Love and loss this Christmas

Unfortunately this Christmas has been a bitter sweet one for us. My Grandmother Nancy passed away, and we found out on the 23rd. She was 91 and still very healthy, happy and full of good spirits. She died peacefully in her sleep, leaving a closet of unlabeled christmas gifts for her loved ones. I'm slightly surprised that they were not hidden like our Easter baskets :-)  She was a very caring, fun and adventurous Grandmother. We always went for walks in the park, painted, or played some fierce games of Cootie or monopoly with her. She and my grandfather came to all our band recitals and more recently my skating shows. She was very excited to be a Great-Grandmother. I wish that both Josh (and I) would get to have more time with her, but that is not the way of the world. She will be dearly missed by us all.

The family decided to hold Christmas dinner as usual, because Grandma would have wanted that. We celebrated our first Christmas with Josh and our last Christmas at the Bells Mill house. We reminisced about some of the good times spent in that house with my Grandparents. While I am filled with sadness at the loss of my Grandmother, I am also very thankful to have known her and have gotten to spend the last 25 years with such a wonderful woman. I am also thankful that Josh got to meet her, and that she got the joy of being a Great-Grandmother.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Hugs and much love to all.

Off to the Park!

Since we had a oddly warm weekend, Julian and I decided to take Josh to the big park about a mile from our house.  Josh is a little bit young for the playground, but that didn't stop us from getting some cute pictures and letting him explore. He seemed to enjoy it, although he hit his head while I was trying to take a picture of him so I felt a bit like the worst Mom ever. Fortunately he just brushed it off and went back to playing, so no damage was done. All in all it was really nice to get outside for a long walk and get to do a little playing. Josh was certainly pooped after it all!

Yay park!

King of the tube!!

Getting him started early!

Vrooom Vrooom

Mommy you are crowding me!

Going to the park is hard work!

Done!

Sorry for the blog silence, but we had a very busy week. I defended my thesis on Weds, and am now 99% done with graduate school...I just have to do some minor revisions and turn in my thesis :-)  Josh attended my final seminar....and by attended I mean he hung out in the hallway because he was mad that I wouldn't hold him :-P  But a special thanks to everyone who helped watch him and keep him happy during my defense and party!

11 month pictures

We probably won't have much time this week for updates (busy week ahead!) but here are some pictures of Josh we took this weekend (sorry about the color being a bit off...). A noticeable change this month was that Josh did not eat the 11 month sticker, he just wanted to play with it!

Snow day!

Josh seems to be pre-programmed to know about snow days :-) On Monday he had a 2 hr delay for daycare and celebrated by sleeping until 8am!! Then on Tuesday when he had a day off he slept until 8:15am!! Which since his bedtime is around 7pm, means he slept 13 hrs!! We had a cozy day at home for Josh's first snow day and took him out for a walk in the snow :-) Unfortunately we leave his shoes at daycare, so we couldn't really let him play in the snow...but we let him touch it and taste it. He didn't seem thrilled with how cold it was, so we will have to try again the next time it snows.

Ready to play!

Watching Daddy shovel the steps

Oooo snow!

Oh that is cold, I don't want that...

Easy vs hard

A few weeks ago Julian, Josh and I had lunch with Julian's mom and stepdad. Julian's stepdad asked if parenthood was easier or harder than we expected. I answered with, "both". Julian's mom then asked me what was easier and I drew a blank. But I've been thinking about it and I really do think some things are easier and some are harder. Overall I would say that the two hardest things have been childcare and how all encompassing parenthood is. In terms of childcare, I didn't realize how hard it would be to find childcare (that I liked), how hard it would be to let someone else take care if my child, and how hard it is to coordinate "backup" child care when something goes wrong. Ultimately we had a really good Nanny over the summer that helped us transition to having someone else care for Josh full time. Switching to daycare was still hard on both Josh and I, but I think that he is doing really well there now. Before having Josh, neither Julian or I really thought through how much day-to-day activities like showering, cooking, etc would be impacted. We sort of knew that we would have to watch the baby, but didn't realize that would mean someone almost always had to be holding him to keep him from being upset. Some of those are getting easier now that Josh is older and we are adjusting, but it was still a much bigger challenge than I think anyone can really be prepared for. Since I'm listing things that were harder than expected I would be wrong not to mention how much harder breastfeeding was/is than I ever imagined. But fortunately that has also gotten much easier. And I think we are at a point where bottle feeding is harder than breastfeeding. Many of my cousins have talked about how hard the adjustment is for your first kid, but even though we had both heard it before, it is hard to really appreciate the change until you bring the baby home.

