Ol' Chomper

Three big advancements the past few days include being able to sit up on his own, being able to crawl the regular way and having cut his first tooth! The tooth is on the bottom in the front and he has used his new exploration skills to crawl all over the house and try out "ol' chomper" on everything.

Crawling into the bathroom to try to eat a toilet paper roll:


Trying to eat his crib bars:


And trying to "read" (eat) his favorite book, "Baby Animals":


He really is crawling all over the house now. I took a similar video from the last post so that you can see the progress:



Today is Halloween and we are going to take Joseph out for his first (short) experience trick-or-treating! He's going as Batman. Pictures and stories of this adventure next time!

Boot Scootin' Boogie

I took Joe to the pediatrician for his 6-month appointment, but he had a very slight fever (99.9) and a bit of a runny nose, so we postponed vaccines until next week. Other than that, he's still hovering at 20lbs which puts him down to the 75th percentile for weight. His height/head are still in the 99th percentile so the pediatrician told me that he's probably going to be taller than Joe Daddy by an inch or two. My brother is 6'4" so tall boys run on my side of the family.

I realized that it's been over a month since I've posted a video so I took one today! Enjoy!

Joe Sixpack

Joe celebrated his 6 month birthday with a visit from Uncle J which is just what he needed after such a tough sick-week. He had lots of attention, got to show off his new scooting moves and even got a new wooden toy whale on wheels.


Joe also got to show off his new ability to eat food. He typically eats apples and pears for breakfast and has a lunch or dinner of sweet potatoes and carrots/squash/leftovers. He can't stand peas. Joe Daddy claims that the peas do in fact taste disgusting. But, by far, his favorite is apples. I'm actually entering Joe in a contest that our baby food company is running. (With a baby as cute as Joe, how could I not?) I'll give more details about this in a later post. I'm REALLY excited about it though cause I think we've got a good shot at winning -- and the winner gets a month of baby diapers/wipes/food!!



Joe's got his 6 month pediatrician appointment next week and I look forward to hearing about his height/weight. While he was sick in the ER they weighed him and he was just over 20lbs, so now that he's all better I bet he's closer to 21 pounds now.

That brings me to the next subject: car seats! We registered for a rear facing infant seat (5-22lbs) and a forward facing convertible seat (20-100lbs). It seemed to me like this would cover it! Whoops.

You are supposed to keep infants "rear for a year", which is not usually a problem -- unless you have an infant who is 6 months and already off the growth chart! It turns out that Graco makes a "special carseat" for just such problems. It's called the "Graco Snugride 32" because "Graco Chunky Style" must have been too inappropriate. I ordered it on Amazon and it came in two days! It's absolutely fabulous in a thousand ways, not the least of which is that our child doesn't hang out of it like he did with the old seat. It claims to fit "97% of 1 year olds" because it has a weight limit of 32 pounds -- so it will at least give us a couple more months. :)

In other news, Joe really loves getting into "trouble" and when he gets "caught" he cracks up. While writing this blog, he managed to get himself half under the changing table. I took a picture of him being 'caught' and then his reaction.



I better go get him outta there!!
-

September

Last month was very eventful -- some good and some bad. I'll start with the bad first.

After taking care of Joe completely on our own for five months, Joe Daddy and I decided to start using some of the resources that JD's work provides in terms of short-term child care options. PU provides us with the resources to send Joe to day care once a week for free. We figured that I could use the break to go grocery shopping without lugging Joe with me, or take a walk solo to get some fresh air sometimes or even get some sleep! So we got all signed up and they referred us to a "highly regarded, fully accredited, hospital affiliated" center. Even better, it had a 1:1.5 ratio (3 kids and 2 teachers!) We set Joe up to go there on a Wednesday from 10am-4pm. I used the time to get my tri-annual hair cut/color. Unfortunately, when Joe Daddy and I went to pick Joe up, he was screaming and they were asking us to fill out an "incident report".

They told us he had been bitten in the hand by one of the other children. They had ice on the wound when we got there. Later on at home, we took a good look at him and found bad scratches and some small bruises. It was awful.




We called to find out how the other injuries happened and were just told, "We don't know what happened." Bad answer. Although at that point, no answer that they could have come up with would have been good enough. Unfortunately the story doesn't end here. We noticed that he was spitting up alot and the next day got worse... and the next day got worse. Within three days, Joe felt like a human torch. Long story short, he ended up with a fever of 105.4 and we had to take him to the Emergency Room. I honestly can't even write out how horrible it was -- the nurses made me leave the room for about 30 minutes. He had to have blood drawn and urine drawn from a catheter for testing. It turned out to be some really bad virus, but we still don't have the exact diagnosis. The nurses felt bad for all the 'trauma', so they gave Joey a cute stuffed moose during our discharge from the ER.


Trying to find the bright side in all of this, we did learn a few things from this experience:
1. We will never again trust other people (even an Ivy League institution) to find a good child care center for us. I will do all the research/visiting/etc myself.
2. Joe has momma's trait of having difficult-to-locate veins and super fast clotting. I feel terrible for him. It's not a good thing for me to pass down. :(
3. Joe has daddy's trait of being 'immune' to Tylenol. It never brought down his fever at all, but within an hour of receiving Motrin, his fever went down by 3 degrees.

OK! Enough about the bad stuff! Let's move on to the cute stuff!

Joe is still a big-ol-kid! He's a few ounces over 20lbs and is starting to not fit in some of his favorite toys anymore. I guess it's time to move on to bigger and better things!


He is pretty mobile now. He's not a fast crawler, but he can scoot and roll well enough to get anywhere he wants to go. His favorite places to go exploring include the closet, under any table, and I even found him once underneath his jumper. I don't know how he got there, but he seemed very pleased with himself.



Joe also met some new folks who visited us this past month.

Here's Joe with JM's friend and roommate from college:


Here's Joe with JD's friend from high school and his lovely wife:


I also got to visit the boys that I used to nanny. Anytime their Grandma Judy comes to town, she gives me a call so we can all get together. She adored Joe and even helped me change a poopy diaper. It was amazing.



This is a pretty large update, so I'll stop here. Sunday is Joe's 6 month birthday and Uncle J is here visiting, so I will probably post after this weekend with more. I'll leave you with a couple of random cute pictures that I couldn't fit in anywhere else.

Thanks for Holding

Hi, everybody! Sorry for the long delay. We had an extended-family hiccup and decided the best way forward was to change the link to the baby blog. I'm sooo excited to be able to post updates again! It's been quite a month!!! It's going to take me awhile to upload everything for this past month, so give me a day and I'll post a ginormous update.

Love you guys and thanks for your concerned emails/texts/etc.
-Joe Momma

P.S. Here's one picture to tide you over until the big update is posted: