Highland Park and 1 Month Highlights

One of my favorite things about Rochester is all the parks.  I love how green it is and how many trees there are. It is just beautiful.  We decided to go explore one of the parks close to our house last Saturday.  Now these are not your Utah-type parks where you can see the whole park from where you park your car and it consists of a pavillion, playground and bathrooms if you're lucky.  No... they are HUGE! I'm talking several blocks worth in each direction. 

Highland Park has a botanical garden (which we were going to go to but didn't realize you had to have cash to get in, boo!), a rock garden (which is lame-o, literally just a cluster of rocks in a flower bed, ha ha), an ampitheatre, a castle, etc...  It is super pretty!

 

The world from Kaden's view :)

Even though he's crying I just love the expression on his face.  He's such an animated baby with his face and his body motions.

There is a HUGE cemetary here called the Mt. Hope Cemetary where Fredrick Douglass and other famous people were buried.  It spans probably 8-9 city blocks in every direction.  This is one of the cool buildings just inside the cemetary and across the street from Highland Park.

 

The castle! It is a building that belongs to the Garden Club of Rochester or something like that but I thought it was such a cool building.

 

 Hello world!

 

And now drumroll for Kaden's....ONE MONTH HIGHLIGHTS...

This sweet boy loves his pacifier.  I thought about removing it for this picture but decided against it because he really likes it and it is the best $4 we've spent in a long time.  This kid would eat all day if I'd let him, so the pacifier is a nice happy medium so he can suck all he wants when it is not time to eat.  This poor boy has also developed a bit of colic in the last week or so, so the pacifier and his swing are the saving grace for both us and Kaden so he's not so miserable.

This is the newest addition to the Little Houdini installment. I tell you, this kid never ceases to amaze us that he can somehow find a way out of everything he wears... This is how Curtis found him in his crib the other morning. :)

 

 My favorite little wiggleworm! This picture captures so perfectly our sweet little boy with all his wiggles and personality.  He is such a happy, content baby.  He is starting to get more chub on his cheeks and his tummy and growing a lovely double chin by the day so I thought I'd put this on so you can admire his little Buddha belly.

 

 Bath time is a new thing since he just barely got old enough to start bathing in the baby tub. His poor skin is still too sensitive to use the yummy smell-good baby bath, but we'll get there.  He likes his bath for the most part and is the most content baby when he's all done and snuggled in his towel.

 Yet another view of this little cutie and his favorite item :)  We love this little boy and are so glad he's been a part of our family for the last month.  We've enjoyed every day of having him here.

Our Humble Abode and our Little Man

A lot of you have asked about our house and the area where we live so I thought I'd give you a little picture tour of the place. Our townhouse is about 5 miles from the University of Rochester, so Curtis bikes to and from school everyday.  Here is the outside of our townhouse.  It is in a complex of about 200 townhomes and they are all different colors and sizes.  I quite like our brick color.

 

This is our livingroom/kitchen when you walk in.  To the left the big cabinets are our "pantry" since apparently pantries are not a big thing back East. (Thank you Lowes...)  We like our house but there are some definite quirks.  Besides no pantry, there are no overhead lights in any of the rooms.  You have to plug lamps into outlets and that is what the light switch turns on.  It is still taking us some time to get used to the idea of it all.

 

 This little cubicle here is the kitchen.  Don't blink, you'll miss it. Don't worry, we do have a fridge you just can't see it in the picture.

This is one of my favorite things about our place- our backyard view! It is beautiful.  It is like having the forest 5 feet from our porch. So pretty.  (The only downside is constant leaves to sweep but I'll take it.)

 Now pretend we are walking up the stairs...This is our bedroom to the left of the staircase.  Closets are to the right.

 Here is the one and only bathroom.  I know you're all jealous of our 80's sparkly white and gold-flecked counter top.  We got lucky and have the same lovely design in the kitchen too.  Pro: there's only one bathroom to clean. Con: There's only one bathroom.  It's been a bit of a change to go from having three to only one but it works.  Quirk: In the middle of the tub about 4 feet up there is a towel rack.  Yes, in the shower.  Anyone have any ideas what that might be used for? (Besides for poor Curtis to hit his elbow on daily during his shower... so far that is the only use we've had for it.)

 

 Still upstairs to the right of the bathroom is Kaden's room.  This is a happy place where I currently spend about 8 hours a day with the boss.  We love our reclining chair and Kaden's swing (far right of the dresser) has been our saving grace because that boy doesn't like to sleep in his crib as much as we thought he would.  The big black thing to the left of the chair is our six foot bookcase which, as a teacher, I am proud to say is well stocked with years of carefully collected children's books that I intend on reading to Kaden.

 Now if we go back downstairs we'll go to the basement.  This is our office/workout room/craft room.  It is really nice to have a place for all of these things since in our other house these things took up two separate rooms and now have merged into one. 

  If you walk through the room of many uses you'll get to our storage room/garage/laundry room.  Yet another great blessing to have this since we lost our garage in our move and we have a lot more stuff than we realized even after downsizing, storing things with family and our moving sale.

 Well, there you have it! The house tour.  Hopefully you enjoyed getting to see it.  Now because most of you probably care more about seeing something cute than where we live, here are some pictures of Kaden.  I was thinking that it is kind of surreal that today is my actual "due date." Isn't that weird? Anyway, I was thinking how glad I am that we didn't have to wait an extra month to meet this little cutie.  Even though these pictures are now almost a month old I figured none of you had seen them yet so they are worthy of sharing.  This is Kaden's first faux-hawk :)  He's already grown so much.  This sleeper and the one in the next two pictures were one of three items (preemie sized) that fit him the first two weeks he was here.  Now he's outgrown them.   Don't get any ideas though- most of his "newborn" sized clothes are still too big on him.  There's a few that fit but not many.  At his last pediatrician's visit at two weeks he was a whopping 6 lbs. 3 oz. and 19 3/4" long so he's grown almost 2 inches taller in just a few weeks.  He was also 10th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height.  Tall and skinny.

 This picture makes me laugh! He's so pint sized in his car seat.  This is the day we brought him home from the hospital on August 19, 2012.  When we left he weighed 5 lbs. 5 oz and by the next day at his 5 day pediatrcian visit he was already up to 5 lbs. 9 oz.  This kid has a teenage boy's appetite! Yikes...

 

 Our happy family of three :)