Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming

Today was my first swim lesson, and I'm still deciding what I think about it. This whole swimming thing is interesting. It's like taking a bath in a giant lukewarm tub, with 20 other people. And no soap.

I don't mind the water, but I'm not exactly splashing with joy yet either. I spent the entire class watching everyone, taking it all in. The teacher said that it's cute how mellow I am, just checking things out while Mama pulled me around the pool and sang silly songs to me.

Cute? I'm not cute. Babies are cute. And I'm a big boy swimmer. Besides, part of the reason I was so mellow is because I was half-asleep. Swim class starts right when I usually go down for my mid-morning nap. Maybe next week I'll take a nap in the water -- it is kinda relaxing in there.

Don't get too comfortable

Today was a doozy of a day! After several weeks of following my nap schedule like clockwork (down at 8:30am, 11:30am, and 3pm), I decided that I was having none of that nonsense today. Especially since Mama had several things scheduled throughout the day -- I think she's getting way too comfortable, assuming that she knows what to expect of me. It's time to mix it up a bit.

I started off by waking up 1-1/2 hours early for my nighttime milk-drug session. Mama tried to just soothe me back to sleep, but I made it very clear that I would not relax until I got my fix. Once I was satiated, I went back to sleep until my normal 6:30am wake-up time. Mama and Daddy thought things were back on track, but I had a big morning planned!

When Mama tried to put me down for my nap at 8:30am, I kicked it into high gear. I started complaining, and then quickly ratcheted it up to a full screaming tantrum. Mama tried every trick in the book (wait to see if I could soothe myself, check on me briefly without picking me up, sing my favorite lullaby to me, rub my belly and legs, finally pick me up and rock me) but I wasn't going to give in that easily. I continued to cry until 11:45am, when I finally fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion. By that point, I'd been rocked, sung to, nursed, fed my favorite meal of pear-cado, kissed, snuggled, read to... I was having a pretty good day. After all, the entire morning was all about ME! And Mama had to skip our yoga class and postpone our date to meet Oliver and his mom.

Mama thought I was going to wake up after an hour, so she made plans to meet Oliver and his mom in the early afternoon. Ha! I slept for almost 3 hours, sabotaging her plans again. When I got up, I ate and then picked up with the whining and crying again. I was losing steam though -- it's hard to be cranky for so long! So I let myself be entertained, and when Daddy came home things were pretty much back to normal. I had my dinner, bath, milk-drug, bedtime story, and then went to bed.

I can't decide if I'm going to do it again tomorrow. I have my first swim lesson in the morning, so there's plenty of opportunity to throw a first class fit. Hmmm, I'll have to think about this...

RAWR!!

You think you can scare me? Hah! I eat guys like you for breakfast! Well, for dinner, actually. And to be truly precise, I eat gals like you for dinner.

Yes, as of today I am a carnivore! Mama made me some chicken for the first time, and now I think I understand why she's always craving that fried chicken from Ezell's. First she let me suck on some pieces of chicken to see if I like the taste (yes, I do), but she wouldn't let me eat it that way because I kept breaking off choking-hazard-sized chunks. So then she pureed it and mixed it in with some sweet potatoes, thus creating a dinner of deliciousness heretofore unbeknownst to me. Finger-lickin' good!

Although to me, anything is finger-lickin' good.

My Daddy rules

I'm not sure if you all know this yet, but my Daddy is awesome. He makes me laugh all the time and I love to play with him. I'm always so excited to see him!

Every morning, we have "guy time" while he gets me out of my crib, changes my diaper, and dresses me in a cool outfit (I've learned from him that it's very important to look good and to always -- ALWAYS -- remember to do your hair before you leave the house). Then he brings me to Mama so I can have my breakfast milk-drug while he gets ready for work. He plays with me a little longer before he goes to work, and he always gives me lots of smooches and tells me he loves me and misses me while he's gone.

I can't wait until he gets home from work in the evening and we play some more or go for a walk in the neighborhood. Then he gets me ready for bed and reads me a story right before I go to sleep. My favorite is "Goodnight Moon", which he can read now without even looking at the words! Yes, he's that talented.

Mama tells me that today is Father's Day, so I'm supposed to let Daddy know how special he is. I don't really understand that -- I think every day is Father's Day! But I did get him a little gift to show him that I love him. I haven't given it to him yet because Mama and I are letting him sleep in today, but I just know he's going to love it. I made it myself!

Wow, it's almost noon. Isn't Daddy up yet? I'm planning to take him to the zoo today, so he'd better wake up soon! (In all fairness, Daddy was up at 7 this morning so that he could play with me before I went to church with Mama. He's taking a nap after watching part of the US Open.)

Thou shalt not covet thy friend's...

...hair? Is that a rule? Because if it is, I'm breaking it. Whenever I hang out with my friend Oliver, if I can get close enough, I reach for a handful of hair. I don't have much hair of my own yet, so he has to share with me. Sometimes I snuggle with his hair, sometimes I pull it -- it depends on my mood. Luckily he's a pretty mellow guy, so he doesn't mind. Besides, he kicks me in the head during yoga, so he owes me some hair time.



Heh heh, I got his toy giraffe from him! And you should have seen when I pulled his binky right out of his mouth and stuck it in mine...that was pretty funny. But Mama caught me doing it and she made me give it back. So I had to settle for sucking on my fingers, as usual.


We are hoping that at some point there will be pictures of us hanging out in some position other than prone on the floor.

