Baby steps! (not so baby post)

Seth has been really taking strides ;) with his mobility lately and today was one for the record books. When I got home from work he was standing up holding on to the couch so I crouched down a few feet away and asked him to come say hi. He is always really excited to see me after work so he was highly motivated. He let go of the couch, wobbled a little, and took a tiny little step with his left foot. Then he took another tiny little step with his left foot. Then he took ANOTHER tiny step with his left foot. All with no hands! Then he dropped to his knees and stomped over to me. So proud of my little guy! Alright, so it's not technically walking but it is so darn close. Later in the evening he did it again. Just the left foot still but this time it was a much bigger step, probably the equivalent of the first three combined. I'm guessing we'll have some real walking here within a week or so. Yikes! He's also quite the climber and is always trying to crawl out of my lap and over the back of the couch. Nana says 9 months is way too young to be walking because kids are so dumb at that age. No fear baby!


Above is the little Samurai suit Natalie picked up in Hong Kong. So adorable!

We took Seth to the Spokane County Fair back in September, Geez I am so behind! The reason I bring it up actually is just to note that around that time Seth suddenly started getting startled by loud noises. We had stopped to watch the kids' tractor pull and I had Seth in the Moby wrap. Well there was quite a crowd cheering the kids on and all of a sudden I noticed Seth was FREAKING out and crying. We moved away from the chaos and he calmed down right away. He also had a poopy diaper so I'm sure that wasn't helping. Here we are checking out a hot tub, before he got upset of course.


Since then he has also gotten upset once when I cheered him on for going on the potty, more on that later, as well as tonight when Natalie and I cheered him on for taking a step. So not sure what that is about but I'll have to try to be more sensitive to his feelings because my natural instinct is to laugh at him for some reason. Mother of the year, right here!



One of his favorite games right now is hide and go seek. Eric or I will get down on our hands and knees and crawl out of sight. He loves to come "find" us and laughs hysterically when he does. It is so much fun! One of my favorite sounds in the world now is the pitter patter of little hands on the carpet with him panting with the effort. This is a good activity to do in the hour or so before bedtime, it really seems to wear him out. After awhile he takes frequent breaks with his head down on the floor. Then of course he seems to sleep really well after that.


Eric observed that he's so much more grown up in his sleeping habits these days, like a "real boy." Whereas when he was little of course you would lay him down in his crib and there he would stay, now we find him in all sorts of crazy positions. He moves around a LOT during the night. Last night he was flat on his back in the center of his crib with both arms sticking straight out perpendicular to his body (above). Eric says I am playing with fire taking pictures like that. Flash and everything, but he didn't move a muscle.

He is also very good at finding his pacifier and has it in his mouth a lot more than he used to. When he is with me he very rarely gets it unless it's bedtime or naptime. Daddy is a little more lenient and occasionally he'll get it to tide him over while he waits for me to get home from work to feed him. By the way I have since replaced the bumper on the back side of the crib so that outlet is not so tempting. I was also trying to deter him from pushing the pacifiers right out through the rails, but no he still just drops them over the top, little stinker. Whenever it seems like we are running low I can just pull the crib out from the wall and gather them up. Of course he rarely throws them towards the middle of the room where I can easily retrieve them.


He has now peed while sitting on the toilet TWICE. The first time 100% of it went on my pants and the floor. The second time about 50% actually went IN, sweeeeet! I have been taking him into the bathroom right when he gets up from his nap if his diaper is still dry. He usually looks at me like I'm crazy but I think he will figure it out eventually. Even if it saves us one diaper a week, that is something. He pooped in no less than FIVE of them today, 4 of them on daddy's shift. Haha, that's my boy! We have sort of made the switch to Huggies because I got a super awesome deal on them at Rite Aid. We tried them out this week and they fit awesome (the Pure & Natural size 4). The Pampers Baby Dry size 3 we ran out of and they seemed kind of tight anyway, but the size 4's are a little big and have leaked a few times. My big kiddo was 21.6 lbs as of yesterday but I suppose a little less today after all his poops. He is still legal up to 22 lbs in his original Chicco car seat although we did get a convertible too, which we love. But I'll be sad when we have to keep moving it back and forth from Eric's car to mine. Right now we have one in each which is really convenient.


