It's been a while...

It's been a while, my husband's grandfather died, so we have been spending a lot of time with family recently. Today my ten month old son decided to throw a full fledged temper tantrum. He has recently discovered climbing. He has decided that his favorite thing to climb is up on our fireplace. It's closed, and has never been used but he hasn't mastered getting down, and its sharp. He throws toys up there before he climbs so he doesn't get bored. This kid is too damn smart for his own good. He climbed up there so I picked him up and set him on the floor near his toys. He goes straight back over there.
I decide that if he insists on throwing temper tantrums and being a big boy now, then I will treat him like a big boy and "ignore it" So I sat there basically restraining my 10 month old from crawling to the fireplace. I tried giving him toys (they say the only way you can discipline at this age is distraction...yea that only works when your kid is not hell bent on climbing on that damn fireplace.) So I eventually removed him from the situation, which translates to it is nap time. I am now sitting here typing this while my temper tantrum throwing 10 month old is passed out. Life is fun...

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mommas out there.

We have succeeded...Mitch takes 2 good naps a day for the most part now...knock on wood...we got over that horrible teething bit and hes back to being my good sleeper! He likes to swing on the hammock with mommy. That always gets him in the mood for a nap. We start swim class on monday...I will let you know how that goes

A while back I posted a picture of Mitch drinking from a straw. Well now he has his very own straw cup...very summery and very cute from Target for 2.99 It has a built in straw and the top part that sticks out of the cup is made of a silicon type material so baby won't poke his eye out! It's totally not a baby cup, but mitch loves it and does well with it...so mommy is happy.

So Mitch pulled himself up to standing last night. I cried. He's growing up way to fast, but he was so proud of himself. He looked up at me and gave me the biggest smile.

so we have been super busy trying to get floors in, banister done..and our kitchen cabinets just got delivered...unfortunately we have a bazillion projects going on at once. But I am proud to say that the banister was put in and I sanded, stained, sealed, sanded again, and just today put a the final coat of poly on there and now it is complete! Yay...happy mommy. Mitch has his 2 upper teeth...so hopefully soon we will get a break from crabby baby!

Mitch had his 9 month checkup yesterday. 22 lbs (75 percentile) and 30 inches (95 percentile) I have quite a big baby! His two upper teeth are coming in, so we have been dealing with crabby Mitch. He's a pro at crawling and trying sooo hard to stand up on his own. I don't think he understands that he needs to learn how to pull up on furniture. Screw it...he tries to stand up in the middle of the floor with nothing around, so his legs are straight up and hes bent over with his arms on the ground, but his balance isnt good enough to get up...it's hilarious. I need to try and capture a shot. He can pull up on mommy and daddy though and he says dada and he's starting to give big slobbery open mouthed kisses more liberally now...which makes mommy happy!
We ordered a baby gate for the top of the stairs. My hubby and I had some disagreements over which gate to get..he wants cheap I want safe and he thinks cheap is still safe...anyways I won and we are waiting for it to be delivered. We got outlet covers on and the tv mounted on the wall so that mitch can't electrocute him self or pull the tv down.

A picture is worth a thousand words

This picture sums up my life...

My curtains shrunk. WTH? They were wrinkly from laying on the bed while we were doing our floors and so I through them in the washer/dryer because I have a sucky iron. Anyways, I didn't even dry them all the way and they shrunk almost 6 inches!!! I am so mad and they look like crap. Whats even worse is now they have more wrinkles than before!! Ah such is life....

Nap training.

Finally getting somewhere!!! He will take his morning nap in his crib and he actually sleeps for a decent amount of time!! I am so excited. He doesn't even need to be swaddled. I really need to get him to sleep in there for his afternoon nap, but I am afraid he will sleep to long or it will mess up bedtime...I don't know why. I really just need to buckle down and do it.

We are almost done putting the hardwood floors in our guest bedroom, so that leaves just our bedroom and the stairs and we are done!! Yay! We have them in Mitch's room, the dining room, and the living room already and they look fantastic. We also got our swivel chair today! I have wanted one for a while. It matches the sectional we bought for the living room a month or so ago. I think it looks really good, almost like a real grown up house. I need to do something about artwork, my walls are bare.

