Send in the wipes!

Please direct your attention to his mouth
and hands.

Well, it happened. Little J made his first mess. I was working on a project on the computer and he was on the ground, playing with my makeup bag (his new favorite toy). I looked over and he was waving my mascara around in the air, and when I looked over again, he had unscrewed it, poked himself in the face with it, and gotten it all over his hands and his book. I was astounded! I had no idea he knew how to unscrew things! So, like a good mom, I didn't clean him up immediately, but instead took a picture. His tongue wasn't black, so I don't think he ate any. But then again, he did kind of have that smug, cat-who-ate-the-canary look on his face.

After wiping him all up, I gave him the mascara again to see if it was just a fluke that he had gotten it unscrewed. It wasn't. He's also learned to pull the caps off of pens. Sure it makes a lot of messes, but I love to see him learn like crazy.

The inventor of baby wipes should get a Nobel prize. I love them. We go through MANY MANY wipes a day because, like me, Little J is a lap-feeder. He gets food in his hair, armpits, nose, etc.

I'd love to hear about your baby's (or yours, I don't judge) messy moments!

Food, Glorious Food!

So Little J has been eating lots of solid (that word is misleading in this context) food lately and he really seems to have been liking it, until about a week ago. I swear, babies wait until you get into a rhythm and then *BAM* they decide to completely change their behavior.

Here he is looking very pleased with
his ability to control his mother.

I wanted to make sure he was eating SUPER good-for-you food so I was making all of his baby food - peas, carrots, squash, avocados, yams, etc., but now he won't even look at it. You know what he will eat? Baby food from the store. Here I am, slaving away over my mini food processor, and Little J just turns his nose up at it. I'm not going to give up yet though. I'll still puree lots of stuff for him until he gets more teeth and is able to eat table food.

For a while, all he wanted to eat was blueberry greek yogurt and avocados. I tried giving him avocados again the other day and he barfed. Nice. I even bought one of those mesh baggies you put food in and they just gum it and get the mushy bits out, but he lost interest in it after about five minutes.

But through all of this confusing not-eating-a-rama-lama-thing, he seems to be no worse for wear. He still poops a lot and is still a happy, giggly baby. In fact, this morning, every time I made an 'O' face at him, he could NOT stop laughing. And that made me laugh, and my laughing made Little J laugh even more, and we were a mess of giggles.

Yes, that is Desitin he's playing with. No, he does not
prefer to play with baby toys. 

He is SO close to crawling. I haven't really been encouraging him to crawl because that means I have to baby-proof my home, and I have a LOT to do there. He'll get up on his hands and knees and rock and he'll scoot himself backward, but the forward thing is really mystifying him. I think today we'll spend some quality time together on the floor sorting this thing out.

Now that he's a lot more mobile, he spends a lot more time smacking his head into stuff. I put him on the floor the other day in front of the vacuum so he could make friends with it (he's still terrified of it), and he started to pull himself up on it. As I'm sure you know, vacuums aren't made to withstand full-frontal baby lunges, so it toppled over and Little J ended up on top of it, spread-eagle. He looked pretty confused about how he got in that position, and then decided he was NOT ok with it and let me know that via ear-piercing squeals and screams.

The only thing he's successfully (read: without whacking his head or falling over) pulled himself up on is the coffee table. I think he has a somewhat permanent bruise on the left side of his head, but at least he's learning!