Thursday, August 18, 2011

Even Mommies Have Milestones

I have officially taken the first step in my path back to adulthood. I completed, and more importantly survived, my first overnight trip without Junior. Don't get too excited, it was only to Lexicon's Princeton office in New Jersey, but that's progress! Up until that point, the furthest I'd been from Greyden for any substantial length of time was the 2 miles between my office and his daycare.  

 To be honest I had been dreading the trip for weeks. I had no idea how I'd do. My friend Nikki opted to go all of the way from Michigan to Atlanta and back in one day rather than staying away for a night. My first hesitation with the whole thing, besided the fact that I was 99% sure I'd be a bundle of nerves, is that Grey has recently decided that bottles are for babies and doesn't really care for them anymore. Of course he still nurses like a champ, but that obviously does Kevin no good (oh, the jokes I could insert here...) So Kevin came up with a game plan (stuff him with solid food) in the event that he refused his bottles while his boob I was gone. Lucky for me Kevin is a rock star when it comes to Greyden and had no issues giving him his bottles.

And speaking of boobs, that brings up my second hesitation - the pumping. I figured the trip would be 6.5 hours from the time I left the house to the time I arrived at the hotel. Pffft - not a problem. I go that long in between feedings every night (god willing). I wasn't even worried about it. Then we got on the plane and they told us it was delayed for 30 minutes due to storms in the Princeton area. Then another 15. Then another 15. All in all, it was 7.5 hours before I got to the hotel. And as hot as I looked, I can't say it was worth it comfort-wise. I figured the flight home couldn't be any worse than that, so imagine my surprise when we were delayed 45 minutes, then sat on the tarmac for an hour after that. Let's just say that I may have been pushing the speed limit a leetle bit trying to get home after that one. 8.5 hours is NOT my idea of a good time.

One of the things I was looking forward to on this trip was getting a full night's sleep. I definitely haven't had one of those in about a year and a half, if you count my being up and down 3 times a night to pee during pregnancy. I was SO ready for it. But again, I failed to take into account the lack of certain familiar factors that prevented me from being able to relax: 1) I had no baby monitor on my bedside table, 2) I had no one snoring and/or hogging the covers, and 3) I had no cat head butting me in the jaw in the middle of the night (readers, meet Linus). Once I did manage to fall asleep, my body decided that it was pissed at me for going so long without pumping that afternoon. I ended up getting up at 5:00am to pump again. So the full night's sleep that I was hoping to get ended up being about 6 hours.

But, like I said above, I survived although it wasn't as nice as I had built it up in my head. I was really banking on that full night's sleep. I was only gone for one night, so it was nice to get away from the mommy duties for a short time. And since I spent pretty much the entire time preoccupied with the potential explosion resulting from my rapidly growing boobs, I really didn't even have time to think about how much I missed my boys.

Oh! I have one more milestone that I'm about to hit this week. Tomorrow I turn 31! Wow, that looks a lot older when I see it in writing. As usual, we have no real plans. It's too hot outside to do anything. But we do have a babysitter! Woo Hoo! The first one in almost 10 months. Can someone please explain to me why we chose to live so far from the grandparents? Because I seem to forget every weekend when Kevin and I are sitting at home staring at each other wishing we could go somewhere and do something that's NOT kid-friendly. I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until last week when Kevin told me he didn't feel like going to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. I just about clutched my pearls and passed out. Oh, I lied. We do have plans for Saturday. Kevin and Kevin want to go up to the deer lease so that they can feed their rabbits deer. To be honest, it’s not the first thing that I would have planned to do on my birthday weekend (which Kevin insists I’m making up - yes, I'm going to remember this on his birthday) but it's better than sitting home and looking at each other yet again!

Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures this week, but I can offer up a couple pictures of Greyden's big boy dinner of baked salmon and broccoli dinner. Can you give a baby salmon? Huh. I probably should have googled that.




Friday, August 12, 2011

My darling sister is getting ready to have her baby! She's only about week from her due date so the whole family is waiting on pins and needles. I'm so excited I could scream. Bring me a baby to cuddle and love on! (but please not another of my own, thankyouverymuch!).  In preparation for baby's imminent arrival (ha! It's too late to back out now sucker!) we've been chatting online quite a bit. This does two things: 1) it keeps me abreast of the happenings in the Walther household, and 2) it reminds me of how much work having a baby is, lest I begin to consider doing it again. For now I'm definitely content to sit back and watch her running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Although I have to say, she appears to be pretty on top of things. If you ask her, she says she's got everything done and ready for Juniorette to arrive. Of course as the older, wiser sister in the relationship, I feel that it is my duty to keep telling her that she won't realize how much she really hasn't gotten done until after the baby arrives. I can practically hear her rolling her eyes at me from the other end of the phone. But she has no room to talk, because she now looks like a pregnant cartoon character. So there.


