September 22, 2011

Those pictures are of a pretty sick little monkey, although it can be hard to tell. Little man has been running a fever for the last 3 days. The first day was the scariest, all the way to 105 - yesterday it was in the low 100s and today it was mostly fine, just a couple of small spikes. J took him to the doc today and they said that his throat was pretty swollen, but he tested negative for strep. Told us it was viral, the throat is a result of sinus drainage and to come back on Saturday if he's still spiking a fever. Poor little dude. He's pretty cool for the most part, but he has some pretty pitiful moments from time to time. He's so congested and I can tell his throat is hurting him. It's been a LONG week. We're hoping that the fever is gone tomorrow.

That's really all that's new with the Monkey this week. Just trying to beat the sickness - tough little dude.

September 18, 2011

Here are a few pictures of the kiddo from this weekend. The first one is during a very interesting lunch conversation we were having, the second is a picture of his new BIG smile face at WalMart and the last two are a moving photo session before bedtime. He just walked back and forth in front of me while I took pics.

Not much new to report during this little post. Little man is a dancing machine, he will bop and shake to any old song - his favorite are the songs J makes up and sings for him. He spent a few hours with me at work on Friday and he had a great time running in and out of everyone's cubicles and charming people. He's eating more and more non-jarred food, which makes things so much easier when we go out to eat. He LOVES him some bananas. The talking is still pretty much nonstop and now he's added a lot of gestures - hands up with a shrug, palm out to prove a point. It cracks me up. We are putting shoes on him more often when we go out and I have to say that he's so cute in his sneakers - he looks so grown up. Daycare is still going well. We've had a little crying when J drops him off, but as soon as he's out the door it's fine. He seems to have a lot of fun there and he's less cranky when he gets home now. I think he's getting used to the schedule. Other than that, we are just crusing along - sleeping through the night, smiling all the time. I'm pretty sure there are some new teeth coming, but nothing just yet.

September 1, 2011

This has been a tough week for the Campbell family - and while the kiddo has been a trooper, it's definitely thrown him off his game a little bit.

A few new developments for Gage this week:

- I found two new TOP molars tonight - that makes 12 teeth total.

- He no longer wants to eat in the highchair, he wants to eat like a big boy on his own.

- He started daycare this week. It's going to be 2 days a week and he did his second day today.

- He has started to basically put himself to bed, coming up to Jason with his binky in his mouth and one of his stuffed animals when he's ready for a nap.

First things first: daycare! Because of the way the schedule works out, Jason took Gage up there both days to drop him off in the mornings. I packed his lunches the night before and we decided that if I took off to meet them there it may make things harder, so he was the strong one and did the drop offs. There were some hiccups the first morning, but not really with Gage. It was more about some confusion about what kids were supposed to be in what classrooms. According to Jason, Gage was ready to get in the mix as soon as they got there. No tears when he left - little man jumped right in and made new friends. I called to check on him around 11a and the director was blown away at how great he was doing. She said he was laughing and smiling, he had a great time. When I got home I could tell he was REALLY tired and a little fussy, but after his bath it was like a little re-set and he was good. We were nervous that since he would have a little more awareness today that he might cry on Day 2. Nope. Another quick dropoff and he jumped right in again. I decided to leave work early and do the pickup today because I wanted to see him interacting with everyone and see how it was going. When I got there he was throwing balls around with 2 other kiddos and having a great time. I opened the door and when he saw me he gave me a great smile and came running to me. We hung out at the house, he had a snack and a late nap. It was more tough for Jason since he's with him all day, but I was surprised at how comfortable I was. I did call to check on him, but I did not fret about it at all - I just knew he would have a good time. So going forward he'll be at daycare on Wednesday and Thursday.

Ok - the highchair thing: the last few days Gage has been crazy fussy in the highchair. I know he's hungry, but after a few bites he'll throw a fit and not take any more bites. I know he gets to sit in his own chair for lunch at daycare and I usually don't have a hard time feeding him if he's wandering around on his own, so tonight I took him out and sat him in one of the dining room chairs. He sat back, totally relaxed and ate the rest of his dinner - such a big boy. We'll need to get something to help secure him in those chairs - they don't have a solid back OR arms - but I think we are moving out of the highchair. He likes to be independent and sit on his own, and he likes to feed himself when it's possible - finger foods, etc. I need to start letting him work with the spoon himself as well, but I'm not ready for him to be that grown up!!

The "putting himself to bed" thing is actually pretty funny. Jason called me a couple of times last week and was like - uh, the kid is coming to me and basically telling me when he's ready for nap. He'll go put his binky in his mouth and then either bring his singing cow or singing elephant to him and that's the cue. He gives you the big blinking doe eyes and all you gotta do is take him into his room. It's been pretty similar at night as well - he was even getting to where he wanted J to put him to bed for the night, which was new. Such a cute little dude.

Molars? Self explanatory.

It's been a big week in the life of Gage. I'm looking forward to the 3 day weekend so we can spend a little extra time together. We're going to find us something fun to do this weekend!

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.