John's Day in Review

6:30 Wakeup.  Scream over diaper change. Get diaper change standing up. Nurse. Nurse in every possible laying position on mom's lap. Stop every minute to look around, making sure to push and pinch in the process.  Barf all over Mom and the chair.

7:00 Play nicely in office while Mom has a conference call since babysitting doesn't start til 8am. Poop at 7:15 while mom is on the phone. Make sure it gets on PJ's before she can get off the phone to change diaper.

7:30 Scream over diaper change Get diaper change standing up. Wriggle as much as possible.

7:35 Breakfast.  Since prior days include nursing at 6:30, 7:30, and 8, mom decides to give oatmeal for breakfast today instead.  I've had oatmeal lots of times this exact way but today its disgusting.  Spit out all of it.  Watch mom pour it into the reusable pouch that I LOVE to eat out of it. Same oatmeal. Spit it all out.  Whine about not getting what I want until 8:00.  Try to be cute so I can get more yogurt melts and raspberries. Come on Mom! I know there are more raspberries in the fridge! What do you mean, "not on sale, I can't have an entire carton in one day?!"

8:00 Daddy takes over. Thank goodness. Play time. Mom goes to work.  What happens with Daddy stays with Daddy.

8:15 go visit mom in the office. She ignores me while I play on the bookshelf. Remove as many books as possible from bookshelf onto office floor.

8:30 Nap.

10:00 Awake and time for a little more milk.  Nurse. Nurse in every possible position. Pinch and pull and look around.

10:07 Lose interest in nursing.  Who put all these books back? I wanted them on the floor.

10:30 Run errands with Daddy. He is so fun!

12:00 Lunch.  Dad tries to trick me with that squash-tasting mac and cheese. No way, buddy.  I get yogurt and berries and cheese instead.

1:00 Nurse a little more with as much difficulty as possible.

1:30-3 Nap

3:00 Playtime with  Daddy.  Play in bedroom with new hand-me-down play kitchen. Open microwave door. Close. Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. Clo---oops, finger stuck. Back open. Close. Open. Close.  Look! Another door on this thing! Open. Close. I love this.

4:30 Mommy off work! Daddy suggests going out to dinner. Great idea.

5:00 Go to mall for Red Robin.

5:45 Done eating at Red Robin but still 1:15 til bedtime. That place is too fast!!!  Mall walk.

6:30 Bath.  I stand up after 30 seconds so bath ends fast.

6:32 Scream during diaper placement and PJ dressing. Get diaper and PJ's on standing up.

6:40 Nurse for 10 minutes. More looking around and trying out every possible lap position. Barf all over Mom.

6:50 Mom takes me into my room with lights out, music on. This means business!  I better get the rest of my milk.  Tries out 3-4 nursing positions before finding a comfortable one.  Nurse as slow as possible to avoid going to bed.  Mom tries to stop me 3 times but no - I am STILL EATING despite long, long pauses and staring into nothing. Finally, FINE - I'll be done.

7:15 into bed. Night Night.

10:00 or soon -- night feed.

3am - wake up again and cry. Mom used to feed me during this time! I used to reward her once in awhile with sleeping til 8.  As punishment for getting ignored at this time, I'll be up at 6!!!


Note: Can't have a post without a picture. These are actually from yesterday, messy play in the backyard. Notice I am holding my current favorite toy, a reusable ice cube.

 Why did Mommy make a bowl of spaghetti for me in the middle of the day? Isn't this a dinner food? What does she mean, "sensory play" ??  I'll fling it around the backyard instead. Oh look! MUD!

Quiet Books, Post 2!

The quiet books are coming along nicely.  This has been a really fun project. More than I set out to do, but still fun.  I already have a lot of ideas for add-on pages for John's book, but I know I need to finish my own contributing pages first! (I have about 12 more at varying degrees of completeness.)

L: Mirror with flap, and a vinyl window for a picture with a flap. R: Xylophone for imaginary music play.

L: Beads on a String for counting, R: ribbon lion

L: Peek-a-boo animals. R: Baseball glove (insert hand)

L: Learn to tell time. R: Under the Sea (sliding fish)

L: Apple Picking  R: Sensory Octopus.

I have to hand it to these moms.  For many of them, this was way out of their crafting comfort zone, and I am so proud of them for knocking these out of the ballpark!!! And all of the moms either had a second kid this year, their first kid last year, or are currently pregnant.  So we are all pretty tired!!!  Hopefully these will afford us a nap. :)  I can't wait to get John's put together and see what he thinks.  So far when I just show him one page, he plays with it for 10 seconds then tries to fold it or eat it.  In true book form, I hope it will be a little easier to interact with.

9 Months

So John is 9 months later this month and I thought I'd beat the 9 month post for once. I wanted to write about travel and food but I'll get these updates out of the way first.

We've gone to our first park now. "John. Hey John. Do not put that in your mouth! Look at Mommy for the camera!"

Then this happened. Oh well. 

John continues to be extremely mobile, here is crawls under the chair and then pushes it around. Very entertaining.  Praise God he has entertained himself very well this week. Not long ago he required constant interaction. Now I can pretty much lay on the floor and doze at 6am while he plays with his toys while I earnestly pray he doesn't fall on anything if I fall asleep.

 While he is playing well, he is napping, well, slightly worse.  Kiddo does NOT want to go to sleep!!! Major angry screaming (I know, a sign of being tired) but no matter when we put him down. Also, up to 3 wakeups a night after being down to only a dream feed.  Sigh. But he squeezed out his second tooth and now is drooling like a crazy man, so maybe we're working on the top ones now.

