It was baby bear's first christmas and I have to say, it was a success. He got lots of presents from Grandpas and Grandmas and had lots of fun hangout times with family.
First his daddy got him all dressed for christmas. There's a bit of video about this later.
Obviously baby man was pumped.
Once we got to Grandpa and Grandma Cupcake's, he decided he was sick of clothes and wanted to strip down and hang out with Aunt Jessica and Uncle Matt.
Jessica made all the girls these gloriously fancy aprons...
Aunt Kristen and Uncle Chris chillin' and opening presents...
Grandma Cupcake got a pretty sweet action coat from Santa...
Baby bear got a pretty rad keyboard...
Uncle Dewey got some delicious fruit courtesy of santa (actually, grandma and grandpa from texas)
More presents...
presents...
And here's a video of his action packed christmas. Please don't report us to child services when you see it. He loved his christmas outfit his daddy fixed up for him. I promise.
So I decided to try talking to baby man the way Ryan pretty much always does: like a terrifying monster. Well...to be fair, when I try it, it really isn't so much terrifying as it is idiotic sounding. At one point I'm pretty sure I sound more like a chicken than anything. He seemed to appreciate the effort though.
Apparently he also loves it when monsters try to gobble up his hands:
Huh. I just realized that perhaps this picture might be a smidgy bit on the creepy side. Which was obviously my intention. Nothing's cuter than a creepy baby picture I always say. But I digress...before I've even started. We've been looking for a good hat with a velcro closure at the bottom for a while now so that baby man can ride on my back in a carrier without me worrying about his hat falling off. This turned out to be a pretty tall order since they mostly make those types of hats for infants and apparently, baby man's got a head the size of a 3-year-old because he can only fit into toddler hats these days. After visiting about 5 baby shops we finally found one that would fit. Very exciting. He still usually wears his bear hat around, though, because he's a baby bear and ought to look the part.
About a month ago he really got the whole thumb thing figured out and now he's pretty much always got it in his mouth. You can kinda see it in this picture here.
This is his "no one will play with me" face. So sad.
Besides thumb sucking, his latest thing is staring off into the distance and kinda whispering sounds to himself before trying them out loud:
Lately he's gotten pretty good at sitting. Depending on his mood, he can sit unassisted on the floor for up to a few minutes and can sit up on our bed indefinitely. Something about the cushiness makes it easier to balance I guess. Huh. According to spell check, cushiness isn't a real word. Psht. Blogger's got a pretttty limited vernacular if you ask me.
Around 30 seconds into the video he gets pretty intense. Must be some sort of dominant bear ritual or something. After that it gets pretty boring though.
I couldn't let Ryan steal all the glory with that picture in the last post. Not sure if this one competes but it's the best I can come up with on short notice.
Before I tell this story, I guess I should explain that I get really nervous around cops. Like I'm gonna get busted for breaking laws that I don't even know exist. I feel like this is very rational and it serves me well as you'll see if you read on.
So earlier today I was driving past an officer and thought to myself "okay, stay cool, just look natural. we don't want this cop getting suspicious of any foul play," and promptly crashed the van into the curb, peeled out when I floored the gas in an attempt to brake, finally found the brakes and violently skidded to a halt. I even had the presence of mind to roll my window down and explain to the officer that I've got this fear of cops which will sometimes result in my inability to function physically. Which is completely untrue since I was obviously way smooth and casual the whole time but he totally bought it. Job well done, I say. He never suspected a thing and I got to go on with my day without being arrested.
Okay and so this post isn't too disappointing to grandma elkins, here's a picture of ryan and baby man.
So...trying to figure this whole blog layout thing and I couldn't think of a more perfect picture to use for the test than the one above. Also I'm told that if you upload videos to youtube instead of blogger they don't look as crappy. We'll see how it goes.
Not much going on lately. We're in the market for a new home for baby man since he demands it. We may have found something that we all like out in Sandy...crap. I'm even boring myself. and we're only like 3 sentences in. hmm. The exciting part is that it's right next to this pretty cool gully so we'll get to go on some awesome scenic walks with the baby bear whenever we want. It's also pretty close to where my friend Poopers* is living right now so when we're walking in the gully we could keep each other company in order to keep those pesky rapists at bay. She claims that they're deterred by larger numbers but I can't help but fear that more people just invites a rapist party. We will just see who wins this debate.
Baby Man's finally started to babble. He's big on saying Mama, mumumum, baba, and blah blah so as you can imagine, we are having some riveting conversations these days. I don't have in on video yet but that's next on my agenda.
