You ate what?!

Peanut ate a lady bug. We were hiking up some steps in Harpers Ferry and I noticed he was chewing. I knelt down, smooshed his cheeks and had a look see for the foreign object. There it was. A poor little lady bug sprawled across the front of his teeth. I was too grossed out to sweep it out. So there I sat, watching him chew. Was it good?

I keep saying that each new stage of Peanut's life is my favorite. So without further hesitation this is my favorite. He's walking, talking and causing loads of mischief. What more could I ask for? It brings a smile to my face. We made banana bread together the other morning and though there were piles of ingredients beneath my feet when we were done, I was laughing and savoring the aroma of the baking bread, and enjoying the moment looking through the oven window with my pint sized helper. Oh and clean up is much more enjoyable when you have a memory to savor while doing it. 

You know what else bring a smile to my face? The chalkboard wall. Yes, we finally got one wall painted in the whole entire house--thanks to the help of my mother--and it is my favorite wall. I keep saying we did it for the kids, but we all know who enjoys it the most; your's truly.

9 Months

My goodness, time flies! And with it has flown the warm weather. As I headed off to bed two nights ago it occurred to me that the little guy might benefit from an extra blanket. The minute the blanket was settled on top of him, he lifted his head, rolled over twice towards the opposite side of the bed, buried the blanket underneath him, and resettled, all while fast asleep. So I tried again. The minute the second blanket was on he rolled the opposite way once, got up on his hands and knees, rubbed his face into the sheet, and resettled with both blankets somehow lodged underneath him. Desperately trying to stifle my laughter, I gave up and tried to tuck the tiniest loose parts around him into some kind of nest hoping in some way it might produce a little bit of warmth. What can you do?

On that note, Peanut has had another month birthday come and go. Here are the stats and a few funny stories:

Height: 30"--This has been an exceptional growth spurt that put him way above his growth line on the chart
Weight: 18 lbs 2 oz--I can't feed him enough to keep up with his height. He eats almost adult sized meals these days, plus 4 bottles a day, plus snacks and never gets any chubbier.

* New favorite hobby...opening and shutting doors and drawers. He slams his fingers at least once a day. I think enough slams will help him figure it out eventually. I have tried to use his hobby as an opportunity to teach opposites. He giggles while I say, "Open", and "Shut," as he does each one. He thinks it's especially funny as he does it faster and faster, and I say the words faster and faster.

* He is fascinated by small tight spaces. Especially the one between the toilet and the bath tub. He takes the cap off of the bolt holding the toilet down and sucks on it until I come dashing over and say, "Gross" or "Icky", and remove it from his hand. He just smiles. He knows exactly what all these words mean but seems to think they don't apply to him. He does the same thing with the plunger. I've started pinesoling both every time I wash the bathroom. I have also become an exceptionally adept blocker while rinsing poopy diapers in the toilet, so he doesn't climb up and try to stick his hands in the toilet. It's like a dance. My body moving around the toilet as he goes from one side to the open side, gently pushing him away with my foot, while my hands speedily rinse, remove the diaper to the sink, and flush.

* The clingy stage has begun. He wants to be carried around quite often, especially when he can't see what I'm doing on top of a counter. He climbs up my legs and whines for me to pick him up, and if I don't succumb, he head-butts my legs instead. He's tried this on the slider door as well. Alas his efforts are never fruitful there. ;)

* Freedom is my child's middle name. Any apparatus where we have to strap him in is guaranteed to produce screams. He is pacified by quickly snatching the keys while I buckle, then screams again when I take them away to drive the car. Oh what a vicious cycle. Maybe we need to work on sharing.

* Peanut has experienced his first real cold. His snot filled nose has run a marathon over most of my shirts and pants and all of our blankets and furniture.

