Thanksgiving

We have a lot to be thankful for this year - Alexander has brought a lot of joy into our lives!

We spent the Thanksgiving holidays with family in Maine. Alexander enjoyed it, but he also seemed really glad to be back with his familiar surroundings. He slept through thanksgiving dinner itself, after having his dinner at Mommy's Milk Bar, but woke up in time to help with the leftovers, and really liked getting to eat some turkey and mashed potatoes and peas and green beans.

Alexander is starting to show some good problem solving skills when it comes to navigating around the house. He is now confidently crawling on all fours, but has recently figured out how to drop to his belly to wiggle under obstacles and get out the other side. He was in the living room, trying to get to me in the kitchen, but the way was blocked by his swing and a folding chair. He whined for a moment, then stopped, belly crawled under the chair, and was on his way. Similarly, when getting packed to come home from Maine, he was trying to get past an area blocked by a suitcase and a towel, and very deliberately pulled the towel out of the way so he could crawl through that space.

He's understanding the Mommy Voice, or Daddy Voice, and testing it's limits. When he got the Mommy Voice to stay away from part of the computer this weekend, he stopped, but then tried to touch the same area again while watching me to see what I'd do. After a repetition of the Mommy Voice, he moved on to play with other things instead.

He enjoys "helping" in the kitchen. Last week he very deliberately took every towel out of the towel drawer, one by one, and dropped them on the floor. Today all of the tupperware containers from the tupperware cabinet are scattered across the kitchen. He even was kind enough to take out the counter liner for me. :)

He's cruising around the furniture - he's getting pretty confident about walking as long as he has at least one hand to balance himself with. Thank goodness he doesn't show any signs of being able to balance without something to hold onto yet, but I'm sure it will come soon.

He now has 5 teeth, two bottom, three top. The first of the top teeth came through last weekend, around Nov 22nd, with the second one close behind, and the third top tooth broke through last night.

And now, it is time for me to teach. More pictures and videos soon, I hope!

We're in trouble...

Part 1 - Alexander can now reach the top shelf of the entertainment center - the area where previously we could put stuff that needed to be out of reach. We can still put stuff on top of the entertainment center, but he'll be able to reach that too soon.

Part 2 - Today I was cleaning out the dishwasher, so I took the rack out of the bottom and had the door open while I was rinsing something out in the sink. I looked down to find Alexander was sitting in the middle of the dishwasher door! I have no idea how he got there, but it's probably a sign that I need to put a gate on the bottom end of the stairs soon.

Even the teachers at day care have been commenting on how much of a daredevil he's been lately, pulling himself up on everything and getting into tons of stuff. He's really enjoying his improved balancing ability. And he just took the door off of the Wii - time to go intervene.

And another

And while I'm uploading videos, here he is showing off his new and improved hands and knees version of crawling at the Halloween party this weekend.

Apples

A while back we got several bags of apples from our CSA. Alexander's mommy is so stingy she won't even buy him a ball to play with, so he had to improvise by stealing one of the apples out of the bags and rolling it around on the floor. :) It actually worked pretty well - it was round enough to roll a decent way, but then it would end up on a flat surface and stop rolling so he could catch up with it. He was much less frustrated with this than he was with normal balls at this stage of crawling, and chased it around the kitchen for quite a while.

More Pictures

Look at me stand!

I love you Mal!!!


Mom, you really need some help organizing this cabinet....


Look, see these ones go on the TOP shelf!

Pictures, pictures, pictures!

Showing off two of his favorite activities of a few weeks ago - he discovered that he could stick out his tongue. And that he could hold TWO of something!! One for each hand!! TWO!!!!

Rawrr.

I'm coming to get you!


Showing off the hat and jacket from Memere - and his two bottom teeth! (So hard to get those in a picture!)

Hanging with Uncle Nick.

November, and changes are in the wind

Alexander hit one of those phases where he's figuring out new things in leaps and bounds. Mostly to do with mobility - we're in trouble. He's getting very good at balancing and pulling himself up now - I'm beginning to wake up to him standing in the crib in the mornings, and as long as he has one hand to balance himself he can stand well. He looks a lot taller these days, but I think a large part of that is because he's loosing the baby bowleggedness and actually standing up straight. This weekend he also started really crawling on hands and knees for more extended periods. I finally caught him in the act of sitting up from a laying position the other day - I know he's been doing it for a while, but never while I was watching. He's been teething this weekend, so likely the top teeth will be on their way before too much longer. And he's getting very good about walking his way along pieces of furniture to get to things he wants. Where did my little boy go?

