9 Months

Boo Boo has now been out as long as he was in, and our little man is growing more precocious by the day.  He is just so dang close to crawling, it literally could be any second now.  He will launch himself forward, can turn in any direction he chooses, and handily wedge himself underneath of stuff by moving backwards (and subsequently get MAD).  He loves to reach for toys, the remote, cell phones, and anything that goes, but that crawling motion is just barely out of reach.  Against my better judgement I'm trying to find that one thing that motivates him enough to launch forward.  Fortunately we have quite a selection of annoying and noisy toys to keep in the rotation.  Until then we continue to hold on tight as he tries to send himself sailing over couches, chairs, and whatever other obstacle is in his way.  In fact just this morning he went forehead-first into one of GG's chairs which litter the house.  Took her three and a half years to get a goose egg.  Took him 9 months.  Bruiser, comin' through!  And I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Luke has a habit of circling his hands and feet when he's excited.  It's usually at the table, and those little wrists and ankles go into overdrive just spinning away.  It's the funniest little habit I've ever seen and it makes me nervous to think what he's going to do with that energy once he gets moving. 

Until we conquer the crawling motion, Luke has chosen to concentrate on building his core with Pilates planks.

feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel the burn!

 

Eating has become soooooo much easier in the last couple months - what a relief.  Luke is chowing down three squares a day and nursing/bottle 3-4 times/day.  Favorites are grapes, watermelon, cheese, crackers, cereal, noodles, ham & cheese sandwiches, pb&j, waffles, apples...the list goes on, as does my time in the kitchen chopping all that stuff up into wee pieces.  But he's got a belly to fill and is great at feeding himself.  I will occasionally go in with yogurt or some leftover baby food but mostly he'd prefer to do it himself thankyouverymuch. 

who could notice the purple hand-me-down bib when there are waffles to shovel in?

The extra calories don't seem to have much effect on his weight, but they are definitely sending him up to the rafters.  The lad came in at just 19 pounds 2 oz but 29.5" at today's 9 month check up.  That's the 30th and 90th percentiles.  9.5" inches in 9 months?  Crazy.  We also have two new teeth, bringing our total toofer count up to 6.  Did you know you can grind your top and bottom two teeth?  You can.  Gah!  He is not a happy camper when teething.  I took my first ever 2 a.m. car trip a couple weeks ago trying to get the poor man to fall back asleep.  Fail.  Not until the next night when we were well into the beloved Tylenol/ibuprofen rotation did the fussing subside.  Naturally that was the week Matt was out of town for work so a good time was had by all.  We're also experiencing some separation anxiety when dropping off at day care or even if I just leave the room (Mom!  No!  Don't leave me to go pee!  Don't do it!  I need you!) but that comes with the territory.  Mostly Luke is a calm, low maintenance little dude who loves to hang out with his fam.

Aside from the mobility, Lukas is now a lot more interactive.  He can play peek-a-boo with a burp rag, tell us he's 'so big', and wave.  He's also started to 'share' which is just so dang cute.

sissie, behold the egg

first, i try it

then, i offer it to you

then we klunk

With all this busyness, getting his pictures this month was no easy feat (plus I'm still a little slow with using the 'ol iPhone).  So here are the best of the bunch!

hello bear.  here is your nose.

and here is how i eat your nose.  bwa ha ha!

 

diving exhibit a

spotting something else to dive after

our eyes are definitely no longer blue.  sometimes hazel, sometimes green (what?) but definitely headed toward brown

diving exhibit b

don't mind me

luke has become much more interested in books in the last couple months

on your mark...

get set...

flop!

uhh, mom? a hand please

screw it, i'm planking

July

Good god it happened again.  Another month has absolutely flown by without any blogging to speak of.  My excuse this month is that Matt and I took a flying leap into the 21st century at the beginning of the month and got iPhones, from which I do not yet know how to appropriately transfer pics onto our computer (ie, the cloud).  So I'll try to transfer pics while I type this and maybe by the end of the night I'll have figured something out.

The month started out with the big holiday of course.  We were supposed to be cottage-bound the weekend before but I felt like garbage so Matt and GG had a father daughter adventure in Wautoma.  And after 36 whole hours what did my angel come home knowing how to do?  Pee in the woods.  Nice.  Meanwhile Lukie and I got to spend some QT together and I caught up on my baby snuggles, which is always a cure for what ails ya.

