August 23, 2011

Here are a couple of pictures of the kiddo and I at the doctor's office. The first one is J's favorite and the 2nd is my favorite, so you get a double dose today. The doctor's office has been really busy, so it's actually 1 month past his birthday, but it's all good. The visit itself went great, his measurements are: 32 inches long (95th percentile), 24.5 lbs (70th percentile) and his head circumference was 19.5 inches (93rd percentile). His development milestones are all great and doctor said he's healthy as a horse. I was expecting a blood draw, since I knew it was their policy to do a blood panel at 1 year, but their lab was closed. So now we have to go back for that, which sucks. He had 4 shots and the first thing I asked was how do you give a MOBILE kid shots? It was so much easier when he was a little meatloaf that just laid there. It wasn't terrible - more traumatizing for me, I'm sure. The minute I picked him up he stopped crying and I gave him a cookie, which of course made it all better.

When they do his blood panel, they are also going to test the severity of this egg allergy we've noticed recently. The doctor doesn't think it's a huge issue since it's only shown up as a mild breakout, but he just wants to be safe. In the meantime, no eggs for the monkey.

He's been awesome the last few days, sleeping in, being super adorable and eating like a champ. We have one more week until he starts parttime daycare - I need to get some supplies this weekend to get ready for that. I need to think about what to pack for his lunches, get an extra box of diapers and wipes. I think he's going to have a lot of fun there, but I have to say that I am NOT looking forward to it.

August 21, 2011

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I wrote a blog post. In my defense, it's been a very hectic 2 weeks. I've been working on a ridiculously crazy project at work, the kiddo has been sick and so we all lost a little sleep the last couple of weeks.

Here are a couple of pictures we've taken - there are some others, but he looks pretty pitiful in those. He came down with a pretty nasty cold last week and between the snot, losing sleep, and feeling crappy, he was not a happy camper. Most of the snot is gone and he's definitely feeling a lot better. He was still a little whiny and clingy this week, but it's getting better. I think he's gone through a little growth spurt and we've upped his calories a little, which seem to really be helping. He's sleeping through the night again and we can tell the rest has done him good.

He's been cracking us up lately with his dancing and his facial expressions. He's the funniest little dude, alays hamming it up and putting on little shows for us. He and I have a lot of fun on our little weekend outings together. He likes to entertain wherever he goes, so we make a lot of friends at the grocery store, restaurants, etc. All three of us have tried to get in the habit of doing something all together on the weekends - usually it's hitting up Elevation Burger on Sunday nights. Kids eat free! Gage likes their grilled cheese and J and I love their burgers, so it's a win win.

J and I signed him up for a couple of days of daycare starting on 8/31. He'll be going on Wednesdays and Thursdays to a nice day school we really like. His 1 year check up is next week, so I'll have to get all of his records together and then he'll be ready to go. Neither of us is ready for it, but we know he'll have fun and enjoy it.

August 8, 2011

There has been a lot going on with Gage over the last couple of weeks. I've been trying to keep track so I could write one big blog post - here's hoping I hit everything.

- He got two molars this week...at the same time. I've known for about 2 weeks that teeth were coming. Between the intermittent crankiness, ear tugging and low grade fever, it was just inevitable. I checked his gums every night and then boom, overnight - 2 lowers!
- Walking is pretty much his chosen mode of transportation these days and he's pretty damn good at it. He's even starting to run away from us a little. Tonight I as walking down the hall to get him and he started squealing and motoring the other way. He was cracking himself up.
- He's also doing a lot of DANCING these days. It is SO damn funny (and cute). All of a sudden he's dancing and swaying to all of his musical toys and even if we sing to him (just any little melody), he'll sway and shimmy. It cracks both of us up.
- Talking is still pretty steady, but over the last week we've noticed that he'll mimic us more often. If I say something, he'll jabber back mimicing my tone and inflection. So even though there aren't real words, it sounds just like whatever we said. He's definitely trying to communicate with us, so we just talk back to him. He has started to talk to people on the phone - if J puts me on speaker and I talk to him, he'll respond to me with jabber. It's a fun little addition to my day.
- We have fully transitioned to both whole milk (no more formula, yay!) and sippy cups. I packed all of the bottles up last weekend. He's been doing milk during the day for a month now, but I would still give him bottles of formula if he woke up in the middle of the night - because it worked to get him back to sleep. Over the last week that changed because he 1) started sleeping through the night more often 2) I just bit the bullet and didn't take a bottle in there when he did wake up. So he has had a couple of wake up sessions - usually just one a night between 3-5a and I will just go in there and rock him for a minute and he'll go back to sleep. I've also gotten better about waiting until he's really awake/upset before running in there. There have been times when I thought he was really going to go nuts and I waited a minute and he went right back to sleep. He and I are getting it down, finally.
- He's also eating more table food. It's getting to where J and I can't eat in front of him unless we are ok with giving him food off of our plates. There are some meals I make that are a little too spicy for him, so we are still doing some jarred food, but he's eating more and more from our plates and from what I cook. We took him out to eat with us last weekend and I ordered him an applesauce side, then fed him some of my chicken and potato as well. He loved it.

