Standing

Alex often will hold on to something (window ledge) and then before you know it (and him apparently too!) he is standing by himself. As soon as he figures it out, though, he sits his bottom down and starts doing something else.

He is pretty fun right now!

9 month developments

9 things Alex is doing now:



1) standing!!! (I know - he probably will be walking by 10 months! He just wants.to.move.all.the.time.)

2) crusing along while holding on to furniture

3) 4 teeth! The two top teeth are coming in and they are SOOO cute!

4) not sleeping very well - a GREAT night is still waking 3 times a night. Most nights are uncountable (6-10?) We are having a rough time with this one because it seems like he has to sleep ON us. (and wake up every 45 min?) I've told Lance this is a phase but it's often hard to see that when you're in it.

5) very clingy towards the Mama

6) walking with assistance from a walking toy - very roughly

7) opening cabinets and drawers in the kitchen and making noises by banging them

8) Eating like a horse - he likes "big person" food now - no baby food. He really likes chili, spaghetti sauce and anything that we're eating.

9) this one is for Mama - since I'm losing my milk, so therefore we're feeding him more and more of formula. Good thing it's only until he's one year old. It's expensive! We're blowing through it and just bought 4 cans from Costco.

Stockings

When Christmas was growing near - - - Lance asked "how can we have stocking stuffers without "Mom" and "Dad" stockings?" Well, the answer was to make some! I searched a bit for some already made stockings that we could embellish with "Mom" "Dad" and "Alex" but none seemed to be just right. So, off to the fabric store and here are three new wool felt stockings hand sewn by "Mom" and Grandma Sandy. The toughest part was deciding what to put on each of the stockings. Lance's (aka "Dad") is a tree with button lights and snowflakes because he is crazy nuts about getting the perfect tree each year. My stocking (aka "Mom") is poinsettia and holly because of my love of plants. Alex's is a snowman because Lance can't wait to build a snowman with Alex someday.

All I want for Christmas is my two front

Teeth

Busy busy bee

It's that time of year, folks.

Busy. (the reason why I haven't posted in a while...)

We are off from work and now hosting a tamale Christmas Eve family get together at our house tomorrow. We are really exicted. Beans and rice, chips and salsa, tamales, and guacamole! Not the traditional fare at our house.

I think we are all ready, though. The tamales are prepared. The Christmas presents are bought and wrapped. The house just needs a light cleaning and we're on our way!

Here are some pictures of us last year - when we were awaiting our little one's arrival into the world. We took a wonderful road trip to San Diego area.

Here I am somewhere in Eastern Oregon (or NW Nevada I can't remember). I don't even look pregnant! But, was 5 mo along!

Here is Lance (aka Daddy) in the lowest spot on the continent? ---- Death Valley

And here we both are on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Oceanside, Ca.

What a difference a year makes. A family of two becomes a family of three. Pure Joy!

Par-tay poopers

It seems as though everyone (every baby and some of the parents) have developed a stomach bug after coming to our party on Saturday. Ok, not everyone - everyone, but two families so far!

The bug was virulent and highly contagious.

I feel absolutely horrible!

But, I know that it's not my fault, it just happened.

But, I still feel horrible!

For the babies it was a night of throwing up and then days of diarrhea (he missed 3 days of daycare and now Mama is officially out of sick time). Alex threw up from about 7pm-3am when he had it and he was covered in it, along with Mama (me) and our entire king size bed. Everything needed to be washed. The good news is that baby barf is pretty harmless. It's little more than baby spit up - just more voluminous.

And for myself (one of the parents who caught it as well) it was 3-4 hours of throwing up, a low grade fever of 101F, and diarrhea. Lance just had a low grade fever, no barfs, no poopers and a really bad stomach ache.

I took little Alex to the Dr. and they said it was definitely going around.

No fun being sick ourselves about 2 weeks ago and then hearing that everyone (OK, not everyone - but, definitely the majority) of people who came to my par-tay got sick. :(

Help getting the tree up

riding a car

Cookies and Kids Par-tay!

Yesterday we hosted a Cookies and Kids party for all the new families I've meet along this wonderful journey. Some people might think I'm crazy, with work, the holidays and hosting a party at my house with 10 little ones.

But, it was a blast.

I cooked up some quick home made chili with cornbread and all the fixins and had some wine, cheese and crackers and veggie tray. That's it! It was fairly easy to get together! We decorated the house and I made my fudge. The deal was to bring some cookies/candy or confection treat to then split up and share with everyone. We had tons of great treats and I think eveyone went home happy.

We sure had a good time and it was totally worth it to me to do all the work so that I could see some of my new Mom friends and the babies! My how they have grown!

