9 months old

On the 20th of this month, JJ turned 9 months old (yes, I'm behind on my blogging...don't remind me). We took him to his pediatrician and he weighed in at 19lbs 13 oz. He was 27 inches long. She felt he was a little behind on his motor skills so she recommended OT and PT for him. She was mostly noticing that his hands are still closed (and should be open), he doesn't sit up from a laying position and that he didn't try to scoot or reach for an object that was in front of him. I'm going to wait a bit and see because this weekend, he was really active. I think he's just taking his time with things. I find that I'm a bit more relaxed about when he does things vs when Christian did things. I find that it's mostly because I don't have any other babies his age to compare him to (whereas with CMan, there were 3 other babies born around his same time that always did everything before he did).

He doesn't crawl yet, but I think that's coming soon because as I said, this past weekend he was Mr. Antsinmypants. I put him down and he lunged himself towards any object that grabbed his attention. Unfortunately that meant he came close to face planting more often than not. He then ended up on his belly and he totally hates that. When I try to help him lift his knees, he tries to stand up instead. Maybe he'll skip the crawling and go straight to standing.

I'm also teaching him to sit up from a lying position by pushing off with his little arms. Even though, he's my second child, I think he's got first child syndrome. Mommy carries him too much and babies him too much, so he doesn't get the chance to learn new locomotion skills.

As far as his eating goes, he still hates baby food. He has started eating some finger foods now though. At meal time, we sit him in his high chair to "eat" with the rest of the family. We put little puffs on his tray and he picks them up (pincer grasp!) and puts them in his mouth. At first he would drop most of them, but this weekend, he really became a pro at it. If I'm eating something soft that he can eat, I give him some of that too. Either he picks it up off the tray or takes it from my finger. So far he's had noodles, potatoes, papaya, yobaby yogurt, rice and zucchini. I'm hoping that if we keep this up, each day he will eat a little bit more. Maybe we can skip the baby food and go straight to solids.

Fighting and Stealing

The other day my parents brought to my attention that CMan was watching a movie that was not appropriate due to its violent content (XMen) with all the fighting that was going on. I shrugged it off because although there is probably a grain of truth to what they were saying, I'm not one of those people that overly concerns herself with that. As long as he's not watching Friday 13th (yet) or watching super violent movies every day, it's OK with me. For the most part, he watches Spongebob, Disney movies or Dora and sometimes he watches iCarly, Drake and Josh, Spiderman, Pirates or Wizard of Oz.

You know what though? Even cartoons can teach kids bad things. The other day when Cman got mad at me he said "I hate you". I told him that it was not nice to say that to people. I figured that he picked it up at daycare. He could have, but the other day, Spongebob was playing in the background and I heard Squidword say "I hate you!" to Spongebob and CMan said "look mom, he said I hate you!" and I said "I know, that's not very nice is it?" and he said "no". Granted, Spongebob may not be geared towards preschoolers, but even the Dora cartoons have bad influences.

Any parent familiar with that cartoon knows that there's a character named Swiper. It's a fox that goes around stealing or swiping things every episode. The lesson comes in when Dora and her clan say "Swiper No Swiping!" and that usually puts and end to it. My son on the other hand, doesn't pick up on that nuance. On Easter morning, we went to Manders house and CMan and Brandon were playing with one of Brandon's toys. When it was almost time to go home, there was no sign of the toy that Brandon had lent to Christian. We looked everywhere and couldn't find it. We asked CMan and all he said was "I lost it". Brandon was convinced that CMan was trying to steal his toy and had hidden it. I, not thinking that Chris was capable of that, assured him that it would be found eventually under a couch or something. Just as we were about to leave, R looked inside of CMan's Easter basket and sure enough, there was the toy. When we got in the car, we asked Chris why he had taken the toy and put it in his basket. R told him it wasn't nice to swipe things. His reply? "I was swiping it like Swiper!". Nice.

Just comes to show you, even the most innocent show can teach them something bad. Perhaps a little sword fighting isn't too terrible after all huh?

Just think, you can say you know someone that won!

