In The Interest Of Catching Up...

...here are some pictures from November.

Here's what Weston thinks of me being over a month late on posting these pictures:

Man, we had to work hard for this quasi-smile!

Nana and cousin Ryan visited and the cousins had a great time! Here they are at the Museum of Natural Sciences--as it turns out, skeletons and bugs are a GREAT way to entertain the pre-school set. (And it was interesting for the adults, too, though I could've done without seeing the hissing cockroaches up close!)

The other piece of great excitement was that Luke moved from his toddler bed to a new bunk bed. He absolutely loves it--he sleeps on the bottom and his stuffed animals--and sometimes, Yellow Cat--sleep up on top.

I'll post December's pictures soon, but for now, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Five!

Weston is five months old today!

This past month has seen lots of changes. Weston has gotten pretty good at sitting up all by himself, which has afforded him a new perspective on the world. When he gets distracted, he still does a slow lean-fall, but he's getting better and better at stopping himself before that happens. He has also started rolling over. He'd done it a handful of times in the past, but it never seemed to be fully intentional--always more of an, "Oh, hey, I'm on my belly...huh...how'd that happen?" But as of today, he can roll on purpose and has been trying out his new skill with great enthusiasm...and SPEED. Gone are the days of leaving him on the couch or the bed, even for just a minute!

He's started grabbing for things--toys, cats, and people's hair. This has been a sore point for his brother, who wants to play with him, but is still unsure about sharing his toys, even the toys that he himself hasn't played with for over a year. We took a bath in the jacuzzi tub tonight and he spent a good twenty minutes trying to catch the bubbles.

He has also figured out how to scoot himself backwards when we put him on his belly. This, of course, is hugely frustrating for him because he doesn't mean to be going backwards--he means to be going forwards. And instead, whatever he's trying to move towards just keeps getting farther away. The only time he's ever managed to move forward was earlier this week, when I set a plate of cookies about five feet away from him, got up to help Luke with something, and returned to find a baby gleefully gumming a cookie. Oops.

And while we're on the subject of food, we've just about given up on that battle. I fully planned on waiting until he was 6 months old before introducing solid foods, but he had other plans, so he's been having tastes of things for the past few weeks. It's still not very much--a kidney bean here, a grape there, an occasional taste of a banana, etc. (He loves bananas, by the way. Loves. Would gladly eat them for every meal, given the opportunity.) We put it in a little mesh pouch and he gums and sucks it to within an inch of its life and usually, that little taste satisfies him and he's willing to go back to his regular diet of milk.

The other thing that he recently figured out is how to scream. Not cry-scream, but just...scream. In a very loud, high-pitched way. It is now his chosen way to express every emotion he has. Happy? *Loud shriek* Grumpy? *Loud shriek* Bored? *Loud shriek* Fascinated by the fan? *LOUD shriek* You get the idea.

To celebrate his five-month birthday, he tried out a baby swing at the playground for the first time. Oh, the joy:

Some Pictures And Some Words, Too

I know I'm way behind on pictures, so here we go. These were all taken around the end of October.

Weston tried the doorway jumper for the first time.

He wasn't too sure what to think...

Maybe it's meant to be eaten?


Ah, but here's big brother coming to help out. You can see by the sneer on his face that Weston is highly appreciative of the assistance.

Of course, Weston was done far earlier than Luke wanted, so we had to do some substitution.

We had a Star Wars theme going for Halloween because once Luke heard that there was a person named Luke Skywalker AND that he carried a light saber, he was obsessed. Plus, McMoose had been campaigning for this costume set since before I was even pregnant with Weston. (Well played, McMoose...well played.)

Darth Weston did not care for his hat...

...or for the fact that he was being photographed when what he wanted was to be taking a nice, relaxing bath.

And here's Luke Skywalker. (As a sidenote, I made that shirt and that robe. The robe, in particular, is fabulous and I don't think any of our pictures from that night do it justice.)

Worn out after a long evening of not trick-or-treating.

And why were we not trick-or-treating, you ask? Because it was rainy and miserable. So we decided to go to the mall, since stores usually hand out candy, too. Of course, EVERY OTHER PERSON within a 20 mile radius had the same plan, so by the time we got there, there were precisely TWO stores that still had candy.

In the end, we stopped by the toy store, bought him a stamp kit that we'd been meaning to buy anyway, and had the store owners put it in his trick-or-treat bucket. Oh, and we got him a cookie. And when we got home, it had stopped raining, so McMoose took him to a couple of our neighbors' houses. All in all, he ended up with way more candy than he had any desire to eat, and he's been asking to do it again ever since.

