Plenty to be thankful for

The title is an obscure movie musical quote from my favorite of all time, Holiday Inn (also the movie for which White Christmas was written).

Today we celebrated with Strawberry’s family and Curly enjoyed himself thoroughly. He tried turkey for the first time and it was a big hit. It was our first “successful” baby-led weaning food and he actually swallowed a big chunk of it with no gagging. Tomorrow we’re celebrating with my family.

It’s a whole different experience celebrating holidays with a little one in tow. I feel very glad that we didn’t have to travel a great distance and that Curly’s routine wasn’t disturbed much thanks to naps in the Pack n Play. But oh my goodness, the amount of STUFF we have to schlep everywhere!

But we’re so thankful for it, and for a healthy, happy son…supportive family on both sides…the ability to live within our means…and for each other. We wish you all this kind of Thanksgiving, even if you may have to wait a little longer for it.

Pictures (and video) worth a thousand words

All by myself….

Come on, admit it, you sang that blog title, too.  Was rather hoping someone on Glee would sing this in last night’s episode, but oh well.

We seem to be in a break from teething. The whimpering has stopped, and although we can’t see them, 2 sharp little teeth can be felt on Curly’s lower gums.

In the last few days Curly has suddenly become really good at sitting on his own and he’s beginning to figure out how to get from belly/crawl position to sitting and back again.  But he’s become IMPOSSIBLE on the changing table. Thank goodness it’s not every change, but more and more often he flips himself over and tries to crawl away.  Even if we’ve got both of his ankles in hand, he flips his torso.  The other night I ended up holding him nearly off the table by only his ankles.  I am not looking forward to the day when he tries these antics in the middle of a poopy diaper change.

Oh, and we got this cool new toy that when you press on the top of its head it plays a cheery little tune and “crawls” along a hard surface slowly for 15 seconds.  Great motivation for a baby that’s beginning to crawl.  I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone with dogs that play with/destroy toys, but cats would likely be fascinated and entertained by it as well.

Waiting on the painful pearly whites

Cool things about the 6th month around here:

• Almost crawling
• Sitting up on his own
• Being completely distractable by just about anything
• More and more solid food
• The bottom teeth are coming through!

Not so cool things about the 6th month around here:

• Almost crawling (must babyproof!!)
• Not being able to get into the sitting position by himself, or out of it well yet (usually he falls backwards and cries)
• Is only distracted by just about anything for a few seconds or minutes
• Solid food is sometimes difficult to work into the schedule twice daily because of bottle feedings/naps/teething pain
• TEETHING PAIN. We can feel the bottom ones coming in, they just need to cut through. The poor guy is frequently miserable despite teethers, teething tablets, tylenol, and motrin. Nothing will help until the teeth are finally through.

And now…

It’s a drag

Based on his hands and knees rocking, we were sure that Curly would be crawling around 6 months.  Well, he’s not there yet, but he can get where he wants to, if he’s determined.  See evidence below.

Teeth are still not visible, but the poor guy has been miserable the past 2 days.  He whimpers like a tiny puppy and can’t seem to focus for more than a few seconds on any toy.  He’s still eating and sleeping well (knock wood) and can be distracted easily, but as soon as he loses interest in the distraction, he’s back to the whimpering.  We’ve been dosing him with tylen.ol and teething tablets and letting him gum cold things and nubby things.  We’ve thus far avoided dosing him with rum, whiskey, bourbon or any other alcoholic substance, as suggested by some friends.  We hope those chompers break through soon and Curly feels more like himself.

Baby boom

We took a little road trip this weekend and had a blast. We stayed with friends about 2 hours north of us who have a 3.5 month old. Since we got there past the kids’ bedtimes, they didn’t meet until the next morning while we got to have our “grown-up” time in the evening. Curly appreciated playing with all of his friend’s cool toys and playmats, though he wasn’t too interested in his actual friend. Perhaps this was because Curly thought his 6 month old self was too cool for a 3 month old. Soon enough that kind of age difference won’t matter a bit…

All you care about is my playmat?

The next day, we travelled about 30 min into the nearby big city to meet up with the gals from Love+Love=Marriage and their adorable son, HP. The two boys seemed very interested in each other, and Curly was his charming, smiley self for the mostpart.

Who needs to smile when I can fit my hand in my mouth?

We all indulged in gourmet chocolate treats (well, the boys just watched) and then walked around the city, shopped and chatted. We hope to meet up with them again in the future as they are really cool people 🙂

Sunday’s weather was beautiful, so Nutella and I took Curly to the park for a walk around the lake and a small picnic. Curly’s new thing is that he dislikes socks and tries desperately to pull them off. This is quite amusing to watch as you push him around in his stroller and the socks stick off the tops of his feet longer and longer each time he grabs them. We finally gave in to his sock-less demands and let him air out his toes in the warm day’s sun. Hopefully he doesn’t keep doing this when it’s 20 degrees out. Sorry, Curly…winter is just around the corner…

Sweet dreams be yours dear

Reducing my supply has gone more easily than I had anticipated.  I still breastfeed Curly first thing every morning.  But since Sunday (5 days) I have gone as long as was comfortable before either pumping or hand expressing.  As the “demand” has dropped so has my “supply.” Here’s detail of how it’s gone:

• Sunday: breastfeed 8am, pump 6pm, hand express 10pm
• Monday: breastfeed 7am, hand express 6pm, hand express 10pm
• Tuesday: breastfeed 7am, hand express 9pm
• Wednesday: breastfeed 7am
• Thursday: breastfeed 7am

I feel full when I wake up  but the rest of the time I’m fine.  For now, Curly is still breastfeeding well first thing in the morning, and I’ll keep it up for as long as that’s the case.

Strawberry’s mom stayed over on Tuesday night, so once Curly went to bed we had the opportunity for a midweek date night.  Our exciting date location… the mall.  We induldged in some Godiva truffles and bought Curly the most perfect (and appropriate for him) onesie ever.  It was $2 on the sale rack at B@by G@p.

In other exciting news, we are looking forward to a meet up with the lovely Love+Love=Marriage family on Saturday.  HP and Curly are birthday twins, and we may all just faint from the power of their cuteness combined.  Once we recover, we’ll be sure to post photographic evidence.

6 month birthday

Curly is 6 months old today. Wow. At first, it felt like we would never get here. The first 3 months dragged on…but now we’re here and time has shifted into high gear. It really is nice to be at this point. He’s so entertaining and getting mobile, and you can see those little wheels a-turnin all day long. We know the next 6 months are going to move by at lightning speed, and we’re excited to see all of the many more changes that they bring.

It was Baby’s First Halloween yesterday and we managed to hit some houses in our neighborhood and see some friends. It had been a while since we’ve been trick-or-treating so it was nice to have a good reason 🙂 We did a family costume of the Flinstones. I was Wilma, Nutella was Betty and Curly was Bamm Bamm. Nutella, the crafty little seamstress she is, made all the costumes herself.

Like the caring parents we are, we are not allowing our 6 month old to indulge in the sugar-laden bag o’ goodies we got, and are eating all some of them on his behalf. Except for the strangest item I think we’ve ever received after a night of trick-or-treating- melted pop-ice. WTF? Needless to say, that one went right into the trash. Curlyfavorite thing of the night? A puffy little bag of pretzels that he chewed on for a good 5 minutes while we walked (the bag, not the pretzels).