Next post - pictures!

Time flies

Alexander had his "6 month" (more like 7) checkup last Friday - 22lbs 7 ounces, 29 inches. He had a slight ear infection, so he's on antibiotics, and going back in a few weeks for his actual shots.

He learned to clap this weekend, although he claps more with his fingertips than his whole hand, so it looks like the Simpson's "eeeexcelent" - very cute. He's getting a bit more clingy towards mom, but for the most part will still happily visit anyone who smiles at him. I have yet to see him sit up from laying on his belly, but my mom says she saw him do it several times in his crib this weekend - I think the floor may just be too slippery for him to manage it. He's getting very good at pulling himself up on the side of the crib, and standing as long as he has something to hold on to for balance. Before we know it he'll be walking. He still mostly crawls on his belly, although I've seen him go from sitting to hands and knees and stay there for a while, or even take a few "steps" that way before he flops onto his belly. I think normal crawling is too slow for him, and again there's that slippery floors thing.

I can't believe he'll be 7 months old Saturday. Where did the time go?

6 months

Alexander turned 6 months old last Thursday. It's amazing how time flies! In another major lanmark, yesterday morning he managed to pull himself from sitting to standing using his crib railing. It's the first time I've seen him successfully pull himself up using something other than a human who can help him balance.

He is enjoying being mobile, and continues to crack me up. Here's a little snapshot of an evening with Alexander....

I put him down by his play gym, and then sat down on the floor on the other side of the room to work on putting his carseat cover back on the carseat. He started fussing, and when I looked up to see what was wrong he had belly-crawled halfway to me and was fussing that I wasn't paying attention to him. I called him to come on over, and he grinned and started wiggling faster and crawled over to me and I put his arms up over my leg. That wasn't good enough as he kept fussing, so I pulled him up across my lap and that seemed to be what he wanted. He lay quietly across my lap for a few minutes just chilling, until something caught his attention and he wiggled off of my lap and crawled over to the door to the dining room.

He had found one of the cat toys - a little loop of wire with some cardboard danglies on one end! What could he do with this? He picked it up and banged it on the floor a few times, and passed it from one hand to another several times. Mal came and laid down next to him and batted at it, then wandered off. Alexander started crawling forward with the toy in one hand and then noticed the cat door in the door that leads to the basement. He crawled over to it and looked at if for a few seconds, then looked at the toy in his hand. Door, toy, door, toy. *lightbulb!!!* He put the cat toy through the cat door and dropped it.

Now what to do? He looked around and crawled over to play with his little farm toy, the kind where you push a lever and the door pops open and shows you an animal. Then he pushed his diaper box around for a little bit. Then he took off down the hallway and picked up the shears that were still there from my earlier attempts at repairing the fence. I took those away from him and put him down in the middle of the kitchen floor, and he made a beeline for the cat's water fountain. I put the fountain up on the table, then took the piece of gravel that he'd found in the meantime out of his hand. He started crying because I took all the good toys away, so I sang him some songs and he happily watched while I sang and unloaded the dishwasher. He then crawled over to where I was standing and grabbed my legs and started whining again, so I picked him up, gave up on getting work done, and went to cuddle in the rocking chair while we waited for Daddy to get home from class.

Mobility

Alexander in one of his "back to school" outfits.

A very mobile Alexander.

Alexander is doing well at daycare, although he really doesn't like taking naps there. But he seems to have fun playing there, and doesn't seem at all bothered when I drop him off. When I pick him up he's ready to come to me and gets very upset if I do anything other than go pick him up right away.

Tooth!

Alexander officially has a tooth now! It finally broke through the surface last night. No pictures yet since it's basically just a white spot on the gum, but you can certainly feel it when he tries to chew on your fingers now.

In other landmarks for my future reference, when I weighed him Wednesday he was over 22 lbs with clothes and diaper on, so we installed the convertable carseat. Last Wednesday, the 19th he said Mama for the first time - he said it a lot that day, and a hanful of times since, but not often. While we were on vacation he started seriously eating solid foods, and started pulling himself up from sitting if you give him fingers to hold on to. He'll now put his hands up when he wants you to give him a hand standing up. And he has taken a few steps while holding onto hands, but hasn't figured out how to do it on command yet.

Updates from vacation soon!

Photo session

A few weekends ago Alexander had a professional photo session in the yard - the pictures are here: http://www.jgoingsgallery.com/Gallery/Clients/Clients.html Click on Alexander to see his album.

Bounce, bounce

Lately, one of Alexander's favorite places to be is in his jumper.

