Onerous Ones

The fight for independence comes way before 2.  With that I give you "A study of Calvin's temper tantrums".   Enjoy.   

It's Christmas time!

Last year we skipped the trip to Santa's Workshop.  Something about handing my weeks old baby to a strange man, even Santa, didn't seem right to me.

This year he's still not old enough to be excited to see the big man, but he's also not suspicious of strangers so I didn't think he would cry.  The perfect holiday photo opportunity.  You've got to do it, right?

Hello

who are you,  Can we be friends?

In other news...

Chris got this winner of a photo at the car wash on Sunday.

look at this toddler!

We said good-bye to Calvin's rat tail on Saturday.  It was time.

and the tree is up, presenting new parenting challenges on a daily basis.

ooh, pretty!

Internet, you've let me down

100 google searches later, I still see no mention of an otherwise lactose tolerant child having diarrhea when switched from breast milk/formula to whole milk.

I've made the switch gradually over the past couple of weeks, but this week is the first where he has had whole milk exclusively.  This is the first week where Chris and I had to deal with a baby with tummy woes and a footie pajama toe full of poo every morning.  All I have to say is Calvin is clean!  With at least a bath a day it's hard not to be.

It's all I could think of, so we dug through the cabinets this morning for the last can of promotional formula (thanks Similac) and he went to school with full-on formula today.

The nurse also confirmed this is likely the problem.  This makes no sense to me as the formula we have given him is milk based and he eats yogurt and cheese on a daily basis.  But we will try again next week, one ounce at a time, cuz the poop don't lie.

Stationery card

Here is a little something you may be seeing soon...

Simply Modern Band Holiday Card

Create modern holiday cards with your photos at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Happy Birthday!!!!

Calvin turned 1 on Wednesday.  We did it!  12 months later he's alive, happy and well.  Despite the fact that today is the official start of the holiday party season, we were lucky enough to have a number of friends celebrate with us.  It's been a busy couple of weeks for me as well and as Friday night was coming to an end I was a little panicked about having guests and wondering what I would feed them...

Cupcakes of course.

It was a little more thrown together that usual for me, but I think everyone had a good time.  After taunting our smaller guests with cupcakes their parents wouldn't let them touch until 'happy birthday' time, we finally sang and gave Calvin his own little cake.  He needed a little encouragement at first.

but I think he got the hang of it...

 and even offered to share...

He was too tired to stay for the rest of the party.

and by the time he opened his presents, everyone had gone.

This is one very lucky boy, indeed.

11 months old

It was another crazy week around her last week.  I was out of town, Grandma Lois was here and some people too lazy to buy there own stuff decided to help themselves to ours.

In all the hubbub, we let 28Oct come and go without realizing what it was.  We waved bye-bye to Grandma when Chris took her to the airport in the morning.  Then I took Calvin to the mall and farmers market while Chris rested and did some tasks around the garage.  Not a single photo was taken except for this great one of C and Grandma below.  

My baby is almost gone and a toddler is just about here (I know I sat this every month) - as soon as Calvin decides walking is worth the initial frustration.  Crawling still suits him just fine.  He doesn't care one bit that his little daycare friends are literally running circles around him.

Calvin this month:

• Teething - he's working on his 5th and 6th teeth.  Upper lateral incisors are on the way.  The one on the left is currently poking through.  As usual, there is a lot of whining, crying out at night and general crankiness associated with this process and a lot of Advil has been consumed by baby and parents alike.

• Food - I'm trying to give him more of what we eat.  This makes me examine the nutritional value of our own dinners.  If I don't want Calvin to eat it, should we?  Emergency pizza may be a thing of the past or consumed less frequently.  Once a week is probably too much for pepperoni.  We are also trying to let him have the spoon.  I'm not up for this mess, but he's gotta learn sometime.  

• Books - Calvin really seems to like books.  Sometimes he will pay attention through an entire book or two, but most of the time he wants to look at them and turn the pages on his own terms

• Behavior - the 'onerous ones'?  Calvin is already throwing little fits when he doesn't get what he wants.  He will sit on the floor and throw his torso to the ground, wailing the entire time.  Luckily he is easy to distract, so if he is crying over something he wants in his little hand, usually handing him something else works fine.  Most of the time though, it's because he is tired and wants to be held.  I try to give him what he needs without appearing like I'm giving in to his tantrum.  We can't start that already.

• Locomotion - standing is old hat and Chris has seen a cautious step from time to time, but nothing that counts as walking.  and I haven't seen anything so it hasn't happened at all in my book... but soon, I'm sure.

