Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Simon: 14 months

Simon is now 14 months.  I'm not really sure the format I want to do these posts in now that he's over 12 months and last month I just posted pictures, but I want to do more than that.  I think I'm just going to put random stuff down - no harm in that!
I can't remember if I included this one last time or not...

Eating


The big transition we made this month is cutting out bottles.  They say that around 12 months you're supposed to be done with bottles.  Well, Simon is 14 months and still getting them at night, but in the last week-ish we have been able to drop the daytime bottles.  At night I'm slowly cutting back on the ounces in his bottle.  I don't really think he needs the bottle at night, but it's more so a trigger that it's bedtime.  We'll keep with it and by 15 months he should be d-o-n-e with bottles.  Which at this point is music to my hears as I've been hand washing bottles since the beginning.  (We don't have a dishwasher, so I hand wash everything)

Playing at the sitters


Simon isn't walking yet, but he gets closer all the time.  Here the thing, I know he's totally capable of walking, he can stand for long periods of time, move his arms and pick up toys.  He can also walk behind a toy really easily even adjusting the direction of the toy if he's run into something.  But he doesn't trust that he can walk on his own - would much prefer crawling instead.  At some point I know he's going to figure it all out, but right now, he's not quite there yet.  That's another thing I'm hoping he figures out by the next update.  In my head, he should be walking by Christmas.
Wasn't too happy with his Halloween costume the first time we put it on

Simon loves picking up and examining leaves


Simon likes to eat, sometimes more than others.  Breakfast I'd say is his biggest meal of the day followed by lunch and dinner.  He drinks milk out of his sippy like a champ.  Whenever Dan or I am eating something, he wants to have bites and gets upset if we don't let him.  He likes to shove everything into his mouth at once, sometimes he gets away with it and gags and spits things back out... lovely haha.  When he's done eating or doesn't like something he will push the food right back out with his tongue.  It's pretty funny.  He's also figured out it's pretty fun to feed the dogs food, so that's another thing we have to watch out for.
Happy boy

Showing me leaves


Simon is a fast crawler.  He is off and going.  He's found it's fun to open the cabinets in the kitchen, explore our bedroom, and the bathroom is pretty neat these days too.  He likes to mess with the dog's kennels (opening and closing doors if pretty fun!), play with the remotes, shake Quina's food and seeds, play with the spring that catches the doors, roll the highchair, and check out our shoes.
He picked out all the other food and left the peas

More leaves!


He says Mama/mom for sure... I'm not sure it's always in the right context, but he says it.  I may have noticed Dada too, but more mama's than dada's.  Sometimes he prefers me and other times he prefers Dan.  I think it's a good enough balance for now... and he prefers either of us to anyone else.  He gets shy when we're in a "new" place and will start clinging to us when he things we are going to leave him.  He gets upset when we leave him somewhere (thankfully not a problem at the sitters, but other times).  It's always sad when they are crying as you walk out the door, but in the end we know he's going to be ok and end up having fun.


We still haven't figured out how to get all the cradle cap/grossiness off his head... and it itches him.  He will scratch his head when he gets tired and while he's falling asleep.  He has 8 teeth now.
Loves playing in the dog kennels

14 months!


Sleep... some nights he does SO WELL and then others we're in there a few times to give him a binky.  He handled daylight savings pretty well (we kept pushing back his bedtime the week before to help him adjust better).  Then sometime this last week he decided 6:30-7 was too early for bed and now is going down closer to 7:30-8.  Naps are better at the sitter's than home.  Last night (the night of his 14 month) I rocked him all the way to sleep after a good 20-30 mins of crying in his crib.  He was getting SO UPSET.  So I ended up rocking him and singing to him.  It was sweet he fell asleep on me, but I'm not sure what that was about as I haven't had to rock him to sleep in months.  Dan normally has to get him up around 7 if he isn't already awake hearing me move around.  He will usually mess around in his crib until Dan is ready to get him moving.  On weekends we can usually get him to sleep until 7:30.
Halloween

Playing at Magic House


Simon loves all the animals, looking at them, touching them.  I mentioned he loves feeding the dogs.  He also loves when they give him kisses and usually laughs with delight... although Bella can kind of smother him with kisses sometimes... she's an aggressive lover haha.  We've been working on gentle with the dogs, learning the pet them and not just hit them (Simon's petting is more like tap tap tap) they tolerate it well though.  He sometimes likes to pull up on them (mostly Daddy) and Daddy isn't always a fan of that moving out of the way quickly, but they are all good with him.  Simon loves looking at the bird and petting/grabbing the kitties (both at my house and my mom's).  He certainly isn't scared of dogs.
Vail and Simon at the trunk or treat



