big laugh

william got lucky and caught thomas laughing... not just any laugh. this was a full body, rolling on the floor type laugh. it even looks like he is hitting the tray with his little left hand. i have no idea what he was laughing at. maybe something that daddy was doing? who knows what goes on in the minds of our little innocent babes :)


--------------- jessica's baby shower----------------

a couple weeks ago, i went to jessica's baby shower with debbie. it was really nice to hang out with debbie and jessica again. they both looked great, esp jessica with her beautiful bump. debbie had on the cutest flats that she had picked up in taiwan. always very on trend:) and i love that maternity clothes these days are designed more to show off the bump than hide it. although it was a hot day and her dad's place has no a/c... one of her aunts was so funny. she said her brother was so cheap to not even put ceiling fans in. but he does have a beautiful home. we got to meet her whole family... and while no family is perfect, I must say she has such a nice family! 95% of my extended family lives in Korea so it is near impossible to keep in touch. plus most of them can't type in English and i can't type in Korean, so email is out of the question with most of my 13 cousins. so sad!


anyways, seeing you guys made me miss my co-workers and lunches in the cafe. although, i definitely don't miss work esp. with no more Target distribution/financial software... i am glad i am not there for that part. but i miss interacting with the people on a daily basis!!

perseverance or faith

say you have a decision that needs to be made. once the decision is made it will affect quite a few people (at least a couple dozen). So you pray about it and ask God for wisdom. Then you seek advice from other Godly persons. One person that you feel is very Godly tells you one scenario, but a second person (whom you also regard as Godly) tells you almost the exact opposite.
now, the first i regard as having more experience/wisdom. but they are both Godly people, so who is right? there are times i know exactly what direction God wants me to go. other times, it is hard to discern (or i am not hearing anything God is sending me because sometimes, I just don't feel up to being focused on God at that moment). i have actually been fortunate never to have been in a situation where God has sent two very opposing advices. so this is a pickle...
usually all the signs (from other people, from reading the Bible, from going to church, etc.) point in the same direction. other times, you only get one sign from God. still other times, it is just not the right time for an answer to be given and so you wait.
what do you do when there are clearly two different directions? i feel i need to wait and pray about it and ask God for further clarification. but so many things go into this decision (plus it is absolutely not mine alone to make). there is pride in my own abilities (which come from God anyways) and my own desires that affect how i see the outcome. it could be that satan is pushing me to rush into a decision based on my own deductions. Or is God testing us to see if we persevere in the one direction? does God want to see if we have enough faith to step out in the other direction? tough tough situation...

helmet head and dropping baby

here is yet another one of william's hilarious attempts to protect thomas. this time it was to protect thomas' lovely baby skin from unneeded sun exposure. he took thomas outside to water the plants but couldn't find a hat - so he plunked his big ole bicycle helmet on thomas' little head. (actually thomas head is not so little - 90-95% for his age.) amazingly thomas put up with it and i got this picture from the patio door. i can't believe he is not flinging things off his head yet; he still puts up with hats. sunglasses are not so lucky - they got taken off about 50% of the time now so that he can examine them. i am sure it is only a matter of time before he starts taking hats off too.

-------------------big falls-------------------------

on another topic, thomas has fallen twice now. both times my fault. :(
the first time, i was playing with him on the bed. our bed used to be a platform - no box spring. when we got a queen, we had to use the frame and box spring that came with the bed (we didn't want to buy a queen frame b/c i eventually wanted a king). this year we borrowed one of those 3" foam toppers to put on the bed from helen (william's sister). so for about a year - our bed has been high - almost high enough for me to need a stool to climb up. i have been DYING to get a king size bed so i can just get another platform bed - no BOX SPRING. i really dislike box springs. anyways, that is not going to happen until later this year... so in the mean time, we have a high bed.
so there we were - lying in bed, thomas was lying in william's spot. i thought to myself "i should really pull him back over to the center of the bed". then i thought "oh he'll be fine." i even started dangling a toy so that he would roll towards me. well, for some reason, that toy was not good enough, b/c he decided to roll away from me. one second baby was on bed, next second, he was dangling at the edge of the cliff. the next second he disappeared from sight as i lunged for his limbs. THUD. i scrambled and peered over the edge. there was poor thomas on the ground crying pitifully, looking up at me to make sure i was there. at least he landed on his back and not his face. i believe he hit his forehead on the nightstand, which caused him to flip from his stomach to his back. anyways, i rushed to gather him up and comfort him. he didn't even cry that much after i had him in my arms. that made me feel worse for some reason. he pulled back a little and leaned over to take a look at the ground that he had just fallen onto. gave a few more sniffles and was ok after that. i held a bag of frozen corn to his forehead for the next 30 minutes. after he realized it was not comfortable to have frozen produce on his head, he started batting it away as soon as he saw me lift it towards his face. smarty little baby... :)
ops... he is awake... have to finish later :)