For the 4th we headed to Shawn and Mel's house for Genevieve's first ever parade (almost 4 years old and hasn't yet been to a parade??  We are terrible parents).  Unfortunately it was, and continues to be, about the same temperature as the seventh circle of hell so by 10:30 a.m. we were all covered in sweat.  We raced back to the Bansemar's - air conditioned - house for a big lunch cookout.  Then the girls played like wild little monkeys with the hose and the kiddie pool while Lukie took a snooze.  A good time was had by all.  Alas there were no fireworks for us that night since nearly all of Wisconsin is on a burn ban.  But since we all had work & school the next day it wasn't a huge sacrifice.

parade hasn't even started and we're dying

The next weekend we stayed in town and Matt kept going on the never ending work that is our landscape.  We have the master planting plan which we intend to fill in a little every year until the house looks fab.  This time the assistant gardener was on site to help with the digging and planting.  And the subsequent muddying.  Gah!

bend with your knees!

well, she had about outgrown those tennis shoes anyway

The next week Matt was in Texas for work so it was just me and the troops.  Poor Luke had more teeth coming in so I was 100% ready for Matt to come home and give this mom a little backup.  We started the weekend by hanging out at Matt's favorite Milwaukee festival: Festa Italiana.  We ended up meeting K&K down there and spent the next few hours stuffing our faces.  They had a series of big bouncy house things that served to wear our girl out and Luke got his first taste of rice balls and cannoli.  Eh!  Oh!  Boppity boopy!  Genevieve has been begging me for a while to go on one of those sky glider things and I finally gave in this year.  She had a superb time taking in the gorgeous lakefront, the boats, and the people, while I spent our ride trying to figure out how to maneuver my body so that she would land on top of me when our gondola inevitably fell from the sky. 

please please please can we go?

up, up, and away!

festa famiglia

Then last weekend we headed to the cottage for the annual Martin/Maio weekend.  Pop Pop spends Saturday filling his inner need for all things aviation while the rest of us chill out in the lake.  The weather was perfect and a good time was had by all, including Lukie who had his first real swim in the lake.  It was another amazing exercise in kids being so different.  GG at that age was screaming bloody murder being in the floatie.  Boo Boo was totally content to hang out and chillax in the water.  I was pretty sure he was about ready to ask for a cold beer too.   

we could hang here all day...

but we've got floating to do! (incidentally, she named her new inner tube 'jason'.  jason is a girl inner tube)

 

nakies!!

i could just squeeze those fat little thighs all day!

mush, dad

get this blasted hat off of me!

During all of this we managed to make it to the library, story time at Barnes & Noble, and to the mall once or twice to just get out of the house and stay out of the heat.  A side effect of that is impromptu hair cuts. Genevieve is a hot box whose hair gets all sweaty and tangled and I was just so sick of the DAILY tears over getting out knots, it was time for the hair to go (the bath time convo a few weeks ago went like this.  GG: Mom, is it hair washing night?  Me: yep, sure is.  GG: Damn it!  Me: excuse me while I call your father).  Insert trendy pixy cut here.  Thank god the girl has the face for it. 

desperate for a little relief from the heat

hi mom, i like poufs and story time

sweet sassy molassey

cooling off in the library earlier this month

feeeeeeeeeeeeeeed meeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Well, I can't say the iPhone experiment was a huge success but it also was not an epic fail.  Next up - Lukie at 9 months!

8 Months

Lukie is 8 months old.  After not sleeping through a single night of his eighth month he is finally back to enjoying at least 9 hours of shut eye.  And the result of the nighttime hollering?  Two top toofers, check.

Now that he's about the age that babies usually start to adapt to table foods eating and feeding is going much smoother.  Thank the sweet lord.  We are moving into a more traditional feeding schedule with solids at regular meal time and nursing/bottle for snacks and before bed.  Luke loves him some PB&J which I can't send to school so when I told his teachers their eyes about popped out of their heads.  Guess they haven't gotten the memo yet that we're now doing the exact opposite of when G was an infant regarding food allergies.  Get with it, peeps!  Other than that he chows of all the usual faves: poufs, cheerios, cheese, yogurt, mandarin oranges, sweet potatoes, noodles, etc.  He'll be outeating Matt any day now.  

Other growth moments: he has cautiously pulled himself up in his crib a couple of times - and is quite proud of himself - and is starting to launch himself forward from a sitting position, but still pretty unimpressed with rolling.  Luke is a super soaker razzer, bubble blower and screecher.  When he really gets going it's so funny, and there's little doubt that he'll be able to make his voice heard in our crowd.  We've officially retired the baby tub, the boppy, the bumbo, the baby swing, and the play mat.  Didn't we JUST take that stuff out of the basement??

Here's the big man at 8 months:

 

peek a boo!

a hilarious moment in time as sis rubs his little back

happy baby

thighs a plenty

leaning tower o baby

see mom i'm not as lazy as you say

so, what's new with you?

can move backwards with frustrating ease

whoa whoa whoa, did you know there was a WHEEL in this carpet?

really a happy little dude

a peek at those top teeth