independence day

So I'm sure that the five people who read this blog have been waiting with bated breath to find out how my first days away from the baby went. Right? :) Well, all went surprisingly (amazingly!) well. Meltdown man kept it in check, and was extraordinarily well behaved, thank goodness. Thanks so much to my mother in law, Chris (aka Grammy) for coming over and taking such good care of him. They had a great time together, and let this nervous mama rest easy. (Of course, I did cry during my training class on the first day. Shocker.)

Here's a good idea of how the day unfolded:

Good morning shnuzzles:

Standing up

Standing up again

And again

Standing up, and getting his move on (I know! Check out that look of determination)

Unexpected visit from Uncle Jeff

Good night shnuzzles:

And that's it! A few tears here and there, but nothing noteworthy. Not a bad day, right? Thank you for taking such good care of our little guy, Grammy!

d-day

Ok, before I get to anything baby related I just have to say that JC and I are watching women's diving at the Olympics, and the female commentator drives me flipping nuts. She's so negative and patronizing, UGH. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

ANYHOO.... we're watching the Olympics in an effort to keep our minds off tomorrow, which will mark the very first day that I've left the baby for more than 2 hours, aaaaargh! I have to take a mandatory work related class on Mon and Tues, 7:30 to 4, so Grammy Byrne is coming over to watch the little monster. I am nervous, not only because Grady is at the point where he totally knows if JC and I are there or not, but also because his attempts at the bottle are hit or miss. It could go really well, or it could be a total disaster. I wonder if Grammy really knows exactly what she's getting herself into... :)

Hopefully, tomorrow will be smooth, and there will be alot of this going on:

I hope that this is how he spends tomorrow, chilling with his favorite kitchen utensils inside a cardboard box. Unfortunately, I think there's a pretty good chance that there'll be a lot of this going on, as well:

Thankfully, we have plenty of wine on hand- just in case.

unbelievable

This is the second night this week that Graydon has slept straight through the night! 6pm to 6am! Twelve straight hours of blissful, uninterrupted slumber! Seriously, who is this baby?

bust a move

Let me just say, this last month has been craaaaa-zay! Graydon has undergone what can only be described as a developmental explosion. He is doing soooo many new things and it is all JC and I can do just to keep up with the little guy. So, to recap:


First, the 6 month checkup. This checkup was mildly disappointing in that we weren't able to get an accurate weight (somebody wouldn't sit still on the scale). He appears to be somewhere between 18 and 19 lbs, as far as we can tell. 27 inches long. He seems to be in perfect health (knock on wood). He got all his shots, and was a cranky cuss for the next 4 days (ugh. He absolutely has definite reactions to the vaccines. Shot day/week is no fun in our household).




Sleep training. Sleep training was going well until shot week reared its ornery head and bit us in the ass. All our work was for naught as Graydon was feeling so crummy that he fought sleep even harder than he usually does. We had several nights where he just stood (yes, stood!) in his crib and screamed FOREVER, and both JC and I broke down and went to pick him up. It's impossible to let your own child cry it out if there's even the slightest possibilty that he's in pain. Simply impossible. So all the progress we had made went pffft. Right out the window. Currently we're trying to get back to where we were, but it's been rough. Especially now that he's standing. Tonight as I put him down, he started crying, and when I turned around at his door to wave good night, he was standing at his crib, sobbing, with his arms held out towards me. Ok, seriously? Hardest thing ever in my life to walk away. Worst. mom. ever. But I know from prior experience that picking him up and rocking him will just make him more over stimulated and take him farther from sleep, so it has to be done. But holy crap, it suuuuuucks.


Now for the fun stuff! My boy is a DEVELOPMENTAL GENIUS. That's right, I'm calling it now. In the past month (5.5 months to 6.5 months) he has accomplished the following:


-started sitting up, which was immediately followed by
-crawling, which was immediately followed by
-standing on his own, which was immediately followed by
-cruising down the side of a couch/ottoman/whatever.



The boy is SO ON THE MOVE. Prediction: he will be walking by month 9, possibly sooner. All he wants to do is move. And it's so fun, at this point, because he follows JC and I around. The other day, I put him on the floor in his bedroom and then went into the bathroom to start his bath. When I turned around, guess who was in the bathroom with me. That's right! This kid is quick. It's really fun to watch him get around. And he's so proud of himself when he gets where he wants to be. It's starting to get fun to have him around! Scandalous. but true!



Here are some pics from today:

Trying to hoist himself up...



Almost there...



Success! Now he can relax.....




Hanging out and blowing rasberries (does this all day long):



Sticking his tongue out at me (also does this move all day long):



Giving me a shit-eating grin- what a devil:



And finally, on a sad note... farewell to Sassy, who may be headed to that big doggy meadow in the sky this weekend. We'll miss you!

love is in the air

On Thursday, Gray and I drove up to Annapolis to see our good friends Kim and Fitz and their baby, Miss Casey Elizabeth. Casey is soooo stinking cute, and now that she's walking, she is all over the place. She and Graydon had a great time playing with her toys (he would pick up a toy, she would take it away, he would wildly flail his arms trying to get it back from her, usually hitting her in the process, she would cry, or he would cry, or both- it was fun!). At any rate, not too long into the visit, something became increasingly evident. Graydon was smitten. He was behaving like a boy totally besotted. It was clear that he had a crush.

