More 2

My aunt Bessie tickling Myles.

Myles playing with his Arkansas cousins.

My dad's first visit with Myles since he was a newborn.

Myles at the harvest festival.

2nd time on a horse. He loved it.

And then we rode the trains.

September/October in photos

Sharp dressed man.

Reading Goodnight Gorilla before going 'night night.'

My friend Charis visited Myles late this summer and turns out to be a pro baby wrangler, all on instinct.

Myles is already trying to fill his daddy's shoes.

Myles and Mark in the ultrasound room, seeing our new baby for the first time.

It's almost Thanksgiving already

Wow. October flew past. My trip to Arkansas to visit my grandparents really took a chunk out of it for sure. The trip was great. Myles got to meet about 9 other male cousins between the ages of 2 and 7. He preferred the 7 year olds. The effect of Mark letting Myles knock him down while wrestling means that Myles thinks he can topple anyone, regardless of size. So he made the 2 and 3 year olds cry and moved on to the 7 year olds. And when they tossed him around like a sack of potatoes, he didn't cry, he just climbed back on again.

It was great, but I'm glad he's not surrounded by that type of roughhousing frequently - he'd become a little thug. He not only got to meet his great-grandmother and great-grandfather, he got to see my dad again, who hadn't seen him since he was about 3 months old. What a shock for him. He went from seeing a baby to a full-fledged toddler. He's sort of macho, so he was impressed with Myles' showing of testerone.

Yesterday Myles slept through the night til 7:30! Seven thirty I say, people! His best so far is usually 6:30 just before Mark wakes up for work. He then has to stash him someplace for an hour until I get up when he's leaving for work. Today, I hear, "all done, dada." I'm thinking he's complaining about a tv show ending in the living room, but nope, he's in his crib still! Glory be! All ye nations sing and rejoice. Sleep!

I think he usually wakes up due to poop and I've been avoiding giving him any apple juice or juice in the evening, but he's been the king of diarrhea due to teething for the last couple of days regardless. We were sick for the last two weeks so things have been thrown off, but he's a great eater now. He'd started to really drink a lot of rice milk once he learned how to use a straw cup, but after Arkansas he got sort of iffy about milk. We temporarily switched to almond milk since rice milk didn't seem to exist there and he wasn't having it! I however, have now switched my morning drink to hot vanilla almond milk, sprinkled with cinnamon, nutmeg and maybe a pinch of turmeric. Yummy! Works well with rice milk too, but the almond milk already has a nutty aftertaste. Hot chocolate without the chocolate. I'm a little afraid of chocolate since this pregnant is fraught with stuffy noses, nasal headaches and migraines. I don't want to add an actual migraine trigger if necessary.

He's also not nursed (it was down to once a day before nap, mostly comfort nursing) in about 3 or 4 days now. Yay! I was pretty sick of that. He's getting to the point where he hasn't even asked and when he does use a word that he uses for milk, I can hand him the straw cup filled with rice milk and he doesn't freak out. Sometimes he initially cried for 20 seconds, but quickly sucks it up and accepts the milk. I'm not even attempting potty training 'til December or January. We're still just trying to get the vocabulary down - to get him to express himself and understand what we say about poop and pee and diapers. I'm sure it helps if he can tells us that he's got to go before he does it, so the more we get him talking, the better. When we do potty train, it'll probably be us staying home for a week, with him running around naked with no diaper for the beginning.

Facebook has made me not so good about updating this blog. I think I like the instant feedback I get versus writing here and never knowing if anybody's read it or not. But I'm going to go back and put in some non-worded picture posts of Halloween for you all. Cheers.

Progress

Is happening faster than I can document. He ate grapes for the first time on Thursday, has settled into a vegetarian lunch of green beans and peas and maybe some chicken if he's looking for more. He ate sliced bananas for the first time (used to refuse any banana out of the skin) on Friday. Started using a fork on Saturday. Ate pizza crust (first substantial amount of bread) last night. Just grabbed it off my plate, dipped it in his turkey gravy and ate it that way, making his own bread and dip combination. By the second breast crust, he was gnawing it plain.

