September 2004

09/28/04

Tommy will be 8 months old tomorrow!  Here are some thoughts on the occasion.

He finds my belly button intriguing.  Anytime I'm lying on my side on the floor, he crawls over to me and lifts my shirt so he can find it.  I point to it and say "belly button."  He laughs.  I pull my shirt down to cover it.  He lifts it back up.  Repeat MANY times. When he finally gets distracted and crawls off, I have to leave my belly button exposed until he's thoroughly absorbed in something new.  If I adjust my shirt too soon he comes right back over and the game begins again.  I have to hitch my pants down below my waist for it him to be able to find it, so I'm constantly going around with my pants hanging down.  Highly undignified.

I think he actually does babble.  I know I've been saying that he doesn't, but I think maybe I've had a too narrow definition of babbling.  He's still not doing repetitive consonants like dadadada, but there sure are a lot of consonants in his chatter.  Eh.  It's probably best not to get too hung up on it.

I don't have much else that hasn't been mentioned earlier this month.  I'm just glad September is almost over.  It's been a pretty hard month.  I've had my good-natured Tommy back the past couple of days, but he was grumpy most of the month.  I can't really blame him of course.  Cutting four new teeth and having a 10-day cold would make anyone grumpy.  

09/25/04

Pooh Sweatshirt!  Getting him to sit still for pictures is getting harder and harder.

09/24/04

I should announce I'm sick more often.  Even though I felt horrible when I woke up yesterday, I was feeling much better by noon.  Tommy is also feeling better (finally).  He still blows occasional snot bubbles out his nose, but he's not as congested or as grumpy.  His two front teeth on top have also finally finished breaking through the gum.  He might have been feeling bad from the teeth just as much as the cold.  

By the way, I'm sticking with size 12 months for fall clothes for now.  Just the one outfit mentioned below shrank enough to be too short.  He'll probably wear size 12 months in pants for quite a while, but he'll be in size 18 months by Thanksgiving.  He has David's freakishly long torso.

He's a pro at both cheerios and sucking water out of his sippy cup by now.

You can kind of see all four bottom teeth here.  It will be a while before all four top teeth are prominent enough for me to get a good picture.  I don't know why his cheeks were so pink today.    

09/23/04

The time for denial is over.  I'm sick.  Hopefully David will be able to stay home tomorrow.  Ug.

At least we got some laundry done yesterday. 

09/22/04

He's still sick.  There's less snot now, but he's more congested and has a cough.  He seems to feel better at times though, so I think he's improving.  I, however, am not feeling great.  I don't think I've got the full-fledged cold, but I'm fighting it.  Sigh.  

In better news, our vacation plans to Florida have been straightened out.  The beach house we were going to rent was destroyed in Hurricane Ivan.  We were originally going to spend the week of Oct 9-16 in the Pensacola area.  We're now going to spend Fri-Mon with our English relatives, my parents, and my brother and his girlfriend at a hotel in Pascagoula, Mississippi.  There will be at least 50 people at the reunion brunch that has been moved to a hurricane-spared location in Mobile, Alabama.  Monday afternoon we're going to move along to New Orleans and stay 2 nights there with my mom and dad.  That will give us a mini-vacation and give them a couple of extra days with Tommy.

Anyway, enough news.  I know what you really want is pictures.  J

Chewing on the earphone cord.  He loves all electronic cords.  We let him chew on them if they're not attached to anything and only with supervision so he can't get it wrapped around his neck.

He opened the cupboard door and pulled himself up to this position all by himself.

I sat him in front of the pans to play while I finished throwing together a casserole.  How Mommy-ish is that!?!

09/20/04

This is how our weekend went...and this morning.

09/18/04

He's still sick.  He has a cough along with all the snot now.  The doctor said not to give him decongestant because it won't do any good and will make him wired so he can't sleep.  I'm slightly suspicious of that advice, but we're trying if for now.  

A pumpkin can make a sick boy feel better.

Drat.  I put him in one of the fall playsuits I bought this morning and it's too short.  I guess the wardrobe of fall clothes I just bought in size 12 months needs to be returned.  Size 18 months just seems so big!  He'll certainly be wearing that size for most of the winter though.  It's a good thing I didn't take the tags off everything.

