Wheeeeeee

A IS CRAWLING!!!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP!

Last week was fun. We went to the park on Tuesday and went swimming, and it was great! He *loved* being "dunked" in the water, and it wasn't insanely cold so I really enjoyed it too. However, it would be a *lot* easier with someone else along to help, so hopefully Jill can come sometime this week.

Last week, A was not crawling. He was doing this insane thing where he'd lean forwards, move his hands like he was going forwards, but then turn his body and sit right back down on his bum. Somehow, he got across rooms like this, but it was not very efficient! Over the weekend he put it all together, though! It seriously brought tears of pride to my eyes watching him crawl across the room today. *LOVE*

Last week was also our last playgroup with the same people we've been with forever...but today we started a new one that seems pretty good, with other babies who get Early Intervention services.

Last week was also the beginning of SLEEP HELL. Aka A crying/screaming every night in his crib instead of going down to sleep like he has for the last 9 months. We have no idea what is going on with him. His naps are also completely unpredictable and weird. It is driving us nutso. And by us I mean mostly his parents, because *they* have to deal with him at bedtime! I feel really bad for them though. And seriously, dude, I really would appreciate being able to plan a day knowing when he would nap! It's so hard to know if we'll make it to *anything* because who knows if/when he'll sleep. Bah.

Oh, the last major awesomeness is that he can now effectively feed himself puffs/yogurt drops/whatever. Well, mostly effectively. A lot still gets stuck to his face/hands/bib, but a good deal gets in his mouth! Yay progress!

:-D

Failshaina

Sorry, all five of you who read this! If there's even five...

So. Two short weeks...I swear, I haven't worked a full week all month! Crazy.

Let's see...in the past two weeks, A and I have discovered the library. Oh man. He loves it! There is this toy, it's a big cube that sits on the floor with different activities on each side. Gears on one, an abacus type thing on another, and those awesome bead-wire things on top! Like this: http://platinumgalleria.com/anatex-deluxe-mini-play-cube2.jpg. He LOVES it. He will sit and play with it forever. And then there are books, which are always good. Except he likes to just play with them closed, and if I try to open them, he'll close them before I can read them! Strange child. It's also really fun for him to watch the other (mostly bigger) kids that are there, and it's fun for *me* talking to the other moms/nannies. *Especially* since I haven't been to playgroup in like three weeks for one reason or another!

Still no crawling. He can get from sitting to his hands and knees, and from tummy to sitting. However, he just doesn't get the pulling idea, or the moving his legs idea. Hopefully with some coaching he'll catch on soon! Although I know it's going to make my life a bit more difficult, it'll still be fun!

We got our passes for the park this week, and went down and checked it out. It is really nice--a big lake with plenty of shade, and a wonderful playground with baby swings as well! And a splash pad too, though I haven't seen that on. We went on Wednesday, and I so wish I'd realized how nice it was out--I would have loved to at least wade in the water if not actually go all the way in with A. Instead we played on the swings, ate lunch, and i dipped his toes in the water before we left. Hopefully this coming week we'll have a nice day or two and Jill will come and we'll go swimming :-)

We also have been signed up for a baby gym thing. Between that and all the meet-up things that L is signing us up for, and the park, and the library story time, I think we're going to have a jam-packed summer. Woo!

In personal news, I'm moving in TWO WEEKS. A and I might make a trip to the hardware store this week to pick up paint so I can paint my room next weekend. Eek! On top of that my parents are renovating our kitchen at home, and work on that is starting this week. It's going to be insane...

Short week

I only worked three days this past week, because Monday was a holiday and Friday I took the day off to start preparing for my brother's wedding tomorrow!

Tuesday was INSANE with the naps. M and L must have really worn A out over the weekend, because his morning nap was two hours and his afternoon nap was two hours twenty minutes. Which is all but UNHEARD of in the last few months! It was crazy. But good for me, because, well, I needed naps too! Haha.

Wednesday we had some cuh-raaazy weather here in MA. if you haven't heard--western MA had freaking tornados, and out by me we had hail and thunder and stuff. Luckily, the middle part of the day was pretty good, and A and I ventured out to the grocery store! It was pretty fun, he was really well behaved, and we ran into a mom and kids that we met on the playground last week! Small world. So that was good. Oh, and the cleaning ladies came in the afternoon. Normally A really likes them, especially Katia, the one who speaks English (they're Brazilian). However, he's really starting to get into the stranger anxiety thing, and he pretty much clung to me for about fifteen minutes after he got up from his nap and saw them. Especially because Maria (the non-English speaker) tried to take him from me--OMG he did NOT WANT. I love him clinging to me...it's the cutest thing in the world. Hopefully it does not make our lives difficult in the future though...like if he didn't like his extended family members or something.

