Notes from the crib

A friend had this on her blog and I thought it would be fun to make one for our family. Looks like I don't have that many states to go. I'm thinking we need a family vacation to the Northeast -- maple syrup, lobsters, and fall foliage maybe?

My Visited States

DH's Visited States

George's Visited States

George entertained us the other night by putting on my shoes and walking all around the living room. He's pretty good with his his balance.

For the triathlon that I participated in, you have to have your race number written on your body down both arms and across your thighs, and then have your age written on the back of your calf. So about 6:45 AM on the morning of the tri, I knelt down on one knee in the transition area to do body marking for my friend. I did not look where I was kneeling and evidently put my knee in the path of some very angry fire ants. When I stood up, my knee was covered in brown, squirming, stinging creatures. I shook them off and tried not to swear. Unfortunately, I inherited my mom's sensitivity to fire ants and I swell up something fierce from just a bite or two. As we walked out of the transition area over a dozen welts were already forming. I stopped at a water cooler and doused my leg with ice water and then went in search of the first aid tent. The paramedics were nice enough to give me some oral Benedryl and some liquid squirts of medicine on the bites themselves. The Benedryl kicked in quickly so I was pretty woozy for the actual tri, but I was able to make it through. I've continued taking Benedryl about every six hours since, which has made a significant difference in how my body reacts. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be able to bend my knee at this point (there are over 15 puss-filled bites right now), but with the meds the swelling is minimal. Of course on the bad side, I'm so sleepy. George was nice enough to take a long nap today so I could crash as well.

Here's a picture, for Mom, since she asked. It's surprisingly difficult to take a picture of your own knee.

George is a very active sleeper. I dread the day we have to turn the crib into a toddler bed. I'm afraid he'll end up on the floor often with all that he moves around. He loves to sleep sideways in the crib and he's also taken to cuddling with toys. We've gone from having one or two things in the crib at bedtime to four or five toys and animals. He's also very in to putting his feet through the crib slats. During naptime, if he's not tired he'll put his feet through the slats and kick the wall. The first time he did that, I rushed in wondering what in the world was making so much noise - and he grinned so proudly.

George attended an art themed party birthday party today. The little children were each given a smock and access to paper, paints, and brushes. Oh, the messes these little kids made!

At first George was a little intimidated, and instead of working at his easel he went over to each of the other little children's easels (incidentally, all the other children were girls). He would lean over the girls' work, point at their paint strokes, and often pick up a brush and add a little more color to their creations. We joked that he was an artistic critic and collaborator with the girls. Amazingly, none of the little girls minded George adding his touch to their masterpieces. After the girls had all done three or four paintings each, George finally felt comfortable enough to pick up a brush and design himself. Often he painted with two hands, but in this picture I caught him painting with his left hand while he held on to a golf club set with his right. I guess he was trying to embrace both his artistic and athletic sides.

The children's art work was hung up on the fence to dry, which didn't take long since the temperature topped 100 degrees today.

After finishing up his painting, George took a break in the birthday girl's air conditioner box fort. I couldn't decide which picture I liked best to post, so I'm going to post them both. In the first one, George is looking right at me, but in the second one George is flirting with the birthday girl's aunt.

One of George's little friends turned two today. For a gift, I made her some play food out of felt. I was quite proud with how it turned out - I made pancakes, eggs, and bacon. I packaged it in a little container and made labels with some of my stamp sets. I bought a new sewing machine in May (I call it my Mother's Day present), and this was the first thing I've sewn on it. It sewed so nicely that I think I'll be making more food soon.

A friend asked if I could make cupcakes for a baby shower that she was hosting. I threw out some ideas and these are the ones that she picked. She seemed happy with them - the ones I sampled for breakfast this morning sure tasted good.

George is discovering pockets. When he has clothes with pockets, sometimes I'll stick his binkie in one and he'll spend several minutes trying to figure out how to retrieve it. He's decided pockets are a great invention with which to carry his beloved belongings. When he doesn't have pockets, he just improvises by stuffing his things down his shirt. The other morning DH documented George stuffing a little person, a tow truck, a cell phone, a taxi cab, and one green sock down the neck of his onesie. Tonight George stuffed a pancake down his shirt and then tried to get his sippy cup of milk in there, too.

My dad came to visit us last weekend for a quick Saturday through Monday visit. George just adores my dad and has talked about him ever since he left. In preparation for the visit, I'd talked with George about how Grandpa was coming to visit and tried to get him to say "Grandpa" since I knew that would make my dad's visit extra special. George tried and tried to say "Grandpa" and finally came out with "Pa-pop".