09/16/04

The good news is Tommy now weighs a whopping 20 lbs 11 oz.  The bad news is Tommy has his first real cold.  There's snot everywhere -- on my shirt, in my hair, in his hair, on the couch, on the nursing pillow -- you get the idea.  I managed to scrape the inside of his nose when he turned his head at the wrong time one of the many times I was suctioning out said snot, so there's also bloody snot all over the house.  Ew.   I'm not going to take a picture to show you all the snot because it's gross and I don't want him to accuse me of flaunting his misery when he's 25.

09/14/04

The sound of the bathtub filling up elicits flails of joy.

He gets even more excited once Daddy arrives to take him off to his bath.

*****

Tommy tried avocado tonight.  He did NOT like it.  Oh, the drama...the gagging...the scowls...the gasps for air.  After six or so spoonfuls, I showed mercy and brought out his two favorites, green beans and pears.  Avocados now rival bananas as the most despised foods of torture.

Speaking of favorites...  His favorite toys right now are his plastic Scrub Oak slinky, the activity block with a flap that he flips back and forth over and over, the small velcro tab on a cloth book and mirror combo Emma gave to him, and the J alphabet block (He always goes right to it in the box.  I think he likes the Jelly Bean picture.)  His favorite things to chew on are the spout of his empty sippy cup, my Williams-Sonoma Spoonula (NOT to be confused with the spatulas, which are not as good), his bath frogs and ducks, and the grippy handle of his hair brush.

This new cheap-o phone toy from Wal-Mart is a big hit.

Pulling himself up.  Oh, and you can just see the beginnings of a diaper leak by his pocket.  I discovered it a little while later.  

Ohhhheeeeeggg

09/12/04

Hi Mommy!

I'm coming to get you!

09/11/04

He's working on four new teeth simultaneously.  The two on either side of his bottom front teeth have broken through the gum.  His two top front teeth are getting close.  He was not a happy camper the last few days.  Today was better, thankfully.

This morning he picked up the plastic measuring cup that was on the living room floor, carried it with him as he crawled all the way across the living room and proceeded to bang it on the tile.  Tile + Toy = Better Banging.  Pretty smart, huh?

His new bongo drums.  He doesn't quite know how to play them yet, but he'll figure it out.  Ages 3 and up?  Ha!

David was securing the bookcase in the living room to the wall, so we took the pink lawn bird down from it's baby-safe perch.  Tommy was intrigued just long enough for me to take a picture.  Then I started bobbing the head up and down and he FREAKED OUT.  That bird thing is scary!  Poor Tommy.  It's back on top of the bookcase for now, but if he still thinks it's scary in the future I guess we'll have to hide it in the shed.

Arial shot.  I know.  I'm always reading him this book in pictures.  We have lots of other books, but this one is his favorite for reading on our backs. He favorite for sitting up and turning pages himself is the board book version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar that Ben gave me for Christmas a few years ago.  He likes to put his fingers in the holes in the page.  Hmm...maybe I'll try to get a picture of him doing that one of these days.  As a side note, you can really see how different our skin tones are in this picture.  I'm hoping he'll tan better than I do so that we won't have a burned baby on our hands when we go to Florida next month.   

09/08/04

Either this new tooth is giving him fits as it continues to emerge, or he's working on more new teeth at the same time.  Either way, he's ridiculously fussy.  Yippee for Tylenol.  I probably won't take more pictures until the weekend.  I sat for five minutes trying to think of good "Captain Pajamas" captions for these new pics, but I'm too tired.  He didn't actually wear his pajamas all day.  He wore regular clothes for about six hours.  Poor Tommy.  He was so miserable and clingy and sad after his nap.  I thought his comfy pajamas might help.  They didn't.

Yay! Daddy's home  

09/06/06

I finally got one!  I've been trying for weeks to get a picture that shows Tommy's vampire teeth.  They're really cute, especially when he's laughing, but never seem to show up in pictures.

Ta Da!

09/05/06

We're having a really nice holiday weekend.  David and I are trying to spend most of our time this weekend together with Tommy instead of taking turns playing with Tommy while the other one does alone-time things.  It's been a nice change.  Of course, I'll still want time alone on the weekends, but it's actually been more relaxing to play on the floor together rather than trying to read in the bedroom or watch a movie with earphones while Tommy and David play.  

