Where does the time go?

Holy buckets! I can't believe it has been over a week since either of us has posted. I won't use the, "we're too busy," excuse, but it's hard not to because it's the truth. Anyway...

Tate is continuing to grow, though not as quick as recently. Our public health nurse came last Tuesday, which I believe was a span of eight days. In any case, he was up to 7 lbs, 8.5 ozs, a nice increase. Now that it has been almost another week, it's probably safe to assume that our little brute is 7 - 13 or so. At that rate he'll be over 8 lbs by the weekend, a two pound gain since he was born. All in all he's doing well, so well in fact, that Ave even had her first opportunity to feed him. I think it was the highlight of her life so far!

He also had his first evalutation with EIS (Early Intervention Services) last week. He was a superstar! Everything looked great, including his muscle strength/tone. I believe that Liz is going to try and blog about that appointment more tomorrow because she was there and can do a better job than I can. Overall though, things are looking great!

And speaking of great, we wanted to reiterate how blessed we are in our lives! It's funny, but two months ago we knew next to nothing about our second kid, and now he's already a month old! It has been an interesting, busy, exciting month! Liz and I were talking the other day, probably after his eval, when it hit us - Tate has Down syndrome! Now this wasn't an, "Ohmygoshwhatarewegoingtodo?" moment. Instead, it was, "Oh yeah, he has Down syndrome - I forgot," moment. We've already accepted it and moved on to doing the best job that we can as parents, that we just don't even realize it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we think of him as our son, a blessing, just like our daughter Avery. I figured we would get to that point, because why should it be any different with him than her, but it still surprised us. We are just enjoying him, and loving the fact that we can already see how much he has grown since he was born!

Enough of that though. I know everyone that reads wants to know what we do in our spare time. Well, we don't have any spare time, end of story. No, that's not true, we do have spare time. I can tell you that I spent all my extra time watching the state hockey tournament last week. That is always one of my favorite times of year, because I can watch hockey four days in a row from lunch until bedtime (yep, I even had it on at school for my students to watch). Avery loves watching too, so it's fun for me!

Liz, while she loves hockey almost as much as me, thought last weekend would be a good time to perfect her chocolate chip cookie recipe. After last weekend, I can safely say that Otis Spunkmeyer, Grandma, and Chips Ahoy! do not have to worry about any new competition, at least not from our house. If you want proof, just check out the cookies. I don't remember if this is a picture from Friday's batch, or Saturday's batch, but you really can't tell the difference. In fairness to Liz, I do think it was a bad recipe from Nestle'. I wasn't sure after Friday's batch, because I think that with Avery's help, Liz might have been off on some of her amounts in the recipe. But I supervised Saturday's batch (by supervise I mean, watched hockey and checked on commercial breaks) and I know she followed it well. Even though they didn't turn out when baked, the dough was pretty tasty and I got to eat a lot of that. I don't know what the plan is for this coming weekend, but I hope it doesn't involve any baking!

(This was Avery and me after the cookies didn't turn out! We wanted cookies!!!)