On the road again

On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again
On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again,
And I can't wait to get on the road again.

Baby proofing

I came across an article in one of the parenting magazines about baby proofing your house. They say it's a good idea to start baby proofing around six months. I have almost an eleven month old baby and haven't even started. Oops. We're talking not even an electrical outlet cover in place. I figure what's the hurry? My child will sit where ever he is placed and will contently play with the toys around him with no interest in moving around. I figure I'm several months away from having to even think about baby proofing.

One thing we did do was finally lower the crib down to the lowest setting. I did that yesterday. It cracks me up, the crib has been on the highest setting (around 12 inches below the top of the crib) ever since he came home from the hospital. I figure he'll start pulling up one of these days and it would be awful to hear a THUD and find out he pulled up in his crib and fell out. So down it went. Now the poor kid looks like he's laying at the bottom of an elevator shaft....he's so far down there. Oh well, at least I don't have to think about baby proofing right now, if he ever starts crawling that will be another story.

The glories of not breastfeeding!

It's been about two weeks since I stopped breastfeeding and I have to admit it is wonderful to be done! When we go places I don't have to wonder where I'm going to feed him, I don't have to hope he won't get distracted, there is no guessing how much he's getting to eat, it's great. The drying up process was uncomfortable but it only took about a week and a half and it was done. I am so happy I was able to go until 10 months because formula is dang expensive! I swear I'm telling Sean to pick some up every six days, one of those big cans only lasts that long. Only a month and a half left of buying formula. Yea!

While I was pregnant I started craving alcohol. Mind you I'm not a big drinker, maybe I'd have some wine once every couple months. But being pregnant I would just drool when Samuel Adams commercial came on the television. Don't ask me why. Now I knew I was going to breastfeed and I wasn't going to drink any alcohol during that. So last week since I was done with everything I went and bought a bottle of wine. The last time I drank anything was fall of 2006. I poured myself two inches of wine in a glass and downed it. Twenty minutes later I was giggling hysterically and my eyes wouldn't focus. Two inches! Alcohol never effected me that way before. It was hilarious.

Today is my Mom's birthday. Happy Birthday Mom! We are going tonight to a Chinese buffet that has all you can eat snow crab, so we are going to go feed our snouts. Yum yum!

The yogurt eater

He does like his yogurt. Blueberry, apple, banana and plain....it's all good.


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On a separate note, our family friend Phil is going in for open heart surgery today....please keep him and his family in your prayers.

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A Kansas City Wedding

We had a wonderful weekend in Kansas City! My sister got married Sunday morning out at Powell Gardens. The gardens were beautiful, all sorts of spectacular flowers were in bloom. It was a wonderful backdrop for a memorable wedding. It was great to see family! I got to visit with my aunts and uncles that traveled in from California, many whom I've not seen in at least six years. It's sad that the only time we see family is for weddings and funerals. But that's the way it is. Wesley did wonderfully through everything. He's turned into a little socialite. He just soaks up the attention, and boy did he get plenty of it! The hook on highchair was the best $30 I've spent on this kid. We just toted it around to the rehearsal dinner and reception site and he spent the entire time in it. All in all it was a great weekend. It was super nice getting away from the house for a couple of days. Wesley really enjoyed himself in the hotel room. He thought sitting in the middle of the king sized bed surrounded by toys was ultra cool. You could tell he got over stimulated because the first night he woke up at 2:30 am and was wide awake until 4:30. He played, rolled and squealed in delight between us on the bed for two hours. That was fun. Monday morning we met up with family at Union Station where we shopped a little and ate some good Kansas City BBQ. I have put up a slide show of the weekend, I don't have any pictures of the wedding ceremony since I was a bridesmaid but everything else I have photos of. Enjoy!

Cute mug

I had to post this cutie pie picture. It seems all his happy smiley pictures are him in his swing. Must be a phase.

Road trip time

We are getting ready to leave tomorrow for Kansas City and my sisters wedding. We are only going to be up there for two nights yet I have a huge list of crap that needs to go. You see baby stuff is like my toiletries....it doesn't matter if I'm gone one night or ten nights I still need make up, shampoo, tooth paste and so on. Baby stuff is the same way. I'm kind of worried about how he's going to sleep in the hotel. I called the hotel to see if they had a portable crib and it turns out they have pack and plays available, so we reserved one of those. That's one less thing we have to bring. Although the kid hates sleeping in those things. In fact he's never slept in one. I figure he'll end up sleeping on the spare bed in the room, I just hope he doesn't roll off.

