Today is our third anniversary. We didn’t do anything special because we are going on VACATION starting tomorrow and we come back on Monday. Boo-Boo did however bring me home three beautiful yellow roses. We are going to a secluded (meaning no internet, no TV, no phone service) cabin in the mountains. It has a beautiful river view (it’s called the River Nest) that we plan to enjoy. I will be away until later next week but once I return I will post pictures of all our adventures and the roses. Until then stop by Smidgel’s page as I have uploaded some videos (be for-warned, some of them are very long).
11 Months Old
Smidgel turned eleven months old on Saturday. We had a great month and it was filled with tons of new things. At the end of last month, he loved to play Patty Cake and Peek-A-Boo, but only when prompted. This month he would just start doing them out of the blue and get a huge smile on his face waiting for you to join in. Just like last month he isn’t as interested in his toys as he is with the stuff we have laying around the house. I have had to move stuff off the first shelf of the bookshelf because he discovered all the photo albums. He has also learned to lift the top to the toilet seat so that he can play in the water. The majority of the time he ends up closing it on his hand and then screaming because his hand is trapped. He also will not leave the dogs water alone and it is starting to drive me crazy. The only other slightly annoying thing that has come about this month is that he throws a tantrum (screams and cries) when you take something away from him or stop him from doing something. I figure it is just the beginning of what is to come so I will deal with it.
We have been to the pool a few more times since last month and he still loves when we go. We haven’t gone as often as I have wanted to but hopefully that will change over the rest of the summer.
He has conquered the stairs, both up and down. We have to get him started coming down but once he gets going he has no problem. If I don’t put the gate up on the stairs first thing in the morning that is the first thing he does once he is done drinking his milk. He will actually go over to the stairs and wait for me to get up. Once I get up to come and get him he high tails it up the stairs. I have tried a couple of times to just wait him out but if I take too long, he starts going up and peers through the stair rails. If I don’t get up or when I peek to see where he is, he starts going anyways.
On July 4th we took Smidgel to the carnival that was in town. It was a small carnival but they did have a carousel that he could ride. I had to go on with him because Boo-Boo can’t do rides that go in circles. I was able to get him to do his screaming thing while we were riding which ws a lot of fun. He had a great time and dad took some great pictures.
He is still a wonderful eater but he has gotten much messier. We have been letting him practice with a spoon and sometimes it just gets out of hand.
There have been a couple of times that I have thought to myself, “why did I even get you dressed before coming down for lunch? I should have just brought you down in your diaper, let you eat and then put your clothes on”. It is about time for us to do laundry and I know that I am going to have to stain treat pretty much every piece.
A few other tidbits and milestones. He has gone out the doggie door to get to his father once. He looks out it regularly but hasn’t gone out it but that one time. He has started to stand up from the floor without holding onto anything. He stands there for a few minutes before falling to the ground. He hasn’t taken a step yet but we both think that walking is only a week or so away. He walks all over the place with his walker, as long as it doesn’t get stopped by something. We have offically stopped using a bottle (unless all the cups are dirty in the morning and I am too lazy to clean them) and he goes to bed with his cup now. He did really well last month with only getting his pacifier at nap time and bed time. We were supposed to start transitioning to not using the pacifier at all this month but that isn’t going so well. He does great with not having it during naps but so far he has gone to bed with it each night. I am okay with him having it at bed time for now. I believe that is all for this month…only one more month to go before our little man is ONE!!! I will be adding videos from the last month to his page over the next couple of weeks. I will continue to add other videos as we take them so continue to check back there.
Baby News!
I don’t know how many of you venture over here from Erika’s blog but I just wanted to give a quick update. Her water broke early this morning so she is in the hospital and the baby is on his way. I will update more as I recieve more info.
Updated to add: Baby boy born 9:52 am; 7 pounds, 11.5 ounces; 20 inches long.
CONGRATS EC, TRAIN AND SHERMAN!!!!
Cell Phone Update
I ended up taking the battery out of my phone and letting it dry out overnight. The next morning when I turned it on, it was initially acting funny. Every time I pressed a number a * would appear. After a few minutes it starting dialing the numbers that I pushed. It took the rest of the day for the volume, speaker phone and other side buttons to work but it is functioning just fine now.
