Finally, a relaxing weekend!

This is Austin Avocado hair.  For some reason, this picture just cracks me up!  He was wild that night, and finally starting to get back to eating food.  He had avocado, which he somewhat enjoys eating.  Needless to say, it ended up as hair gel by the end of the night.  He's starting to feed himself more and more everyday.  He loves peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peaches, pears, watermelon, bananas, raspberries (he tried his first one last night), and crackers.  He pretty much has started to pick up everything, except for meat.  He doesn't seem to like it much!

We finally got in a relaxing weekend at home.  We didn't really do much, for a change, which was nice.  Jared and I worked more on the yard, which looks like a mess.  We had a bunch of dead areas that we had to reseed and level out a bit.  We also are working on the landscaping, trying to get it back in order.  Since Austin came in the fall last year, most of it went neglected for a year.  So this year, it's in need of some TLC!  Since we have started to work on the yard,  Austin has discovered that he LOVES to play outside.  I guess it's more like crawl around outside, but either way, he enjoys it.  Since we've been doing the yard work, we let him crawl around and explore.  Because of this, he now bangs on the doors and cries if we don't take him outside.  It's pretty cute.

Tooth number 8 has finally broke the surface, which seems to be a bit of relief to Austin.  He's still working on his molars though, and he has his fingers in his mouth constantly.  Since he's started teething a lot again, he's stopped sleeping through the night most nights.  Hopefully, he'll get back on track again soon.  I feel bad for him, because you know it hurts!  And the only thing we can do for him is give him Motrin and love on him!

Austin has finally started to drink again from a normal cup, so I'm hoping that I won't have to give him a sippy at all at this point.  Wish me luck!  He's starting to drink his formula out of a cup at breakfast and dinner time.  Today was the first time he took the formula out of a cup for breakfast, so I'm hoping that we're getting there with him on it.  I'd like to have him off of his bottle before his first birthday, and we're slowly getting there.  Finally!  We've been working with him on this since he was about 4 months old, and originally, we thought our doctor was crazy.  But believe me, it can be done!  It just takes a lot of practice!

Austin has continued to discover new things to play with around the house, mostly in the kitchen.  He LOVES to play with the pots and pans, the chopper, and the tupperware.  As you can see, he not only crawls in the cabinets to get the stuff out, but then he spreads it all over the floor and plays.  It's a good thing I clean our floors quite a bit!

This is a picture of Austin from Saturday.  Notice he has his very first Michigan Wolverines Tee......for daddy of course!  He's learned how to say "Touchdown" by lifting his hands up in the air.  He actually really enjoys watching football on T.V.  I'm thinking he's going to be a sports fan when he grows up.  He enjoys watching golf also!  In this picture, I was folding his laundry.  He decided to "help" me by crawling in the basket and throwing the clothes all over the floor.  As you can see, he had a blast!  He watched part of his first movie on Saturday night.  We turned on Horton Hears a Who, and he sat there and laughed at it.  It didn't keep his interest for long, but he did manage to watch a few minutes of it.

Well, I have officially been unemployed for a year at this point.  I can honestly say, I never thought that I would enjoy it this much.  Austin is such a joy, and a pain at times, but I can't imagine being away from him.  Austin has changed our lives in ways we never could have imagined, and it's truly a blessing.  We have accomplished many things in the last year, that we never imagined were possible; one of those being, me staying at home for this long.  One of the biggest obstacles we had to face since I quite my job is money, for obvious reasons.  You don't just drop about half your income and not feel a thing!  At this point though, we finally seem to have gotten a grip on money, which is an amazing feeling.  Jared has worked so hard to keep our little family afloat, and for that, I am very grateful in ways that he may never know.  Thanks Jared, you're the best!

Oh, the changes!

