Babies Need Supervision

Here's why:

Art was playing the dog's water bowl like it was a turtle swimming pool.

I think this kid needs a water table for his 1st birthday.  He loves the pool, bath, and even wants to put his hands in the toilet! 

The yellow and black cord around his neck is the emergency brake for the running stroller.  He decided to put it around his neck today.

Please, Slow Down

I am talking about the time. Have you ever heard the saying, "The days are long, but the years are short"? I frequently think about this each day when we are waiting on Dad to get home. I have to start planning his first birthday party which is crazy because he used to be so tiny. I got to thinking because we had two first birthday parties this weekend.

Here's Princess Brooke opening her gifts. Art is in the picture as well.

He got a few party favors, but they gave away the balloons as well. He loved it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ben's party was at a playground. They had a great setup with a small baby play area.

It was so toasty outside, Art decided to play in the buckets of ice water where the drinks were.



Here are his buddies, Joey (to the left) and the birthday boy, Ben (who is in the center). Art didn't mind the party hat one bit. It was adorable on them!

Playdates

We rearranged the living room so it is more functional.  Forget selling the house now.  I need some space to play with my baby.  Once we take it off the market, we'll really do some rearranging. 

Here's the new setup. The floor is not fun to sit on, but it'll do for now.

Art has this fun tunnel thing that he can crawl through. It was really hard to have the babies crawl through this.  They must have been scared.  You can see my excitement as Ben is the first to actually go for it. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was another playdate at Efrain (on the left) and Claudia's.  He has tons of toys!  This is how babies play together. 

I thought this was a funny one.  Joey is putting Eli's pacifier in his mouth. You can see the pacifier is still attached to Eli.

Here's Art playing with Claudia's phone.  She told him, "You can call whoever you want, but they have to be on Sprint because I am out of minutes."

And finally, all the babies at the playdate.  These are fun pictures to do because you can see how much they change!  These pictures are harder to do.

Left to right: Gwyn, Eli, Art, Ethan, Joey, Efrain, Camille

Around the house

Here's some craziness at our house.

Art was curious with the dog bed.  Luckily he didn't climb too much further into her cage.  She puts up with a lot and we're lucky she's been a good dog. I thought it would have been hilarious if he actually climbed all the way in.

He's checking to see if the dog needs to phone a friend.

Ha. These are really funny.  He climbed underneath the chair in the kitchen and couldn't figure out how to get out.  You can see a pout on his face in this picture.

Here he is in distress.  "I'm trapped in baby jail! Maybe I'll chew my way out."

Here's how he got in there.  He just couldn't figure out that he needed to go back under that bar.

A different view of his face.  His tee says, "I traveled through the birth canal and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." 

I usually dress him in a t-shirt to hang out all day.  If we go out, then I'll put something else on him. If you dropped in on us, he'd be in a shirt and diaper. Luckily, the cloth diapers look like pants.

This is the big boy that was pushing the stroller around.

Adios muchachos!

Bathing Beauty

This video is a few weeks old, but is pretty cute so I thought I'd show you.  He loves playing in the bath.  Instead of setting up a pool outside, I just stick him in the tub.

Just One Blue Balloon (Not 99 Red Ones)

GiGi and Nanny taught him how to play with the punching balloon.

Laugh It Up, Fuzzball

My husband, brothers, and I always quote movies so that's where the title comes from. I actually had to look this one up because I always think it is puffball and not fuzzball. I didn't know this was from Star Wars!

Anyways, Art's new favorite pastime is taking my post-it note cube and tearing the bits apart. I am left with smaller post-it pieces as you can see. I try to piece it back together, but that doesn't work. I guess I need to get over my need to keep everything neat and tidy.

Ahhh...Simplicity

We're back to our simple layout.  I found a template that I like and functions as I need. I have to work out a few kinks, but hopefully you like the changes.  I actually enjoy having my creative side again.

(Disclaimer: For those of you that are into photoshop, I am still working my way around some of the tools.  You can probably tell that I am self taught!)

New Trick

We are trying to get him to tell us when he is done eating. I am teaching him to put his arms in the air and say, "all gone or all done." I guess "touchdown" in the fall will be an easy one.

Cloth Diapers Revisited

I wanted to give you curious folks an update on how we are doing with cloth diapering. I can't say that I love it, because it can be inconvenient and gross at times, but I really don't mind it and it has tons of benefits. It has been super simple and we have even ordered more supplies.

