Adventures in Parenting: ONE YEAR!!!!

HOLY CRAP.  We survived.  We kept a small human alive for TWELVE MONTHS.

Not only that, but I'm relatively sure that we haven't physically or emotionally damaged him (yet).

This kiddo, all 23.5 pounds of him, is 90% of the time a happy, smiley, laughing little goober, who loves to cruise around furniture, crawl all over the house, and laugh mischievously when he manages to get into something he's not supposed to have (and then cry when we take it away).

90% of the time, he can sleep through the night.

90% of the time, he can eat whatever table food we're eating.

Noodle dishes are his fave.

NEW STUFF:
Blowing raspberries.  It's hilarious.  And he does it A LOT, because we laugh.  We try to discourage it at meal time so he's not blowing food at us, but just about any other time, it just makes me giggle.

New Car Seats:  We donated his infant carrier to a friend who's due in November, so we had to bust out the big boy car seats.  We were given one for the Hub's car (Safety 1st Complete Air), and bought one for my car (Graco MySize 65).  Personally, I like mine WAY better.  The Safety 1st is pretty basic, and doesn't recline for rear-facing--so if your seats aren't angled well, you have to use a rolled up towel under the base to get it to recline enough. It's also super-tall, so in a recline, you have to keep the seat in front of it scooted WAY forward to fit (and that's in a Jeep Cherokee).  The Graco also features a "rapid remove" cover for easy cleaning...which would have been really handy when Lil' Man projectile vomited all over the Safety 1st seat last week (which does NOT have a "rapid remove" ANYTHING and took about 15 minutes to disassemble to get the cover off of for cleaning).

Shoes:
When he moves into the 1 Year Room at day care, they start going outside for play, and to the gym, so they have to have shoes.  We NEVER bothered with shoes before that (I could say it was because we wanted his feet to develop properly, yada yada, but it's really because I'm lazy.  He barely keeps socks on--why bother with shoes?)  Thankfully, a friend loaned us a huge bag of shoes so now he has quite the assortment.

So matchy-matchy!

1st Birthday Party:
This of course means we survived planning and executing our first kid's birthday party!  Our friend B had her daughter the same day as us, so we decided it might be fun to have a dual party for them.  B found an indoor play place that would be able to keep the kiddos entertained, and her sister made cakes for both kids (and cupcakes for the adults and guests).  No big blowout event--the little ones loved the Under 18 Month play area, and the older kids loved the bigger play equipment.  

The birthday babes.

And I managed to NOT go Pinterest crazy:  Only bought him a special onesie, and made the banner for his high chair.  

(Used a blank banner from Hobby Lobby, and then just printed out the ball and letters on regular paper.  Got a bag of mixed ribbon and tied to the banner for extra "pop". Used double-sided tape to adhere to the high chair...with mixed results.)

Everything went pretty well--aside from both kids being kind of scared of their giant cakes.

"You're saying...this whole thing is for ME?"

Too. Much. Cake, MOM!!!

With a cupcake instead.  Much more his speed.

UPCOMING CHALLENGES:

• We haven't started him on whole milk yet...let alone cold milk. This lil' turkey still likes his formula nice and warm.  And we still need to fully transition to a sippy cup and get rid of the bottles.  
• Paci's have not been a big issue so far...at home, he only gets them at bed time or during naps, and we keep one in his car seat but he usually just plays with it.  But theoretically, we're supposed to wean him off of those soon.
• Same goes for the bedtime bottle.  
• Moving into the new house.  Renovations have been a big challenge--not that we have a ton of stuff to do to the new house to get it ready, but the list we have is enough--especially when we both work full time, and have to pick up the kiddo from day care by 6.  We usually leave work around 4:30p, get to the new house, work for about an hour, and then have to leave to go pick him up.  Sometimes one of us will stay at the house and continue working, while the other picks him up and then goes home to start dinner.  Weekends are pretty well full of more work at the house, but Lil' Man is kinda clingy, or into everything, so we can't let him roam free upstairs while we work (since it's a disaster right now).  Sometimes we can get a grandparent or friend to come over and play with him for a few hours while we work.  

Disaster zone or living room?  (The exersaucer will keep him contained/entertained for about 15 minutes, tops, if we HAVE to have him upstairs.  Downstairs we have a couch, pack n play, and a wide array of toys to play with while someone is working upstairs.)

