Find out if Chase likes Santa Clause.....

The answer is No!

Everything was going fine as we walked through the Macy's little elf land.  Chase was enjoying the singing trees, the animals, and the toy making exhibit.  We got into line for Santa and he noticed some trains, which he thought were pretty cool.  He tried to make a break for it at this point, but we scooped him back up and told him it was time to see Santa.  At Macy's they put Santa behind a curtain so you can't see what you are walking into.  You also don't see people exit, so I could see how this may be scary for a kid. 

The nice little helper pulls the curtain back, we turn the corner, and Chase wanted nothing to do with this nice man in a red suit with the white beard.  He started screaming like we had taken a cookie out of his hand after he had already taken a bite.  Of course our camera was on timer mode for some reason, so I only got this one good shot.  Pretty sure Santa will be haunting Chase's dreams for the next few nights.  When I hear that scream at 3 AM, I'll know that Chase is reliving one of the most traumatic experiences of his life.

From a parent's standpoint, we found this hilarious.  These are the moments you live for when you have to wake up at 5 AM each morning because your kid won't sleep in.  Does this make us evil, nahhhh, just normal parents I think.  We can't wait to do it again next year!

I have failed...

Wow, it's been about 6 months since the last time I posted, not much happens in 6 months right.  Never mind that it is a third of Chase's life right now.  Well he's almost 20 months old and getting more funny and more aggravating depending on the time of the day.  I'll try to hit some of the highlights since the trip to the bahamas.

He finally did get a haircut, first attempt was a trim by mom, but that didn't turn out too well.  Then we just went with the buzz look, and it has been the same ever since.  He has this weird things at the nape of his neck though where the hair just kind of sweeps to the side, makes it tough to cut.  May turn into a good mullet or rat tail someday.  Maybe for next year's christmas card.

You saw Laura's post about going overseas for a month, well you can figure out who was watching Chase the whole time.  His grandparents.  He had a good time hanging out, seeing mom on the computer screen and talking to dad on the phone.  For awhile he would refer to the computer as mama and the phone as dada.  Awesome.  When he finally got to see Mom at the airport he acted pretty shy, but eventually accepted her back into the family.  Which is a good thing, because things wouldn't go quite as smoothly without her.

For Halloween Chase was a baseball player.  This involved Laura attempting to make him some pants. After about three tries she finally figured out that Chase has some chubby legs and got them to fit.... barely.  So he had his bat, his Twins jersey, and some awesome eye paint.  So he looked good, unfortunately the actual trick or treating was a bit of a challenge.  He just wanted to pull his wagon around, so we stopped at no houses, it was cold out, so I eventually just grabbed him, wailing, and took him home.  We have some good pictures of him crying on the ground. 

At some point we took family pictures, which I was really excited about.  Check out the ones with me in my hat, they are the best. I wanted to wear my hat that made me look like a robber, but that didn't work out.  Most of the pictures are of Chase, and they turned out really well.  I'm pretty sure Laura has put them on facebook. 

Chase knows a ton of words now and is starting to repeat everything we say.  Our issue word at the moment is "truck".  The tr comes out as an f if you know what I mean.  Now we think he knows what he is doing too.  He can say tree and train just fine, so he doesn't have an excuse.  Pretty funny though, we just have to make sure we don't take trucks to church. 

Our ipad also gets the most use by Chase.  Whether it is Dr. Seuss books, blues clues movies, or flashcards, he's figured out how to navigate it pretty well.  Pretty funny to watch an 18 month old start swiping at the screen to get what he wants.  I also taught him how fun movie time can be, for both him, and for dad since it serves as a good distraction.  So he's seen cars, thomas the train, an American Rabbit (that one was a movie I remembered as a kid, I remember it being a much better movie)  So if you hear him saying "moobie, moobie", that is what he wants. 

Otherwise we hear a lot of "no's", and finally starting to get a headshake for a yes.  He can give us "knucks" which is pounding fists, although when we tell him to blow it up he tries to blow on your hand.  He insists on eating full size food, so he must have the full slice of pizza or a full cheeseburger. 

