Here Comes Trouble

The past couple of days have brought about a few more changes, but what's new? For starters, Baker got his 5th tooth on Saturday but this one is on top...his first top tooth! The one next to it is almost out as well. It's crazy to think that he has 5 teeth already! When one sprouts up, they all do I guess but this seems to be happening so fast.

Baker has also made a few more advancements in crawling. I mentioned before that he is starting to rock back and forth on all fours but this is happening a lot now. Last night, Brad was upstairs with him getting ready for bed. Baker sometimes gets in this crazy mood before bedtime where he is suddenly gets a burst of high energy. When Brad laid him on the daybed to get his PJ's out, he popped up on all fours and started to rock but when he realized that he inched forward if he put enough force into it, he did it more and moved across the bed! When I got upstairs with the bottle, Brad was so funny...his eyes were so big as he explained to me what had just happened. We keep saying that we need to baby proof but the reality of that is getting closer.

1. The first pic is from this afternoon. Isn't he darling? 2. Last night, we had put Baker on the floor on the blanket that is laying in the background. When I turned around, he had moved all to the edge of the rug. It seems that his ball had rolled off so he was going after it. I love that one sock is barely hanging on and the other is beside him!

Video: Baker rocking back and forth. Please ignore my terrible voice. I, for some reason, can't sit there in silence while videoing and hate it after I play it back! If I knew how to mute the sound on this I would! :o)

Baker is starting to grab the top of his crib as if he is going to pull himself up. Yesterday, I had a put some toys in there and sat him up to play. A few minutes later I noticed that he had leaned so far over and somehow got his legs into this position as if he was doing a split and looking a bit distressed! Then again, if I were doing that I would be distressed too! We might have a cheerleader or gymnist on our hands! :o)

I just thought this was a funny picture showing how messy his face is
after a having a teething biscuit!

Surprise Visit From My Dad

Yesterday afternoon, I was so excited to have my dad over for a quick visit! He and two of the guys that work for him were in the area on a job and on their way out, daddy stopped by our place to check on the baby, and to see me of course! Unfortunately, Brad was in NYC (again) for the day so he missed out but we all missed him. It was a brief visit but we were just so happy to see him. Baker is so funny when my dad holds him -- he is obsessed with his facial hair and all he wants to do it touch it. I guess it's because no one we know around here has a beard. But we had a great time catching up and letting daddy see how much Baker has changed since we were in NC in July. Can't wait until next time!

Baker with his Papaw

Baker with Robert - he has pretty much been working for my dad and a part of our family since I was a kid so it was great to introduce Baker to him for the first time!

Rod and Sarah's Wedding

This past Saturday, Brad and I hired another babysitter to watch Baker so that we could attend our 3rd wedding this summer/fall. Sarah (Anna's sister) and Rod Walston were getting married in Richmond so we couldn't miss this one. After the beautiful ceremony at the church, we all headed to the Ashland Berry Farm for a laid back, harvest-like reception that turned out to be a ton of fun. All of the guests changed into casual clothes and lined up for bbq and the usual fixin's all while a live blue grass band played their tunes. It was truly a lot of fun but as always, we were ready to head home to be with our baby, even though he was already in bed and we didn't get to see him until morning! Congratulations Sarah and Rod!

The wooden chapel was built by Humberto, a friend of their family and the nicest guy. He does woodworking as a hobby and is a amazing at it! I wish the pictures showed how gorgeous this was and all made from scrap birch wood! Beautiful!

Sarah clearly was afraid of what Rod might do with the cake and by the looks of the second picture, she had every reason to be. But then again, Rod got it too! Did I say how delish that cake was? Hmm!

Time For a New Car Seat!

Brad and I started to notice a few weeks back that Baker was outgrowing his infant car seat so I started to research what seat we should get next. It's a shame that those infant seats are so expensive for the little time they actually get to use them! Anyway, we want to make every effort to make sure our little man is perfectly safe in his seat should anything happen. So with the help of the internet and my local mom's list serve, I came to realize that Britax was the right choice for us. But who would have thought that there would be some many Britax seats to chose from? Good grief...it's the Roundabout, Diplomat, Marathon, Boulevard, Decathalon...are you kidding? Before Baker came into the picture, I thought there were a few seats to chose from and pretty much everyone had the same seat. Not so! The next choice is which one of these do we get? So many parents swear by the Britax brand and while they are more expensive, they often rank the best with Consumer Reports. After a few weeks of talking it out, Brad and I decided to go with the Britax Marathon. It's a great seat that Baker can grow with, up to 65 lbs, so maybe we'll save a little money in the end. All in all, I think we are going to be very happy with our choice and Baker will be super comfy!