 One of the few things that we haven't really discussed a lot is her cats. Her cat Bob weighs in around 20 pounds. And yes, I have an overwhelming urge right now to add "In this corner of the ring..." I mean, that's a full pound and a half more than my 9.5 month old. (I'm hoping that she has begun the process of weaning Bob off eating babies and small children, because if not, she's screwed.) Her other cat, Cotton, is 17 pounds. That's only a pound and half less than my 9.5 month old. "And in the other corner..." (I'm sure Kerry isn't actually feeding them the neighborhood children. It's probably just *ahem* a "thyroid problem.") While I don't know how Kerry and Greg are handling the sumo cats' feeding habits, I do know that, being the good parents-in-training that they are, they've begun the process of transition the cats out of sleeping in their bedroom. They live in a 100+ year old farmhouse so their choices in bedrooms is limited. They have either the master bedroom on the first floor or the 2 deathtraps other bedrooms on the second floor, which you get to by climbing up the steepest, two foot wide staircase you've ever seen. So master bedroom it is. (Which is good, because if they did try to set up one of those upstairs bedrooms as a nursery, the whole family will show up on their doorstep with torches and pitchforks. We may already be a little over-protective of Juniorette.) The problem with the nursery also being in the master bedroom (besides the obvious for poor Greg - HAHAHAHA! His wife is one smart cookie) is that the master bedroom happens to be both cats' domain. Bob actually prefers to sleep on Greg's head at night. And I'm sure transitioning them out isn't an easy task when your cats are capable of breaking down the door every time they want back in. Kerry seems to think that the cats may try to sleep with (read: on) Adelaide. Kevin and I had the same concern with our cats. Come to find out, the LAST thing a cat wants is to be anywhere near the alien creature that you have brought into their house. But, better safe than sorry, right?


It's been really fun to watch Kerry go through the whole pregnancy/getting ready to have a baby phase. Being on the outside looking in has given me a totally different perspective than when I was going through it. I just went along for the ride without really thinking about the impact. Now that I'm watching Kerry do it, I often find myself thinking about how much work this is going to be for her and feeling exhausted just thinking about it, all while ignoring the fact that I'm already doing it. I blame my exhaustion for the slight oversight. Not only that, it's also recently come to my attention that Kevin and I are going to be doing it (and therefore being exhausted) for the rest of our lives. I'm definitely not saying that it's not completely worth it, but you're talking about the two people who have been trying to weasel our way into the senior living apartment complex for the last 5 years so that we don't have to take care of ourselves. (It's slightly depressing to realize that Junior has now completely blown any chance we had of getting in.) Now we have to be the responsible ones. Whose great idea was this again?


It's already becoming more work with the older he gets. For one thing we have to prepare his 3 meals a day, along with our own. Yes, the people who have been surviving on Johnsonville sausages (minus the buns because they require too much effort) and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for the past 9 months are responsible for providing a baby with 3 square meals, plus 2 snacks. In order to make it easier on myself, I have started just giving him what we eat. For example, Spaghetti Night in the Hockenberry Household:



Yes, it's in his eyebrow along with everywhere else. But that's why God invented the kitchen sink, which is where he ended up approximately 30 seconds upon finishing his spaghetti.




I think the only ones who enjoy Greyden getting table food more than Lazy Mommy are the sharks dogs. Funny, they haven't wanted a thing to do with him until now.



Greyden has recently figured out how to go from being on his belly, to sitting up, to standing up, all on his own and all in the last week. I actually found him standing in his crib on Tuesday morning, which was a first. You could tell he was SO proud of himself. And to be honest, it was cute as hell to see him standing there grinning at me when I went in to get him at 7am. It was not so cute when I went in to get him the following morning at 4 am. His favorite place to stand up is at the window in his play area. (How on earth do you baby proof a windowsill???)




His crawling came on literally overnight. One day he was army crawling, the next he was real crawling. Day 1 was a little slow going:


By day 2 however, he was an old pro.



He's also mastered the art of his walker, which I didn't even realize he knew how to use until I stuck him in it while I vacuumed the other day. I'd been vacuuming for about 2 minutes when I realized he was chasing me through the house. And I literally mean chasing. That walker might as well have been a Hummer. Even the rugs were no match for that thing. He cornered me in the hallway, the bathroom, the office, the entry way, the living room, then finally headed me off by taking the opposite way as me around the kitchen island. Vacuuming now easily takes twice as long as it used to.

So our little man is obviously growing up! Of course there is one aspect that he's still hasn't grown up enough for. Remember this photo?


That was taken back when Greyden was 5 months. Here is a more recent picture of him, taken at 9 months:


Yeah, we still might be on the low side of the growth charts.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

3/4 of a Year!

