holy stinkfest batman!

So I haven't blogged in a bit, but I honestly have a subject that's been taking over my mind and I haven't thought of a clever yet appropriate way to write about it. So here it is, baby poop. All you future mommies, don't get scared. All you who condemn "bathroom talk", skip this entry.

In our meetings at school we always have to start with celebrations first. Celebrations for my Cade would be that we are officially a solids-eater! Yay! (And by solids I mean the practically liquified Gerber variety...organic of course, bonus points on my mommy score card - whoop!)
We've mastered bananas, apples, sweet potatoes, peaches, green beans, green peas, apples & apricots, pears, and now prunes! We've also mastered our share of variety in baby cereal: rice, brown rice, and oatmeal. I'm so pretty much making up this whole food-introduction process as I go. I can't figure out when Stage 1 ends and Stage 2 begins and how to plan "meals" for him. No clue, but whatev! He's gaining weight and in 75%ile so I must not be a huge f'up, right?

Now comes for the concerns. The diapers. Ohhh, the dirty stinky diapers. Oh, the unholy smells. I had my first gag-reflex to a diaper yesterday. Not only was the stink outrageous, but it looked like um, looked like a giant melted Hershey kiss. I'm sorry, I know it's TMI and my mom will kill me for writing this, but I died when I opened that. And the thing is, I've so always been amazed at how powerful my love is for this sweet angel baby, that I've been --- for 6 months-- thinking my baby's poo don't stink.

I'm ridiculous, I know. I never wanted to be THAT mom, but I always was a bit suprised that I didn't start vomiting at the first #2 diaper from day 1. I've totally been living in poo-oblivion. Hell, I even totally accepted it when the pediatrician told me that brown, yellow, orange, AND green were all acceptable #2 colors. But forget it. The cloud has lifted. It's over. Bye-bye loving mommy filter on poo smells. Hello gag-city.

As I said earlier, I don't know much, but I have learned some BAD combinations of food (and by that I mean unholy diaper-ness):
- Peas & rice cereal
- Oatmeal & green beans (worst of all time bad)

Now I understand I've totally tempted the universe by putting this out there, but I'm certain tomorrow will not be pretty. Tonight was oatmeal, green beans, AND prunes (hey- they kid was hONgry!) Please Lord, let the #2 come at daycare. I pay too much money to not get SOME perks!

Good night baby bowel Gods. Bless me and my Diaper Champ and Lysol. We'll be ready.

Momma's Punkin in the Pumpkins

I know, Cheesefest 2009 with the title, but I couldn't resist. One of those daydreams I had whilst rubbing my big prego belly was of taking my baby to a pumpkin patch. Something about a sweet butterball baby lounging with big round pumpkins warms my heart like a tall nonfat light whip mocha. (also something I dreamt of whilst prego)

Sunday was the big day. Cade and I loaded up snacks (toasted pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, dark chocolates, Almond Hershey kiss mix for me; rice cereal and Enfamil for him), grabbed our jackets and picked up Grammie and Grandaddy. We met my aunt, uncle, and cousin at the Arboreteum to hang out for my uncle's 60th birthday (shout out!). It was the perfect day, clear skies, absolutely gorgeous. Strolling around looking at the millions of pumpkins, gorgeous fall foliage, and flowers everywhere was so relaxing. (okay, and exciting to see all the cute kids getting pics taken---haha, and hilarious to see fat brides in rather unfortunate wedding gowns, but I digress)

Cade loved it, he was so attentive to the colors and so loving the pumpkins. He's decided that faux-coughing is a clever means of communication. I'm sure other parents were thinking I was parent o' the year letting my baby cough and choke and sputter, but he was so faking for attention. As soon as you looked at him you got this big grin and if you faux-coughed back at him he'd just do it again and again. (Before you go calling CPS we just had 6 month check up and got clean bill of health, so go get over yourself...oo, I'm nasty tonight!)

Anyhoo, you don't really care to hear more, you want to see the pics, so here goes. Enjoy!

6 months old pics!

Still the happiest baby on the block!

Showing off sitting skills.

It was only a matter of time... let the birthday boy have his day.

First Food with Taste!

September 7, 2009 Cade tries his first "solid" besides rice cereal--- bananas! Very seriously tasting it, then very excited about the new taste. Give me more, Momma!

Video clip of tasting bananas as first tasty food (besides rice cereal:).

Guilty Horrible Parents

In the midst of figuring out which parent should get the first sleep shift and who gets the second sleep shift, and when said shift switch time should occur, we forgot. We didn't even realize, there was no handy reminder, I had no freaking idea....I missed my baby's six month birthday.

I know! What the hell?! I didn't even know the 7th came and went until I got a text this morning from Nick that said "Did you remember it was Cade's 6 month yesterday?" Um, I felt like shit. I may have cussed in my training. (No worries, it was semi-approp given it was the child restraint training and half of the day I had to pretend to bite/hit/scratch/grab/kick/choke my principal) I wanted to cry, in fact, there were tears but my friendly staffmate was kinda panicked when she saw the ol' eyes start watering and then I felt bad for making her feel bad that I was about to cry. I know, awkward.

So then today I get home for work with Cade, and I try to find the camera. Again, bad bad poor mommy. My regular camera broke, borrowing my mom's camera, can't find my mom's camera. Ugggh! Why why why can nothing be easy? So, I didn't even get a semi-fresh 6 month old pic. I have a quasi-cute pic on my phone of the 6th of the month, and nothing from the 7th, and now nothing of the 8th. Whatev, this is what happens when people don't let you say he's 5 months and they start rounding up his age so then I forget when he actually does have a milestone.

All the other cute mommies have cute pics of their cute babies with cute signs that say how old they are. My baby crunched and ate his 5 month sign. I forgot his 6 month bday. What does this say about me? I'm exhausted. I'm guilty. I missed it and I can't get it back. Damn.

Yo rolio!

We are SO on the verge of something big here. We've been waiting and watching and cheering and the camcorder has been on perma-standby. He puts his head down to the ground, pushes his booty in the air, kicks his feet and pulls with his hands....but yet not enough of a "crawl" to officially announce it.

I've demonstrated last night and that seemed to help quite a bit. Got a little bit of rug burn on the ol' elbows, but it was worth it. Cade tried his best to mimic me, but mostly he laughed and laughed and then tried his hardest. Then slapped the floor with his hands and tried again, he did a couple of creeps....BACKWARDS. Don't think it counts as it was probably accident. Poor kid. He's zero crawls forward, and two creeps back. Ah well, as long as the first crawl doesn't happen first at daycare, right? (now that I've put that out in the universe watch it happen for the teachers I've kind of probably pissed off...if it does they know not to tell me about it, right? They'll play along and let me tell them that he did it first at home...right?)

So today was pretty cool. When I dropped him off at daycare he was on his back, rolio'd to his side, and grabbed his little buddy's arm, and then proceeded to nuzzle his face into this other baby's shoulder. Um, it was kinda presh. I won't lie. Then I realized maybe the teachers don't want him grabbing other babies, so I gave him a toy instead. Good thing, because about 30 seconds later Cade spit up about 3 inches from the kid. It was gross too, a little brownish tint to it due to the Poly-vi-sol (nasty baby vitamin, supposedly "grape" but nothing about it resembles "grape" to me. But what baby is going to sue for false advertising? I'm sure we don't even get to introduce grapes until what, 8 months? 1 year? huh)

Anyways, in things that freak us out, Cade has decided he's now a stomach sleeper. I can't judge for this because I'm all about stomach sleeping, in fact he probably gets it from me. I slept on my stomach while pregnant until my belly made it too uncomfortable. (No, I didn't restrict myself to left side only, go back in the blog and you'll see I find that theory to be bunk) So the kid rolls over totally on his own and then cries in the middle of the night when he is too sleepy to remember how to roll back over.

I will say it's almost the cutest thing in the world the last 2 days when I've gone to get him out of his crib in the morning. He has pushed himself up on his elbows and he just looks around, sees ME and smiles and shakes his head side to side and just grins and coos. I can't stand it. How could any one being be so freaking precious? In. Love.

Will you keep you posted on the creeping/crawling.

Mama Bear...grr!

Confession...we had our first baby birthday party for a friend's gorgeous girl's first birthday. I was so excited to see the other babies, especially another little man who was born just a month after Cade. So cute to compare! (And yes, I was doing completely respectable comparing, none of that psycho-momma comparing to see whose baby is more advanced at what! So proud!) Um, so where does my confession come in? I'm getting to that...

Cade was rocking his helmet as usual, people were politely curious and concerned. Again, I'm a very happy mama when people mind their manners. Everyone was pretty amazed at how "smiley" Cade was/is. It amazes Nick and I when people ask, "Is he always so happy?" "No really, does he actually smile that much, even at home?" Uh, what do you want us to say, people? The truth is, yep, he's a happy kid. Obviously he's teething and it gets painful at times and he cries. Obviously he has his growth spurts where for whatever reason he gets cranky. He's a baby. That's normal shit. You get over it and move on. Frankly, it's a good excuse to take a mommy nap/glass of wine/large pizza/gorge-fest-on-half-bag-of-Oreos/cranky bitch day too.

Anyways, so this one friendly lady was particularly sweet with the compliments so I let her hold him. The other sweet ladies I granted Hold Time respected the unspoken rules of Hold Time. You're not familiar? Allow me to educate you.

Hold Time Rules:
1. Pay Mama Bear a compliment about her baby.
2. Ask to hold.
3. BEFORE grabbing baby, verbally affirm that your hands have been washed/sanitized.
4. Gently reach for baby and hold him firmly. Even if you drop the baby I will forever feel guilt and horror at having deemed you Hold-worthy. Blame will be all on me, not you. So respect my hesitation before I let go of my infant.
5. Hold Time has Tiers. Tier One = 1-2 minutes (aquantainces and coworkers) Tier Two = friends (2-5 minutes) Tier Three = great friends/fellow mommy making baby Hold Time trade (5-15 minutes), Tier Four = family members only (15 minutes-40 minutes). If you are in fact a Tier One aquaintance, you may be granted a Tier Two pass if you casually drop a valid reason. Like, your grandchild lives more than 3 hours away, okay, you can hold my baby. You're going through a personal trauma and holding my baby will help heal you, automatic pass to Tier Four. I respect Baby Hold Time Therapy.
6. In return for my respect of you, and my granting you access to Hold Time, I expect you to respect me. I am a working mom of one child. My personal Hold Time allotments are shorter than a SAHM (stay at home mom) or a mom of more than one child. I get it, I know you've had 2+ kids you're a little "over it". I'm not anywhere near being "over it". I've regressed in my selfish baby-sharing ways since going back to work. I confess.

I also confess that after 2 minutes of Tier One Hold Time, I was starting to get a little possessive of Cade. I was HOVERING. Standing less than 6 inches from this woman and keeping one hand on Cade for most of the time. (Looking back at the mental picture of myself, yes, I'm ashamed) But I can't help ittttt! It was Sunday night, all I was thinking of was that I had to leave my baby at daycare for the following 5 days. Nearing the five minute mark I started to panic.

I started secretely wishing upon Cade all sorts of minor upsets. Toothache, wet leaky diaper, tired fuss time, hungry little whimpers...anything to signal to this woman that she was totally violating my rules. I just miss him so much when I'm at work, it kills me. The fact that the way cute new mommy told me she was a SAHM and how it cut me to the core I was so jealous probably upped my psycho-possessiveness. Any way you slice it, I can come up with a million excuses, I was sooo jealous and sooo pissed. I finally managed to wrangle Cade away saying I better do a diaper check. Then I just walked him to the other side of the room, forgetting my lame excuse to cuddle my baby, and just held and rocked him and fell deep into our little world of Two.

Let this be a lesson. Respect Hold Time, and Mama Bear will respect you. Yes, I see my baby every day and get in hours of hold time, even when it's a workday. Will it ever be enough time? Even if I were a SAHM? There will never be enough time to hold and love my baby. In fact, I'm going to sign off, so I can steal him out of his crib and snuggle his Aveeno baby scented hair and velvety skin. Goodnight bloggies.

Shortie

I wish I had more time. So stream of thought blog, here we go. Feeling guilty about 80% of the day. Guilt over not having enough time at work, guilt at not being with Cade. Guilt over STILL not getting my appeal to insurance worked out. Guilt at not being there for my friends as much I used to. Guilt. Ugh. I hate guilt. I don't do well with any feeling less than "awesome". Guilt leads to pissy mommy when added with stress or bitches. Consider that your warning. Pissy plus lack of sleep equals tears. Again, you were warned.

Um, reallly I'm still in LOOOOOVE with my man. Does every parent over the world just look at their kid and think "I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life?" And then you think you're the most awesome person who possibly ever walked the earth because this little perfect gorgeous baby came from you? Okay, I thought so. Sometimes I'm looking at Cade and we're staring in the mirror at ourselves (we're working on self esteem at an early age, so far I think we've surpassed self esteem and now he's onto vanity, but whatev), so sometimes there we are looking at ourselves in the mirrors and I imagine a little mommy and son doing the same thing in Egypt. And then I imagine in India there is also a mommy and son also thinking they are the coolest, best people in the world. Isn't that funny? Surely at least one of us is wrong. At least that's what I tell myself. And usually it's the poor people on the other side of the world, not me and Cade.

This kid cracks me up. It's highly frustrating at times, but really when he's nursing sometimes I catch his eye and he stops and smiles at me and giggles, then goes back to eating. He's such a flirt. He does it over and over, like "Oh yeah, I love you Mommy", and a little milk dribbles out the side of his mouth while he's giving me this wide smile. It's a ridiculous situation, but I love it. Do all babies do that?

Food update: We're eating rice cereal at 9am now too! And also adding a fruit to dinner time rice cereal feeding. So far we've tried bananas, apples, and tonight- sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes was the only thing that got a quasi-yuck face. Soon enough he got over it and grabbed my hand and pulled the spoon into his mouth. Little lover.

Anyways, I'm enjoying the last couple of days in his helmet. Monday is our big final day! He's so cute in the helmet, a few friends and I will miss it. I do love his hair that he's been working so hard on, but the helmet was much cuter than I had originally worried about. I'll miss all the friendly mommies knowingly smiling at us and telling me their babies had helmets too. Guess I'll join their ranks soon, and be sure to be super-encouraging to other plagio mommas out there.

Okay, this shortie turned into a longie. Now it's 10pm and time for bed.
later faithful bloggies. I hope all 3 of you are doing well:)

Rainy, rainy day!

Saturday, September 12th was a rainy, rainy day! Grammie (my Mom) and I took Cade to the mall, but had to pull over because the rain was so intense I could barely see. Nothing like driving towards 121 in a monsoon with your baby in the backseat!!

I'm so glad we pulled over because I was able to raise the baby shades and let Cade see the rain, he was so fascinated by it, the look on his face was so funny. The last pic doesn't even look like my baby, I've never seen wider eyes!

Once we got to the mall we had a good time. It was our last mall visit with the helmet on, so I made sure to be a good advocate and be proud of the helmet. We got stopped by a couple of moms whose babies had helmets and I was impressed with their round little heads years later. I hope when Cade gets it off his head looks normal and the derformations that were once noticeable on his face are gone. Hopefully we don't need another helmet.

Anyways, rainy days are fun days! Crowded malls and all.

A Lambie Birthday

Hanging at a Very Lambie Birthday lunch celebrating Daddy, Papa, and Aunt Kelly.

Yep, those are baby's first Levi's. Note the red tab:)

Annnnnd we've discovered our toes. V. exciting. Yes, the current most
popular comment is "I wish I were that flexible!" Um, really people? You have
a need to suck your own toes? Hmmmm.....

Again, we're very serious about success with our toes.
No worries, the thumb and fist have not been forgotten as
fave objects to suck on/teethe on/grab in the gums of steel.