All in all, getting more and more entertaining.  I'll give an update after Christmas, I know he already got too much from us, and I'm sure he'll get plenty from the grandparents.  I promise it won't be six months before the next visit.  Now back to my holiday tradition.  The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  Time for the big fight at the end of movie one. 

Iowa, Minnesota, Malaysia。。。

I've hijacked matt's blog.  Don't have much time, but thought i'd at least give a brief update of my trip thus far.  I have to start by saying how much I already miss my boys.  It was hard to leave them, but i know chase is having a blast in algona with both sets of grandparents and matt is enjoying his golf, video games & twins games.

I landed in Korea Wed afternoon after 15 hours on the plane...and maybe only 3 hrs of sleep the previous 2 nights.  It was so great to see steph - who i haven't seen in over a year!!  We headed back to her apartment and then  out to her favorite thai restaurant for dinner.  That night we also had to pack for our 18 day backpacking adventure.  If you haven't guessed already, it took us 3 rounds of packing and re-packing to get everything to fit into our backpacks.  I thought I was bad with overpacking, but I'm nothing compared to steph!

Thursday morning we headed to the airport, but soon ran into some debris from the previous nights typhoonesque weather.  Trees uprooted all over, power lines down, it was pretty impressive.  Looked like a tornado had hit a 2 block stretch.  Steph took about 500 pictures, so i'll try to get those up sometime. 

We're now in Malaysia for the next 9 days.  Today and tomorrow we'll be in the capital city of Kuala Lampur.  Today, we got here just in time to get some massages, but at a really sketchy place...not sure i'll go back there.  It was really dark, dingy & i seriously feared for my safety just a little bit.  The old lady who was doing my massage kept saying that steph and i needed to be careful in malaysia(2 girls traveling alone is apparently just asking for trouble).  don't worry matt - we can  take care of ourselves!!  Tomorrow, we're going to do some shopping and sightseeing.  Then it's off to Cameron Highlands for the next leg of our trip, which is one of malaysia's many national parks.  I'm hoping to see some elephants & monkeys!!!

I think that's it for now.  Off to bed for me.

to my boys...I miss you tons!!!

Laura

Chase in the Bahamas

Only 14 months old and Chase has already been outside of the United States.  Pretty sure it took me 18 years to do that.  The best part about taking him to the Bahamas was that he got to get a passport picture which looks awesome.  Even better is when they really inspect that passport in customs, like he's going to smuggle something through in his big gut. 

Overall he did pretty well on the plane, pretty much slept on all four flights, which was great accept when you had to hold a 30 pound kid on your lap like dead weight.  Also in case you every go on a plane with a baby I guess you need a ticket even without a seat.  We almost left him in the bahamas because of this very reason. 

Pictures are up on Picasa from the trip, but Chase enjoyed the trip overall.  He got his first experience with the ocean and he loved to just walk in and out of the swimming pool.  Being the great parents we are we forgot to bring any toys with us on the trip, which forced us to buy a $15 dollar ball that probably cost 25 cents to make in order to keep him occupied.  As for the adults there was a lot of snorkeling (with sharks!) (no really, I got in with sharks 15 feet below).  Of course I waited until everyone else was in the water and then went in for like a minute.  We also did a lot of water slides and Laura tanned for about 5 hours a day.  So a great vacation overall. 

Other than that the kid has had a pretty good summer.  A lot of time at the zoo, running around outside, trying to teach him to hit a baseball and golfball (which we are off to a pretty good start on), and playing at the water park.  He can know climb stairs quicker than we can figure out where he is at, still falls at least 5 times a day, and is starting to get more words.

 He also has discovered the bobblehead collection.  This started with first staring at them in fright and then figuring out that his Dad has to be the coolest person on the earth with all of these bobbleheads.  Know he will spend 10 minutes just staring, pointing, and saying bah-bah.  He also had his first camping and boating experience.  Infant life jackets seem a little uncomfortable, but if he gets tossed in the water he should survive.  He was sleeping when he got on the boat, so I can just imagine what he is thinking when we force him awake and he's got the wind blowing through his long locks.