We do a lot of video chatting with our distant relatives, so George knew who "Pa-pop" was, even though he hadn't seen him in person for a few months. The two of them played and chatted and had a wonderful visit. George was not his usual happy self when we dropped my dad off at the airport due to some teeth coming in, and didn't really acknowledge my dad leaving. We went home and took a nap, and later that afternoon George awoke happy and slightly confused. He kept running around the house looking for my dad. He was especially cute (and sad at the same time) the way he'd stand at the base of the stairs and cry out "Pa-Pop?"

He's settled in this week and finally stopped asking for his grandpa as much, content to just video chat with him instead. He'll grab my laptop, hit some keys, and then ask "Pa-Pop?" expecting his face to appear on the screen. After I get the video chat going, he'll visit with Mom and Dad and then when he's done he'll say "Bye-Bye" and shut the laptop lid, effectively ending the conversation.

This evening, George and I went upstairs to ready the guest area for our next round of houseguests. George hadn't mentioned my dad in a day or two and we wondered what he'd do as he headed up the stairs. Sure enough, he got to the landing and yelled out "Hi, Pa-pop!". When he finally made it to the top, he was a little confused that Pa-pop wasn't hiding up there but he was easily distracted by his Big Wheel which we keep upstairs out of the way, since George isn't big enough for it yet.

I love this picture, it's of George sharing his cracker snack with my dad - can't you just see the adoration in his eyes?

We're in the process of upgrading our computers and servers. Blogging will be sporadic for awhile.

But here's a shot from today. We decided with temps in the high 90s that we needed to spend some time at a local sprinkler park. George packed his car in the park bag all by himself.

We took George to a local amusement park today. He was able to go on all the rides (most of them by himself) and he even rode his first pony, which was named Tyler. George was pretty overwhelmed by the entire experience and didn't smile much for pictures, but he did yell "Whee!" on every single ride.

George has been talking about his car all day, so we pushed him in the car on a walk to get the mail tonight. George saw an SUV coming our direction and he had to get out of his car, wave and yell "Hi!" at the female occupants. I'm sure in a few months he'll be yelling more things than just "Hi" - can't you just imagine him thinking "Hey, pretty ladies! Look at me!" as he waves?

George turned nineteen months on Cinco de Mayo. We celebrated with sopapilla cheesecake bars. Mmm... those are good.

George has mastered walking and running. He's even started walking backwards within the last week. His feet touch the ground when he sits on his train, and he can push himself both forward and backward.

He's very vocal. He is gaining one or two new words a day. Yesterday he learned "cookie" because I wouldn't share mine with him unless he said the word. He babbles a lot, and can also put together two word sentences like "Car go" or "bye-bye go". He gets shy around people that he doesn't recognize. I took him to work today and he hid under my long skirt for most of our visit. When I finally got him coaxed out, he would smile at everyone, but wouldn't say a word.

He's got teeth and he knows how to use them. He teethed all through March and a good part of April, and he's now got a mouth full of teeth. He loves to gnaw on foods and use his chompers to bite off bits. No more cutting up food into little pieces, he likes sizes that he can hold and chew on. He eats graham crackers like a little typewriter, down one end and then back.

He is having more purposeful play these days. He "cooks" things with the spoons and bowls I give him. He carries on conversations on his play phones starting with "hi", filling in with babble, and then ending with "bye" before hanging up. He also uses other objects as a phone, sometimes putting potato chips or waffles up to his ear and "talking" into them as if they were phone receivers.

He remembers and puts things together. My parents have a cuckoo clock with a bird that pops out and chirps on the hour. Whenever we go visit, my dad will pick up George and run to the clock so that he can watch the bird pop out and make its noise. George hasn't seen that clock in over six months. But he's started associating clocks with my parents' clock. We have an old fashioned grandfather clock that chimes on the hour. When George hears our clock chime he runs over to it, looks for the bird, and yells "Cuckoo!". I bought George a telling time board book that has movable clock hands on it and he'll pick up the book, move the clock hands, and cry "Cuckoo!".

Another example, George has a remote control car that he received for Christmas. We rotate his toys to keep down on some of the clutter, and to keep him interested in all of his things. Bringing them out of rotation makes them "new" again and keeps him from losing interest in them. The car had been out of rotation for about a month. Last week he found the remote control for the car in one toy bin and immediately ran to a toy bin in another room to find the car. Then he brought them both to DH for assistance in turning on and driving the car. It was amazing to us that George could find the remote and know that it went with the car, especially when he hadn't seen them for awhile.