24 and william's "tumor"

william and i finished watching the first season of 24. now we know why it is such a popular show. it is just real enough to make it completely believable... really well written. he is an uber-agent of sorts, but not like on alias where sydney bristow is practically super human. i read eric haney's book "delta force" (it is the book that "the unit" is based on, the new show that dennis haysbert is in). it is amazing the training that delta force operators have to go through. they really can shot accurately while running, and they can accurately identify people holding weapons from innocent bystanders while under high pressure. they are trained to be highly resourceful and delta force picks from the best. btw, you know those HALO knives are almost $400 each??? they have over 20 parts and are pretty much guarenteed to stay open regardless of any pressure you are exerting on the handle. i guess when you are trying to kill someone, the last thing you want is the blade to accidentally "pop" back in the sheath. anyways, delta force operators are mostly special forces guys when they are selected to try out for delta force. eric haney made a comment in his book that after 4 weeks of intense selection exercises, all the big, heavily muscled, jock guys were gone. the few remaining guys that made it through the selection process where fairly average looking guys, people that you would never pick out in a crowd. so it is believable the things that jack does as a former delta operator. whereas i have to admit, syndey is pretty skilled at things that really can not possibly be... as much as i love her character. plus, 24 is believable, whereas alias got into funky plot lines after the first season.
*******SPOILERS COMING******* DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT AND INTEND TO**************

it was heart-wrenching to see jack discover terry in those last minutes, but so believable. nina is obviously a highly skilled field agent, deep undercover. her handler told her to leave no connection to germany. the writers made a point of terry discovering nina speaking german. why would someone that like leave a liability like that alive? no way. she was trying to cover her tracks, there is absolutely no reason to let terry live. oh and watching sherry palmer get dumped was a most satisfying moment as well. palmer is a character that does not bend his principles no matter the effect on his career. i guess that is why everyone likes him. btw, dennis haysbert is the 8th of 9 children and he is 6'4". he was also in a lot of TV (A-Team, magnum p.i., buck rogers... ha ha yeah he's been around for awhile) before getting his film break in a movie opposite michelle pfeiffer. he got a couple sports scholarships but decided to go into acting. interesting guy. anyways...
we are taking a "24" hiatus for now, to catch up on some movies we have really been wanting to see (munich, firewall, cars, etc). but we are really looking forward to renting the next seasons of 24 and the adventures of jack and senator palmer. if anyone has seasons 2 and 3 let us know :)

------------william's stress--------------

william has had a headache off and on for 2 weeks now. i think it is stress - not bad stress - just stress of interviews, final projects due, micro-manager boss looking over his shoulder here and there, and crabby wife at home :p. he also managed to get a kink in his neck last wednesday - from just reaching over to turn the light off from bed. we are getting old. the neck kink still hasn't gone away and neither has his headache. he keeps saying he has a tumor. yeah... real funny bubba.... keep that up.... NOT funny at all! no more joking about brain tumors.... life's too short to be thinking about brain tumors. although, knowing william he is saying as a sort of reverse murphy's law. he is always saying "if i say it and it won't happen." i still say no more joking about brain tumors. although, william just sounded off a ridiculously long wind (of the nitrogen/hydrogen/sulfur kind) in the kitchen, making it really hard to be serious about this. he just deadpaned "do not come near here unless you want to die."

------------finally thomas---------------

i can not resist making fun of william's makeshift attempts to protect our son against chills while sleeping. sometimes i find thomas wrapped in old tshirt, old sweat pants, random bedsheet... i finally got proof...

Silly Pictures of Thomas and William

Thomas moves around in the crib a lot before he falls into deep sleep. In this instance, he decided the center of the bed wasn't "cool" enough so he decided to head for the corner and on top of that, decided that it's more comfortable to put his left feet up on the crib bumper. in the dark of his room, i thought he was asleep... i could see the outline of his body and thought it would make a funny picture. so i snapped a quick picture. to my surprise, his head whipped up after the flash went off. later examination of my surveillance photo revealed that i had snuck into his room when he was awake!!!
that made my heart kind of ache - because he was laying there in the dark, not fussing or making any noise... just waiting to go to sleep :( little boy has learned to put himself to sleep. *sigh* it is true what they say about how fast they grow up. one day, they cry for you to nurse them before they fall asleep, the next day they are fine without you. makes me kind of sad...


Here's a few silly shots William asked mom to take quickly while she was in the kitchen cooking. William had just finish spoon feeding Thomas his dinner... goofy goofy :)

piles and piles

i have 4 piles in the house. (1) the recent pile is things that have come in the mail recently or need to be done in the last week. that is located on the dinning room table. (2) the monthly pile is in the den upstairs. that is stuff that has come in in the last month that i really need to sort through in the next month or so. (3) the 2006 pile is in the office upstairs. this is stuff that has been sitting there since thomas has been born. yes jan 8th. i try to take an item or two from that pile every week so it doesn't sit there forever.
(4) the last pile is the X-files pile... scary. it is compiled of all the items pre-2006, including from when i was on bedrest (sept to dec 05) and some stuff from when i left Mervyns in feb as well as some stuff from my previous employer (yes 2003). it is a fairly big pile. i tried to avoid it for a long time. i am sure there is a lot of stuff in there that is not even valid any more. i used to have it under my desk upstairs. then i moved it right next to the chair on the floor in an effort to get myself to take a look. i bumped it with my chair and now the stack has toppled backwards, kinda of in a fan. it is like art. i should take a close-up picture of it and blow it up real big for the wall. i can probably throw away half that stuff... *sigh* i just need to start looking through it. or maybe, if i manage not to touch any of it by the end of the year, i'll just toss the entire pile in the circular file...

checking out the hands

thomas started looking at his hands again. he was doing it a lot starting around 3-3.5 months, then stopped around 5 months. he started again a few weeks ago, so i thought i would try to get a picture of it. he holds them up and just turns slowly front to back, palm to back. it is SO cute. like he is trying to get a really good look. "hey look here i have these hand things and they move when i want them too."


what a difference not using the flash makes. almost looks like different times of day but i shot these at the same time in the afternoon. opsy... i've been discovered! thomas was very intent on his hands but he suddenly flipped up really fast to say "hello! i see you!!"


----------------- 7 months old! -----------------------
i took him to the doctor's office yesterday to get a height/weight check. the office we go to said we can take him by any time to get an height/weight check. plus the scale we have at home is not always accurate. he is 18lb 9oz and 26.5 inches. he barely grew, but he packed on almost 2 pounds in the last month with all the solid food. look at how fat his cheeks are. i like to call him my fat little fluffy bird head because he is fat and his hair is fluffy (when it is clean) and he just sits there like a little birdy, mouth open, waiting for the food. although, i take that back, he is a moving target now. he gets distracted very easily and looks at everything except his food. so we have become experts (mostly) of RDMI (rapid digestible meal insertion). mrs naomi - that was for you oh queen of acronyms :)

more firsts for the record

we took some more pictures of him this weekend. here is a artsy little picture of his cute butt. look at the fat ooozing out the sides of his stomach! :)

thomas clearly recognizes his name now. he turns his head towards us when we say it. last Monday, he also started getting angry when we take toys away from him or when he can't get at something he wants to touch. it is so cute. he gets a little frustrated and starts breathing fast, hyperventilating really. then if he still can't reach it, or i take it out of his reach, he starts crying - a really whinny, higher pitched cry. so funny! at least it is funny now because he is so small...

i also had him try his gumball toy and AMAZINGLY, he realizes now that if he pushes the little lever, fun things come rolling out. that is amazing! i have showed him the toy several times, but he would slap it with his hands as he watched me push down the level and the gumballs roll out. now he actually pushes the lever himself and watches as the toys roll out. it was so great watching him discover this. look at the sly look on his face. like "whadda you lookin at?" the way he is holding it, it is like when you have put money into a vending machine and it is not spitting out what you selected. so he is shaking it to see if it will come out. ha ha....

i have been really really moody lately and poor william is getting the brunt of that. everyone has off days and this has been more of an off week for me. one minute i am fine, the next minute i will be chewing william out. poor daddy... never knowing when to duck! :p

thomas is finally getting used to sleeping without waking up and crying for us. wow... that took almost a week to get him back on track. it is so nice having him sleep through 9 to 6. and every morning when i go to pick him up, he cries a little when he sees me and gives me a big hug as soon as i pick him up and clings to me. it is so nice to be loved!

------------------- 24 ------------------------
on a side note, we borrowed the first season of "24" and we are totally hooked. we watch one episode every night. it must have been torturous for those of you that watched it when it first came out. we can't imagine a whole week between each episode.

look at the mess i made

i was eating and eating. and i had enough. mommy tried to make me eat more. so i showed her with my fast karate hands that i had enough. she wasn't expecting my fast karate hands!

by day, lovely baby, thomas anderson, with respectable parents. by night, a renegade cereal hacker with matrix hands...

sleep battles

thomas has been waking up quite a bit the last month or so. at least 2-4 times a night. as long as william picks him up and rocks him, he goes right back to sleep. sometimes around 4am, it takes longer than that and william ends up taking him to the downstairs room to co-sleep. i got sick a couple weeks ago and william was trying to protect my sleep. which is greatly appreciated but i am not sick anymore and we need to get our little crafty one back on track. i suspected that thomas was just looking for comfort but really didn't have a way to prove it. william doesn't like to hear him cry and neither do i (it certainly has a way of raising your blood pressure) so william always comforts him back to sleep.
well, the night before (at 3am), william was trying to talk through why he keeps waking up. we know he can sleep from 9 to 6 am without needing food. so william keeps thinking it is because he is cold. i've been telling him that he gets congested because he is crying, but he doesn't want to believe that. then he tells me that i need to get myself in order and figure out what is wrong. sheesh... if i had it my way, thomas would only get picked up once after 9pm to check for any remaining burps. anyways, i told him last night that babies wake up here and there during the night. they are not manipulative but they do learn and thomas has learned that if he cries, daddy will come sooth him back to sleep. i think william was finally ready to hear that, so we let him cry and he was back asleep after about 10 minutes of crying. around 12midnight, he cried out but it was literally less than a minute and he was back asleep. the third time, he cried out once and decided it wasn't worth staying up.
he slept right through until 6am. so, william has learned, even though he wants to comfort baby, sometimes, it is better to let them learn to cry it out so they learn not to cry for a certain reaction. then thomas can learn to sooth himself back to sleep and we all get a full night's sleep!

and i am supposed to change his diapers...

this is getting a little ridiculous. i need to install a restraint system of some kind. maybe velcro straps across his chest and hips...

he even uses the towel bar for leverage! several times now, when i try to flip him back, he swings his leg wildly all around until his foot finds the towel bar and hooks on for dear life. he grabs hold of the side of the changing table and presto magico flipping baby... look at that crafty face, so proud of himself.

bodega bay weekend

it was a beautiful sunday at bodega bay! we went out there because william's college friend, darren, had a birthday get together with a small group of friends. darren & dorris are both architects and he was one of william's groomsmen at our wedding. on saturday it was overcast so it was a little dark when we arrived around 5pm. but sunday was a crisp sunny day. great way to get away from the inland heat. in the top picture, thomas has a very grumpy little face on. thomas never likes to take family pictures. never smiles when all three of us are in a picture. but he sure loved seeing the ocean (as you can see in the next two shots).

dorris rented a 5 bedroom vacation house just a short walk from the beach. the views from the windows were great and made us feel like we were thousands of miles away from work/home/boring job/school. it was so relaxing and just the break we needed to get our batteries recharged. we ate food the entire weekend. there was so much food!

besides william's college friends, 4 of darren & dorris' other friends were there. one couple had two kids so thomas was not the only baby. he had to share all the attention with their second child, about 3 months older than thomas. but he did very well - didn't mind sharing the adoration spotlight one bit! :)

dorris did notice that when thomas looks at men, he just studies their faces very intently. but when he looks at women, he smiles. he is such a little ladies man already. i am not sure how i am going to feel once he starts dating. that is going to be really hard. i am going to have to remind myself to be nice and not scare them away. well, i will have to treat it on a case by case basis. it depends on whether i like the little gal pal or not... :p

of course, what gathering of good college pals would be complete without the downing of much distilled spirits with and after dinner. william of course grabbed onto his wine glass as soon as he got there and didn't stop until about 10:30pm. after one shot of vodka with guava juice, he came down to our room and promptly passed out on the bed, curled up around thomas. he mumbled something about getting up to go join them again once i was asleep. whatever. he is getting old. i told him to go to sleep and just dream about sitting up there drinking the night away. :)

he did manage to get thomas into it though. a few weeks ago, thomas noticed sara clutching her daddy's beer and decided to investigate what the big deal was. he took several strong whiffs of beer and became very very happy from the fumes... he wouldn't let go for a long time...

mini william

who is this baby??? that's right this is william at a little over 1 year old. look how cute he was. :) and how scary... thomas looks just like him except for the mouth. that will be really wierd when our kids are older and it will be like a 15 year old mini-william walking around the house (only not so mini anymore). and then there will be the 50 year old william walking around the house. scary.... here's another one - lets us all see what william would look like if he gained weight and put some chubb on those cheeks :). as you can see, william and his sisters all look a lot like his mom.


--------------HUGS!!!---------------

this week has been miserably hot for all of us. hard to sleep at night, hard to get outside to do stuff during the day. william mentioned he met someone that had their a/c break on Friday. there are lots of people without power right now too. so i have been reminding myself to count my blessings and not complain about the heat. one thing that has made the hot days not so bad is that thomas gave me my first baby hug last saturday! a real, live, lunging toward me, arms wide open, uncoordinated arms closing around my neck HUG! it was fabulous and made me feel so great. :) so now i get about one hug a day. i can't wait until he knows how to give kisses.

odds and ends

for those of you who haven't noticed, william posts random pictures of thomas because he wants to see them at work. he likes to admire thomas from all smilie angles (as many dads do). i end up adding text later. :)

it has been so hot - i have had a really hard time sleeping these last couple weeks. as a new parent you all know how precious sleep is. it sucks! thomas sleeps from 9 to 6 and i am awake at 4am, twiddling my thumbs for 30 minutes sometimes longer, until my body will let me go back to sleep. this last week however, thomas has been waking up at 4am for no reason. i think it is because he is too warm and uncomfortable. i have let him cry it out in the past and he does go back to sleep but usually cries for 20-30 minutes. when i feed him, he is back asleep in 10 minutes. so many times i just feed him. i am too tired to listen to him cry for 20 minutes.

i was talking today with another mom about how limiting breastfeeding is. you have no life! (at least not your own) and when you do go out, that baby is tied to your boob. Thomas used to be so good about taking a bottle from william so i could stay out for 3-4 hours. then william went back to school. during finals in May, there was about 2 weeks where we didn't bottlefeed consistently because william was in class, studying, meeting classmates, earning extra points, etc. that week before his finals was the last time Thomas accepted the bottle. ever since then, the little trickster just refuses to feed from the bottle (even though it is the same milk). he feels that silicone and just starts chewing around. then when some dribbles out, he won't swallow - just lets it run out the corners of his mouth. when he realizes that the bottle is not being replaced by boob, he starts crying. and once he winds up, he can really get going. and he cries and cries and cries, until i give in and feed him. i am a wimp!

anyways, we started him on solids on july8th and he was more than ready. besides the rice cereal, he is eating peas, carrots, squash, pears, and potato.... pretty much anything pureed we put on a spoon and move towards his mouth. i have been adding new items every three days and so far, thomas has not had a bad reaction to anything. i have been lazy and jars are so easy so he has been eating all Earth's Best baby food. safeway has them on sale: 8 of the 4 oz size or 10 - 2.5 jars/$4 at least a couple times a month so that is the best time to stock up. another mom friend of mine has been badgering me to make my own food. the last time i told her i still haven't tried, she said, "oh catherine, i am just going to make you some so you can see how easy it is." but i threatened to retaliate with an elaborate thank you gift if she did that. regina also mentioned on her blog how easy it is to make. i guess i started with jars, so i am reluctant to pull out the blender. plus you gotta clean, peel (for some) and steam the veggies, you can't just pull them out of the ground and throw them into a blender/processor... more work!! don't want more work at this stage. so thomas will have to settle for jar food. at least it is only a little while. by the time they are 10-12 months, i figure he will want chunks of what we are eating (along with chicken nuggets, noodles, hotdogs, and juice boxes). seems like most toddlers are pretty picky eaters and tend to want to eat non-healthy options.
the BEST thing about starting solids? william can feed him again so i can leave the house for longer chunks of time. plus it is also really funny watching him open wide for that spoon :)

thomas discovers the jumper

we found a jumperoo on CL for about $50. i read they were safer than the door jumpers. thomas examined the toys for about 10 seconds before discovered that it was LOADS of fun to be able to move his feet. jump jump jump - silly giggly squeally FUN! get one for your babies!

whooooa!

finally some nice shots of mommy and thomas

william has a ton of pictures with thomas and i don't have many. this is mainly because william is always saying "hey grab the camera and get a shot of us right now!" for some reason i don't ask him the same thing. maybe he is always looking busy when a good camera moment occurs, or that i simply forget to ask... who knows why i don't ask as often.







last weekend, william finally got another set of shots of the two of us that was really sweet. just the two of us with our matching mouths. thomas has william's eyes and nose no doubt, but he has my lips! :)











look, he is winking at you!















and here is the ever popular mommy kissing baby on the cheek shot. but i couldn't help myself. babies are so kissably cute and their cheeks are so chubby you just want to eat them up. no wonder the old fairytale talks of a witch who eats little children and babies. they are so irresistible!






this is from another series of photos he took of thomas on his little helper seat. this was a lucky shot though. usually thomas is bent over almost in a U, trying to reach things on the floor around him. he gets really frustrated in the seat when he can't reach things. so he starts yelling out in loud grunts. aah! eeaaah!

this morning, he was in the seat and i heard him grunt a little. then he let out a little fart. then another little chain of farts.
these were hard won farts - it has to be hard getting them out when his butt is pushed down into that foamy seat. i am fairly certain he has not realized that tilting to one side facilitates passing. when i looked over, there he was, with a look of strained concentration on his little face. he was pooping! i went over, bent down to pick him up and phew!! his poops and farts are truly getting malodorous now that he has started eating solids. when he has no. 2's to change, i try to breath as little as possible and turn on the bathroom fan. luckily our changing table is in the bathroom. we are going to have to start using the diaper genie or champ soon. the age of sweet smelling diapers has faded and with it's passing comes a new and challenging age of odor.

diaper face-off

we've found that diapers are like clothes. the different brands all fit and are constructed a little different. you have to find the brand that has the right fit for your baby. we tried several different brands from left to right: huggies supreme, luvs, pampers and target brand. the kirkland signature diaper is a direct rip off of huggies supreme. given that thomas has a very economically minded daddy, and that you do go through a LOT of diapers daily, we considered price as well. the target diapers are 13.5 cents and pampers/luvs/huggies all run about 19-21 cents each. kirkland lands in the middle at 16 cents. this is for the 104-170 count cases.


we started with the target diaper. that seemed to work, but we had lots of problems with leaks at night. he would wet himself, wake up and start crying. so we tried pampers at night. that worked better but he still would have a leak once in a while. all the leaks would occur when he was lying down. we tried the luvs brand diaper next and that did the trick! so for rolly polly babies, luvs has a better fit. we haven't had any leaks since then. however, i discovered the kirkland huggies rip offs a week ago. they have this great stretchy waistband that allow you to get it snug, but still allow baby to move around. we are going to start trying it this week at night. if we get no leaks, then kirkland wins the diaper battle :)

i also did a face test with several different diaper wipes. pampers for sensitive skin is by far the gentlest wipe. huggies and kirkland tied for second and target came in last. i have to say, i was surprised when i rubbed the target wipes against my check - it is almost rough. definitely not something you want to be rubbing on babies bottoms.

the best diaper rash creams are boudreaux's butt paste and aquaphor ointment. the butt paste has the highest concentration of zinc oxide (16% per mommy Liz) and the aquphor ointment is a great alternative protective screen for their tender skin. it's primary ingredient is petroleum jelly. that actually got rid of thomas' diaper rash after 2 weeks of 24/7 zinc oxide cream application did not work. go petroleum jelly! go costco! :)

Thomas tries some rice cereal!

for about a week or maybe even close to two, thomas has been making these funny little chewing gestures with his mouth... like he is biting or chewing down on something with his little gummy jaws. i have been letting him taste things like banana, peas, cucumbers and apples but not actually eat any of it. well, last night, we found out that thomas was ready and more than willing to eat rice cereal. in fact, as you can see from the pics, he was demanding and trying to help william get the food faster to his mouth with his hands and his feet. he would use his hands to cup the little bowl and his feet to hold william's wrist in position. that is more coordinated than i ever thought he was! he also ate more than we expected. the first serving in the morning was about a teaspoon of rice cereal. he finished that up and was asking for more. but i was a little worried about the expansive properties of rice. i didn't want to overfeed and have him spit it back up. we tried again that evening after a half feeding (one side). i mixed up 1 tablespoon of cereal with about 2 tablespoons of formula (the box said 3-4 tablespoons of milk or formula but that seemed too watery. any advice?). amazingly, he finished the whole thing and was asking for more after that. of course he ended up with some on his bib and mouth... but a lot less than we both expected. he was really downing the stuff! i guess he was ready for the rice and we were slow to read his signals to us...

as you can see he has also had his second haircut. it was hard though - for some reason i love his little baby hair bangs. but i caught him rubbing at his brow that day. i think the longer pieces were actually starting to bother him so i decided that i should cut them back. it is harder to cut straight across that i expected especially when you have a moving wriggly target.

catching up and co-sleeping

hey look- thomas loves his new soccer ball... shout out to his auntie jenny :) if you put it on his legs, he brings his legs up so he can reach the ball with his hands. so cute. oh hmmm, he looks kind of girly in this picture...maybe it's the hair parted to the side...

this is the longest i have gone without posting since thomas was born, over 10 days. even now he is starting to fuss. sheesh... am i spoiling him? do i hold him too much? why does it seem like he is so demanding of my attention these days... well i guess that is normal. maybe i should have been typing while i was eating lunch. but then typing with one hand is really slow. or you end up taking an hour to eat because you are just taking bites between typing.

we got one of those foam ABC mats for the floor in the kitchen. they have a bunch at the Ross store in Dublin for only $12. as you can see thomas and scsi helped William put it to gether. Thomas is much more aware of Scsi now. He will follow scsi around with his eyes and even try to talk to scsi. William's mom was laughing last Thursday because at one point, Thomas was looking right at scsi and making these cute little noises and she said "oh look, he's talking to cat!" now i may be imagining things but it even sounded like thomas was making meowing sounding coos. :)

Last Saturday, we got together with several of our old college friends. we don't see them very often because they live all over the bay area (peninsula, south bay, one in fresno). out of 6 couples, 3 of us have kids now. i am sure in another few years almost all of them will have kids. renee and allan in fresno have 2 kids and the older one, Kaitlyn is very very precocious. we discovered that she loves being the center of attention and can keep talking all by herself in needed. it was so sooo funny watching her talk to william and vijay outside on the patio, they were both buzzed and could barely keep up with her. heh heh...

ok i said i would not co-sleep. right from the beginning, i remember thinking, i am not going to get stuck with a kid that always wants to sleep in our bed because he is used to it. then we had that heat wave in June and william doesn't want to run the a/c all the time. definitely makes sense at night because i don't want a cold draft running down on all of us as se sleep. so rather than sleeping in his crib, thomas slept with daddy downstairs in the guest room where it is nice and cool. we found he slept longer when he slept in the big bed with daddy... until almost 7am every morning. then he would bring thomas up to the master bedroom and put him in bed with me. at first i resisted. plus i couldn't find a comfortable way to feed him with both of us lying down. it just felt like i had to keep my legs and neck tensed to keep us both together while he was feeding. very uncomfortable to try to maintain that tension for the 10 or so minutes he needs to fill up. however, i noticed that for some reason, when he eats in bed, he goes right back to sleep - practically passes out! that is not fair. when i feed him in the den, sitting up with the pillow, sometimes he goes back to sleep, but 60-70% of the time, he stays awake for about an hour. when we co-slept, 3 days in a row, thomas just filled himself up and passed out. and even when he wakes up around 8am for another feeding, he still goes back to sleep. amazing!
so that is why people co-sleep. after 3 or 4 mornings of experimenting with different positions, i finally found a way to make it work so that we are both reasonably comfortable. not only that, i discovered that thomas sleeps longer into the morning when we co-sleep. if he falls asleep at 9:30pm, he wakes up the following morning at 9am. sometimes even 9:30. how do they know?? how do they know that they are sleeping between mommy and daddy? can it be smell?? but it is not like their noses are any more sensitive than ours. maybe the warmth of our nearby bodies?? who knows... all i know is that i have succumbed and now sleep in with thomas almost every morning until 9, sometimes 10am. we are lazy little piggies together!

on days when william has class, i make him sleep downstairs so he can get a full night's sleep. it also helps put him in a better mood so that he is not cranky from lack of sleep. on those nights, i put a pillow on william's side so that he can't roll all the way off the bed. luckily he is not strong enough to roll over or under the pillow. instead, he rolls and ends up hugging the pillow, and sometimes sucking on the pillowcase. can he breath ok? don't they warn us not to allow babies to sleep with loose clothing and blankets for safety reasons? i can't remember. well, i managed to get a pic of him hugging william's pillow without him waking up. funny little baby...


~~~ Thomas is official! ~~~

Finally got his authorized birth certificate yesterday. has any one been to Martinez? the contra costa county registrar's office is up there, in this tiny placein the middle of nowhere. i had no idea martinez was such a small city. i mean there are all these refineries, and you pass those, and then you are suddenly in this town with four main roads and it just feels like you're in yontsville. it was like a mini getaway with Grace (her son is 15 months and she hadn't gotten the BC yet. so i got to hitch a ride with her. both boys fell asleep on the way there and it was after lunch on the way back so they both fell asleep again. perfect:). martinez has lots of historic buildings with warnings posted at the entrance saying that the building is unreinforced masonery and could be unsafe in an earthquake. ha ha...

5 1/2 months with Mr Frog

look how rosy his cheeks are :) isn't it funny how they love touching their toes? i can't wait until he realizes he can stuff them in his mouth!

--------------first time things---------------

he did two things for the first time today. he rolled over all by himself, finally! and he did it three times, as if to say, "it's not a fluke. i really can finally roll over." for a while, we feared his big ole head was impeding his progress in this area. the second thing was he discovered his balls. or i should say ball, because the left one unfortunately has not come down yet (something they call an undescended testicle). anyways, william and i were changing his diaper together this afternoon when out of the blue, he just reached down and grabbed with enthusiasm, while vigorously sucking on his lower lip. this of course sent both of us into beals of laughter. he did it again during his bath. *sigh* diaper changes are never going to be easy again... :)