Our little kid

I swear he changed from a baby into a little kid overnight!

Eight Months Old!

Here I find myself writing on the 12th of yet another month. Wesley's first year is speeding by, I can't believe how fast it's going. I have come to the realization, after eight months, that my life revolves around this child's eating and sleeping habits. Pooping comes in a close third. I realized this quickly when he was born but thought I would be old hand at it by this late in the game. Oh no, I don't think it ever goes away....it just changes.

I've discovered that I don't know how to put this child to bed without nursing him to sleep. That is what I've been doing for almost eight months and now he's decided to change it up on me. For the past two weeks I've tried nursing him, rocking him, walking him around, pretty much anything I can think of minus putting him in the car seat and driving around to get him to sleep. I'm at my wits end. Last night he and I were sitting on the couch watching the late show because he wouldn't go to sleep. At 11:45 I said "ENOUGH" and into the crib he went.....tears streaming, red faced he cried and cried and cried and finally passed out while I was in the shower (hey I can't hear him in there so he must not be crying, the old ostrich head in the sand theory). There must just be something in the air because I don't know what's going on. Maybe he's getting ready to do something...like cut a tooth or crawl or something.

Eating has had an overhaul as well. The child who would so lovingly cuddle up to me and nurse is now a squirmy, whiny child that wants little to do with the oobies. Which is fine, I know he would grow out of this phase (thank goodness), but I know he still needs most of his nutrition from the breast milk so it is important he nurses. With the solids comes a whole new set of worries. Is he getting the nutrients he needs in addition to boobie juice? Is he ready for finger foods? Who knows! We've just started giving him little banana puffs and he seems to like them. He will open up wide for me to place in his mouth, doesn't know how to place it in there himself. We're working on it though.

His buddy Alex came over yesterday. Alex is almost exactly 9 months older than Wesley and it's great seeing the differences in size in the beginning are quickly evening out.
Here is Alex at 9 months old and Wesley at 1 day old

Here is Alex at 17 months and Wesley at 8 months

Spring has arrived

I didn't realize how much the weather impacted my mood until this beautiful spring weather appeared last week. Wesley and I have been out walking every day and it's just improved my spirits ten fold. I think I had a serious case of the winter blues. I feel like a bear emerging from its den after an incredibly long winter.

I'd like to say that we go on walks every afternoon for the exercise but it has mainly been to make this child take a nap. He's completely boycotted napping during the day and it's driving me insane. For the past week he's only taken a nap in his stroller or car seat and refuses to nap in his room. I'm really hoping it's just a phase and he'll get back to his regular 1 o'clock nap because I can't get anything done, sculpture orders are just piling up and income would be nice. Oh well, only 4.5 short years until he starts school.

Crazy Farting Child

Turn your volume up for this jewel.

The New and Improved Monkey

We have a monkey that lives in our house. His name is Chance. Well, he's not really a real monkey....he's actually a tiny little terrier mix we adopted from the Humane Society. His nickname is Monkey. Today was a big day for Chance. He went to the groomers for the first time. You see, poor Chance's hair has gotten long enough that it has started to mat on his legs. He's always looked like moving roadkill to me anyways but the matting of the fur just added to this. I felt it was time to have something drastic done to his appearance. Here are his before photos:




I dropped him off this morning and told the groomer to do a schnauzer cut on his face, shave his body and give him a "lion" tail...you know with a tuft at the end. I do believe the other dogs were laughing at him once I brought him home. I swear that was the best $30 I've ever spent. They washed him, clipped his nails, cleaned his ears, trimmed his hair and emptied his anal glands (yeah...you don't want to know). He's so unhairy now! After pictures:

Grandpa's at it again!

I get a call the other day from my father who is very excited about a new toy he's found for Wesley. You must understand that my father is very excited to have a grandson, being a big kid himself he's happy to have an excuse to buy all the really neat little boy toys that are out there right now. You know how some people are adults with an inner child? Well my father is a child with an inner adult. So back to the new toy. He has found a thing called GeoTrax by FisherPrice. It is a train made for little ones 2 years and up. There is plastic track, little bridges, buildings and train engines made for little hands. He went on eBay and bought a whole set somebody was selling. It is set up in their living room and he and my Mother have been buying more sets when they come across them. I have to admit it is really cool. We think by this Christmas when Wesley is 1.5 years old he'll be able to play with it. By then it will have grown to cover every available inch of floor space I suspect. Below are pictures of Wesley and the GeoTrax over at my folks house. He was being all "Godzilla" like and whenever a train came near him he would pick it up and fling it across the room. Click on the pictures to see bigger images. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa, you're going to spoil this child rotten.

The Mamarazzi Strikes Again!

I've been taking way too many pictures again. Here is a compilation of the most recent cuties.

