Busy being 6 months!

It's been forever since I've blogged! And in my defense I thought Blogger broke. haha. It won't allow me to log in on my Mac. Maybe my Mac broke? Whatever. So I need to get my 6 month post on here full of pictures of my sweet boy. I will do it soon. Promise! This weekend we have my dad over so after this weekend will be a good time to update my blog. Hope you aren't having too many Landon withdrawls ;)

More to come...

Busy boy growing and playing

What a busy month this has been in our household! Landon turned 5 months on May 16th and we celebrated by getting his pictures taken at the Picture People. I was going to save my Picture People Groupon for the 6 month pictures but I really wanted a family picture and my hubby had to get braces on this month so we decided to get the family photo before the braces. Seeing as getting Landon to smile for my camera is pretty hard, I was afraid that he was going to freak seeing a camera with lights and the whole bit. But he was amazing! We got some great shots of him and we were overly pleased with most of them. So we ended up buying more prints than what was included in the Groupon but they were worth it.

This month is also the month Landon gets the ok from his doctor to take the Ponseti shoes off full time and only have to wear them to bed. This happens on Tuesday and we are counting the hours. Even though he won't have much memory of this when he is older, I know he will be happy to have them off during the days. We have met more and more people that see his shoes and comment on having to have worn the same or similar shoes as a child. Pretty interesting to see how common it really is. We are very happy with the results of this whole process.

This month Landon has learned to play the screaming game. It has actually caused minor stress for us parents. We figured out that this is something babies do to try and get you to react. Well it works! And it wears me out. I am convinced my neighbors think we abuse him with the level of volume in that scream. He sure can capture the attention. And then he laughs. I however don't. Yesterday we discovered that Landon thinks it's hilarious when I eat popcorn. Am I a loud eater? Not sure. But man he was cracking up at me. I was starting to get insecure...Did I have something in my teeth? Was I making a funny noise? He's a goober head. For sure.

Today I bought the coolest new appliance in my kitchen: The NINJA! And it totally is too. I decided to try and make mashed banana for Landon to put in his cereal with the Ninja. In a matter of 3 seconds (literally) I had pureed banana with zero chunks. I was in heaven! And so was Landon. It was his first time trying banana and I didn't even get a yucky face from him. What I got was his full body weight lunging forward in his little plastic high chair seat as he bites the bowl as if to say "GIVE ME IT ALL!!!" and he ate every last lick of that banana rice cereal. What's with babies and their banana love?

Anyway, enjoy the cuteness.

On this day...

To my sweet loving son. You will not remember this day as a history maker but you will read about it in your books and hear about it in your history class. So let me tell you what you will one day understand. May 1st will never be the same in the eyes of Americans. For the past 10 years our country has been at a war that is so controversial throughout our great nation. That war was started on Sept 11, 2001 when I was a sophomore in high school. As I'm sure most people can attest, I remember exactly what I was doing that day. My dad came to wake me up and turn on my tv to show me that the twin towers were just destroyed by terrorists. Granted I was a sophomore just waking up,I was truly confused as to what he was talking about. "Watch this!" he says. Ok dad I'm still trying to wake up so bear with me here. My eyes became like glue to the tv. It was like I was watching a movie except it was real! It's hard to grasp the reality as this was happening all the way across the country and it was calm and quiet and sunny outside my window. Landon, there was a bad man in another country who didn't like America and so he sent a few of his people over here to crash our planes in a place that he knew would kill thousands and hurt the entire country. We spent 10 years searching for him. He was in hiding and on the move and eventually found a place to stay where he thought he would never be found...in a country that we were allies with. On May 1, 2011 our brave Navy Seals completed a mission that I am sure any military man or woman wanted to do. They found the bad guy, Osama, in a mansion in Pakistan and in 40 minutes were able to take him out for good. On this day, you were 4.5 months old. You still had your shoe braces on but you loved to roll all over the floor and jump in your jumper. On this day you made funny spit noises as your way of playing with us, you went to church and hung out in the nursery without even crying, you walked through a few open houses with mom & dad on a search to find a home you could grow up in. It was a good day for us as a family and us as a nation. Some people may tell you otherwise, that there was too much patriotic celebration over Osama's death and that's ok because everyone has their own views, as you will too one day. But this was a great victory for America and in my eyes, it's worth waving the American flag over. One man may have lost his soul, but I think it was gone way before we took his life. I would rather see one man who was in charge of mass murders lose his life than thousands more innocent people that just want to live a full and beautiful life. Not to mention the millions of people that were affected by the devastation this man caused.

