My kid likes to chew on things

Did you notice that the nice pretty Onesie stickers all start out like this:



But end up like this:



Let me show you why.


Hi mom.  You want me to sit nicely for pictures?


Then perhaps you shouldn’t put this nice white toy next to me.


I’m just going to chew on his arm a little.


Then swipe it all over the sticker.


And rub it in, for good measure.


Oh, were you trying to fool me with a paci?




You were wrong.

Obviously.

Peanut - 6 months

Hey, P.

 

 

Yeah, mom?

 

Do you want to take your 6 months pictures?

 

But I’m le tired.

 

 

Okay, P. We’ll hold off for another day.

 

How about now?

 

I don’t know, ma.  I’m pretty busy.

 

 

I’ve got things to do,

 

 

floors to play on.

 

 

You can’t hold me back.

 

Okay, P.  Guess we’ll just make do with what we have.

 

So, umm, at 6 months Peanut has become very opinionated.  The end.

 

Here’s a recap of our 6th month together:

• At her 6 month appointment, Peanut came in at just over 13 lbs and 26 inches.  That puts her in the 5th percentile for weight and 50th for height.  How true to her nickname.
• I can’t say this enough - the kid’s got opinions on everything.  Her little personality is showing through in everything she does.  She’s an incredibly happy kid, but I can see the mischievous streak in her.  She gets this “I’m-up-to-no-good” look in her eye whenever she sees something she’s not supposed to touch (cord on her wipe warmer, the remotes, my iPhone) and then immediately lunges for it. 
• She loves to do things on her own.  She wants to stand, walk, and attack the dogs.  As I type this, she is standing between my two arms and trying to type. (This makes for a very difficult job for me since I’ve had to retype multiple sentences she’s deleted.)
• She’s officially sitting without any wobbling.  She can even correct herself when she starts to fall back. 
• She’s also practicing standing and walking.  It all started innocently enough - a little lift to her feet here and there, but now she insists that we stand her up by reaching out with her hands, grabbing my arms and pulling up.  She’s also learned to shuffle her little feet and walk while I’m holding her hands.  The dogs are terrified because she’s usually aiming for them.
• Addi is still in 3-6 months clothes (although there are a handful of 0-3 onesies that she still wears) and size 2 diapers.
• She is taking between 3-4 naps a day (about 30-45 minutes each) and sleeping soundly from 7:30/8pm-5:30/6am.
• P has learned to hand things from one hand to another, reach for things around her (then promptly stuff them into her mouth), look for things that are out of sight, and play peek-a-boo with her blanket.
• Some of her favorite activities include jumping in the jumperoo, playing in her exersaucer, and sitting up on her playmat.
• Addison absolutely loves food (hard to tell from her weigh-in).  To date she’s tried apples, pears, zucchini, yellow squash, acorn squash, yams, rice cereal, oatmeal.  She knows it’s time to eat and opens her little mouth as wide as possible.  She tries to grab and stuff the spoon herself, since we seem to be too slow for her.  She’s also started drinking out of a sippy cup (although we still have to hold it for her).
• For such a quiet kid, P has started “talking” a lot.  And loudly too.  She loves to shriek, yell, laugh, coo, and even imitate some of our sounds.  No one can get the sounds out of her like the pups, who then scramble away as she lunges toward them.
• Addi is getting very good at imitating us.  If you press a button and look at her, she’ll usually try to press it too.  Some of my favorites right now are the phone (I will pick it up and say hello then put it back; Addi will pick it up immediately…then stuff it into her mouth), the rattle (I’ll take it and turn it upside down then back again; Addi will take it and turn it upside down and back again, then look up and beam at me with pride).
• This month we went away overnight to the Cape for the first time…and came back that same evening since Peanut was really sick/fussy.  We also went to the beach for the first time, and then hung out in the pool in our back yard. 
• Addison is still (I hope I never get tired of saying it) the happiest kid.  She rarely ever cries or even whines.  Mostly she just observes everything around her, smiles her gummy smile, or is content playing with her toys.

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

In case I don’t say it enough, I’m so in love with her.

 

Canon EOS Digital Rebel Xsi

50mm lens

1/25s f/2.2 ISO 800

 

Edited in Photoshop (with some help from Pioneer Woman’s actions - you can find them here).

 

Link up your photos!  I’ll put up one of them in the Weekly Roundup post this weekend.

Brothers & Sisters

As requested, here’s an update on Peanut and her puppies.

Because that is exactly what’s going on at our house - Peanut thinks that the dogs are her puppies.



Among the very first things that Peanut noticed when she started to notice objects were the dogs.  She is absolutely in love with them.



They’re the jelly to her Peanut butter.  She loves to watch them, laughs at their every move (especially when Cailey sneezes), and even lets them lick her (although I don’t let them lick her face).



They’ve become the reason for many of her milestones - she couldn’t wait to sit up so she could get her grabby little hands on them; her first real belly laugh came when Cailey tried to chew Travis’ ear; she’s learning how to walk (yup, I’m not kidding) because she wants to chase them around.



We still have quiet a few rules around here.  The puppies know that they cannot be in Peanut’s room unattended (Travis has a tendency to rip everything he can reach apart).  They’re not allowed to rough house while Peanut is around (Cailey can get mouthy by accident when she gets over excited).  They’re not allowed to lick her face (Travis has the hardest time with this one).



And we never, ever leave the kid unattended with the dogs.  Although we’re sure that nothing would ever happen and that the pups love her as much as they love us, it’s just not worth it to find out otherwise.



We’ve also started teaching Peanut a little more about the dogs.



She’s started to grab their fur very roughly, so we grab her hand before it reaches them and pet the dogs together “nicely.”



This doesn’t always work because Peanut is very quick to find something she’s not supposed to do and then go for it as fast as possible.



Thankfully, we’ve been prepping the dogs to such treatment by grabbing their fur hard and often.  At this point they either take it, or simply stand up and walk away.



Since that won’t work with other dogs, we want to get Peanut started on the right track for success with the pups.  Otherwise, how else would she be the next Dog Whisperer?

Does anyone remember this pic?  Aww Peanut, why do you keep growing so quickly?



Check out the original post about babies and puppies here.

How do you work with your dogs to make sure they’re playing safely with the dogs?

Do all your pack members get along?

Homemade baby food - apples and pears

Peanut seems to really love this whole food idea we’ve been introducing her to.  So we press on.

On the menu this past week were apples and pears.



Because apples and pears are on the Dirty Dozen list, we bought organic.  I think that raised the price a little, but considering that we still got about 20 portions for about $5, I’m over it.



After talking to my bestie, Inna, I decided to try one of her “recipes.”  Instead of baking, I peeled, cubed, and boiled the apples and pears for about 10 minutes in about 1-2 inches of water.  Then used my immersion blender to get it down to a nice, watery paste.

At first, Peanut did not like the apples.  She just kept making gagging faces with each spoonful, but reaching out for more.  After a few bites, she got used to it and seemed to really love it!




I think we may try bananas next!

Let’s talk about poop

If you don’t enjoy tales of baby poop, move right along.  Or go over to It’s a Dog Lick World to read about more poop.

Yesterday, Jon and I were getting ready for dinner while Peanut was hanging out in her exersaucer.  Peanut seemed totally content and when it was time to sit everyone down at the table, I lifted her out of her exersaucer and put her on my hip.  She smiled.



And then I smelt it. 

Let me go back a couple of weeks and tell you that I am embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t take the new poop.  A couple of weeks after her first solids, Peanut’s poop changed from being this non-smelly stuff I could deal with to pasty, yucky, smelly poop.  And I can’t take it.  As in, I gag.  Meanwhile, Jon doesn’t seem to mind.



Now let’s fast forward to yesterday.  And that smell.  I looked at Peanut and asked her if she pooped.  She smiled her toothless smile at me.  So I smelled her butt, which stunk.  Then I looked at her leg…and noticed a huge glob of poo hanging out of her diaper.

That’s when I, maturely, started gagging and yelling for Jon to help me.  He came over and I showed him Peanut while handing her over.  Then I looked at the exersaucer, which was covered in poo.  And my shirt, which was covered in poo.  Then I gagged.  And whined.  And gagged.  Jon was standing there, laughing, while holding the poopy Peanut.  Then he looked at me seriously and said that there was a huge glob of poop that’s about to fall on the floor.  I looked around, seeing nothing and reached out and caught the huge glob of poop in my hand.  Then I gagged.  While holding poop in my hand.



Jon just kept laughing and headed for the baby room.  I gagged.  Washed the poop from my hand, changed my shirt, gagged, and went in to help. 

After almost 15 minutes of cleaning poop off Peanut’s legs, back, arms, and belly button, she was finally clean and still smiling.  And ready to eat some more food that will make her poop.



I guess it’s all just a vicious cycle.  Gag.

New skills

I just found a wicked cool collage-making Photoshop freebie.

Check it out here.

Photoshop fun

Before

After

Changes applied:
Selective color: adjust blue to brighten up the dress
Curves: played with the custom settings until I got the result I wanted
Brightness/Contract: adjusted brightness to lighten it up
Hue/Saturation: adjusted the hue to give Peanut a little more pink in the cheeks

Do you edit your photos?

What do you use?

Our weekend recap

This weekend was one of the first weekend where we didn’t have some place to travel or some intricate plans.  As much as I love weekends with plans because they seem to last forever, I always end up extra tired on Monday. 



On Saturday Jon went out to play golf with his buddies so Peanut and I were left to entertain ourselves.



We decided to go hang out at Marshalls where I bought Peanut a new toy (she insisted, I swear) and a couple of plain shirts for me (I have no clothes. True story).



Then we went over to my friends Christine and Joe’s.  They have an adorable 2 year old baby girl and are expecting a baby boy at the end of this summer!  Which, in case you didn’t read into that, means that we get all the cute baby-girl stuff!




We spent a little while hanging out and watching the girls play together (read: Peanut was grabbing everything in her sight and trying to put it in her mouth while Sofia tried to understand how this was a fun game).  Then we had some lunch and dove into the piles of clothes.  By the end of our play-date, Peanut had 3 huge bag-full of practically-new clothes (just for her current size!) and a bag full of shoes for when she starts walking.  Needless to say, I am ecstatic!



By the time we got back, took a nap (Peanut) and vacuumed and made dinner (me), Jon was back from his golf-outing and we spent some time together, ate dinner, and played with Peanut.  After her bedtime, Jon and I plopped our tired butts on the couch, had some wine and brownies and watched Mrs. Doubtfire.



That’s what your Saturday nights are like too, right?

Sunday Peanut and I let Jon sleep in a little bit, then we all showered up, prettied up, and headed out to Church.  This Sunday was the first time that we didn’t bring Peanut to the service with us and left her in the nursery.  Usually she does great at the service, but she’s recently found her voice and is now entertained with screeching at the top of her lungs.  We didn’t think that would be appreciated by the others in the service, so we left P in the nursery.



She did great!  Initially she gave the nursery lady a pout face and a couple of tears, but once the stranger anxiety wore off, she loved hanging out.



After Church, we did some Sunday shopping (Walmart, Big Y) and spent the rest of the day hanging out, playing with our Peanut, and relaxing. 



What did you do this weekend?

Baby food - yams

We’ve tried a few solids with Peanut so far.

First, we did rice cereal.  We just took a spoonful of the rice cereal, mixed it with some breast milk, and gave it to Peanut.

Next we tried some avocado, mashed in a food processor.  She did not like avocado much.

After we learned that the rice cereal clogged Peanut, we stopped it altogether and moved on to pears.  I ended up buying the pear baby food because I was too stressed out about Peanut not pooping for 12 days straight to worry about making her some food.

After a few days with the pears, which Peanut loved, I decided to try my luck with yams. 



In case you’re wondering, yams are like sweet potatoes (I’m still a little unsure about the difference). 

To cook them for the baby, I started with one.  With the oven on 400, I washed and wrapped it in tin foil, then baked it for about 45 minutes.  I read that baking will bring out the flavor.

Once it’s cooked (you can check by poking it with a fork to make sure that it’s soft all the way through), I sliced it into 4 pieces.



Then used a spoon to scoop out the yummy stuff and leave the skin back.



Then I ground it down in a food processor.



But this didn’t really get it quiet as processed as I wanted it to be, so I added some water and used this handy little guy.



This did the trick!



To one yam, I added about 1/4 cup of water to make it a little more watery.



Since this made plenty of food for the next couple of weeks, I froze more of it by putting it in the ice-cube tray.



Once it’s frozen, I transferred these to a zip-lock bag and we just pop them out in the evening, warm them up, and Peanut’s home-made food is ready in minutes!

Now, on to the tricky part – the judges.



At first, she wasn’t so sure.



But she quickly came around and loved it!



Next time, pizza.



I’m just kidding – that’s our dinner.

Did you make or buy your baby food?  What was your baby’s favorite?

What are you having for dinner tonight?

What’s the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?