Last Thursday I suddenly found myself sitting on an airplane. You would think that getting on an airplane would require a fair amount of warning, however you would think wrong. I am completely justified when I say it was sudden. I had been sitting at my desk trying to decide if I was going to go to the gym or not at lunch. Then I got the following text from Kevin: "Lunch?" Huh. Decision made. Over lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant we start talking about how it was opening day of early doe season in Michigan. I made a comment about how it's too bad that he wasn't going up for it. I had been trying to talk him into it since Labor Day, my reasoning being if we fill our freezer now, we wouldn't have to stress as much about not getting a deer in November (and I wouldn't have to help him process and grind it and could instead use that time to sit my happy ass in the hot tub). He agreed (not with the hot tub part), then we moved on to other topics. After lunch, he dropped me off at work. At 1:50 I was sitting at my desk when I got "the call" from Kevin telling me that he had booked us plane tickets and by 2:35 we were headed for the airport. Somehow I managed to get to the daycare to get Junior, get home, and pack, all in under 30 minutes (even managing to remember underwear). I have no idea why he couldn't have planned this, say, 2 weeks ago when I first told him that he should go up hunting, but whatever.

After racing to the airport (luckily, my husband was a race car driver as he is constantly reminding me, as I white knuckle the dashboard whenever he's driving) and literally running through the airport, we made it to the gate only to discover that the ticketing agent hadn't put our seats together. After explaining to the gate attendents that us not sitting together would result in my having a very disgruntled seat mate when they found out that 1) I fully expected not only their cooperation in wrangling Junior for the 2.5 hour flight, I expected them to help and enjoy it, and 2) they would also be required to help with feedings (ie - see my boobs), since trying to maneuver Greyden into eating position is quite the feat in those tiny seats and he does NOT like to be covered when he's dining. And no, I wasn't dragging out the jarred baby food and risking everyone within a 3 seat radius wearing it. The airline agreed and quickly managed to find us seats together. Once they got everyone crammed on the plane and ready to go, they decided that it was the perfect time to tell us that one of the A/C units was only blowing hot air, but not to worry, maintenance was working on it. As if being confined in a small space with a wiggly infant isn't bad enough, let's add sweat to the mix and see if he's any easier to keep a grip on. No? Okay, great. Kevin is lucky that I am so understanding love adventure think he has great ideas stayed on the plane, because by the time 30 minutes had crawled by, I was slightly less than thrilled with his so-called "great plan". 

When we did finally manage to get off the ground (a full 60 minutes later), Greyden was about as thrilled with the entire situation as I was and only slightly more difficult to deal with. And God forbid the child give in to his drooping eyelids and actually sleep. It was only once we were in the rental car and heading out of Detroit that he gave in. Nothing like giving an infant a 2 hour nap before he's expected to go down for the night, right? We finally pulled into my parent's driveway at 11pm sharp.

I have to be honest, being at my parent's house was rough. The Mighty Mighty Hunter (Kevin) was too busy being out in the wild drinking beer not getting deer preparing for the hunt to really help much with Greyden. That meant that I was responsible for all feedings, naps, diaper changes, and entertainment (which is the exact reason why the kid is in daycare people!). Kerry was busy with Addie, who decided that having Greyden around was taking away from the attention that should be bestowed upon her and was subsequently seriously pissed off about it. Mom was busy running between the two grandbabies on Friday, then ditched all of us to go to a wedding on Saturday. I mean, she did RSVP that she would attend, but come on. Kerry and I travel hundreds of miles for a break for a babysitter to spend quality time with her and we get ditched. We did manage to convince her to come home after the reception and not stay the night, however it was not lost on either Kerry or I that she didn't come home until after the baby's bedtime. Well, what was supposed to the baby's bedtime. Addie was still busy being pissed and taking out her rage on anyone who would listen. (Please note that at that point the only people who would listen were her parents. The more experienced of us (me) were all in the "let her cry, she'll be fine" camp. They'll learn.)

And in case you're wondering what Kevin did with his time while there:



The Command Post, on it's way to it's annual cleaning. I think Kevin may be giving me a thumbs up, although I can't imagine why.