Unathorized Charger
That’s what my cell phone thinks right now and it isn’t hooked up to a charger. I accidentally dropped it in the toilet (I was hiding it from Smidgel and had put it in my waist band, obviously I forgot about it) and it may be toast. I tried to turn it off and it wouldn’t turn off. I tried to unlock the keys (I had them locked because Smidgel was playing with the phone) and they wouldn’t unlock. I have taken the battery out and it is drying on the table. Please, please, please dry out sweet little phone. I really can’t afford to replace you right now and you have pictures of my little man stored in your memory that I really don’t want to lose.
Endocrinologist
Yesterday was Smidgel’s endocrinologist appointment. They weighed and measured him so that they could chart his growth compared to our doctor’s visit in May. He weighed eighteen pounds, nine ounces (10th percentile) and was 29 3/8″ long (50th percentile). Our nurse was a little confused at why we were there because she didn’t see anything wrong with him statistics. She asked if there was anything that we had changed since May and I told her that the only thing was that he was formula fed now. The endocrinologist came in and said that they are usually only concerned when there is a decline in both weight and height. He said that since the blood panels run at our primary care physical showed normal levels he didn’t see the need to run any additional tests. In other words, Smidgel is a normal kid, just skinny. I asked if he still needed to see the developmental pediatrician (scheduled for next Monday) and again the nurse looked confused. She said that children are normally only sent there if they are behind in their milestones and she said Smidgel definitely isn’t behind in milestones. We have since canceled that appointment.
Brown thumb
At the beginning of the year, or some time around then, one of my bosses friends brought us giant pumpkin seeds from his 700+ pound pumpkin from last year. There were twenty in all and we split them between three of us. Of course my boss always has to have a competition of some sort so we bet that we each would get the biggest pumpkin out of the bunch. I started growing mine in little pots in the house and they did great. I then transferred them to a nice spot (or what I thought was a nice spot) in my front yard when they got too big for their pots. That was around May. There were seven in all and I have been struggling to get them to continue to grow. I lost three of them to some animal and the other four really have not grown. I was out marketing with my boss today and he told me that one of his plants is huge and he has two pumpkins. I had been wondering if my plants were far behind the growth curve and that confirmed that they were. I actually had not looked at them since last weekend because it has been raining every evening and into most mornings so I did not need to go and water them. I looked at them when I got home today and they are not doing well at all. They look the same as the last time I saw them and another one has been eaten. I don’t think there is any rescuing them. I did talk to my boss about what we did differently and his are in a raised garden area. He said the soil was imported and he had been adding ashes from his fireplaces all winter. So, I don’t know what I am going to do. Maybe I will pull them back out of the ground and try putting them back into a pot with just potting soil this weekend. I guess I am not going to win the “bet”.
P.S. The third person has since left the company so we have no clue how well hers are doing.
10 Months Old
Smidgel is ten months old today. It has been a really great month that was filled with lots of laughs accompanied by big smiles, a couple of bumps and bruises and of course all kinds of new things.
He has become a little less interested in his toys and is more interested in everything we have laying around the house. I had been keeping him in the living room and just putting up a gate but he likes to have free reign of the house. As long as I pick up the water and the cat food (he tries to eat it) we are good to go. He spends most of his time pulling the golf clubs out of the bag, following the dogs to the doggie door, looking at himself in the washer and dryer or pulling everything off of my bedside table.
We have had to get back into the habit of putting the toilet seats down or we will find him playing in the water. The stairs have only been an issue once and I hope it will stay that way (unlikely if his grandmother and uncle continue to teach him how to climb them). So far he hasn’t gotten into all the photos and books we have on our built in bookshelf in the living room. We hope that because of the way we have the living room set up he won’t realize all that stuff is there. If we have him on the couch he wrestles with us to get over to the blinds. Once he is there he stands up on the armrest and tries to hang on the blinds. I was letting him do it but it was starting to get old so we have put a stop to that.
He loves his bath time and we have been to the pool twice now. He loves the pool, which I am thrilled about. Both times that we have gone he has had a great time. When we take him out of his floatie he tries to stick his face in the water. I have let him do it a couple of times and he just sticks it in and comes back up, it is crazy. Swimming was a huge part of my childhood so I am very excited that it seems he will be a natural in the water. Bath time is fun and games now but he keeps getting himself in trouble because he tries to stand up in the tub. He spends most of his time staring at the running water.
