Hot, hot, hot!

It's been 95+ all week here on top of the usual humidity. That's just too miserable to go outside, much less do anything other than wilt and drink lemonade in the shade. It's unfortunate that my garden is getting neglected for a third year in a row. I need to do some weeding and pruning and planting of pots.

The wee one is taking a nap upstairs. I was thinking of all the things he has started eating in the past month:

Yogurt, vanilla and banana flavors, which he thinks are the bomb-diggity
Pureed fruits: apple, banana, apricot, pear,plum, and peach
Pureed veggies: avocado, green beans, peas, squash, pumpkin, carrot, and sweet potato
Cereals: rice and oatmeal, cheerios, and "puffs" in banana and sweet potato flavor
Juices: Apple and prune/apple combo

A couple of tastes of pureed chicken and gravy did not go over so well.
He had a few licks of strawberry popsicle today. I can already tell that they will be popular.

We have two more days of swimming lessons left. He really likes being in the water and has no fear of getting his face under the water. Yay for water babies!

Yes it's 4 AM

I'll be glad when C gets back from his out of town conference tonight. Single mommyhood is rough when the little guy won't sleep.

First days of summer

We've spent the past week doing summer type things, even though summer doesn't officially start until Monday. Spenser has been enrolled in swimming lessons through the county. We went every night this past week (except for Thursday, when it was storming) and we'll go Monday through Thursday this next week. He's in a class meant for 6 month-2 year olds. He's the youngest one in the class...most of the other kids are closer to 2. He's also the only one who hasn't screamed, cried or had a tantrum about getting in the water. He's even let us dunk him under a few times and he pops up smiling each time.

Getting used to the water. He's pretty happy about the whole experience. He even starts laughing and smiling when we pull into the parking lot.

Practicing floating on his tummy and moving his arms. He hasn't quite figured out how to blow bubbles when his face is in the water.

Sitting in the awesome swimming pool I picked up out of the One Step Ahead catalog.

Playing in the yard on the fuzzy quilt Grandma Gail made him. He was quite content to sit and play for quite a while as I did some gardening.

My vegetable garden is quite hardy since it's fortified against rabbits.

The End.

Weekend updates

Solid foods are going better. He's figured out that the spoon is actually putting yummy stuff in his mouth and he should swallow it.

Yummy sweet potato! He's also digging on the cheerios and yogurt melts (little freeze dried blobs of yogurt)

In non-baby related news, we've started overhauling the front garden. It has gotten overgrown and crowded. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the garden before we started, so this picture is after we removed 6 large barberries, 4 creeping junipers and several large clumps of mums and daylilies. We dug up the remaining azaleas to relocate them and divided clumps of monkey grass to spread them around. We put down some soaker hoses and mulched the area.



We're only about a quarter of the way done with the entire garden, but I think it's a nice start. We'll throw some annuals in this bed just to have some color in it for the summer and maybe add a couple of evergreen type plants in the fall. Oh, and the two big black bags with plants are potato bags growing Yukon golds.

More pool time!

We broke his cool, crazy, monkey-style board shorts.



He really likes this little pool. Best $4 I've spent in a while.

Another one

Just another cool picture from the pool today.

First dip in the pool

Naked baby, shaded porch, cool shades, swimming pool. Summer doesn't get any better than this.

Milestones

Spenser saw the pediatrician yesterday for his 6 month booster shots. He weighed 19 lb 6 oz. Babies should double their birth weight by 6 months and triple it by 12 months. I think Spenser skipped the chapter on baby growth and development.

We've also started him on solid foods. Here's a rundown of what we tried and his apparent reaction:

Rice cereal mixed with breast milk ----- Are you trying to poison me?
Organic apples ----- This stuff is tart!
Bananas ------Not bad, I'll think about it.
Carrots ------ I'm reserving judgment for a future date.
Bananas (again) ----- I kind of like these, let me grab the spoon and try to feed myself.

I was lazy with supper last night and we ate at Chili's (predictable food and kid friendly). We gave him a couple of tastes of mashed potatoes which he seemed to like and guacamole, which got a big yucky face. (C agrees with Spenser's assessment of guacamole). He's still figuring out what to do with Cheerios. Right now, it's much more entertaining to get them to stick to his fingers.

At school, Spenser gets little monthly report cards as to how he is doing with various milestones. This month, he's able to sit unsupported for short bits of time, he's playing with his feet, he will imitate sounds you make, he's dropping things on purpose, he can roll to his stomach ( and now, consistently, to his back as well), and is vocalizing lots of different sounds. In fact, he doesn't just repeat the same sound over and over (la, la, la), but makes lots of sound combinations.

So that's the big Spenser update.

In other news, I'm thinking of ripping almost everything out of my front garden and starting over. I hate my sticky, big, overgrown barberries and the holly bushes are succumbing to a fungal disease that is indigent to the soil here. I just dread digging up bushes in our heat and humidity.