• Daily activities - Evening is a challenge as always.  Calvin is tired after a long day 'at work'.  I try to keep him busy with a walk and trips to the park to swing and slide.  After that we cram in dinner, bath and bedtime.  On weekends we try to take a daily outing:  Children's museum, farmer's market, whatever we can think of to give Calvin something else to look at.  The weather is perfect for it and I hate to keep him inside all day.

• Sleeping - He still wakes up once most nights.  Why?  I don't know.  Hunger, teething, cough and congestion, wet diaper?  These are all possible culprits and I do my best to combat them all but I am losing.  Bed time feedings, disposable diapers at night, cool mist humidifier, Vick's baby rub, prophylactic Advil... doesn't matter.  We are still up.  This will end some day... right?  RIGHT?

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating with Calvin.

Babies and ACL

This past weekend was the 3 day ACL Music Festival.  We bought tickets last year and fully anticipated taking Calvin with us for the entire thing.  Babies are portable, right?  Oh what naive parents-to-be we were.

Babies are portable, to a point.  But Calvin's happiness and well-being, or more specifically how that would affect OUR happiness and well-being, started to weigh on my mind as the weekend approached.  Friends with a slightly younger child quickly found out on Friday afternoon that a music festival was not to their baby's liking at all.

My plan was to take Calvin with me all day on Friday.  I love being at the fest during the day and as the evening comes and the crowds increase for the headliners (who I am often not that interested in) I get out of dodge, so Friday would be an early day for me.  Unfortunately, I did want to see the last bands on Saturday and Sunday and thought Calvin would benefit from a normal bedtime.  I lined up a baby sitter and picked the most convenient time to get him home/picked up.    All in all not a bad plan, except...

Calvin got a stomach virus on Thursday night.

And he proceeded to pass versions of his illness along to Chris and me.  With all the being puked and pooped on it was inevitable.

I spent a very frustrated Friday afternoon at home with a sick baby.  There was too much going on in the diaper area to brave an all day outing and he was at risk for dehydration which wouldn't be helped by a day in the heat and humidity.  We did make it for a couple of hours in the evening and Calvin made friends and enjoyed exploring the bottom of the stroller.

Saturday I had the sitter come in the afternoon so I could be sick and Chris could go have some fun - until his symptoms appeared anyway.  Sunday pretty much went as planned, but with everyone feeling a little less than their best.  I've never seen Calvin drink so much water.

The end result is that we learned a few lessons on how to survive an event with baby (toddler?) in tow; we survived our first tumultuous tummy; we have very few pictures to commemorate our success.

More visitors

Calvin and Pop

Miss Martha and Pop came to visit as few weeks ago - right around Calvin's 10 month birthday.  I've been so busy I missed posting about it.

Pop spent much of the weekend on the floor with Calvin or carrying him around.  On Saturday we took Calvin to the Children's Museum so we could all watch him play.

Calvin had a great time and the rest of us had about as much fun as you can have at the Children's Museum.

On Sunday we took an extra long car trip to eat BBQ.  None for Calvin, but he did get this spoon.

As you can see he was very excited about it.

Then we pilgrimaged even further south to the house of beaver.  Chris has an unnatural desire to show this place to people from out of town.

we have a new Buc-ee's fan

If you don't know, Buc-ee's is basically a travel plaza that is off limits to truckers.  They have the normal stuff: gas, ice, meat snacks

and the not so normal stuff: a deli full of many different types of jerky, extremely clean bathrooms, a souvenir penny machine, and gift shop  You can buy everything from buc-ee coozies to cast iron skillets.  Martha got a lovely handmade tile.

We both have a soft spot with this convenience store, but probably because we were stuck down the road from one, camping at a state park on a rainy weekend.  We went to Buc-ee's no less than 3 times in those 2 days.  I am less inclined to take visitors there.  I would like them to come back some day.

Pumpkin Patch

October has arrived and with it came some great fall weather.  Not one to waste a cool weekend, we packed Calvin and his accessories into the car and journeyed an hour to Marble Falls and Sweet Berry Farm for some pumptastic fun.

obligatory cute pumpkin photo

We honestly drove all that way just so I could take this picture - and 50 others just like it.  But there was so much more.  Obviously most of the activities were not appropriate for Calvin, but he enjoyed feeding the goats.

He cried when it was time to move on.  But then we found this guy, who got a little too friendly with Calvin for my taste.  Calvin didn't mind.

and to my delight, they were offering u-pick flowers.  I picked them, Calvin ate them...

                   
and Chris carried them.

We ended the day with a barrel train ride for Calvin and pumpkin ice cream for Chris and me (and a little for Calvin too)

It was a lot of fun and I'm already looking forward to next year when Calvin can run around the candy corn maze.