9 Months!

My baby can really get around, and he loves it! He inchwormed a lot this month. By the end he'd moved on to army crawl.

Here he's doing the inchworm and coming after the camera.


Towards the end of the month he decided it was time for more solids. It's also about when he got comfortable putting those little Cheerios in his mouth on his own. His favorite foods have been bananas, toast, cucumber, avocados, and watermelon. He's okay with carrots but not a fan of black beans, sweet potatoes, or butternut squash yet, he probably just needs me to prepare them more. Oh and he also loves parmesan cheese. (I discovered an amazing trick. I'd read a baby-led weaning tip that you cover slippery foods in crushed cereal. He didn't care for that at all. But parmesan cheese makes it not as slippery and he loves it!)

With a grilled cheese sandwich:


Things that aren't necessarily new this month (and are probably pretty typical of babies) are ...  He loves wheels and music. He's been turning the wheels on toy cars since forever (though perhaps not as enthralled with them as big brother was, I'm not sure if it's too soon to tell). He loves toys that make music and has always complained at the between songs parts of Baby Einstein. Though he loves my screen saver and it doesn't have music.  Also, everything goes into his mouth.  Seems like that'd go without saying but our first born rarely did that.  He is super into everything around him and loves the view and access he gets while being held.



(I recently backed up the last few years of photos & videos which coincidentally made them easy to access through the TV. I've been showing our toddler videos of him as a baby and it's made me realize how horrible I've been about getting videos of our new baby! I'll have to work on that. I'm really not much for video-taking, though of course I love having them.)


Pounding on the reflector :)

Teeth!

Hi Mom.

You want a picture of my what?

How's this?

Haha!

Alright.

What?  Not my tongue?

Okay.

Here they are.

That's right.

Two teeth!

My baby is 9 months already!  I'll post about that soon(ish) but first I thought I'd share a pic of his teeth.  He got his first on April 2nd and his second the 14-15th.

Happy Easter!

Birthday Party

On Saturday we had family over for a little party for our 3 year old. Thanks for coming everyone, he loves you all and was thrilled to have you here for his party. I felt he really understood we were celebrating him and it made it extra special for him.


Hot Cup grilled ribs & salmon for the lunchtime party and they were both really delicious. Seriously perfect. Unfortunately I don't have a picture, but I do have pictures of the birthday boy eating ketchup and his baby brother eating toast.


He loved all his his gifts and we were hardly able to convince him to open any after the first, but he did and had a really fun time discovering all his new stuff. By the time he was done it was naptime but we still had to have cake :)  (The picture on the right shows his I'm-trying-really-hard-not-to-smile face.)


I decorated his cake after he went to bed the night before. So the morning of his party I showed it to him. I asked him not to touch it until after we sang to him and he blew out the candles. He'd occasionally let us know he remembered the cake was there, and he was super about not touching it.


I don't know if I confused him and he thought he'd just get to play with it, if he was just tired, if he was too excited about his new toys, or if he simply didn't want cake, but he didn't eat any. He came over for us to sing to him and had dad blow out the candles. Then he played with the trucks a minute and ate a beam (aka Kit Kat) but when I started dishing it out he asked to get down to play.


After everyone left he wanted to play with the trucks & cake, and after he napped we let him and he played with it for over an hour. He ate some of the icing and some of the extra rocks (chocolate graham crackers) but still no cake. He's played with it Sunday, Monday, and today too. I suppose I'm about ready for it to be gone so we don't have to clean it off the trucks anymore.

I guess he's not a huge cake person, at least right now, so I'm glad it was a cake he could enjoy without eating, haha.

The cake didn't taste as good as the one I made for his first two birthdays. It's Warren Brown's sponge cake instead of butter cake, and in all fairness he says in his cookbook that sponge cakes aren't as good.

Happy Birthday buddy!

3rd Birthday

Our toddler had a birthday on Wednesday!  We decorated the night before and he enjoyed seeing them in the morning.

That morning he played in the basement for a bit while I was working upstairs. I heard him coming up and went to the stairs to find him walking up while holding the rail! Recently he's been great about holding my hand, or my hand and the rail, but this is the first I saw him do it alone. He also went down by just holding the rail, it is the new norm.


It was a beautiful day so after baby brother's nap we headed to the park. I brought along a picnic and we stayed out until naptime. I asked the birthday boy to stand by his brother and smile. I meant for him to smile at me but I suppose this worked too.


Baby brother had some firsts; it was his first time in the stroller sans car seat and his first time in the swing. He loved it!




Silly birthday boy.


It was our first trip to the park of the season and after a couple times down the slide with me he wanted to do it himself, something he hadn't wanted to do before winter. He went down about a million times, and sent his train engine down about as many. After a while I asked if he wanted to try the other slide too and he did ... all by himself.



Big brother pushed the stroller all the way home.


I'm really excited it's springtime and we'll get to go outside more, and I know both my boys will love it too!

After dinner that night we gave him one of his gifts and had ice cream.  We had to save some things for his party on Saturday ;)




He's really growing up and is a wonderful little boy, I love him!

McQueen & Pizza

We have some friends that have two boys that are the same ages as our little ones.  Yesterday they were over and our toddler's friend brought his Lightning McQueens and shared them.  After he left our toddler kept asking for one.  He's such a good little guy and doesn't really ever ask for anything, so when daddy got home we decided to go get him one.

Then we went to Uno's for pizza & a little dessert. The kids menu had a connect-the-dots, Hot Cup showed our boy how to do it and he did it up to 14! I thought that was quite impressive as it takes a bit of patience for him to do. I will have to print some beginner connect-the-dots for him.

I didn't mean for it to be a taking-a-bite picture, but my phone's camera isn't great and I'm happy when I can manage an not-blurry picture.

It was a fun night out and I think our kids thought so too.