Simon loves his toys.  In his room he will frequently go from one toy to another.  He'll get to the baskets I have corralled some toys into and pull them all out.  He likes his rolling toys (cars, little people ones, etc) and rolling them back and forth between us or crawling and rolling them around.  He will also play fetch with himself by throwing a toy and the crawling after it and throwing it again.  He loves walking behind his walking toy as I mentioned.  He also give Scout hugs and I've started saying AWW real loud when he does it and he thinks that's funny and does it over and over again.  He can kind of do the shape sorter, but mostly doesn't have the patience for it.  I'll read to him sometimes, but again, no real patience.  I really look forward to getting to the point of teaching him things, but he doesn't repeat things.  It will come with time.
Pushing the wagon

More playing at the Magic House


Simon has a buddy at the sitter's now and it's adorable.  I think it's going to be fun to see them grow together and feed off each other's developments.  He's also so close in age to Vail and that's so fun to watch as well.  Simon is much more agile now, but Vail is crawling.  At some point in that not so distant future they will be the same age doing the same things.
Crawling after the wagon... he looked like a real dinosaur

Magic House


Simon claps and waves... sometimes.  He loves when we 'dip' (lean him backwards upside down), being upside down, crawling back and forth between us on the couch, tickles, chasing after him crawling, spinning/dancing, dancing, watching Blippi, playing with leaves, rolling balls, watching kids, staring at people, playing with his binky, having a binky, eating, drinking, talking (sometimes), and so much more.
On Halloween day we dressed him in the prisoner jammies he has from Alcatraz  

Waving with both hands


Simon is really just a happy guy, he is just a joy to be around.  He likes to mess with somethings sometimes but let's face it he's exploring.  I can tell he's going to like climbing soon.  I just love this little boy so very much and so so happy he's part of our life.



Monday, November 7, 2016

Simon: 13 months

Well, I'm terrible - I've missed many weekend recaps and Simon's 13 months.  I wanted to continue to stick with the monthly posts for another year, but 13 just got away from me.  So instead of trying and failing to remember what he was up to when he was 13 months old I'll just post some pictures from that time period and pick up where I left off on his 14 months (in a couple short weeks)
This kid loves remotes and phones... and always straight to the mouth

He's been playing with that cup - Dan thinks it's silly but he enjoys pulling the straw and spinning the cup

We ran into this guy at an outdoor concert - Simon wasn't scared, just stared.  He stares at everyone when we are out.

Simon was sick sick for the very first time in his life this month.  I got a call from the sitter that he had a fever and I had to go pick him up.  He had to stay home the next two days with a fever.  It was just a viral thing and went away, but poor guy.  He liked to cuddle, which he never does anymore and sleep was really rough those nights.  Luckily he got better pretty quickly.  We just don't do sick well in our house.

We enjoyed some family time at the Belleville Chili cookoff.  The weather was great.  Here's Vail and Simon enjoying aunt Amy.

We've been making the transition to cows milk.  Here's Simon with his last bag of frozen breast milk.  He made it 1 year and 19 days with some breast milk.  I'm so proud I was able to provide that much for him.

We spent some more family time at a pumpkin patch.  Simon didn't quite know what to do on this car, but he looks pretty cute on it!

Hey Vail, fancy meeting you here. 

These kids are so great.  Love getting them together!

Vail and Simon by some pumpkins

And Simon enjoying the pumpkins as well

Simon with his last bottle of mommy milk

And me feeding him that bottle - again so happy I made it past a year!

He thought it was bedtime, but I surprised him with a photo shoot first in his Halloween jammies.  Kid wasn't to happy about it at first.

But he came around

Helping aunt Lindsey with a little shopping.  Simon was lounging in the cart.

Morning face

Simon loves playing with the dog kennels. 

This kid and his faces

We went to ride a little train in Glencoe, MO.  We of course dressed him in his conductor overalls.  Hanging out with Daddy.



Watching the train

Selfie on the train

These three!

Simon loves playing with daddy

Finally on his 13 months we had dinner with my mom and Lindsey.  She was able to catch this great picture of him.  I love this little boy so so much.  He brings so much joy!


Monday, October 17, 2016

Simon Says COME PARTY!

