Teeth

And now for your viewing pleasure...TEETH!!!

James has 4 teeth now, 2 on bottom and 2 on top. "The better to bite with you with!!" he says.

An evening at the park

Let me extol the virtues of our home. We are in a ridiculously awesome neighborhood with ridiculously awesome neighbors (who gave us lots of free baby stuff). We have a home we can be proud of, that is the walls aren't crumbling, the floor doesn't tilt, and it's larger than the (cough, cough) 4 rooms we previously had. Best of all, we are within walking distance of lots of cool stuff - coffee shops and restaurants, bars, the lake, and best of all the park! The park with the playground! We've been waiting all winter to be able to go outside and play and we have definitely taken advantage of it this past week or so. Every day after work we go for a nice long walk. We love the exercise and fresh air, Buster just loves it.

Today we headed to the playground for some much needed goofing around. I love the playground still as an adult. And best of all, now that I have a kid I can play at the playground without people looking at me weird (as long as I have the kid with me, that is). We went on the swings today. Buster was definitely the giggliest little boy, or I should say kid in general, at the park. His laugh was so robust it was contagious. We both laughed for about 10 minutes straight, I'd say.

Can I just reiterate how much I love this little guy? Even looking at the pictures that I just took a few hours makes me smile!

9 month stats!

Okay, my apologies for being gone so long. It's been hectic both at work and at home. I promise to post some pictures over the weekend.

In the meantime, we had our 9 month check-up and I'm proud to say that James is doing just great! I dont' think our pediatrician is used to having laid back parents though because when we told him we didnt' have anything to talk to him about, his response was "really?" Then he proceeded to tell us basically everything we already knew (baby proof the house now that James is more mobile, time for a bigger carseat, which we upgraded months ago anyway, wear sunscreen since he's so pale). The one thing we learned that came as a bonus is that James can now eat whatever we eat as long as we cut it up and it's somewhat mushy. So that's a bonus. But what we're always excited to learn is height and weight and what percentile he's in. And this time, we've even controlled for gender so the following are among boys only:

weight: 20lbs, 40th percentile
height: 29 inches, 75th percentile
head: 19 inches, 95th percentile (he's obviously got my big brain :) )

Lessons from the trenches

Weekends are full of learning for all of us. Buster continues to learn how to be a baby, we continue to learn how to be parents.

(On a side note - one of the wisest things my mom ever told me was when I was 10-12 and she admitted 'I'm still learning how to be a parent.' How true, how true. Just when you think you've got it figured out, BAM! A new gaggle of things to learn crops up.)

Anyway, here in no particular order are the things that we all learned this weekend.

What we learned:

1. When your pediatrician tells you to babyproof the house when your child is only 6 months old and not mobile, don't assure him you will and then later laugh at him when the two of you are alone ("Babyproof! He can barely sit by himself!") Ignoring this lesson will lead to your child pulling on cords, knocking down precariously stacked dvd's, eating anything and everything laying on the floor.
2. Once your child starts to crawl, it's a good idea to mop/vacuum your floors often. There's nothing gross than pitch black baby hands after a half hour of crawling around the kitchen floor.
3. In general, it's not wise to heartily laugh at your child as he cries. This will only lead to more and louder crying
4. Bringing a baby to a furniture store guarantees a full on barage of harassing from any and all store staff who happen to smell Johnson's baby lotion.
5. Babies can inexplicably begin to hate the thing they once loved most. At some point over the weekend Buster decided he hated baths more than life itself. This is disheartening since it was once our fool proof 'get the baby to stop crying' plan.
6. Never use the word "no" when playing a game and laughing. This will only lead your child to think that "no" indicates playtime and it is, indeed, okay and encouraged to pull on all wires in a 30 foot radius.
7. Infants' Tylenol is God's gift to babies and parents alike (we already knew this, but it's worth mentioning again.)

What Buster learned:

1. Screws are not for eating.
2. Cats are not for eating.
3. Pieces of carpet are not for eating.
4. Cat food is not for eating.
5. "No" does not mean "yes" and coyly smiling does not always guarantee you'll get your way.
6. Baths are not fun.
7. He is at the beginning stage of pulling himself to a standing position. Yay!! However, the bathtub is not a good place to practice this due to general slipperiness.
8. When in pain mom and dad will rush around to try to make you feel better (awww!)

Weirdest.Kid.Ever.

Well, it's official. I have the weirdest kid ever. Let me explain -

I was in a ridiculously foul mood last night for no real reason other than I'm just tired of the responsibility that comes with parenthood. I want to be spontaneous and reckless again rather than spend $100 on diapers and kid food. Anyway, in order to make myself feel better and have a little laugh I thought I'd give Buster a taste of the pickle I was eating. No baby likes pickles and I thought it would be hilarious to see his face. Well, the jerk loved it. As in, not only did I not get the laugh I wanted but I also lost my pickle. Seriously, what baby likes pickles?

Christmas 2007 Video

Here's some poorly shot video from Christmas 2007, but you'll get the jist:



I was lucky enough to get a camcorder from Leslie & the Neumanns and intend on putting it to good use.

We're on the move!

Guess who started to crawl? Our little guy is growing up so fast! The first crawl was technically last week Friday at my parents' house. He saw his reflection in the window of their entertainment center and wanted to check out the baby. Voila! He was off! (I guess this means we actually need to babyproof the house now instead of just talking about it - boo.)

And note the soup can from the aforementioned blog. It's a surprisingly great tool to get him to crawl more because it keeps rolling away from him and then he tries to catch it. I'd like to say "simple minds" but Jim and I sat and watched this take place, so I guess we're just as simple :) What can I say? It's beyond cool that he's more independent and moving around!!