I'm not ready!

The baby can now crawl, stop crawling, and get off her knees and back to sitting all by herself. She's also starting finger foods. She LOVES to pick up puffs and cheerios and drop them down the front of her clothing. I think she even eats a few! Poor Beau can't decide which seat to camp out under at mealtime anymore.

The little guy had chocolate ice cream for dessert tonight. After his bath, I clipped all of his nails. Eric said "Let me take a look at those bad boys" and the little guy replied "Daddy, they're GOOD boys!"

Haute Cuisine

The baby had some Target-brand Cheerios today (or toasted oat O-shaped cereal). The little guy asked for a bowl, too, but he only took a couple bites before he wanted applejacks again.

At lunchtime, he had crackers, string cheese, pepperoni, and grapes. He eats more of it if I make his food into a sculpture, so today the cheese was climbing the crackers AND the pepperoni. See?

I should work at some kind of fancy French place. I'll call this dish Sculpture et Casse-Croûte de Fromage et Biscuit.

Catcher and the Rice?

Sorry about the abysmal pun title... I couldn't help myself. Anyway, we were caught in a torrential downpour picking the kids up from school, so we changed into warm and dry clothes when we got home. The little guy dressed up like a catcher-- see his vest? He also has two hats on-- one facing forward and one backwards.

The baby was NOT happy about being rained on, but trying rice for dinner gave her something else to think about.

 She was pretty suspicious, but managed to get some of it into her mouth.

Delicious!

Last weekend we bought some sausage at the farmer's market and we ate it tonight with pancakes... it was amazingly delicious and quite possibly the best sausage we've ever eaten. The little booger was pretty excited about it, too.

We know he loves something when he has to stop frantically signing for more in order to hold the food in his mouth.

Pizza Redux!

So the little guy can say a lot of words, but he sometimes has trouble using them correctly. Take dinner tonight, for example:

In other news, I finally figured out why he keeps running up to the window and saying "Oh NO!!!" while pointing outside. "Oh NO!!!" is how he says "window." That makes so much more sense, right?

Happiness and Disappointment

Here's the good news: the little guy is now the small-to-medium guy. He has officially moved from the 5-10th percentile in height to the 10-25th percentile. Wahoo! Look at that tall (well, taller than he was) boy!

After dinner tonight, the little guy's dad gave him a really strong salt and vinegar potato chip. I can barely eat them without pulling a face. This is how the little dude reacted.

In case you don't know baby sign language, he said "Please, more!" with no puckering or grimacing or anything! My poor husband felt a little cheated.
Please ignore the Steelers shirt. It belongs to daycare, not to us.

Disgusting!

I wouldn't watch this video before dinner...

We have no idea why he puts so much food in his mouth at one time. What a goober!

Busy Night!

For dinner, the little dude ate a cereal bar, half a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, a banana, lots of crackers, a mini-bagel, and part of a piece of pizza. He's a messy and unstoppable eater.

After dinner, he played with one of his little toy cars. It has a mechanism that makes it almost self-propelled. Anyway, one of his favorite things to do is push it under the couch. Then he lays down on his belly and looks under the furniture. It's pretty bizarre. He managed to get the car all the way against the wall under the loveseat tonight. 

The nice thing about getting on the floor and looking with the little dude is that we tend to find a lot of his things under the couches. The only real negative here is that Beau is a stealth face-licker.

Terrible Table Manners

The little dude gets so excited when he realizes he's about to eat that he starts laughing. I was trying to get it on camera, but he wasn't very cooperative. I did, however, capture his latest mannerism at the table:

We have no idea where he picked this up, because we don't do this at all.

Say "Aaaaaaah"

Another new thing the little dude is doing is trying to feed us. He says "Aah?" and puts food in our mouths after we open wide.

Sometimes it's kind of cute. Sometimes, though, it's not. The other day he tried to feed me pre-chewed crackers... and he can be quite insistent.

He's not a baby anymore...

While we were visiting my parents, my mom figured out that the little dude preferred a regular spoons to his rubber-tipped spoons. Similarly, he's a lot happier in his high chair without the baby set. Look at him sitting there like a big boy:

Going along with that same thought process, we got him to stop throwing his food on the floor tonight by giving him a real fork. That's probably not anywhere near as smart (or safe), but look at how focused he was with it! He speared that piece of pasta on his own (and several times over).