In his new seat. The other picture is of Baker wearing some sweet little shoes that our neighbor/friend bought for him the day we brought him home from the hospital. I forgot about them and found this morning but his feet are almost too big for them already. We'll get our wear out of them though. Baker became obsessed and wanted to eat them!

Baker Turns 8 Months!

Please don't feel like you have to read everything I write. We know that it's mostly for our family that we include all the details! So feel free to pass on it if you get bored! :o)

Wednesday was a big day for Baker because he turned a whopping 8 months old! I can't believe that our little monkey has been in this world for 8 months already. Time is really flying by. I write all the time about how often he changes but it's so true. On Wednesday, his 4th tooth came through. I considered feeding him steak tonight but thought it might be a little too early for that!
He has also made great strides in just two days with his efforts to crawl...it's like he's starting to connect the dots on how to accomplish it. I really noticed on Tuesday how high he is lifting his chest up off the floor and does what almost looks like a push-up. But he has also started to put his knees underneath him at the same time and does a rocking motion. I'm sure you're thinking what we're thinking...trouble! I notice him doing it more in his crib when he's laying there before or after a nap (that's all thanks to a video monitor!). I guess I should probably get Brad to install the cabinet locks that we bought a few weeks back before Baker gets his little hands near them.

Baker also seems to be letting his inquisitive side come out. On Wed, I was playing peek-a-boo with him just before we started our bedtime routine, unfortunately without Brad because he was in NYC for work. I had laid him in his crib while I put some things away underneath his crib. When I came back up, I said Boo! and he started to laugh...he loves this game so we play it a lot. I did it a few more times and by the third time, he started to pull the bumper down so he could see me before I came up and started laughing. Another game we play - I lay on our bed with him and pretend to go to sleep and then I suddenly wake up. It always startles him and makes him laugh. But every now and then, he reaches over to touch my face as if he wants to wake me up. And since he recently discovered how to slap things with the palm of his hand and the noise it makes, we've started to play high 5...he's actually catching on pretty good but I doubt he knows it's a game. I think he's just hitting our hand! :o) We like to think that he's a small genius though!

Overall, Baker is turning so lovey now. He is more cuddly than ever and loves to reach over and plant a big slobbery mouth on our face. I think that is more for the biting aspect of it as opposed to kissing! My new personal favorite time of day is to lay on the bed with him as we're winding down for his nap and just let him roll all over us. He'll often grab our faces and just love on us, of course after he has scratched or pulled the skin off our necks first or yanked the hair out of our heads! Being with him in these precious moments is the most rewarding feeling in the world! I can't believe how he's changing and look forward to writing what new things he's doing next month!

Let me start these pictures by saying how DIFFICULT this shoot was! Baker is getting way too busy for me and moves so much that catching that perfect shot is really hard. He wore me out after this one with all of his rolling and flipping around!

Baker is beginning to outgrow the changing table! He stretches from one end to the other.

If you look closely at the 2nd picture, even click it to make it bigger,

you can see all four teeth so clearly!

Sweet face!

When the giraffe comes out, he loses all interest in the camera and

getting a good shot is really difficult!



He loves his Harrod's puppy too but would much rather eat him! By the looks of it, I think he's pretty excited to have his blocks out too!

In the same 12 month onesie. He is totally big enough to wear this now. I'm not sure what I'll do for the remaining 4 month pictures. Maybe show how tiny they are on him???

Baker's funny face. The last picture shows how exhausted he is from this photo shoot! He must be thinking, "Are we done yet? I just want to relax for a bit!"

