Nine Month Check Up

Aiden has his 9 month well-child visit today. He is growing wonderfully. The doctor found nothing of concern. Hooray!! Good news all around.
He is now 21 lbs, 8 oz, which puts him just about in the 80th percentile for weight, and he is 29 1/3 inches tall, which is about the 90th percentile.
When Thomas and I heard this, we were kind of taken aback because from the time he was born, he had been 97th percentile and above, but then we said, "Now wait here a second, he's still way above average." We were just being a little silly that our kid wasn't tipping the scales anymore.
That's about it here. I'm still going crazy trying to get things done for the Trunk or Treat, which will soon pass.
That is all.

Fish Face, Visitors and Trunk or Treat

Aiden has recently learned how to make a fish face. It was a slow process. It started as sucking and then smacking when he'd lose suction, always after he ate. After a few days of perfecting the sucking without losing suction, he has been able to make it into a full fledged fish face, and he loves to do it.
This morning he was crawling around and for about ten minutes straight while he was crawling he was just doing it over and over every few seconds. I tried to do it back to him but my cheeks quickly tired after a couple minutes.
He is becoming so much fun! He loves to play and wrestle and today he discovered a new favorite game. All day long he had been sticking his tongue out as far as it would go, so while I was holding him, I was mocking him and he tried to grab my tongue, but it was too slippery and he could never hold onto it, so he would try again, and again, and again. He thought it was hilarious, especially when I tried to grab his tongue. He finds games in the weirdest of things and I absolutely love it.
As for Thomas and I, we have been crazy with guests lately. This past weekend his brother, Josh and his family were here visiting. The weekend before Thomas' Uncle John and his girlfriend Natacha were here and the two weekends before that my mom was here. Our guest bed has been put to good use as of late. I am so glad that we were able to visit with these people. It has been a while since they have seen Aiden, and in John and Natacha's case, it was the first time meeting him. I love that Aiden is now at the point where he can interact and I can show him off to people. :)
Other than that, I have been mainly working on getting things prepared for our church's Trunk or Treat. I have been making signs and flannel pumpkins and my better-be-award-winning costume all week long. I'm very excited and hope that there will be a fair amount of people who show up so that my efforts won't be all for naught. Time will tell.

Nine months and counting...

Aiden is now nine months old and he is ready to go out and take on the world. He is feeling much better from his stint with the ear infection. He is finally eating normally which means no more runny puddle poop! Hooray! He is still taking the Amoxicillin but actually gets kind of excited when I take it out of the fridge and shake it. He has always been good with taking medicine, but the 10+ times a day with the syringe in his mouth between the Tyelnol and Motrin just pushed him over the edge. Now with the twice a day, he is doing much better and doesn't think the spoon full of food is an abominable medicine.

As far as new things, he is starting to wave to people when they greet or leave him, which is adorable. And he is starting to interact so much more. He will honk your nose and laugh and laugh and laugh, and one of his favorite teasers is to get Momma's hair and tickle her face with it and he loves picking noses. If you cradle him in your arms, almost always his little fingers are up at your mouth and nose playing around and if he gets a finger stuck up your nostril, he'll just let it hang out there until you take it out. I don't get it, it's just one of his things. He's a crazy kid.

He is also starting to understand that when we tell him that we're gonna get him, fun will shortly ensue. He tucks his head down and brings his hands up to his face in anticipation of the tickling that is to come. It's fun.

He is also playing favorites and loves to be held, for short periods of time. He will crawl all around the room, and then out of no where try to get up on the couch into Momma's lap and he will just hang out for a few minutes and fuss if I try to put him back down, and when he gets his fill of cuddling time, he will fuss if I don't put him down. I love how sweet he is.

He loves to receive kisses. If you kiss him once and pull away, he will push his head into your mouth letting you know that one wasn't enough and when he thinks you've kissed him enough, he'll pull away and go about his business.

We were going to have a Doctor's well-visit tomorrow, but since he is freshly on antibiotics, they pushed it back to Friday, so we'll find out then what percentile etc. he is in.

P.S. Check back soon because there will be pictures to go with the commentary.

Poor, Sick Baby.

My poor, little boy has been sick the past few days. It started Wednesday morning at 4:30 am with a fever of 102.2 that persisted for the next couple of days. He was his usual self, fun and happy and didn't really have any other symptoms other than a fever so I called up the Doctor to see if and when I should take him in and he said that if it lasted until Friday to bring him in.
So this morning his fever was not as vigorous but I was worried the same because he had an ear infection about six months ago and I had no indication except for a little ear rubbing.
He was checked out by the Doctor and turns out he has a pretty bad ear infection in his left ear. I have to give him Amoxicillin twice a day and put ear drops in 3 times a day. I feel terrible and I know Aiden does because he had a terrible night's sleep last night.
Stinks because his Uncle John and his girlfriend are coming today to visit for the weekend and they might not get his peak performance, all because of a crummy ear infection.
And to top it all off, he is not eating anything from a jar because that involves feeding him with a spoon, and any sort of apparatus that comes towards his mouth, he is adamantly against. He will purse his lips and shake his head side to side. I think he's tired of all the medicine I've been giving him between the Motrin, Tylenol to keep his fever down the past couple of days, and now the Amoxicillin. So he's pretty much living off of breastmilk, Cheerios and whatever else I can cut up into chunks so he can feed himself.

