Bye Bye Baby

I think it's time for me to acknowledge that I no longer have my baby. He is turning into a little person. He has started taking steps without holding on to anything. It started a few days ago with just one step and now in a matter of two or three days it has turned into four steps at a time. I think it's safe to say he'll be walking before his first birthday. It's sad and exciting all at once. Also, he has signs of a tooth. I was begining to wonder if he even had teeth in there!!! He finally got a little bump and now it's getting all red and he's grumpy and won't sleep, so I think it will be popping up pretty soon. I'm a little scared for that considering I'm still breastfeeding, but we'll work it out I guess.

He's also starting to eat new things and learn to drink from a cup. We're skipping the sippy cup stage because it seems like an extra step to me, so we're going to try and just go straight to a regular cup. When I am complaining about all the spills I'll have to remind myself that I wanted to avoid the sippy cup. :)

Here he is drinking from a cup all by himself. (he loves those awful big plastic ones) Here he's eating a pretzel thing. He loves these!!

I spent all day making some baby food from scratch for him because I don't really like the idea of him eating canned meat and he HATES it!!! It took hours and made a huge mess and he won't eat any of it. Here's a pic of him after he took a bite of the homemade stuff.

These are just really cute pics of him in the dry bathtub. I put him in there with toys while I take a shower. This won't be lasting much longer because he has been trying to climb out lately.

Our First Christmas

Well, it's really Austen's first Christmas. We had so much fun watching Austen open all his presents.....he had a lot. He was really into tearing off the paper and he loved all his new toys.
This post has the most pictures ever, but it was really hard narrowing it down from 300.

I gave him a candy cane on Christmas Eve....he loved it of course!Here's his dad helping him open his pajamas the night before Christmas.

This is Christmas morning before he saw his stocking.

Discovering the stocking....he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be touching that.

Showing me what was inside.

This pic makes me laugh.....he looks sooo serious!

Soooo many toys!!! It was toy overload!! I think he was a little over stimulated because he did not sleep at all on Christmas night!

Where Do I Begin???

I guess I'll start by saying if you haven't read my post from yesterday, you should scroll down and read that one first.....

It's kind of ironic that I chose yesterday to label my blog post "he's into everything" because at the time I wrote that I had no idea just how bad it was about to get. First, I have a picture of him emptying out his dresser. (This isn't bad.....it's actually kind of cute!!!) Later that day I noticed Austen picking at these tiny wooden peg things that cover up the screw holes in our office desk. I didn't really think anything of it because I never could have imagined that he would be able to get them out.......well I couldn't have been more wrong. Here's a pic of the empty holes.

And here's a pic of the wooden pegs.

I turned around and noticed he had something in his mouth.....it was three of the above wooden things and there was one on the floor. I was shocked that he could have gotten those out of the furniture, but I was absolutely frantic when I realized that there were four more empty holes on the other side of the desk. I looked everywhere for the other four pegs and when I couldn't find them I assumed he must have swallowed them. I immediately called the doctor and they said if he had swallowed them he should be able to pass them just fine, so I shoudn't be too worried. They said to look for them in his poop over the next couple of days.......how fun!!! I still don't know if he could have swallowed four of those things, but they are missing so the mystery remains......

And because that wasn't enough for one day there's more!!! An hour later Brian noticed that the dog had thrown up in the family room. He thought he had cleaned it all up, but there was more behind the recliner. Unfortunately, Austen found it before we did. All I'm going to say is I found some on his hand AND face, so you can draw your own conclusion. I certainly did.....YUCK!!!

To top it all off the poor little guy is now sick just in time for his very first Christmas. We made it one month shy of a year with no sickness at all......great timing to get his first cold huh??

He's Into EVERYTHING

Did I mention he's into everything??? Well he is!! The other day I caught him sitting partially in the office garbage can with all it's contents scattered around in front of him. (He's really into ripping paper into tiny little pieces, so finding a magazine is a jackpot for him.) Here he is shredding some magazines while sitting in the garbage can.

He also got into the kitchen garbage can the other night and pulled out an avacado skin that I had just thrown in there. (This was totally my fault.....I must have forgotten to close the garbage cupboard all the way, but I have to say I'm sooooo glad it wasn't something worse...it could have been really bad.) I turned around to find him eating all the leftover avacado and loving it!! He had it smeared all over his shirt, pants, socks, and face. He also had it smashed on the tile and in the grout of the floor that I had JUST finished mopping. By the way these pictures do not do the mess justice....it was way worse than it looks.