Here he is munching on his fingers, his favorite snack.
And here's a random video for the grandmas. It's nothing new, just baby man hanging out in his little toy car. He just goes bananas for it.
Oh and baby man's standing unassisted now!
...or not. well, whatever.
*she claims to hate this name but I can't help but feel she's lying. plus I've got to use some sort of alias lest online predators find out she lives in sandy
Baby Man's really been into scrunching his face up and breathing furiously through his nose lately. So much that he'll often do it when he's not even really upset which can get kinda confusing. Here's a preview picture but the video captures it much better.
It's some scary times around here what with the witching hour (err day perhaps) almost upon us. Baby Man insists on adopting his usual camera expression which in the context of halloween turns out to be very appropriate.
Also, he just turned 6 months 2 days ago. He's finally started rolling from belly to back recently but still doesn't have it down perfectly yet. And by that I mean that I saw him roll over one time with the help of his crib bars. But you know, he's getting there. Also, he's getting decent at sitting up. But honestly, he doesn't trouble himself too much with all the boring typical milestones that most babies get all hung up about. He's more into developing mental skills. Like telepathy, for instance. He'll stare at an object for minutes at a time with an intensity that you'd have to see to believe while frantically flapping his arms. He's big into drinking my "coffee" (basically warm milk with sugar) in the mornings, gasping and chirping at the dogs, and grabbing everything in sight and shoving it in his mouth. This includes things that he considers to be disgusting as well. He'll shove a rice cracker in his mouth, grimace, shudder violently, moan sadly, then quickly shove it back in his mouth only to start the whole thing over again. He loves being outside. In fact, if he's not sleeping, that's still the only way I can consistently keep him happy. We walk to the grocery store every day and still go hiking at least a couple times a week. It's so sad that winter's coming but Tess has started to convince me that snowshoeing might possibly be delightful. We will see.
Oh and look how skinny this bear is! He's up to over 70% in height but has dropped to 17% in weight. He's got the skinny lurp genes for sure. :)
He really likes showing off his slender baby physique whenever he gets the chance.
More random videos for grandmas...
He's really into standing up these days. Just standing rigidly still, that's it. Bouncing or any type of leg movement is currently for suckers.
Here's something that he was really into for like a week and hardly ever does anymore. He started violently gasping whenever he'd get excited, and in this case, seeing the puppies is very exciting.
lol...his dad has such a way with children. That's all I've gotta say about this one.
Here is his first encounter with a sippy cup. It was a hit.
Last night we got the opportunity to get all fancy shmancy and go to the Governor's Gala, courtesy of John Pestana (guy who co-founded omniture and who's been big time helping Ryan and Jason with their company). It was some good times with good company. Unfortunately, Baby Man wasn't invited due to his passionate personality. He's way too into Keepin It Real to attend these types of functions so Grandma Cupcake and Grandpa came over to watch him. They must have fed him really well because the next day, something of quite an alarming magnitude happened in his diaper as you can see here. It must be some sort of record.
Lately Baby Man's been a big fan of sucking on his lower lip, making him look like an old toothless man. He augments this image with old man grunts and moans sometimes too:
Oh and just go ahead and ignore the depeche mode in the background. He seems to like it when I put on dance music and prance around while making dinner. He really gets a kick out of hopping around to the beat, like most babies I would imagine.
Here's my terrible filming skills at work, showing how he thinks it's funny when the camera comes towards him really fast. If you look closely halfway through, he lifts his eyebrow sean connery-style. It's awesome. But really subtle. And then later he tries to eat the camera.
I'm always having to clean under baby man's neck...like 3 times a day lately since he's developed such a drooling problem that it's pretty much constantly moist and there's usually a bit of a rash despite my best efforts. Anyway, after I wipe him off, I usually lift up his chin and blow on it so that it's dry for at least a little while and this always gives him the chills. I thought it was pretty cute so I filmed it:
And also for your viewing pleasure, I'm including some videos where absolutely nothing of interest happens. I'm thinking his grandmas might like it but even they might get bored.
