Gametes In Love

S2 now scoots himself around. G will quickly discover to hide his toys.

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(a certain unnamed parent): [fart]
S2: hahahahahaha

Uhmn… yeah.

It’s crazy to think that it’s time to forever retire our infant car-seat. I swear it was a week ago that we brought our wee little boys home in it.

However it’s becoming a monster to lug around with a 19lb munchkin, so it’s about time we move onto the next thing.

This time snuck-up on me so fast. G took forever to get out of the seat. Since he gained weight so slowly, he was about 1 when we moved him into the convertible seat. I was so excited to finally “graduate” away from the bucket seat. Now, this transition seems melancholy in comparison. It’s the “this is my last baby” syndrome, for sure.

S and I spent a couple of mind-numbing days car-sear shopping and stalking friends’ car seat setup. We wasted a perfectly good date night at Babies R Us one evening coming to the conclusion we just can’t fit 2 rear-facing car seats in my car. I drive a Fit, and the only way to get a convertible seat RF behind the driver (because let’s face it, there’s no such thing as “middle” when there’s a convertible seat in that vehicle) is if the driver’s seat is pulled up all the way forward, and it’s not reclined in any way. I just can’t drive like that, and God forbid S tries to drive it — he’s have to have his knees around his ears.

So the next logical thing (past buying a different vehicle) was to consider turning G around and transitioning our search to forward-facing seats. I had, initially, hoped to keep G rear-facing until the recommended 35lbs, but at his rate of snail-paced growth, that was going to be another year from now. S2 on the other hand would be reaching the weight-limit for the carrier within 2 months. Not adding up. Ultimately we chose the Nautilus for G’s next seat. We narrowed down the patterns we liked down to 2, and let G pick out which one he wanted. He chose this one <-

So… let’s take a moment of silence to bid adieu to the seat that represents the age of an era… and a short stroll down memory lane. I’m going to try and find it a good home, since it’s in great condition and has 2 years of life left in it.

S2 coming home

G partying out

My peanuts ain’t peanuts no mo 🙁

R, Special-K and G — pics of an afternoon of fun.

and just think — a few months ago they were THIS tiny:

Boy are you lucky — you get 3 for the price of 1 today 🙂

We went to the Zoo today. Of all the things we saw, G liked the swings at the Zoo playground the most.

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G had the hiccups earlier this week. You know how “they” say to try to scare hiccups away? Yeah, that only makes G laugh.

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G has a Sofie (the Giraffe) of his very own and he’s figured out how to make her squeek.

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We spent the day yesterday cleaning up our home. We tidied up, vacuumed, and did laundry. Well, come laundry folding time (a task I HATE by the way), I was on the floor with G by my side making my piles of clothes. I was doing pretty well with the folding under I turned around to see this:

Yes, mommy has a little helper — he wanted to fold the t-shirts himself. Doesn’t he look Oh so proud of himself? I’m excited at the prospect for someone else wanting to do folding. Child labor laws don’t apply when it’s your own kid, right?

In other news, we’re moving forward with enclosing the patio off of our master bedroom. The cleaning of the house, believe it or not is because of our renovation. You see, because we live in a planned development we not only need to apply for a building permit, but we have to get our project be approved by the city planning commission first. This means a formal, public hearing where we have to notify our 300 ft radius worth neighbors. We needed to hold an open-house and give our neighbors an opportunity to come and talk to us about our project. Yes, all this to enclose a 11×12 ft existing patio, in the back of our house, not seen by anyone. No neighbors came, which is just fine by me. I got exactly what I wanted out of this week-end: no renovation complaints, with the added bonus of a clean house. Now wish us luck!

Look at this!

Does this look to you like the sight of a child that is taking a nap? Yeah — I didn’t think so.

This is G, just minutes ago (and still going) up in his crip trying to go down for his mid-day nap. And he’s having none of it. He’s been clapping his feet, swinging his monkey and generally having a grand ole’ time up in there. Everything but napping of course.

My favorite part of the image? The pacifier stuck up in his diaper while he was rolling over. Classic!

You know what I wish baby stores did? Test-drive programs for baby gear.

I want to be able to rent a different stroller each week and test-drive it around my ‘hood to see how it fits in my lifestyle. Sure, a stroll around the baby store is fine, but my kid might not like sleeping in that stroller; or it might not fit in my car; or go up and down stair quite right. Sure, I can spend a grand on a fancy Bugaboo, but is it $900 better than a Graco for how I live my life? I tell you rental programs could be a hit!

Second up — baby carriers. These little items can be the difference between graying hair within baby’s first birthday, or not. A carrier that baby likes is a God-send. We went through 4 before we found one G likes, we like and is easy to put on. I’m thankful that two of them were hand-me-downs from friends so that I didn’t spend any money on them. The soft-sided carriers can be expensive, running around $100 for the Ergo’s or Beccos. I’ll happily spend $40 on a trial rental program, if it saved me $200 in the end from buying stuff my kid won’t stand to be in.

Thirdly, diaper sample packs! (This is an S idea!) JilliansDrawers does an awesome job with doing starter kids for cloth diapers, but how about disposables? You don’t know if your kid fits better in a Huggies, a Pampers a 7th gen or the Target generics. Why not buy a sample pack that has a week’s worth of each?

That’s my business idea inspiration for the day. Sigh… if I only had the capital 🙂

I’ve given up on G crawling. I think he might consider trying it when he turns 2. The moment I put our little monkey-boy down on his belly, he 1) verbally (and in a high-pitched tone might I add) protests; 2) immediately rolls over. I believe our child has learned to roll specifically to avoid belly time. As such it is very difficult to get him in a position to encourage any type of slithering movement.

At day care there’s a 9 month-old girl, even smaller (in size) than G if you’ll believe it. She’s doing circles around our child while he is perfectly content to play Bam-Bam-Bam with whatever toy he’s got on hand. That, or nap. Yes, why do today what you can put off to tomorrow? Our little man, as it turns out, spends much of his day snoozing while at day care. He takes 2-3 naps during the day, each averaging between 30min to 2 hours. It’s awesome! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that our child sleeps so well — wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s no surprise his mobility has taken a back-seat: he’s sure not practicing crawling in his sleep, that’s for sure.

A part of me wants to try to push him a little bit more. On the other hand, there’s the part of me that knows we’re travelling to the East Coast in a few weeks and I’d rather have a Happy-to-be-stationary baby than one that wants to wiggle out of their seat to go somewhere. I’ll have plenty of those trips in my future to want to start now.

None-the-less I’m skipping over crawling and moving onto walking. At the moment we’re just getting through standing. He’s a much better stander now. He doesn’t bend at the knees constantly, so he’s able to take his body weight while standing… and support that big ole’ head of his. Although he isn’t able to balance himself on his own just yet, we have a few good moments where we can let go while he shuffles his hands over his music table.

I know he’ll get there at his own pace and I really AM enjoying where we are right now. Yet seeing a bunch of his peers so much ahead, I can’t help but wonder if he is considered delayed and I need to speak to his pediatrician about it. What do you think?

G’s practicing for the Terrible 2’s. You see, he’s working on the “No! No! No!” head-shake. I don’t know that he realizes what it means, but he’s got great timing at delivery.

The other week-end we were out at breakfast and S had a great little exchange with G. I only caught the tail end of it, but there was a great refusal on G’s end on anything offered up by S.

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Yes, that is a Margarita S is offering to G… and the kid approves — yep, that’s how we know he’s ours.