(He's in the closet because it's one of the few places where we have a door frame to attach the jumper to, not because we like to store our baby with the coats and shoes. ;))

Reading with Daddy

Daddy: "You see Alexander, people often attempt to attribute patterns to stock market movements, when really randomness is the driving force"
Alexander: "Really Daddy? That's fascinating!"

"Mommy, why are you interupting us with that flashy box?"

"Sorry - you were saying, Daddy?"

(James was reading "Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets" to Alexander. That kid is going to have a better understanding of economics than I do by kindergarden!)

And some random shots

Watching the big trucks with Grandmom

"It is so stimulating being your hat."

CEO Alexander discussing important buisness with chairman of the board Big Bird

Grandmom's visit

Pictures of the Saturday out with Grandmom....

Snowcones are yummy!

Um, Mom, this bathtub is awfully big....

And awfully cold!

Ooh, the sand is nice though!

I like the way it squishes between my toes!

It tasted yummy too!

Hanging out with Bridget

I have lots of pictures to catch up on! Here's one batch - hanging out with cousin Bridget when they stopped through after the baptism. This was around the 4th of July weekend.

Yummy

Today I had one last overripe peach from last week's CSA share - Alexander was watching me so intently at breakfast that I decided to offer him a little mashed peach to see what he would do. He seemed to love the taste, grabbing the spoon and putting it back in his mouth after the first bite, but didn't seem quite ready to handle the actual eating part. The little bit that he actually managed to swallow got spit right back up again. So since it was so overripe, I decided to pull the skin off of a section and let him lick the juices to see how he'd like that. The results are below. (When I took the peach away for a moment so I could go get the camera, he started crying in protest!)

Mmm, tasty!



Slurp, slurp, slurp


I wanna do it myself!


Why is the peach gone???

The Emerging Will

Alexander's will and personality continue to emerge. He's gotten to the point where he's getting good at making his will known. He will reach for a toy when he wants it. When he wants to play in his johnny jumpup, he will look at it and make bouncing motions. He gets all excited when you walk by his stroller if he wants to go for a walk. It's great because when you figure out what he wants and give it to him, he gets a great big grin on his face and laughs and is so happy!

The downside is that he is now that much more capable of being frustrated when things don't go the way he wants. He knows how routines work, and expects them to be followed. The night before last we messed up his bedtime routine - he went to play with Daddy before bed as normal, and the lights got turned off, but then I took him to change his diaper and gave him back to Daddy instead of sitting down to nurse him. He was NOT HAPPY with this change in routine, and boy did he let us know! When I came to take him for his before bed nursing he settled down for some voracious nursing, but you could tell he was still miffed. "Geesh - it goes change diaper, play with Daddy, then lights out and nurse with Mommy. Don't you guys know anything!"

He has also been very chatty this past week. While I was sitting on the couch talking with Grandmom about their day together and nursing Alexander, he stopped in the middle of nursing, looked up and made eye contact, and babbled at me for about 10 seconds before going back to nursing. I'm not sure exactly what he was trying to tell me, but he obviously had something to add to the conversation!

He also is ever more fascinated with new textures and toys. Last night we had spaghetti for dinner, so I put a pile of cold noodles on his plate for him to play with - he was having a great time digging his fingers into them and squishing them around. He seemed to like the odd, slightly sticky texture. Today he picked out a new toy from the "big box of toys that you haven't grown into yet" and was fascinated with figuring it out all morning.

Busy weekend

Alexander has had a busy, adventurous weekend! On Saturday, he went out with Mom and Grandmom to his first fair - granted, it was a 5 stall church fair, but he got to watch the big kids play in the bounce house, and taste his first snow cone, and see a clown! Unfortunately, the ponies had already gone home for the day. Then we went to the town beach and he got to try swimming in the lake. He thought it made an awfully large, awfully cold bathtub - he seems to prefer the one he has at home. However, digging in the sand was wonderful. He loved the funny feeling of the sand between his toes and was digging his feet in and kicking. Earlier in the day he'd had a photography session in the yard, and was fascinated by the grass and dirt between his toes too.

When he got home he got a nice bath, and then later in the evening we let him try some mashed up bananas for the first time since he's been so interested in watching us eat and trying to put stuff in his mouth! He seemed to enjoy the spoonful that made it into his mouth, but was much more interested in just smearing it all over the tray, so I don't think he's quite ready to get serious about solids yet.

