Baby Lei

While in Hawaii we bought a lei to match the one we got on our honeymoon. We had accumulated so many things while in Florida we had to have Mom send us a box of our things through the mail. We just received the box and I couldn't resist putting the lei on Chance's head. He thought it was fun and started clapping. He claps and laughs everytime. He has started clapping a lot. I can't tell if he is going it because he really thinks things are fun or funny or just when he feels like clapping for some other reason. He has also learned what fun it can be to clap while in the tub. It makes a big splash. He wondered around the house for a while wearing the lei. The second picture is his "Hey, look at me I'm wearing a lei" face.

Babysitter and the Door

Today I left Chance with a baby

sitter for the first time. A babysitter taht isn't related that is. I hired a sitting service, the same one that sits for a lot of the hotels in the area. They are a 24 hour service so I thought they would be great for when Scott and I want to go out at night too. The woman was very nice and I felt comfortable with her. I had a doctor's appointment this morning at 9:15am so Chance had just woken up when the sitter arrived this morning. Having never left him before I was a little nervous but she was professional and friendly and immidately started tlaking to Chance and playing with him. I kissed him and told him I would be back soon and left. She said he didn't cry much when I left she started playing with him and he was fine. There was a six hour minimum

with the sitting service so I decided to take the extra time for myself. I didn't do an excellent job with this because I jsut went shopping and bought stuff for Chance but it is a start. I want to get a baby sitter once per week just to give me time to get out of the house to myself as well as do things like doctor's appointments and things Scott and I want to do when he is here. When I came back home (an hour early) Chance was sleeping but he must have heard my voice because he woke up, the sitter went in to get him as I was still putting down my things and he came ot with a huge smile on his face. He bounced up and down and smiled at me and then she put him down and he crawled right over. When she left he crawled after her to the door and when she shut the door he whined like he didn't want her to go. We waved bye through the glass door. I think he had a good time with her.

He is learning so many new things with all the crawling and today he opened and closed the door to his bedroom at least twenty times. He had a lot of fun until he pushed it close and couldn't open it again and then Mommy had to open it back up for him to play some more. I also put my head band on him which you can see in the last picture. It doesn't make him look girly just cuter.

The Clap

Ha ha ha (sorry adult joke). Yesterday After dinner I gave Chance a cookie. Needless to say he loved it. It was bath night so I didn't worry about a bib and just let him have fun. He didn't need me to break it into little pieces he just played and ate. He made a huge mess of himself and the surrounding area. While he was playing with chocolate all over his hands he began to fling his arms about kind of like a bird and then he clapped. When his little hands clapped together it seemed like the noise scared him but then it was great fun. He clapped and clapped and laughed. I clapped with him and told him he was doing a great job. We clapped and laughed together. He didn't do it again yesterdeay but today he has clapped quite a few times. Each time he thinks it is very funny. He starts out clapping with one hand open and the other in a fist then the fist opens up and when he makes the first clapping noise he smiles really big and bounses up and down, he is very happy with himself.

9 month check-up

Today we went to the doctor for Chance's 9 month checkup. He weighs 23 pounds and 11 ounces and he is 30 inches tall. To put that in perspective the average baby his age weighs 19 lbs and is 27 inches. He is doing just fine. He was happy and awake and he talked and talked to the nurse and the doctor. He is working on waving and showed the doctor how he claps with my hands. He crawled around for a while and pulled up which impressed the doctor too. He has a little rash on his face and they gave me a cream for it which should make it go way.

His next appointment is set for December 19th for his one year old check-up. He didn't get any shots today but he will at one year.

Chance gets into everything.

He has lots of toys that he plays with everyday. We put them away every night and every morning when he gets down in the floor to play he pulls them all back out again. We gave him some bowls to play with and this day I put one on his head he wore it for a while before pulling it off and tossing it aside.

Playdate

We went to Norco, La. which is about a 30 minute drive from the house for a playdate at the house of one of the girls we met on Meetup.com. She has a little girl who is 18 months old and there was another Mom there whose son is 13 months. The three of them got along very well, the otehr two were walking but Chance kept up with them with his speedy crawl. He had fun playing with the other two children and with all the different toys that

she had. He does a good job getting along with other kids though there are some things he just can't understand yet. He doesn't understand when he grabs something from someone else but he also doesn't understand when someone grabs something from him. I saw this confused hurt look on his face when one of the children took a toy from him but it was fleeting and in two seconds it was gone and he was playing with something else and totally didn't care. I guess seeing that is the Mom in me.