On this day, you were so peaceful

First Easter

I really wanted to put together an Easter basket for Landon this year but all I could find to put in it was an Easter bib. Boring! So I fulfilled my need by filling Easter eggs with chocolates and creating a candy Easter basket to take to my in-laws house. In return I was given Easter eggs filled with chocolate (what comes around goes around! and in this case...yay!) and a herb garden. Fun! Landon got a pretty cool baseball piggy bank that will go great in his big boy room once he turns 1. My plan is a classic baseball theme. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, back to Easter. Of course I knew I wasn't going to get pictures of him on an egg hunt and I didn't really care to take him to see the Easter bunny so I thought I would take pictures of him in his super cute Easter outfit with the eggs that I dyed (for my own enjoyment). Welp here is what I learned. Use the plastic eggs when taking pictures with a baby! And here is why. I decided to take these adorable pictures right before we were headed out the door to church. Once I realized sitting with the eggs in his lap was not working because he just folds in half and I can't get a picture of his sweet little face, I decided to lay him down. Well now that he is a roller, there is no leaving him on his back. It's an instant roll in that case. So here we are, he has his Easter bib on and looking oh so sharp, and I brilliantly lay him on his belly in front of the eggs. I was picturing a cute curious baby looking at the eggs, touching the eggs. What I got was a teething baby trying to gnaw on the eggs in any way he can while producing mass amounts of slobber all over the place which in turn gets the dye on the eggs to come off...and there we have it, a baby with egg dye all over both cheeks and his Easter bib. Picture time was over. As I sadly go get him another bib (sad because no one got to see his "My first Easter" bib) I come back and find that in the 20 seconds I left to get him a new bib, he has spit up all over his nice collared shirt. 10 minutes before church starts and I'm back at ground zero with a naked baby with colored cheeks. Scrubbing and changing and hurrying about, we finally make it out the door. And for that, I will use plastic eggs with my next baby's first Easter. phew!

Easter Sunday was Landon's first trip to the nursery at the church we now go to. They gave us a pager after we tried to explain "care for Landon 101" in about 2 minutes. I think any new mom does this. Like these folks haven't cared for an infant before...So we are sitting in service with a death grip on this pager just convinced it's going to go off and we are going to have a screaming baby on our hands (probably because he has dye on his face and he didn't get to wear his Easter bib!). But to our surprise when we showed up to pick him up, he was asleep in the arms of someone we don't know. She said he was an angel (he's a show-off) and he slept the entire time. What a relief to know he was comfortable there and we were able to enjoy Easter service.

Enjoy the cuteness!
The first collage is from Easter. The rest are just because he is so darn cute! :)

4 months today

Happy 4 months Landon. You are so fun to see grow and learn. Here's to the next 4 months....And in 5 weeks, the shoes comes off. Hooray.

Trying new things is hard!

Landon is coming up on 4 months already! (This Saturday) and so I decided to buy rice cereal and see how he likes it. And these were the results:

As you can see we went from attempting to introduce the spoon right back to using the bottle. I poured the rice cereal into his bottle and went that route. After several attempts at rice cereal I have come to 2 conclusions....1. He is not ready to eat with a spoon and 2. He does NOT like the taste of rice cereal by itself but will eat it mixed in to his bottle. So I'm going to wait till his 4 month check up and ask his pediatrician recommendations. But it was fun getting these priceless expressions on camera in the mean time.

A few weeks ago we started putting him to bed without rocking him to sleep. So far it's been going pretty well. Well then we throw a curve ball in there. Today we decided to try putting him to bed without a swaddle. Mostly because the last week he has been waking up a TON in the middle of the night and a lot of times I find he has busted out of his swaddle and is awkwardly flailing his arms about. So we read that 3-4 months is about when you stop swaddling. He screams when we swaddle him so I figure he is trying to tell us this is soo for newborns and he has grown out of wanting to be swaddled. Welp...as of right now he is screaming and won't go to sleep. So through the grinding of my teeth to keep myself from rescuing him and rocking his little butt to sleep, I will leave you with this sweet picture of a baby who is excited about successfully rolling onto his tummy. Enjoy!

Rolly Polly

We have ourselves a little rolly polly here. Landon has mastered the art of rolling from back to tummy and boy is he on the move! Try changing a diaper when he knows he can move. Now we have to work on from tummy to back. I think it will be much easier when the shoes come off. He gets a little frustrated. They say babies usually go tummy to back....what a little rule breaker he is!

He is also eating 5-6oz of milk now. I've purchased some brown rice cereal but we haven't tried it yet. Once he bounced back from that nasty bronchiolitis it's like his tummy grew and he was eating more overnight. He is also very into grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. His little teether ring has now come out of the toy box. I feel like we need to get him real toys because he is so interested in them. The teether ring he likes has like 3 keys on it and so when he gets real excited he bats the thing around and for some reason when he bats one hand the other one automatically goes too. It's like they are in sync. And then he gets hit with the rings and throws them and then cries because he wants his toy back..."well you threw them!" He has found his shoes and I'm sure is trying to figure out how to get them OFF! And to top it off, we think there is a little tooth bud popping through on the top! I know...usually the bottoms come in first but I tell ya Landon has been anything but fitting the profile. He just does things his own way. Anyway I tried getting a picture of the little bud but he moves too much and I end up with a close up of his chin. Sooo for now just take my word and I'll work on getting a picture.

We are working on getting him to put himself to sleep. It's a work in progress for sure! Last night I fed him and laid him in his crib wide awake. He cried and cried for about 10 minutes until my husband went and put a pacie in his mouth. He cried a little more and eventually....silence! He did it! Cried himself to sleep. Although it breaks my heart listening to him cry and not running to his rescue, it really is good for us to let him become a little more independent.