You guysssssss, my baby is almost one! People say all the time how quickly time passes and it really does! I find myself trying to cherish every moment because I know there will come a day when he doesn’t want me to rock him to sleep anymore or cuddle when he first wakes up. We’re still working on getting him to sleep in his own bed all night long but I’ll admit that I love waking up to a sloppy baby kiss, which wouldn’t happen if he didn’t end up in our bed. I truly love watching him learn. He’s been doing so much of that lately. His communication skills have really taken off, even though he still only verbally says, “dada” and “mama.” His receptive language is amazing, meaning he understands so many things. He can follow one step directions, such as “come here,” “lay down,” “put it in the bag,” “say hi/bye” (which he waves for), and “give it to me.” Now, that last one he understands, but he may or may not comply. Especially if it’s a leaf or hunk of dirt that he’s about to put in his mouth 🤦🏻♀️. He claps his hands when you tell him, “good job!,” and he definitely shakes his head “yes.” He had started doing that when I wrote my last post and I wasn’t sure if it was coincidental or not but I can confirm it is a learned skill. Some skills are great to learn, like filling and dumping. He can release objects into a container and then dump them out again. That activity will keep him busy for a bit. Others, like how to lift the toilet seat, *aren’t* so great 😳. Our kid is a master water finder, no matter where it is. He even tried to crawl between Philip’s legs one day while he was standing at the toilet so that he could grab his pee 🤣🤣. Ahh good times.
“Pouring” beef stock into Sansa’s food dish. It was empty but he didn’t mind 😉.
Some of you may have seen the video I posted on Facebook of Quinn dancing on his mattress on the day I lowered his crib. If so, here’s an update: that was a horrible idea. For anyone who didn’t see it, I put his mattress on the floor while lowering the crib and turned on some T. Swift. He loves music and “dancing,” which is a super cute head bob. We had made a video about homemade toys that day for my YouTube channel that involved artificial flowers and he was still playing with them. So he had a flower in his hand and crawled up and down on his mattress, bopping to the music for over an hour. It was very entertaining. However, come bed time he decided that the mattress was now a place to dance instead of sleep and there was a battle. Also, I used to play calming music on his Leap Frog Scout while he drinks his milk but now all music jacks him up so I can’t do that anymore. I think Sansa is pretty bummed about that but she still comes and lays on the floor by the chair while we rock. In order to try to break the association of bouncing in the crib, I brought my mini exercise trampoline in his room and showed him how to bounce on it. It took a few days but I think he may have broken the crib bouncing correlation. My friend Chris watched him one day around this same time and played a super fun game of “Dropsy” while he was in his crib, creating another association 😩. So he spent several days throwing tantrums to be put in his crib so he could dance and throw things on the floor, expecting us to pick them up 🤦🏻♀️. This game was especially enjoyable the night that he fell asleep in my arms, I laid him in his crib, he immediately woke up, stood up, and threw his bink on the floor. Uh huh, yep, super fun. You know, in that situation, when you’re just done with mom duty and wanna threaten him if he doesn’t go to sleep, you tell him, “You’re not funny. This is not a game. It’s bed time,” but then he laughs his cute little baby laugh and you try so hard not to crack a smile. I know I just said “when you’re just done with mom duty,” but we all know that’s not a thing. Mom duty never stops. I was exhausted, the dishes still needed done, I had stuff I need to do for the Farmers Market, and I still needed to pump but none of that matters to a baby. I won’t fight with him. If he doesn’t want to sleep, fine. But I’m not going to just sit and entertain him. He has to come wherever I need to be and entertain himself while I get things done. For the most part he’s actually really good at that. He loves kitchen utensils so those are usually an easy way to keep him busy. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies under 18 months get no screen time except for video chatting with relatives, which is considered quality time interacting with others. For that reason, I don’t let him watch tv at home. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no judgment for anyone who allows their child to watch tv. There are days when I wish I could sit him in front of an electronic babysitter and have some time to myself, so I get it. However, because he’s never really done that, he’s learned to explore his environment. This is also known as making a mess, which he does very well. Our house is pretty well baby-proofed at this point but I swear that kid can find anything you don’t want him to touch. There are days when I feel like the worst parent alive because while I was trying to check my work email or make dinner, he was busy licking my flip flop or chewing on a dog toy 🤦🏻♀️. Lots of tasks I let him “help” with to avoid these sorts of things but I can’t keep my eyes on him 24/7. One of his favorite tasks is unloading the dishwasher, whether the dishes inside are freshly cleaned, or dirty and I have just loaded them 🤬. He loves crawling onto the dishwasher door and sitting. He also loves crawling onto and off of (head first, I might add) the mini trampoline and also up the basement steps (four is the highest he’s gotten so far). Do girls climb like that? I don’t remember my nieces being so quite so….adventurous. He pulls to stand on anything possible and if he has enough might to push it, it becomes a walker: his slide, his high chair, the dog food storage container.
Stirring (and spilling 🤦🏻♀️) the dog water. He loves playing with a whisk 😂
I had to eventually surround the entire mattress with pillows because he was getting so rowdy with his dancing, I was scared he would bounce right off and hit his head 🤦🏻♀️.