Get that %#&@ camera out of my face


Yes, almost 8 months old and still occasionally in the Bjorn


I shall stand and look at myself in the mirror


Now I shall smile and ride my tractor


Highchair toy time ROCKS!


Don't mind me I shall just sit here and read my book

Could it be any bigger?

I've been saving my pennies for a few months and ordered Wesley his convertible car seat that I had researched to death. It came today. It is HUGE! We went with the top of the line Britax Marathon. It's weight limit is 65 pounds so little guy can be in it for years, maybe until Kindergarten. Plus it came in a limited edition mossy oak camo color. I'm a sucker for camo. Twice a year Britax has a sale on their car seats and mark them down 30%. I waited and waited until Feb 24th to order it, all the while 21 pound Wesley is crammed into his infant seat which has a 22 pound weight limit. I'm such a cheapskate. The picture to the right is his infant seat. Pictured below is the new one, take note of the tooth brush and spoon in his hand.....all is well with the world as long as they are in hand.

My Crazy Little Man

I thought I'd write about some of the fun new things Wesley is doing. He picks up something new everyday, this is just a few of the current trends.

He loves his highchair. He will spend about an hour in it after every meal. Once the smeared sweet potatoes have been scrapped off of it I get the small bucket of "highchair" toys out which consist of a few rattles, plastic spoons, tupperware, measuring cups and rubber blocks. These get poured out on the highchair tray. Then the race is on to see how quickly each and every toy can be dropped onto the floor and into the mouths of the waiting beasts, I mean dogs. He has mastered a technique known as the "snow plow", where he sticks his arms straight out and moves them furiously left and right. He gets a smug smile on his face when all the toys have been thrown. I then must retrieve all toys before the dogs find them and eat them. We have a small pile of the unlucky ones on top of the fridge, the rest that I can't find I will assume have been digested.

Wesley's favorite two toys aren't the expensive train set or loads of board books but rather a plastic baby spoon and toothbrush. Life is good if he's clutching his spoon and toothbrush. Life is not so good (for us) if spoon and toothbrush get lost.

A not so fun new thing he's up to is giving hickeys. I'll be carrying him around and he'll learn over and start sucking on my arm. Today I had a V-neck on and he started sucking on my chest. Maybe it's time to try a pacifier again. He's my little sucker.

Happy Birthday Auntie Becca!

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy 30th Birthday to Auntie Becca, Happy Birthday to you. And many more!!
We hope you have a wonderful Birthday you old fart! From Wesley, Sean and Mandy

Creepy Yet Very Funny

My friend Jessica sent me these pictures a few days ago and I thought I needed to share. Back in June of 2007 I was thrown a baby shower and one of the games is to take a separate picture of the expectant Mom and Dad and make several copies. Here are the pictures taken May of 2007 at seven months pregnant:



You divide the baby shower guests into groups and give them copies of these pictures to cut up. You then take elements from the expectant Mom such as eyes, nose and hair and glue them onto the picture of the expectant Dad and visa versa to get a finished picture of what your offspring might resemble. My friend Jessica took the pictures and went into Photo Shop and did this. All I gotta say is Wesley is screwed if this is what he's going to look like when he grows up!

Are you ready?

Here is creepy #1:.....ah the shemale with a 5 o'clock shadow....




And here is creepy #2. Baaa haaaa haaa....kinda looks like a serial killer doesn't he?

Spin Master Wesley

Wesley has been spinning stuff for several weeks now and I thought a video would be nice. Enjoy. P.S. Thanks April for the awesome toy!!

Adventures in Baby Food

Sunday I spent several hours making Wesley his homemade organic baby food. It took about three hours from start to finish and it made one heck of a mess, but it was fun. I used the book Blender Baby Food, it gives instructions and cooking times for everything...made it all very simple. It was interesting to note that each grouping of veggies only made one ice cube tray of food, for example four pears made one tray, four apples one tray....they don't go too far once they are cooked down. One ice cube tray makes 16 cubes and he eats three-four cubes a day. After doing the math it is actually cheaper to make your own baby food by about .50 a day verses buying the jarred organic baby food, plus it is healthier and satisfying knowing he's getting fresh stuff. I labeled them and put them in freezer bags, now I just pop cubes in a bowl and microwave them. Pretty cool.

During my countless hours of web surfing I found this neat item called a Sassy Self Feeder. It is a little mesh bag with a handle that you can put chunks of food in and let your little one gum the food through the mesh bag. This way Wes can have whole foods without the possibility of choking. We've tried a chunk of banana in it and he spent about 20 minutes sucking on it before he chucked it over the side of his high chair. I'm going to try peaches in it next.