9 months old

We are back home in New Orleans. It is nice to be back in our own space even though I didn’t want to leave the comfort of Florida. Our plane was delayed two hours coming home but Chance was a little trouper and bounced up and down on my lap and talked to everyone on the plane even though it was past his bedtime by the time we got home. He has grown so much. Outfits that fit him perfect when we left for Florida are now hard to button. He is solidly in 12 month clothes and moving into 18 months. He is crawling all over, I have to do more baby proofing now that we are back at the house. He is pulling up on everything and cruising along the couch and other things. He is also very brave, he lets go and only holds on with one hand when he stands and a couple times he has let go with both hands and stood there for a second before plopping down on his bum.
He is 9 months old today. He says mama when he is upset and dada when he is happy we are trying to connect the two sounds to me and Scott. He definitely knows ‘No’ and his name. We are also trying to teach him to wave he waves his hand but has only done it at the right time once so we are still working on it but you can see him thinking about it, He knows we are trying to tell him something and he is trying hard to figure out what it is, he will have it before long.

I am sure I have mentioned how much he likes Sesame Street but this long only grows. He loves Elmo. It comes on at 7am and 10am here so we get to watch it if Chance gets up early or if he sleeps in and he will watch the first five minutes or so non stop then he will play and crawl around but any time Elmo comes on he will drop whatever he is doing and watch. We don’t watch much TV and when we do it is 9 times out of 10 PBS. He seems to love puppets because he also likes Between the Lions.

He still favors the color red. If you lay clothes or toys out in front of him he will pick the red one. He definitely likes red. He does not like wearing his bib I make him wear one most of the time anyway though. He eats cheerios and lots of other table foods even though he still has no teeth. He doesn’t like peas for sure and one of the baby food dinner things he wouldn’t even touch but everything else he likes a lot.

He got his first haircut the other day it was short and sweet my Mom just cut the long hairs that were getting in his eyes while I fed him to distract him. We kept the cuttings and I will put them in his baby book. The rest of his hair doesn’t need to be cut yet.

I will be posting a lot more now that we are home with a good internet connection.

He does all of the nine month milestones already.

By the end of month nine a baby typically:
Reaches for toys
Drops objects and then looks for them
Becomes interested in grabbing the spoon during feedings
Goes from tummy to sitting by self
Picks up tiny objects
Begins to identify self in a mirror's reflection

These pictures are from when we were in florida. In the second one he is chewing on his little finger which he does a lot everyone says he must be teething because of it but I don't think so. I call it his "One Million Dollars" face. He also sticks his tongue out a lt these days which he thinks is funny. The last two are from the last day we were there and Chance wanted to put his feet in the pool (I think) and once he did he jsut sat down. He really likes the water and loved just sitting on that top step in the pool.

In the bathtub

These pictures are kind of unrelated to this post but I love sharing pictures so I put them on here anyway. While we were gone Chance has really perfected his crawling which has made for a lot of babyproofing in a short amount of time back here at home. Well, Chance loves the water. He likes taking a bath and will sit in the tub for up to 15 mitunes after I finish cleaning him just playing with his toys he also really liked being in the pool when we were in Florida. With his new found crawling abilities he has been found in the bathroom multiple times. When we were in hotels he would crawl into the bathroom and slap his hands on the tile and now that we are home he heads for the bathroom. He usually goes straight for the tub and pulls up on the side where he slaps the side and smiles and looks into the tub and looks up and us and then smiles and laughs some more. It is pretty obvious he is saying "let's get in!". Well, the other day he did get in. It wasn't a smooth hop in the tub but he didn't hurt himself bad and now we have a gate up to keep him out. Another reason for the gate is our bathroom door doesn't lock very well and some little baby I know likes to barge in when you are using the bathroom.

