pictures next week!  We'll probably also go again tomorrow, as I don't think it's supposed to warm up again until Tuesday.  However, the Denver golden rule for snow is to play in it as soon as possible, because 60 degrees is always a day away.

Anyway, I think it's currently nap time, and I'm afraid I might have already missed my chance.  I'll take lots of great pictures this week, and you can watch this on repeat at night, so you can all feel like you're here!  Have a great week, and make sure you're getting enough sleep now while you still can! :)

Enjoying Fall in the Back Yard

Ahoy. The days are ticking down and we're now only 3 days away from the new baby!  At this very moment I feel tired, which is probably a bad omen...  This past week I spent a bunch of time in the backyard with the kids that currently wake me up at 3 am.  We had fun playing in the leaf pile again.  It's too bad we can't have leaves all year, though I don't know how long I could happily go move the pile every few days to make sure the grass doesn't die.

Winry and I headed out first.  After a fluffing of the pile it was time to jump in!

Winry really loves to grab big handfuls of leaves and throw them up in the air.  That might explain why she leaves a trail of leaves all over the house for the rest of the day!  It's impossible to get all of the leaf pieces out of her hair.

Not too long after we headed out, Brooke changed her mind and joined us.  We tried crazy things like somersaulting into the leaf pile and even cartwheels!  As you can see, the girls are capable of doing cartwheels.  I took a slow motion video of the girls jumping in, and spent some time throwing them into the pile.  They could have spent the rest of the day doing that... but I couldn't, so we just did it a few times.

My mail in ballot came this past week.  I'm almost done filling it out.  While I think it's great to have more than 2 choices for president, I think this is a little excessive/ridiculous.  

Brooke and Winry have really been into taking care of their baby dolls lately.  At preschool this past week they even had a baby day!  The girls loved it.  The babies even got to participate in the freeze dance song!

Jelly continues to think that she is the new baby...  I hope it's not a rude awakening when we come home with a human her size this week.  We fortunately have multiple places we can lay the baby down, so he and Jelly should be able to coexist peacefully.  Also, look at those legs popping out the side!

On Wednesday after work we went out to do some swinging.  While Brooke was swinging, Winry started to bring her leaves.  Winry would hand them to me, and I'd hand them to Brooke and she would release them into the air.  They both thought this was insanely entertaining.  The next time it was Winry's turn to swing, she wanted to release leaves too.  Brooke went inside, so I got a chair and sat by Winry so I could push her and get leaves from the ground.

On Saturday I wanted to mow the lawn for hopefully the last time this year, so I needed to clean up the leaf pile.  Brooke came out to help me put everything into a bag.  She likes to come help me every year!  Why?

Because she gets to sit on the bag to smash the leaves down!  I think the first time we did this together was 2 years ago, and Brooke is always very excited to sit on the bag every year.  It's nice because she's more excited about sitting on the bag, and not sad about cleaning up the pile.

On Saturday Gram drove out to spend some weeks with us!  She came out to help with the new baby.  The girls were very excited all day!  Gram read the girls their bedtime stories last night.  Currently, everything is better if Gram does it, and I won't complain.

That get's us all caught up for now.  Oh, I forgot one thing.  On Friday night while I was watching the BYU football game my phone randomly rebooted... and got stuck in the boot loader and never booted again... sigh.  The screen was stuck on, so surprisingly it was dead in the morning.  I think the battery over-drew itself as well, because I can't seem to get it to take a charge again... so I've got a new used phone on it's way in the mail.  It should be here... the day after the baby is born.  So our photo situation is pretty optimal right now.  Monica's phone randomly reboots all the time, and I'm back to my 8ish year old phone.  I think we'll have to take a camera with us.

Leaf Pile

Fall is upon us, and so we have arrived at our first leaf pile of the year!  Brooke really wanted to help me rake up the leaves, and I believe Winry helped a little too.  It didn't take too long, and soon we had a big leaf pile!  The girls were very excited to get in and play.  I don't know that Winry remembered leaf piles, and she was definitely following Brooke's lead on everything.  We had a lot of fun playing in the backyard together until we were all called in for dinner.

Of course leaves quickly find their way into everywhere, and soon the girls were needing to empty their shoes.  At some point Winry decided to just forgo shoes all together and was barefoot the rest of the time.

Leaf rain was a new game this year, or I at least don't ever remember doing it before.  We only ended up going out once this past week, however there are lots of new leaves that fell, and so we may go out again today!  I guess it depends on if I can talk the girls into it.

On Tuesday morning I thought Winry's crazy hair just looked so cute, and I had to take a picture.  I took several, and I quickly learned that she just kept eating breakfast through all of them!  In my (unpictured) life, I attended a virtual conference for work on Tuesday through Thursday.  I had a lot of fun with it and wouldn't mind attending another one.

Winry was giving her fairy bear a shoulder ride this past week, and I asked her if she wanted a ride on dad at the same time!

This past week Brooke has really been into doing crafts.  She wanted to make a crib for her new stuffed animal she got on her date with Monica last weekend.  On her first attempt she was cutting up some felt, and planning to glue it together.  I offered to help, and in the end we built this crib!  Brooke loves it, and loves to play with it.  She also cut out a crib sheet and blanket for Donut to use.

On Wednesday the girls wanted to eat their lunch outside, so Monica let them head out into the backyard to eat.  Here they are, enjoying lunch and the outdoors together.

One night Dobby was running and we got a notification that it's wheels were off the ground.  I found it wedged into this little spot.  I'm not really sure how it ever started getting into here.  It is a circle after all...

On Saturday, Monica took Winry out for a mommy daughter date.  Whenever she asked Winry what she wanted, Winry always said "pancakes!!" They went to Kneaders around brunch time to get some food, and then went to eat at the park.  Winry had a great time, and was full of that ol' model attitude!

Here they are together, having a wonderful day!

The girls joined Monica and me to watch the BYU football game yesterday, but they did not make it through the whole game.  They were happy playing the whole time, but at times it got rather loud.  At one point Winry started scooting off on her bear.  Not sure what game they were playing... but it looked entertaining.

I don't think anything else very interesting happened this past week.  Things are mellowing out a bit around here as we prepare for a baby in 10 days!!  We're trying to be careful and super make sure we don't get sick this close to the due date.  I am hoping to spend a little more time in the backyard with the kids this next week, or take Brooke on bike ride walks around the neighborhood.  Anyway, that's all I've got for this week!