Continuing with the "Oh my gosh, he's so grown up!" theme, he sat down with The Atlantic after dinner.

I promise I'm not bragging about his budding intellect, though. He mostly just chewed on the cover.

Noooooo!

The little guy was in a pretty foul mood when I picked him up this afternoon. He got to play in the mobile room for a while, but he was NOT happy about being back in the infant room at the end of the day. That attitude carried through most of the evening, so here's a happy picture from a few days ago:

This was taken right before a post-spaghetti bath.

Spoiled Rotten

This is what I saw when I walked into the kitchen yesterday. Apparently, the little dude was having trouble specifying what he wanted to eat, so his dad just put him on the counter and let him get his own food out of the cabinet.

Around late-afternoon snack time, this is what I found on the couch:

I know his clothes are as ridiculous as his posture and facial expression, but that's kind of an involved story. Anyway, just as a bonus, here he is jamming to Old MacDonald (lucky you!).

Our Little Bottomless Pit!

The little dude has started making the sign for "more" every time he wanders into the kitchen. He looks so hopeful- it's adorably pathetic.

He had his first navel orange slices at breakfast this morning. They were a hit!

And it looks like his spaghetti at dinner was literally finger-licking good!

What a happy, messy, sticky boy!

Lessons Learned Today, Episode 2

1. Dark fleece pants are a bad wardrobe choice for rolling around in a dog crate belonging to a light-haired dog.

2. Only so much bagel will fit into your mouth at one time, no matter how enthusiastically you ask for more.

3. Looking at a book while on it and in a yoga pose may make it more interesting, especially if you can't read.

4. If one song is good, two songs at once are better!

Our day was pretty much chaos... as usual.

This kid is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

The little guy's dad can't stand food messes. He also really doesn't like bananas. Having a beginning eater has been tough on him, and having a beginning eater who likes bananas has made it even worse. That changed tonight, because now the little dude can bite off his own pieces of banana!

Wahoo! No more banana-hands for the adults in the house! We also have a video, if you're interested:

The Little Stinker's Guide to Eating Right

I should have knocked on wood after saying he made progress with utensils. Here's a step-by-step (oh baby) guide to eating the way the little dude did tonight.

Step 1: Put your cup in your bowl.

Step 2: Bring the cup to your lips using the bowl. This may not work very well.

Step 3: Start over.

Step 4: Turn the cup around with one hand, because you must not let go of the bowl for any reason.

Step 5: Make a terrible face.

Step 6: Repeat steps 1-5.

Progress?

He will hold onto a spoon at mealtimes now. Tonight, for example, he didn't eat with the spoon, but he waved it around with one hand while cramming fistfuls of chili into his mouth with the other. The little dude still has several key spoon skills to master, including how to get and keep food on the spoon.

 I think the little dude's dad is starting to see a distant light at the end of the dinner-is-a-giant-mess tunnel.

It's a very distant light, but it's there.

Why I Should Not Be Left Alone with This Child, Part 1

I love to dip my grilled-cheese sandwiches in barbecue sauce. The little dude has eaten barbecue before (and baked beans, which is barbecue-ish) and loved it. I've read that toddlers like to dip their food in sauce. Plus, he had (really mild) honey-mustard sauce on chicken last week and it was a hit.

So, tonight I gave him cheese-toast with a side of barbecue sauce for dinner. He stuck his hand in the sauce, licked his fingers, and seemed happy... so it was going well, right? This is the kid who eats almost anything, right? Yup. Until he started crying and clawing at his tongue. The sauce was apparently a little hotter than I thought it was. Continuing my streak of pure genius, I gave him a piece of toast that I had already dipped in the sauce. That made it worse, of course. (Duh.) Then I gave him some water, which obviously didn't help out either.

Finally I grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge-- he didn't want milk since the water was ineffective. The yogurt worked, thank goodness, and he calmed down. What the heck was I thinking?

Here he is finishing his peas after all was forgiven:

He never did eat the rest of his cheese-toast. I think this was my worst idea yet!

Sleepy Boy

He was a sleepy boy tonight, which means that he's both really cuddly and quite serious about his food. Here he is being cuddly:

And here's a video of him inspecting and then demolishing his burrito:

The bruise down the middle of his forehead is from face-planting into a chair leg.