Happy Blogiversary

I realized this morning while I was in the shower that September marks three years since we first started our blog. My how times have changed! When we first started blogging, we only knew two others that were doing it. By the looks of our blogroll, it seems now that everyone has joined in on the fun. For those of you that didn't know this, though it is kind of obvious by the blog URL, we created our blog when we moved from NYC to London in 2005 so that our family and friends could keep up with our lives since we lived so far away. Looking back, we should have made a much more general URL but we didn't know that we would want to come back in a year. We led a pretty interesting life in London and traveled a ton, taking Bleeker all over England...that is one well traveled pup! It was great to be able to share our photos from our trips to Venice, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Dublin, and the English countryside (Bath, Cambridge, Devon), after all, those trips were part of the very reason we wanted to blog. When we moved back to the States, we thought, we might as well keep it up because we've never lived close to our families and it was the best way for them to know what was going on in our lives. Needless to say, we didn't have a very exciting life in Atlanta but we did get the chance to travel a lot to see Brad's family in Cleveland, TN and a few trips to see mine in NC. We also had the chance to make a trip to see my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Bob in St. Mary's, GA...Brad and I adore those two and wish we saw them more...and a trip to Mississippi to see Brad's aunts, uncles and cousins for his cousin's wedding. We don't see any of them nearly as much as we'd like! So being closer to our family was nice. And we all know what happened this year! Baker has fastly become the heartbeat of our blog now. I'm realizing now how boring our blog must have been before he arrived! So, in honor of this blogiversary, join me in going back to some of our very first posts and see how our lives have changed in 3 years! Happy Blogiversary!

Ch-ch-changes

Gone are the ordinary days where things stay the same. The only constant in our home is change these days. Baker is constantly doing or trying something new but I guess we can't expect that not to be the case with an 8 month old! The past couple of days seem to have come with many changes. For one, Baker has his 3rd and the 4th tooth has almost broke through as well! And they are all on the bottom! I don't know why that seems so strange to me. I admit that I'm one of those that needs things spelled out to me as if everything in life were a perfect science and for some reason, I imagined that his bottom two front teeth would come, then the top two, then the teeth on each side of these. That clearly didn't happen. But he is so stinkin' cute when his three little teeth shine through with every smile!

Speaking of smiles, Baker seems to have turned over a new leaf this past week. He is talking A LOT and laughs at just about anything. We don't even have to really try anymore. Oddly enough, when he is out, like at church or with friends, he gets quiet and becomes this observant little boy, soaking everything in. Even when the other babies are crying in the nursery, he just sits there and watches. His doctor even suggested that he might turn out to be shy. Shy?! How can that be with his parents being the way they are?? But at home, he's a totally different story, squealing, talking and rolling all over the place. Not to belittle the past months that we've had with him but this is by far the most fun age yet! Having so much interaction with us and playing with his toys...we love it! He is growing out of that baby stage and totally turning into a little boy, sigh.

Loving on his daddy! If you look closely at the other picture, you can see all three teeth and the fourth one trying to peak through. Sorry it's so blurry...not sure what happened there.

Playing with some of his new toys. He'd much rather eat them than stack them!

Other changes - Baker has not been eating so well the past two days. It started on Sunday afternoon but yesterday morning started out rough. I usually feed him his solid foods then finish with his bottle just because our doctor recommended it. But yesterday, he refused the bottle at every single feeding, 8 am, 12 pm and 4 pm. I had to, due to no success at anything else I tried, feed him his bottle about 45 minutes after he hate his solids! Not good and I knew that this was not a trend that I wanted to start. So this morning he decided that he wanted to do the same thing and it got me thinking. Maybe I should try the bottle first at his 12 pm feeding and see what happens to make sure he isn't over the bottle. Sure enough, he downed that bottle and refused the solid food later. I knew it had to be that he was too full for the next thing. I called the on-call nurse and asked her what she thought of this and we both agreed, seeing that he isn't lacking in the weight department, that we should alternate what we start each meal off with so that he is still getting a balanced diet and taking in the ounces he needs from formula. So that's what I did at 4 pm. I fed him his solids first. When it came time for the formula I tried something new. The nurse had asked me earlier if I tried giving him a sippy cup instead. I had only tried it about 2 months ago with water and juice but that was it and we haven't done it since. So I tried putting a little taste of formula in a cup and gave it to him without the top so that he could drink from it like a little boy and he did great...I held it of course! I next tried it with the top on and he loved that too but sucked a little too hard on it so it came out a too fast...he didn't stop trying though! Then Baker got really crazy with it, slinging it all over the place so I took it away and put the rest of the milk in the bottle, he screamed and was totally mad at me (he is very dramatic these days and knows exactly what he's doing!), then attempted to feed him and oddly enough, he drained that bottle. So who knows what's going on!