Mitch loves iced tea. I gave him a few drops when we went out to dinner one time and now every time mommy or daddy gets tea he yells until we give him some! He hates juice...its odd. But I assume tea is better for him than juice anyways and I can always buy decaf. He doesn't get it at home, only as a special treat when we go out and of course he munches on fries. We went to a place where kids under 12 eat free so we ordered him some fries. Before the waitress had even set his plate down he had a handful. He is figuring out how to actually eat them now too instead of just gumming them until they fall out of his mouth. He drank out of a straw for the first time too and he actually got some (tea) out!! I'm so proud of my little or should I say big boy!

We went to the park on Wed. for the first time! It was lots of fun. Mitch had a good time and we got some great pictures!
Mitch can get himself into a sitting position now! Yay for milination of nerves! He's getting dangerously close to figuring out the crawling situation...mobile baby! watch out!

We went to visit grandma and poppy yesterday. It's a 3 hour drive to get there. Mitch did great...for the first hour and a half...He screamed the rest of the (for some reason) 2 hours it took us to get there. Normally he naps in the car. He slept for 30 minutes...we have taken longer car rides than 30 minutes. So he was up from 8:30 a.m. until 9 p.m. and slept for a total of maybe 35 minutes (that is including the 5 minutes he slept in daddy's arms from pure exhaustion.) He was not a happy kid. I can not get my kid to sleep in my arms...I don't know what it is. Maybe Mitch's fascination with my face is overwhelming his ability to sleep. I don't know, but my hubby can get him to sleep in less then 10 minutes. It's a miracle, but of course as soon as daddy puts him down he's back to screaming. I love the swing...I don't know what I would do without it, although it's really time to get on with the nap training. Adam is off this weekend...maybe we will do it then.
Mitch got his catch up shots today. We had to switch insurance and in case you didn't know they love to drag it out. And frankly I don't have the money to shell out 800+ dollars to get mitch his shots and hope the insurance pays me back in my lifetime. So we are playing catch-up. He did very well as soon as they were over and I picked him up he stopped crying. Until he saw the nurse and he cried at her! It was precious.
Mitch likes to throw things now. The whole experimenting with gravity thing. I don't let him throw his sippy cup. He throws it once, mommy or daddy pick it up and tell him not to do it again. He throws it again and we take it. That's it no more sippy for a while. He knows this and has gotten fantastic at not throwing sippy cups. Well we were at grandma and grandpas and we took his highchair and I gave him his sippy cup. He dropped it and grandpa picked it up for him. I told him not to throw it again. Well he slowly put it out over the side of the highchair and he looked at me and I told him "no" he looked over at grandma and grandpa and then threw it. He turned back to me and gave me the biggest "take that" smile I have ever seen. ugh! 7 months old and too smart for his own good, what am I gonna do??

I had friends over last night...I don't feel very good today... The weather is getting better and that makes me very happy. I was getting sick of being stuck in the house during the cold days and soon we can go to parks and whatnot! yay

"Ra ra ra ra ra ra ra"
"Say 'Mama'"
"AHHHH ra ra ra ra ra"

That's the conversation I have been having with my son all day...
Oh and he got his first tooth!!! :):):)

Almost crawling

So I figured Mitch would skip the whole crawling thing. I did and he gets around well enough by rolling. He got up on his hands and knees today and started rocking. This came out of no where. I am impressed and proud. :) He also had his first big boo-boo today as he faceplanted right into his seahorse rattle...poor baby.

7:00 p.m. until 10:30 a.m.
That's how long Mitch slept last night! My hubby and I take turns getting up in the morning with Mitch, so we can each sleep in sometimes. It was my turn to get up today. That makes me a very happy mommy.
On another note...I love tax season and I never thought I would say that. We got a nice sum of money back from the government. Gotta love my little tax deduction!

Avocados

So I bought some Avocados and took a blender to them to see if Mitch would eat them. I've never really got this reaction before...He kept eating them but I have no idea if he likes them! I don't think he knows either!



P.S. My nap training failed.

