Eating lunch

Spenser has been doing a great job eating. He's gotten to the point where he doesn't want mushy baby food. He wants bits and pieces that he can pick up himself! At school yesterday, he had spaghetti, peas, green beans, bananas and 2 pieces of bread. Apparently, he kept eating as long as they kept offering.

Here he is last night at supper with a melange of peaches, peas, and ground up chicken, with a side of dried apple bits and gold fish crackers.

We've also been working on learning to drink out of a cup. He only has bottles while he is at school or with daddy. If he gets good at the cup thing, maybe we can skip right over the sippy cups. He has a way to go though. This is an example of why you don't want to share a cup or drink after him. You might get a healthy dose of his meal with your drink.

7 month update

Seven months crept up on us and slipped by. Spenser has been 7 months old for a week now. As you can see by the picture, everything goes in his mouth and he's quite adept at sitting up on his own. He's very good at the pincer grasp and likes tasting all kinds of new foods. This also makes going to restaurants a lot easier and more entertaining. We went out for New Mexican for breakfast on Saturday and Spenser got to try home fries and tortillas. I didn't think he was quite ready for beans and green chile sauce.

He loves swimming and playing in his little pools. He finds the cats fascinating and hilarious. He continues to be a happy and good natured baby with smiles and giggles for everyone he meets.

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.

6 Months!

Spenser has turned 6 months old! I think the hood on his little outfit is hilarious as is his expression in this picture.


Sorry for the blur, but he's a man of action. He's able to sit up in this corner (with a little bit of pillow propping) for up to 30 minutes at a time.





Spenser had the giggles after I found a tickle spot. I was squeezing the flubby fold where his hip joint is and he thought it was hilarious!

Great Grandma Virginia came to visit Spenser. She really made him giggle.

Spenser!

Grandma Gail and Great Grandma Virginia on the swing in the backyard with the handsome boy.

Milestone!

Spenser figured out how to blow raspberries today....now if he would just do it without a rainstorm of slobber to go with it.

Grandma time!

Spenser is getting to spend time with his Grandma and Great-Grandma. Great-Grandma really gives him the giggles. We also gave him his first tastes if rice cereal. He kicks up a horrible fuss about it here, but is starting to get used to it now.

Iris give away!

My irises are threatening to take over all my gardens and are begging for a division.  Anybody need some iris bulbs?  Let me know which colors you want and I will send you some  I have three more colors that haven't bloomed yet.  I'll put those up when I know what color they are.  The bottom picture is not the best, I know.  The forward color is an orangy-peachy color and the back one is a pale blue.  I have names for some of these documented in my garden book, but can't be bothered to look them up right now.  If I send you bulbs, I will pass on the name if I have them.

Feeling better

He's feeling better. Monday night, he woke up every two hours crying and screaming. Tuesday, C stayed home to help me with him. Late in the afternoon, we noted nasty, thick, white fluid leaking from his left ear. He was back to his usual good humored self. I didn't have the equipment to look into his ear adequately, but the best assumption is that he had an ear infection and his ear drum finally ruptured, releasing all the pressure and goo. I had a colleague look at his ear, but there was too much gunk leaking out to see his ear drum. We have him on antibiotic drops now and will recheck with his pediatrician on Monday.

I'm also happy to say that he is feeling better just in time for his FIVE MONTH Birthday! He consistently now rolls from back to tummy, but gets very angry because he hasn't figured out how to go back the other direction. He has discovered his feet in the past couple of days and has been grabbing at them. He can raise his head up when laying on his tummy. He loves to grab Mommy's hair and chew on it. In fact, anything he can grab goes straight to the mouth right now. The drool is also tremendous. He continues to talk, laugh, and giggle. He finds it especially funny when Mommy dances around like a goofball while humming tuneless tunes.

Happy but rumpled first thing in the morning



Zoe still loves to sleep near her baby

Sick baby napping in the bouncy seat

New milestone!

Crazy baby hair!  His hair is starting to get so long!  Some day we will have to cut it and all those brown baby wisps will be gone and we will have a towheaded baby on our hands.

For the past several weeks, Spenser has been spinning in his crib.  We will lay him down in one direction and when we check on him later, he has turned 90 degrees from where he started.  This morning, he was also on his tummy!

Cuteness overload!

This is the smile I found waiting for me after naptime this morning.

Naked baby on the changing table!  He's naturally modest..unlike Mommy and Daddy.  We're really lucky to have such a good natured, happy baby.

First artwork

Sprint PictureMail, originally uploaded by Sweetypants.

I was picking up Spenser from school yesterday when I noticed artwork on the wall. Spenser made his first finger painting! Picture's a bit blurry since it was taken with my cheap-O camera phone.