10 month milestones and Jenny's Journey

Today is the big day that my little guy turns 10 months old!  Very exciting, but yet very scary at the same time.  That means the countdown is on!  And yes, I have started planning his birthday party!  While I am sad that my baby boy will be turning 1 and becomes a "toddler", I am really excited for his party!  I LOVE birthdays- they are so important to me! I really try to remember everyone's birthday and send a card or at least let them I am thinking about them. (Although I do have to admit that I haven't does as well this year).

This past month has been pretty crazy at the Monaghan Pad. Caiden wants to explore every inch of the house.  He gets fascinated by the littlest things- it's so neat to watch and realize how much we take for granted! I have to share this video of him exploring the kitchen cabinets and playing with a door. I was cracking up! ( I was going to upload two but one went all night and never finished!)

Here are his 10 month milestones:

• Use thumb and finger pincer grasp to pick things up ( as you saw in my last post he loves to eat finger food!)
• Crawls well, with belly off the ground - and FAST!
• Puts objects into a container- this is one of his favorite things to do- he takes a ball from his ball popper and puts it in one of his stacking cups.  I just got him a shape sorter so we are going to work on that next! Here he is putting his ball in his new sippy cup.

• Stand holding on to someone or something
• Walk holding onto furniture - yep... he's cruising!
• Pull up to standing position from sitting
• Wave goodbye : we really have never tried to teach him this so he hasn't seen it much.  I'm going to start working on it though!
• Understand the word no but doesn’t always obey it - he tends to laugh when we say "no".  Hope that's not a sign of things to come!
• Respond to own name
• The big one- he just started today- Clapping his hands!! He started clapping while I was changing his diaper this morning!
• He's really acting like he wants to feed himself so Monday I let him at it. 

We don't have another doctor's appointment until his 12 month, so I'm not sure on his stats.  I sat him on the scale and it looks like he's about 20 lbs- but it's not a digital scale so it's hard to tell!  He still just has the bottom two teeth, but I really think that more are coming in on the bottom.  For those of you who have been following along on the sleeping saga- I think it is slowly getting better.  He just woke up crying right now so I hope I didn't jinx myself.  I'll be back...  Ok- He goes to bed at 7:00 no problem. He tends to wake up a couple of times within the first hour or two and we just go in and lay him back down and he goes back to sleep.  Typically he sleeps until 5:30 or 6am.  He does wake up in the night, but we have stopped going in, and he does go back to sleep.  On the napping front, he usually falls asleep in the car on the way home from class in the morning and will sleep about 30-40 minutes.  In the afternoons, I have worked with him so now he will nap in his crib for about 20-30 minutes.

I also wanted to tell you about the journey that my sister, Jenny, is on.  She has dedicated herself to run the Oklahoma City Memorial Half Marathon on May 1, 2011.  This really surprised me when she told me because she was never a big runner in the past. Not that she wasn't able- I just never knew she was interested in it. She has been training with the Team in Training program for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) since last fall. She is doing this to honor a co-worker of hers who had recently passed away for myeloma. You can read about Clancy on her website. I am so proud of her for doing this and am trying to encourage her in any way I can. I would love it if you could check out her site (http://pages.teamintraining.org/mid/okcity11/jyinger), maybe leave her some words of encouragement and perhaps a donation to help her on her way if you feel so inclined! 

Has spring really sprung?

The weather has been beautiful lately, in the mid-70s, so this past weekend Eric and I got to spend some time outside with Caiden. We started off on Saturday by going to my Stoller Strides class.  It was family day so the daddy's were invited to join us! I was glas that Eric got to see how hard I've been working out.  After class we went to the park and played for a little bit.

Here's the boys enjoying the swing:

And then some fun on the slide:

Then some crawling around- it was really windy!

I was looking through some pictures and realized that I hadn't posted any of Caiden eating his finger food.  He is getting so good- he feeds himself puffs, MumMums, avocado, cooked apple & pear slices and whole grain bread. And last night- one of the big moments that his daddy's been waiting for... his first steak dinner!  We pureed some steak, carrots and cauliflower and Caiden loved it.  Now we can't wait for the chips and salsa :)

I'll send you off today with a new way to explore an old toy!  Be sure to check back later this week for Caiden's 10 month milestones!



Ups and Downs

So should I start out with the positive or negative?  Hmmm, maybe the bad so I can finish on a good note.

