"Because You're Totally Worth It"

The next L'Oreal hair model has been discovered:

Whenever I wash his hair I spike it up, it's amazing how long it is!

Wind In His Hair

Here he is getting blasted by the turkey baster. You can see his top teeth when he starts laughing!

Cute 'Ems

I put out a big blanket in the yard on Sunday because it was so nice. I brought his shape blocks his water bottle and the camera. He was most interested in the grass and pine needles and leaves, as usual. Here he is, and no, he is not wearing pink lipstick...I don't know how this happened.

Band Practice

Here he is banging on things. I like it when he bangs on the pot and then goes to look in the middle of it as if there is something in there making that sound:

I Love Babies

Remember this post when I said I was scared of babies? And I was scared to hold baby Kavi? Now I want to hold every baby. We went to our friend Ross and Kate's, they just had a baby boy; he's almost 4 weeks old now. His name is Eli and he's adorable. I held him for almost an hour and he slept the entire time with a couple of squawks and other funny sleep noises. He is so much lighter than Stanbear who is now 7 months...almost 8! I was having a hard time imagining the Bear at 4 weeks or at that size. So tiny!!! Gosh they grow fast.

What Happens to Hats

When you leave your hat at our house (Christina) this is what happens:

One Year Ago Today

I've been keeping up this blog for just over a year now! I looked back to February 22, 2012's post and found this picture of pregnant me:

So happy and pregnant (and naive) was I! So much has changed yet I am still happy (and tired)...over the moon for this little guy!

Underpants Swing

Here is a video of him in the ol' underpants swing (or actually it looks like a sumo wrestlers starched uniform.) I apologize for my sound effects.:

Baby Food Palate

Isn't this pretty? It was taken by my friend Suganya. She makes her own baby food too. They are cubes of her frozen delectables. From left to right: squash, spinach, apples, carrots and mangoes

When making baby food I will put them in these ice cube trays that have lids:

 

Once the food is frozen I will pop out out the frozen food and put them in tupperware containers in the freezer. So all the pears will go in one container, all the squash in another, etc. The night before a day care day I just have to grab cubes out of the containers and put them in one of his food containers. It makes food prep so much easier. By the time morning rolls around they have defrosted.


What he has eaten so far from his most favorite to his least favorite (although he really will eat them all. Even after a yuck face he will continue opening his mouth for more):

He has also gnawed on celery, pineapple core and a piece of bell pepper. These feel good on his gums while getting to experience different flavors. You have to really watch him gnaw on these, especially the bell pepper and celery, as his teeth can now cut little chunks off of these foods and he can choke. I tend to give him the pineapple core the most because if he does get a chunk it is softer and falls apart more easily although it is a juicy mess!

He has also tried Baby Mum Mums which is a rice cracker in the shape of a surfboard. He seems to really like those but I don't like that they have sugar in them so I'm in search of an alternative biscuit/cracker suitable for a wee one. He also is practicing his hand dexterity by picking up Green Puffs (which is like a rice puff cheerio with kale and spinach) and putting them in his mouth. He gets it sometimes but others it gets trapped in the palm of his hand.

He has also tasted several different spices. Cinnamon is the most common as I put that in his apples and pears. The other night we went to a party and he ate his first guacamole (I tried to give him avocado bits only, no red onion or pepperflakes) but I think he got some cumin and coriander flavors in there as well as some lime and some spiciness. He probably could've eaten an entire bowl full of that.

On deck for his food eating is spinach, for strong muscles and maybe another leafy green like kale. I can't  wait for summertime when we get peaches. I think he will love those. I also want to branch out into the spices a bit more. Any other baby food suggestions?

Jumping Bean

Stanley got two big toy-thingies in the last several months. First he got an exersaucer from Auntie Sue and fam and then a jumper (bumper jumper) from one of Mike's coworkers. When we first put him in his exersaucer he sat/stood there looking at all the different things around him. Sometimes he would go bananas and whack everything with his hands as if playing a drum solo, other times he would really get into each individual toy and spin it, chew it, tug it, grab it. He would never jump. Then we got the bumper jumper. Now all he wants to do, it seems, is jump. When you hold him on your lap he arches his back to stand and then he collapses his knees and then stands up as if to jump. I can just lift him up and down and he has this spring to his legs now. So now when he goes in his exersaucer he JUMPSjumpsjumps! Have a look:

Good Posture

Mike and I were remarking on how amazing Aki Bear's posture is. We would like to teach him to keep it up. I wonder when he'll start slouching...the teenage years? or before that?