It seems like everyone I know is posting pumpkin patch pictures, so I better jump on the bandwagon while I have a minute. We took Seth 2 weeks ago up in Greenbluff and I think he had a pretty good time. Lots to see. I might post a few more pictures from that day later.



Well this post was originally intended just to report on the walking. But I've been killing time waiting for a scheduled database backup to complete so I can do a server upgrade. And now the time has come. Nighty night! Congratulations if you made it all the way to the end of this monster post.

Seth 9 months

Dear Seth,

Holy cow, you are already 9 months old! You've now officially been outside of me as long as you were inside of me. And I still have about 3 pesky pounds to lose. Dangit! You're going to help me out with that though since I'll be chasing you all over the place pretty soon.

Not a whole lot has changed with your mobility in the few weeks since you started to crawl. Your crawl is SO funny to watch because you always "stomp" your hands on the ground. Usually you've got your head down too and aren't necessarily looking where you are going. You can pull yourself up and walk along a straight edge of the couch holding on with ease. But no amount of coaxing can get you to turn a corner. You don't seem interested in the least in practicing walking with someone holding your hands. You usually immediately drop to your knees and crawl where you want to go. You know your limits, and like Grandpa says, one of these days you'll probably just run across the room out of the blue. You do practice balancing upright on your feet quite a bit and can stand there without holding on for a good 20-30 seconds at a time. Oh, and you have climbed the stairs twice all by yourself with no hesitation.

I'm happy to report your sleeping at night has gotten a lot better. Still no 12 hour stretches but it's nothing like it used to be (thanks to Dr. Ferber). The last few days we seem to be regressing a bit, but Eric insists you are going through a growth spurt. Maybe he is right because you can sure put away the food. Or maybe you're working on your 4th tooth? We'll see! Speaking of food, you will eat just about anything (including grass, the remote control, cat hair, my face, etc). You get a real disgusted look on your face when we put stuff in your mouth you don't like, but usually you'll keep eating it anyway.

You've had 2 episodes of barfing now. The second one happened on Daddy's shift, about two weeks ago I think. The two of you were actually at Toys R Us at the time. I wish I could have seen it because apparently Daddy was standing there cupping your bib under your chin, trying to catch all your puke, and this lady comes up and goes "Ohhh what little cutie! Are you going to smile for me?" Hahaha. Daddy was like "uh, do you not see what is happening here?" Some people are just so dumb. Don't ever repeat that buddy. Anyway, these two barf incidents coincidentally both happened after eating egg yolk. I talked to the nurse in your pediatrician's office and she said "oh honey we don't recommend giving solid foods until at least 6 months and table foods not until a year." Mind you, this was right after I had told her that you were 8 months old. And what exactly is a "table food"? And who does she think she is calling me "Honey"??? Needless to say we won't be giving you egg again for awhile, and maybe we'll even get you tested just to make sure you are not allergic. Since you probably should get a flu shot... but the jury is still out on that one. But you are getting good at mashing stuff up with your gums and can handle chunks of banana, pears, tofu, bread, and the latest and my favoritest - CHEESE! You were all over the cheese yesterday.

Play time is interesting. You will go from whining and needing constant interaction for an hour to suddenly being totally independent and quietly pulling toys out of your bin and examining them one by one. We got you a set of Mega Blocks last week which you and Daddy both enjoy. Daddy builds these elaborate towers and you humor him for a little while before crawling over and destroying them like Godzilla.



You're starting to show slight signs of separation anxiety. When I come home from work in the afternoon, once you've spotted me I cannot leave your sight again for awhile or you get really upset. Usually I try to sneak in the door so I can go change my clothes and use the bathroom before I say hi. Maybe it's because you love me, which I'm sure is true but mostly I think it's because you're hungry. Yup, you are still breastfeeding. I don't know what I'm going to do when you stop because I've gotten so used to being able to eat whatever I want.