Please note the silver balls hanging from the front of the Scout.




The "Mighty Mighty Hunter" looking happier than a pig in shit.



Command Post: Side 2 - Having a flat tire while pulling it didn't seem to bother Kevin in the least. 

I have to admit, I was slightly worried about entertaining Junior at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We didn't bring any toys with us (mainly because someone didn't give us any time to pack them) and I was wondering how we were going keep him occupied all weekend. I don't know why I was worried. First thing Friday morning, Mom's kitchen storage closet puked toys from the 80s all over her kitchen. There were toys that I hadn't even thought about in 25 years stacked on every surface. Greyden took one look and was instantly in 7th heaven, and not because there were suddenly toys everywhere. In order to get the toys out from under the staircase, Mom had to pretty much empty her kitchen storage closet. From there it took Greyden approximately 15 seconds to zero in on the salad spinner. 300+ different toys of all colors and sizes, and he picks that. There is absolutely no need to tell Santa what's on Junior's wish list this year.

As if the salad spinner wasn't reason enough for Greyden to be Sir Happy Baby, he discovered his second favorite toy while we were there - stairs. He literally spent hours going up and down them, all while holding onto my fingers. HOURS. One foot per step. Once we hit the landing, he'd turn around, sit down, swing his legs over the edge, and scootch forward until he was standing on the next step. Aaaaaall the way back down. The kid was a machine. Since then I have thanked God every day that we don’t have stairs in our house.

In addition to the salad spinner and stairs, Greyden got to go for rides with Grandpa in the Scout (yes, balls and all) and in the backhoe. I can already tell that my dad is trying to figure out how old Grey needs to be before he wills him the family excavating business. Sorry Dad. Mommy and Daddy already have plans for him to go into the NFL and support us in our old age.



In case you're wonding, Greyden is NOT floating in mid-air as it appears in the picture. Grandpa is actually wearing camouflage pants!


Getting back home was slightly easier then our trip up there (meaning the flight actually took off on time AND we had A/C) however Greyden again decided not to sleep until the car ride home (again, a 45 minute nap right before bedtime. Nice.) Once we got home we were exhausted. We managed to get Greyden to sleep, hoover split an entire large pizza between the two of us, and crawl into bed. It was only once we were laying there that Kevin suddenly asked me if I had seen our cat Linus since we had gotten home. Funny, I hadn't. He's always out and about these days. 2 minutes later we found him locked in a closet, where he had apparently been stuck the entire weekend. Thank god we were only gone 2.5 days. Apparently I need to make sure to leave the pet sitter more explicit instructions when we go out of town to expand the scope of the Pet Sitting Job Description to include a "Ensure all pets are accounted for and not locked in closets" clause. (I had assumed this was a given. No?) This could have turned out very badly had it been a week long trip.  

Besides that little, uh, "miscommunication," the trip was a success. Which was a nice surprise considering that, while staring daggers at Kevin on the entire flight up to Michigan, I had had some serious doubts. Oh, and Kevin did manage to put his beer down long enough to shoot a deer, so at least we won't starve this year. (Side note: Kevin's deer hunting has meant that we haven't had to buy a package of ground beef in about 3 years. With his little hunting hiatus last year (Greyden being born) we didn't have much ground venison left in the freezer and finally used the last of it a few weeks ago. So last Wednesday I was unloading groceries and Kevin saw that I had a stack of packages of ground turkey 2 feet high sitting on the counter to go into the freezer. The following day, we were on a plane. Coincidence?) 

That night was rough. Greyden decided that he much preferred being rocked to lying in his crib, meaning he would start shrieking every time we tried to lay him down. Kevin ended up falling asleep in the recliner while holding Junior, while I passed out on the floor of the nursery. About an hour after my alarm was supposed to go off (and actually was, but unfortunately was doing so in a different room) I felt myself get pegged with the hard, plastic remote to Greyden's mobile. That was Kevin's cue to me that he was 1) finally putting Greyden down in his crib, and 2) really late for his flight to Louisiana. I guess he thought it was okay to get my attention this way since that's usually how I get him to stop snoring when he's cashed on the nursery floor while I'm feeding Grey in the middle of the night. (I'd like to take this opportunity to point out for the record that I only whip soft things, like burp cloths, at him.)