Greyden is 9 months old! Have you ever tried to take a picture of a 9 month old? It's not easy. Long gone are the days when I could prop him up against a pillow, hope he didn't tip over, and snap away. I mean, let's be honest, it's not like he was going anywhere, right? This months photo shoot took no less than an hour and a half. Seriously. And the majority of that hour was spent dragging him back to where I had originally set him. The kid can move! He's 18 pounds, 6 ounces (20th percentile) and 28.5 inches long (55th percentile). Oh, and his melon is 45 centimeters around (40th percentile).











Ever wonder what a baby sees when he looks outside?


How about the big, scary monsters?




By nine months into this mess you'd think this whole "child-rearing" thing would have gotten easier, since we're slowly becoming more experienced parents. If this was your thought, then I hate to break it to you, but you thought wrong.


We're currently having some issues with Junior taking his bottles. He has decided that he only wants one 5 ounce bottle per day at daycare. This is in sharp contrast to the three 5 ounce bottles he was taking each day just a few short weeks ago. How is this kid who doesn't want to eat mine you ask? Easy, he's hoovering solid foods like they're going out of style. I know that the majority of his nutrients are supposed to come from breastmilk or formula until he's 1, but I can't force feed the kid a bottle. Trust me, I've tried. And so far the only surefire way that I can think of to get him to take his milk is by putting it in a beer bottle (not that we've tried, but the kid is seriously obsessed with them). Unfortunately daycare frowns on this technique, so until he decides that he's back on the Breastmilk Bandwagon my hands are tied.


Feeding solids brings up yet another issue. Right now I make most of his food. I just steam or bake up some fruits or veggies, run them through my food processor until they're pureed, and freeze them into ice cube trays. This was all going along well and good until the other day when I realized that he's almost 1 year old. That means he's going to be on table foods very, very soon. Or at least he's supposed to be. Which means that we should probably be working hard core on his eating finger foods. I know, I know. We've been slacking, but don't call CPS on us just yet. (Who am I kidding? If you were going to call them, you would have done it at the breastmilk in the beer bottle.) We've done a little bit of finger food with him. He gets puffs as a snack at both daycare and home, and we also give him pieces of diced fruit from those little Dole cups. Oh, and bananas:




The problem with finger foods is that he gets frustrated easily. He hasn't quite mastered his pincer grasp, so the only way he can pick things up is with his entire fist. Then he has to figure out how to get the food from the palm of his hand into his mouth. Sometimes it works, but more often than not it doesn't. So Junior has gotten resourceful. Instead of trying to pick things up with his hands, he's decided it's easier to just put his face directly on the tray and suck the food up that way. Unfortunately even that technique has it's downside. For example, this: 








No, he didn't have any idea that there was a puff stuck to the end of his nose. It was there for at least 5 minutes before mommy stopped laughing long enough to pull it off.


So even though we've introduced a few finger foods, I'd really like to get to the point where Junior is eating what we eat. I'll be the first to admit that I am incredibly lazy and really don't want to have to prepare separate meals for him 3 times a day. So starting yesterday...






Yes, that's a T-bone. Done medium-rare for all of you steak snobs out there. He ate most of it too (and obviously ignored the Dole fruit pieces). I finally had to take it away when he got about halfway through it and began trying to shove the rest of it in his mouth. He eats steak like his Daddy. And since I am completely grossed out by even the mere idea of pureeing meat, this is how we're going to be doing it. Liquid chicken just doesn't do it for me.


One of the other issues we're having is with his crawling. Actually, he's not having an issue with it at all. He's almost there. It's me that's having the issue. Once Greyden starts crawling he has to move up to the next classroom at school. Are you kidding me? Not only are we finally getting his routines down in the class we're in now, but I am 100% comfortable with his teachers. And they've pretty much figured out that most of the time my brain isn't functioning properly and don't hold it against me when I forget to fill out his sign in sheet for the 3 straight day in a row. I don't even do well when he has a substitute for a day and they want me to put him in a completely different room with a completely different set of teachers? (insert hyperventilating here.) I may be a bit of a control freak so this whole moving thing is NOT sitting well with me. Luckily, his teachers adore him and don't want him moving up either. They make sure to immediately pick Greyden up and hold on to him when the director or her staff walk into the room so that he can't army crawl his way to their feet and pull himself up. Because he will do that. According to his teachers, the kid is hellbent on showing off his newfound skillz every chance he gets. 












And last but not least, it may be time to start baby proofing. Please see exhibit #1, Greyden in his walker, below:




And exhibit #2:








It might also be time to Daddy Proof Greyden from Daddy and Uncle Kevin. Although I can't imagine why.






Our first (okay, our only) step so far in the baby proofing saga is putting down a soft floor for him to play on. We went from this:


To this:


Nice huh? Fortunately you can't see the floor lamp with the nice, long cord that is plugged in in the background. That will probably end up being baby proofing step 2.