Well my darling, time to sign off for today. I forgot to get a monkey picture today but I did get this, which is pretty awesome.



I have a TON of other pictures I need to post. So if you do me a favor and entertain yourself for awhile this week I will get right on it.

Loves,
Mama

Bargain shopping adventures

So, I could basically write a whole book about what's gone on with me all week in my quest to find the greatest deals in all of Spokane. But I'm sure it would be boring, so suffice to say it involved dragging Seth around to an average of 3 stores a day, every day last week. I did want to document the specifics of my shopping trip yesterday though because I felt like it was the cherry on the sundae that was my week.

I spent hours in the morning painstakingly going through the ads and coupons from the Sunday paper and matching up with what I already had, seeing what items we actually use, etc etc. I put together a pretty awesome deal at Rite Aid that was going to get me over $45 worth of cleaning supplies and moisturizer for under $9. Now, this is rookie level savings believe it or not. But for me it... was... awesome.

It all started because I had a coupon for $1 off any 2 Cascade gel dishwasher detergent. And Rite Aid had 45oz Cascade gel on sale 2/$6 with a $1 "Up" Reward which is (if you don't shop at Rite Aid) kind of like a rebate but better because there's no forms to fill out and mail in or submit online. So basically it was going to be 2/$4 which works out to about 4.5 cents an ounce. I also had a coupon for $5 off a $25 purchase and they were having a big Buy 1 Get 1 Free sale on some other cleaning supplies. ANYWAY, long story short I went to 3 different Rite Aids only to find the shelf devoid of 45oz Cascade gel at each one. Boo! At the 4th Rite Aid the sale price tag was stuck on to the shelf where the 75oz size was sitting so I gave it a shot. No such luck, they rang up at 5.99 each but since I had already finished checking out (and survived the skeptical cashier ringing up my SIXTEEN coupons), I was kind of exhausted and REALLY thirsty I just headed back out to my car.

I pounded the Powerade Zero I had bought and with renewed energy I hit a 4th Rite Aid and they didn't have the right size either.

Aside: before you judge me for wasting gas or something I did want to mention that I was going out to the valley already to run on the trail and there were two almost right on my way. Then later I was up on the South Hill to go to Safeway and there are literally 3 Rite Aid stores within about a 1 mile radius.

After Rite Aid #4 I got smart and called the 5th one (I know, I'm a little slow). Yes, they said they had the size that was on sale, so away I went. I walked in and they HAD NO 45oz CASCADE. Ugh. Totally disgusted I managed to track down the girl I had talked to on the phone and while she went to investigate the case of the missing detergent I had the cashier refund my previous purchase of the larger size. When he gets done I look down the aisle and see my helper standing back by the detergent with the manager basically scratching her head. I wandered back to see how things were going and she explained that the 45oz size on sale must have too many phosphates so they probably weren't going to even get it in. They said what they could do was give me the larger size for the sale price. I actually felt bad about that and said that wasn't really necessary but they pretty much insisted and I caved, I mean what do I look like, a saint? So I got 150oz of Cascade detergent for $5. FIVE DOLLARS. That's about 50% off Wal*Mart's online price, which was the cheapest I could find. Besides, I never would have bought it at Wal*Mart anyway because I hate going there and normally I would have just waited until we ran out and then buy it at Fred Meyer whether it was on sale or not.

In conclusion, over the last two weeks I have used over $160 in coupons and sent in for over $75 in rebates. That's $235+ in savings which doesn't even factor in my savings off of the shelf price by paying attention to what is on sale.

We are ALL stocked up now on quite a few things so I think I'm going on hiatus from shopping, briefly, to reflect on what I've learned and more importantly let the adrenaline drain from my body.

Tomorrow Seth will be 9 months old. Where has the year gone?

Seth 38 Weeks

Dear Seth,

You are 38 weeks old today and I noticed this afternoon you have a third tooth poking through. No wonder you have been whining so much! It is your bottom left lateral incisor.

That's all I have time for.

Loves,
Mama