Needless to say, it has been impossible to catch up on our sleep this week. Greyden decided to start teething again and has therefore been Sir Crabby Paddy since Monday. Luckily the top left tooth (that appeared to be the big offender) sprouted through yesterday, bringing the grand total to 3. Only 198 more to go. Wait, has that number gone up since my last post? Will this ever end???

Greyden's preferred method of travel throughout the airports. Thanks Daddy.

This one is a little blurry because they're IN MOTION. You can pretty much plan on never getting Greyden back into his stroller ever again.

10 Months and His First Plane Ride!

Happy 10 months to Greyden! I can't believe that in just a couple more months he's going to be a year old. I guess that means that Supermom (me) needs to get on planning his first birthday party. Let's see we'll need a moonwalk, ponies, a magician, a keg....  


I probably say this in every "X Months!" post, but he is growing up so fast. He's doing so many different things that it's becoming hard to determine what is a milestone and what isn't. His crawling (as of August 8th)? Definitely a milestone. His becoming our new Swiffer Sweeper? Probably not. (Although the kid does a damn good job of it. And he can get under things and into corners. Every. Freaking. Corner. In. The. House.) I can't even figure out where he finds all of the furballs. I swear we the housekeepers vacuum once a week and  I  Kevin tries to do it at least one or two more times on top of that. We're not even using our pre-baby method of "sweeping", which involved turning on the ceiling fan then picking up the clumps of fur as they collect along the baseboards. We're actually using the vacuum (or Greyden). Side note: I was on the phone with my friend Janis last week and throughout the entire conversation she had to keep stopping to tell one of her kids "honey, don't worry. I'm not going to vacuum without you! I promise we'll do it as soon as I get off the phone." Wtf? Where do I find one of those? Janis is hereby nominated for 2011 Mother of the Year. Please teach me your ways.


Now that Junior's getting older, he's begun to put into practice the art of manipulation. He knows that in order to make Daddy come running, a series of da-da-da-daaaaaas will do the trick, even at 5 in the morning which lately has seemed to be his wake up time of choice. And no, just because he's up at 5 (or, god-willing, 6) doesn't mean he's sleeping through the night. Well, technically he's sleeping through the night, being as the morons experts seem to think that sleeping 5 straight hours is "through the night." (Personally I disagree. 5:00 am still = night.) He's definitely going more than 5 hours without waking up, most of the time it's about 7-8 hours, up to eat, then down for another 2-3 hours. I actually stopped and listened to his 3:00 am "crying" a few nights ago, and I realized it wasn't so much crying as it was angry yelling. Which seems to work just as well as crying to get mommy and daddy up and into gear. By the time we make our way into his room, it's likely we'll find him standing in his crib glaring at us, most likely because it took us more than 60 seconds from the time he decided he wanted us to the time we walked through the door. Yes, we need to break this habit. But at 3 am you have two choices: 1) get your ass in there and get him on the boob as soon as possible, increasing the odds that he'll go back to sleep by about 95%, or 2) wait it out and see if he'll go back to sleep on his own, which will most likely result in him working himself into hysterics and being up for the next 2 hours. So far we've been going with option 1. The sooner we're up and he's fed, the sooner we can all go back to bed.

One more big milestone is that we have teeth! We, meaning Greyden. Both bottom teeth popped through on August 28. 2 teeth down, only 167 more to go. I'd love to get a picture of them because he looks super cute, but to even get your finger in there just to feel them is a feat of astronomical proportions so we'll probably never have proof. Ever. I'm just happy he finally has some. I was pretty sure he was going to be our Toothless Wonder until he turned 10 years old.


You may have noticed that this "month" post, just like the last 9, isn't on time. He was actually 10 months on September 1st. But, as usual, I have a good excuse. Actually, I have a couple of them.