Well, Austin has made some strides this past week, and most of them, are not the best.  He has recently decided that since we got back from Georgia, that he no longer wanted to eat food.  It's almost like he's decided that he wanted to eat baby food all over again.  We've struggled for the past few days, with him not eating, and when he does, he doesn't eat much.  It appears to be his teeth, once again.  It looks like number 8 is finally getting ready to poke through, and it looks like he's also working on his molars right now.  In particular, he hasn't been eating meat.  He used to love eating hamburger, and small pieces of chicken.  He is currently spitting them out once you put them in his mouth.  The other day, I couldn't even get him to eat watermelon!  And for those of you who know him, that's unheard of.  The only luck i've had lately is applesauce, waffles, Cheerios, and cheese.  Hopefully this phase will pass soon, because it is so frustrating!  He's been eating table foods for about a month now, so to go back to baby food and spitting out food, is quite a shock.  He's starting to get back to the table food slowly, and thankfully it's only lasted a few days.  Hopefully these teeth will cut through soon, because not only are the disrupting his eating habits, they are also messing with his drinking and sleeping habits.

He has recently started to push a cup away from his mouth when you put it to his lips.  So, I broke down, and gave him a sippy cup.  He's learning how to use it, but we are still working to get him on a normal cup also.  In some weird form of my imagination, I feel that a sippy cup is better than a bottle, and I want to have him off of his bottle at 12 months.  And if that means that we use a sippy for a brief period of time, so be it.  He'll get the hang of the cup again soon.  I was just about ready to give the bottle up, but didn't want to when we went down to Georgia....maybe I should have!

While we were in Georgia, Austin did great sleeping.  He took great naps, and even slept all the way through the night all the nights we were there, which we weren't anticipating happening.  Since then, he's begun to wake up again during the middle of the night, and he has been waking up earlier in the morning.  He has also recently decided that he didn't really want to take a morning nap either, which means he falls asleep in his high chair during lunch.  Today is the first day since Wednesday last week I have been able to get him to go to sleep for his much needed morning nap.....wish me luck, we hope this pattern continues and he starts to get back to his old routine!

On a brighter note, he finally started to say mama.  He says "mmm ma-ma".  It's really cute.  He still doesn't know what it means, and isn't saying it directly to me, but he is saying it a lot.  He has even started to say "duck", which just about everything is right now.  I thought about making him a duck for Halloween even :)  How cute would that be!

Austin recently discovered the toilet paper.  I've tried to keep it away from him for quite some time, but he got into it without my knowing on Sunday.  Of course, I let him play with it so we could take a quick picture, and them told him no.  I hope at some point he figures out my twisted method of discipline :)  He's just so ornery and cute....I couldn't resist letting him play with it for a bit!

This is Austin on Saturday eating dinner.  We tried to give him Bologna, because like I said, he hasn't been eating meat.  I don't really consider Bologna a meat, which is fine, because he hated it.  I had to mask it with pears.  He was excited about the ND Michigan game, and was trying to get ND to score a Touchdown.  We've been teaching him to lift up his arms for Touchdown and "So Big!"  He's finally getting the hang of it!  Too bad the wrong team won that day :(

Here's Austin helping dad check out the garden.  Jared set him down in the yard, and he did his "walk/crawl" out to the garden to check things out.  We had decent luck this year, not great though.  I guess you actually have to water the plants to get them to grow....weird!  Austin also got stung twice by bees on Sunday.  Luckily, he's okay.  The area swelled a bit, but he did pretty well with it.  He only cried for a few minutes, and even let me put ice on it.  Poor thing, he just can't get a break right now!

Round 2

Austin made it to Round 2. He is trailing the leaders by close to 5000 votes.  That means that he is close to $1000 less in votes.  I never expected the voting to go that high.  But if you want to you can vote for him by Clicking Here.

It would probably be easier if we just made a calendar of him rather than voting to have him win this contest!  (let me know if you are interested in a calendar of him)

Safely Back From Georgia!

