Who is this kid???

Out of no where this week, the baby has been doing all sorts of new things. Since I posted the crawling video he is getting around everywhere. On Thursday he couldn't crawl on my parents' hardwood floors. Tonight (friday) he did it no problem. Wednesday (1/20/10) he started waving. It's very cute. I will get it on video. He's also pointing. Not to make a choice but just randomly and sometimes he'll point after we point.
He's also been trying new foods. He has had chicken nuggets, hot dogs, mac and cheese, and grill cheese. It was so cool that the past two days he has had lunch with his big cousin Dylan and they were able to eat the same things.
The biggest shocker of all happened today. When he woke up this morning I found him on his knees holding on to the side of the crib. I told Eric that we are going to have to move his mattress down ASAP. We made plans to do it this weekend as well as really baby proofing this house (I know we're a little slow on this but we keep a good eye on him). So we put him to bed tonight and he apparently wasn't interested in sleeping. Eric claimed that he saw him standing up in his crib for a minute and then falling back down. I went in to see him and rocked with him for a minute and then put him back to bed. This time I kept peeking in on him. I saw him standing at the back of his crib playing with his mobile. Then he sat down, turned around and stood up at the front of his crib. I had to take a picture and risk going in there one more time. I can't believe how quickly he's figuring all of this out. A week ago I was worried that he wasn't going to put it all together to get to a standing position and now he's sitting up, crawling and standing, all in one week. So here's the proof, thankfully he finally went to sleep after having to have him lie in our bed for a little bit:

crawling...sort of

It has been a frustrating week for the baby. He seems to be over rolling around to get everywhere. He wants to crawl but when he gets into position he falls flat to the floor. He has been coming up with a new method of getting around but it takes him forever. He sits up, gets in the crawling position, falls to the ground and rolls once and the starts the whole process over again. I've been working with him to try to get him to crawl and keep his legs up because they seem to be the problem. So he finally is starting to get it. He kind of scoots around in order to keep his legs from buckling but he was starting to get places tonight. Probably by the end of the week he'll be all over this place. I apologize to my parents now since they will have to take care of this new adventurer on Thursday!

Daddy took this video, not the best picture but he seems to be proud of his video so here it is. I call it "crawling...sort of":

hello again

Life has gotten so busy that I have completely forgotten about my blog! I went back to work three weeks ago just a couple of hours a week. It's time consuming however because I have to drive to the south shore for work. I'm not sure how worth it it is but we'll see what the next few weeks bring.
The baby had his 9 month doctors appointment on the 29th when he was practically 10 months old. He weighs a whopping 18 lbs 5 oz and is 29 1/2 inches long. He is in the 75th percentile for height and only the 10th percentile for weight. The doctor is not too worried about his weight because he's more mobile so he's burning more calories. He is still not crawling but he is so close. He has become an expert at sitting up on his own and we've been working hard on trying to crawl and walk. He will stand on his own for a few seconds and he has taken a few steps between Eric and I on his own. He seems to be getting much more confident on his feet.
He is 10 months old today. I cannot believe how close he is to his first birthday. Every time he becomes a month older we are one month closer to not having to buy formula! That's what I'm excited about :) man that stuff is expensive! He's started a lot more finger foods and is starting to strongly detest certain foods. Today I was getting frustrated because I was trying to feed him the baby food version of a turkey and vegetable dinner. He kept sticking his fingers in the spoon before I got it in his mouth or not moving his tongue out of the way when the spoon went in and getting it everywhere, etc etc. I was getting very frustrated and by that point he had gotten it all over his clothes so I just gave him the spoon and the bowl and told him to have at it. Well my mistake because apparently to him having at it meant throwing the bowl on the floor and getting his food all over the floor and wall. I was not too pleased. We are going to have to work on spoon use. If he had more teeth I would be more confident with finger foods but I feel limited and I also need more ideas for finger foods so if anyone has any suggestions let me know!
Ok picture time...

10 month old pictures:

Such a miserable child huh?


He made his first works of art last week. We painted a picture for my dad's birthday and one for our fridge. He wasn't totally into it so it was a quick activity. I bet if he could do this with his lunch though it could last all day!

concentrate!