Thursday my friend Jill came over and we baked! L and M are having a yard sale today (like, right this minute) and wanted to have a bake sale too to get as much money as possible. Not for them--for the Pan-Mass Challenge, a big bike ride that supports cancer research that L is doing in August. She has to raise a lot of money, so everything from the sale is going to that. I made brownies, m&m cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. I hope people buy them! A was pretty good although a little antsy. He's generally pretty happy sitting in his highchair watching us, and he gave us just enough time to do what we needed to. We had a bit of a snafu with the chocolate chip cookies because Jill accidentally measured 1 cup less flour than we needed, but they were still delicious!

And that's it. Next week I might have to work extra hours, since M has to go out to Springfield for the week to help with the tornado stuff. Crazy times we live in...

Finally!

A B-E-A-utiful week! Weather was just about perfect. We went outside a lot. I walked and jogged and sweated enough that i realized I need to bring a bunch of t-shirts to work JUST for when we go outside, haha.

L worked from home a few days this week. That is always fun! Especially because it means I get Starbucks in the morning...she'll text me around 7am and be like...Starbucks? Please? So I stop, get her whatever and then I get to get ME whatever I want too :-D

A is *so* close to crawling, it's probably as frustrating for us as it is for him! He'll hang out on his hands and knees and rock, or he'll lie on his tummy and streeeeeeeeetch for things, but he hasn't quite gotten the idea of forward motion. However, he HAS learned to clap, and ZOMG is it ever cute. Like, seriously, adorable. He also has a tooth, a very sharp little tooth, which I'm still getting used to feeling on the spoon when I feed him! Also this week we discovered that this kid LOVES the swing at the playground. Like, laughs so hard he gets hiccups. Insanely, insanely cute. It hurts how cute he is.

Hmm...found a food he didn't really like this week, for the first time. Up 'til now he pretty much has eaten anything we have given him, no problem. Until Friday I gave him something called "Beef, Carrots and Corn" which also had things like Kamut flour and roasted onions in it. He had a hard time with the texture, I think, and I eventually gave up on it. Baby food is so weird. I know every mom-to-be says this, but I mean it--I'm going to make my baby's food as much as I possibly can. Because it's not cool that something that is called one thing has five other things in it. Plus random vitamins and chemicals added. Hopefully by the time I get around to having my kids they'll have even niftier, cheaper systems for making baby food!

Other exciting news...Oh, A has really started discovering his voice lately. He doesn't make many consonants yet, except when he's hanging out in his crib before or after sleep. However, he sure as heck knows how to make NOISE! He just loves to be squealing at the top of his lungs while I'm out and about...luckily it's pretty obvious that it's happy noise, otherwise people might think I'm torturing the kid, lol. It's mostly cute. Only a little annoying :-P

Oh, last thing. Just this week he's started napping on his stomach! Generally, we'd go in and turn him over a few times until he fell asleep on his back. This week, a few times I gave him a little time to play on his stomach before I went in, and what do you know? He rubbed his face on his blanky a little bit, and then just fell asleep just like that! It's a little nerve-wracking because it's harder to tell if he's breathing that way, but he's happy so woo!

This weekend M and L took him up to their place by a lake in New Hampshire. He'll be sleeping away from home for the first time, going out on a boat and in the water for the first time...I hope he's doing well and sleeping! Otherwise, the three days I'm working next week (holiday Monday, and then I'm taking Friday off because my brother is getting married Sunday) will be very interesting...

Rain, rain, go away...

Ugh. New England. SERIOUSLY? We've had maybe two nice days in two weeks. And it's driving. me. insane.

So last Sunday I was able to go to the Christening, which was awesome. Even though I had to kind of sneak into the church and sit far away from what was actually going on, it felt right that I was there. And then at the party afterwards, A kept leaning out of his mom's (or whoever's) arms towards me, and it was awesome. And then he was falling asleep in my arms, so I put him down for a nap, and he slept for like an hour and a half...which of course prompted M and L to tease me again about giving him drugs, lol. M's like, it's only because you're here that he's sleeping this long! What do you do?! But anyways. I like being an authority on A, second only to his parents pretty much. And it was also gratifying to hear some of L's friends tell me that they've heard a lot about me, and that it is all positive! Seriously, did I luck out or what with this job???

The week was pretty uneventful, mostly because of the @#@$&(*! rain. We had playgroup on Monday, which was fun and a little less stressful than usual because L has given in and said that I don't have to try so hard to keep him on his own blankets any more. WHEW. It is getting pretty much impossible to do that, even at home on the rug, because he's rolling and he pulls at whatever he's on...Yeah. So it was nice to be able to just let him play on the big quilt with his buddies.

A's got a new favorite toy this week...an old Verizon remote, with the batteries taken out of it. For serious. He'll ignore everything else to get to a remote...it's good to have one to give him that won't change my channel!