He LOVES to play in our pantry!!! I have cleared the floor and bottom shelf of things that he can't have so he can go in there without me worrying too much. Well last night the dog came out of the pantry with a red vine and I immediately knew that we had another mess on our hands. Austen had somehow opened the red vine lid that I can barely even get off and he had licorice everywhere!!! He was in heaven!!! He had licorice in both hands and kept pulling more out. Luckily I got some pics before I took the candy away and cleaned up. Too bad you can't hear the sounds he was making while I was taking the pics though, it was super funny!

Just today he has cleared out six dresser drawers in his bedroom, pulled out and shredded all the tissues from a kleenex box I had left within reach, and managed to get a roll of wrapping paper off the table. I'm sick with a bad head cold, so he's been taking advantage of my weakened state!!!

Christmas Comes Early Around Here

Apparently Brian and I need to work on our patience. So far we have given Austen two of his Christmas presents early. First it was the walker and now it's this super cute airplane toy. It has a moving propellor that has a light display and it sings too. It's his new favorite thing.

He wouldn't smile at me while he was getting a ride......he was all business.

Christmas Is Coming

And that means time to make Brian put up the Christmas lights!!! I loaded the pictures backwards, so this first picture is the finished product. I didn't include the super cute candy cane tree that's in the corner, but it's really cute!! It has a red and white trunk and the top is all red. Brian got very creative!
Here's Austen watching daddy.


And here's Brian up on the ladder.

The Baby Has Spoken

Austen is changing a lot lately!!! Sometimes I even notice things that are different in the morning from the night before. The other morning I noticed that his eyelashes had sprouted over night. When he went to bed they were normal and when he woke up they were super long and perfectly curled. (Why is it that boys always get the amazing lashes???) Just the other day he would say mama as just another one of his babbling noises and then the next day it was like he figured out what it meant. Now he says mama when he wants me! It's so cute.....well he might be over using it a bit. He says it when he wants to nurse, when he wants to be held, when he gets hurt, and when he's hungry. So it's a lot, but still cute. I'm counting this as his first word even though it's a toss up between Mama and Hi.

Austen didn't really like bath time much when he was new, he learned to tolerate it by about 3 months, and by 5 or 6 months he didn't love it, but he liked it. He would splash around a little, but he was mostly all business. Then one day about a month ago he discovered that he could play in the tub. Now he loves it and I can't get him to hold still while I get him clean. He loves it so much that when I take him out he screams at me and then he scowls the whole time I'm getting him lotioned up and dressed. Here's some cute pics of tubby time.

And here's the scowl I get for taking him out.

When I'm cooking dinner, I used to put Austen in his highchair to keep him contained so I wouldn't have to worry about what he was getting into. Well, that was before he discovered that he could still open some of the kitchen cupboards (we didn't put latches on all of them). Now he refuses to be in his highchair. He would rather be mommy's little helper and do this:

This year I decided to brave the madness and go Christmas shopping on Black Friday. My sisters and I got in line at Toys R Us at 11:15pm and waited in the cold until almost 2am just to get inside the store. We didn't think they were going to have anything left, but I think we all ended up getting just about everything we had gone there for. It was pure insanity. Austen was at home with a tummy ache, so when Brian called and said Austen had been screaming for the past hour and a half I had to leave my poor sisters there to fend for themselves. Luckily I had already put the toys I wanted into our overflowing cart, so they stayed and got my stuff for me! They ended up having to wait in the checkout line for 2 hours!!! I owe them! I got some really good stuff though, so it might have been worth it. I got Austen this super cute activity walker and I was so excited for him to have it that I couldn't wait until Christmas. We ended up getting it out for him the next day, but I'm really glad we gave it to him early because he's at the perfect stage for it. It has a little phone on it and he takes it off and holds it up to his head. It's so funny!!! He's also started doing that with the remote which makes me think I talk on the phone too much!

He figured out the walker part instantly!!! I was so surprised. He had no fear, he just took off. In a matter of a few hours he had taught himself how to control his speed and also how to back up when he gets stuck. He is the ultimate problem solver!!! The only bad thing is that with all of his walking and crawling he's starting to lose some of his squishyness. His rolls are disappearing and it makes me so sad!