Sleepytime

I am so glad that my son has always been a pretty good night sleeper. When we brought him home from the hospital, he ate every 3 hours during the day and at night he would go exactly 4. He started giving us a good 7 or 8 hours around 5 weeks and was always really good at getting himself to sleep at night. I just wish he was a good napper! He still gets swaddled for naps (hasn't been swaddled at night for a good 3 or 4 months) and he goes into his swing. It doesn't matter how tired the kid is he will not nap. My MIL has gotten him to take a nice hour and a half nap in the crib unswaddled at her house once. I can't even do once, although I admit I haven't been trying that hard. I'm so grateful we don't have to do bedtime sleep training, but I'm thinking it's about to do nap training. The past week or so, his naps in his swing, swaddled, have even sucked. Ugh, this parenting thing is hard in the strangest ways...

Mitch

My son is soo precious!! He tries to give me kisses and he's been wanting to cuddle lately, which makes me happy as he's never in his whole 7 months of existence been a big cuddler. Speaking of 7 months, that was yesterday. I can't believe it, he's 7 months old and can sit by himself, kind of feed himself some puffs and he's drinking out of a big boy sippy cup...where did my sweet little baby go?

I HATE insurance companies. Our lovely insurance company decided to raise our homeowners by 137 dollars...wonderful...this means I have been on the phone with various companies/agents all day!

Mitch has got this pincher grasp thing going. He's really bad at it, but damn it he's trying! He loves his little gerber puffs and tries so hard to pick them up and often succeeds, but I don't think he understands how to get them in his mouth all the way. They end up in his lap most of the time, but I'd say 20 percent of them make it to his mouth and actually stay there. I'm so proud...and glad I have a dog.

It's just a phase

Mitch seems to be going through phases of his baby talk nonsense. First it was the screaming phase...that was adorable...for the first couple days. Then he got into this fake cough, then he went through a grunting phase...that was annoying because everyone always thought he was pooping. He went through a short bubble blowing phase, which ended up getting mashed baby peas all over mommy, followed by a bath. I guess mitch felt bad about getting peas all over mommy so he splashed at me to rinse them off...it was fun. We are back to screaming apparently today...fun times.

Yup

Well we at our cake and it was delicious! We had a nice anniversary. We had lunch at Krieger's, which is a bar and grill, only 2 of which remain in this area and we don't have one by us. Followed that with some bowling...I got an 80! I'm not very good at bowling. We went and saw Shutter Island...eh. Then came home and played some board games. Wow I just realized how boring that sounds, but hey I had a lot of fun. Oh and did I mention I got beautiful flowers? :)

Mitch's Fun Book

I've been working on Mitch's cloth book. I have the eyes sewn on (by hand...I have yet to set up my sewing machine, I am still trying to figure out where to put it) and I sewed Kopa's name onto the dog house. Kopa is our dog by the way and I made the doggy bone out of white pleather...I need to get some fabric for the backgrounds still. I threw in a shot of my dining room table just for good measure. It's a mess! I'm having a ton of fun making this for my munchkin butt!! I just hope it turns out ok...

Happy Anniversary

It's our wedding anniversary today! Go us! I just want to say I love this whole automatic posting thing *I wrote this on Thursday :)* I am no where near a computer (hopefully) My in-laws are watching little bits and we are eating not so frozen anymore wedding cake! Super excited...We made it through the first year and they say the first year is the hardest! Whoever the hell 'they' are, I hope they are right, because we did it!

Crazy shopping

So I met a friend for lunch on thursday, then we walked over to the fabric store. It was a delightful early afternoon, I got some material to make my swim suit and some odds and ends I need for Mitch's cloth book. Mitch was content this whole time, just looking around. Well said bye to my friend and off to run a couple errands, the last of which was grocery shopping. It was coupon thursday (10 off every 50 spent). I had waited all week to get what we need and we literally had no food in the house. I may have absentmindedly put the last of our butter in the pantry when I made toast earlier in the week. Our milk was expired and we had no butter, so that means not even Mac n Cheese for dinner. Anywho, we are shopping at the local grocery store and Mitch is being a good baby, playing with his blanket cow in the front of the cart (by the way he can sit in the front of the cart! Go Mitch!!) I'm almost done grocery shopping and he starts screaming his head off for no identifiable reason. He's not wet or dirty, nothing. So I do my best to calm him down while rushing to grab the butter (which is what we need because I lurve my toast.) Then rush to the checkout. I can't calm the kid down. This grocery store is one where you take your items and go to a separate area after you pay and bag your own stuff. So I scramble around for my debit card to pay, while holding a 20 pound screaming child (yea I know my son is huge) I go to the bagging area...I don't know if you have ever tried pushing a cart while holding your child, but its not easy...and set him in the front of the cart, which of course means he screams louder. The cashier actually came over to me and bagged my groceries...thats how bad this was. So I rush out of the store (rather embarrassed at this point)and strap him in his car seat and literally toss the majority of the groceries in the trunk. We get home and I set him in his highchair so I can put away the perishables and he is sitting there perfectly content... seriously not a peep just smiling at me watching me put away groceries. My almost 7 month old son made a scene at the store for no reason whatsoever...I am in for an adventure.