Philly Trip - Aunt Kristy

Chance loves his Aunt Kristy, when she comes into teh room Chance will bounce up and down. While on the trip they played a lot together and she even made up a little song to sing to him. He would always climb into her suitcase and even though Kristy isn't a morning person at all we would send Chance into the bed to wake her up she would play with him and hug him and get right up out of bed. It is cool to see Chance really recognize people other than me and Scott. That is just one of the many things he is learning new all the time. These were taken in our hotel room in Philly. We stayed in a really nice hotel right in the business district close to the museum. I really liked Philly last time I was there and I really liked it this time. Where we were is like New Orleans but cleaner and no one can argue with that. Of course New Orleans doesn't snow or freeze either. You can't have it all, I guess.

Philly Trip 3 - Cheerio Head

Chance eats a lot of table foods now and like most babies, he loves Cheerios. I always make sure I take some Cheerios along everywhere we go now because they are great for a snack anytime. While on the Philly Trip he learned a new trick to do with his Cheerios...flick them. While the Cheerio is on a flat surface he puts his little index finger right on the edge of the Cheerio and pushes, the result is the Cheerio goes flying into the air. I found this very funny and so he kept on flicking all the Cheerios I gave him. I would retrieve them, give them back to him and he would flick them once more. Until he flicked one and I could not find it anywhere. I was sure it was lost under the seat or somewhere I wouldn't be able to find until we took the carseat out. With that I decided we had had enough fun and I stipped giving him any more Cheerios. A few minutes later I looked on top of his head and what did I find there? The missing Cheerio! I tried to get a good photo of it but everytime I moved the camera he would follow me with his eyes then move his head, I finally got this last picture just as proof. and this cute picture of his eye in the proccess.

Philly Trip 2

Chance was very good in the car on the way up to Philladelphia. We stopped a little more than usual which gave him time to get out and play. Here he is sitting in the floor of the car playing with his toys, we are stopped somewhere. The floor of the car was great because he fit down there perfectly and could play and have tons of fun while still being in a confined space. I take so many pictures of him he is learning to look at the camera. So here he is looking up right into the camera for his picture.

Philly Trip post 1

For my Mom's birthday this year my sister and I went together and got her tickets to the King Tut exhibit in Philadelphia. She loves history and especially Egypt but she wasn't able to go to the show when it was in Florida and it's next stop was Philly before it was off to London so we rented a car, got a fancy hotel and took off for Philly. Chance is an excellent traveler. He loved being in a new hotel room every night with new things to explore all the time. He was very fond of the air conditioners being to low to the ground. He would pull himself up and let the air blow in his face. He thought that was great fun. In this picture you can see his hair plowing in the wind. He also enjoyed climbing into our suitcases while we were getting packed or unpacked. I should say while we were TRYING to get packed or unpacked.

Standing by the Window

Chance found a rock in the track for the sliding glass door at Mom’s house. We got it away from him before he swallowed it but now he checks that area thoroughly a few times per day. He likes to look out the window. He can see the pool and all the plants that are on the patio around the pool as well as all the nature that spreads out beyond the patio area. He likes watching the water in the pool glisten. Like I said earlier he pulls himself up on anything and the window is no exception. He put his little hands right on the glass and shimmied his way on up to standing. The first picture is of Chance and Grandma looking for more rocks in the track then when Chance has had enough of that he starts to climb. At this point in the day he had lost his pants but I can’t remember why. After he got all the way up to his feet he rested his face on the window for extra support as you can see in the last picture it is so cute.

Cruising

I had never heard this term used before in reference to babies until I had one, but Cruising is when a baby stands up and walks while holding on to something. Like pulling up on the couch and cruising along the front while still holding onto the front of the couch. Chance started cruising yesterday. He pulled up on the bed at the hotel and took a few steps while holding onto the bed. Then when we got back to Mom’s house he cruised all the way along the front of the couch to get to the box of tissues that were at the other end. These pictures aren’t very good but they show him cruising even if not very far. You can see his arms stretched out to the TV then to the stoolHe pulled himself up on the brown stool then cruised over to the TV (to play with the green light on the front) and then cruised back to the stool after which he promptly fell on his bum. He is a good sport and doesn’t cry when he falls on his bum. If he goes over sideways he usually cries for just a minute until he realizes he has not horribly injured himself and then gets up and tries whatever he was doing again. He hasn’t hit his head too hard yet but he has come very close many times and I am sure it will happen one day but for now he has absolutely no fear in the falling department. This last picture is just one of him standing up by the couch.