The Love of Yarn

The love of yarn has been passed down to another generation:

Knitted Bib

I made this bib from the pattern in the book One Skein by Leigh Radford. Isn't it adorable? My model is pretty fantastic too, even if he has broccoli and carrots on his face.

 Here he is hamming it up for the camera:

Baby Thighs

Squishable, soft baby thighs. The pediatrician says that 6 months old is usually the peak of chubby legs. Here is the 7 month chub:

Aki Bear and the Cat

He loves Dickie the Cat. He expresses his joy with his open mouth and arm flap. He smiles everytime he sees her. It's adorable.

The Park

 This is the second playground that we've been to now. This particular one is super close to our house and there are probably 6 different slides. We went down almost every one of them. This time he was big enough to sit in the "underpants" swing and not fall out of the leg holes. He had fun. He would wiggle his legs while swinging. It was cute.

Texture

The Bear loves to put everything in his mouth. I think he relies on his tongue to gauge how soft or prickly something may feel. When we read his touch and feel books he touches them with his hand and then touches them with him mouth. Here he is feeling a pinapple with his mouth:

Learning to Pluck

One of my favorite things to do is to sit Stanbear on his blanket scatter a few toys about him and sit on the couch and watch him as if he is a hit, primetime T.V. show. I'll just sit there and try not to say anything unless he looks at me or or "asks" me for something. The other night he was playing with the ukelele which usually he just hits/slaps with his hands. He has seen his Pa play it many times so he knows how it works. This time it was especially fun to watch him because I was able to observe him discovering something. He was hitting the uke at first, just flapping his arms (this takes place in the video at about 32 seconds) and his hands would hit the strings which sounded almost like he was strumming it and then for a long while he was looking intently at the strings and touching them and then his finger latched on to one of the strings and when he pulled it away it made a high, clear sound: Plingggggggg! (this takes place in the video starting at about 2 minutes, 32 seconds) Music to his ears. He carefully placed his finger there again and pulled. Plingggggggg! and again and again and again. He would look up at me and at first I would say, "Good Job!" even though I just read something about not praising your children but instead use statements like, "It looks like you figured out how to play the ukelele?!" or "Doesn't that sound nice when you pluck the string like that?" It takes practice to make comments like that rather than just say, "Good Job!" Anyhoo. It was fun to watch him discover something. He would look at me and I swear that look was a, "I'm so humble but proud that I figured out how to pluck the string!" (this takes place in the video starting at about 2 minutes 48 seconds)Here's what I got on video it's a little long and uneventful (that's why I gave you the highlights above in green!) until he starts to pluck!:

Big Boy Stroller

Sorry, no post yesterday - I've fallen behind! 

 

Watch to the end for a smile!

A couple of my co-workers got us a big boy stroller way back when. We finally decided to break it out. Aki Bear loves it. He either leans forward or looks out the side. He likes looking at the ground move beneath him or the flowers starting to sprout up. (YAY SPRING!)

Toothless Grin

Here he is in his little year of the dragon shirt from Uncle Sean. You can't tell from this picture but his top teeth are in! They cut through the gums today (Tuesday) because when you run your finger across his gums you can feel little serrations (deadly sharp baby teeth) but you could see them through the gums a couple of days before that. And before we could see them through the gums the front part of his upper gums have been bulged out for a while as if someone shoved some chiclets up there. Poor baby pie. Kids are such troopers. He has his fussy moments, that's for sure, but then he can break out into big contagious smiles or joyful peals of laughter. He's a keeper. Pretty soon we won't be seeing these toothless grins. I can't believe he has four teeth already. The next ones that will most likely come in are his upper and lower lateral incisors which are the teeth on either side of the front upper and lower teeth.

Climbing

The time to lower the mattress is upon us. He can't lift himself up yet but man, oh, man is he trying.