I'm wondering how the wedding ceremony is going to go with Wesley's new found voice. The kid likes to scream, not in an unhappy way, no he just likes to hear himself. So I went to the dollar store and bought him a pile of worthless toys that will be reserved until the wedding with the hopes that they will distract him until the nuptials are completed. I'll be up front as a bridesmaid so Sean is in charge of keeping him quiet. May the force be with you Sean. I'm sure he'll be fine, he's a good kid. I will post pictures when we get back.
I also find it funny we are going to take his red push buggy up there instead of a stroller. We have room for one of them and he sure prefers "driving" everywhere instead of sitting in a stroller. Such a big boy.

Too cute

There isn't anything much cuter than little fat feet shoved into tiny little shoes.....


....no, actually there is....the owner of the fat little feet.

Ten month appointment

I took Wesley in yesterday for his 10 month well baby visit. All went well. Little dude weighs 21 pounds 13 ounces which puts him in the 65% for weight. He is 29.5 inches tall which is the 60% for height. His head is 47.5 cm which went down to 85%. Doc says he looks good, keep doing what I'm doing. He did say I need to up his formula intake from 20 ounces to 24 ounces. He will barely suck down the 20 ounces over 5 different 4 ounce feedings so I'm not sure how to up it. He won't ever eat more than four ounces at a time. I'm going to try and shove in 2 more 2 ounce feedings somewhere during the day. We'll see how that goes. Doc also gave the go ahead on cheese and yogurt so we stopped on the way home and bought some YoBaby. Man does this kid love yogurt. It's nice to have something new and healthy to feed him. Well that's all to report for now.

Ramblings

Wesley is finally settling into a nice nap routine. He goes down at 2 pm and sleeps for exactly 2 hours. I love this routine and I hope it doesn't stop. Ever. I have become the most productive person alive during those precious two hours. On Sunday, as soon as he went down, I grabbed the baby monitor, plugged it into the garage electrical outlet and washed and waxed the truck. Yesterday I put him down for his nap and ran into the kitchen and mass produced his whole wheat pumpkin pancakes. I'm still into keeping the freezer overstocked with all of his food so all I do is reach in there and grab something for each meal. He's still getting organic food as much as possible, I've started to incorporate non organic stuff like pasta and meats. But fruits and veggies are all organic. I think it's smart to keep him pesticide and hormone free for as long as possible. He's going to be exposed to all that stuff soon enough.

He's becoming a pro at feeding himself finger foods. You should see the speed in which this child eats green beans. I can hardly place them on the high chair tray before they're gone. So far he's getting:
-Cheerios
-mini meatballs
-green beans
-pasta of all shapes and sizes
-sweet potato cubes
-pancakes
-applesauce
-naners
-shredded chicken
-beans and lentils
-peas
-blueberries
-cubes of carrots and potato
-melon or any sort

I'm trying to add more food into his diet whenever I can. I think we are going to start him in shredded cheese and yogurt next month or just hold off until a year. My friend Jessica's little boy has a milk allergy which scares me from letting Wesley have full milk products just yet, even though he's getting formula which is made from cow's milk.

I forgot how easy is was to use the jarred baby food. With my sister's wedding this coming weekend, I am wishing he was still eating the jarred stuff that I can just toss in the diaper bag. I now have all this freezer food that I'm going to have to lug around in a cooler. Luckily the hotel room as a mini fridge so I can just keep it all in there and portion out servings for eat meal, wherever we happen to be. I also wasn't sure it all the locations (rehearsal dinner, reception) would have highchairs so I bought a clip on chair we can carry with us. I hope it works. I hope the kid doesn't fall off the table.

Fields of tennis balls

We had our sweet golden retriever Cisco Bob put to sleep a week ago today. It's a little easier to write about it now that it's not so raw, but it's still hard. He was going down hill pretty rapidly, the last weeks were a dramatic change. Bone cancer is nasty stuff. I told myself there would be "something" that would happen that would make me make the decision to have him put down and he started bleeding out of his nose Mother's Day evening. The cancer had obviously spread to his lungs. Last Monday was probably the hardest day of my life, waiting around for the vet to come out was tough. But it was painless and he's not hurting anymore. I imagine he's up in heaven running around in open meadows with 500 tennis balls and countless people to throw them.

I'm sad that Wesley will not remember Bob. He would have been an awesome dog for a little boy. He was just the most loyal dog I've ever had. We bought Cisco Bob as an 8 week old puppy one month after we got married back in 2001. He was our first kid. We were in our last year of college and living in an 600 square foot house with a crazy golden retriever puppy. What fun times we had. He chewed on furniture but heck, who cares about their college furniture anyways! He was a nutty dog. I remember taking him to obedience training when he was 6 months old. One of the obedience tests was to hold your dog on a leash at your side with one hand and with your other hand you held a spoon with a cotton ball on it. The goal was to walk with your dog at your side in a calm manner so as to not drop the cotton ball off the spoon. Needless to say after a few steps with crazy Cisco I had dropped the cotton ball....Cisco saw me drop it and proceeded to eat the cotton ball. Sucked it down before I even could react. Everyone in the class was laughing. He was such a clown.