Fed himself a COMPLETE bowl of oatmeal today! Of course he's wearing about a 10th of the bowl, but he did it by himself and even grabbed the normal cup of rice milk that had a straw in it and got the straw in his mouth and drank it without spilling the cup! Not even a baby cup with a top, just a plain old cup. He started out with food slowly - he didn't like much, but he's making up for it quickly.

We've also entered the realm of parental influence. He used to do what we asked him to. Now he doesn't. BUT, he now does what we do. So he'll see us do stuff and mimick. So rather than ask him to eat something, it's better to just eat it yourself and let him see.

Still working on the potty. We announce what we're doing whenever we're on the potty. He gets that much. I'm not going to really try and train him until January. The weaning and simultaneous molars coming in and the sleeping in the bed all night is a lot at once. He slept til 6 am today. After a year and a half of nightwakings, you'd think we'd be grateful, but we're still trying to get him to sleep longer! Gotta get some sleep before the new baby comes.

I really like how long it took him to grow up. It goes fast and Myles really milked babyhood as long as possible. He didn't rush to food, or sleeping through the night or walking. He took his time and now looking back, it's almost over and he's not even 2 yet. We get one more shot at this and then that's it for babyhood. I always thought that babies grew up so much slower than dogs, but really, not so much. They get pottytrained much faster than babies, but other than that, they only have then beat by maybe a year in terms of cognitive understanding and language comprehension. Max was fairly clueless for the first year of his life.

We had an ultrasound yesterday and everything looks good. We go back in 5 weeks for another one and we'll probably see the gender by then.

Now off to bathe him. There's so much oatmeal stuccoed to him that I should just hose him down!

Mark and Myles at a playplace

What a big boy!

Myles circa September

Being pregnant has really sapped my energy and enthusiasm for blogging and posting to Facebook, so now I'm severely behind on updating pictures and stories of Myles. So be prepared for a bunch of disjointed posts trying to catch you up!

Here's Myles above with his Paddington Bear he got from his great-aunt Margaret in England. He's just now getting into stuffed animals, so Paddington's getting some use. He also has a bear from Kenya that he likes to kiss.

His food progress is great. If he'd been eating this way all along, weaning wouldn't have been a problem. He seems to be a sensual eater, so he's got to actually get the bite. He hated purees and skipped them completely. Everything needs to be chunky and whole and bitten into, so here's a great example with him and the corn on the cob. He eats bananas the same way (you can't cut them into pieces - he's got to bit it off the stalk in the skin) and grapes as well. He loves the sensation of biting things. He's also discovered peas. And initially, they needed to be fresh frozen peas, pan-sauteed. He wouldn't eat soggy peas from a can or heated in water. But yesterday I tried microwaved peas and he accepted them.

He's a juice fiend now too now that he can use a straw and a juice box. Which is good, because he's iron-deficient, so we hide his liquid iron supplement in apple juice. He's discovering the allure of sweet - finally at 18 months! Yesterday he said the word 'cookie' which surprised me because we don't eat those much around here, but apparently it made an impression.

Boy is making progress

Myles is making lots of big boy progress. We haven't nursed ONCE today! Yay! Not without struggle, however. I am currently wearing a turtleneck - he can't have any access to the boobs at all or he'll claw at my clothes. I was wearing my robe backwards for most of the day.

12 week belly picture

Okay, I've been informed by Mark that this picture makes my stomach look rounder than it actually is, so don't freak out yet.

I'm bored

Myles woke up today at 4:15ish again today. This time, I didn't go in his room at all. I instead slept in the hallway next to his room, between our rooms so that I could hear if he were attempting to climb out of the crib and stop him. I never heard the crib creak, so I just let him cry. We started the CIO thing last week for the middle of the night wake up that sometimes occurs. It backfired on Thursday when he apparently climbed out of the crib and was just walking around free as a bird in his room. He cried at 6:30 and when Mark went to get him, he was greeted by an awake and free child.