General Use

We use a cover and an insert. No folding or pinning here! When I need to change his diaper, I usually just need to replace the insert unless the cover has gotten dirty. The cover snaps together similar to how a disposable fastens. We deposit the used diapers into the Diaper Dekor (similar to the Diaper Genie) since we had some leftover bags. We have since run out of bags so I ordered a washable liner for the pail. I think it should fit, but if not, then I'll have to buy a plastic trash can. Here's the gross part, if there are any solids in the diaper, then I have to dump those in the toilet and then just place the insert in the diaper pail. Simple, but not always pleasant!

Wipes
This is probably one thing you aren't thinking about. I switched to cloth wipes as well because when I clean him up, I just roll everything together. If I used disposable wipes, I would need to have a garbage can for the wipe and then a separate can for the diaper. I didn't think about the wipes part until I read this. This was a simple change as well and I just made my own wipes. Heck, they're used to wipe someone's booty, they don't need to be perfect!

Initially I purchased a 1/2 yard of fabric (the blue cloud material in the picture), but then figured out that I had plenty of flannel receiving blankets (the cream pattern in the picture). I just cut two of those up. Between both of the materials, I have plenty of two ply wipes. The blue ones were cut so they would fit perfectly into a wipes container. The cream ones are more useful, but have to be folded in half to fit into a container. I put the book in there to give you an idea of the size, they are about 4"x8" and 8"x8".

We initially used water for the wipes, but that didn't seem to work as well. I have since found and easy solution that we use and consists of baby oil (had no idea what I should do with the baby oil until now), baby wash, and water. I use these wipes and solution to clean him up after other messes as well!

Laundry

It is recommended to only have about 2-3 days worth of supplies so I am constantly doing laundry. It really isn't that big of a deal though. Over the past month, I really haven't noticed. I just take the bag and dump it into the washer. I wash it once in cold water and then wash it again in hot water with an extra rinse. It takes 2 or hours to do, but it is easy. Each time, it is recommended to only use 1/4 of the manufacturer's recommended amount of detergent. If there too much detergent, then they can get buildup and not absorb as well. It sounds counterintuitive, but it has worked so far and they smell clean each time. You can imagine that they do get stained so I have used bleach once or twice and that helps to disenfect them as well. We also had to buy special detergent for this since you can't use one that has whiteners or brighteners. I learned that whiteners/brighteners just leave particles on your clothes that make them appear brighter! They do nothing to actually keep the color. These waxes/particles only repel water and make the diapers less absorbent.

Disposables

We haven't completely rid our life of disposables. I do appreciate their convenience when we are out and about and we'll definitely be using them when we travel. Sometimes we'll use them if we have run out of inserts and are doing laundry.

So, I either bored you or answered some of your questions. I am still learning, but this is where we are now!

More Food

I wonder if I have grossed you out enough and hopefully I have not scared you away from the blog.  He seems to be doing funny things while he eats so I love getting pictures.

We finished all of the baby food purees this week and didn't think it was necessary to make any more so we have officially graduated to table food.  I am not ready for this!  I was afraid that I was raising the picky kid because he wouldn't eat some of the food that I cooked especially for him. For example, I have tried on 4 different occasions to feed him a scrambled egg yolk - no win.  I made toast with homemade strawberry jelly - no win. I tried to feed him yogurt 3 different times - no go.  I am determined to not give up (the taurus in me) so I kept going.  Here is an album of some of our recent victories!

I tried shredded grilled chicken which he refused at first, but then ate some.  I think he wants to see me eat it first.  He must have seen me eat it in a salad so he thought it was ok.  I actually got some Chick-fil-a tenders the other night.  He ate a few pieces of his shredded chicken, but then made his fussy noise when I was biting into the chicken strip.  He stopped when I fed it to him.  He LOVED it and wanted more.  I pretty much had to give him the rest of the one in the picture.  He's grimacing because he is thinking really hard.

Funny story too, he bit off a large piece.  When I told him to spit it out, he laughed at me and kept chewing.  I didn't want him to choke so I gave up.  It would be ironic that he would choke when I was trying to keep him from choking!  He loves to defy me.  

Chick-fil-a is VERY family friendly so you can find us there pretty often.  (I was able to get a taste of the new spicy chicken sandwich and it is amazing!  There service is fantastic and I couldn't say enough about the place.)

