Now You're Cookin'!

Too cute! Roy helped me make dinner for his first time tonight. I was making some fried, breaded pork chops, and I started out by offering to let him stand on a chair so he could see the counter and watch. But he kept pushing the chair closer until it was right up against the counter, so finally I asked him if he wanted to help make the pork chops? He shouted "chops!" and then watched as I dredged the first one, and then helped me do the rest. He was actually a very good helper, up until the point where he decided he should start dredging other things too. Then the cooking lesson had to end.

I'll have to ask mom, but I think Roy has me beat for earliest cooking experience now. :)

Oh, and while I'm at it, he makes a pretty cute dinosaur:



And here he is, just as the sugar rush started to hit:

Evil Cat

We were all up at 3:30AM this morning, thanks to Bullseye. And I'm horribly sick with a cold, so I really did NOT need that. Damn cat. What was I thinking, saying I wanted a cat that weighed in excess of 20lbs??? Sure, he's a substantial bit of a cuddle, but his sheer need for the cuddling caused him to try breaking into Roy's room last night to wake the baby up. And his 20lb fat ass is why he's capable of pushing open the door. Argh. I'm tempted to let Roy play with a spray bottle of water today, for revenge.

Childhood Milestones

Today, Roy started singing. He's said his A-B-C's and even used the same cadence as the tune when he does it, but he's never really tried holding a melody before. This morning, he busted out with "Sing, sing a song" from Sesame Street. I can't wait til he's sitting in front of the mirror in the hallway and making up lyrics and tunes of his own, like his aunt Anna used to!

And also, tonight I read Roy the last story in the Hans Cristian Andersen collection. It took nearly a year to get through all nine-hundred-seven pages of it, but finally did it. So now I'm digging through my books to figure out what to read him next... I was thinking "The King of Elfland's Daughter" because I'm already about halfway through it and I think its really pretty, or I could go in an entirely different direction and start him on some Edgar Rice Burroughs. Any suggestions? (Keeping in mind please, that he isn't even three yet.)

Mommy's Little Helper - and I ain't talking pills

Roy Helping Mommy from Russ Wetzel on Vimeo.

My, he grows up fast...

The tooth count stands at 10+ now, and we seem to have finally hit a teething lull. The kiddo is sleeping through the night again, and his usual cheery self during the day.

We have a vocabulary now, too! "Go" "No" "Up" "Momma" "Daddy" "Booga" "Hi" and "Bye Bye"

And over Labor Day, Roy got to take his first hike. We drove up to Shenandoah National Park, had a picnic at Big Meadows, and then took the Story of the Forest trail. It's probably the wussiest trail at the park, but Roy walked a full third of it on his own. I can't wait to get him back out to the park again, because his walking has already greatly improved, and he's even doing short runs. He's using his new skills to insist on pushing the grocery cart around the store for us when we go shopping, too.

Best of all, from a time-saving perspective, Roy now eats his meals on his own. That's at least an hour and a half each day of my time freed up to cook, or do the dishes or other work, as long as I'm still in the kitchen with him.

I swear, with every day that passes, the kiddo becomes more fun.

Seven! Ha ha ha ha! I count seven teeth!

After what seems like a week of teething misery, the kiddo has finally managed to push an additional tooth to the surface. This one is a molar on his lower left! Woo! That makes seven, and the matching tooth on the lower right looks about ready to pop through any day now as well.

Baby Steps

Here are a few things Roy has been up to lately:

He now has six teeth. Four top and the two bottom.

He's figured out how to climb down off of the couch on his own, and is learning how to climb down stairs.

He loves to share. If I give him a cookie or offer him his sippy cup, he always insists I take a bite or a drink as well. ... or it could be he's making sure I haven't poisoned him. It's still cute.

He's developed a fascination with the silverware basket in the dishwasher. I have to prop something inside to force the lower rack to stay outwards or he won't leave the basket alone. And boy does it piss him off! He'll brace his chubby little baby fists against the lower rack, plant his feet, and push as hard as he can, making little weight-lifter grunts while he does it. You can see he's really putting his back into it. When he realizes he's not going to get that lower rack to budge, he starts yelling.

He no longer nurses to sleep. We walk him down for his naps, or if he's really tired, we can just put him in his crib and he'll roll over and go to sleep. He's down to just a morning nursing, and that will go away starting with our road trip to Lissa's.

