Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, from our little turtle man!

This is his first Halloween, and I made his costume!

As I put it on him, I realized that I forgot to cuff the pants...but he didn't complain.

We love our little turtle!

7 Months

Little Man is 7 months old. We can hardly believe it! He still shows almost no interest in crawling, but he is getting better at sitting and reaching. I figure it is only a matter of time until something is just far enough out of his reach that he goes for it!


He laughs and laughs with us, plays back at us and shakes his head when we say "nooooo." It is so fun to play with him and have him play, too!


He loves peek-a-boo, though in our house it is usually called "Where's Little Man?" "There he is!"

Such a great baby, we're so grateful for the gift he is to us!

Cloth!

Man, it is addicting! I love our cloth diapers, and we have plenty (30), but I can't help but occassionally covet new styles, colors, patterns, etc.

We use Bum Genius 3.0s, but the 4.0s are coming out and they have new colors. Specifically, mirror, dazzle, and sassy. The mirror color is a cool turquoise, and my new favorite! Cottonbabies is our prefered retailer, and also the company that makes BGs.

There are also some cute Thirsties that have owls on them! I'm doing my best to not buy more diapers than I need, but boy is it tough.

Weekend Wrap Up

This is the "we need a babysitter" edition.

We have awesome friends and neighbors who are willing to watch Little Man for us when we need to be out at night, but it is getting to be time for us to get a real babysitter. By 'real' I mean someone that we pay to come hang out with LM, like a high schooler.

Friday night, Frank and I attended the Young Life South Arlington Banquet. It was really fun and it has reignited my desire to be involved with YL. Frank and I are hoping to contribute some of our time and resources to YL-SA in the near future, we'll have to wait and see what exactly God has planned for us in that area. They are a small but feisty group, and we can't wait to get to know everyone better.

Saturday, Frank spent the morning volunteering his lawyerin' talents out in Fairfax so LM and I hung out around the house doing stuff like laundry and making baby food. That afternoon, I got to spend some time with Tina and do a little shopping - we both needed new outfits for a friend's birthday dinner that night. It was way overdue, it has been ages since the two of us got to spend that kind of time together. Saturday night we went to our friend's birthday dinner and had a blast. It was a group of people that we don't see that often anymore, so it was great to catch up and just hang out.

This week I'm hoping to getting around to finding a babysitter so we can stop begging our friends to spend their weekend evenings on our couch. We'll see how it goes!

Baby Food

I had my first adventure in making baby food last week. It was pretty easy and really truly took about 20 minutes. Granted, our nanny was here so I was able to focus solely on my task the entire time, but it was quick enough that I think I could manage to do it once LM is down for the night or even just napping.

We started with carrots. Frank brought home a bag of baby carrots and I got to work. I boiled the carrots (you can also steam them but that would require an additional trip down to the basement and back and another thing to clean...so I boiled them) for about 12 minutes, until they were soft. (gross)

Then I threw them into the food processor and....processed them. That is it! I added a little bit of the carrot water to the mix to help break things down while processing, then I used a spoon to divide the carrots into serving size containers for freezing.

Now I have 14 servings of carrots in the freezer, just waiting to be thawed and consumed. All for about $2.00.

Our next try will be sweet potato (we already know he likes them), then maybe something green...can't wait!

Wordless Wednesday: DC Livin'

Book Review: Nurture Shock

It has been called "Freakonomics for Parenting," and that seems pretty accurate to me. This book was very interesting, offering new and different views on everything from praising your kid to how much sleep they need and when.

I would recommend this book for parents, teachers, and care takers, but just like any other parenting books you can't take it as scripture.

I think they did a good job of sharing studies, questions, conclusions, correlations, etc in a way that hands you the results but doesn't preach an absolute way to manage issues. It is less of a 'parenting' book and more of a 'maybe we're approaching these issues the wrong way, or maybe not' book.

Worth a read if you have the time and are around kids of any age!

Hold on!

