He's on strike!

The Booger is posing some trouble as I return to the semi-real adult working world. Since he hit 6 months, he dropped a couple daytime feedings because his belly was big enough to fill up plus his solid foods in between were keeping him satisfied longer. This meant that even on days that I worked all day, I could nurse him on my lunch break, and he hasn't needed to have bottles. He went several weeks without any bottles at all, and had one when he spent the day with daddy at work. This past Monday I was unable to come home to nurse him, so we left a bottle.

That he adamantly refused for four hours until I got home. We didn't think much of it, I nursed him when I got home and we chalked it up to a fluke.

Until today. He refused to take it again. Let me describe to you the scene I discovered when I got lucky enough to come home early (Mind you I was excited to come home early and then I am greeted with a grouchy, incredibly displeased baby). The Booger sitting in his grandma's lap, slapping his bottle with quite an amazing amount of force, arching his back with every ounce he had, and squealing with an intense amount of displeasure. He then preceded to wiggle himself down, chew on the bottle, pull it out of his mouth, and screech some more. This went on for several minutes, all to my amazement that my generally good natured baby was throwing and all out baby tantrum! Complete with kicking feet.

The last couple times, we've offered the bottle a few times, then when he refused, gave him his usual cereal and fruit for lunch, and kept attempting to offer the bottle. But I think this is counteractive because then he's not really even hungry. After some talking with my sister, I think we've decided to not give him lunch until he takes his bottle. My rationale is that breastmilk is more important than anything else as this point, so we'll wait until he's hungry enough to take his bottle. I've also thought about offering it in a sippy cup. (Stay tuned for more ponderings about those crazy things!)

Ugh! I've barely even started getting into what will be our new situation, and am torn enough just knowing how much I will miss him from now on. Doesn't he know this is hard enough without worrying about him eating enough? Anyone have any suggestions for their own bottle strike experiences?

The naughty boy being cute as a button

Way Back Whens-day (along with some sentimental ramblings)

The Booger is 7 monhts old today! So I thought while I reminisced and got misty eyed about my baby who is already turning into a 'kid', I could play along with Way Back Whens-Day with Twinfatuation. Okay.. 7 months isn't techinically way back, but it's far enough! :-)

The Booger only minutes old! He had more hair then than he does now!

I know I said all this a month ago, but it's amazing how much changes in such a short time. Just since last month, he has (almost) 2 teeth, is sooo close to crawling, is starting to pull himself up, and is climbing all over us. He picks up on everything and is so wonderfully interactive and playful. He is obsessed with grabbing and pulling and tapping everything. He will imitate things we do, and loves to laugh at us making funny faces. For some reason he get great pleasure out of someone yawning or sneezing! He plays well on his own but loves to be tickled and play games with us too. And our favorite- he lifts up his arms to be picked up and loved, especially when he wakes up.

We are very lucky to have such a good, healthy, happy baby. I am thankful everyday, especially as I read the blogs of moms and families dealing with health issues, or when I go to work with the children and adults that I work with. We have not had to fear that we'd lose him any minute, or grieve about extra problems or difficulties we know he would have to overcome. My heart and support goes to all families who live with the worry and the wonder that comes with raising children with special needs, health or otherwise.

It's also fun to have the connection with other people that comes with being a parent. Other parents just get the crazy, all encompassing love that we have for our son, and bear with us while we gush adoringly. It takes your own parenthood to make you stop and think about everything that the other person with two kids in tow has gone through to make out of the house, or to make it out the door to work or school. You know that they've probably spent many mornings or evenings cuddling with their little ones, and countless nights up changing diapers and feeding their kids in a dark, sleepy fog. You know they've called five people just to get ahold of someone to celebrate that the baby just smiled at them, or they've argued with themselves whether or not to call the doctor about something at 4:30 on a Friday because they don't want to go the whole weekend wondering. When you think about what you've done to get through the last day or week or month with your family- you really appreciate the grumpy person you just came across, because they were probably doing the same thing with theirs!