Some other new little tidbits are that he is still a great eater but once he is done he starts throwing his food and cup on the floor. You have to quickly remove everything from his tray or the floor will be littered with food. It is quite annoying because he is totally doing it on purpose. I say that because he looks at us straight in the eyes, laughs and grabs another handfull. Another annoying thing he has begun the last couple of weeks is sticking his fingers down his troat. I don’t know why he is doing it but he has made himself puke twice. We have figured out that if we just ignore him he will stop. He has transitioned over to a sippy cup, once we found on he liked. We still give him a bottle when we put him to sleep but that is the only time that he gets one now. He is a huge copy cat and when we take family trips in the car he spends most of it screaming. Why you may ask? Because his father says “ahhhhhhhhhhh, scary Mommy driver” so Smidgel copies him. It is really quite humerous and I will have to get Boo-Boo to record it on our new video camera here soon. He is doing much better with CJ now and only sent him into one small crying fit last weekend when we were in North Carolina. The majority of the time he either ignored him, played nicely or listened when we told him to be nice.
We have decided that this month he is only going to be allowed his pacifier when he is taking a nap or going to sleep. We implemented that today and he did great, ever when we left the house. Hopefully next month we can just do away with it all together. Last but not least, he has another tooth! That’s all for this month, only two more months and my little man will be ONE!! Maybe we will be walking by this time next month…
P.S. You can track Smidgel’s growth through his page that can be found at the top of my blog.
Appointments
Our doctor’s appointment on Monday went very well. They weighed Smidgel and he weighed seventeen pounds, seven ounces. He is now in the fourth percentile. The doctor checked his ears and they were clear of infection. The rash was long gone by the time we got there but I did bring it up. His doctor felt that seeing it lasted less than twenty-four hours that it was probably a reaction to something in his environment and wasn’t something to worry about. They did try to redraw his blood but our nurse did not do a good job. The first time around she just had me hold him and of course she missed his veins. So, as she waited for it to magically fill with blood I had to try to keep Smidgel as still as possible in my arms. She then left the room for a few minutes while I got him settled down and then came back to try on the other arm. This time she felt that we would have better luck with me holding him while he was laying on the table. When she went to inset the needle she hesitated and nicked him three times and then left again. At this point he was hysterical and tired because it was well past his nap time and we had been there for over an hour. She sent another nurse in to do damage control and she asked how many times she tried. I told her that she tried twice and nicked on of the arms three times in the process. She apologized to me and told me that he had gone through too much that day and we should come back today (Wednesday) and we should see her. I made the appointment for this afternoon so I wouldn’t have to take him. I just couldn’t stare into those pleading eyes again so I felt it was Boo-Boo’s turn. The second nurse did it this time around and she got it on the first try. Boo-Boo said that he started crying once they put the tourniquet on so he knew what was coming. We should get the results tomorrow. Smidgel turns ten months old tomorrow so I will include pictures of him then.
Bye-Bye Boobie
Two weeks ago today we said goodbye to breastfeeding. It was becoming a battle every time we tried to breastfeed and I was just over it. I was suplimenting for the most part throughout the day and the morning and evening sessions were very short and often full of stops and starts. The funny thing however is that once we started bottle feeding I found out that is just how he is. It is taking him two to three hours in the morning to finish a six ounce bottle. For the first three ounces he sits still but after that he is on the move. I just put the bottle (now his sippy cup) on the floor and occasionally he comes by for a quick sip. So, we are now a formula family. A week or so after we went to formula we found some great deals on formula at Target. We had gotten two five dollar off coupons from Similac in the mail and when we got to Target one of the end caps had a sale on different formulas. One of those was Similac. They were selling thirty ounce cans for eighteen dollars because they were dented. We got two thirty ounce cans for thirteen dollars a piece, crazy stuff. We probably should have picked up a few others at the eighteen dollar cost but we didn’t think that far ahead. Hopefully when we are due for some more we will find a silimar deal again as I have gotten more coupons in the mail.
Tomorrow we have another appointment. This one is supposed to be a weight check and to redraw his blood but I don’t know if the later will happen. We are once again battling a rash, a cough and he is digging at his ears. If he has another ear infection the blood draw will once again have to be put off. Being sick seems like a never ending thing here lately but I really can’t complain. Despite having infections and rashes he is still very happy. I will update tomorrow on what they had to say.
Towering Expectations 