• Walking/Talking: While he loves to cruise holding on to furniture, and will let go sometimes to free-stand, he's not walking yet.  And while he loves to babble/jabber, no real "first" word yet.  He does say "mama" "dada" but they're not always directed at us.

• More teeth:  Ahead of schedule as usual, his upper first molars are starting to come in.  So we've got some fussy days & nights ahead of us.  Guess it's time to bust out the teething rings again!

Adventures in Parenting: Month 11

Weight: 24.5 lbs

Teeth: 8

Eating:  He eats just about everything.  We still haven't tried crunchy vegetables, but he eats table food at day care and pretty much everything we eat for dinner.  

Life Changes: Last month I mentioned that we were house hunting.  Well, now we've house-found, house-bought, and are house-fixing up so that we can house-move-in.  I'm pretty excited and nervous at the same time...it was my first home buying experience.  I was constantly certain that everything was going to fall through, and since it was a For Sale By Owner, at least once or twice I had the thought "this guy doesn't even OWN this house...he's a con man and he's fake-selling us someone else's house.  Have we checked his ID???"

The new house is very similar to our house upstairs--we're pretty sure it was the same building plan/builder.  BUT--now we have a basement, extra bedrooms/bathrooms, storage, a tornado shelter, and a ton of other little extras.

New Living Room

We bought the new place from the original owners, who lived there for about 13 years with their 3 kids--meaning it's well lived in.  So we'll be spending the next month or so fixing dings and dents and repainting and cleaning carpets and whatnot. But I'm excited to move in.  We've already met some of the neighbors and it seems like a great, family-friendly neighborhood.  We've even been invited to a neighorhood BBQ.  Yay!

Finding a New Day Care:  *sigh*  This is no fun.  Seriously.  Trying to find a space for a kid under 2 is SO frustrating.  One day care we called didn't have openings until NEXT summer.    So we may be shuttling Lil' Man to his current day care for a while, which is really out of the way (like, in another town out of the way) until we can find an open spot.

First Plane Ride:  Over Labor Day week, we flew down to Louisiana so my friends could meet Lil' Man for the first time.  I was anxious about the plane ride, but he did great, both there and back.  We had a connection in Dallas, so each leg was about an hour long, which was pretty manageable.  He would sleep for one of the flights, and then be awake for the next, but was pretty easy to entertain--we'd feed him puffs or applesauce and let him play with the seat buttons and latch for the tray table, or sit and watch out the window.  I downloaded a bunch of games and videos onto my iPad, but we never had to use them--ah well, they're ready for the next time!

In Dallas we had a little bit of a layover, so he even got to play in the kids area!

We stayed in Lafayette for 3 days, Morgan City 1 day, and New Orleans 3 days.  It started out a little rough: we tried to visit an alligator farm, only to get there and find out they weren't doing tours, but they did let us see all the wild-caught alligators that had come in that day (it was a LOT, despite it only being about noon).     Then we tried to visit a tap room and got kicked out because they were having a private event (but hadn't put a sign on the door). The next morning, I had planned for us to do a nature walk at one of my favorite spots in Lafayette, only to find out it had flooded in the recent rains and was teeming with mosquitoes.  Needing to fill some time and let my restless child crawl around,  I enlisted help from my local friends and they pointed us to Kart Ranch, which has a special play area for little ones under 5.

But from that point on, it went pretty well.  We got to see most of my friends, eat lots of good food--Lil' Man had MANY firsts:

• grits
• cajun sausage
• rice dressing
• boudin
• beignets
• jambalaya
• snoball
• shrimp
• and probably others that I'm forgetting.

Nommy nommy beignet from Morning Call at City Park.

Sleeping...was rough.  All of our hotels provided either Pack 'n Plays or a collapsible crib (we confirmed this ahead of time before booking), but Lil' Man had a hard time sleeping in so many new places, and would inevitably end up in bed with us sometime around 3am. Which means we were all a little sleep-deprived for the entire week.  I brought some sheets from home so they would smell familiar, which probably helped, but apparently not enough.

"Yeah, I see the crib.  I'm good right here."

We played tourist and visited Avery Island Tabasco factory, City Park in New Orleans, and did a walking tour of the Garden District (for free, using the self-guided tour in that link).  Note:  The sidewalks in New Orleans are...choppy, at times, which can be rough for stroller travel.  You've been warned.

