I Like the Hell Outta Bud

Beck and I are proud to announce that my sister is pregnant with her first dirty, stinky, rotten, little boy named Bud! Congratulations Jenny and JD! We are so excited to meet him!

(Beck, not Bud)

In other news... for the first time in 6 months and 3 weeks poor Beck is SICK! I took him to the doctor today and he has his first ear infection. I feel awful for not taking him right away on Monday, but I just knew he had a cold and they were just gonna say "He has a cold, it's a virus, there's nothing we can do... and that'll be $30." If I'm gonna pay $30, it better be for an antibiotic.

$30 and a bottle of amoxicillin later, we are praying tonight is gonna go better than the last 2 nights have. We've gotten no sleep, I cracked every vertebrae in Seth's spine last night when he "didn't hear" Beck crying and I woke up single this morning. No one here can take another night of this. I feel like Beck is 2 weeks old again... except I have to go to work in the morning.... please, please, please sleep until even 4 am tonight!!!

Disclaimer: JD and Jenny are not naming their baby Bud. I am naming their baby Bud and I encourage you to do the same

Things Beck Likes Better Than Sophie

shoot me.

Meet Sophie

Sophisticated, spotted and seven inches tall, Sophie came to reside at our place a little over 2 weeks ago.

Sophie is all the rage in baby toys. She cannot be bought at Target, she cannot be bought at Babies R Us. No, Sophie can only be bought at baby boutiques (or Amazon.com for 25% off... suckassss). This French bred giraffe has won the esteem of mother's world wide because of her size and shape- both allow newly dextrous babies to hold and play with her easily. She's also great for teething. Most baby toys are hard plastic made big enough specifically to not fit in a baby's mouth so they can't choke on them. Not Sophie, Sophie is very pliable and Beck can pass her back and forth between hands chewing on her ears, antlers and legs with ease.

I could hardly wait for her delivery. I checked my UPS tracking everyday to find out what city my sweet Sophie was in. She could not have come soon enough. Beck had been getting so frustrated with not being able to pick up and chew on his toys, when I saw that big brown box on the front porch I nearly did a back flip out of my car.

She came so cutely packaged, complete with a French birth certificate, written in French, "Oooh lala, how very French!" I thought. I pulled her out gave her a squeeze and

SOPHIE IS A DOG TOY!!!

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh... I did not spend that much for a DOG TOY.... I did not get a DOG TOY for my SON.

Sophie looks like a dog toy, feels like a dog toy and squeaks like a dog toy. How on Earth did I fall for this??

She was much easier for him to pass back and forth from hand to hand, and if he drops her it's really easy for him to pick her back up. He can't do that with any of his other toys.

One week later, he can do that with all his other toys.

(yes that's a sippy cup, can you believe Beck is old enough for a sippy cup??)

Sophie is still great. She is cute. Beck likes her. He just needs to like her a little bit more. We will get our money's worth out of her. She will be his favorite toy and we will save her until he's grown and smile fondly on all the warm memories of Beck and his little Sophie the Giraffe. I really did not get ripped off after all...

Did I mention she's French?

(6 months since his) Birthday Boy!

Today Baby Beck is 6 months old! Half a year, where did it go? And in another half a year he'll be one! Half a year of diapers, half a year of breastfeeding, half a year of not sleeeeepppinnnngggggg.

At 6 months old, Beck weighs 17 lbs 15 ozs, is 27 inches long and has a pretty decent sized noggin.

He no longer likes to sit on my lap and read. Instead, he prefers to flip over and play with things on the side table next to the glider. Particularly the lamp and especially the beaded lamp shade. Said lamp now resides on the floor behind the glider.

At his doctor's appointment he got 5 more immunizations. He cried some but immediately stopped when I picked him up. And immediately resumed when I put him down. It was so sweet, it was the first time I've been able to console him with just cuddling after shots.

He has such a personalitly now too. He is happy allll the time and thinks his dad is the funniest person ever (I have not brought out my best material yet).

He's eaten green beans, carrots, bananas, pears, apples... and that's all I can remember. He loved apples but everything else he sometimes loved sometimes didn't but never refused anything.

We are still in a sleeping dilemma. On one hand, he has a hard time sleeping when he's not swaddled. He always knocks his paci out of his mouth and then wakes up. On the other hand, I think he wants to sleep on his stomach. I don't want to swaddle him and have him roll over and then not be able to flip back over or push him self up on his hands. There have been 1 or 2... or 10... arguments over how we should put him to sleep. Any suggestions on transitioning from swaddle to stomach?

And lastly, at the tender age of 6 months, Beck has met the girl of his dreams.... Sophie. More on her to come...

Out the Window

I am beat.

I needed to finish a couple prereqs before I apply to PA school so I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet. Since I have to leave work in the middle of the day to go to class, I have to make up my hours doing airport pickups at night. Last week I got home at midnight...