Today the town paved our road - when he saw the big trucks out the window he started squealing with joy, so we went outside to watch them for a while. Four months old and he already loves the big dump trucks - he's definitely his mother's son. :)

On the landmarks front, Alexander is getting very good at sitting unsupported. He can occasionally sit on the floor with his back straight instead of having to prop himself on his hands. Of course he commonly overbalances and flops backwards when he tries to do that, but he's getting pretty good at it. He's starting to introduce more consonants into his babble too. Grandmom put up the jumper that we got at the consignment shop, and he absolutely loves bouncing and twirling in it - when I carry him past it he'll start wiggling and kicking to tell me he wants to get in it again. He's been enjoying lots of long walks in the stroller with Grandmom, and has started sitting up in the stroller for extended periods instead of having to be in the reclined position most of the time.

The past two weekends were weddings - one of the Kilbride cousins last weekend, and his Aunt Mikaela the weekend before. Both times he did wonderfully, handling meeting all the strange people with ease and apparently enjoying being passed around from one person to the next. We were all glad to have a weekend at home to relax though.

Pictures soon, once I get a chance to get them uploaded.

And the other way

Alexander learned how to roll over the other direction on Monday. So now he's got back to front and front to back down. He's very good at back to front, still perfecting front to back.

He also went to his first wedding this weekend, and his Aunt Mikaela and Uncle Nick got married! He handled the large crowds and being passed around like a football quite well, and seemed to enjoy meeting all the new strange relatives. :)

His evening caretakers (thanks grandad!) have reported that he's been rather fussy in the evenings the past couple nights - he seems to be dealing with a bit of teething pain or something. Hopefully it will pass soon!

Rolly polly baby!

Tonight, Alexander managed his first unassisted back to front roll over! He'd been working on this very hard for the past few weeks. The past two nights he'd managed to make the roll in bed, but with a gravity assist from the fact that the crib is still side-carred, and the bed mattress is a half inch lower than the crib mattress, so that would help him get through the last little bit of the turn. He hadn't been able to quite get that last bit of the turn on his own. But tonight while he was hanging out on the floor with Dad and Grampy, he manage to roll over all by himself!

Alexander has gained mobility - we will never rest in peace again. ;)

Growing so fast!

I am constantly amazed at how fast Alexander is growing. He's only 3.5 months old, but he's already solidly into his 9 month clothes - I think some of the smaller of the 6-9 month outfits may be getting hard to fit on him soon! It depends on the manufacturer - one set of his 3-6 month onesies still fits and is worn to bed every night. But some of the 9 month barely fit.

We had a hard time finding a baptism outfit for him - the largest outfit we could find was 6-9 months, and it barely fit him. If it weren't for the fact that we bought the outfit Saturday and he was getting baptized Sunday, I would have worried about him outgrowing it before the baptism! I tried to put the shirt on over his onesie for mass, and it wouldn't button - I had to take the undershirt off! And even then, the top button wouldn't button, the little bow tie wouldn't fit, and we could barely get the cuffs buttoned but it would have been very uncomfortable, so we left them undone. He got to be cover model casual in his white tux with no tie and unbuttoned collar!

Picture Update

Alexander got baptized this weekend! So here's a bunch of pictures to share with you all...

Happy baby playing on the blanket Memere made for him!

Alexander did not fit into the baptism gown that we were hoping he would wear. The sleeves wouldn't even fit over his hands! The skirt part barely fit him.

Kendo Baby!

Ballerina Baby!

Alexander met his (soon to be) uncle Nick for the first time! Who is this scary guy, mommy?

And meeting his great-grandmother for the first time.

Cover model - showing off his baptism outfit for the admiring crowds.

It's hard work being this cute!

Alexander got baptized in a joint ceremony with his cousin Bridget, who is 6 weeks younger. I don't have pictures of the ceremony - I'll have to post those once I get them from someone else's camera. But here are some pictures of Alexander with Bridget, and the priest who baptized them.

"Cutting the cake". Alexander had a great grip on that knife! Bridget was doing her best to help. I think they were both about ready to end up in the cake though - Bridget ended up with a little icing on her toe.

The cousins together.... aw, how cute!

Sitting

Alexander managed to stay sitting solo for several minutes Saturday. Of course, as soon as I pointed the camera at him gravity took over and he tumbled off to the side. But, after a few tears and a hug from Mom he was ready to give it a try again, and this time the camera didn't break the spell.

For Emily....

Alexander got a package!


Hmmm, this blanket is pretty, but how does it taste?

It passes the Alexander taste test!


And it's great for hiding behind and flirting....

And for resting on the floor with.

Thank you Emily!