Tooth number five showed up today.  Actually, I can't see the tooth yet, but there's a split/hole in his gum where it's breaking through.  It will be his third tooth on the bottom.  I guess all it took was for me to say the fussiness is NOT teething for a tooth to appear.

We need to get him an old keyboard that doesn't work so that he can bang on it while I try to check my e-mail.  (If any of you who live in Albuquerque happen to have one you'd let us have, let me know!)  He's discovered some great keystroke commands that I wish I knew.  Of course, he does them randomly with hundreds of other keystrokes so I can't ever see how he manages to do them.

The frog Lego was spinning like a top.  David was explaining how it's possible to mathematically model the motion, or something like that.  I wasn't listening...there was a cute baby to watch! 

He didn't know I'd snuck outside to take this picture.  He was waiting on the grass and straining to keep David, who was watering the roses, in sight.

09/04/04

Tommy had a rough day yesterday.  First, he woke up really upset at 4:45 and couldn't go back to sleep.  He was ready for his morning nap by 6:30, so his whole daily schedule was really messed up.  Luckily, I've gotten better at sleeping in the La-Z-Boy while I hold him for naps.  He did pretty well most of the day, but then he bumped his face and cut the inside of his lip on one of his teeth.  Poor Tommy. He was pretty grumpy the rest of the day.  We resorted to the stroller trick to get him to take an extra nap before dinner because he was super cranky.

Could he be any sweeter?

Daddy's favorite cups are supposedly bullet-proof...but are they Tommy-proof?

09/02/04

He started waving this week.  I'm not sure if he understands the social significance, but he had a fine time waving at all the food in Costco this morning.  We wave bye-bye to Daddy each morning so I'm sure he'll figure out what it means eventually.

In other news, his separation anxiety has escalated.  I now realize that what I thought was separation anxiety the last couple of months was oh so minor.  He literally doesn't want me to be more than 5 feet away from him at any time now.  I've always held him a lot and carried him with me around the house, but this is much more intense.  If he's really interested in crawling around and playing he'll wander farther a field, but only if I stay in the same place so he can look back at me every few minutes.  Woe is the mother who moves from floor to couch without making eye contact while moving...and don't even think about going into the kitchen or sitting at the computer!  He'll play with David in the evenings but only after a few minutes of grumpiness and only if he can't see me.  I know it's normal, and it's actually very sweet to get unsolicited cuddles every 10 minutes, but it's pretty tiring.  I'm sure I'll look back on this nostalgically when he's running around like crazy and won't stop for a hug or diaper change without a fight. 

I was really thirsty this afternoon, so I went into the kitchen for a glass of water.  Crying and crocodile tears immediately began.  I went back in the living room, picked him up, and we went to get my glass of water together.  Of course anything Mommy is holding is super cool and must be touched.  I gave him a few sips (he'll drink from a glass if we hold it), but he didn't just want to drink!  He wanted to hold it and touch the water and tip it.  When I took it away from him there was more crying, and I was still thirsty.  So, I got out the sippy cup.  We have to use them without the clever no-spill insert because a baby who doesn't know how to suck from a bottle certainly can't figure out how to suck from a sippy cup at this young age.  Finally, mother and son sat on the floor each drinking water from their own cups.  Actually, mother drank and son chewed on the spout and drank when Mommy tipped his cup up, but close enough.   

Waving doesn't really translate in still images, does it?

09/01/04

Here are some pictures I took of him standing in his crib.  We've put the mattress all the way down so he can't fall out.  I'm leaving the bumper in for now because I'm terrified that he'll wake up a bizillion times in the night if I take it out.  The side of the crib is lowered in all these pictures.  He can pull himself up to stand if it's down, so we let him play with it that way (with supervision of course).  He can spend up to an hour pulling himself up and then kneeling, squatting and sitting.  He laughs when he falls over and when you look at him through the slats.  In the last picture, he'd taken a few steps sideways so he could turn the corner.  He can do a mini-pull-up from there and lift his feet off the mattress for a second or so.  Hopefully he won't figure out how to climb out soon. 

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