What I would say has been much easier than I expected is how well we know our baby. Before Josh was born, both Julian and I were very scared about him getting sick or something being wrong. We were worried we wouldn't know if he was sick, or wouldn't know what to do. I must say, all it takes is looking at Josh or spending 1 minute with him to know if something is wrong. Both Julian and I can tell he has a fever without even feeling his forehead or taking his temperature. We still have panic moments of googling something to see if something is wrong, but so far our instincts have been very good. I think some of the general care for a baby have also been easier than we expected. We both had almost no experience going in, and learned about diaper changing, swaddling, bathing, etc at the hospital.

Sleep has been about what we expected, Josh has been a pretty good sleeper. The first few months were hard, although not worse than we expected. While his napping can be erratic at times, his nighttime sleep routine has been very consistent for months now. He does have his off times when he is sick or teething, but for the most part he is very good :-)

Overall we will take the good along with the bad, and wouldn't trade any of it for the world :-)

He is about as messy as we expected...

But he cleans up well!

And he is the best! :-)

11 Months

As we say every month, we can't believe Josh is a month older.  No doctors appointment this month but we believe he had a growth spurt a few weeks ago.  Josh continues to try new things and explore the world.  He has figured out how to get through several attempts at baby proofing and no longer falls for simple attempts at hiding things from him (usually our phones).  This month Josh moved into a higher level at daycare with older kids who are walking.  We hope this will lead to him trying to walk.  He will occasionally stand unassisted for a few seconds before slowly falling back down.  It almost seems like the Coyote going over a cliff - fine until he realizes he should be falling. We have not been too pleased with him moving up because he isn't napping as well at daycare and is getting sick every week again. But hopefully things will improve as he gets used to his new room.

Josh's eating continues to improve.  At dinner we now feed him whatever we are eating.  He seems to enjoy most food although has little interest in bland food (who can blame him!?).  We are still avoiding soy and green beans/peas but otherwise we've let him eat whatever he wants.  He enjoyed all of the food at Thanksgiving including turkey, potatoes and vegetables.

This past weekend Margaret went on a skating trip and Josh and I stayed home.  This was the first time either Margaret or I had to take care of Josh alone for several days.  We were both a bit worried about how this would go but Josh was very well behaved and everything went very smoothly. Lately Josh has been in a really good routine with a morning and afternoon nap at predictable times, which made taking care of him much easier. Although, doing everything for him for two days was certainly more difficult than splitting the duty (and there was lots of it ;-) ).  Heather came over Saturday to help out which gave me a bit of a break.

Here is a video of Josh playing with his toys.  He is starting to play with his toys rather than just eating them

Working on his walking skills

The only hat Josh will keep on his head (most of the time)

Josh discovered he could climb on boxes

Very excited about his new spot on the box

Baby Proofing Fail

Since Josh became mobile several months ago I have made several attempts to baby proof the house. Margaret and I try to let Josh explore so that he can learn and develop, but I tried to take care of baby proofing the big things that could cause the most harm.  The outlets are all covered, the smaller furniture is strapped to the wall, the TV is strapped to the stand, corners of furniture are protected and I installed several baby gates.  None of these are meant to allow Josh to play unattended but they at least will prevent him from getting into too much trouble.

Unfortunately, Josh has foiled many of these over the last few months.  He pulled the protectors off the corners of furniture.  He unplugged CO detectors we had plugged in (mostly to play with the detector) which left the plug exposed.  The baby gates were working very well until this past weekend when he followed after Jeter and got under the gate.