One other story about Cisco that comes to mind when I think about him was his first Christmas. We traveled to visit Sean's parents and once we arrived we went downstairs to depost our bags in the bedroom. Cisco ran in the room and immediately found the tray of rat poison under the bed and ate it all. We freaked out told Sean's parents who called a family friend whose dog had done a similar thing. We poured a concoction of hydrogen peroxide and milk down his throat and within seconds he was throwing up all over the place. The poor pup threw up for an hour.

Cisco Bob you will be missed. Rest peacefully old friend.

Wesley's first car

We had a nice weekend. Wesley got to try out his new push buggy this morning and just loves it. I took him up the driveway and back, he was just smiling the whole time with his little hands on the steering wheel. It has a seatbelt (thank goodness) so he remained seated without any problems. What a fun toy. Here he is going up the driveway waving at Dad whom he just spotted mowing.


He tried to grab everything in sight.

Here is Mom giving him a big smooch.

The kid is gonna freak out

Oh I'm so excited! Look what I just bought for Wesley this afternoon....



They had them on sale at Babies R US and I thought, what the heck. The kid is going to freak out. I will post pictures tomorrow.

Big Boy

I love this picture. Wesley will stand and play with this table (another garage sale find, I might add) for 10 minutes and when he's done he'll look down at the floor and plop back on his butt. He's getting proficient at getting down once he's done standing. Also thank you Granny Randi for the adorable clothes, he's such a big boy in his overalls.

The non crawler

Maybe he'll crawl one day, maybe not.

Rub a dub dub Wesley in his new tub

I received a gift certificate for my birthday (thank you Rich and Randi) so I purchased a new tub for Wesley. He's been in his infant/toddler tub up until now and was outgrowing it quickly. His new tub is an inflatable one that fits inside the tub, it's nice and cozy for him. We tried having a bath in it last week and he was scared to death of it, poor kid just screamed and screamed when placed in it. So the tub was moved into his bedroom and he got to play with it empty first and decided it wasn't so bad. SO today he had his first real bath in it. He loves it.



There is a squeaky duck on the side of it that he finds highly entertaining. He'll just look at it giving it the vulcan death stare. Silly kid.

Holy Cow.....

....this kid can eat! Tonight for dinner he had three meatballs, half a cup of green beans, two cubes of sweet potatoes, some chopped up spaghetti, half a banana, two cubes of applesauce and a hand full of cheerios for good measure. Can we say Jabba the Hutt? The kid is going to eat me out of house and home.

Ten Months Old!

Wesley turns ten months old today! Only two more months until we get to party down when he tuns the big O-N-E year old. Yesterday for Mothers Day we met my parents in town at a nice little restaurant that was serving a Sunday brunch buffet. Wesley did wonderful sitting in his high chair, he's becoming a seasoned pro at the whole restaurant thing. I picked fruit and other food off the buffet that he could eat. I think all in all he devoured half a watermelon. The kid loves fruit. The table of people next to us came over on their way out and told us how much of a joy it was to watch Wesley during their meal. He really is a good kid, we really are lucky. Happy ten months old little dude!

Here are pictures from yesterday in the restaurant and then outside the restaurant walking by the lake.

Happy Mother's Day!

Just a shout out to all you wonderful mothers out there, hope you are having a wonderful Mother's Day! I'm excited to be celebrating my first Mother's Day. I can't wait for the little handmade cards to arrive when my little man is older. That will be a joy.

On a sadder note, this day signifies the first day my baby won't be nursing anymore. We are officially done breast feeding and I'm kind of down about it. I have to just get over the fact that we didn't make it to a year, it's a bummer. He got a bottle first thing when he woke up today instead of nursing and he took it pretty well. After he drank the bottle he turned his head and started sucking on my neck but other than that he did pretty well with the change. We made it to nearly 10 months (ten months old on Monday), not bad. We switched him to Similac Organic formula and he seems to like it. I've been trying to offer it to him in a sippy cup instead of a bottle and he's doing pretty good during the day but still prefers the bottle in the morning and evening.

Last of all here is a picture of my two favorite men in the world, they make all this "mommy" stuff worth while.