Excuse number 1: We were busy packing so that we could go on a trip to Indiana to meet Greyden's new baby cousin Adelaide Elizabeth! Yes it was Greyden's first plane ride. He did much better than I was preparing myself for. (Let's just say that had I no longer been nursing, copious amounts of alcohol would probably have been involved, starting at 6 am with Baileys in my coffee on the drive to the airport.) He spent the first half of both flights overtired and crabby and lunging back and forth between Kevin and I, but after we got him to actually close his eyes for more than 10 seconds he was out for the duration. We even managed to pack slightly less than we would have had we been taking the RV. For that reason alone we considered it a successful trip. We had a great time visiting with my sister and brother-in-law, as well as my parents (because if you thought Mom was going to miss out on her first shot at having both of her grandkids in one place, you were sorely mistaken). Mom even let me hold Adelaide for almost a full minute before ripping her back out of my arms.

Adelaide is just adorable. She was 6 pounds, 4 ounces when she was born and 21.5 inches. That's an ounce heavier than Greyden was and 4, yes 4, inches longer. In addition, her feet are the cutest little canoes, measuring in at 3 3/4 inches, which is only 1/4 of an inch smaller than Greydens are now at 10 months. Yes, we might have actually bust out a ruler while we were there. It's sad, I really don't remember Greyden being that tiny, let alone even tinier than she is. I just wanted to cuddle her the entire time (except between the hours of 10pm and 7am). At one point Kevin was snuggling her and I told him that I wanted one. He proceeded to hold her out to me and say "here you go". Hmmm....not exactly what I meant.




We couldn't keep Greyden off the 4 wheeler. All weekend it was parked in the yard and whenever he'd see it he'd cry until Daddy took him for a ride.

 


Don't be ridiculous. There was no alcohol involved.



Greyden and Uncle Greg. How come Kerry never looks that happy when she's sitting next to Greg?



Greyden and Addie. She looks less than thrilled.





Dad and Mom with their 2 grandchildren. And Greyden with his ever-present remote control.



Addie looks like she is smiling! (or trying to get away.)



Yup, she's definitely trying to get away.

 

Remember how I said there were 2 excuses as to why I'm so far behind on Greyden's 10 month post? Okay, I'm horribly embarrassed to admit this, and probably wouldn't had I been the only one taking the pictures, but Kevin was helping. Here are a couple of shots from his photo shoot:



Notice anything wrong with these pictures? Besides them all being horrible, of course. These were the best we could do, especially since there are about 30 more that look like this:

Have you every tried to make a 10 month old sit still? It's like trying to nail Jello to the wall.

Excuse number 2: Um, yeah. That's a big old 1-1 on his chest. No wonder I feel like the kid is growing up so fast. Mommy forgot to get out her fingers when calculating how old he was this month. I don't know what I'm going to do when he gets to be 21 months and I've run out of fingers and toes to count on. Sightly embarrassing. Of course what is even worse is that my first thought when I realized my mistake (as I was uploading the pictures to the blog 2 days later) was that his 11 month pictures were done and I wouldn't have to worry about taking any next month. Then I realized that just because he's wearing the sticker does not mean that he is actually 11 months old. And again, the ONLY reason I am admitting that I was dumb enough to think that is because when I showed the pictures to Kevin the first words out of his mouth were "at least we won't have to take his pictures next month!" Yeah, great minds think alike, huh?  

This is usually the look he gives you when you tell him "no," right before he goes back to doing whatever you told him not to do in first place.



Here, Grandma. You eat it first. (You had to be there, right mom?)





The End.



  

Food Fight!

Wow, has it really been almost a month since I last posted? I'm sorry! Things have been crazy busy around here, both at work and at home. By the time I get home from work and we get Junior fed, bathed, and in bed, I am ready to crash. Of course after he's down we still have to get everything ready for daycare the next day: make bottles, pack food, make our own dinner, and I still have to pump.

