the art of sneaking

Before I became a mother, I had a mental list of things that, as a parent, I would never do. I would never take a small baby to the State Fair. I would never let my child have dried-up boogers in his nose. I would never give my kid a pacifier until breastfeeding was well-established. And (this is the most important one, so take note) I would maintain a normal level of noise around the house while the child was sleeping, so that he/she would never require silence in order to stay asleep. Crazy how I used to know so much more about parenting back then.....ahem.

It all began on a rainy April day, as I recall. Henry had been cranky all morning, which was unusual for him. I had worked and worked to get him to nap and finally by about noon, he was asleep. I now needed to take a shower, get supper started, make my grocery list, and fold laundry before he woke up again. Because when you have a baby who lays happily in one spot on the floor and bats his arms at toys for long periods of time, how can you possibly get anything done while he's awake?!?! (Ah, the days before Henry was crawling, pulling up, emptying cabinets, and putting everything in his mouth. I had no idea. But, that's another post for another day.) Anyway, I was so relieved that he was finally napping, that I tip-toed out of the room just as Dameon was coming home for lunch. I greeted him with a "Shhhhhhhhh" and a look of desperation that said, "If you wake that child, I will cry and you will be punished," and the rest is history. I have successfully managed to create the lightest sleeping child on the face of the earth. Yay for me.

In the beginning it didn't seem like such a big deal. Henry was still sleeping in our bed and taking most of his naps with me or on me (in his sling). But around six months of age, he transitioned into his crib, and I quickly memorized every creaky floor board, squeaky door, etc. in our very noisy 1920's home. I mean, it's just common sense that you don't empty or load the dishwasher, get ice from the freezer door, turn the t.v. up past volume level 7, walk past the nursery door, flush the toilet, run a load of baby clothes through the dryer (those snaps are LOUD), or cough while the baby is sleeping. Duh! So, for those of you out there who live in an older home full of creaky hardwood floors, I've developed some ways to help you move around your home while your child is sleeping. But only if you must. And, if you're more of a visual learner, stop by my house (but not at naptime or after 8:00 p.m.) and I'll give you a little demonstration.

1. The tuck and roll. This move is most helpful when trying to get out of your baby's room without him seeing you. You want to basically melt to the floor like a limp noodle and then slither to the door on all fours, avoiding the places that will creak underneath you. It's also helpful to hold your breath. You can come up for air once the door is closed behind you.

2. The skate. You will minimize the creaking if you can slide your feet across the floor, rather than picking them up and actually taking steps. It's just common sense.

3. The straddle. Floorboards closest to the wall are the quietest, so if you can kinda straddle the hallway, you'll be much better off. Trust me.

Now, there are a couple things that can really throw you off. Once your baby is able to pull himself up, the crib ledge has to be raised. In my case, this has to be done after Henry is laid down because otherwise I'm not tall enough to lower him into bed. There have been many times when the clicking of the latch wakes him. I don't know what to tell you on that one. Secondly, your husband can be a real wild card. Dameon tries very hard to follow the rules of sneaking but he's got these wide feet that don't slide very well and tend to kinda slap the floors instead. He also tends to hover over the creakiest areas of the house. He says if he walks fast, it's quieter. We have differing definitions of "quiet". I mean, what guy wouldn't want to come home from a long day of work to be greeted with a "Shhhhhh" and pointing motion toward the nursery and then have to ask permission to walk to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a snack or glass of water?? Sounds relaxing to me.

*Yes, this post is written sarcastically to poke fun at myself for the dumb things I've done. So thankful I have a husband who puts up with my crazy antics! I've worked to tone it down a bit after Dameon said to me a few months back, "I think your shushing is going to wake the baby." Ha! We can laugh about it now. Live and learn, right? Oh, the things I won't do with our second child!! :)

uppercase around the house

Back in April, I decided to try something new and become a demonstrator for Uppercase Living. If you don't know, it's a company that makes vinyl expressions for your home, school, business, etc. Since then I've had lots of fun doing parties for people and personalizing our own home. I took some photos for an album I'm putting together, but thought I'd also share them here!

This is in our living room right above the fireplace. The expression is applied to our metal board, so it's easy to rearrange if needed.

This is in our master bedroom:

I shared these nursery photos in my last post, but wanted to explain. This first expression isn't one that is found in the catalog. Uppercase Living offers the option of customizing your own expressions! This was a verse (well, part of a verse) we had picked out, so I just went on the website and created it in "My Design Studio". Soooo happy with how it turned out!

This dandelion is super cute, but also hard to capture in a photo. The petals go up and over the window. They can be placed however you like because they are cut apart and applied individually.

This is in our dining room above the doorway. I like the contrast against our wall color.

Anyway, that's just a little tour around the Place house. Now I'm looking forward to doing a few Christmas-themed things!

ten months

Sooooo behind once again. But you're probably used to that by now. Darn home computer still doesn't let me post. Anyway, Henry is ten months plus about 11 days now. Less than two months til the big birthday! Wowza!

• Not sure exactly how much he weighs but it seems like a lot. He's gotta be over 21 pounds by now. I'd guess 22.
• He's not overly interested in baby food right now. About a month ago we had a scarring salmon incident and ever since then he's been quite cautious about anything on a spoon. However, we think he's going to be quite the independent child, and we're convinced that if he could feed himself with the spoon, he'd clear his plate. He's still nursing throughout the day and night, so he definitely gets his fill.
• His current tricks include: So Big, clapping, pointing, twisting his hands when he hears music, following along in his flap books and Pat the Bunny, saying "Oh, Wow" "sssssat" and "dada", crawling around and pulling up on everything, and sometimes waving bye-bye.
• Lately we've been very impressed with his receptive language skills. The other day he was standing at the couch and I said, "Henry, where's your spoon?" He turned around and looked at the spoon. Then I said, "Go get your spoon." He plopped down on his bum, crawled over, and picked up his spoon. Coincidence? It's possible :)
• He does a little bit of cruising but has only let go and balanced once. And it was only for a second.
• His nursery is finally (FINALLY!!) done. See pics above.
• He had a few firsts this past month. First marching band contest, First haircut, First parade, First ride in a shopping cart, and First illness.
• Next up: First Halloween. Stay tuned for pictures!

the long and short of it

Yesterday we took Henry for his first real haircut. For some reason I had it in my head that haircuts shouldn't happen until after the first birthday, but I broke my own "rule" and finally made the appointment after I noticed that his hair was in his eyes and constantly all tangled in the back from rubbing against his high chair or stroller. As you know, Henry has consistently (and by "consistently", I mean "DAILY") been mistaken for a girl since birth. This has never really bothered us, but we figured having his hair trimmed up would help. He was really wiggly to start off with, but then the stylist gave him his own comb and he was happy as a little clam. Well, until the very end when she needed to trim up the back and asked him to "look at his shoes." Yeah...that's not happening. After the haircut, we went to the fireplace store to do a little research and the salesman commented on what a cute little boy Henry was. Dameon and I totally did a mental high-five. Then we went to grab some dinner and as we were waiting to be seated, the hostess said, "Oh, SHE'S sooooo cute! She looks just like you!" You can't win 'em all.

The before:

The during:

The after:

nine months

• Henry is now nine months. That means we are only three months away from his first birthday. Unbelievable!
• He is sporting two teeth these days. They are the middle ones on the bottom. I've been trying, without much success, to get a picture of them. Every time I try to catch a glimpse, by pulling down his lip, he sticks out his tongue! I'll keep trying :)
• He is crawling all over the place, but sometimes bottoms out and scoots on his belly. His favorite activity is exploring the parts of our house where he normally doesn't hang out such as the hallway, the dining room, and any corner where he may find a dust bunny or two.
• He loves to eat! He sits in his high chair for two meals a day (usually breakfast and supper) and still nurses throughout the day and night. His newest foods are beef ragout, mini whole grain waffles, whole grain pasta, and the baby version of cheeseburger chowder. Yummy! He's getting to the point where he really wants to be in charge of the spoon, so that makes things interesting.
• The tables have turned and Henry is now chasing after Rufus. Rufus, however, has realized that Henry doesn't understand "soft touch". He pulls Rufus's tail and ears...hard. Rufus usually tries to scurry out of the way before this happens, but sometimes he's not fast enough. Remember Elmyra?? I'm worried we're going to have a serious Elmyra situation on our hands.
• Henry is a total social butterfly. He will smile and jabber at people as we walk through the store and loves when they smile and jabber back at him. We go to storytime on Tuesday mornings and he loves to watch the other little kids. There's one little two-year-old girl who loves to hug Henry and hold his hand.
  
• At his nine-month check, he proved that he is a healthy growing boy! Weight: 20 pounds, 14 ounces (52%ile); Height: 29 inches (74%ile); Head Circumference: Can't remember the measurement but I do remember it was 96%ile...that means big brains, right??
• He got his first haircut today...pictures to follow soon!!!

ABC's, 123's, and scarring kids for life

I've been at a bit of a loss for blog material lately. I have lots of thoughts and a few posts started about some deeper-type stuff, but nothing too light-hearted. Lots and lots of months ago (or maybe even years?? Yep, years) I started a little blog series about my favorite student stories, since working with 3-6 years olds is often quite hilarious. Remember this? Or how about this? Yes, I'm a stay-at-home mom now, but I still have five great years of teaching to reflect on. And lots of good stories to tell.

Today's story comes from my most recent class. Last year I taught four-year-old preschool here in Winterset. Each day there was this awkward six or seven minutes between storytime and lunch. And if you have ever spent time with a group of young kids, you know that time spent waiting around quickly turns into bouncing off the walls and chaos. So, I would always try to come up with some sort of fingerplay, song, or game in order to maintain some sort of ...well... order. On this particular day, I decided to introduce the "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?" game. You know the one. It goes like this:

"Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"

"(Student name) stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"

"Who me?"

"Yes you"

"Couldn't be"

"Then who?"

And each child gets a turn to be the designated cookie stealer. Seems innocent enough, right? WRONG.

We'll call the kid Joey. Joey was sweet and cute as can be. But he was also a bit oblivious. It was hard for him to understand a joke or an exaggeration. He took everything on a literal basis... Bless his heart. So most of the kids were kinda catching on. Not quite getting the rhythm of the whole thing, but all in all things were going well. Then we get to Joey's turn. "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? Joey stole the cookie from the cookie jar." And we all look at Joey and wait for him to chime in with the "who me?" part. It started with him noticing everyone looking at him and his eyes growing very wide. And then he says, "No I didn't, guys. No, I didn't! I didn't steal the cookie!" Now, of course, the other kids understand that it's a rhythm game and they start to say things like "Yes, it's your turn. Yeah, you stole it." This, of course, is even more upsetting to Joey and he starts to unleash a little bit more. "No, I didn't! I don't got it! I don't got a cookie! NO I DIDN'T!!!!" Poor kid. I think he even cried a little. Yes, we got him calmed down and just kinda dismissed the whole thing. The next day as we were playing again, I decided it was better not to set Joey off and just skip his turn. I didn't think he'd notice or care. Wrong again. He insisted on having a turn. Fine. But when it finally came around to him, the whole scenario played out again. Oh, brother. Hope they don't play that game in kindergarten.

a wonderfully fantastic labor day weekend

Ya gotta love a good three-day weekend, right?

It started on Friday evening with our good friend Jon and his little girl, Bella, coming over for dinner. They were out for a bike ride while Megan (wife/mom) was running musical rehearsal and stopped by to say hello. I was about to put my gourmet dinner....er...Vandekamp's fish fillets...in the oven, so we invited them to stay. And the Vandekamp's ended up being pretty tasty.

Saturday brought the much-anticipated opening game of the Hawkeye football season! I'm pretty sure Dameon has been waiting his whole life to sit on the couch with his baby boy and cheer on the Hawks :) We had our usual game day smorgasbord including nacho hamburger dip, salami and crackers, and brownies. We also had a few close calls when the power went out 45 minutes before kick-off and then the Big Ten Network basically failed at broadcasting the entire first half of the game. My husband gets a little intense during Hawkeye Football. (Can you imagine that?) So, every time I felt like saying something like, "At least this is happening during a game that isn't very important", I decided against it. Things like that don't usually go over very well. Saturday evening we tried out a new recipe that I got from my cousin, April. Chicken Tacos = delicious!! Here, you should try it: http://family.go.com/food/pkg-family-approved-recipes/recipe-an-814457-slow-cooker-chicken-tacos-t/

Because who doesn't love a good crock-pot recipe?? So pumped to eat the leftovers tonight. Yum.

On Sunday we headed east to Oskaloosa for Grandpa Charlie's 80th birthday party. It was neat to see such a great turn-out of family and friends. And the cake was outrageously good!! After the party, we stopped over to visit our friends, Matt and Molly. It is always great to catch up with them and let our dogs catch up, too. :) Next we went to Pella to spend a little more time with Dameon's dad and step-mom. They had supper ready for us (taco salad!!) and then we got to enjoy the beautiful weather even more with a bonfire and s'mores. Good friends Barb and Bill stopped over to get in on the action. Henry was quite the comedian the whole night, which seems to be his new thing. His current shtick is to fake laugh and get other people to laugh at him. Then his laugh gets louder and more forced until it turns into more of a holler. And, of course by then everyone is laughing so hard at him that he decides to shake his head back and forth as quickly as he can, only taking breaks to make sure people are still looking at him. Hmmmm....I'm pretty sure he's going to be a "watch me, watch me" kind of kid. Not that I was ever like that or anything. (Ahem....dance and tumbling routines in the basement, anyone?)

We got home late and Henry was totally wiped out so he slept really well last night, but was ready to get up at 7 this morning. My amazing husband got up with him, fed him breakfast, and played with him so I could sleep until 8:30. SOOOOOO GREAT! Then Dameon did some drill work while I got ready for Mom, Dad, and Grandma to come over. They arrived around 12:30 and we had burgers on the grill, sweet corn, and toffee brownie trifle for lunch. We ate out on the patio and enjoyed this lovely Iowa weather. Henry is on his third nap of the day, so he's either catching up on sleep or growing or both. When he wakes up, we're definitely all going on a walk. Hooray for fall, football, and family!