Baby Boy turns one!

Well, it happened over a month ago, but now is as good as any to write about it! Baby Boy is officially a big boy! He turned one, and before I forget all the things he's doing at one, I'm going to write it down. Where do I start? He is developing more and more personality every single day. Every moment of every day! Daddy and I are convinced he is losing those precious chubby cheeks a little more every day, and we are starting to see the maturity in his face as he turns into a little toddler! I guess he's not a toddler quite yet...not technically. I think they say toddlers these days are babies that can walk. He is SO close! He just started standing up on his own, and sometimes he'll just stand there, looking around like, "where do I want to go?" just teasing us because it looks like his next move is a step! Daddy and sit about three feet apart and encourage Baby Boy to walk between us, and he'll take one or two steps and then fall down onto his butt. Every day, I practice walking backwards in front of him while he clasps his tiny hands around my index fingers. I slowly pry his hands off my fingers and let go, and he just thinks it's so funny! He knows that when I loosen my fingers, I'm wanting him to take some steps, and he just starts laughing as he takes giant steps toward my legs before falling to the ground laughing. One of these days, I know he'll just surprise us and start walking!

Gosh, there is so much to write...he is doing so many things. On a negative note, he has been introduced to "timeout" almost every single day! He gets very worked up sometimes and strikes his little hand at my face and slaps me! I yell, "no hitting," and if he hits again, he gets plopped into his room with the door shut, and oh man, it's the end of the world. Sometimes his cry lasts a good ten seconds before the inhale, and after about a minute or two, I go in to find him sitting there, red-faced with crocodile tears pouring down his face. It's heartbreaking, but he needs to learn, "no hitting." Now, if he starts to hit me, I'll say his name in a loud voice, and he'll just look at me, soften his face and touch my cheeks gently. It's SO cute! And if he hits again, he goes right back into his room. It's our very first attempt at discpline, and so far, we are being very consistent, as hard as it is! It breaks our hearts to hear him cry like that, but how else is he going to learn? The next challenge will be keeping him in his room. He is a very tall boy, and he can reach the door handle. So, as we stand in the hall, waiting for the minute to pass, the door handle jiggles back and forth. He hasn't quite figured out how to turn it, but he's so smart, so I'm sure it won't be long!

Let's see...what else...he says "mamama" and "dadada" all the time, and "baba" for bottle. Sometimes he'll say, "mama, baba"...what a smart little guy! I think it's pretty early for him to be putting two words together like that! He has a bathtub book that I read to him every night. There are pictures of monkeys on one page and elephants on another. Every night, I say, "where's the monkey?" And believe it or not, he flips through the pages until he finds the monkey. He's so smart! :)

One of Baby Boy's favorite pasttimes is pushing anything he can get his hands on around the house. He has a train that is a walker, and he pushes that everywhere! He is getting so quick at it that he's almost running. He just started, in the past two weeks or so, to be able to maneuver it wherever he wants it to go. He can go down the hall, stop abruptly and turn the train around and head the other way. He also pushes around his dump truck and makes frequent stops to pick up rolls of toilet paper or Daddy's sandals (which are, of course, lying around, haha!).

Baby Boy loves, loves, loves our dog Cooper. They have become such good little buddies. Cooper would never bite Baby Boy, but sometimes he growls to show who's the boss! They love to play with stuffed animals...one end of the animal in Baby Boy's hands, the other end in Cooper's mouth. They play tug of war until Cooper wins, and Baby Boy just cracks up. Sometimes Cooper will growl and then act like he's going to nip Baby Boy's hand before licking it, which makes Baby Boy laugh even harder.

Daddy and I just adore Baby Boy. We love to just sit and watch him eat or pick something and try to figure out what it is. Baby Boy is SO contemplative. He picks everything up and really studies it. He is a real thinker and analyzer. For instance, Daddy and I took him to a splash pad today and while the other kids are running around, Baby Boy finds a little crack in the ground near one of the water sprouts and sticks his finger in it, trying to figure it out. He must have sat there for five minutes. So cute! Well, while I'd love to write more, it's 10:30 pm and time for Mommy to go to bed! Will write more soon :) I just can't get enough of my little guy and I love to write about everything he does!

The little things

Ah, a blank piece of paper (or big, white screen). So refreshing. An endless space to record my thoughts. While I could get as deep as the ocean with those thoughts, I won't. I'll keep it simple. Sometimes simple is best. In the life of a mommy, sometimes simple is definitely best. For instance, a lot of money and time is spent on buying your baby that perfect toy when (as we've all heard), he'd rather play with the box it came in. Tearing paper nice and slow and then speeding up at the end triggers the deepest belly laughs from Baby Boy's mouth...not my attempt at funny faces or silly voices...the tearing of paper. The shampoo bottle makes a better boat than the actual red and blue toy boat. Pushing the trashcan lid around the kitchen is better than the magnetic, musical toys that have become lonely stuck to the fridge. My keys are SO much better than the three fake sets that belong to Baby Boy (they even make clinky noises). Making the kitchen blinds rattle is more entertaining than any goofy dance I can perform while preparing Baby Boy's breakfast. Splashing sink water is more fun than playing in the little pool we just bought and chewing on books is better than reading them. It's the simple things.

And today he discovered one of the simplest pasttimes I could have ever thought to offer him -crawling up and down the walkway between our front lawn and our front door. It was after his afternoon nap and before dinner time that Baby Boy started to get antsy (as he often does around this time). So, I took him outside, thinking I'd show him the pinecones from our pine tree (yes, suprisingly, pine trees can survive in Phoenix...somehow...) or flowers from my potted plants or blades of grass. No interest, none at all. He wanted to play with the rocks. He banged them together, rubbed them in the dirt, tried putting them in his mouth. And then he crawled. He crawled toward the front door, and I followed. He crawled back, I followed. I just sat in awe as he crawled back and forth, caring nothing about the hard cement on his knees. He smacks his hands, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, as he goes. So precious. There is nothing cuter, and there is no better reminder to appreciate the small things. The simple things...

When life hands you oranges...

Okay, I know the true saying is "lemons," but hear me out. I believe that all things happen for a reason. I have been thinking about starting to blog again for months, but who would read it? (I ask myself) I figure that anyone who once had faith that I would post one or two blogs a month probably lost it a long time ago. I think my last blog was in December. Oh well, better late than never, right?
I was taking a walk yesterday, thinking about blogging and my lack-of, when I had the thought, "what would I even blog about? Nothing interesting has happened lately..." Then I hear a little voice.
"Would you like some orange juice?"
I look across the street and follow my dog, Cooper, who is already running to greet the three girls standing in their driveway with a little plastic pitcher full of juice.
"Sorry, I don't have any money," I say.
"That's okay."
"But aren't you selling it?"
"Ya."
"Well, I don't have any money."
"That's okay."
"But I thought you were selling it?" I ask, puzzled.
"We are...for free!" the youngest replies.
How cute!
So I take a free cup of juice and continue on my way.
It was confirmed. There are small moments every single day that could be recorded, and what better way than through a blog?
Then today, it was reconfirmed. I re-read through some of my old posts and realized that I had already forgotten half of the things that have happened in the past several months. What will I remember in 30 years? Most likely not much. So, I have made it my goal to spruce up my blog site with photos and cool backgrounds and entries (novel idea, right?)
As I said, when life hands you oranges...
You know the rest.

yuck

I haven't blogged in two months and for some reason I wait until I have something really icky to write about. Being sick. Yuck in so many ways. The experience of having one clogged nostril and the other running like a river down your face into your mouth is literally yuck, and the other yuck is just feeling yuck. And the worst part is that Baby Boy is also feeling yucky. :( Poor guy. So far, the hardest part of mother hood is having a sick child (not waking up three times a night or trying to figure out what a continually crying baby is asking for). It's being sick. I started fighting this darn cold more than a week ago, and I thought that, with enough rest and vitamin C I would fight it off. Wrong. My immune system finally succumbed to its challenger and I caught the cold. And so did Baby Boy. Two nights ago was the absolute worst. Me, Baby Boy and Daddy were up til 3 in the morning. Baby Boy wanted to nurse SO bad, but couldn't because his nose was so clogged. He would nurse, gag, pull off and cry...so hard. I felt so bad and so helpless. We kept trying to nurse and finally gave up and fed him rice cereal at midnight. Fortunately he ate it or I'm not sure what we would have done.

So, 1 a.m. rolls around and he's been up since about 10, and it's been nothing but crying, pacing the house holding Baby Boy while he was crying and doing everything we could think of to calm him down. Daddy played him the guitar. For the first time ever, that didn't work. I sang to him, tried to lay him in bed with me to go to sleep (which ticked him off), sucked the boogies out (which REALLY ticked him off) walked him around the house, tried nursing him, giving him the bottle...we tried everything. At 1 a.m.,an hour after the rice cereal feeding, I put Baby Boy in the car. It's the only way to calm him down sometimes. Immediate silence in the backseat, and after 10 minutes of driving (which, in my given sick, half-awake state of mind, I really probably shouldn't have been), I headed home. I carried the carseat into the nursery, transported him into his crib, tiptoed out and crawled into bed...until 2 a.m. 45 minutes of sleep...I can't complain...it's the most I had gotten all night. He cried in my arms til 3 (which felt like an eternity) and then I did the one thing I should have done to calm him down a long time ago. I stood in front of the mirror, holding him so he could see his reflection, and alas, a smile! We stood there for a good 10 minutes because it was the only tool I seemed to have that let him forget just how upset he really was. After that, for Baby Boy, it was playtime. I gave him my Tylenol bottle, which he found very entertaining. It's not a fun feeling when your baby makes a new discovery at 3 in the morning and you're hardly coherent enough to be happy. But, I was happy. He discovered that he could use the Tylenol bottle as a shaker, so he just kept shaking it (did I mention he had a smile on his face the whole time? After so many hours of crying, what a relief...) The smile made me happy, but his calm nature made me crave the bed even more. He's happy so it's time to go to sleep, right? I was sick, I felt miserable and that's all I wanted to do. So, Daddy went to bed in our bed and Baby Boy and I slept in the guest bed. I propped him up on some pillows and hoped for the best. He woke up every hour or so after that, and I'd just lean over and nurse him until he fell back to sleep. So, needless to say, neither one of us got very much sleep, but Baby Boy is such a trooper...he was full of energy the next day (until his two-hour nap, which is not at all typical). So, I learned a valuable lesson. It doesn't matter how sick you are or how little sleep you've gotten or how hard you pray that your little one goes to sleep. He still needs you, and that's what keeps you going. Running on fumes somehow feels like a full tank. And it's totally worth it.