*You will be rewarded with this one if you have read this far...yesterday I was rearranging his room again and had taken the fish bowl off of the dresser while I moved it. I forgot to put it back..dun dun dun.  As I'm putting things away I hear a splash, and see Peanut kneeling with hands gripping a tipped fish bowl as the water and fish spill over his head, and into his open, crying mouth, and onto the carpet. I  had to pick up a fish off of the floor rush to the sink and toss it in some tap water. Yes, I left the baby crying, on the floor. I rushed back to him next and tossed him in the tub also turning on the tap water. All are well. What a way to start the morning.

Now that I have written a small novel for this post I'll sign off with this: We are having a grand old time playing, laughing, growing and making a giant mess. It is wonderful to be a mother and it's wonderful to have a son.

8 Months

Our little peanut has grown up so much this month. Today I marveled at how heavy he is, and how much food he eats, and how incredibly strong this little tiny boy is! I picked him up by his hands just a bit ago (to move him away from the dishwasher that I needed to close) and in his rage at being taken away from all the shiny silverware, he held himself there in a chin hang. You know like this:

 I think we have a little rock climber on our hands. He is always looking for finger and footholds in order to climb the cabinetry. He does a pretty amazing job considering it's a completely smooth surface. Also this month, he has figured out how to crawl like normal, but he still slips back into his butterfly stroke on occasion. I love it.

I snapped this picture the other evening and was inspired to write a little poem to sum up this month in an oh so general way. I think he's heard this word a lot lately:

My dear Desmond,

Please stop chewing on electric cords.

Please stop putting rocks and dirt in your mouth.

Please stop falling off of one piece of furniture when there is a sharper/harder piece of furniture or floor near by for you to land on.

Please stop taking your bib off during a meal.

Please stop throwing all your food on the floor.

Please stop crawling into small spaces that you can't reverse out of, that I have to crawl into to get you.

Please stop putting your arms in the cleaning bucket...when it's full of suds.

Please stop pulling the toilet paper off of the roll.

Please stop grabbing the items off of the shelf or rack at the store.

Please stop taking Daddy's glasses off of his face.

Please stop throwing a tantrum whenever I try and keep you safe.

Please stop biting me just because you're tired.

BUT...

Please don't stop getting the giggles before bed.

Please don't stop giving your heartwarming smiles when you see Mommy.

Please don't stop being curious.

Please don't ever stop moving, little energizer bunny.

Please don't stop being so strong.

Please don't stop being so forgiving.

Please don't stop being such a good, adventurous eater.

Please don't stop being such a crowd pleaser.

Please don't stop entertaining us at church.

Please don't stop being such a good sleeper.

Please don't ever stop being you!

 

{ Month of 7's }

Are we talking about Rugby? Sadly not. One day Desmond may want to walk in the footsteps of his mother and join a rugby team, but for now we are talking about other things...

**Peanut is 7 months old, today!**

**He is currently growing 7 teeth. He has two that are just about all the way in and five little pearly whites all making their appearances out of his sore gums. I think four broke through all at the same time about 7 days ago. Ouch!**

**He has tried at least 7 new foods in the last month including, mashed potatoes, watermelon, pancakes, apricots, beef, avocado and sweet peppers.**

**We have added 7 or more cloth diapers to the ever growing stash. My conclusion, all in ones are far superior to prefolds.**

**Des sleeps from eight PM to 7AM every night...moving our record from the nine hour stretches of the last two months, to eleven hour stretches. What can I say, we're lucky...or maybe we're just really great parents...Ha ha, yeah right**

**This has been the hottest July on record for Maryland, with temperatures reaching over one-hundred and 7 degrees multiple times every week this past month, making it  feel like a sweltering one-hundred-and-fifteen degrees here with the humidity index included. This means we spend lots of time at the pool, the babe wears only onesies (if that), and I have been tempted to sleep in my swimming suit because one hot day just blends into another.**

**We put the last 7 pieces into our mickey puzzle 7 days ago and boy did we feel accomplished (thanks for the help Holly)**

**Holly was here for almost 7 days of adventure...including the air conditioner breaking, a visit to Harper's Ferry and a stroll through three local covered bridges**

**We found out that Rob's company may be moving to Reston, VA. If that's the case that move will bring the number of different cities I have lived in to a total of 7 (Spokane, WA / Provo, UT / Orlando, FL / Colorado Springs, CO / Frederick, MD / Reston, VA)**

Any 7's for you?