Sipping formula from his sippy cup but he doesn't do that too well. I guess for being new to it, he's doing pretty good with it! With help he's great! And look at those feet...they are so big! I was noticing how big his big toe was today...small giant!

Video of Baker making his new face. He just started this yesterday with the whole food thing. He scrunches up his nose and huffs like a bull! It's so cute! He shows it more at the end of the

video. This is one strong willed child! :o)

Over the past few weeks, Baker discovered that if he pulls hard enough on his Bumbo tray that it will pop off! It's impossible to keep it on now. Today, I put it on over and over again and before I could even move my hand from it he would pull it off again...he's way too quick! He's so strong too...he was giving me a workout trying to put the tray on the seat and totally working against me!

Short video of him popping it off but notice that the minute I put it back on the seat and grabbed the camera, he was already pulling it off! I just barely caught it!

Up to No Good

Our little one is turning into quite the mischievious one! The other morning, I went to get him up for the day and when I walked into his room, I was shocked to see that he had taken one of his dirty towels from his clothes bin and had it wrapped around his waist. You see, his nursery isn't the largest room in the world and every nook is used for something practical. Beside his crib is the changing table but there is a small gap in between the two so we have the stool from our rocker glider wedged in (there isn't enough room for that to be used either...once again, city living!) and on top of that sits his little dirty clothes basket. I'm guessing that he reached his tiny arm between the slats of his crib and pulled out the towel. Immediately, I called Brad in and we both got a good laugh out of it. He's always into something these days! Just today, I found him chewing on Bleeker's ball...ugh! Bleeker dropped his ball at Baker's feet while he was playing on the floor (bless him, he thinks that Baker is going to throw it for him...one day!) and I had just turned around to get some toys out of his basket for him to play with. Next thing I know, Baker had picked it up and started to eat it. That is disgusting!

Baker and his sweet morning face. As you can see, he has the towel totally wrapped around his waist. The other picture shows how close his bin is to the crib.

More naughtiness but also how absolutely precious he is when he naps...and sucking on those fingers!

Also, Baker is getting pretty good at rolling off of things, which in turn is not so good for us. The days of us laying him down and staying put are long gone, and have been for months now. In the past 2 months or so we've noticed that if we lay him on the couch or bed, he will flip over to his stomach and inch his way off the edge of the sofa until he tips off. We're there to catch him of course but it's a good thing to know how he does it. Instant flipping is what he does so well now but it makes diaper changes and clothes changes a really difficult task. Brad and I have both begun to master dressing him backwards and putting his diaper on while he is on his stomach. He's such a wiggle worm! Anyway, last night when getting ready for bed, he kept flipping over while I was trying to dress him and he kept inching his way off. Baker would get such a kick out of the fact that he was standing up beside the bed. Brad grabbed the camera and video'd it but of course, at this point he had already done this about 5 times so it was getting a bit old.

I love how cute he is from behind!

One more video - Brad is being naughty this time, teaching Baker bad things...throwing this really soft, cloth ball at Baker's head and he thought it was funny! I promise it's soft & weighs nothing so please don't think we were being mean!

Playing in the Park

This past Tuesday, a few friends from my moms/young women's Bible study group decided to go to one of the nearby waterfront parks for a picnic. Knowing how much Baker loves to be outside, I didn't pass this one up. So I stopped by the bagel shop for a sandwich and walked over to meet the girls. Baker, being pretty chilled out anyway, is most content outside. We had a great time out and Baker got to have some playtime with his friends, Noah and Micah. Of course we had to swing since he adores that but this time, we even attempted the see-saw! And it wouldn't be normal if I didn't take loads of pictures! It was a fun afternoon out but then we had to head home for his afternoon nap!

It's obvious by the look on his face that he loves to swing! I love how sweet his face is in the second one! I'm not sure how his arm ended up inside the

swing but he didn't seem bothered by it!

Look at his little pearly white showing! Did I mention that he got his 2nd tooth last weekend?

Carolyn and Noah, Melanie and Micah, and Sara and her little girl Ellen. The other pic is of Baker and I on the see-saw.

The three amigos - Noah, Micah and Baker

Video of Baker swinging - Please excuse all of my talking. The lady at the swing next to us was so nice but kept talking to me and I couldn't be rude so I just kept talking back! :o)