So the next couple of nights we've been doing the sleep on the floor next to the crib thing. We've taken sofa cushions to create a crash pad under the bed, and when he awakes at some ridiculous time, we just go in there touch him through the crib and sleep on the floor on the cushions. That way he's comforted, but he doesn't get to come into our room and has to stay in the crib. New baby's coming, so we've got to lay down the law. Our queen sized bed won't fit two babies and Myles is a wild sleeper. Plus it's time.

He's over working on his morning poop as we speak. We're slowly ambling towards potty training as well. But we're asking a lot of him at one time. Weaning, potty training, eating dairy. He's gotten good at recognizing certain letters of the alphabet. He knows A, B, C, D, E, O, M and Z. Sometimes Y. He knows the number 2. I don't know how he picked, but he started with 2 and B. We're just working around his natural interests.

He ate cooked carrots the other day for the first time and kept requesting that I shovel more in his mouth, calling them "ree." Okay, more ree for you. He also ate a bowl of peas. I have to saute frozen peas - he won't eat mushy ones from a can. So specific, this boy. Wonder where he got that?

He eats a lot more different food now, but is still pretty biased against trying certain things. Can't get mandarin oranges near his mouth, nor yogurt (which doc wants to try). Basically anything on a spoon versus a finger. Had to hand feed him a carrot before he liked them enough to let a spoon near him.

That's all for now. Gotta get him all napped up so that we can make our 3:30 playdate.

Blog title

Well, maybe I can leave the title Bun in my oven, since there is now, --DRUMROLL PLEASE -- another bun in my oven! We're pregnant again. About 9 weeks at this point. It begins again. I've had to keep my mouth shut for the last 3 weeks since I found out, but now the cat's out of the bag. Went to my favorite OBGYN on Thursday and it's all good. Everything is so much calmer than last time. It's old hat now. And there's less pain because my stomach muscles are so non-existent that they are whining about stretching. They are already flaccid and have submitted to whatever I may be planning to put them through.

We're thrilled. We only had to try for one month and we're hoping this one is a girl. When I wasn't allowed to say anything, I had all these great blog post ideas. Now that I can talk, I'm brain dead and don't have anything particularly witty to say. I'll be back later when I can remember anything...

August - 1st week

I should've written yesterday - I was so bubbly and full of stuff today. Today, I come back to this page that I'd left open and can't remember anything. I had a minor nasal surgery today and perhaps the anesthesia has made me a little foggy.

Our boy slept until 4:45 am on Tuesday I believe. Wow. He slept til 3 am and some change last night. And if I can get his daddy on board, we can maybe just let him CIO this weekend and get him on the road to sleeping through the night. He's old enough and he CAN do it, he's just got to get used to it. I'd hoped we'd do it when Pam came, but once she got sick, it didn't work out. I talked to another mom with a similar baby and she said it took 4 or 5 days of a lot of crying, but her baby's been sleeping through since then. I tried it sort of last week and he cried for 1 hr and 11 minutes - in the bed with us! Not even alone in another room. So he's got stamina, but we'll have to let him express him stamina in his crib.

His verbal skills are coming along quite nicely. I got him a book of simple words and pictures and he points to a flower and says, "a wower." Cute. Now he sees them outside or drawn or whatever, but he recognizes them well. Lots of little signs that the connections are being made in general. Saw a picture of a plane and did airplane arms and started making raspberry noise.