We threw Simon a big first birthday party over the weekend.  Before I had kids I thought the big first birthday party thing was a bit silly, but we did it so... yeah, that's how it goes.  Honestly I didn't care about throwing Simon a big party so much as I thought it would be fun to throw a big party and Simon is a pretty good reason to get our families together to celebrate.


I've also been thinking about the party for longer than I care to admit... especially when Lindsey asked me to pick a date back in the spring so she could take off work for it.  So I picked September 24th because I like to do things after instead of before. 


I was originally thinking about doing a monster themed party until I came up with this idea to do a Simon Says one.  I could picture the invite saying Simon Says Come Party... but wasn't sure past that.  I thought about it and then decided if I could bring in Simon game colors - red, blue, yellow, green - that the theme could come out like that.  That's what I went with.  Dan weirdly got upset that I didn't include him on the theme planning.  Sometimes it's weird what he (men) decide to care about.


Our very good friend Kyle designed the invitations with some very loose direction from me
.




I just pulled bright fun colors into the decorations and supplies.  Plate, napkins, cups, balloons.  I made cupcakes (boxed mix, I made one box of chocolate, one box of funfetti, and one box of marble).  And then iced them in the four different colors (well my mom iced them, thankfully!)  I made a special bigger one for Simon.
Cupcakes!




For food Dan made hot dogs and pulled pork.  We also had beans, slaw, party potatoes (which I totally forgot to cook until we were serving food), chips, Rotel Dip, veggie tray (courtesy of Janet), fruit salad and 7-layer dip (courtesy of my mom). 




For drink we got bottled water, beers, and I made 4 different types of punch - one in each of the four colors.  The yellow was simply lemonade.  The Green was what we called Tropical Green punch which was ginger ale, pineapple juice, lemonade concentrate, and lemon-lime kool-aid.  The Blue was Spiked Pineapple Lemonade which was lemonade container, frozen lemonade concentrate, 1/2-2/3s pineapple juice can, and a bottle of UV Blue Vodka (also may have added a drop or two of blue food coloring to get it to be more blue).  Finally, the Red was Strawberry Peach Sangria.  I followed a Tasty recipe I found on Facebook but it had peaches, strawberry syrup I made, a bottle of white wine, a cup or so of white rum, cut up fruit and a bottle of champagne.  The Red was the most popular for sure.
Punch!




Other projects for the party:  I made a balloon wreath with the idea that we can use it year to year.  My mom made a birthday banner for Simon with that same idea.  I got pictures printed out with his monthly photo shoots and put them on paper.  We also painted my mom's old highchair a bright blue.  This is the same highchair I used as a baby.  If/when there's another first birthday to celebrate we'll use it again and repaint it.
Wreath!

Didn't my mom do such a great job?

Laying down pics

Face shots... people liked the second picture in the top row and how it looked like Simon was looking a the naked lady bottle opener

Sitting up

"Outtakes"

The pretty blue highchair


His party was so awesome.  We had so many people come to celebrate and it was just the best.  It was hot outside, but people still spent time out there chatting and hanging out.  We just had the perfect time.  I really can't tell you how great it was to have so many people that love Simon and us all together celebrating our guy.  He got so many presents (too many really) and I'm just filled with love and gratitude for our family and friends. 

Such a cutie!


A roll of tape is a fun toy, no?


Playing with uncle Keith's beard - this kid loves to touch faces.  It was really great that my brother was able to come in for Simon's party and family time.


This is Simon's excited face


Playing with a card - in my head he read the funny message inside


Simon got a PB Anywhere Chair... clearly he's excited


Simon and my mom


Did I mention the face touching?






Tanner and Macy playing


Simon trying out his toy truck


Three cousin's playing


Again with the face touching


Love these kids so much


Paper is fun too



I thought Simon would really go for the cake smashing and he didn't as much as I expected.  I think he still had fun and a good time with so many people.  He has some separation anxiety but overcame that for the party pretty well and never seemed to feel overwhelmed.
About to sing happy birthday!

What's this?


ICING!

Ok, I'm over it now


Dan and I have just the best families and friends and we feel so loved.  Everything about the party was perfect.  Could I have done some things better - yes, but honestly even those things I didn't care about in the moment.  Was I late with the potatoes? Yes.  Did we have a ton of flies?  Yes.  But who cares!  People enjoyed themselves and I had a great time mingling and enjoying Simon and everything.  It was perfect and I honestly mean that.