Speaking of that, the kid needs a haircut.  Laura refuses to do it, but I think she finally realized the necessity when she got asked "how old is she" at the store the other day.  So not sure how we will pull this off, but I told her if it is not done in a month, I'm taking care of it.  Buzz cut man. 

Finally, I think I figured out that when you are a baby, Dad's probably really don't know how to fix anything, but they pick it up as they go.  I tonight figured out how to wire a telephone line by myself.  One of two times I have completed a man task.  I figure I'll continue to pick up on this, although my wife may disagree. 

Here's a link to the pictures again. http://picasaweb.google.com/mbecker0410

Later

Rocky, Roads, and Sprinklers

It's your lucky day, bonus coverage of the exciting adventures of little Chasers.  This is what happens when I get a day off of work and run out of things to do.  Definitely an exciting weekend that began with some blood.  For the most part Chase has the walking thing down, but every once in a while he likes to throw in a good faceplant to remind himself he has a little learning to do.  This weekend there were two pretty good ones.  The first happened while he was carrying a basketball around the yard, tripped, and bit his lip.  Nothing like a kid wailing with blood all over his teeth in front of the neighbors.  About a minute later he was fine though and shouting "ba, ba" as he went to pick it up again.  Round two came at a friends house.  Chase was taking his 5th lap around the driveway (more on this later) when all of a sudden he fell forward on his hands, couldn't stop his mass from driving his face right into the driveway.  It was one of those slow motion moments where I just stood there and watched the nose and lip smoosh into the driveway and what "oh crap".  He immediately started wailing and had blood dripping from his nose and a cut lip and front of the nose to go with it.  So while the outside maybe fun, we're finding it a little more dangerous than around the house. 

Second, once again we buy an awesome little pool, take Chase to parks and all he does is find the road and start walking towards it.  We set him in the middle of the yard and he immediately bee lines to the driveway and wants to walk over to the neighbors.  My wife would say that is because they all have dogs and we do not, but it means no snoozing while watching him in the front yard.  Then today we drove about 30 minutes to find a park.  We were trying to find a lake, since this is the land of 10,000 lakes, but all the lakes around us have no parks attached.  So we finally find this nice park, have lunch, put Chase into the sand next to the playground and he immediately starts marching off down the sidewalk, does a few laps around the restrooms, and then walks out into the parking lot towards the road finding discarded cigarettes and water bottles that he wants to play with.  Awesome.  You've got to love the walking now though because he very rarely falls and he swings his arms like he's out for a nice little stroll.  Maybe he understands when we talk about his big belly and he's just trying to work it off.  He already takes part in Laura's workout videos every morning.  He has the arm waves and jumping jacks down. 

Finally, Chase isn't quite sure what to make of sprinklers yet.  He first experienced them this weekend and he would basically walk into the stream of the sprinkler, stop in shock, and let the water continue to just pelt him in the face.  I thought this was pretty funny, so we tried to make him continue to do it.  Doesn't seem to be afraid of them though and seemed to like getting wet, so that bodes well for our vacation coming up.  Although he did hate the sand today at the park, he didn't like that it stuck to his hands, and he just tried to wipe everything off onto his belly.  He definitely loves the outside though, at least 10 times a day he walks to the door and starts waving his hands like he's saying goodbye to let us know he wants to go out.  It's going to be rough once winter is here again, which in Minnesota is like 2 months away. 

We've got a dancing, cooking, baseball lovin son

Our son continues to dance to anything whether it is his favorite song "Boom Boom Pow", my awesome singing, or a Pep Boys commercial.  If he hears any music at all the dancing begins.  He's added a new move to his repertoire which includes waving his arms back and forth in front of him while he nods and bobs his butt and head. 

