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!!!

First mess

I almost forgot! We had our first "Mommy turned around for a second and Connor made a mess" moment. He got ahold of his yogurt melts and shook them out all over the floor.

I'm going to have my hands full!

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!

Catching up

It has been FAR too long since I posted! I swear I meant to post way more often than once a month when I started this blog!

Things have been going really well. We survived our first flu with flying colors. It was not pretty, but Connor got over it in about 2 days. But since he got an ear infection at the same time, he wasn't 100% for about a week.

He is really trying to learn to crawl. I think he'll be doing the army crawl soon. Still not sitting up on his own on the floor, but we hold him so much he doesn't have much motivation to do it himself! I'm not worried at all. He's only going to be a baby once, and I want to eat it up as long as I can.

And now, a picture explosion!

Christmas!!!

Our Christmas was great. Connor wasn't crazy about all of the excitement during the present opening part of the day, but he loves his new toys and had lots of fun with all of the family members around. Some of the highlights that he got are a glow worm, books, a baby signing kit that I'm sure I'll brag about later, a blanket from Grandma Joyce, and a ball with a wobbly monkey on top of it. It's hard to describe, but when you roll the ball the monkey stays on top and makes noises. He loves to bat at it and it will be fun to chase around when he starts crawling.

Here are a handful of Christmas morning pictures!

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.

Ok, I NEED to get on this thing more!

I really need to start keeping up with this blog! Connor is officially 5 1/2 months old now, and I just can't figure out where the time went! He is SO big and so full of personality it's just amazing. He is rolling over like crazy lately and really wants to sit up. It's funny how milestones come. It's like nothing for weeks, and then all of a sudden, BAM! He's doing all sorts of new stuff! He also figured out how to play with the treehouse toy on his high chair, and that has made mealtimes a LOT more difficult!

I've been uploading movies to my YouTube account lately, and I'll be adding more today. I also started a new online store, which you can find Here. My stock is pretty limited so far, but it will be getting bigger as I go through the house and find stuff to sell. I doubt I have anything anyone here is interested in, but take a look anyway and pass it on if you think you know someone who might be interested! (Just in case anyone is wondering, every penny of everything I sell that belongs to Connor goes toward buying him bigger clothes and more advanced toys. I've had some people tell me it's tacky to sell his things, even if I spend the money on him. I told them to buy the stuff for me then.)

Anyway, here are some pictures!

This one was when we were waiting for the parade to start. We walked in it with my After School program! I don't have any pictures from the audience yet, but hopefully I'll be able to find a few! Our theme was Teddy Bear Parade and we handed out donated teddy bears to the kids in the crowd!