With the appearance of four new teeth, we decided it’s time to make toothbrushing an addition to his bath time routine. He loves when we brush our teeth because we have Burst toothbrushes and they make noises from the vibrations. He’ll gladly hold the brush and “help” 😆. He understands when told to brush his teeth and moves his banana brush in and out of his mouth. We make vibration noises so he thinks it’s like ours 😁. Another change to his bath time routine is the one we made to our alphabet game because we got tired of naming words that start with each letter. We decided to change it up and whoever washes Quinn gets to pick the game. If you want to see how differently someone else’s brain works, play a word association game with them 😅. We still choose 3 letters and the bather gets to say a word that starts with one of the letters and the other person has to say whatever word they think of that’s associated to that word. We tried doing both words starting with the letter but that was too hard. Anyway, we’re keeping the alphabet game interesting for us, which is the most important thing, right? 🤪
Brushing his teeth 😍
They finally came through! 😁
Because Quinn has all those teeth now, he’s chewing on things more than ever. I woke up to the sound of gnawing coming from Quinn’s room the other day. My first thought was, “What the hell is that?,” followed by “Is he chewing on his crib?,” and then “Oh no, that means he’s standing up.” 🤦🏻♀️ No chance of getting him back to sleep right away if he’s that awake. Ugh. As I’ve said, he always has something in his mouth but now he thinks we should, too. He tries to “share” his bink all the time 🙄. He’s also really into feeding us, usually things I don’t want a bite of…like slobbery pizza crust that he’s been gnawing on 🤢🤣. He’s doing really great with eating though. He’ll eat just about anything I feed him. He even tried my sesame chicken stir-fry the other day. I put small pieces of chicken, broccoli, and rice on his tray and let him choose what to eat. Surprisingly, he ate all of the broccoli and some of the chicken and spit the rice out. That makes 2 of our kids who won’t eat rice because Sansa doesn’t like it either 😜. He’s likely to change his mind though once he has more exposure to it.
Gnawing on some broccoli lol. There is a movement called “Baby Led Weaning” and the idea is to let babies learn to eat by giving them big hunks of food like this. In my opinion, I don’t think that is a safe practice until a child is older. They claim babies don’t need to eat purées but that’s just not true. They have to build up the muscles in their tongue in order to be able to move food around in the mouth and to learn to chew. Doing so with solid pieces of food presents a choking hazard. Never gives babies anything to eat without close supervision.
Today was Philip’s first Father’s Day and we celebrated with our first out of town excursion since we quarantined in March. We went to Oglebay Zoo, Quinn’s first trip there. I went several times when I worked for Head Start because we took an end of the year trip there. It has changed a lot since I was there last. It’s not the best zoo we ever been to (we went to the San Diego Zoo so not much compares to that!), but we had a good time. It almost didn’t happen though because as soon as we got there I went to unlock the stroller with my foot and my stupid sandal broke 🤬💩. I know, I know, I should have worn tennis shoes for all the walking anyway and won’t make that mistake again. I fixed it enough and my repair lasted for most of the way. The toe strap pulled out of the sole but my toes held it in place well enough that I could walk without discomfort. Well, aside from the 90 degree weather 🥵. Quinn seemed interested in some of the animals and didn’t fuss, unlike the last 20 minutes of the ride up and the first 20 of ride home 😫. He’s not used to being in a car for long periods anymore. Especially for the ride home, he was hungry and tired and cranky as hell. He kept reaching for me and it’s awful when your baby wants you to hold him and you can’t 🥺. He eventually calmed down and fell asleep. When we got home we played in his pool for an hour and half before we walked the dogs. He had a very full day so we’ll see how he sleeps tonight 🤞🏻.
‘My daddy’s first Father’s Day’
Petting an alpaca
Speaking of dogs, Sansa learned a new skill recently, too. She can now pull open the gate to go into the yard. She’s always been able to push it open to come back in, a skill Soph has yet to master. I’ve tried to convince her to come forward into it but she just doesn’t understand. She sure is pretty though 😉. She has learned to only leave the deck with Sansa and to follow her in, so that’s something I guess. We had a staff meeting via Zoom on Friday and I was sitting outside for it because I had just put Quinn down for a nap before it started and I didn’t want him to wake up from hearing us talking. Right in the middle of the meeting, Sansa started going crazy, barking at something and pouncing it. I got scared because I didn’t know what was in our yard so I had to go check. She killed a black bird and the other birds were angry! They were squawking at her and even chased Soph, making her run into the house and hide under the kitchen table 😂. She’s killed birds before, too, but not black birds. Those ones are real hard asses. They have a nest in our tree and the neighbor has a falcon nesting in their garage. The falcon flew into our tree the other day and caused a commotion. Those black birds squawked at that falcon for over half an hour. They were dive bombing it, trying to knock it off the branch. They’re a bunch of bullies. However, the falcon is likely to eat their babies so I guess it’s warranted 🤷🏻♀️.
Poor Sansa 😂
We learned today that Soph might be a kangaroo 🤷🏻♀️. That would explain some things 😉.