Now that I've gushed- take a few minutes to visit Twinfatuation and enjoy some more thought-provoking moments in the form of pictures!

Two for Twosday!

Our family time this weekend made me decide to share a picture of my two favorite boys in the whole world! The Booger's daddy loves the water- being on it, near it, or in it, and I'm sure as the Booger gets older, he will log many hours at the lake (any lake will do!)

This picture if from a while ago when we spent an afternoon at one of the great parks in Portage. There are lots of great parks and trails with playgrounds and courts, we will have lots of fun visiting them all over the next few years!

Family fun

We decided a few weeks ago that we needed to do something fun just the three of us. We've done things with family, and lots of work around the house this summer, and some much enjoyed relaxing but hadn't had a chance for a family outing.

We looked into stuff and knew we couldn't stray too far or get too wild and crazy, so we chose John Ball Zoo. Only an hour away, and lots of fun things, even an aquariam and a Treasues of the Tropics building with lots of cool animals up close. This was definitely the Booger's favorite, next to the Spider Monkeys. He has little monkey feet that grip things quite amazingly. He was happy to his friends, and was trying to figure out how to set up some ropes at home so he could swing around like they were.

We enjoyed ourselves and were home in time to nap and eat before anyone was to grouchy. Check out the fun we had

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Here comes trouble

I'm only a day late for Debi's Baby Picure Sundays better late than never! But we had some family fun yesterday and didn't bother with the computer. Right in the beginning of our fun, the Booger found some trouble to get into...

So many buttons... so little time...

I could get the hang of this

C'mon, get out of the way, baby behind the wheel!

Hmmm?

The Booger loves to eat, and has always (pretty) willingly accepted new foods and chowed down like there's no tomorrow. Which has been great- we get some silly faces when he tries something new and we've tried all the 1st foods and are now beginning to move onto 2nds. I stocked up really well on 1st foods and now have been stocking up on 2nds. We've gone through most everything except for the EXORBITANT amount of applesauce and bananas I apparently bought.

So- we have at least 6 more 2 pks of bananas, which of course seems to be the one food that is not agreeing with him. Has anyone heard of a baby being allergic to bananas? We're thinking he may be. We gave him half a container at dinner on Sunday night, and Monday morning, I got a call from Daddy while I was at work, saying the Booger had some kind of rash on his forehead and cheeks. We didn't think too much, called the pediatrician and they said we could put some lotion on it, that if it changed or got worse or he seemed out of sorts we could bring him in.

So we decided to just keep an eye, it seemed to lighten up a bit throughout the day. Then he had the other half of the bananas for dinner that night and the next night. Each day it would get a bit lighter and then worse the next morning. The last two foods we introduced were bananas and green beans. Since the most recent thing was bananas we decided that could be the culprit. I gave him green beans a couple times and it didn't seem to get worse, and I can't think of anything else that has changed.

I've looked up rashes and such and it doesn't seem to sound like anything, and he hasn't been really out of sorts. Just tired because he once again can't decided when he wants to nap. Here are some pictures- not the best (why would he cooperate when I wanted him too! hehe)but there is a reddish/orangish splotch across his forehead, and his cheeks, with one kind of concentrated spot on one cheek. Let me know if you have any ideas/suggestions. Looks like we might be crossing bananas off our list of foods!

Two for Twosday!

And again, it's Twosday!

With my *one* kid, I get a little creative to play along...

Meet the Booger's favorite singing caterpillar. This was one of the first toys he ever 'asked' for. He was playing with other things and got fussy, so I gave him something else, and he still fussed, and reached out to the caterpillar in the bin next to him and tapped it, then looked at me thinking "Duh, mom- I want that!". He loves the little bug on top, it sings the alphabet and hits it over and over and over....

Be sure to check out Deanna's blog to play along and see other great pics.