random thoughts.....

Here he is after naptime playing with his new favorite bedtime distraction. Really, who could resist 10 minutes of music with lights, bubble and fishies swimming about? And two fun spinny things?

We've being doing our daily walks at the mall since it has been somewhat cold and windy this week. Amazingly I've been able to resist buying anything except a $6 sweater from Gap and some tea. But I'm not sure how good I'll be when we get some new stores in a few months. Thank goodness it will be warm so we'll be walking outside!

And how about these cuties! Miles (today) and his daddy (from Dec. 1974). I definitely see the resemblance, do you?

water baby

Bath time is just about the best time of the day. Miles loves getting naked for the bath. In fact, getting naked and the bath are our stall tactics to avoid any late evening melt-downs before bed. We've started bathing him in the kitchen sink since he outgrew the little baby tub. Putting him in the real tub is killer on the knees and back! Anyway, he has his little ducky and a couple other small floaties but his favorite "toy" is the sprayer. Months ago he started by staring at it, then he'd swat at the stream, now he's pulling at the nozzle to get it near his face. When we rinse his cheeks and chin he makes this funny "bitter beer" face. Guess we'll need to get one of these sprayers for when he's too big for the sink.


Miles got to meet Kate this weekend. Kate is 6 weeks old and I can't believe I've really forgotten what it was like to hold someone so small. I know Miles weighed eight pounds not that long ago but she seemed so little! Anyway, she's got a head full of black hair like her daddy. In fact, they had a picture of her daddy as a baby and wow! what a resemblance. Miles got to play on the floor with lots of "new" toys. Not wanting to lose his center-of-attention status, he rolled onto his belly and started to push up onto his knees!!!!

He is ready to be mobile and not much will stand in the way of this determined kid. Last night after we put him down, we listened on the monitor as he rolled around. Then all of a sudden this loud rrrrrrrkkkkkkkk sound started and it happened three or four more times. What in the world happened? Oh Miles had just worked his way to the top of the bed where his aquarium is attached and he was spinning the crab. From his belly he had pushed up on one arm so he could reach the spinners with the other. He did start the music on his own too! Unfortunately the aquarium is attached to the short side of the bed, so when he was done he was crammed up against the slats which he didn't like. But he went on to sleep after we straightened him out.

woof woof

7 months old and such a big boy. Miles is starting the phase of turning into a toddler. He's started doing several new "big boy" things and he's so excited about it. The first one mommy & daddy aren't so excited about. He's started waking at night. Sometimes it's at 9pm, sometimes it's at 3am, but pretty much every night he wakes up and it takes about an hour for him to fall back to sleep. None of the old tricks work anymore - bouncing, swaying , rocking, feeding, singing, pacifying - he really just wants to play. Although last night he did finally calm down when I placed him on his belly in bed and rubbed his back for a while. Then I stopped and stood there. Then I veeery slooowly backed out of the door. He did cry out one more time, but that was it until 7am.

The next exciting thing is that he's feeding himself finger food! Well, sort of. He's had his first tast of the veggie puffs - these little cereal-like puffs of sweet potatoes. I place one on his tray and he scoops it up. Sometimes he gets a great pincher and pops it right in his mouth. Other times it's a scoop into his palm and it sticks there until it falls to the floor (and some happy pups waiting beneath). When he does get it in his mouth, he grins so big as he mashes it with his gums. Yummy!

Speaking of his puppys, Miles is a HUGE fan of Apollo & Chelsea. They make him laugh and he just wants to pet them. We're trying to keep him from pinching them, and so far there has been no ear pulling. Miles's cousins call puppies "woof woof" so that's what we've been calling them. And Miles has picked up on that. When he's watching them and I say "woof woof" he'll make a little "fff" sound. Yeah, so his first words will probably not be mama or dada, but woof woof. Oh well.



This is getting long, so I'll save the rest for later. I will share this photo of me with my mom, aunt and grandparents sometime in 1976 (you'd never guess it was the 70s, huh?). I've been working on Miles's baby scrapbook and put in photos of his great grandparents. I'm almost done (see the page below) just missing some photos of his paternal great grands. Hope to find them and finish soon!




(Thanks to Raven for both of my new hobbies... blogging & scrapbooking!)

30 weeks

I just received a newsletter titled "Your 30-week-old." Can it really be 30 weeks? 210 days? Almost 7 months? My how time flies. We can hardly remember life before this kid came screaming into our world. Of course he's still screaming today, but for a different reason. He's soooooo close to getting his first tooth. This morning his gums look so puffy and swollen. I swear I see the white beneath the surface, but I think I've seen that for days, so who knows. I just hope his pain is over soon. At least for these first few teeth. So hopefully some exciting news will be here soon!

Yesterday we took a trip to the grocery for some dinner as well as a distracting trip outside the house. The weather has cooled off again so we can't do our usual late afternoon walk around the neighborhood. He gets to sit in the cart basket now and really likes being able to look around. His Ya Ya got him this really cool cart cover that buckles him in and covers all those grimy handles. So we strolled through the fruits and vegtables and the bakery (yum!) and the butcher's area. He liked the lobsters in the tank, even though they weren't very active.



Then when we got home, daddy thought it would be fun to show Miles the drums! Rather than sit at the kit, he brought one to Miles. We definitely need some plastic sticks as the wooden ones get splintered very quickly. Miles shows great promise in the art of drumming. But we'll probably need to practice with pots and pans for a while before graduating to the real thing.

The little ham

Our son is a comedian. He has been finding all sorts of ways to crack us (and himself) up. On our walks he squeals and laughs at everything he sees. He discovered he can blow raspberries with a mouth full of peas. The devilish grin that follows makes me think he knows the mess he's making. His puppies love it though, they come to clean up the spray. Then of course he giggles when his puppies lick his hands. He knows his cute little grin charms the pants off of just about everyone. And he's figured out all sorts of tricks to do with his pacifier, including fitting it completely in his mouth.

Whirlwind weekend

Miles has just returned from a five day tour of Tennessee. First we went to visit cousins Evan & Kate. Miles had so much fun and is in total admiration of his older cousins. In true slumber-party style, none wanted to go to bed, they wanted to stay up and party! Not that we had much choice, but the moms let them.

After a couple of days there, we moved on to visit more grandparents and attend a wedding. The days of travel started to wear on Miles and his napping schedule got way off. It also didn't help that his, um, digestive system was a little wacked too. A nice dinner of prunes fixed that Friday evening but he still felt like getting up at 3am and not going back to sleep for an hour. So much for all that peaceful sleep.


On Saturday Miles got to meet my friends Stephanie & Justin who were in for the wedding too. We met at world famous Huey's but alas didn't get to have a burger since we were having a later lunch with Miles's Mimi & Grandpa, his great aunt Kathy, great grandma and Uncle Kyle and Kyle's girlfriend Megan.



I don't think the family scared Megan, at least I hope we didn't! Miles sure did his best to charm her. After lunch he was bouncing in the jumper and would spin around and stop to look at her. Then he would take off laughing, bouncing around again. What a flirt!

Hush little baby...

Sunday night goes down in history as Miles's first time to sleep completely through the night!! He went to bed around 6:45 and we didn't hear a peep until just before 7am. Of course we were awake at 4:30, 5, 6:15 thinking is he okay? should we check on him? something's wrong.... but no, a happy boy greeted us when we went to look at 7. The next night we did have a peep at 4:30, but he went right back to sleep when we gave him his pacifier. In addition to his marvelous night sleeping, he took 3 naps today 1:30, :45 and 1:30 long!!! What a peaceful sleeper he is. Spunky, his stuffed puppy, is his buddy. I think Apollo would be his sleeping buddy if he could figure out how to get in the crib!!

It's always more fun to share with everyone

This afternoon Miles paid a visit to Miss Karley. They had fun playing with the Little People Noah's Ark. Miles enjoyed gnawing on one of the giraffes and Karley had fun trying to take it from him. Karley's already a walker, so Miles had to impress with his highly advanced sitting skills, and some rolling on the floor laughing. It worked and they have a date for a walk together on Monday!!