This kid also loves the kitchen, if he hears the fridge or pantry door open he will make a beeline waddle towards the kitchen and see what he can find.  We keep hearing he is going to slim down when he starts walking, but the way this kid eats we may have a lineman on our hands.  Although no sweets, this kid loves beans, peas, strawberries, bananas, and almost any fruit or vedgie you give him.  I'm seeing a future as a dancing chef.

On the sports side he knows what baseball is.  Everytime I flip at the twins he points at the TV and shouts "ba ba"  which is his word for ball since he doesn't know how to make the "ll" sound.  So we've got that going for us.  I still think he's a little spoiled since he has seen more games in his lifetime than I saw in my first 20 years of existence.  I'll make sure to remind him of that later in life.

He also loves any other type of ball whether it is a basketball, wiffle ball, golf ball, baseball, etc...  He also likes to stand at the top of the stairs and chuck a ball down to watch it fall.  I've tried to teach him how to hit off a tee.  The box said 1 and half +, but I was hoping he was a little advanced for an age.  Since he can't hold the bat upright, I'm thinking that may not be the case.  Maybe we will try golf next. 

We found out he was allergic to penicillan after giving it to him for about 7 days.  He started getting a rash and my reaction was, oh it will just go away.  2 days later and with bumps all over his body, we finally figured it out.  Fortunately the ear infection was cured, but know something we will need to remember going forward. 

Other than that he is starting to develop an attitude.  When he's done he throws whatever is left on his tray on the floor.  If you take something from him he throws a tantrum.  He's learned how to throw his head towards the ground in disgust.  All similar to things his mother does, so I see where he gets it.  So it should be interesting once he can actually start to talk.  I'm assuming we will have a hard time not laughing at him when he tries to be tough. 

That's it for now, he's definitely walking and going up stairs.  Words right now seem to just be ma-ma, da-da, and ba for ball.  He's learned to wave goodbye and sign language for more, all done, and milk.  So overall the little guy seems on track.  I'll be back in a month.

Chase is 1!

Well we just got done celebrating Chase's first birthday.  Amazing to think it has already been a year since the drive to the hospital.  Chase had a pretty good birthday overall with his grandparents and aunt and uncle.  He got a lot of toys that he immediately ignored so that he could focus on playing with his swiffer, wrapping paper cardboard centers, and pop bottles.  Pretty sure Grandpa had more fun with building things out of the blocks then Chase did. 

Chase enjoyed his first taste of cake and ice cream.  He pretty much just picked at it gently to ensure he got enough of it to eat.  He probably ate about a fifth of the cake before we realized we should probably take it away before he gave himself a stomachache.  We only let him eat in a diaper and a bib to make sure the mess wasn't too big of a deal.  Chase's haul included a wagon, some blocks, some books, a crane, and some other stuff.  We took him around in the wagon a little bit throughout the house because unfortunately it is 55 and raining all weekend.  So back and forth through the kitchen was all he got.  Otherwise he slept for around 5 hours throughout the day, so he slept most of his 1st b-day away.

Otherwise as far as Chase progress goes he is walking around on his own now.  Loves the microwave and trying to get into the bathroom and the pantry if possible.  We have had to clear everything out of the cupboards.  He also started climbing the stairs in the past week, the only problem is he doesn't know how to get back down.  He's starting to mimic us with yells and noises.  He also carries a picture of me around since he doesn't see me Sunday night through Wednesday with my class schedule.  He hates shoes and would rather eat them.  He pretty much eats anything, but now he will spit it back out after chewing it for awhile if it doesn't taste good.  He also continues to chuck his milk or water on the floor, we have stopped picking it back up.  He can go thirsty. 

Chase also got to see the first game at Target Field, which he enjoyed for the most part.  He loved trying to touch the people in front of him and he has learned to clap along with everybody else when the Twins score some runs.  He's also been to the zoo twice in the past week, and liked staring at the giraffes as they had some lunch.  He's also been going to story hour which Laura says is a little over the top.  He pretty much just stares at the librarian, which is more than I can say when we read him a story.  He lasts about 4 pages and then crawls over to play with the doorstop. 