Brace yourself, kiddo...

Initially, I spent a lot of time planning our trip by trying to find kid-oriented activities for us to do.  And then I realized--when your kid is under a year, and still sleeps a fair bit, and can't walk, and won't remember any of the trip, it's a little silly to spend a lot of time (and money) trying to do activities he can't really participate in and won't remember.  Our son can still spend nearly half an hour being entertained by a PLASTIC SPOON.  So, aside from making sure the places we went had high chairs, it was pretty easy to travel with him and still do the things WE like to do--which is mainly eat, drink, and walk around and see stuff.

Snoozing while Mom & Dad try some new brews at Second Line Brewing in NOLA.

I realized about halfway through our trip--this is actually a pretty easy age for traveling with him (aside from the sleeping arrangements).  He's still portable in the infant carrier/stroller, he's not nursing anymore so we can feed him a bottle anywhere that has warm water, and he's eating table food so we don't have to cart around a bunch of baby food. Each morning before leaving the hotel, we filled a bottle with hot water (and put the bottle in a coozie to help keep it warm), and grabbed some yogurt, a banana, and made him a jelly sandwich from the complimentary breakfast fare--bam, there's lunch and snacks for him, if we don't happen to eat at a sit down place with choices for him.  

And New Orleans was very kid-friendly, everywhere we went.  We particularly liked Urban South Brewing, which has a kids area for little ones to play at.  Lil' Man loved the train table and the tote full of Mega Blocks.  They usually have food trucks, but none were there the evening we visited, so the bartender recommended ordering pizza from Slice & having it delivered. I loved eating at Slice when I lived in NOLA, and I'm happy to say it's still delicious. (I highly recommend the Flying Hawaiian.)

Not really thinking, I put our kiddo down in the kids play area without socks (because it was pretty warm out).  And it wasn't long until I noticed his bare feet were pretty dirty.  And some Mom Guilt started creeping in.  "You put your son down on a dirty old warehouse floor, and let him play?  When were those blocks last cleaned?  He's totally going to get lead poisoning, or Zika, or some other disease from touching all this dirty stuff."  

And then, in a moment of fate, a 20-something girl walked over to our table and said, "I just have to tell you...you guys are doing life RIGHT.  I mean...seriously." And she gave us a little bow. I laughed, and thanked her, and pushed the Mom Guilt aside as I looked at my happy child, contendedly playing, and smiled.  Yes...yes we are.  Kids are meant to get dirty.  And later after we finished our pizza and beer, we went back to the hotel and plunked him into the pool, which took care of all of that soot just fine. :)

Adventures in Parenting: Month 10

Weight: 22 lbs

Teeth: 7

Birthday parties: I'm probably supposed to start planning this, right? O_o

Mobility:  Kid is everywhere.  We're crawling, cruising, and essentially getting into every nook and cranny where his tiny body and giant head can fit.  Baby proofing required some padded corners, cabinet locks, and moving of some furniture to prevent access to some spots.  

We also have this uber-wide entryway between our living room and kitchen--too wide for any available pressure-mount gates and we don't want to put holes in the walls.  So a coworker gave us their 6-panel play yard--we're using 4 panels to block off this entry and the other two near the fireplace. 

Sleep:  Now that he can move around in his crib a lot, this is requiring some adjustment for all of us.  Sometimes he wakes up, sits up, cries or babbles for a bit, crawls around, and then within a minute or two, plops down in a new spot and passes out. Sometimes in some really strange positions.  On at least one occasion, he just flopped forward while sitting up and fell asleep doubled over.

I envy your flexibility, kid.

Or sometimes he stays awake for 10-15 minutes, just sitting there playing with a pacifier quietly, and it's a 50/50 shot as to whether he'll eventually lay down on his own or one of us will have to go in there and soothe him back to sleep.  It's a crap shoot, really.

A particularly rough night, but passed out at 10:04pm.

We've learned to just be wary.  If he's got a cold, we mentally prepare ourselves to get up every couple hours...and then sometimes he surprises us by sleeping through the night.  5 nights in a row.  But we KNOW it's coming--the night when he wakes up 3-4 times.  So we just try to assume that we're going to have to get up at some point EVERY NIGHT, and then if we don't, it's a nice surprise.