Today when a friend came over to play with her 2 kids to provide redundancy until Mark got home to take over while I went to have my procedure done, he and the little boy said 'bye' to each other about 25 times back and forth while she buckled the girl in the car. Myles stood at the screen door, screaming "bye" and "bye-bye" alternately while the little boy did the same. Hilarious. I love how interactive he's become lately. He notices other kids. He's bridging the gap between himself and our friends w/kids who are 3-5 months older. He's also really tall, so he looks like one of them. Went to a playdate and when bubbles came out of the bubble machine, after hearing the older kids say 'bubbles' he did too.

It's really hot in Los Angeles

It's so hot, in fact, that a group of us mommies and babies were videotaped last week at a park for the local news doing spots on the heat wave. We were having a going away playdate for a mommy who's moving away to Indiana. We're so sad to lose her, she was the sweetheart of our group, but work calls. She's got a Phd and job offers are few and far (literally far) in between. Then I found out today that the leader of our baby group, whose husband also is a Phd, is moving to Seoul, Korea. Wow.

I've meanwhile, been having fun designing elements for my new digital scrapbooking kits. I don't have my own creative team, so I should probably take a break from designing at some point and scrapbook my own baby. Maybe my next kit should be blue and more masculine, so I could do some more pages for Myles.

Myles, meanwhile, is growing and changing at a lightning pace. He's saying more words everyday. He points to planes and says, "bee." No idea why. He's started to read a book on his potty. We're just getting him used to the idea of sitting on the potty. Today he crawled into his jogging stroller on his own. Subtle hint, huh?

New kit preview

Almost done with another kit. Not sure about the name, but I'm getting there. I love pink and green, so this one's called Berries and Pistachios at the moment. Take a sneak peak:

Big sister's leaving

My sister came into town to visit Myles on the 4th of July, coincidentally the same time as last year. A lot has changed. She visited a really cute, warm lump last year and came back this year to find a little boy. He's learned so much since she's been here: he can blow his nose (caught her flu), he learned to blow a little whistle noise maker we got from a baby party, he says "wawa," "open" - apparently he's been saying it for awhile, but we didn't understand "opie" "oppie" the way she did. And sure enough he only says it while opening and closing things. She bought him a potty, which he's scared to sit on, but likes to open the top while saying open. She's learned his lingo, which includes the undiscernable, "bee-dub." No idea what that's about. He can turn the rotary dimmer light switch, the cable box. He's said thank you, but "love you" doesn't really sound like English. It's funny how adding another person to the mix speeds things up. These are all added to his standard repertoire of "dog" (voiced as if he's totally surprised every single time), "dada," "mama," "hi," "hello," "bye bye," "oh no," "uh-oh" and "aww, man," which he learned from The Backyardigans. He's also made up "nummy num num," as a way to ask for food when he sees some that he wants. We're entering exponential growth as far as the vocabulary is concerned.

We had three days of him sleeping through the night - M,W,F, followed by him waking up every 2 hours last night. Hope ignited, hope set aflame! LOL. It was so bad, I had to sleep on the sofa so as to not wake up the rest of the house. He's had a great time. I hope he remembers her face on webcam when she makes it back home.

He's tried new foods: cut up (and peeled) hot dogs, corn on the cob which he adored yesterday and not so much today, burgers and fries and sweet potatoes. It's been a great visit and I'm sad to see her go, as evidenced by this late night post. She was sick so it wasn't even as much fun as it could have been and I'm still said about her leaving. Imagine if we'd had a full-on blow out. But as usual, nobody can make me laugh harder than my sister. I fell to the ground in fits of hysterical laughing with tears rolling down my face at least twice that I can remember. I can't wait to give Myles a sibling so that he may know the joy of having somebody else in the world who's forever connected, despite how similar or dissimilar they are. When my brother's not busy dividing and conquering my parents so that he may pillage them for every cent they have, we have a lot of fun as well. One year, we had a Thanksgiving with just the 3 of us kids and it was SO funny. We did imitations of our parents, told our favorite stories and just hammed it up. I feel bad for him, he's really missing out on the best of life, right now doing his imitation of an only child. But my sister and I, we figured out that our tastes are SO opposite. We like the opposite foods, we made a guy crack up in the store as she mentioned that "the chunks were rising" to her throat at the sight of some darling purse I showed her that she didn't like. She hates mayo, I love mayo. She hates curry, I'm honorarily Caribbean, I hate strawberries and am allergic to shrimp, both of which she loves. Friends need to be somewhat similar to you in order to make it, but siblings don't have that pressure. We don't have similar tastes, we don't even exactly have the same upbringing, but we have a shared set of references and a language of shorthand that can't be replicated, which is funny because we weren't close AT ALL growing up. She's nearly a decade older than me and I grew up moreso with my little brother who I used to be somewhat close to until he was old enough to talk. LOL. Fast forward several years, now she's one of the first calls I make. Enough of the wistfulness, I'm going to catch some more zzzzs.

