Sorry Scrappy, but your time has come

Sorry, Scrappy! 

We gave it a shot, hoping that this was your "Forever Home", but discovered after nearly a month that it was not working out like we had hoped. You were MUCH too hyper and naughty, but were indeed - just being a puppy that needed LOTS and LOTS of attention. Sadly, it is most important that we focus the bulk of our attention on our baby Sydney.

Your cute little ears piled atop your head should be heart-warming to your new owners. We hope your new home will be a large house with other dogs to play with, lots of room to roam and someone else's kitchen cabinets to chew on. May you poop on their doorstep (for old times sake) as well, as that is one way that we will always remember you.

Good luck, pup!

Stairs are NO PROBLEM for Sydney, Problem for parents

Sydney figured out stairs tonight. He (slowly) made it 3/4 of the way up – chasing after one of the cats. Daddy videotaped. Grandpa Lowell supervised and encouraged. Mommy did not want to watch.

Guess we'll be needing that baby gate on the stairs now...

Recall... really?

Today, we got a notice in the mail that there is a safety recall on Sydney's carseat - claiming that there is a problem with the handle falling off of the carseat while carrying it by the handle with an infant strapped inside.

Really?

They don't test these things to make sure that they work as intended?

Mike was hoping that we would be able to return the carseat (because it is defective) since Sydney has almost outgrown in now anyways. (That's not the case.) So, we have to call to order the repair kit. In the meantime, it says to only carry the carseat by holding onto the head and foot portion - with two hands. (Hmm, 19# baby... that doesn't sound all that fun; now does it?)

Silly Boy is a window licker

After Grandpa Lowell taught Sydney how to lick condensation off of the outside of a water glass, it wasn't all that surprising when Sydney started licking the window pane of the front door this afternoon while Mike sat just outside (on the sunporch) with the puppy and laughed.

It started off innocently enough - where Sydney crawls over to the door, pulls himself to a stand and peers onto the sunporch at daddy. But soon, he is LICKING the window. From the outside looking in, it looked HILARIOUS! (Daddy videotaped it and sassily announced that our baby is a genius, but is the smartest baby that we have.)

Don't worry... since Daddy got it on video, we can someday threaten to show it to his girlfriend. (Perhaps tomorrow, if we are not too busy enjoying each others company and catching up on housework, I will try to upload the video to this blog posting, too.)

What a silly boy!

Winding down the day with a backrub

Lately, our house appears to have the slightest bedtime routine where Sydney snuggles (and/or nurses) to wind down and when he is in a relaxed state (or sleeping), I take him to his room. Sometimes, I stand in his room next to his crib while he rests his head upon my shoulder. He flips from cheek-to-cheek as I rub his back and sway on the creeky floors. Otherwise, I put him into his crib and turn on his cribside musical nightlight. He almost always flips instantly onto his stomach for sleeping and flails his head from side-to-side, making me wonder if he is trying to get comfortable or if he is fighting the urge to fall asleep in the darkened room. I stand by his crib, leaning over the side (since the mattress is in its lowest position) and gently rub his back for a minute or two. Sometimes, he will whimper like a tired puppy, but the wimpers get spaced out further and further until he stops and falls asleep completely. 

Who wouldn't like to wind down the day with a snuggle and a backrub?

Speaking of backrubs, on a similar note - tomorrow afternoon, I will be going in for my first chiropractic appointment. . . EVER! 

At the breastfeeding support group, it has been mentioned on multiple occasions how out-of-whack your body gets during pregnancy and how it is good to get everything put back into place again since your center of balance is no longer skewed towards your baby belly. So, I am going to take my aging body, with stiff lower back, in for an adjustment. The chiropractor is the father/husband of one of the babies/moms at the support group. (I'm told he likes to do pediatric chiropractic work, having adjusted his daughter just 40 minutes after birth. Apparently, being confined in a pretzel shape in a confined space and then, coming out of the birth canal does a number on your alignment and is the reason why a lot of babies are "colicky". Mike thinks that Sydney doesn't need an adjustment because "if it isn't broke, don't fix it".

I guess it will be an interesting experience - for this newbie.

Play date at the water park

This morning, I took Sydney to the local water park for a play date. I had been encouraged to go hang out with a group of moms, despite Sydney being the littlest one there. (Plus, Mommy was having a bad morning with Eddy throwing up on multiple occasions, the puppy peeing all over his mat and toys and then a little incident with dog poop all over the bottom of daddy's slippers, which coincidently ended up smeared all over the kitchen [that had been washed yesterday] when the puppy took off running with one of daddy's slippers.)