You might be expecting me to be posting about our ski trip last week.  You might have noticed my little countdown ticker counting down the days.  Well, we didn't go.  Our plans were to travel Monday, ski Tuesday and Wednesday, and travel home on Thursday.  Eric and I were really excited to go skiing and have a vacation.  Eric's mom was going with us so that she could watch Caiden while we skied.  We had won this package at the Hyatt ski in/ski out resort (normally about $800/night). Sounds perfect, huh? I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  Monday morning we got to the airport at 8am for our 12:00 flight.  Normally we don't get to the airport that early, but it was the day after the Super Bowl, so everyone and their brother was going to be at the airport. We got right through security no problem and sat down and had some breakfast. Just after that we found out that our 12:00 flight was cancelled.  The next flight was at 6:00pm and we decided to stay at the airport and wait (rather than leaving and coming back)  due to the onslaught of other people at the airport that day. We found a couple of play areas for Caiden and had lunch and wasted the day away.  Just before the flight, there was a gate change.  We had to switch terminals so we headed for the Sky Link (the train that connects the terminals). When we got out of the elevator to go to the train, there was a train pulling in.  I had the stupid urge to rush to get on that train and I tripped and fell. The worst part of all is that I was carrying Caiden at the time.  Yep- worst mom of the year award goes to Me! We both took a nose dive with my face bearing the brunt of the fall.  I did whatever I could to protect him and not smash him.  Luckily a nice pilot called emergency and the paramedics came to check us out.  We are both ok physically and they said that Caiden got the best of it because he didn't tense up during the fall.  We were all pretty shook up so we decided it would be better to not go on the trip!  I am slowly getting over the guilt as I know it was an accident, but it is just a terrible feeling to know that something you did caused your child to be injured!

Enough of the drama- yesterday was Valentine's Day and I must say, that I have 2 of the best Valentine's.  Caiden received little goodies in the mail all week from Nana & Papa, Aunt Jenny, Uncle Rusty and Addison and Ethan; Grandma Sorensen and Grandpa Glamann. On Friday, Caiden and I went to a cookie/cupcake decorating party at my neighbor/friend Jamie's house.  She is very brave to have 18 little ones running around with pink and red frosting! I think we did manage to get a photo of them all, but I'll have to get it from someone else, and upload it later.  Eric and I celebrated this weekend because he had to go to Chicago on Monday for a recruiting trip.  We went out to dinner at Outback (thanks Dad for the gift card!) and  Eric surprised me with roses, chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne!  He knows me so well!! On Monday, Caiden and I went to Stroller Strides where we had a joint class with Baby Signs and learned some sign language! Caiden gave out these little Valentine's to his pals!

And here he is with my roses!  Of course he wanted to eat them!

So- this is a much better week.  Enjoying being back to normal (and the 70 temps as well)! Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Brrrrr.... and some random thoughts

Today was our second day of being "snowed in".  Although, it's more like we are "iced in".  Monday night/Tuesday morning we got rain, then freezing rain, then sleet, and then a little bit of snow.  It was sleeting so hard that it was pelting the window above our bed making it difficult to sleep- and there was lightening too!  The worst part is the temperatures.  It hasn't been this cold here in decades.  We've had single digits with negative wind chills- Brrrrrr.   All of the schools have been canceled and have already cancelled for tomorrow! I feel bad for the kids though, because usually on a snow day they get to go out and play in the snow- but not this time. 

The other big news story is the Super Bowl this weekend.  I can't wait for it to be over!  So much hype!  At least this year we can sit and relax and watch the commercials- I mean, the game :)

A quick update on the baby proofing- we successfully upholstered our stair. (see the previous post if you don't know what I'm talking about).  It didn't turn out too bad- definitely not designer, but at least a baby's sweet head will be spared!

Here's the foam

 And Caiden checking it out

A little video of him playing



I don't think I've posted a picture on here of Caiden's teeth.  It's been hard to get a god picture of them!  It looks like two more might be coming in soon, but the top ones are still MIA.

 This last picture cracks me up- but you kinda had to be there. I put Caiden down to play one morning last week while I was getting the diaper bag ready to go. He likes to use his toy basket to stand up and when I looked over, I saw him like this.  I guess the basket tipped over and he was high-centered on it.  He looked like Superman!