The height of the gate was set to allow Jeter to get through but it seems Josh is now able to do it as well.  I then installed a piece of plastic poster board zip tied to the baby gate to reduce the gap size in hopes that Jeter could still get through but Josh could not.  Sadly I was foiled again....

Examining the changes

Let me in!

Unhappy with the situation

Searching for weaknesses

Solution found!

Success!

I guess it is back to the drawing board...

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year we are so thankful for our little turkey :-) He is the best!!

Look ma, new shoes!

Josh is moving up to the next classroom at daycare (more on that later), but he needed to have shoes for going outside to play with the big kids! I ordered him some Robeez on Amazon because I had read good things about them. They are just leather, so they are supposed to not impair a baby's foot development. Josh seems to have relatively big feet (his pajamas always are too small in the feet first...), so I ordered the 12-18 mo size...but they were HUGE!! He happily walked around in the shoes, but we decided we didn't want him to trip. Unfortunately, the Robeez were not available on Amazon prime, so we could not order another pair and get them fast enough. So Julian took Josh out to Stride Rite and got him some snazzy shoes! These were a little more sturdy than we had been planning, but it was all they had. He seems to like them, and LOVES eating them. He has been "high stepping" a bit with them, and they get in the way of his crawling sometimes. But overall we think he will get used to them, and they will serve the purpose of having shoes to wear outside at daycare well. He looks like such a big boy when he is wearing shoes!

Too big, but still fun to play in!

I'm a big kid now!

Ready to play!

Cookie Monster

We usually let Josh play in the kitchen as we are making dinner.  This evening he made it into the cabinet and was playing around.  Just when Margaret was commenting that there wasn't much he could get into that would be a problem Josh grabbed a box of cookies and spilled them on the floor.  He then started grabbing them and eating them.  We couldn't help but let him enjoy his first (and second, third and fourth) cookie (he mostly took a bit out of each and then went for a new one).  He was very happy with himself so of course instead of stopping him we just took pictures :-P

First bite of cookie

Sharing!

Double fisting

Yay cookie!!

Margaret's first cookie #tbt

See, I can share too :-) #tbt

A Round of Applause

For the past few months we have been trying to get Josh to clap his hands.  We would show him how to clap and hold his arms and clap but he wouldn't ever try it on his own.   We thought he could do it if he wanted since he has no trouble "clapping" two toys together to make noise. But he always refused to do it on his own, until this weekend.  Josh started clapping and now we are having lots of fun with it.  It is just a constant reminder of how enjoyable it is to watch him grow up and do new things.

Here is a video I recorded Sunday morning of Josh clapping (he just started doing it on his own)

Just Pictures

Margaret and I are both a bit busy this week so we don't have time for a full post.  Here are some pictures to tide you over

Not sure how he feels about being 10 months old

Not so bad I guess

Looking for a good book to read (or eat)

Here is a video from Halloween when Josh wanted a piece of candy

10 months!

Happy 10 months to our baby boy! There is no checkup until he is 1 year (ahhhh), so we won't have any stats for a while. He certainly is outgrowing his clothes, so we are confident he is still growing :) He has pretty much outgrown all his 9 month clothes and is in 12 month clothes, he can even wear some 18 month clothes, although they are a little big. The biggest developments this past month have been his eating and his playing with toys. He will now eat lots of different foods and different textures. If you are eating something and won't share, he gets very upset. We think we have narrowed down his allergies to soy and peas (both legumes), but haven't fully tested the other legumes yet (oddly enough, peanuts don't seem to cause a reaction). We have been afraid to give him dairy yet, but I think we will try some yogurt or cheese soon. In terms of playing, he is starting to play "games" with some of his toys. He has a set of blocks and he likes to put them up high and then grab them again, or put them into baskets and then look for them. It is very cute to watch his mind developing :-)  He also loves to play a game with a pair of sunglasses he has. Either Julian or I will put on the sunglasses, and he loves to take them off us and then give them back. It has been so fun to get to play with him now :-)