Oh and did I mention Beck has decided he doesn't like to sleep through the night now? Yes, he likes to visit 3 and 4 times a night.

Yes, I am tired and so blogging has gone out the window.

So has supporting Beck when he sits up... he is now able to sit up unassisted! He topples occasionally, but I think many of the times he topples intentionally.

Another thing that has gone out the window... the swaddling blanket (I still can't believe I don't have one picture of our BOYrito, I need to get one). Since Beck hasn't been sleeping well, I thought maybe it was because he didn't want to be swaddled anymore. So for a couple nights we experimented only to wake up to find him laying on his tummy!! The past several nights we've tried swaddling him again and he's been sleeping better so maybe it's not quite out the window yet.

Maybe not out the window but definitely on his crib sheet is Beck's hair. He's been sporting the back side bald spot followed by a Kentucky Waterfall.

Conan O'Brien's career- out the window. The DVRed Tonight Show was a staple at our house, and some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen in the last week it was on. Poor guy, out of a job and only 33 million to show for it... Beck feels his pain.

And last but not least... the Viking's season flew out the window last night. 5 turnovers and 1 broken lamp later, they've lost the NFC Championship. We were all devastated (ok, I wasn't) (ok, neither was Beck) but we at least still have our undefeated C.A.T.S!

Boogey

I've been thinking about this guy a lot lately.

I really hate people talking bad about him, calling him a butt*hole and trash among other choice words. True, the man has a temper and true he sometimes does act out but also true he's an 18 year old kid. Who wasn't an idiot at 18 and how many of us were on the big stage like he is? We can't all be perfect like John Wall. Not to mention, he's some woman's baby, which I don't think you can appreciate until you have a baby yourself. Most importantly, however, I think my son, who has also been given the nickname "Boogey," may be him in 18 years.

Big and black? Probably not.

An AWFUL sport? Absolutely.

Seth and I play Scrabble, rummy and the Wii a lot. And by "play" I mean curse, scream, fight, throw boards, quit and stop speaking to each other. I can't speak for Seth but nothing makes me more mad than when I lose, especially when I've got 7 vowels infront of me!!! What good is a triple word score when my word is "it" and Seth's are "jolly" and "zero." I rarely cuss but if I need a good cathartic melt down just put a board game infront of me. Even more irritating is how giddy with delight the other person is upon seeing the loser "lose it."

That being said, what chance does Beck have? I will try my hardest to keep my cool infront of him, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna kick his ass a time or two in Memory. Welcome to the real world, kiddo. I think I'll be fine with Chutes and Ladders and CandyLand, those games require no skill and "I wasn't really trying anyway." But genetically, yikes... he's in trouble... and if someone calls my baby a butt*hole and trash among other choice words I'll be in a world of trouble too...

Also, listen up and listen good, because this doesn't happen often.

I am an idiot.

I wrote about Beck meeting his "first baby" at Christmas and talked about how much he liked her and how I wished I knew more moms with babies. My stupidness dawned on me this week as I picked up Beck from KinderCare in a room full of snot nosed babies. First baby indeed.

Duh.

ExerSaucer

On Christmas morning Beck woke up to find this beauty under his Christmas tree.

After going back and forth about whether or not to put it together, and if so how we'd get it home from Henderson, we decided to go ahead and try it out. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to put together and I wanted to see how Beck did in it. 3 screwdrivers, 9 AA batteries, 15 GD's and one break up later, wa-la! We have an ExerSaucer!!!

I thought Beck would really like it. He loves standing up and he's getting in to playing with toys so it seemed like it would be the perfect fit.

Well, he doesn't really like it. He LOVES it! He goes crazy in it! He loves all the toys with the exception of the alligator- in his defense, it does suck. He'll slam himself back and forth with excitement, he is so funny to watch in it. He just smiles and laughs and gives himself whiplash.

Oh and sometimes the butterfly pictured below slams into his head. Like I've said before, we're not raising a wuss.

According to EvenFlo, all the toys and stimulation helps babies achieve 10 developmental milestones. For instance, reaching for the toys helps hand eye coordination, being able to stretch out his legs helps when beginning to stand, not being held by me or Seth helps his independence, being surrounded by animals will acclimate him to any future trips to the Amazon rain forest and peaks his interest in environmental issues...

putting a dragonfly in your mouth helps hand mouth coordination when eating, the fun he has in it puts him in a good mood and I'm pretty sure all the exercise will drop his 40 time significantly. Who needs Harvard when you've got a EvenFlo ExerSaucer Triple Fun

Jungle??

Here's a picture of my sister 27 years ago in her ExerSaucer. Which developmental milestones do you think she missed out on???

.... clearly not Harvard bound...