And finally, last night he got a hold of a small peppermint patty. His reach has gotten a lot better lately, and we had him in his exersaucer while Russ was cleaning up downstairs. He'd started gnawing on the foil wrapper, so Russ decided it would be funny to just unwrap it and let him have at it. I came out of the office to find a baby sticky all over with bits of peppermint patty, with palms and face coated dark brown with chocolate, and not a recognizable lump of that piece of candy left anywhere else in sight. I had to give him a bath before he could eat his dinner - which he wouldn't finish since he'd had so much candy.

Precocious

I have a tendency to let Roy wander off while we're upstairs and I'm in the kitchen. As long as he's not near the stairs, and the bathroom doors are closed, I'm not too worried about him. He normally spends his time chasing his roll-a-rounds or one of the cats.

But yesterday, while I was busy preparing the boy's lunch - I caught the sound of Roy giggling coming from the back of the house. So I paused my puree-ing, and followed the sweet sounds of a happy baby....

to find Roy, standing at our dresser, with the second drawer up half pulled out, and some of Russ' t-shirts pulled over the edge of the drawer. Roy is bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, giggling like mad over his discovery: daddy's cache o' girlie mags.

That kid is too clever by half.

In the mouth of Hell

Since this Friday night, Roy has been teething bad. He's been running a mild fever off and on, and is extremely unhappy. He woke up 3 times Friday night, and then woke up that morning starting at 520am. For the rest of Saturday, he alternated between crying and napping, and drooling on everything. Infant Tylenol helps a little bit, and giving him ice cream will settle him down for a few minutes as well, but for the most part he's just miserable. He was so unhappy Saturday night, we actually ended up just putting him bed between the two of us, because Russ and I were too exhausted to try staying up with him any longer. Then he spent Sunday running a mild fever and crying some more. His poor teeth hurt so bad, he didn't even want to drink anything... pretty much the only thing he would let us put in his mouth was yogurt or ice cream. Finally, last night I was cuddling him on the couch when he finally passed out, and I did as well. I woke up around 1am, and put him in his crib, and he finally slept the whole night through. He actually seems to be doing much better this morning, but I really feel like we spent this weekend in the mouth of hell. It was rough enough Russ called in sick today.

New Foods For Roy

This week's new vegetable was eggplant. He hates it! I can get maybe 3 spoonfuls into his mouth before he starts to cry. So I'm giving up on the eggplant, and I'll try another vegetable instead. Any nominations?

This week's new fruit was pineapple. Of course he loved it. There hasn't been a fruit yet he hasn't liked.

This week's funny experiment was a marshmallow. I handed him one while he was in his exersaucer and let him go to town. He had the thing nestled in his palm, and the entire palm shoved up against his mouth while he gummed that thing. When he was done, there was maybe a thumbnail sized portion of it left.

Another Milestone For Roy

Since we wanted to get out of the house for a bit today, and Roy is sitting up on his own, we figured we'd try an experiment. So we drove on into Manassas and hit Potbelly's. Roy got his very own booster seat, and a chocolate milkshake, and we got to actually sit down and eat somewhere with Roy for the very first time. He spent the whole time - between spoonfuls of chocolate shake - gaping at everything. I think maybe next time we'll take him to that Town and Country diner on 29. We went there a lot while I was pregnant, and I think it'd be nice to go back and let the folks there see what I was hiding under that shirt.

Oooh... and in other news, we also swung by the Global Foods market in the same shopping center with Potbelly's, since I'd sent Russ there to get me some rice, and he'd come home with wild tales of an insane produce selection and an entire aisle of rice varieties. Wow. He was right. I felt like a total tourist, wandering around the place, since every other person there was asian or hispanic, but they had all kinds of shit! Great big papayas, fresh herbs in bunches, fresh okra, garbanzo beans, green beans of several different varieties, five or six different types of fresh mushrooms... and then I hit their butcher/seafood section, and was floored again. Everything from live crabs and tilapia, to large squid, rabbit, quail... and the weird stuff, like containers of pigs blood, ox tails, entire beef tongues, fish heads, etc. This dingy, weird-looking market had a selection of meats and produce that would make Wegman's blush, and prices that made me wonder if I had teleported to another state with a much lower cost of living. When I can figure out some recipes for some of the stuff I saw there, I'll be back.

Mark Your Calendars!

Last night was a red letter day for me! For the first time since Roy was born 7 months ago, Russ changed a poopy diaper!