Baby Man is turning 5 months old in a week. This is craziness. Pretty soon he'll be off to college. He's already been sleeping in his own room for a couple weeks now. I think he's teething because he's become a big time drooler and is always stuffing things into his mouth, as you can see here: He's also starting to roll around like a champ. Well...rolling from tummy to back anyways. He got a bit behind with his baby milestones because he couldn't tolerate tummy time and would crumple into baby bear tantrums within seconds of being put on his tummy and would then just kinda thrash around, which is great exercise but not so great for learning. We persevered, though, and got him to start actually liking tummy time for a few minutes at least by the time he was 4 months old and he got caught up right away. He hasn't quite figured out how to roll onto his belly yet but he'll roll onto his side fairly often from his back so it should be right around the corner. Although I'm not sure how much motivation he has since even with all his improvement, he still really dislikes being on his tummy.
But enough about that. He's also started making these really loud chirping sounds, usually when he appears to be conversing with light fixtures. He especially loves this nighttime lamp we got for him. He'll sit there talking to that guy for like 10+ minutes. About what, I've got no idea. Sometimes he'll get so into it that I'll catch myself glancing over at the light myself to see what all the fuss is about. But, surprisingly, whenever I look there's just some lame lamp sitting there doing nothing. He's gradually becoming more independent. He goes to sleep in his crib now all by himself and can usually get himself back to sleep if I wakes up, unless he's hungry. Which happens a lot because he's a hungry little baby bear. He insists on helping me with all the chores and gets very upset if I'm not holding him while vacuuming, dusting (lol, like I ever dust. but if I DID, you can bet he'd wanna help), cooking, doing the dishes, etc. You can imagine that it isn't always feasible to be holding him so he gets upset fairly frequently. Occasionally lately he'll be content to hang out in his baby chair and watch me work while playing with some toys. Usually when that happens I'll just stare at him wondering if someone switched out my baby and forget all about the stuff I've gotta get done . I think those rare times are becomming more frequent though. Very exciting.
He gets scared by new things sometimes...
...but he's learned to retaliate with some sweet action ninja moves that his friend Ryker (aka mr Bugglesworth) has been teaching him:
And he's got some pretty amazing plotting skills...where he learned those I've got no idea.
I found this bear outfit in one of the many bags of clothes I have from my friend Alexis and had to put teeny goober in it because it was pretty chilly in our apartment this morning. I realized it would be a good opportunity to show off both the cuteness of the outfit along with his new "baby sitter." I wish I'd known about this product before because it allows babies as young as 1 month old to sit up. Well, supposedly anyway. I've been spending the last month holding him almost constantly because he was developing a weird head shape from always sleeping on his back. Since his head couldn't grow out the back, it was starting to push out the sides. Here's a pic of it right before I started taking corrective measures:lol I love this picture. With his collar up like that he looks like a cackling Dracula to me. I don't have a recent similar picture to compare it to but I feel like it's looking a little better already. It's probably too soon to tell though.
Anyway, with the Bumbo, I can plop him down next to me and not worry at all about his head smashing itself. Brilliant. I didn't get any pictures of it but he was having a great time playing with some dangling toys that I set up in front of it. What I do have a picture of is him getting pretty intense about his hands here.
So Old Spice's latest ad campaign features this shirtless dude who answers people's questions about old spice on the interwebs. Ryan showed this to me just today. Apparently, baby man already has questions that he feels uncomfortable asking his parents. He's gonna be so embarrassed when he wakes up from his nap and realizes that we found out.
Baby Man has been giggling for a few weeks now but today's the first day that it's been reliable enough for me to get it on camera. So far the most hilarious things in his book are diaper changes and other people laughing. But mostly diaper changes. Obviously his sense of humor could use some refinement.
* don't mind my cheesy laughing...or the fact that every time I make a video it turns out sideways. It's just my style.
I'm convinced that Baby Man is obsessed with his daddy. He lights up every time daddy comes home and if I don't hand him over, the tiny goober will just sit there staring at him from my arms with this foolish grin on his face for like an hour. Once Ryan is actually holding him, he'll get super excited because he knows it's play time...then inevitably within 15 minutes or so, he'll completely fall apart. It's hard to say why. Baby Man's just very passionate, as you can see here:
I like to think that he spends all day thinking about how great it's gonna be when he hangs out with daddy, they'll get to do awesome manly stuff like wrestling and playing football, then a few minutes into hanging out, he realizes that he can't muster up the coordination to do more than haphazardly smack dad in the face or maybe head butt him if he's lucky. And it just breaks his heart. One day, baby man, one day...
Here he is learning how to look cool in front of the camera. He's still a little unsure of his skills and keeps looking at daddy for tips.
And here Ryan's teaching him how to swing. As you can see, he's got a ways to go.