Pictures to follow.

New Foods, More Pictures

Myles has eaten two new foods this week! Shouldn't be a big deal, but for him it is. He tried adult oatmeal this week and liked it and today tried sweet potatoes and liked it. He didn't immediately take to the sweet potatoes, but something in the way he rejected it let me know he might eat it if I prepared it just so. So he spit out the big chunk, I squished it much thinner and he spit it out again, but no yuck face. I mixed it with a bit of honey (he's over a year now, so it's safe) and he still wasn't thrilled, then I thinned it with even more water and then he liked it and came back for more voluntarily. He even said the words more and eventually signed the word more without saying it. He ate the whole ramekin I made for him and fell asleep. Progress! He started corn as well last week. Fruits don't work so well for us, but I'm going to try watermelon next week perhaps. He won't have grapes at all, nor apples. He's not totally revolted by oranges, but doesn't particularly like them either.

My sister's in town from DC and it's been great to get away. She watched the baby and let us have 2 movie dates alone. We saw Eclipse (guilty pleasure) and Get Him to the Greek, which was fantastic! I LOVE Russell Brand.

Here are so more random pics of Myles.

New Kit Completed

Here's a layout using the kit:

Credits: Kit-Outta This World, Template-Aprilisa Design.

Some respite

Had a horrible weekend where Myles had night terrors and started beating me up in his sleep. Pulling my hair, trying to punch me, head butting me, kicking me, the whole spiel. Saturday night was the worst, it was like a 30-40 minute episode at almost 4 am. Sunday was slightly better, but I was still on edge.

Finally last night, fed him lots before bed, including corn, on the advice of my Aunt Olivia's friend Candice. She said her son's night terrors were exacerbated by hunger. Fed him up, drugged him with tylenol at 11 pm at his first waking (he went down early at 7 after resisting both daytime naps) and he slept through the night, for real. First time ever this well. Okay, maybe 2nd time, but a full 7 hours. When he cried at 6am, we didn't even realize what had happened. No night terrors and an improved sleeping. Let's hope we can do a repeat tonight. This is the first uninterrupted block of sleep I've had in at least 10 months.

Additionally, the little one fed himself at lunch yesterday. He's usually sort of lazy and will feed himself snacks, but not food. But yesterday he fed himself chunks of chicken and tried to feed himself pasta with his spoon for the first time. He plays with the spoon usually, but this was the first time that contents of the spoon made it to his mouth. Thus proving right the statement, "progress is inevitable." He also tried to hold the water bottle several times. I've had to invest in more expensive bottled water because he hates bottles, resists sippies slightly less, but likes bottled water. So I got the kind with spouts and now he's much more of a water drinker (and spiller.)

He's such a stereotypical male - he'll push me to the edge and goes that extra mile to do something cute and make his way back into my good graces.

No, no, no

The boy has learned the word no. He actually HAS to say it at least 3 times together in quick succession, "no, no, no." Often he sings it as a song. And this started yesterday, but today was the first day he told Mark no in the correct context. Mark asked him to give him this pen he was holding and he replied clearly, "no." Wow! Game on.