I'm also pretty sure I'm going to have a dancer for a son.  Which means he won't take after me.  Anytime you throw some Black Eyed Peas on he will start shaking his rump.  Actually pretty much anytime you play music whether it is chopstics, church music, random keys on the piano he will shake his rump.  So we'll see, hopefully he can dance better than I can. 

That's all for now, Chase is having a little lunch and then time to watch the Twins. 

We're moving now

I realized it's been quite awhile since the last post and we no longer have the issue of Chase getting around the house. Quite a few moments of him being one place one second and then out of sight the next. He's got the crawling portion down now and his new favorite activity is to walk along the furniture and walls. If he has something to hold onto, he can make it anywhere he wants. Although this also usually involves carrying something in one hand, whether that be a TV remote, an empty cup, or a yardstick which is his new favorite item. Just this weekend he learned the process of standing up on his own with nothing to hold onto. He stands up, gets this huge "look at me" grin on his face and then dives forward on to my stomach. So walking is not far away.

Laura and I took a vacation last weekend in Minneapolis (otherwise referred to as a staycation, although I hear that word is considered lame now) and sent Chase packing with his grandparents. The non-highlight of the vacation was ice skating. It was our first time trying it, and I have to say I don't get it. It's basically like running laps on ice. Which means you can't balance and it is uncomfortable. Their may be video of me falling, followed by Laura not holding the camera straight because she's laughing to hard. I landed a couple of triple axels, and I consider my ice skating career to be over. We also got to see a movie theatre again and restaurants which are a rarity with Chase around. So it was fun.

While my parents had Chase they taught him the "so big" game. We decided to change that once we got him back and instead taught him to raise his hands when we say touchdown. It was also funny when he started crying as soon as he saw Laura after the 4 days and then immediately wanted to come to me. I can't say she liked it, but he wasn't too happy with her. We've also started the morning cry session now as I leave the house. Also makes Laura pretty happy. I tell her it is because I'm the fun one, he just knows her as the person who provides food.

He'll pretty much eat anything now, although he's starting to say no to some of the vegetables. I don't know where he gets that from. Oatmeal has also been stopped, A. because he hated it and B. because not even Laura could imagine eating it so why force him too. He'd still rather eat books than read them. We often find him in his crib just sitting up and staring off now when he's supposed to be napping. We're going to have to get something to tie him down.

Well that's about it for now, Chase is getting ready for his first game at Target field in less than a month and then his big birthday in around 7 to 8 weeks. A one year old in the house, crazy. I'm trying to hold off on another one, he's enough work. :)

Still not moving

Chase has just passed the 9 month mark and from what I hear, lucky for us he is not moving yet. Still above 90% in height and weight, Laura's building some pipes with this kid. Everything is on track with Chase, loves to stand, can't figure out how to crawl. Just gets on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth. Our hypothesis is he's just got a little too much weight to move around very well. Definetely finding him in his crib trying to stand. I'm just imagining all of the babies that launch themselves out of their crib. He's getting close.

We've also started the biting phase. Laura tries to tell him no, but he just looks up and smiles at her. I think we have a troublemaker on our hands.

Chase's first Christmas came and went. Obviously didn't quite understand what was going on. Favorite presents included wrapping paper and an empty pop bottle I gave him. Not a bad Christmas on the family budget. I'm sure we can keep this up for a couple of years. For some reason Laura wasn't happy that our Christmas family picture included me in a grinch T-shirt. I'm just trying to play my part during the season.

Also nice to see all the gifts he got from his relatives. We played the game of setting all of his presents out in front of him to see which one he picked. Mike was the big winner with his fake remote. Although Chase still preferrs the same thing. Chase was a little dissapointed he didn't get a mupppets or Fraggle Rock DVD set, but maybe next year.

Chase continues to bring no better luck from a Minnesota Sports standpoint. That Vikings game was terrible, and I'm glad to add another classic minnesota sport moment to my memory. Bring on Target Field, chase is getting excited for his first outdoor baseball. Only 75 days away