Someone Make Him Slow Down

What is happening to my little baby? He's getting to big and growing so fast and doing so many things. He certainly isn't the little snuggle-bug he was a few months ago. Believe it or not this guy is already on the go. He has figured out how to turn his flipping and rolling into directional movement. He also is a champion of pivoting around while on his tummy. The other night I watched him army crawl across the floor. Yes I used the word crawl!!!! Down on the hardwood laminate of the basement he would link his fingers together to make one big ball. Then he'd throw his arms in front of him and pull himself forward. At first I thought is was a fluke, then I realized he was going after a toy about 8 feet away. And guess what..... He Got It. Then he just looked up at me with that big (now toothy, remember) smile as if to say,

"Look at me mama!!!"

"I am looking at you. What do you think you are doing? You're not supposed to figure this out yet. Noooooo"

Ok, now I need to step back and take a big breath and realize that it's time to get out the babyproofing stuff again. I just can't believe it.

Ladies and Gentlemen.......

We have a tooth (it's true we all do). But most importantly Jeffrey has a tooth. It first broke through a little over a week ago and now it's a full-fledged tooth. Let me tell you, no one here is happy about it. He is a much crankier teether than Erin was. He's also been trying it out on me - OUCH. He goes through some periods where he just fusses and screams, mostly in the evening or afternoon. It makes for some long days especially that Tom has been traveling more lately.

It also appears that he's got his first cold to accompany the tooth. So he's also struggling with that. There are still moments where I get the big, now toothy, smiles but they are a little less frequent right now :(

Jeffrey has also moved on from rice cereal to squash. He LOVES it. He can't seem to get enough of it. When I was feeding him in squash last night he would scream every time I took the spoon out of his mouth. He opened up for more as soon as he saw the spoon again. I noticed he was also sucking on the spoon when it was in his mouth. I think maybe, he thought that there was an endless supply of squash on the spoon (like mommy has an endless supply of milk for him). When I took the spoon away he didn't realize it would come back with more. I could be way off base here, but that's what it seemed like to me.

Unfortunately the solid/pureed food has not helped the spitting up. He certainly is spitting up less than he was, but still spits. Now the spits are tainted with rice or squash, making them much messier than before. Hopefully this will not continue into our attempts with peas - yuck.

That's the latest on Jeffrey. Erin's still wild and crazy and talking up a storm. The potty is getting much better, I'd say we are about 95% trained for the pees and 70% on the poops. She gets very excited every morning to pick out her special panties (Nemo are her favorite right now).

Hope you all are enjoying reading about our adventures in childhood. Also something I noticed accidentally the other day. If you click on one of the pictures in the blog it will bring up a bigger version of the picture. Makes the ones at the park a little easier to see.

Playing with photoshop

I was playing with photoshop the other day and came up with this. I don't know how well it will come out in a smaller image, but the full sized one looks really cool. I'd like to do something more with the background - maybe a little texture to it or gradiate it from darker green to lighter, but I couldn't fully figure out how to do that. Let me know what you think.

I am editing this to put in the original picture of Erin and Jeffrey I used.

Park Pictures

We've had several trips to the park in the last month or so as the weather has cooled a little. I realized that I have many more pictures of Jeffrey on here than I do of Erin, so here are some shots of her from some of our recent trips. As you can see, she loves the park to run and jump and play.

4-month Stats

After a screw-up on the part of the people at the doctor's office (they never actually scheduled his appointment in the computer) I was able to get in to have Jeffrey's 4-month check-up today. We weren't able to see Dr. Quillian (she was on vacation, why they would have originally scheduled me for a day she was on vacation, I have no idea). We saw a fill-in Dr. who was nice, but not Dr. Q. She said Jeff looks great and is right along track for everything. Technically he's outgrown his carrier seat - by length not weight. We used Erin in her's long after she outgrew it's length, but it might be time to think about getting him a traditional seat - he's growing so fast and getting heavy to carry around in the seat. It's just sooo convenient.

Here are his stats:
Height - 26.5" -- 90-95%
Weight - 15 lbs 2 ozs -- 50%

Compared to Erin at 4 months who was
Height - 25.5"
Weight - 13 lbs 11 ozs

Looks like he might outgrow his big sister before she know's it.

"I'm not really sure about this mom"

Well, I've been waiting to try cereal with Jeffrey and we gave it a try Tuesday night. Let me begin by stating, I think this stuff looks gross and to make it palatable for him the suggestion is to make it really runny like rice soup. We grabbed a bib and set him in the bouncy chair on the kitchen table. He didn't seem to really dislike it, but made some precious faces of indecision. He eventually got the idea that he was supposed to swallow the stuff and got about half of it down before replacing the spoon with his fingers - what I took as a sign he was done.

The biggest problem was that he wanted to "help" and pull my hand with the spoon towards his face. Sometimes we hit his mouth other times it was closer to his nose or even eye. This was compounded by the fact that he is a kicking machine when sitting in his bouncy chairs so we were aiming for a moving target. HEHE.

So we're not really sure about the cereal, but I got this other picture earlier in the afternoon. It was simply gorgeous out and we took our chairs outside to enjoy the weather. This he truly liked.

Lessons of the last week

Wow - we've learned so many lessons around here in the last week. Things I should have known, but somehow am just picking up on now (hehe).

Lesson 1: It's not worth trying to shower - at all (unless Tom is home). If both kids are asleep invariably Jeff wakes up and screams and/or Erin gets up and runs into the bathroom announcing that she has to potty. If the kids are awake, Erin is no longer fully entertained by cartoons if her baby brother is lying on the floor. It's much more fun to sit on baby brother at that point.

Lesson 2: Naptime is now apparently optional, especially for Erin. I can put her in her room all sleepy and tired but not 5 minutes later I hear "Jumping on the Bed" accompanied by shrieks and giggles eminating from the room. She still doesn't seem to comprehend the "falls off and bumps his head" part of the story.

Lesson 3: Mealtime is also optional. It does not matter if I have prepared a favorite food (at least last month is was) if she doesn't want to eat, she won't. I guess she'll just have to be hungry. Jeffrey also views mealtime as optional. He would much rather look at his big sister than focus on eating with mommy.

Lesson 4: A baby brotther's squeals and giggles outweigh mommy's words. Apparently phrases such as "don't sit on your brother", "don't roll your brother over", "Be gentle with Jeffrey," "Don't Touch Jeffrey" all come across in a foreign language. The worst part of it is that Jeffrey seems to love all of this.

Lesson 5: Spit-up happens right after you change into good clothes. OK I've known this one for 4 months now, but it's continually being reinforced.

Lesson 6: I've still got a million more lessons to learn.