Sewing...

I’ve decided to take up sewing. I’ve sewed before, so I am not a complete beginner, but I will definitely have to give myself a little refresher course. I am not big on patterns, I’m more of a sew and figure it out as you go kind of girl. So I’m sitting here trying to figure out what in the world I should sew. I thought about maybe a nice simple blanket or a new beach bag type thing…but no I chose to make my little boy a cloth book! I am so excited! I went to the fabric store, bought lots of fabric and other things called my hubby (who is at work) and told him about my wonderful idea! His response? “You spent 50 dollars to make a book that you could just go out and buy?” Yes. Yes, I did. I spent 50 dollars on fabric and accessories. Now keep in mind, my sewing machine is still in its box from more than a year ago, so obviously I don’t have everything I need. But oh well…I’m still super excited and if it turns out alright and hopefully cute, then I’m sure the hubby will be too…

Rolling...

He is a rolling fool. He hated doing tummy time when he was littler so I didn’t make him do it. I know shame on me, but who cares he’s fine! I would put him on him belly every few days or so and pretend that we did tummy time. Well he figured out how to roll and he can go both ways, but loves being on his tummy now. If he doesn’t know we are watching him, he will roll onto his back, but if he sees us, he screams. Not a mad scream but a ‘hey you roll me over’ kind of scream…so we do.
My grandma says babies can’t be manipulating or be spoiled. Every time she says that I laugh. My son is both. He gets what he wants, maybe not the exact moment he wants it, but he makes you miserable until he gets it. He screams bloody murder if you leave him in his crib. I walk in thinking maybe he got a leg in the slat or something, but no he just looks up at me and laughs. Yes he laughs. He thinks it’s funny that mommy and daddy are so pathetic and he can keep tricking us over and over. He’s perfected the fake cry. It is true. He gets a billion gold stars for his fake cry…I wish he was old enough to understand the story about the boy who called wolf…but he’s not so I will continue thinking there is a wolf.

One Instant

It’s amazing to me how you become a parent in literally an instant. One minute I was laying in the hospital bed freaking out asking the doctors if he was out yet, the next I was a mom. Unfortunately I was on all sorts of drugs, but still an amazing experience. Now my son is only 6 months old, and I feel like a mom. I don’t think of myself as Kat, I think of myself as Mitch’s mommy. I love it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still me, but I’m not at the same time. The last thing I think of before bed is Mitch. It’s crazy how I went from being miserably pregnant to loving this child in such a way that only a parent can understand. It’s amazing how that one instant, becoming a parent, changes your entire perspective on life and the world. I look at my own mom, my grandparents, even my husband in a different light now that I am Mommy.
Think about yourself when you were a child. What did you think about your parents? *or in my case grandparents* I can’t answer the question for you, but I thought of them as responsible ‘adults.’ They were my grandparents. That was their job, to be my grandparents. I never thought about life for them before me *or even after I went to bed at night*. Now that I am Mommy, I find myself wondering what they are really like. I feel like I understand them better and I really wonder how many times that my grandma said she wouldn’t tell my grandpa about whatever I did, she did tell Poppy, but he just kept his mouth shut.
Obviously my son is only 6 months old and he doesn’t really do anything bad yet *ok that he knows is bad* but when he’s older I am sure I will tell Adam about all his exploits even if I promise I won’t. Does that make me a bad person? I don’t think it does. I think it makes me a person that is not just Mitch’s mom, even though, until he has his own child, to him that is what I will be.

Mitch can sit.