Ok so I apologize for my husband's outift. He is wearing clothes just long johns after work but this video is funny so don't look at him and just look at the baby :)

A precious life

The other night I had a terrible dream. I dreamt that I was diagnosed with lung cancer (of all things!) and one of my lungs was completely full of cancer and the other was 50% cancerous (if that is even possible). I must have been crying in my sleep because I was crying throughout the dream and all I kept thinking was that I couldn't leave the Erics. My husband would be devestated and the baby would grow up without a mom. I told Eric that I would do anything I could to get better.
I probably had this dream because now that I have my only family I am constantly thinking about how precious life is. I just finished reading a book where the father dies of cancer. Whenever I hear stories of people dying to young or parents losing their children, my heart aches much more than ever.
It makes you come to grips with how precious life is. Anything can happen. I try and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail but I try to not take any day with my Erics for granted. I am very lucky to have the both of them in my life and I hope we all live long and healthy lives together.

Happy New Year!

We had an interesting New Years Eve. We went out to dinner at applebees in Millbury around 7ish. The baby didn't need to eat until 8:30 so we had finished up at 8:20 and figured we'd just feed the baby when we got home since we only live 10 minutes away. We got stuck in the parking lot for 20 minutes however because there was a fire or something at the movie theater and they had to evacuate that parking lot first. So we rushed to try to get home once we got through all that. Unfortunately Eric rushed a little too much and got pulled over. He didn't get a ticket but at this point I seriously didn't think we would ever get home. I was really hoping to get the baby to bed by 9 but that didn't happen. After all was said and done it took us an hour to get from Millbury to Grafton! The baby didn't go to bed until almost 10pm. What a disaster. So now I will never wait to feed the baby again!
Ok so here is 2009 in review (copying Marissa!):
January- Eric and I brought in the new year by sleeping through it :). I set the alarm to wake up to see the ball drop. Being very pregnant I had to go to the bathroom and when I got back the ball had already dropped. So I fell back asleep. January was a pretty quiet month.

February- Eric turned 27. I had my baby shower and by the end of the month I was already 2 1/2 cm dialated and 50% effaced!

March- Pokey goes on his first great adventure outside. Our little man joins the world on March 13, 2009, 2 weeks and a day early. I get laid off from my job.

April- Eric goes to his first birthday party for his cousin Dylan who turned 2. He found his thumb and he rolled over for the first time.

May- We went to see a plastic surgeon about getting Eric's extra thumb removed but we weren't impressed with her. Pokey goes on another great adventure. Eric started going longer between bottles. He starts sleeping in his carseat at night making sleep much easier. I celebrate my first mother's day.

June- We take our first trip to CT to visit Heather. Eric goes to the beach for the first time and puts his toes in the water. Eric gets a UTI causing a lot of stress on us. His first fever and sickness but we survived! He slept through the night for the first time but then we discovered that it was because he had a fever. Eric celebrates his first Father's Day.

July- Eric got diagnosed with reflux of the bladder. He is sleeping through the night consistantly. He is rolling over both ways regularly. We took our first trip to Dean Park and Thumbs Up Creamery.

August- I celebrate my 28th birthday and get accepted to BC's MSW program. We try cereal with the baby again and this time it becomes part of his daily diet. Once he gets used to this we started veggies. The baby goes swimming for the first time. The baby is sleeping in his crib instead of his carseat at night.

September- I start grad school. Eric goes back to work finally. The baby starts drinking out of a sippy cup. He also starts using an excersaucer which he loves. Eric and I celebrate our 1 year anniversary of being married.

October- The baby starts babbling using vowel-consanant sounds. Ryan is born on October 2nd. Eric celebrates his first Halloween. He was a pumpkin/lion.

November- Eric gets his first haircut. He celebrates his first Thanksgiving and is actually able to eat some of the meal. I help my mom cook and learn all the tricks of making a Thanksgiving dinner. We move to Grafton.

December- The baby gets his extra thumb removed. He celebrates his first Christmas and meets Santa for the first time. He also goes sledding for the first time.

I cannot believe that the baby is going to be a year old soon. Time passes so fast. I know this blog would have been more exciting with pictures but I got lazy. I'm sure I missed some important events but this is about it. I'm looking forward to a new year with a new beginning. Happy New Year!

Catching up

My mom sent more pictures of her birthday and Christmas so I could post them (Thanks Mom!). I also have a few other cute pictures to show.
So lately the baby has not been sleeping well. Daddy can't get enough of him (neither can I!) so the two of them have been up past 9pm all week. Then the baby wakes up in the morning from Daddy's alarm clock and doesn't nap that great during the day. It's been quite a battle to get him to get some rest when he's obviously tired.

