Adorable Alter Egos

Superhero by day…

Skeleton-Slaying Kangaroo by night.

Happy Halloween!

The Seventh and Eighth Months

Hey guys! Alexander here. My mom’s gotten terrible about remembering to blog — can you believe she never wrote my 7-month post?! — so I figured I’d step in and do it for her. A lot has happened in the last couple of months, and I have so much to tell you!

First, I celebrated my first Easter. It was pretty fun! Mom and Dad took me to church where they officially became godparents at my friend Mattelynn’s baptism. Then we hung out with Matty and her parents all day long. It was such a nice day that I didn’t mind too much when the grown ups stuck these silly rabbit ears on my head and made me pose for pictures. (Who am I kidding, I’m a total ham for the camera!)

I also learned how to sit up. At first, I was a little wobbly and toppled over pretty easily. But now I’m an old pro. You can sit me up anywhere and I’ll play happily for quite awhile without falling over.

Of course, I’ve recently discovered something even more fun than sitting: crawling. Well, not crawling, exactly…it’s more like I drag myself around on my stomach mostly using my arms and pushing off with my feet a little. But I’m getting ahead of myself — that’s a skill I just learned in the last week. Let’s get back to my seventh month.

Mommy and Daddy took me to the park where I learned about swings. It was a little confusing, but mostly fun. I hope I get to go back to the park again soon!

You guys, do you know what’s exhausting? Eating! Usually it’s pretty great — I mean, what’s not to love about all the exciting new flavors and colors that I get to smear all over myself? But this one time, Mommy was feeding me when I was tired, and as soon as I finished my last bite, I just laid my head down and took a nap, right there in my high chair. It wasn’t the most comfortable nap I’ve ever taken, but I just couldn’t help myself. Sometimes you just gotta take a break, you know?

Here I am the day I turned 7 months old. I weighed about 20 pounds back then…I’d say I’m creeping up on 25 by now. I’m a growing machine!

My eighth month was pretty great, too. Mommy worked from home for a couple weeks, which meant I got to hang out with her a lot more than usual. Even if she was being boring and sitting at the computer most of the time (can you believe she wouldn’t let me have a turn? I’d LOVE to get my hands on that keyboard!), she also played with me a lot and let me hang out in what I like to call my “Arm Chair.”

Get it? Because it’s a chair? But it’s also an arm? Hahaha I crack myself up.

One day, all this big, flaky white stuff fell out of the sky. Apparently this has happened before, but this was the first time I’d ever noticed it. It was completely mesmerizing.

And then, just like that, a few days later the sun was shining again and I got to play outside. (Did I mention that I grew a bunch of hair? Yeah. That happened.)

I’ve gotten pretty good at holding my own bottle — sometimes I even multitask and hold a bottle and a toy at the same time. I’m just that good.

But sometimes, when I’m feeling lazy, I just have my toys hold the bottle for me. My elephant is especially good at this. One of many reasons he’s always been my favorite.

You know what else I’m really good at? Removing socks! Mom and Dad keep putting them on my feet — or on my cousin Maeta’s feet — and I just keep pulling them right off. It’s one of the funnest games I know.

I got to help Mom celebrate her first Mother’s Day. I gave her lots of love and snuggles, played with my cousin Maeta and my friend Mattelynn while Dad grill a delicious meal for my Mom and my Auntie Jenn and Mattelynn’s mom, and then Dad and I took Mom shopping for flowers for the deck. I think Mom had a pretty great day — she sure seemed happy!

Speaking of the deck, it is a really fun place! Grandma and Grandpa came and spent a week with us, and we all spent a lot of time out on the deck. They even took my walker out there so I could chase the dogs around. I hope we get to have a lot more deck time this summer.

Let’s see…what else have I been up to? There’s the pseudo-crawling, the dog chasing, the teeth…oh yeah, the teeth! I have two of them! Right in the middle of the bottom of my mouth. Can you believe that? I’m going to be eating big kid food before you know it!

(I know you can’t see my teeth in this picture, but I assure you, they are there.)