New Traditions

Yesterday Sean, Wesley and I started a new tradition. We went and picked out fish for the koi pond. I'm hoping when Wesley is older he'll be able to pick the fish out himself but for now he just looked in amazement at the tanks and tanks of fish while we picked them out. The store also had stock tanks full of bullfrog tadpoles and huge snails along with water lillies and other assorted pond plants. They had tanks of koi and goldfish. I love the look of koi but I have a goldfish budget. We left with a big bag of six palm sized goldfish.

Changes

When I was still childless I always thought a kid could sit by themselves and play....entertain themselves. Boy was I in for a wake up call. My little man couldn't just sit somewhere and play with his toys or books without me or Sean being less than 5 feet away. Well, he finally hit the magic age when he'll sit and play with is toys by himself, and I might add it's WONDERFUL! I'll plop him down on the living room floor with toys all around and he'll just play and amuse himself for half an hour. Get this: I was able to make dinner last night while he was in the living room. That might not sound like much, but it's a huge step to our lives becoming normal again. I know once he becomes mobile it will be a whole different story but for now I'm enjoying the things the way they are.

His appetite is changing as well. He's nearly off of strained baby food. I haven't bought little jars of baby food in awhile now. He's still getting his food mashed or slightly blended because of the whole lack of teeth thing but the watery food is a thing of the past. We are trying all sorts of new food lately. Still haven't come across anything he just flat out won't eat. He's been getting a variety of beans mixed with chicken for dinner the past two nights, let's just say beans work on him the way beans work on all of us. It's been like a little band in his pants every evening. Funny stuff. My parents got us a little blender of sorts, it's similar to the Magic Bullet and I can just throw all of his food in it and blend it up in a couple of seconds. It works like a champ. I've been blending up our dinners if it is something I feel he can have yet. It is so nice to have him eating what we're eating while we all sit at the dinner table. It's a good feeling.

His dexterity is getting better every day. Lately he's been trying to throw balls. He'll pick up these little palm sized balls and crank his little arm back and try and launch it and it usually falls backwards. Then he looks around like "Where did it go?" It cracks me up. He's still not crawling or trying to pull up on anything. Just doesn't seem interested. He will pull up on your hands if you stick them in front of him but that's it. I think he's going to skip crawling all together.
That's all for now.

The swing

I told myself if I hadn't found an outdoor swing at a garage sale for the kid by next week I would go buy one at Toys R Us. Sure enough I found one at the church garage sale and snapped it up. We hung in on a tree this weekend and Wesley got to swing. And did he ever swing....and swing and swing and swing. If you removed him from the swing he would cry, so back he went. He even told me he really wished he had a pair of sunglasses like his cousin Sasha so I found a pair at Target and he swung with his sunglasses on. He was so preoccupied swinging he didn't even try to rip the sunglasses off. Twice a day now we go out and swing. It's nice to have something outside to do with him.

Here he is in his sunglasses. Doesn't he look cool?

Interesting stuff

I thought I'd share with you a website that I visit every Sunday. It started out as an art project, people were asked to anonymously decorate and send in a post card to a certain address with a secret they have never told anyone before. Then certain post cards are selected and posted on this site. I can usually relate to at least one secret a week. Try and find yours. New secrets posted every Sunday. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Hilarious hiccups

About every two months I post a video of Wesley laughing hysterically. Well at dinner the other night Sean had the hiccups and Wesley thought that was the funniest thing EVER. Enjoy.

Celebrate good times

Another birthday has come and gone. I'm the big 2-9 now. First birthday as a Mom. Only one more year until the not so dreaded 3-0. I think my thirties will be a fun time, looking forward to it. My pal Jessica, her hubby and two children came over to help me celebrate. Here is my cake Jessica made. It was mighty delicious.

Here is Alex stuffing his face.

Here is Jessica enjoying it.

We hung out and had fun. I got to hold her new little three week old baby girl Abby. It is truly hard to believe Wesley was ever that small!

Wesley wanted to "hold" her too...with his kung fu grip that is.

We all had a nice time, I got some fun loot. Jessica got me another wand to collect from the Harry Potter series. Yes I'm a nerd. My wand collection is growing quite nicely. This is my new one, pretty cool eh? Thanks Jessica!

And last is Wesley playing with Sean's hair, I just thought it was cute. My two men are too cute.

Happiness is a junk room

My laptop finally died and went to the laptop heaven in the sky. My convenient old way of checking my email and surfing at the table while stuffing food into my child is now gone. We now trek into the scary, once was an office, spare bedroom that my old Mac lives in. It is also known as the junk room. The room where old paper work and stuff that needs to be filed away goes to die. Wesley and I go in there once a day to get online. I sit at the computer while he sits on the floor and destroys stuff. I do believe he enjoys himself.