A friend of mine that came to his birthday party warned me to look out because the personality would start getting bigger and bigger from that point on and she was right. It was like he started walking, turned 1 and now he's his own little person almost overnight. J and I are always commenting on how he looks like a little boy now, where did our little baby go? I will say that he's so much fun though. He goes out with us a lot - the grocery store, restaurants, people visits - and he's just great company. We all tumble around the house together and act silly, he has us laughing all of the time. We've decided that he's just the best kid ever.

July 31, 2011

Well the epic birthday celebration has come and gone. For those that have asked, no I am not stopping the blogs. The intent was a whole year, starting from 1/1, so there are 5 more months to go to finish up that year. Now I can't promise I'll do it every day, but I'll do my best to keep it updated. The first picture is a picture of little man playing with one of his new toys, please note the tongue stuck out as he is working very hard at his new workbench. The second picture is another one we took last night in the middle of his 2 hour fight over going to bed. I posted a really pitiful one on FB last night, this one shows that he was smiling a little bit, but he was exhausted. After the full day of festivities, it took us about 2 hours to get him to bed - 2 hours of screaming, kicking and being ticked off! Poor kiddo, he just had so much fun he didn't want it to end. He was EXHAUSTED though. He went all day with only a 30 minute nap - I have no idea how he did that.

The party was awesome and the kiddo had a great time. He was showing off his awesome walking skills and chatting up anyone that would chat back. I bought a sprinkler/crazy hose type thing for the kiddos to play in out back and Gage had a lot of fun in it. He stood there and just let the water hit him in the face for a few minutes - it was cracking us up. He got to tear up his monkey cake (that I made!) and got chocolate all over himself and me! He and I opened up his presents (mostly me) and little man cleaned up. I think we need to invest in V-Tech, that's for sure.

Thanks to everyone that came to the party and had fun with us. The kiddo is officially into his 2nd year. He celebrated that by throwing some pretty impressive tantrums today. I think he may have some teeth coming in - there was a lot of ear tugging during the fits today. At least I hope that he has some teeth coming in - because those fits were ridiculous and it will be easier to make them less in my mind if there was actual pain involved. Poor kiddo, it's tough to be a little boy.

July 27, 2011 - Happy 1st Birthday!

WOO HOO! It's the Monkey's birthday! I can't believe it's been a year since that precious little baby came into this world. I also can't believe he was ever as small as he is in that picture. I'm secretly happy that he's getting better at this walking thing so that maybe I won't have to carry him around so much. Although he still walks up and wants me to pick him up, so I'm probably fooling myself. J sang Happy Birthday to him when he woke up this morning and I sang it to him when I got home. He got a gift in the mail today, so we went ahead and opened that up and he got a super cute shirt, some jeans and a train from his great aunt and uncle.
He's getting really great at walking, it's turning into his preferred mode of transport - although when he wants to go somewhere fast, he'll still drop to a crawl. He has this toy that is pretty big and his current "thing" is to walk around with it and then randomly throw it on the ground. I'll be surprised if it still works tomorrow. It's really loud when he does it, but man it cracks J and I up. He'll just raise it up as high as he possibly can and then toss it down while he's walking around - did I mention we have concrete floors?
Happy Birthday to you, my little Monkey! You are the funniest little dude and I love you so much.

July 24, 2011

The first picture is just a little fun with the kiddo. The second one is an example of how excited he gets to see himself in the phone (or mirror). It totally makes his day.

The weekend was a bit of a whirlwind. Monkey and I went to Gymboree, where he showed off his new walking skills by pushing the airlog without my help, and then later that evening we went to Southlake to take his 1 year pictures, stopped for dinner at our favorite burger place and then got him in bed around 9p. Did I mention he slept until 9:30a Saturday morning? He did get up for a bottle around 6a, but that's a whole hour later than usual. He took a good nap between Gymboree and the pictures and he was in a great mood, despite us being outside for them. Today was a little more laid back - he slept until 9a and then after playing for a while we all went to the grocery store, took a nap and then Monkey helped me make dinner. We had all dinner and just hung out this evening. Jason and I got his birthday present while we were out and I'm glad that's done.

Got a lot done this weekend, got another big weekend coming up.

July 21, 2011

Someone took a few steps today! J texted me and told me he had taken a couple of steps early in the day. He and I were hanging out in his room after his bath and I got a 3-4 steps out of him. The funniest part is that I knew he wanted to walk to me. I had his binky in my mouth (facing outward) because I was cleaning up his room before bedtime. I looked up and he was standing about 3 feet away from me, staring me down with a smile on his face. He has this look on his face like, "I AM going to walk over there and get that binky!" I stopped what I was doing and called him over and he took 3-4 steps to me! It was pretty awesome. He got the binky AND some kisses. We'll see if he keeps practicing over the next few days. It would be awesome if he was really toddling around before his birthday party.