Stay tuned for a picture/video only post coming in a few days

{ Independence }

Happy Birthday to the U.S.A, and happy half-birthday to Peanut!

{ 5 Months }

Peanut is officially 5 months old! He is rapidly gaining weight (he's still small, don't get me wrong) and, as of a week ago, is up to 13lbs. 5oz,  meaning he's gained about a pound and a half in two weeks time. He's also up to 25inches. He's making up for all that time he was starving. Looks like I'm an insufficient producer. I find that very sad. It's sad to fail at something so critical to your baby's health and to not really have any way of fixing it. At least I did what I could. So now we get to start forking out the big bucks for formula supplements and we're starting more solid foods. We tried out stage one apples this week. Next up bananas! Spoon feeding is so time consuming. It's a lot of fun though. This was fun to do too:

OTHER FUN FACTS:
*Not one, but two teeth have broken through!

*He enjoys sucking on his toes whenever he can.

*He attended his first Itsy Bitsy Yoga session on Friday.
He made it a whole fifteen minutes before we had a melt down. He probably thought, "Mom this is ridiculous," and it was, but it was free and sounded fun. We said lots of silly chants while "helping the baby's digestion" in a variety of yoga-ish ways.

*Eating is an aerobic event for this little boy.
He wiggles his arms everywhere (it looks like he's swimming the crawl stroke with one arm while he's nursing or taking a bottle) and he's constantly kicking his feet. He's always trying his best to throw off the nursing cover when we're in public.

*He's reaching for everything.
Dinner plates, hanging toys, watermelons...one day after we got back from the grocery store I put him in the Bumbo to put the groceries away and left the watermelon on the floor next to him. It kept him occupied for at least fifteen or twenty minutes.

*He's talking so much.
He'll wake up and just sit there in his bed cooing and babbling to himself. He also loves to make this high pitched scream when he's happy. It makes me think of a bird...a very loud bird.


*He's becoming quite the excellent pooper with all this extra food.

This is what he did to me on the return trip as we're standing in airport security waiting for my shoes and the diaper bag to come through the scanner. I looked down when I felt something warm on my stomach and saw a fountain of yellow-brown mush coming out the sides of his diaper. Gross! Oh and the bathroom was on the other side of the tram so everyone coming through security got to see the mess.

*He is starting to move like an inch worm. He scoots from one side of his crib to the other, ending up like this, the opposite side.

{ I Love My Feet }

Do we have a poster boy for Gerber or what? That smile is like gold. I need to start marketing our munchkin. Why would he not flash a single one of those during family pictures? Oh right, he's a kid.

Ahh progress! We are getting so much done around here these days. Crafting, packing, gaining weight and just generally crossing stuff off the list.  Let's do a quick recap.

Peanut is rapidly gaining weight, now that we're feeding him more food. He gained 10 oz in one week to be exact. And that was a week ago that we had the check up. He's a jolly old 12lbs now. We'll see how he's tipping the scales June 1st at the second weigh in.

This success is due to his, now eager, eating of the extra bottles of formula that he's given on top of nursing. He also has now decided that he loves eating things from a spoon (or just eating the spoon itself). After that first failed attempt with the rice cereal I waited a week and then tried again, this time thickening the cereal. That did the trick! The side of the box said to water it down so much for the first feeding but he just kept spitting it out. Now with the thicker cereal he slurps it up and then smacks his lips while he swallows. I think my favorite part though is how he leans. He's still not able to sit up all the way by himself so we have to make sure to hold him somehow while he dives for the spoon. He'll dive so fast to get his mouth around it that he tips over to the side like so. I started letting him hold my pinky finger on the hand that's holding the cup and he holds on with an iron grip and stays upright. I secretly like it better this way. I love when he wants to hold my hand.