My home made chili recipe (well, actually it's my Mom's):
Brown about 1-2 lbs meat (I used ground turkey)
saute one chopped onion
add a little bit of garlic after the onions are sauted
then add some canned tomatoes (I used diced) and some cans of "chili" beans until it looks the right proportions.
Add oregano, cumin and chili spice, salt and pepper to your liking.
Bring to a boil and cook for a while.

Serve with sour cream, onions of some sort and CHEESE!

There you go - chili away!

I love all things photography and pictures

As some of you already know - I love to take pictures. I love my Canon Digital XTi camera that Lance gave me for Xmas 2 years ago. Love. Love. Love. I think I've taken ~2500 pictures.

Not kidding. :)

So, in my look out for all things cool with photography I've found some websites that I thought I would share with everyone. They are really fun!

My first site I would like to talk about is picnik This site is so easy to use, free and fun. (As can be seen from the above Santa hat photo of us.) You upload your photos or interface via flicker or any number of other web storage sites and it is very user friendly to create photography masterpieces.

All for free! Zip. Nada. Nothing. FREE.

You can pay ~$25/year for "premium" features, but right now I'm just having fun with what they've got for free. See what else I've created!

(fun, yet not so out there)

(plain, yet classy)

And the second website is tabblo It's easy.

(yes, you do have to register unlike with the above website)

You upload your photos (or interface with any number of web storage sites i.e. flicker) and there are many templates, colors and ways to get cool collages. The even cooler part is that you can get a pdf format and post to your website - see below - or print from home or print via them. I went the cheap way obviously. I haven't had too long to explore this site, yet. I'm sure there is more fun to be had.

I created this wonderful collage of all things Alex and sent it along with my Xmas newsletter. The possibilities are endless!

If any of you are looking for stocking stuffers and have about $500 in mind to spend - look no further than here . This lens does everything - close up and zoom all in one. It's definately on my wishlish so that I can take more photos and make more Tabblo and funny pictures.

snow

Lance got to show Alex snow for the first time.

Santa Pictures

I got a great tip from a friend - skip the line up for hours at the mall and make an appointment at Chapters Photography .

Wow! I am so impressed. Not only was the appointment easy to make (online) but it was so easy to get to at Bothell Country Village and the photographer is a Dad! ... he knows how kids are.

Alex was slightly cranky and I said that he might be hungry. They were super flexible about this and we had a great time. Next year I will make the appointment for the morning hours since Alex seems to be less cranky then.

They are not only easy to work with, but are very creative with their photography and are reasonably priced. I got 2-5x7s and 8 wallets for $42! No sitting fee - no anything else fee.

They even threw in 2 more poses (bottom two pics) for free!

Can I make my appointment for next year already?

34 1/2 weeks in...

...over 34 1/2 weeks out.

I tried to time it just right.

But, then life stepped in and things got too busy (work, holidays, parties, sick, etc) for me to remember.

Remember to post that Alex has now been outside the womb for >34 1/2 weeks. (actually ~37 weeks!)

Can you believe it? Our little man is now almost 9 months old!

He is crawling faster and faster all the time and our two stairs in our kitchen are no problemo. He's up them in 2 seconds flat! He's pulling up on everything - even objects without a hand hold - like our sliding glass door. He's starting to take a step and move his hand along an object in order to move himself along. He's getting his top two teeth at the same time. :) He's still follicly challenged in the hair department, but he's eating well and as Lance's grandpa used to say to him "eat carrots to put hair on your chest!". He likes carrots... so, we'll see! Hopefully some of the hair ends up on his head. He's able to tell when we're going to put him in the highchair, exersaucer or any thing else and straightens his legs when he doesn't want to do it. He arches his back and tells us he wants out of things. Sometimes he even does this when he's not in anything (aka the floor) and he falls back and hits his head (not really funny... but, kinda). We have to keep him entertained when we (physically restrain) change his diaper since he and the diaper changing station aren't best of friends lately. He loves his tongue and we hope that he doesn't (with his new top and bottom teeth) bite it off. We just had to buy him some new pants since he is so tall, otherwise they all end up looking like shorts.

He has developed quite a personality in his 9 months out.

3 tired puppies

After a long night of waking an uncountable number of times - Lance snapped this shot of Alex, Mama and Bella all in bed.

Alex had crawled himself around and was facing the foot of the bed. Bella has weaseled her way into bed again and is now relegated to the bottom edge (often with a nose out of the covers) all with Mama squished in the middle.

crawling & stairs

Alex is not only just crawling and pulling up.... but, crawling up stairs. Like a mad man! We have to watch him like a hawk now. The lower two pictures are from a time when he was playing by himself in the family room and I was in the kitchen watching him. 2 seconds.... I swear! He was crawling up in the kitchen underneath the table.

mmmmm..... sand dollars are tasty

Thanksgiving weekend we enjoyed a trip to the beach in Gig Harbor and had the beach to ourselves. We bundled up and walked around. Look what Alex found!

Mmmmm... sand dollars are tasty!