Catching up

Ok, so it's been, what, 8 months since I last posted? I really thought I would be awesome at this mommy blogging thing, especially with my love of sharing pictures, but I'm really lousy at it, aren't I?So what's been going on? My baby turned into a toddler, that's what! He's in to everything we don't want him in to, and he gets out of everything we want to keep him in!

The easiest (and funnest) way to catch up is with pictures! I'll start digging back in July, when the last post was, and work my way up to now!

At 13 months, Connor started walking. The cats were most unhappy with this, but he sure was pleased!At 14 months he got a new tricycle. He still loves this thing! It's convertible, so at first you can put the big handle underneath it to make it a rocking ride-on toy. We're about ready to take off the big handle all-together to make it a traditional trike.
At 15 months, we took a trip to San Diego to visit with some of my Cloth Diapering friends from the internet. It was a lot of fun to meet other crunchy mamas like myself, and Connor had a blast and made lots of new friends.16 months saw Halloween! Connor was the cutest clown in town, in my humble opinion, of course!
17 months saw our first snowstorm of the year, and Connor played in it all day!


18 months saw Christmas! Yay! Santa was NOT a hit this year....
The new car from Grandpa Bill was a BIG hit though!
The Wiggles have taken over our lives ever since....
And dinner with Grandma Joyce was delicious, of course!At 19 months, he learned how to eat with a fork!
It doesn't always work as planned...
But he has fun anyway!


19 months also saw a new haircut!

20 months didn't see a lot of action, but he sure is handsome!
And 21 months brought my favorite time of year, SPRING!

February? Man, I'm bad at this blog thing anymore.

February? I haven't posted since FEBRUARY? Oh my, I'm not very good at this, am I?

Well, today is Sara's 16th birthday. It's not as scary as it sounds. Sara is a good girl. The filter between her brain and her mouth is a bit too thin sometimes, but she has one of the kindest hearts I've ever had the honor of meeting.

Happy Birthday Sara!

Here she is circa 2003, and about a month ago. Yes, that is Connors beanie on her head.

As for Connor, he is growing in leaps and bounds. He is 21.5 lbs (63rd percentile) and 29.75 inches long (86th percentile). He is army crawling all over the house, and just started pulling up a few days ago. He's not too good at the whole getting down part yet, but he's getting really tired of falling, so I'm sure he'll figure it out soon enough.

He has also officially gone on a baby food strike. He will only eat finger foods for a bit over a month now. It's fun, but frustrating also. It was so much easier to get a balanced diet inside of him when I could feed him with a spoon now and then. I'm having to get much more creative now. Mealtime is also MUCH messier now, as you'll see in the pictures I'm about to upload!

Oh, and of course I have more pictures of my fancy cloth diapers and his very first head bonk, as well as a few shots of those first teeth!

Bathtime!

Mmmm... Carrots!

We love Mr. Bubbles!

Big toothy grin!

Eli Monster All In One Punk Rock diaper

Yay for kitties!

Oh yeah, I'm that cool.

I love to brush my teeth! I even give Mommy a turn once in a while.

Pat-a-cake is my favorite game.

I feed myself... sort of.

Hanging out with Daddy

The first bonk.

Watch out world, I'm crawling!

Mommy wanted a photo shoot for Earth Day, but I didn't think that was a good idea.

Where's Connor?

Peek-a-Boo!

Almost there...

And I'm standing!!!

Teeth!!!

Connor went through another milestone spurt these past couple weeks. He can sit up on his own for longer and longer now. He's still not to the point where I can just leave him sitting up (if I let him fall he gets VERY angry with me) but he's really getting the hang of it. He is also rolling all over the house now, and trying very hard to crawl.

And and and? He cut TWO teeth this weekend! The first, bottom right, showed up Valentines Day morning, and the one right next to it was there the next day! Wow!

His favorite game is still peek-a-boo, but gimme-five is very popular as well.

This is my favorite shirt EVER.

And here is a pair of pants I made all by myself! They are fleece too, so they double as a diaper cover! Woot!

And here is the newest diaper to our stash. This is a dyed Drybees Gone Natural. The woman who makes and sells these was trying out a new method of dyeing them, and needed testers, and we got on the list early enough! Yay! It is made from Organic Bamboo Velour and Organic Bamboo Fleece and is absolutely the softest thing I have ever put my hands on.

And no, part of the deal for testing was not advertising. I just LOVE this diaper!

Finger food is a GO!

So I've been fighting with myself over finger food. He acts like he's ready, but hasn't hit the milestones you're supposed to look for. He's not sitting up yet and his pincher grasp needs a lot of improvement. But every time we eat in front of him he is frantic trying to get at whatever we have!

So I was in the grocery store hmmm'ing and haaa'ing over the different kinds of teething biscuts they have, and as I was walking away I decided to grab some of the Gerber Baby Biscuts. It was only like $3 for a box of 10 and they are individually wrapped, so I figured I could try it myself and if it didn't seem like a good idea then I'd put them away.

Well they are SUPER hard and just kind of melt away slowly, so after dinner I put him in his high chair and handed him one. He LOVED it! I mean he was sooo happy! So here are some pictures of his very first finger foods.

Bathtime!

Connor LOVES bathtime. The girls helped me tonight and we had a lot of fun. Megan played camera person and got some great shots. She got a video too, I'll put it at the bottom. She's not great at that part, but it was fun anyway. We have a hammock style thing that goes on the tub, two of them actually. But he kept sliding down and within minutes he was frustrated and wanted out. But then I just laid a blanket down in the bottom and let him lay flat and now bathtime is his favorite thing to do!

He's becoming more and more social as the days go by. He smiles all the time and is a total wiggle butt. I think I'm going to have to get some of those mesh bumpers for his crib because he wiggles all over it. I have some standard bumpers, but "they" are saying that bumpers are a suffocation hazard now. I figure millions of babies have survived them, but when you weigh the risk of suffocation to the risk of a bump on the head or a stuck leg, I think the bump wins. But they make mesh bumpers now so that we don't have to worry about him wiggling his way through the bars and hurting himself.

We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming...

I was going to do my controversial post today because I basically have it all typed out, but something MUCH more important has come up.

I finally got a smile on camera! Woot!

First smiles!

I haven't caught one on camera yet, but we are getting REAL smiles now! He loves to play with me in his crib, which is great because I can leave him alone for a few minutes at a time and actually get dressed and eat in the morning now. I lay him down and we play with his elephant for a while, he talks to the baby in his mirror, and watches his mobile. He just smiles and talks and it's awesome to watch. I was really starting to feel the blues creep up on me the past few days, but now he's giving me all of these smiles and it just melts away all of my problems!

This is the closest I've gotten so far: