New Coats!

Do you remember the scene from "Christmas Story" where the main character and the younger brother are outside walking in the snow, and the younger brother is so bundled up in this giant, poofy red jacket that his arms are sticking straight out and he can't hardly move and falls over in the snow and can't get back up because all the layers of snow gear he is wearing makes him completely incapable of doing so?

Well, that's Aiden in his new jacket. We bought him a winter coat from eBay for when we go out to Utah, and by the weight sizing, it is exactly the right one for him, if nothing else, a little bit small. We received it today and I proceeded to put it on him and it is huge. It's a little bit too long, but mostly it is just a big poofy jacket. Too much for such a little person to handle, I think.

Ya live and learn. At least it was from eBay which means it wasn't expensive, and at least it's too big instead of too small and he will be able to wear it at a later date.

But on a brighter note. Thomas got a new Miami Dolphins coat, too, and his fits him perfectly and it looks awesome.

Looks like Zelda and I are left out on the new jacket trend.

I'm so glad people don't treat you the way they do babies.

Sometimes I just sit and wonder what it would be like if everyone treated you like they do a baby.

For instance, could you imagine someone coming up to you and just picking you up and carrying you around, and you have no say in the matter?

And then to top it off, lift up your shirt and blow on your stomach or pretend to chew on your toes trying to get a couple laughs?

Or if you start to grunt, someone say, "Uh oh, someone's pooping." And then proceed to look down the back of your pants to see if you did or not.

Or even to calm you down or put you to sleep would pat your bottom until the desired effect was achieved.

But then again, if someone did this, you could always spit up on them and tell them you were just fitting into the role.

Just some thoughts I have....



(I spend a lot of my day talking to a dog and a baby that really have no idea what I'm saying.)

It's Great to be Eight (months)!

It is absolutely incredible how much Aiden has grown in just the past couple weeks. About three weeks ago, it was weird to see him move into a sitting position from laying on the ground and now he has taken over everything in the house. Well, everything three feet off the ground and below. He has tried many new foods. French fries, Jolly Ranchers (thanks to Daddy) and lemons, which he actually liked, to name a few. But mostly his getting-around abilities have multiplied greatly. And there is another tooth, which brings the total to a whopping seven.
He is now able to pull himself up on just about any surface, and can climb up onto low-lying objects which makes the running-after factor greatly increase. And earlier this week, he started to cruise along the couch. I was sitting on it, and he half army-crawled, half really crawled over to me, pulled himself up, and was trying to climb onto the couch (not quite enough coordinated for that feat, yet) and then I moved to the other end, and up until the other day, he would have fallen down, crawled over to me and then pulled himself up, but he is a new man, moving on up in the world. He is above all that nonsense, he just cruises right along the couch over to me now.


This does, however, make the bumps go up. He is testing out most everything and sometimes he is just not able to handle them. So he falls down a lot and bumps his head a lot, but then he sees something else in this new perspective on the floor and goes right after it and forgets all about his woes.
He is definitely into the interacting mode and loves especially to play with Zelda, which I am so grateful she is a patient dog. He will climb all over her and chew on her ears and give her giant slobbery kisses on the top of her head, and she will sit there and take it as long as she can get a kiss in every once and a while. Which I'm not upset about because the best do's come from Zelda licking his hair. Just sometimes she gets a little excited and forgets she is a 60+ lb dog and not a little puppy, so I have to intervene and calm everyone down so it can start anew.

He is much more vocal and has started to make sounds that sound like actual words. When he gets really excited, he will lift up his arms into the air and it sounds like he is saying "YAY!!" Only at super-sonic levels. And when he gets upset he will say momma over and over and over again. Sometimes I like to think he is actually calling out to me. This always proves fruitful when he does this because nine times out of ten, he will start blowing giant spit bubbles and he gets a kick out of that.
One thing, however, I am not so excited about in this growing up process is he is now a biter. He hasn't really bitten anyone other than Thomas and I, to my knowledge, but to us he does it plenty. He does it in spurts. He won't bite almost all day long, and then out of no where, he will bite you ten times in just as many minutes. Most of the time is when he is tired and/or hungry, but then others it is completely out of the blue.

But most of all, I especially love how much of a ham he is. He will mind his own business all day long but the second I bring out the camera, he is crawling all over me and posing with giant smiles. I don't know what he thinks it is, but he loves to get his picture taken. He also loves to perform for others. If he can get the attention of anyone in the room, he will go on and on showing all his tricks. All his super screams, tell all kinds of jokes (he will babble on for a while and pause, and then start laughing like he just told a joke), flailing his arms about which is completely exhausting just to watch, blowing spit bubbles, and the sort.

He's just too cute.

Cheerios!!

Aiden is now a Cheerio fiend. Thomas and I went out to eat with his brother and his family on Saturday and we were talking about all the new stuff Aiden has been trying, which is really not that much because I am very much the first time mom that is completely clueless in the food department when it comes to babies. But when they heard he hadn't tried Cheerios yet, it was a travesty.

So to avoid being labeled as a bad mommy, I went to the store this week and got him some Cheerios. It took him about two Cheerios to figure it all out, and now is a Cheerio master. We took him over to Nana and Pop-Pop's last night to show off his new trick and he tore through about a half a cup of Cheerios and when we put them up, he was searching all over the place to find them. What can I say? The man loves himself some Cheerios.



P.S. Happy Birthday, Aunt Brenna!

The Life of Thomas and Kim

Seeing as how I am terrible at writing in my journal because my hand quickly cramps (out of touch with writing essays for school), and I am just as bad at letting my family know the goings-on with our lives and keeping them current with pictures of Aiden, I figured that I would start a blogspot.

Our lives heavily revolve around Aiden, of course. He is an absolute mess. He has six teeth with a couple more on the way so he definitely loves to chew on things, therefore you always end up with a soaked shirt-sleeve or collar after holding him for any amount of time.

He loves to give kisses, at least to Momma, he is a little more reluctant to kiss anybody else, but you don't hear any complaints from me. It is so sweet. He will be playing and climbing all over the place, and out of no where will smack a big, opened-mouth, slobbery kiss on you, and keep going as if there were no interruption at all.

He is scooting around now and getting into everything, which made me realize how terribly un-baby-proofed my house was. He was bonafide hands-and-knees crawling for about three days, long enough for me to call up my brother (who has a son 12 days younger than Aiden) and brag about him, and then started belly scooting just in time for my Mom to come visit in October and see that he isn't crawling like I said he was. Then, I'm sure, she'll go back to tell my brother he is not crawling.

Just in the past few days, he has figured out how to pull himself up and is definitely testing his limits. Thomas and I will lay in bed in the morning and let him crawl around and he will pull himself up on one of us and turn around to see the other and dive towards them. Makes my heart skip a beat every time, but he thinks it's amazing. He is now slowly starting to interact. He loves to tease Zelda, our golden retriever. He will be in his pack-n-play and shake his toys around, making Zelda crazy, and when she tries to get it through the mesh (which, of course, doesn't work) he laughs and laughs.

It is very bittersweet to see him growing up so much. I love that we are able to play with him, but on the other hand, he is not my little cuddle bug anymore. There's a big giant world out there to discover and he doesn't have as much time to sit around and be loved by Momma.

As for Thomas and I, other than myself trying to keep on top of vacuuming as often as I should (it is utterly incredible how much Zelda sheds) and Thomas working as much as possible without wearing himself thin, we are constantly trying to find ways to save "play" money for our trip out to Utah for Thanksgiving. We have been busy these past few days selling stuff on eBay, which is nice because it cleans some stuff out of the house while making a little moolah. We are also trying to find a way that we could get a more reliable vehicle for myself to drive around, which will be a ways off. But mostly we have our eyes set on the Utah vay-cay. We are extremely excited to go out there. We love Utah in the winter and are anxious at the prospect of all we will be able to do during our 17 day trip! Aiden is not at all the same baby he was when we were last out there, and I am especially ecstatic to see him be able to play with his cousins in Utah.

That just about sums it all up for us. We will soon be harvesting our family garden (hopefully, if we don't get anymore steady-rain-for-a-week tropical storms and untimely, but welcome to my electric bill cool weather) and start the canning process, which I'm a little nervous about because I have not solely canned, just did little stuff that my mom directed me to do while she was doing the real process. But time will tell how it goes.