Grandma's Visit

My dear mother just left to go back home after a nice, long 11 day visit. It was wonderful having her here, and this morning I was deeply missing her when I had to get up with Aiden at the early-morning hour of 6:45. She spoiled me terribly while she was here because she was sleeping in the nursery and would get up with Aiden at 6:45-7:15 every morning, get him dressed, feed him breakfast, change his diaper and play with him all the while I was sleeping because I never heard him cry over the baby monitor. Every morning I told her to get me up but she would proceed to do it all herself again the next morning. It's like she liked spending the time with him or something. :)

While she was here, we accomplished a lot of stuff that needed to be sewn. We made a thank-you blanket for our Ward's Primary piano player who will not be able to play for us any more due to arthritis. I'd like to say we hemmed Thomas' uniform and whatnot, but she did most of it. She did make me feel better though because she told me she hems all of my brother-in-law's pants because when he asked my sister to do it, it sat there for a few months until he asked my mom to do it. Nothing gets done in my family until it's been put off for long enough and my mom says, "Alright, it's been long enough. Let's get this finished." And then it takes twenty minutes to do it.

And we also made a T-shirt for Aiden, proudly displaying the fact that his Daddy is a Police Officer. I laugh everytime I even think about it.

We tried to go out to the Gulf, again, but alas, this was not the visit for her to see the Gulf, apparently. We got all packed up and on our way, and we're about halfway there and realize that Thomas and I both forgot our cell phones and seeing as how there's really nothing but back roads between here and the Gulf but Perry, Florida in between, we stopped off at Perry to buy some canning supplies and headed back home. I really have no idea how we both forgot our phones, but we did. Maybe next time will be the time we actually make it out there. Everytime my mom comes, we tell her we're going to go to the Gulf and go to this delicious restaurant that catches all it's food for the day in the morning, so the seafood is nice and fresh, but we have yet to make it out there.

We went shopping quite a bit to buy stuff to can. We canned 3 pts of tomatoes, 2 pts of pears, 9 pts of peaches, 4 pts of oranges, and 9 pts of bread and butter pickles. I feel much more confident in the canning area and am so grateful to have had her here to get my feet wet again and remind me of the whole canning process. Now I have a canning bug and am constantly thinking of things that I could can. I think my next venture will be fruit cocktail. Wish me luck.

Aiden ate a lot of new foods and now has an adorable Buddha belly, thanks to Grandma. Which was nice for me because since I am very much the first time mommy and scared of the unknown I wasn't trying a lot of new things but my mom blazed right through that because she's gone down this road a time or two between five kids and ten grandkids. He ate his share of bread, broccoli, bits of chicken salad sandwiches, beef stew, corn, sweet peas, fresh green beans, mushrooms, fresh peaches, strawberries, french fries (without the gag reflex this time, thank goodness) to name a few.

He also mastered the chum bag we bought for him. My sister-in-law, Michelle, had told me about it a while ago, and finally while at the store I remembered it, and I wish I had bought it when she first told me about it. It's amazing. But also with all this new stuff in the feeding department, he has figured out that he can feed Zelda. He has put his chum bag over the side for Zelda to lick a few times already, and then proceed to suck on it himself. I'm sorry to say that I didn't catch him in time a few times to stop him, and that is gross.

Mostly while my mom was here, we just hung out and let Aiden play with Grandma, which he took to immediately. We went down to the garden a couple times to pick beans and radishes, and walked around the property where he encountered his first turtle!

He also learned the wonders of "This Little Piggy" and "Patty-Cake" and "High-five, side-five, low-five, cut the pickle" from Grandma. I have tried to do this since she left, but he just doesn't think it's as funny coming from Momma and it was Grandma.

Dropping her off at the airport was heart-wrenching. I'm not good with saying goodbye to my family, but it the blow was softened because in a hopefully-short six and a half weeks we will be going out to Utah to visit.

Happy Birthday, Thomas!!

So today is Thomas' birthday. He has turned the ripe old age of 25 and we are ecstatic because our car insurance has gone down quite a bit. Hooray!

We didn't really do anything special on his birthday because he had to work. Bleh. But he did get quite a few presents and a fancy birthday dinner the next day complete with Rib-eye steaks, fried zucchini, mac and cheese and a salad.


He received the aforementioned-in-another-blog Miami Dolphins jacket and a book on CD from me.
He got a couple ties from Aiden and Zelda.

He got a computer desk from my mom. (We needed a computer desk because the one we had was gigantic and my mom happened to be here and said she would buy that for Thomas' birthday.)

And from himself he bought a BUNCH of hunting stuff. He's wanted to start hunting for a while now, but since Aiden has been here, he's felt that he really needs to learn so he could teach Aiden how to hunt. So he bought himself a big fancy bow, a case to carry it in, some camoflage clothing, deer attractant something or another and a deer camera (you set it up on a tree, set some feed in front of it, and if anything comes by, it has a motion-sensor on it and it will take a picture of whatever is there. We have caught rats, squirrels, Thomas, his mom and a butterfly on the camera). He came home from work and pulls out the camo and says, "Wanna see how redneck I am now?" and then proceeds to try it on and kept going on and on about how he vowed to never buy this stuff, and how he coudn't tell me how many times he made fun of people wearing camo. My take on it? As long as he doesn't wear it to Wal-Mart, he's not a redneck. If he uses it to kill a deer or two a year, I am perfectly fine with it.

So here's to one year older and wiser, too: Happy Birthday, to you!