It was GREAT to get out of the house for an outing!

It must have been visual chaos for Sydney's little brain to take in all of the sights, sounds and splashes. Although, as long as he had one of his (two) rubber duckies in his hands at all times, he seemed quite all right. He sported his Winnie-the-Pooh Little Swimmers (diaper) in style.

He didn't much enjoy the smaller kiddie wading pools because the water was too cold. His favorite seems to have been the hot tub that was a tad warmer than baby bath water, but his bath duck didn't alarm HOT in glowing white letters so, it couldn't have been all that bad for us. He sucked on his duck(s) and kicked his feet, making big splashes and inspiring some of the other little boys to splash their feet as well.

Looking ahead on the calendar, it looks like it will be $5 well-spent, to get out of the house again, on another Monday later in the month.

A week of photos

Sydney helped take down the Christmas tree on the day after Christmas. He was fascinated with all of the lights – and kept pulling them from the tree and putting them in his mouth.

Sydney likes to play with the dog's chew toys. Ironically, the puppy likes to play with Sydney's toys. If only they could swap... YEAH, RIGHT!

Sydney is busy crawling all over the place. It is AMAZING how quickly he can go (when he wants to).

He likes to pull himelf up to a stand whenever he can. (He thinks he is a much bigger boy than he actually is, I'm afraid. Mike reminds me often that BOYS GET BUMPS.)

Ah, YES... stairs! He tried his hand at those as well. Fortunately, the second step is a hair higher than the first and he can't get up it. We're trying to avoid stairs because he is hard enough to keep an eye on.

This week, we tried a mesh bag for ice cubes, peaches and avocado. Sydney thinks it works pretty cool.

We also tried our hand at small pieces of avocado. As you can see, it was VERY FUN to play in it!

After the avocado, we played in some bubbles while Mommy did some dishes.

Sydney is loving his crackers. With his two little teeth, you can even hear him CRUNCH when he bites.

Look close... there are TWO TEETH on the bottom!

Tough days of telling time with Tylenol

Throughout the past few days, you can tell the time by the dosing of Tylenol.

Funny how Sydney hadn't shown ANY signs of pain leading up to the emersion of his first tooth that we first noticed on Saturday afternoon. He hadn't been fussy. He hadn't been drooling. He hadn't been chewing excessively. In hindsight, the only sign I recall was that his cheeks were both bright red last week Wednesday and Thursday. 

All of a sudden, with his mouth opened JUST RIGHT, I had gotten a glimpse and noticed that: HOLY COW, my baby has his first tooth!

Sunday afternoon, we saw the bottom right tooth poking through the surface of his gums, next to the left one that had come up first.

With the emersion of teeth, our house has found itself to be rather noisy – with whimpering and whining. Granted, getting teeth can't possibly be comfortable so, we're giving Sydney a little bit of a break - as well as regular doses of children's tylenol.

Yesterday afternoon at 4:01pm, after at least an hour of moaning (while playing, crawling or snuggling), I gave him another dose of Tylenol. Amazingly, like clockwork, at precisely 4:29pm, there was silence and the moaning had stopped. Sydney was back to his happy, playful self - full of smiles, giggles and absolute delight.

I think about parents who have whiney kids on an everyday basis and am so very thankful that Sydney has been a delightful child. After a full day of fussing on-and-off, I was SO RELIEVED when bedtime came and our house was FINALLY QUIET. (Well, other than two cats and a puppy.) Thankfully, Sydney slept until 6am this morning, which was MUCH NEEDED SLEEP by mommy.

As I blog, Sydney is snuggled tightly into the Moby Wrap on my chest and I am able to gently rest my cheek onto his forehead and feel his breath on my collarbone as he sleeps soundly. (I am thankful that he's napping; despite being tired, he fought falling asleep for 25 minutes before he found it too comfortable and womb-like.... well, besides being floating or upside down, that is.)

Shoot, a kiss on his forehead just woke him well-before this nap should have ended. We're going to try this again... back to walking around...

And then there were TWO (teeth, that is)

This afternoon, we noticed the second tooth poking the tiniest bit through the surface.

Baby's First... TOOTH!

This afternoon, we noticed Sydney's first tooth had poked through: His bottom left tooth made its appearance.