Minding Your Own Business: Fail

The other day, we were expecting some company, so we ran out to the store to pick up some snacks. We go to this particular store at least once a week and there's one cashier who is ALWAYS there.

Cashier: *Says something in Spanish*
Me: I'm sorry?
Cashier: Do you speak Spanish?
Me: No, sorry.
Cashier: Oh. I was just asking...do both your kids have the same dad?

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

(And from a purely genetic-likelihood angle, the question that would have been somewhat better justified is: Are they both your kids? I mean, if you HAVE to be wildly inappropriate, at least be scientifically accurate about it.)

I fear I'm raising quite the, for lack of a better word, smart-ass. This morning:

Luke: Dada, I want to get something that all of us can play with. ALL of us.
McMoose: Like what?
Luke: I don't know. You figure it out and let me know.

This evening, during bathtime:
Luke: I want to do a car.
McMoose: A...cartwheel? You can't do a cartwheel in the tub.
Luke: No, I want to do a CAR.
McMoose: I don't know what that means.
Luke: A car is a vehicle. A vehicle is something that drives on the road.

Pants on Fire

When I got out of the shower this morning, there was a (giant) pile of cheerios on the floor.

Me: Luke? Why are there cheerios everywhere?
Luke: Weston knocked them over.
Me:...Weston?
Luke: Uh-huh.
Me: How'd he manage that?
Luke: He walk, walk, walked over here and kicked them over. Then, he knocked the bathroom scale over with his booty. Then, he fell back down on his mat.
Me: Really?
Luke: Uh-huh. I told him to stop.

Wow. Blaming his baby brother AND making himself out to seem like an angel. This kid has talent.

Handmade With Love

Every spring and summer, the outdoors calls to me. I have no interest in staying inside, so we plan trips to the beach and the zoo, we picnic and hike, we spend afternoons at the park and the pool. And then, autumn arrives, and with it, a desire to craft.

I've gone through different crafting phases. Needlepoint during high school and college because it was easy to put down and return days or weeks later, as my class and work schedule allowed. Scrapbooking while I was planning my wedding because I wanted to save every piece of paper, hold onto every memory. Knitting while I was pregnant with Luke because the thought of wrapping my new baby in soft, warm blankets made the whole world seem like a cozier place.

And then, for a while, I stopped. I barely had time to think, let alone craft. But when I was pregnant with Weston, McMoose bought me a sewing machine. A wonderful, functional sewing machine. I've owned machines in the past, but I usually buy the cheap, bottom of the line ones because the good ones? They're not easy on the wallet! Of course, this is one case in which you definitely get what you pay for, so in the past, I've sewn one or two things, gotten frustrated, and returned to hand sewing. Which is nice and all, but takes forever, so I had my fair share of projects that I started and never finished.

Enter the new sewing machine. I've made aprons and art smocks and quilts and a Halloween costume and today, while we were at the bookstore, Weston spit up on a sewing book that's chock full of patterns for little boys. We had no choice, of course, but to buy it--don't you know about the you-soil-it, you-buy-it rule? My mind is swirling with all the things I want to make...and isn't it lucky that Weston is on the verge of outgrowing all his winter clothes and will need a new wardrobe soon?

Crib Experiment: Fail

Weston has always slept on me--in a sling during the day, in my lap in the evening, in my arms at night. If I need to do something while he's asleep, he sleeps in McMoose's arms instead. And I've been fine with this--in fact, I've really enjoyed it. But then, I started to feel that he is four months old, after all, and maybe it's time to introduce him to the crib.

Plus, I figured, if he would sleep in the crib for just a few hours every evening, I could sweep or sew or fold laundry or blog or WHATEVER without having to co-ordinate schedules with McMoose first. So we put the dumb crib together last night. And swaddled Weston up and put him in there. I fully expected him to be awake within minutes. Instead, he slept in there for over three hours.

And did I sweep? Did I sew? Did I blog? No. I folded a (very small) load of laundry and cried. Because that was the longest that he's ever gone without physical contact with me for the past four months. No, scratch that, for the past THIRTEEN months.

Of course, all my gloom-and-doom predictions that he was growing up too fast and he'd be completely independent and out of the house in the blink of an eye were for naught because for the rest of the night, he woke up EVERY 45 MINUTES. See, what I'd forgotten about is that when he sleeps in my lap in the evening, he wakes up every 30-45 minutes, nurses a little bit, and then falls back asleep. And when he doesn't do that, apparently, he makes up for it by wanting to eat constantly all night long.

So right now, he's asleep on my lap again and I'm relishing the sweet, snoring weight in my arms a bit more tonight.