Short side story. I was with some women the other day at the Temple visitor's center and we were watching one of the videos. The other lady was holding Peanut while I was sitting next to them. He kept reaching out and holding my sleeve, even though he was quiet and content on the other ladies lap. It was like he wanted to reassure me that he still loved me best. Ha ha. What a charmer!

Next update: The Peanut has officially found his feet! He has finally figured out how to get them to his mouth is what I really mean. When I put him on the changing table I get his diaper off and the first thing he does, whether I've wiped him or not, is whip his feet up, grab them with his hands and start to giggle. He also loves to do this when I put him down in his crib. He lifts his legs high in the air and gives one of those little manipulative smiles saying, "I'm just so cute, look what I can do with my feet, are you really going to make me go to bed right now?"  The very nicest part of this is he is becoming much more self entertained ever since he found those little friends, with wiggly toes, at the bottom of his legs. Which means, I have been able to get this art piece (the one in the picture above) done. It has been cooking in my brain for some time now.

I have been trying to come up with crafts that are made from completely recycled items except for maybe paint and paper, and then whatever else I have lying around the house. So for this piece, I cut Rob's dead tennis balls in half and made a caterpillar "D", then took some broken dowels I found and made them into little twigs and then cut out leaves from green paper and folded them a little to make them 3-D. I made some homemade canvases out of paper mache and pizza/Omaha Steak boxes and wa la. Here is the finished product. I am so happy with it. The green and blue together are my favorite. I hope Des likes them because those colors are all over everything in his room.

So there's a quick snippet of life on the east coast for now. I'll make sure and post some videos the next go around.

{ 4 Months...Revised }

Our little guy is 4 months old! For the first time in his long life, I got pictures on the exact month date. Not that this is of any importance but I thought I would share anyways. At his scheduled check up these were the stats:

Length: 25inches
Weight: 11 lbs. 6 oz.
Status: Healthy, Happy and Small

So somehow the post we already posted about this seemed to go missing so here is the repost with a few updates...Our handsome little baby was officially underweight this check up. He moved from the fifth percentile (yes 5%) to the third (yes 3%) percentile for weight. It's so funny that he is so tiny since he was in no way premature. I think the premies out weigh him now. He is however, growing taller at an exceptionally rapid fiftieth percentile rate. The nurse asked me which NBA team we were hoping he would play for. Her vote was the Miami Heat. As Rob and I would love to retire to Florida that didn't sound like a bad idea.  Anyways, as for the weight problem, we were told to start supplementing a few more ounces of formula along with his regular feedings.  The first day he refused to take a bottle, which was extremely annoying as he has never ever had that problem before. He's taken countless bottles since the blessed day he entered this world. The next day he decided that a bottle was OK again and we haven't had a problem since. Temperamental! The doctor also said we could start him on solids. Here are the fruits of that effort...

More food on the face and hands then in his tummy.  I deduced from this experience that he probably isn't quite ready yet. He sure did like sucking on and grabbing the spoon though. Rob thinks he would just rather have steak and mashed potatoes and none of this rice cereal junk. We shall see. We have a weight check tomorrow so hopefully he's made some progress tipping the scales in the right direction.

And while we're talking about food...Rob made the most delicious pie for my Mother's Day dinner. You can find the recipe here. It's all from scratch. Rob has come exponentially far in the cooking department. This pie was heavenly along with all of the rest of the dinner...and he looks darn good in an apron.

Babymoon

ba.by.moon

-noun

1. Pre-baby vacation for expecting parents

You guessed it...I'M PREGNANT!  January 3rd, 2011 is the scientifically proclaimed "big day". Prayers for a December 31st (or earlier) arrival will be much appreciated for tax purposes. It will be the first grand-child on both sides and I forsee a bit of spoiling in Peanut's future. 

As for the babymoon, the proud parents-to-be decided to take a relaxing cruise to Mexico before we remove a solid night's sleep and extra spending money from our list of expectations for the future.