Pine Needle Eater

Here is video of the warm winter day he dug in the dirt:

Kisses and Laughter

Two of the very best things in life.

Pineapple Core Teething Snack

The Bear loves pineapple. I made my favorite fruit salad of pineapples and strawberries and instead of composting the core of the pineapple (my dad wasn't here to eat it) I thought it would be a great thing for Aki Bear to gnaw on since it's pretty tough. So, I chopped it into strips and let him at it. He loved it and chewed it up.

The only drawback is that it is über juicy and he had a pineapple juice sopped onesie. He was also gnawing on it and got sleepy so kept rubbing his eyes and so he had pineapple juice all over his face and hair. Other than that it kept it's shape mostly and Stanbear ate it up! I would say it is a great teething snack. I saw his top teeth peeking through his gums on Saturday!

Jumper

Mike's colleague got the Bear a door bouncer thing-a-ma-jig.

I was wary at first but he loves to bounce around in it!

First Play Date

 

Stanbear had a playdate with Miss Kavi last weekend. Kavi has come to visit us before. She is about a month and a half older than the Bear and is crawling! She was demonstrating the proper crawling position in the picture above but Stanbear was just looking at the floating image on the T.V. and flapping his arms(boys.) The best part is when they were both "standing" and Kavi swiped the Bear's pacifier right out of his mouth:

 

Here is Daddy Day Care in action:

I Hate Pumping

My least favorite thing to do as a new breastfeeding mother is pumping breastmilk. There are days at work where I almost avoid pumping until 3 in the afternoon! I know that is probably not very good for the ol' milk production. I don't know what it is exactly that I dislike...perhaps it's because my hands have to hold the pumps to my breasts and I can't really do anything else but watch T.V. or awkwardly browse the interwebs. (In order to do this I have to put the bottle against the edge of the desk and lean into it a little bit so that it's held between the desk and my chest so that I can maneuver the mouse...it's ridiculous.) I probably should get one of those bras where I can free up my hands.

I was talking with my mommyfriend Suganya about it, she feels the same way. I asked her why she hated it so and she had lots of good answers:

"I hate lugging the pump to work and back every day. The pumping bra makes it a little easier to pump and type at the same time but I hate having to sit near an outlet for ever and ever. I hate leaving meetings early or being late for others so that I can pump every 4 hours. I also hate the awkward looks I get when I'm cleaning the pump parts in the office kitchen. I also hate how it makes me anxious and paranoid if I don't make enough milk each time I pump. I pumped for two hours at work yesterday and only made 6 oz and I was so upset. Finally, I hate that it makes me feel like a cow everytime I attach the valves to my boobies." 

I must agree with her on all points. I have to inform one of my co-workers every time I leave to go pump. We made up a code phrase. I now say that "I'm going to the gym." Because I was saying, "I'm gonna pump." Which eventually evolved into, "I'm gonna pump....you up." (Like Hans and Frans would say.)

Which then led to the latest code phrase. And then walking down the hallway to the fridge with my bags of milk (that is not euphemism) can sometimes lead to an awkward coworker moment. I hide them from some people but not from others. Also, pumping isn't as efficient as Aki Bear is. So, I tend to get hard boobs. It grosses Mike out. It really feels like there are big rocks in there or one big, overcooked steak. I'm a pro at getting the rocks out now and it doesn't happen that often...maybe every couple of months or so. If it's really bad I just put a hot water bottle on there before nursing and then I place the Bear with his chin pointing towards the rock hard area. Other times I forgo the hot water bottle and go straight for the baby. I drew some illustrations on which nursing holds to use according to where your breast may be hard. Since I drew them at work I made the boobs into milk jugs just in case someone saw me drawing them I could say, "They are milk jugs with little spouts!" The last one isn't real - well, maybe it is. Tree pose is a yoga pose but I bet you could do this position better while lying down. Actually I've done that one lying down and it worked! But it was awkward. I will try tree pose next time, if there is a next time; I rarely get hard boobs on the top bits. You can click on the image below to see it in full size.

For an extra laugh have a look at this blog called electric boogaloo. She drew some pretty hilarious breasfeeding hold poses. my favorite is the "Rich Person Hold" at the bottom.