My "baby" barely fits on my lap for pictures anymore. I used to prop him up on my knees in the recliner and read, play, photograph, etc with him - now he takes up all the space and is huge! I had to hold the camera way back to even get this shot.

Sweaty boy can really rock the curls.

John is also waving, knows his way around the house (translation: crawls down the hallway and around the corner to my office and bangs on the door if I am inside.) He says Adada and Tsstsstss. He loves all food, lately especially chicken, watermelon and strawberries.

Life Happening

Well, I'm ridiculously late on the 8 month update as well. And I put him in the same onesie as 7 month. Oops.

Someone loves crawling "freestyle" after bath time.

Finally met Uncle Nathan

I hated my road trip with John (only hated the driving) but I love the Central Coast in the spring. Gorgeous.

First Swim Lesson...must take more pictures next time!

First wagon ride...

Introducing backyard water play, aka, how to wear out your child to get them to nap. Also known as, how wet can you get with 2 cups of water?

Not impressed with Easter or a fake chocolate bunny.

Mildly interested in bubbles.

John is 17 pounds and described by many as "having a lot of energy." He crawls, pulls up on everything, loves to be tickled and play peek-a-boo, and the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star song.

Quiet book update soon!

Then and Now

I can't believe how fast this little guy is growing. I was scrolling through my instagram feed and seeing our sleep training chronicles (evidenced via many pictures of an awake boy) and realizing how long ago that was.  We don't have a total schedule going, but we have perhaps 4 different possibly day schedules that seem to shake out depending on wake time and length of first nap.  

So here are little baby fingers within the first month.

 Here are chubby 7 month fingers dirty from crawling in the backyard.

 One month old, chilling on his play mat.

 7 months old, can't keep him on the play mat! And chubby legs for days!

 Case in point - Popeye escapes the blanket.

 We're trying out some cup training. What better place than the bathtub? With clean water of course.

 Blinked.

 Happy bathtime boy!  Zach usually gives the bath and usually climbs in. John wants to stand in the tub all.the.time. so this seems to be the best way to keep him safe for now.

Nothing special

Non-baby topics? Does anyone even read this anymore except for John updates? Who knows. I do know that I love reading all sorts of updates from other friends, from kid stories, hearing about favorite products, and thoughts from the heart.  So I'm challenging myself to write something more about myself or something interesting.





This is a busy time for us. Well, mostly Zach. His senior project is shooting their film at the end of the month and into May. He is the Assistant Director so he has a lot of pre-production responsibilities organizing the 6 days of filming.  Plus there are 3 other senior projects in full swing as well and everyone is helping on the other projects as well.  This makes for long weekend days away working on sets and lots of Mommy-John time on weekends. (Oops, I just talked about the baby.)  I don't mind this time since I'm back to working full time and I don't frequently get full days with John. But I find myself cramming activities and chores into our time together, at the expense of reading books and tickles.  I wonder if he likes playing with the babysitters (15 hours/week) more than me since they devote all of his waking time to him.

I was feeling pretty low last week, no real reason why, probably mostly stress.  After the weekend with John and visiting some friends, I felt a lot better.

At a church work day Saturday.

I did a trial box from Citrus Lane. Its a company/website that sends you a little box of baby treats monthly. There was a deal and I was able to get a trial box for $9.  However, the site is devoted to showing you awesome baby products (yay) but it makes me think I need all of those things (not yay.)  It would be so easy to spend so much on unnecessary things!  I appreciate the glimpse I've had into this website (and I'm excited about my box) but I'm trying to remember that we don't need more things!!!  Already during baby proofing I fill up a bag of excess stuff for Goodwill every week. Ironically, many of them trinkets, vases, and other decorative items originally bought at Goodwill.

Prayer. We are hoping to dedicate John on Mother's Day (or Father's Day) and we have to do some prep work including reading "Shepherding a Child's Heart." I'm excited to start it after hearing good things from several friends.  I've been praying a lot - when I am at my wits end with a crying baby in the high chair, a crying baby not wanting to go back to bed, a whiny baby I am tired of, and ideally during happier times as well [put down the ipad and pray for John during nursing.] Mostly I pray that we are parents enough for John. God gave him to us to watch, to teach, to love - so he must have known we can do it (with His help!)  We DO have enough strength to sway and shush a teething baby 5 more minutes. We DO have enough strength to pick up his spoon, thrown to the ground, again.  This has really helped my attitude when times have been hard.  Which is not super frequent - John really is a joy - but if you consider my time with him during the week is 6a-8a (I'm tired) and 5p-7p (dinner, bath, nighttime and he is cranky) - is not the best time for either of us.  I am so grateful of a job I can work from home so I can fit in some snuggles and books during lunchtime. And I'm thankful that most of those working hours, John can be cared for by Zach.

So much for not talking about the baby.  I feel like I might have had some other thoughts but now sitting here at the computer I am drawing a blank.

How our photo shoots go

Yesterday John was wearing a cute coordinating outfit. (Love hand me downs!) So this of course requires a good picture, right? (Future additional kids: sorry there won't be any of these of you.) So here is how our photo shoots usually go down. My general thought process is in the captions.

Look tired much? 7am is too early for you? Also - background: horrific.

Grab closes blanket and drape over couch. reposition squirmy baby. Again. And Again. Chair is still showing.

Open the blinds and get the kid to sit. Blanket still looks horrible.

But if you crop a lot, you can get an OK picture.

Still not the best. Wipe off drool and snot. Then I put pillows on the couch so the back blanket would go higher.  Since there were pool noodles right there (planned baby proofing tools) I also sat him on top of those for a little height.

Final product! Still a little bunchy but with enough high pitched random noises we can get a big smile.