The joy of eating

I'm really enjoying this "solid food" stuff. I get it twice a day now, and I love it! Mama makes me my food and freezes it in ice cube trays, so she has freezer bags full of cubes of yummy goodness. For lunch, I eat 3 cubes of fruits and veggies and for dinner I eat 1-2 cubes. My favorite by far is what Mama calls "pear-cado" -- one cube of avocado and one cube of pear mixed together. I'm not a big fan of avocado by itself because it's hard to swallow, but the pear makes all the difference!

I'm also eating carrots, sweet potatoes (yum!), and peaches. I get to try green beans soon, and then I think Mama is going to try that whole pea thing again. Maybe I'll eat them if she mixes them with pears. Pears make everything tasty, even green things.

I wonder if food comes in any colors other than green and orange?

In addition to those yummy things I'm eating, Mama keeps feeding me things that make me sick. She really needs to be a bit more careful, if you ask me. How many rashes, diaper blow-outs, acid reflux flare-ups, gas attacks and bouts of constipation must I suffer through?

Here's a list of things she's given me for the sole purpose of making me miserable, or so it seems to me: rice cereal (gas), bananas (acid reflux, constipation), oatmeal (rashes, diaper blow-outs), applesauce (constipation). Next thing you know, she'll be sneaking peanuts into my food, just for fun.

At least the Dude gave her strict instructions not to give me any more grains until I'm older. So her plans to feed me barley are foiled for now. But I strongly suspect I will have an encounter with barley (very possibly mixed with pears) sometime in the next couple months. I'll keep my eye out for it.

Cooperation...

...is not my middle name. Mama has that mastitis thing again, for the 8th time. It makes her tired and sore and feverish and feel pretty yucky all over. In spite of that, I have spent the last 83 minutes screaming at the top of my lungs instead of taking a nap. I stop crying when Mama comes in to turn me over or to rub my belly or sing me a song, but I start up again the second she moves away from my crib. To be honest, it's exhausting. I really need to get some rest.

Make that 84 minutes.

Update: After more than an hour and a half of screaming at the top of my lungs, Mama finally gave up on the nap idea. I was still crying, so she brought me to her bed to cuddle and I immediately fell asleep for 45 minutes. Finally! I was pooped.

Ahhhh choo!

Sneezing is fun. I sneeze a lot (I always have, even as a newborn), and now it usually makes me giggle. But today at lunch, I found a way to make it even more fun: wait until my mouth is full of carrots. Fun! Bright orange everywhere!!

Still a peanut

But a growing peanut! I had my weight check at the Dude's yesterday, and he's pretty happy with how things are going. I weighed 14 lbs 9 oz, which still puts me below the curve (in the negative percentile) but it shows that I'm trending back up to the 3-5th percentile. I'm 26-3/4" long, which puts me in the 40th percentile for length...so maybe Mama should stop calling me a peanut and stick with her new nickname for me: string bean. Or maybe she should try to expand her nicknaming horizons beyond vegetables and legumes.

And remember way back when I used to wear puny little size 2 diapers? Hah! I was such a little squirt back then*.


*By "back then" I mean "yesterday". And by "squirt" I mean literally.

Hello Seven

I'm 7 months old today! I'm learning new things so quickly now. I'm getting a lot better at sitting up, so I'm that much closer to taking off to roam the city with Jammy, Oliver and Cowboy. I still don't move around much (not like Jammy, who's rolling himself around the room, or Oliver, who pretty much bulldozed me at yoga yesterday), but I am pretty good at spinning in circles on my back or my tummy. I do scoot myself off the play mat too, but I haven't tried to make a break for the other side of the room yet.

Mama got me some foam mats to play on so that I don't bang my head on the hardwood floors. Usually she puts me on the mats, but yesterday she thought it would be funny to build a box out of the mats and put me inside of it. I wasn't sure I liked it at first, especially when Mama suddenly disappeared behind the wall of the box. But then her head popped up over the top of the wall, and I thought that was pretty funny. And after I tipped over (I told you, I'm getting better at sitting...I'm not perfect yet), I realized that padded walls can be kind of nice.

Coordination

Mama tried something new today. In her (largely unsuccessful) efforts to keep me relatively clean while she feeds me, she decided to give me foods that match my clothes. So today I had oatmeal and carrots.

I like this idea, because it gives me a heads up about when to worry. Such as: "I'm wearing a green outfit today. Hmmm...green like avocados? Or PEA green??"

By the way, do you like my carrot soul patch in the first picture? I'm one groovy hep cat, daddy-o.

Rollin' rollin' rollin'

So my latest trick is to roll over in my crib, every single time I go down for a nap or bedtime. If I'm really tired, it doesn't matter -- I just curl up on my side, then roll over and sleep on my tummy. When I wake up, I complain a bit until someone comes to get me, and everything is fine.

The trouble comes when I'm not quite exhausted yet, but it's time for me to take a nap. I used to just kick and complain until I fell asleep, but now I roll over onto my tummy and then scream like a banshee until someone comes to flip me back over. For one of my naps this weekend, I rolled over, screamed, was flipped, then rolled over again four times in less than 15 minutes. Mama was really pleased with the situation.

I'm also starting to get a little nervous about being left behind. When someone came to the door this morning, Mama set me down in the Pack-n-Play so that she could control Cowboy and answer the door. I got to work on pulling down the toy bar (I can pull it down on top of me in under 3 minutes now) . Then I noticed that Mama was standing with the door open, and I wasn't sure what was going on -- was she going to leave without me? So I started screaming my "fear" scream (I have a wide repertoire of screams now). Luckily, Mama came right over and swooped me up and we danced in the living room until I felt better.

Whew, that was close.