We made it safely back from GA early Tuesday morning. The drive there took us over 12 hours (it should only take 10) due to an accident, and the drive back was uneventful. We had an awesome visit with Chris and Kristin and miss them already. It's so great that every time we are around them, we just hang out, not do anything, and we always have a great time. We only left their house to go to the grocery store. We cooked out on the grill every night, played games, and hung out with Austin. Austin had a good time feeding Uncle Chris his lunch and dinners. He's never done that to anyone, but he kept offering up his peas to Uncle Chris, which Uncle Chris doesn't enjoy eating. In the picture above, he helped himself to a snack.....and then dumped it all over the floor and himself. Man, was that a treat! He even found a new way to eat off of his highchair tray.....he does it like a dog. He'd never done that before, but while Aunt Kristin was feeding him, sure enough, he did it! I guess whatever works for him, works for us! He made himself very welcome in their house, and pretty much cleared their coffee table, and even enjoyed playing with Uncle Chris's Playstation Controller. Aunt Kristin and Uncle Chris both gave Austin baths, and played with him a lot. They read him stories, and even fed him. He loved it! Austin is really starting to get attached to both Jared and I, so unfortunately, one of us was typically around so they didn't get much one on one time with him, but I think they still had fun with him. Hopefully this is just a stage that will soon pass. As sweet as it is, it's a bit irritating at times also. The next time they will see Austin, he will probably be walking....which makes me so sad to think about. I wish they were closer to witness these milestones with us, but in due time, hopefully they might :)

Austin has recently discovered new things around our house even. He loves to play with the pots and pans. I even caught him riding around on a cookie sheet the other day. He's very into exploring our house and new things. He loves banging the pots and pans around and making a bunch of noise with them. One of his favorite things to do is to play with the dog bowls. He's so inquisitive right now, which can be frustrating at times, but is good for his imagination and learning I think. Every time I open the refrigerator for instance, he rushes over to check it out. So then I have to stop what I'm doing, move him, close the door. Not really a big deal, unless you do it 10 times a day!

Nothing New This Week

Well, there hasn't really been anything new and exciting that's happened this past week. It's gotten a bit colder, and so Austin got to try on some of his new digs for the fall and winter. They are a bit too big on him, but he still looks adorable. He's starting to look more and more like a toddler than a baby every day. It's sad, but we look forward to these upcoming stages of his life. As Austin approaches his first birthday, its amazing to see how much he has changed in a year. He's so active and interactive now, it's amazing. He loves to throw balls to us, read books, and has even started to play peek-a-boo with us, and many times he initiates it. In one of the pictures above, he's playing peek-a-boo with me, and has just pulled the blanket off and started to laugh. He's too cute! He's not really into playing peek-a-boo with his hands, but he loves this blanket for some reason.

Austin also really enjoys our pets. He's discovered the cat recently, which he says is a "dat". Our animals are so great with him, if they don't want to be bothered, they just get up and walk away. The dogs sometimes even initiate play with him. As scary as this is, one of his favorite things is to have the dogs run past his head, within inches. He just giggles and giggles at this. We try to control the dogs as much as we can, but as many of you know, they aren't very bright. They are lovers, but sometimes they are a bit much! It's a good thing that Austin isn't scared of them, in fact, I think Allie is going to be one of his best friends growing up.

Like father, like son, that's what they say right? Well if that's the case, then we welcome it with this talent. Austin LOVES to play with our cameras. Granted, it's not the best toy, but he never throws it or anything, he just likes to look at it and play with the buttons. I have a feeling he's going to enjoy his toys just like his dad, and this is one hobby, that I think Jared and I both agree with, we hope he takes up early on.

So, feeding times are starting to go a bit better lately. He still enjoys throwing his food on the floor frequently, but he's starting to try things on his own also. This morning, he managed to put his spoon in his oatmeal bowl, and then put the spoon in his mouth. He kept trying to put the spoon in the bowl, but most of the time it ended up that he put his fist in the bowl, and then his fingers smeared all over his face. Thankfully, it was bath day today, because like they say in Georgia, Austin was a hot mess!!

Another thing that runs in our family, is a love of beer. It started off many years ago, with my grandpa enjoying one from time to time, and now my father does the same. Unfortunately, this habit didn't skip a generation, and as we all know, I like my beer also, as does Jared. Well, aparently, Austin does also. Now, keep in mind, he didn't drink any of it, but he just thought it was hilarious to try to take my bottle away from me. Notice in the second picture he's drooling.....I do the same thing from time to time when I see one nearby :)

Anyway, like I said, nothing's really going on right now. We're getting ready to go to GA again the end of this week for a long weekend, so, we're just trying to get things wrapped up around the house. Keeping busy, and having fun!