Just last weekend, Mom and Dad introduced me to another fun thing about summer: Swimming! I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical at first, but then I realized that the pool is basically just a giant bath tub. And, you guys, I love the bath tub! Mom and Dad let me float around a bit, and then they took me out of the floaty and held me so I could really splash around. The only thing I didn’t understand is why, whenever I splashed with my arms, someone kept throwing water in my face. That part was a little confusing, but I still had tons of fun. Daddy says he doesn’t have to work all summer, and that means we get to go to the pool whenever we want. I’m so excited!

Here I am today, on my 8-month birthday. Can you believe how big I’m getting? Mommy and Daddy say I get cuter every single day, and I tend to believe them.

Okay, I think we’re all caught up now. I’d say I’ll try to convince my mom to post more often, but I think we all know how easily distracted she can be. She just gets so busy playing with me that she runs out of time to blog about me. I guess I can forgive her for that, though.

The Third Month

This month, Alexander learned about traveling. We went to Virginia to visit Tim’s parents, a trip that involved planes, layovers, and lots of time in the Baby Bjorn. He was a great little traveler, with minimal fussing on the planes, and he tolerated being schlepped around Colonial Williamsburg very well.

We did get to change multiple diapers and outfits mid-flight, which was fun, except Alexander was the only one who had a change of clothes in the carry-on, so some of us had to sit through the rest of the flight with the results of a diaper blowout on our jeans.

Fun fact: Most airplanes don’t have baby changing stations in the lavatories. On a related note, next time you travel, you may want to wipe down your tray table with a Clorox wipe before putting food on it.

We had a really good time in Williamsburg, touring around, soaking up the history, and hanging out with Tim’s parents. We also got to meet up with our friend Mike, who we don’t see nearly often enough, and his adorable son. AND we got to meet Lindsey and her husband Edgar for dinner. Lindsey and I have been online BFFs for years, and it was so much fun to finally get to hang out with her. She’s every bit as awesome in person as I expected her to be.

This month, Alexander also learned about Christmas. At 5:00 Christmas Eve morning, we flew home from Virginia and went straight to my parents’ house in Ft. Collins. It was incredibly exhausting, but once we all got to take a nap we felt better.

Alexander was so tired from staying up most of the night waiting for Santa to come that he slept through most of the presents Christmas morning. Silly kid!

The night of the 26th, though, he gave us the best present of all by sleeping through the night for the first time. A solid 9 hours of sleep! Don’t tell anyone, but he’s been consistently sleeping through the night ever since, and it has been marvelous. It’s especially good timing since this was also my last month of maternity leave, and going to work is a lot less exhausting than it would be if I were still getting up for a 3am baby feeding.

My return to work is a story for a different post, though. For now, I’ll leave you with this picture of Alexander on his 3-month birthday. He’s more than doubled his birth weight, and he’s getting more adorable by the second.

Thankful

I have a lot to be thankful for this year, including (but not limited to):

  • The little taco shop down the street that not only makes delicious breakfast burritos, but will make them without eggs for those of us who prefer our burritos egg-free.
  • My wonderful husband, who goes and picks up breakfast burritos from the taco shop down the street every weekend. (I’m thankful for him for lots of other reasons, too.)
  • My sister-in-law, who jogged at a slow pace with me even though she could have run much faster and kept me motivated to complete my first 5-K yesterday morning. I didn’t stop to walk at all, and I finished in 33 minutes and 1 second.
  • All of my in-laws, for deciding that we would run the Turkey Trot yesterday morning. If not for the Turkey Trot, we might have stayed at my in-laws’ house the night before Thanksgiving, and rather than discovering at midnight on the coldest night of the year (so far) that our furnace had stopped working, we likely would have come home the next night to frozen and cracked pipes.
  • The furnace repair man, who got out of his warm bed at 1:30 Thanksgiving morning to fix our furnace for not too exorbitant a fee, all things considered.
  • My wonderful husband, for letting me snuggle with the dogs under the electric blanket while he dealt with the furnace repair man in our frigid house. (I told you he was good for more than just breakfast burritos.)
  • My parents, for being all-around fantastic and never failing to amaze us with their generosity, most recently as we try to sort out all the details of selling one house and building another.
  • The fact that in just a few short months we’ll be moving here:

It doesn’t look like much now, but soon enough it’ll be the house of our dreams.

What are you thankful for this year?

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, full of food, family, laughter, and lots of goodies from Santa!

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