Wesley Up Up

Little man has learned some new stuff. Now when he's lying down on his back you put your hands in front of him and say "Wesley Up Up." He will smile like crazy and throw his hands up to yours and will pull himself into a sitting position, then once he's sitting he will lock his little feet in place and will pull himself up until he's standing. It's way too cute. Then he'll just stand there holding onto your thumb with this giant toothless smile like he's so darn proud of himself. We do this like 10 times a day. I'll have to get a video sometime soon of it. Here are pictures of him being a big boy on the couch with Dad this weekend.

Girls Gone Shoppin'

My friend Jessica and I flew the coop yesterday to have some much needed girl time without the babies. We said "Screw you weather" and took off. First stop was a really cool organic supermarket. You see Wesley has only gotten organic food since he started the whole food experience. My original goal was to buy the organic produce, cook it and freeze it and be all Suzie Homemaker like. Well then reality hit and I discovered I had no time to pick my nose some days little own cook up batches upon batches of baby food. So I bought the wonderful little jars of organic food and decided that was good enough. Then I hear of a big recall of organic jarred baby food, something about the applesauce possibly containing botulism. Great. So I decided back to square one. The organic supermarket. Very cool place, full of organic, healthy, very expensive stuff. I bought lots of apples, pears, sweet tators, squash and carrots. My plan is: today hand Wesley off to Sean and head into the kitchen to peel, dice, simmer, blend and freeze everything I purchased yesterday. I will then pour this concoction into ice cube trays, freeze them and put them into zip lock bags. I will report later on how this goes. Wish me luck.

Back to our outing. Next stop was Carlos o'Kellys. You see it is a tradition to go feed our snouts on mexican food a month before either one of us is about to have a baby. We did this with her first one, then we did this a few weeks before Wesley arrived and now today we did this in anticipation of her little girl due in April. Third stop was Babies R US (or Baby Hell as Dru calls it). We waddled around there for almost two hours taking in all the new and mostly useless baby gear. I was thrilled to see they started carrying Seventh Generation products. If you haven't heard of them take a look at their website. In our families' ongoing effort to Go Green I have researched this company and was anxious to find a store that carried their environmentally friendly, non-toxic products. I bought a bag of their Chlorine Free diapers to see if they're any good. They are about 3 cents more expensive a diaper than Huggies so if they are good I will definitely make the switch. Interestingly enough, they are brown diapers....kind of look like a brown paper bag on your babies butt. It was worth buying them just to open the bag and not get that strong, nauseating chemical odor like the Huggies bags. I bought their phosphate-free dishwasher detergent and laundry soap as well. We'll see how they work. Anyways, that was my day...Sean had Wesley for a whopping 5 hours, I think the longest he's ever had him alone. They had fun, man bonding time. In seven months I've never been away from Wesley for more than 5 hours, that's insane.

Rubber Ducky

Wesley and I watch this video everyday and I sing it all day long. He loves it. You gotta love classic Sesame Street. This clip is from 1970, nine years before I was even born.

Month by Month

Now that Wesley is seven months old I thought it would be neat to see him change month by month, with that being said here it goes:

Two Days Old....we called him our little Ompa Loompa, poor little guy was so swollen.


One Month Old


Two Months Old....by far my favorite picture ever.


Three Months Old....little guy was sooo tired when this was taken.


Four Months Old


Five Months Old


Six Months Old


Seven Months Old.....the poor kid got his Mom's crazy afro hair.

Goodbye to the Devil

We are officially getting rid of our cable TV. I've decided that TV is the devil. Before Wesley was born I had my regular shows that I would watch throughout the day. I sculpted all day and sat around watching TV. There really isn't much to do while sculpting. I would turn on the television in the morning and watch the TODAY show and it would remain on all day long, until we went to bed in fact. Many hours during the day it wasn't being watched but still remained on. Then Wesley came along. My addiction to TV died soon after he was born. I found more entertaining and purposeful things to do with my time. Most of which included trying to make a screaming Wesley stop screaming. Like a crack addict I slowly weaned myself off of my regularly watched shows. Goodbye Dr. Phil. See ya later Bob Barker. You won't be missed Regis and Kelly.

Anymore the TV would come on in the evenings and would be turned to reruns such as Law and Order that we've seen at least 12 times each. About a month ago we both started saying to each other "we could totally live without a TV". We would always laugh it off but more recently started thinking we really could cancel our DISH Network subscription and be much better off. It makes me feel better knowing Wesley won't be raised in a house with shows like CSI (how many dead decaying bodies do you really need to see in a day?), Law and Order SVU (let's all watch stories about incest), Dirty Sexy Money (the title says it all) and Sex and the City (those women are so screwed up!). We will put up an antenna so we can watch the news and weather if needed but that's it. I'm excited to start reading some books I've been meaning to read. Heck and the $40 we'll save on cable is just icing on the cake! Yea for us!