It wasn't always so time crunched, but Junior's dinner time has become slightly more challenging lately. Okay, fine. It's become all out warfare. Greyden was, and still is, a good eater. But only when he wants to be. So dinner time has become a power struggle between Greyden and Daddy. It has also become a power struggle between Daddy and Mommy. I'm in the camp that says breastmilk is supposed to be his main source of nutrition until he's 1. So if he decides that he would rather study the art of gravity with his broccoli or brush up on his physics by launching pureed sweet potatoes across the room via his spoon, then so be it. Kevin on the other hand is in the camp that says he needs his solid foods so that he'll sleep better (although so far we haven't been able to verify that claim). Kevin is also the one who ends up bathed in pureed zucchini and broccoli when Greyden decides that he'd rather blow raspberries than swallow. Coincidence? I think not. 

Of course his daycare teachers just RAVE about what a good eater he is. At first I thought they were messing with me. Nope, turns out he'll put away pretty much whatever they put in front of him. So why are mommy and daddy having to make the broccoli dance in front of his face in a worthless attempt to get him to notice it? I'm sure part of it has to do with the circling sharks beneath his high chair dogs distracting him, since he always needs to know what they are doing. While I'm content to sit back and watch the food fly (Harley and Bella are big fans of this technique as well), Daddy gets stressed out and tries other tactics which don't usually do much to help get Greyden to eat, but do result in other parental discoveries. For example, we've learned that by putting Greyden's Gerber cereal puffs right in or under his table food, he'll go from his normal eating technique of picking up his food with his whole hand and shoving it into his mouth, to the most precise and perfected pincer grasp you can imagine, lest he should *gasp* pick up a piece of his table food along with it. And even though he won't touch his own dinner lately, he is more than happy to partake of the dog's dinner as we discovered last week. I thought I had caught him in time and removed the two kibbles from his hands and the one that was hanging half out of his mouth. About 5 minutes later I realized he was still drooling like a faucet. I stuck my finger in his mouth and managed to remove the final kibble. Mommy fail.



Greyden at his Graduation/Going Away Party at daycare. They got him a mini-cupcake. Maybe this is why he's so willing to eat for them.



I'm hoping he really gets the hang of the table food soon though because I plan to quit breastfeeding when he hits a year old. And let me tell you, I'm READY. If you would have asked me about it a few months ago I'd have told you that I can't imagine not doing it. Then 9 months hit and I was suddenly ready to be done, which is a relief because I was starting to get visuals of me showing up at Greyden's 3rd grade classroom to feed him. I'm slightly nervous about it because I have a feeling weaning him isn't going to be as easy as I would like it to be. For one thing, he does not seem to have any intention of giving up the boob. He's much more efficient than he used to be so it only takes him a few minutes on each side, but when he's done, he's done. No more laying on my lap and gazing adoringly at me. Nope, he's trying to sit up, grab my hair and earrings, play with the ties on my hoodie, stick his hand in my mouth and down my shirt, and looking behind him (without letting go of course) to see what the dogs and cats are doing. For a while I thought that his sitting up when he was finished was his way of showing me that he was done, so I couldn't understand why he was getting so upset when I would put him down. Last week when I was distracted and didn't put him down right away he ended up faceplanted into my other boob. It was then that I realized that he wasn't sitting up because he was finished, he was sitting up because he was switching sides for me. I might be showing up to third grade after all.


The end of breastfeeding means the end of many things, the most important being my fridge at work the last physical bond of me being the sole provider for my son. Okay, fine. The fridge. I fought hard to get that thing in my office so that I wouldn't have to haul my cookies to a different floor 3 times a day and I'm not looking forward to it going away. That means I'm going to have to start drinking room temperature water again, which was fine pre-pregnancy, but post-pregnancy I HAVE to have ice cold water. Room temperature (which was my preference before) now makes me want to gag. Quitting breastfeeding also means that Greyden's immune system will no longer be of the highest caliber and that we'll now need to worry about him getting sick. Oh wait. Maybe we'll actually have to worry about him getting well. This could actually be a good thing. Just an FYI - The person who said that breastfeeding is necessary to ensure a strong immune system is totally smoking crack in his or her spare time. How do I know this? Maybe because today's lunch hour was spent picking up his 267th antibiotic prescription.



Greyden's first wagon ride!