He's also started paying attention to the television. It started 2 weeks ago when he started chanting "yeye" and "la" while watching Nihao Kailan. But then a couple of days ago, we were watching Backyardigans (me as much as he) and the kid said, "aww man!" And Myles repeated, "aww me!" He didn't finish the 'n' but he got the intonation totally down. He's a little parrot these days. Gotta watch it.

First Digiscrap Kit

New Venture

Introducing my line of digital scrapbooking supplies, Pixel Poubah! More about this and previews to come.

Feeling more hopeful

Just talked to my band guitarist who owned a car dealership for 20+ years and he said that although new car parts have skyrocketed due to lack of sales volume, I could get reconditioned replacement parts cheaper and that the quote was way too high in general. I most likely can get the car repaired for less than $2k, more like $1k. That sounds a lot better. We'd probably have to get a new car anyhow in 2 years when he have 2 babies in 2 big car seats, so if we could eek some more years out of this car, I'd love it. Also, we really intentionally have no car payments for a reason. I don't believe in getting a new car often at all.

I can't remember what I was about to write

Myles just did something cute, but the phone rang and it was the dealership telling me that my A/C repair is $2600 and all of a sudden, I can't for the life of me remember what I was just about to write.

Day 2 of weaning - hardcore version

We went 5 hours between nursing while at the beach. I've got to keep him occupied as we drop feedings. We dropped one feeding yesterday and we might dr0p an additional one today. He's still not upping his liquid intake yet to compensate, but I'm choosing to walk on faith that he'll catch on and get thirsty and give in to the cup. He'll take a couple sips from it for fun, but when he's actually thirsty is when he's most prone to resist it. We just keep offering it and at some point, it'll click.

I need to keep him out of the house and active in general this week - I think it's a good strategy for weaning. He's starting to add some foods to his repertoire. He likes peanut butter now and corn. Tried grapes for the 3rd time, he still hates them. Won't even try apples- I've sort of stuck one in his open mouth, but the taste was not good enough for him to voluntarily come back on his own.

We go for his 15 month appt tomorrow. I have a feeling he's WAY skinnier in terms of the percentile stuff. He's leaning out now that he walks. No more chub. I think he gets one of the shots that I put off from last visit, when they wanted to give him like 4 shots at once.

That's it for now. I'll be back later to put up some beach photos.

15 months old!

I thought he was just 15 months today, but looking at the blog, he already turned yesterday - I just apparently never know what day it is. He's growing up. Despite himself. Today I drew a line in the sand with the nursing. I can't take it anymore! The teeth are killing me - he's not biting, but I'm super sore. I pumped this morning and he wouldn't take any milk from 1 bottle or 2 different cups. He knows what's going on and wants no part in it. He's normally a little better with cups, but somehow he can tell this is the end. So I spent the WHOLE morning with him crying and whining.

To top it off, I locked my keys in our back house, so I couldn't walk him or leave the house to distract him. So after half a day of fighting, then a long nap, he wakes up ravenous. He starts downing banana puffs (which he'd stopped eating awhile back) top speed. Then I told Mark to try Cheerios to slow him down and he downs those just as fast. Then we go get his favorite chicken. He eats some of it, then starts revolting, chanting and yelling, "ma" and "mama" which doesn't refer to me, just my boobs. We distract him a little and then when dinner comes, he's hungry again. He tries corn for the first time. AND, for the first time, he accepts a new food readily with no grimaces, no pulling it out of his mouth or anything. (He pulled the green beans out of his mouth, but they were unsalted and fairly gross even to us.) So tomorrow, I'm looking forward to interesting poop with corn kernels in it.

Additionally, he goes to bed without much fight now. The last few nights he just lies down peacefully, you rub his belly a few times and then he goes to sleep. Tonight, he didn't even require me to stay until he was totally asleep. He was drowsy, I walked out and he didn't even care. Our little boy is growing up!