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!

Rub-a-dub-dub!

The resemblance is uncanny, no?

Bath time is Little J's favorite time of the day hands down (splashing around, most likely). So the other day while he was in the bath, I decided to see what he would look like with hair. The following pictures are the fruits of my labors.

I tried to do a Bob Ross 'do, but the structural integrity of the bubbles just wouldn't allow it.

I know, I know, I got the spikes a bit in the wrong spot.
Nevertheless, "RUFIO, RUFIO, RU-FI-OOOOOOOH!!!"

He thought the whole thing was rather funny and didn't mind a bit. Also, he took Big J's toothbrush with him everywhere that day, so hence it being in the bathtub as well. Don't worry - we sanitized it afterward.

I think tonight we'll try Captain Picard. Maybe some Princess Leia if he doesn't mind looking like a girl.

Oh! Speaking (well writing, really) of looking like a girl, I was in a checkout line a couple of days ago and this cute little old lady called Little J "Princess"! I didn't have the heart to tell her she was wrong, but it was fairly obvious he was a boy. He was wearing a white onesie and a blue hat and had his blue blanket with him. I mean, if you're going to hazard a guess in that situation, go with boy.

Anyway, I'm over it.

Any other suggestions of bubble hairdos I can subject upon my son?

I wrote too soon!

So remember how I said I was a tiny bit tired of getting barfed on? Well, I think I might have jinxed myself a bit. This is how it all began:

On Friday night, we were travelling home from a friend's house around 10pm and I remarked to the husband that I felt a bit queasy. Two hours later I was hugging the porcelain throne wishing that the next six hours wouldn't be as miserable as the last five minutes. I was wrong. Saturday morning came and I was feeling much better, despite the lack of sleep and stomach juices. I thought the worst was over. I was wrong. Again.

On Sunday night Little J puked big time. We thought it was because we had just introduced him to yogurt and his little tummy couldn't handle it. But then it just kept coming. He woke up in the middle of the night, nursed and then barfed. He then went promptly back to sleep and made me a bit jealous. This continued into Monday morning and it didn't show signs of stopping. I finally got over being grossed out by getting puked on. I was somewhat damp throughout most of the day, and I changed my clothes twice because of the volume of vomit. I gave Little J small amounts of PediaSure throughout the day, and he's feeling much better now, and has kept his dinner down.

I spent 90% of my day like this. My butt's
still a little numb from sitting that long, but
it was worth it.

I thought it was difficult for me to go through this bug, but it was a thousand times worse to see Little J go through it. He was so thirsty, but I couldn't give him any more to drink because he would barf, and he didn't understand this concept. So, to express his frustration with my parenting techniques, he would cry/scream. And then I would start crying because he was crying and we were a mess of tears and barf. I'm pretty sure my neighbors knocked on my door at one point because they thought I was abusing my child. I didn't answer the door because I had just gotten him to sleep and I didn't want to move him and release the screaming Kraken. So I spent most of my day pinned to the rocking chair because when the babe is sick, he just wants to be cuddled (something I think he inherited from his father).

I was ok with it.

Having a baby sleep on you is a beautiful experience. I made an effort to appreciate having him close because I know in a couple of years, he will loathe being cuddled. I may or may not have teared up a bit when he was sleeping on me.

Of Barf and Drool

I am getting just a tiny bit sick of getting barfed on. There, I said it. Also, I didn't think I would be making another blog post so soon, but the events of tonight were too good (read: gross, memorable, stinky) that I couldn't pass it up.

This is what happened: I had just gotten home from a great trip to Fashion Place with some good friends and was excited to put Little J in his new polar bear footie (I think I might be making that word up.  It's a onesie with feet in it) that I had bought him so his dad could see how incredibly cute it was when he got home (and thus be ok with the price tag). I proceded to wrangle him into his new clothes and then we high-tailed it to the rocking chair so he could eat. He hadn't eaten in about 6 hours, so needless to say, he was hungry. Hmm...that's putting it mildly. He was more like a ravenous piranha that happened upon a flotilla of dead cows in the Amazon. He nursed through both sides and then, when I sat him up to burp, it happened.

Little J put Old Faithful to shame. There was a fountain, nay, a geyser, of milk mixed with tummy juices that erupted out of him. I have never seen that much barf in my life. It just kept coming and coming and coming and coming. There were probably about 10 ounces that came out of his tummy, onto my lap, the nursing pillow, and his brand new footie.

I didn't know what to do. I sat there in shock a few moments. Little J looked pretty confused too. He's used to eating and then having it actually stay in his stomach. I decided the best way to deal with it was to laugh about it. So I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. Little J apparently thought it was pretty hilarious too and giggled about it for a while with me. You could never tell that he just ejected his entire stomach contents on me by looking at him. He was as happy as a clam.  Then, I took off his barf-soaked footie and, with a sigh, put it in the laundry. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

P.S. It turns out that you CAN put rocking chair cushions in the washing machine.
P.P.S If you're wanting to add a picture to a blog post you just wrote about barfing, and didn't take one after the event happened, please don't search google images for pictures of barf. You will be sick afterwards.

Ta da!

Well, I wanted to try and be a little more grown-up an I didn't want to do anything that required TOO much responsibility, so I made a blog for our family. I also did it so my friend Charisse would have another blog to read so she wouldn't get as bored. I'll post pictures here, write about the struggles of being a mom, and generally keep you apprised (which is the opposite of surprised! I figured that out all by myself!) of the happenings in our household.

So here's the latest news: Little J has a tooth! It's hard to see in this picture, but it's there, right on the bottom. He got it about a week ago, and to be honest, I didn't know he was teething. He chomps on anything that comes within a two foot radius of his mouth, including (but not limited to) hair, plastic cups, baby toothbrushes (thanks again to my friend Staci), milk jug caps, clothing, ears, noses, and his toy buffalo. We buy him all these fancy toys, and his favorite thing to play with is a cup. Oh well, at least he's having fun! He's also in a very grabby stage and will reach like his life depends on it for anything in the aforementioned radius.

Well that's all for now. I've got to go feed the babe before he actually ingests his fingers.