Back to the blog, here he is tasting some icedream.   I usually let him have a taste and then regret doing so because he'll make noises until you give him more. You have to hide it from him if you don't want him to have anymore.

Here's another favorite.  Watermelon.  I tried feeding him little bite sized pieces, but he would have no part of it.  I finally gave him a chunk and he loves it (you've probably seen the video).  He usually stuffs his mouth.  During this meal, he bit off so much that part of it fell out of his mouth.  The picture shows such a huge chunk that he can't even close his mouth.

Someone mentioned to feed him meatballs so we made some stuffed shells with meatballs.  He ate the leftovers for lunch and devoured all of it.  The meatballs were done first and the pasta was eaten soon after.  That was a very messy meal.

After a birthday party last weekend, we went to our favorite BBQ joint, Fat Matt's Rib Shack. (my mouth waters even just typing the name!) Before this day, he was finicky about all of his foods.  I decided to give it a try and feed him some pulled pork and baked beans.  He looked at me like I was crazy at first, but once he tried it, he kept coming back for more.  I didn't have any disposable placemats so you can see I had to create a makeshift plate which is actually a tupperware lid.  I held it for him so he could pick up his food.

He was a mess, but loved the food. 

So, looks like he's no longer a picky eater.  He still loves goldfish and cheerios but at least he tries other things.

Pool Playdate

I always complain that Marietta seems to be an established neighborhood with older children. I finally found some moms in the area with babies the same age as Art (and some are even walking distance!). Here's us at Yhaira's pool.  She's the one taking the picture and has the only girl! 

In the back: Nani and Nico

Left to right: Christing and Ben, Tanya and Joey, Claudia and Efrain, Me and Art

Ben is the oldest, then Art, Joey, Efrain, and Nico

Housekeeping - The Dog Can't Help With This One

Don't be shocked if you see a new background in the next few weeks.  I don't like the current one and plan to change it.  What is up with the random white rounded rectangular box in the top, right hand corner?  I am not skilled enough with HTML to find where it is and delete it.

The Best Floor Mop Ever

I hear people complain that they need a floor mat under their child learning to eat.  I just tell them to get a dog!  Morgan is the best at cleaning up messes and will eat most anything.  I think she got a little sick of watermelon, because I had to pick up a few extra pieces, but I can't be too upset. 

Brian and I always says that we would like to invent a device that the dog can pull to sweep up all of her fur, but I guess floor polisher fits her better.  She's finally earning her keep!

New Sippy Cups

He now drinks out of the straw!  Listen to him go.

Water, Water Everywhere...

We went to the pool last weekend.  It was a little chilly for him at first.  You could see him somewhat grimace at the cold, but know he wanted to be in the pool.  We both got used to it.

Can you tell he loves the pool?

I mean, really loves the pool.

We spiked his hair again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We got season passes to the aquarium so we took a trip down there with GiGi and Rowan.

Here we are waiting outside.  It is usually busy, but the trick is to go in the morning and only look at the large displays.  We spent 2 hours inside.

Rowan wanted to see Deepo, but then got really scared when she went up close.  I love her face.

We were in the tropical area when they were feeding the fish.  One of the divers stopped to say hello.

The leopard shark wanted to say hello.  

Art is looking at the "Ocean Voyager" tank.  According to the site, it is "the second largest viewing window in the world at 23 feet tall by 61 feet wide and 2 feet thick."  There is plenty to look at and you can be there for hours.

The sea otters were actually playful this time. They usually sleep when we are there so it was exciting to watch them play.  Art is trying to get a closer look.

Goodbye aquarium!  Hopefully we'll see you soon!

Self Feeding and Improptu Baths

I have let him feed himself more recently. He is a slow eater so we have to be patient with mealtimes. You can imagine how many impromtu baths we have had recently.

Frozen blueberries seem to be his favorites.  When we went to the store the other day and I reached in the freezer to get them, he shuddered with excitement and also gave a little squeal. 

 After being a short order cook at breakfast, I have found out that he doesn't like eggs.  He usually drops everything for the dog.

The vegetable soup was a big hit. Veggie chunks were soft and perfect for the little guy. I let him pick them up, but I also fed him the ground beef.

The soup part was a little messy though.

Here are his fingernails after eating blueberries at snacktime.

Brian and I had a good laugh at this picture that I took. He has a potbelly.

Tiny naked butt!

Good Night, Atlanta!

He is practicing so he can be the next Jimmy Chamberlain (Smashing Pumpkins drummer for all you non-fans).