So one night Eric had got to his friend's house so I tried to get the baby to go to bed early but it was not happening. I brought him into our bed to spend some time with him and he has this thing lately where he thinks that I would like to suck his thumb too. So here we are both sucking his thumbs (not a great picture of me! I took this one myself!):




Whenever Eric plays his guitar normally the baby "sings" along. It's pretty cute. Here they are playing guitar together:





The baby did not want to take a nap this morning. He seemed really tired but he was not having a nap. Maybe he needs just one nap a day but we'll see. So I put him in his crib for the second time this morning to see if he'd sleep. He was quiet so I went to check on him and this is what I found. Yup that's right, him sitting up in his crib. He finally figured it out! Now we're going to have to move the mattress lower because when I saw him sitting up I realized that once he figures out how to stand up he's going to be hanging over the crib.

Eric has school for the Union a few weeks ago. He got these bright orange sweatshirts that week. The color is ridiculous but they are really comfy. So we both wore our orange sweatshirts to my mom's birthday and Ryan just so happened to be in orange too!

We tried to take a picture with my mom and the boys but Ryan started crying, Dylan couldn't stop talking about his tinker toys and Eric didn't know what was going on so this is the best we got:

The orange people:

Ok here are the picture from my mom from Christmas at their house:

Lots of jammies!

9 months old and he's already driving

beep beep!

Baby's first Christmas

The baby's first Christmas was a success! Christmas Eve we went to Auntie Linda's house. The baby was such a trooper. He had been up late the night before after an exciting time at Chuck E. Cheeses with his big cousin (he cried when we had to drop Eli off, he loves him!). I thought that there was no way he could make it for another late night but he was up partying until 10pm! Once it's past his bed time he gets really silly. He was laughing and freaking out at the slightest look from anyone! He was quite the hit of the party. Santa shows up at Auntie Linda's too so he got to see him again and get a present!
Christmas day we started by opening presents. He was actually able to open his first present a little bit on his own. I was impressed. After we opened presents at our house we went to my sister's house and opened presents there. Then it was off to Eric's dad's house in Hopedale. From there we went to Eric's Aunt Karen's house in Burriville. After that it was to my parent's house for dinner. Let me tell you, by the time this day was over I couldn't even see straight. Next year we are just going to have an open house in our tiny apartment for people to stop by. I will cook and do whatever it takes to avoid driving around all day on Christmas again. It is always good to see everyone but it is hard to relax and enjoy the holiday when whenever you get comfy somewhere you have to leave for the next destination. Plus the baby only napped in the car and although he hardly fussed for mommy and daddy's sake, he needs his naps!
Ok picture time:

This is Eric's cousin Shannon. She was very excited to meet the baby:


Uncle Alex just got his license so he was able to come to the party all by himself and hang out with his nephew!

Present from Santa (blocks)

There he is, Santa himself! If you notice in the back right corner there is a santa that is lit up. For my entire life my mom used to have a Santa just like that sit in the front window of our house. I cannot believe Eric's Auntie Linda has the same one! My mom finally got rid of hers but he lives on at Auntie Linda's!

I love how the baby is pulling Santa's beard

So this is Eric's cousin Courtney. For over a year she has been in the Peace Corps in Morocco. We didn't know she was going to be able to come home for Christmas so what a pleasant surprise it was to see her!

Crazy cousin Shannon who declared that she wants to be called "Auntie"

I feel so under-dressed!

Hi I'm a goober but I dress up nice!

9 months going on big boy :)

Mom enough with the pictures!

Standing tall

Christmas day at my sister's house:

Me and my sister look so tired. You can tell we've got little ones!

Playing with gramma and his new train

I wish I had gotten a Santa hat for Eric for Christmas but no worries because Auntie Karen had one that Dylan wore for his first Christmas and we borrowed from Ryan this year for picture purposes

Aww Ryan :)

Auntie and Uncle got him his own placemat with his name on it

and his own guitar

and a train

Dylan got a really cool tool bench and tool set for Christmas. He was fixing things all morning

A book from Auntie and Uncle

Ok now we are going a little backwards. These are from the morning at our house.

Checking out all of his new toys

A new ball

Some paints for art projects!

Haha Pokey you're so funny!

Yummy, thanks for the box!

Goober

"Now Daddy, go over this with me again... I'm supposed to rip this open?"

This is a video of him opening his first present

So I'm a little bummed because there was some good picture opportunities at my parents' house at the end of the day but I had left my camera in the car and I was just too tired to get it and I haven't gotten any pictures from my mom (hint hint). However, among other very nice presents including lots of comfy jammies, my parents got Eric a toy car to ride on that he can also walk behind and push. Once he figures it out I think this will be a favorite. He has walked while pushing it but I wasn't quick enough to take a video and then he stopped. Stay tuned...

And on another note, Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2010 brings great things to all. 2009 brought us the best present ever and we look forward to great things in 2010!