LM and I hit Target on a last minute run the other night. Frank was watching the Patriots game - a well deserved break as I'd been away for 7 hours with nary a complaint from either one of the boys - and our trunk was full of stuff from a baby shower I had just co-hosted. All of these things lead to me needing to take LM into Target with me, but not being able to access the Snap-n-go in the trunk and not having a carrier with me.

LM got to ride in the cart like a big kid! He was amused when we were moving, but seemed worried when we stopped. He was a total trooper and never fussed, and then slept all of the way home...very exciting stuff when you're 6 months old.

Sick

Little Man is sick for the first time. He's had low grade fevers and even some gastrointestinal issues, but this is our first virus.

It started with a little sniffle. Then he added a low grade fever. Then came the cough - it is awful hearing your baby cough!

The doctor said that he is weezing a little, so we're doing a albuteral treatment three times a day. It seems to be helping, a lot! LM isn't a huge fan, but he feels so much better afterward that it is worth the struggle.

Also, we've tried carrots. The first time didn't take too well, but he's coming around.

Unintended Compliments

I try not to brag here, at least not about myself, but I can't contain just how flattered I was the other day when a friend unintentionally paid me an enormous compliment. I happen to think that the unintended compliments are the best, so natural and just wonderful in their nature.

I was at a the baby shower I was co-hosting and a friend who had her second baby in July just looked at me and asked "how did you lose the weight"?

Might not seem like a compliment to you, but to me it was a HUGE compliment! I worked really hard to drop as much baby weight as I could before my brother's wedding and before I had to go back to work. And even though I'm still carrying an extra 10lbs (which I've decided to not try to lose until we're finished nursing), I feel pretty good about the shape I'm in. (sometimes I get down on my pudge, I can't help it)

I was so flattered to be asked the question because the question assumes that I have lost most of the weight.

Once I gave my answer (Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred), my friend said "now, I gained 50 lbs with this baby" and I laughed and said "I gained 46 - it works, I promise"!

The best part was that this conversation was had over the most delicious apple cup-pies I've ever had. And that is how I'm going to hang onto those last 10lbs.

Wordless Wednesday: Big Kid Style

Truckeroo 4

Truckeroo 4 was not as awesome as the first 2 we attended. This was mostly due to three things:

1. It was cold. Even before the sun set, it was chilly and windy. When the sun went down, it was down right cold. I was not dressed for cold weather, and while LM was wearing extra layers he wasn't wearing enough warm layers to hang out for too long.

2. It was crowded. Truckeroo has been getting lots of press, positive press, and rightly so! It is a fun evening that does something I've never seen another DC event do - it crosses all social boundaries! Everyone loves food trucks, and so everyone comes to Truckeroo. I think we'll have to start attending during the day to make this a worthwhile event for us. That would require me to take time off of work, so maybe it will be a once a summer thing for us going forward.

3. My so-far-favorite truck didn't have my favorite dish available. I have been waiting for this dish (goat cheese mac n cheese with swiss chard and garlic chicken) for WEEEEEKS. Needless to say, I was bummed when they didn't have it listed on their menu for the day. I'll be writing a letter to management to voice my displeasure (actually, I'll just tweet at them, they'll get it faster).

All in all, the Truckeroo experience has been a fun one and I hope they will do it again next year! Maybe they'll start earlier in the spring, too. And maybe they'll do a Saturday offering for those of us working parents....something else to tweet, I'm full of tweets today.

6 months

Little Man is 6 months old! Happy Half Birthday! (a few days late) (the pictures were taken on time, my posts are tardy...sorry)

He weighed in at 16lbs, 7oz on the 29th, placing him in the 30th percentile for weight and he is 26 inches long/tall/whatever, 45th percentile. No sweat, since the scale includes formula babies and LM is still 95% breastfed with a little rice cereal thrown in.

He is sitting on his own, but we're still struggling with rolling over - more tummy time! He hates it, but he has to do it.

Still sleeping through the night, and he is actually pushing his own bedtime back a little bit these days. We're back up to about 3 hours of nap time spread over 2 or 3 naps each day and he is sleeping for 9-10 hours at night.