It's so much fun to see him develop into a little person. Each stage seems funner than the last.

George is sporting a new shirt today for his 19 month birthday.

George helped me make cornbread tonight. I let him dump the ingredients into the bowl and then help stir. Unfortunately for me, he was more interested in lifting up the spoon to see what was on it, and he ended up covered in flour. I decided if I wanted to get dinner in the oven, I needed to distract him, so I offered him some of my kitchen utensils to play with in the living room. He had so much fun "cooking" and stirring. He even made "Mmmm" sounds when he "sipped" from the spoon.

DH and George had a boys' afternoon and evening together last night. They ran errands and helped one of DH's car-less friends go shopping for bookcases and other household furniture. DH said that George was such a good sport and had fun hanging with the men.

Meanwhile, I had a girly afternoon with some friends. One of my friends is going through a rough time, so we decided to have a girls-only day of pampering. It started off with pedicures for all (and then a few also got manicures and brow waxing).

Then we moved on to our local ritzy shopping complex for a makeover at the department store makeup counter, and then a stop in the specialty chocolate shoppe for truffles. Next up was dinner at a nice local restaurant. It is prom season, so we got to giggle at all the prom groups and have our jaws drop at the risque clothing today's teens are wearing. We decided our mothers would have never let us out of the houses dressed as these girls were. And the accessories! I could have bought enough groceries to feed my family for two months with the money these girls had spent on their handbags. I had the most fabulous dessert at dinner - it was a piece of raspberry peanut butter pie. It was kind of a light peanut butter cheesecake with a top layer of raspberry, and then covered with a hard chocolate top, all on a graham cracker crust.

After dinner, we decided to go hang out at Dave & Busters. We played skeeball, a shooting gallery game, and then discovered video boxing. I loved the boxing! It's a virtual reality game where you wear boxing gloves, give and take punches, and have to move around in order to avoid being punched by the video opponent. My first attempt I ranked 75th, which I thought was pretty good. We took a couple hour break at the bar, enjoying beverages and watching the NBA playoffs and pro rodeo bull riding. After resting, I returned to the boxing game and kicked butt! I ended up ranking 13th! We took a picture to prove it, and I'm amused to see that the video boxing must not have been programmed by someone with a good command of the English language - note the ranking.

Today, my arms and shoulders are so very sore from the boxing. The game calculated calories burned, and I think mine were somewhere close to 400 calories for my two boxing matches. My muscles can attest, it really was a great workout!

George was a little terror in church today. Wouldn't sit still, wouldn't be quiet - he was fussing and yelling and basically acting like a typical toddler. We took him outside for most of the service (and when we'd leave he'd yell "Bye-Bye" when we'd return inside he'd yell "Hi!"), but we did bring him back in so that we could do communion as a family. As soon as that was over, he and I headed outside to burn off some energy. He played on the playground until the service was over and then waved goodbye to people as they drove away. As I carried him back through the crowd to find DH, one nice elderly church lady greeted us and said, "You sure have a precious handful".

George knows himself as "Baby". If he sees reflections of himself in the mirror, he always says "Baby!". I didn't realize this would cause as much amusement as it did tonight.

I have some of my childhood toys that I've carted around from house to house, and I'm excited to share them with George. We've put my old doll cradle in his room, along with two of my Cabbage Patch Kids (a boy and girl). George was playing with the boy doll and I told him to "Put the baby in the cradle". He immediately dropped the doll, went over to the cradle, yanked the girl doll out of the cradle and threw her on the floor, and then proceeded to climb into it himself!

He must have decided there was too much stuff in the cradle with him, so he climbed back out, emptied it out of bedding, and then climbed back in again.

My mom likes to tell a story of me and the cradle when I was just a little bit older than George is now. We were moving to a new town, and apparently I became quite upset when the movers tried to take my doll cradle away. I threw a tantrum and climbed into the cradle, I guess trying to keep them from moving it. As the story goes, the movers just picked up the cradle, and carried it with me still inside into the moving truck. I had so much fun, I forgot about being upset about the cradle being packed up, and I happily got out and went on with my playing. I imagine that sitting in the cradle, I looked a lot like George does in this last picture.

George and I went to a park today after work. We had much fun playing on the playground, in the sandbox, and at the water fountain.

I managed to capture a video with my phone of him going down the slide. Sorry about the poor quality.