Other than that, it was a pretty boring week of just playing inside, trying to stay sane, fiddling around with what he eats (L decided to try to go back to a full jar of food each time, but he then didn't eat enough formula, so we're back to half...). We did go to the mall on Friday with my friend Jill, because I just needed to get OUT. And buy shorts. lol. Got lots of compliments on "my" cute baby, lol. Sometimes I let comments like that slide, but mostly I am just like, I'm actually his nanny but thanks, he is super-cute isn't he! :-D

L texted me this morning that A learned how to clap and got a tooth for real this weekend! I'm very excited for tomorrow to see these new develoments :-)

Freaking phases...

A is going through some sort of phase again. And it was driving me UP A WALL. The sleep schedule...it was just so incomprehensible. One day he took three naps, 40-40-25 (minutes). The next, he took three naps, 50-80-45.  Jeez. And then yesterday (Saturday) L texted me after 9am that he had woken up at 6 but hadn't yet taken a nap--she was like, where do you keep the magic nap powder? Man, I hope he napped at some point!

And then to top off this crazy sleep week, on Friday he pulled a bottle strike JUST for me. He'd drink one ounce, then refuse the rest until I gave up and fed it to him on a spoon. Like, seriously? he'd act like I was poisoning him if I tried to get him to drink the rest from the bottle. W.T.F. little dude. I did absolutely nothing different from any other day! He drank for his parents that night and yesterday though, so hopefully on Monday THAT will be back to normal at least.

Other news from the week is just a lot more progress with the rolling. It's going to be impossible soon to keep him on a quilt in front of the tv, which we have done thus far to keep him from getting doggy germs all over him. I know I should take him in the playroom more, but it's hard because we feed him in front of the TV (that's where the rocking chair is) and so I get hooked on whatever show is on, and then I want to keep him there so I can keep watching! I'm going to have to break my habits. But as long as I can just watch my 3.5 hours in the morning (Today, Ellen, Nate Berkus) I think I might be okay.

We didn't get out a lot this week except for playgroup, because it was just yucky out. It's MAY but it's acting like late March! Lame. We finally got out on Friday--I was tired of having the same old same old for lunch so I took A into their town center and went to a deli and then we walked around a little bit. It was pretty fun, and I def want to explore that area a little more. A woman I met said that there is a playground not too far from the center, and once A is more mobile I'll definitely want to check that out! We'll also be going to a park with a lake this summer, L and M are going to get us a pass. I'm both excited and nervous to go to the beach with him...just thinking about everything I'd need to BRING is a little overwhelming. Plus, will he nap outside? Who knows! Maybe if I'm lucky L will be able to come with us the first time to help me figure out how to do everything.

I just can't wait to be outside!

Today is A's Christening. I really want to go, but I might have another commitment...unless it gets rained out. I'm really hoping it does!

See ya next week...

A mixed-up kind of week

A's sleep patterns just got WEIRD this week. Monday through Wednesday I just could *NOT* get him down for a second nap unless he was in a moving vehicle of some sort. And even those naps were short. Thursday was good, finally. And then Friday L and the cleaning ladies accidentally woke him from his morning nap after only 25 minutes, and he didn't go down again for a few hours, and then the phone woke him up after only 30. The "Sleep Lady" book we got once would call those disaster naps...and yeah, cranky baby was cranky. Poor thing.

The odd thing is, L and M say no matter how much he naps or doesn't during the day, it doesn't seem to impact his nighttime sleep. Which seems weird to me. But whatever works for him...

Big progress this week with the rolling--meaning, holy crap the kid won't stay on his back! Especially when putting him down for a nap...We have a video monitor, and so i dump him in the crib (not literally) and then go out of the room and watch him on the monitor. Almost every day this past week, within a few minutes the kid was on his stomach. I learned that if I left him there until he started whining (as opposed to going and turning him over immediately) he was much more likely to go down for good. We'll see if that keeps up.

Oh, on thursday A had his evaluation from Early Intervention! He tested extremely well--with the exception of his upper body strength, he's completely at age level (and that's real age, not corrected!) and even AHEAD of it! They basically said he was brilliant, lol. Apparently the fact that he will move a blanket that's on top of a toy to get said toy, and things like that, is really advanced for his age. Awesome! So he still qualifies for services, but since it's not covered by M and L's insurance and it's pretty pricey without, I'm not sure what they're going to do. He's progressing really well, really blowing everyone's minds actually, so they'll probably end it. We'll see.

Every day is so new with this kid, it's why I love this age so much. Just this past week he's started reaching out to be picked up, and every day I discover something new that makes him laugh, and he's just such an incredible delight. I left L a mother's day card before I left on Friday, and inside of it I wrote "I am glad you're a mom, because if you weren't, I wouldn't have the best job in the world". And I mean it. I am incredibly, incredibly lucky.