But, I am sad to report, it was not on this pretty little lady:

No, instead, Gray was in love with this.....thing:

Is it a dog? a bear? a wildabeest? I have no idea. All I know is that it was big, it was hairy, and it was pink. But he rolled on it, and climbed on it, and hugged it, and tried to eat it, whatever it is, for a good half hour, which is a lifetime for someone of his short attention span. He couldn't get enough of this crazy stuffed animal. And so, we are on the hunt for a similar one (maybe not the pink, though). Kim got it as a gift so she doesn't know where it came from. Any ideas? Because, clearly, it is a must-have item:

In the meantime, Graydon plays with his favorite toy at home- a coffee can filled with beans:

His other favorites are the dog leash and a plastic spatula. Seriously. At least he's not costing us alot of money. Yet.

right here in river city

So... the fashion show game... not so much. Today I tried to put Gray in a variety of different outfits, all of which he squirmed out of almost immediately. Trying to put anything on that boy (diapers, onesies, lotion) is like trying to dress a cat- totally impossible. I swear his head actually did a complete 360 today when I was trying to jam a hat on. And then getting him to sit still for a picture? Not happening. Here's an example of some of his best shots:

In this last one, he is mocking me because once again, he got out of his outfit before I could snap the picture. Sigh.

It would seem that child modeling is not in the cards for us.

So instead, today we played the game "Hey kid, do you think you're old enough to watch TV? Here's the remote". Ha! Just kidding! Kind of. When I was pregnant, I swore (swore!)that MY children were never going to watch TV. But now, I don't care if he wants to watch Rambo, parts one through eight; he can watch anything he wants if only he would just. sit. still. Just for five minutes. Just for 30 seconds. But alas, it's not to be. He will glance at the TV and then turn back to whatever he was doing, which is usually crying, trying to eat something inedible, crying, trying to climb up something unstable, or crying. Such a nut.

Speaking of eating things that are inedible, today I tried to get Graydon to eat sweet peas again. He had them a few weeks ago and didn't seem to like them, but the Gerber box and all the baby websites say to reintroduce foods that didn't go over well the first time, because they may actually like them the second time around. So I did. And he made faces with the first three bites, but he swallowed them. And then? on the fourth bite? Before I had even gotten the food near his mouth? He opened his mouth and vomited. Vomited sweet peas. All over himself. I've never seen anything like it. It's not like he had a spoon or his fingers in his mouth. He wasn't gagging or coughing. He simply looked me straight in the eye, opened his mouth, and willed the peas to come back out. I kid you not. What have we gotten ourselves into, I would like to know.

I tried again to get some pictures of his new teeth. They are seriously adorable. But that child will not let you in his mouth for love nor money. Here's the closest I came to snapping them:

Sealed tighter than a bank vault.

summer daze

Ok, so this blog is finally working again. For three days it kept shutting down on me everytime I opened it, citing some sort of "problem with internet explorer". Did anyone else experience this? Was it just my computer? Anyway, we seem to be back on track now, sorry about the delay in posting.

This has been a pretty slow week anyways, for us. It has been so freaking muggy and hot that I am loath to leave the house very much, especially with one chubby, sweaty baby in tow. When it was winter, I couldn't wait for the summer, because I was sure we'd be out all the time. Now that summer is here, I am barely holding on til autumn. Will I ever be satisfied? Probably not.

Since we haven't had much to do outside, baby and I have had to find new ways to amuse ourselves indoors. He likes to play pattycake, but there's only so many times I can play that before my head explodes. So, we've started two new games. One I like to call, "Let's see what ordinary household item we can imagine is a New, Exciting Toy" (also called "Here kid, why don't you play with this tupperware bowl for a while"). This is usually a fun game for oh, five minutes before Senor Antsinmypantsohmygoshineedtomovetomovecan'tsitstillcan'tsitstill

moves onto something else.

The second game I invented I like to call "Fashion Show" (also called "Let me dress you in the many outfits we have laying around that are supposed to be for a 9-12 month old but that you are clearly going to be too big for tomorrow fat boy"). In "Fashion Show", I like to dress Graydon up in clothes that may not be considered "seasonal" or "climate appropriate" or even " a good fit", but are clothes that he has never worn and are going to the storage bin without ever making it on to his long, chunky frame. Every day this week I will be featuring a picture from our runway extravaganza. Up first:

Adorable russian babushka hat that I registered for and Grammy was kind enough to buy and yet never wore since we never left the house this past winter due to crazybaby/nervousmom/cold:

Cute right? I know. Fashion Show is a fun game.

You may have noticed the long face in the second picture. That's because tomorrow we go for our 6 month checkup and shots. As Aron Boggs would say, "meerph". Additionally, my mom's cat broke his leg so we have to go take him to the vet first thing in the morning. I hope Graydon likes cats. More importantly, I hope the cat likes him. I don't have the faintest idea how I'm going to corral both simultaneously.

Tomorrow is not going to be fun.