Mitch can sit. He hasn’t figured out how to pull himself into a seated position, but if I set him that way, he will stay…Mitch can also throw himself onto the floor. He gets quite a kick out of that. I set him down, he looks at me all proud like then flails *on purpose, although why you would flail on purpose beats me* and he’s lying on the floor laughing his butt off. So I pull him back into his seated position and here we go again. It is rather adorable, for now. He likes the dog. Kopa *the dog* makes him laugh. Oh and if he flails himself to a lying position and then Kopa runs over, we have ourselves a little party. I do love my little flailer. It makes me wonder what I was like as a baby…I wonder if I was also a flailer? I hope I wasn’t. I don’t think I would look as cute as Mitch does flailing about, but he is my son, so I am sure I was. The first few weeks with Mitch home and not in mommy’s belly were hard. Not because of the usual reasons, like being dead tired (I had pain killers to get me a good solid 3 hours of sleep between feedings) or not knowing what we were doing (I had read quite a bit on babies, but alas it is much different to do it yourself), what really killed me was the boredom. I had a c-section so I didn’t like to move if I didn’t have too and Mitch was in that *wonderful* sleepy newborn phase (ya know when they wake up to eat then sleep til next time), so I sat my big swollen butt on the couch and…watched HGTV. Constantly. Adam *husband* would come home every night, and I would have plenty of things that now needed to be done to the house…keep in mind we had just bought a new house 6 months prior *a foreclosure* and many things needed to be done like new floors, replace a cabinet, ect, not new paint *seeing as we had just painted the entire house when we moved in*, new curtains, ect. I think I drove him a little batty. I also wasn’t allowed to drive for 10 days and that just helped fuel my HGTV obsession. This went on for a couple months, the TV was constantly on and on HGTV. I am proud to say that I have been HGTV-free for a while now! In fact I don’t watch much TV at all, apart from my weekly shows: Desperate Housewives, House, Private Practice, Scrubs…and sadly we don’t have Tivo or anything of the sort, so my wonderful husband has to suffer…although he did admit to me during a drunken night that he actually likes Private Practice, but don’t tell anyone!

Surprise Surprise!

I found out I was pregnant in Dec. of 2008. It was right around Christmas time. First off let me say I have PCOS with means I’m super irregular, but anyways I took a test because I had one lying around and it came out positive, although I didn’t know it. See I had thrown away the box…and I can read a pregnancy test just fine, but there was that whole denial thing working against me in my head. So I went up to Walgreens to pick up a prescription and stopped in the family planning isle and took a look at the box…yup positive, so I did what any sane unmarried *at the time* woman would do, I bought 5 more and got my butt over to urgent care. Yes, that’s right. I took 5 pregnancy tests at various stops on the way and at urgent care and then after they all confirmed what the first test told me, I paid a 50 dollar co-pay for the doctor to look at me like I was crazy and allow me to pee in their wonderfully cheap plastic cups which turned out to be, what do ya know positive! They did give me a nice little piece of paper saying “your diagnosis: pregnant” because 7 tests and a Dr.’s visit wasn’t enough for me *yes I requested it*. Adam *now husband just to clarify yet again* worked and lived about 40 minutes away, and yes he was coming over that night, but no, it couldn’t wait and no, I wouldn’t tell him over the phone. Poor guy thought I was driving 40 minutes to break up with him…anyways I walked in said hi and handing him my “diagnosis.” All he said for 20 minutes was “wow.” He came over that night we talked about it and our lives have never been the same.

Happy Valentine's Day

So my wonderful hubby who works very hard and takes very good care of our family, had to do just that all day today. So it was just me and my other Valentine today, so Mommy covered him with kisses and then took pictures...what do you think?

To Begin...

A little background information...I'm Kate and both my parents died when I was pretty young. My grandparents raised me and let me say I give them mad props (yes I just said that) for doing what I consider to be a fantastic job. Don't get me wrong, my grandmother and I hated each other a good portion of my teenage years, but in this case I guess it's more about the destination than the journey...no one died or got seriously injured, I turned out to be a well-adjusted young adult (or so I like to think) and she is enjoying her wonderful grandson, Mitch, as much as possible! I have a beautiful little boy who is about to be 7 months old on the 26th. I had a horrible pregnancy and got the joy of staying in the hospital for almost a full week around the time of my son's birth. I have never really been around babies (I lived with old people) until I had my own and I am doing my best to figure out this whole mom thing as I go! Feel free to join me on my journey through parenthood...which I guess again our main goal is to get him to adulthood alive and with both of us still *hopefully* semi-sane...we shall see...