Eating:  He's doing pretty well with finger foods and spoon feeding "real" food. I can cut up pasta with some sauce and veggies and ground beef and feed it to him on a spoon, and he'll manage pretty well.  Sometimes he can't quite handle the little bits of ground beef so after he's been chewing on them forever I just fish it out of his mouth (the joys of being a mom). He loves quartered grapes and chunks of watermelon--though he'll squeeze the watermelon until all the "water" is on his high chair tray and then eat the "melon". ...so maybe he just likes "melon".

We've also tried giving him bits of banana "rolled in Cheerio dust" so they're easier to pick up.  Which is true, they are...but that "dust" eventually turns into a "crust" which doesn't seem to end up in his mouth--just all over his hands, face, the high chair....but hey, he's self feeding, and babies are messy. It's what they do.  

He's a big fan of pancakes, his cheese puff snacks...oh, and Mexican food.  Seriously... I think Mexican food is designed for sharing with babies.  Mild salsa, guacamole, refried beans, rice, cheesy bits of soft tortilla...he has a field day!

Nomming on some banana-oat pancakes.

Teeth: He's had 6 for quite a while, so we've just been waiting for his lower lateral incisors to show up.  Finally noticed one of them peeking through the other day, which probably means that #8 isn't far behind.  He doesn't get overly cranky with teething, but it does usually mean a few more wake-ups than usual, a lot more drool, and always having something in his mouth to gnaw on.

Solo Parenting:  I started talking about this last month.  We survived 2 weeks without The Hubs.  Barely. It was pretty rough. I'm glad for a good day care that's open 6am-6pm which gave me some flexibility... if he woke up super early, I could just nurse him, change his diaper, and then take him there in his PJs and they'd feed him breakfast.  Or if I was running late from work because of traffic, I had until 6pm to get him.  For the weekend that we were alone, we went to my parents' house so I wouldn't have to try to entertain him all by myself, and that was really helpful.  He loves Nana and Papa, and their boxer Joey.  

I also had to go to a conference during this time period, which involved an overnight stay.  Thankfully, the conference was being hosted at a resort that was about 45 minutes from my parents' house, so my mom came down to watch Baby J while I was in sessions.  The night before that was tough, though.  Lil' Man wasn't handling the strange room well, and after going to bed at 9pm, woke at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30... after that last one, I just said "screw it".  My hotel room had a king size bed, so I used all the pillows in the room to build a fort around the edge, and brought him into bed with me.  It took him about 5 minutes to get settled down, but he fell back asleep snuggled next to me. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fall asleep because of being paranoid that I'd roll over on him, but eventually I found a comfortable position that ensured I'd have to wake up to turn, and I passed out too. It definitely wasn't the most restful night's sleep ever, but he did sleep until 5:30am that way.

Developments:  He's a jabberbox, with lots of "mamama-dadadada-babababa-nanananan"...but mostly only at home.  Out in public he's quieter, sitting back and watching everything around him and smiling at everyone who passes.

He's also started testing the waters of standing without holding on, and crawling everywhere (including under things, like the dining table and end tables if he can manage it). No longer content to stay in one spot, if we're not in the room with him he's on the move to come find us.

He also loves to make us smile or laugh at him. One of the newest games is him scrowling at us if we touch his forehead or nose.  Then we scrowl back at him and he immediately smiles.

Life with Kids:  We hosted a BBQ at our house for the first time in..well, a long time, but definitely the first time we've had people over since Lil' Man was born.  Many of our friends now have kids, so it was important to me that we be able to keep them entertained.  Ages ranged from 9 months - 3 years.  I pulled out all of the "toys that make noise", bought a couple big rubber balls, and a R2-D2 bubble machine.  I have no idea if any of the adults had fun, but the kids were definitely entertained.  

And of course, then there's Lil' Man's stalker B...who could care less if there were any toys so long as she gets to play with Baby J.

Home Repairs and Babies: So we're looking to buy a slightly bigger place and put our house on the market, which means getting our house up to snuff as well and taking care of 12 years of wear & tear.  Which would probably be a LOT easier without a kid in the house.  Generally, it means scrambling to get as much work done as possible while he's napping, and then taking turns on projects so one person can keep him entertained or work on something while in the same room as him while the other works on a bigger project in another room.  But we've made a lot of progress just in the last couple weeks with small updates:  touch up painting, replacing some worn out looking hardware and flooring, deep cleaning, etc.  There's still a lot to do, but we've got time.