Playing in the Curtains

At Scott’s hotel room in Fort Myers he has sliding glass doors with floor length curtains. One layer of curtain is heavy to keep the light out and the other set is sheer. I pulled the curtains open a little when we were over there yesterday so Chance could see outside. He sat there by the window and played for a long time. But when he found the curtains the real fun began. He crawled around in them then he sat in them and pulled the sheer curtain around himself till he was completely inside the curtain then he would twirl it the other direction until he was completely outside the curtain and laugh at himself. He was playing peek-a-boo with himself then when he realized he could see me through the sheer curtain he laughed even harder. We don’t have any curtains at home for him to play with like this so he had lots of fun discovering all of the wonderful playtime possibilities curtains have to offer.. From these pictures you can see how much fun he is having. I could never get a really good picture of his little Rockabilly outfit but this is his new one he has little cuffed jeans, and button up shirt and skull and cross bone socks. He is so cute.

Pool Days

The house here in Florida has a pool and we all went in two days so far this week. Chance likes it very much. We slathered him in sun screen put him in his swimming trunks and took him in the pool. We got him a little baby inner tube to float in but it didn’t work the way we thought it would, he likes it but doesn’t love it. I took him all around the pool he floats on his tummy I just barely have to hold his head out of the water. He kicks a little but doesn’t really do anything with his arms. There is a theory on how to get babies as young as six months to swim. You hold them on their tummy till they are comfortable and then you just let them go they will go under but are supposed to naturally start swimming and pop back up. The first day I tried this but I don’t think I did it right. I let him go he went under for a second but didn’t pop up immediately so I grabbed him. He wasn’t upset, he hadn’t swallowed any water and he wiggled to go right back down to splash in the water so I don’t think it did any damage. I think I am supposed to let him try to swim a little longer before I save him but I don’t really feel comfortable with it so I will just wait till he seems like he wants to swim a little more on his own before trying it again. He loves swimming around with me and sitting on the top step playing with his rubber duckies. He didn’t get sunburned at all which I am very happy about because I have always burned and it is not any fun. I need to get him so sunglasses to protect his eyes. It’s on my list of things to do. After he gets out of the pool he is so tired you can see it in his face. We feed him lunch and then he takes a really long afternoon nap.

Crawling Perfected

Chance is crawling on hands and knees pretty much all the time now. He has moved past the tummy crawl. He has gained so much control over his arms and legs in such a little amount of time. He crawls over to the couch and pulls up with very little trouble at all. Then if he sees something on the TV he will crawl over there and pull up by the TV again with little trouble. He is really starting to get around. He can follow me around mostly anywhere I go. If I go in the kitchen in just a minute I look around and he is on his way into the kitchen too. He can play by himself for a long time now (15 – 30 minutes). He uses his little index finger to push buttons on his toys. He is so funny when he stretches that one little finger out and pushes on a button so gently. The second picture here is him playing with his laptop. He always tries to play with my laptop when I am working on it, He likes to push the buttons and his little finger nails pick the keys off my keyboard like they are just laying there for him to move around at will. So we got him his own laptop. He likes it well enough but will put things in and take them out of a box for longer than he will play with his fancy laptop. Oh Well.

A Lot of Standing

We got back from Hawaii on Saturday and Chance (with Mom and Grandma) was at the airport to pick me up. He was happy as usual. He looks bigger though I am sure he isn't much bigger at all, in just one week. He is crawling on his hands and knees a lot better now and goes all over the place. He is also pulling up on everything now. On the couch , the table, me. He can get all the way up to standing almost every time. He has found a new level of fun in peek-a-boo. Now he can play too. If you hide at one end of the couch and stick your head out to play he will laugh and crawl aroudn to find you, then when he gets there he will peek his little head around the corner and pull it back really quick and giggle again. This is great fun and he will go round and round the couch after you. The internet at Mom's house is very very slow dial up so it took a long time to get this one picture up, and it doesn't look very good but I will post more pictures later. I will also put all the Hawaii pictures on Flickr soon too. This picture is of Chance standing up at the couch. We are going in the pool today too so there will be lots of fun as soon as Chance wakes up from his first nap.