You know I'm a sucker for baby contests, so here's another one that you, my blog friends, can help me out with. I entered Jordan in Elvis Duran's Battle of the Babies. It's supposedly for the cutest baby in America, but we all know it's really a popularity contest. Since I am not very popular, I need all the help I can get. Please go to this page and vote for Jordan once a day every day until May 18th. The winner for week 2 will be announced on May 20th. The prize? $5000. Nice huh?


If you're on Facebook, I've created a Facebook group here. Please repost and share share share!

If the voting page doesn't work, you can try this link too. Just click on the letter J. He's on the 14th page, third row, in the middle.



Thanks a bunch!

Nebulizer City

It's been Nebulizer and Antibiotic City at my house for the past 10 days. Christian was diagnosed with left upper lobe pneumonia and a double ear infection and JJ had a runny nose, a cough, and icky ears, so both were given nebulizer treatments. Do you know how hard it is to give an 8 month old nebulizer treatments? I don't recommend it that's for sure. It involves lots of flailing and screaming...and that's just me.

Yesterday was the last day of Christian's antibiotic and an Xray done earlier this week revealed that the pneumonia was all gone. Thank God. That was a little scary for a moment there because Chris got really weak (he wanted to be carried) and he refused to eat for a couple of days. He said no to happy meal, pizza, macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets, so you know something wasn't right.

Fortunately, he's all better now. JJ on the other hand still has a runny nose and a cough, so we've had to hold off on the things that the G.I. doctor wanted us to do. I refuse to do a cry it out when he is sick. I did stop on the pumping though (on Cinco de Mayo). It was starting to get a little tedious. Why is it that I always choose to stop pumping around a holiday? For Chris I stopped on St. Patty's Day. I just noticed those are both drinking holidays too...ha ha. That totally makes me look like a lush.

The weaning has gone smoothly because JJ is taking formula like a champ now (still hates food though). I still nurse him at night to go to bed and in the wee hours of the morning when he's in my bed (4am-7am) so I'm not completely done, but it's very minimal. I think because of the fact that I'm weaning is why I've recently gained 3 pounds all of a sudden. This totally sucks because I haven't finished my 20/20 plan (it's more like 7/11 at this point) but oh well, I guess it will have to be extended. 20/30 perhaps?

Speaking of 20/20, I'll be doing another 5K in about 2 weeks. I enjoyed the first one so much that I'm ready to do it again. Hopefully this time I can take a picture...you know to have proof that I was there and that I did it. Ha ha.

Last but not least, I've entered Jordan in a baby picture contest, so please vote for him (once daily until May 18) so we can win $5000. It would really help us to get his college fund going. Pass it on to your friends too! I will do a more thorough post about this tomorrow. Thanks y'all.

Someone ran a 5K yesterday!

That's right, yours truly. I ran my first 5K race yesterday at the Mercedes-Benz Corporate run. This was my first time participating in this type of event and it was so much fun, I plan on doing more of these in the future (Disney, here I come!). I'd been running at the gym and at home for a little over a month now, so I was able to run the whole thing without stopping, well except for that one time, but I'll tell you about that little fiasco now.

Unfortunately our "company" didn't' have a tent for us to hang out and leave our stuff in, so we had to only take with us what we could run with. With this in mind, I bought an arm band for my iphone and car key and ID. Wouldn't you know it, the day of the race, I couldn't find it anywhere. I had to use my old ipod arm band (which does not accommodate my iphone very well and is a little wobbly and has no pockets for keys and IDs and such). I had also purchased a nike+ sensor for my ipod so that I could check my pace, distance, etc. This is a wonderful little gadget that helps me stay on pace (thanks for the suggestion R!).

So I lined up with the thousands of people ready to start my run. They were starting to count down so I turned my ipod on and guess what? The screen wouldn't turn on. It didn't work. Fabulous. Fortunately, the music came on, but since the screen didn't work, I had to listen to whatever song the ipod wanted me to hear (the same 3 songs over and over again) and forget about turning on the nike+ sensor. It looks like I would have to wing it. Fortunately, I have a Runkeeper app on my iphone, so I turned that on instead so it could track my run. That one isn't as user friendly though and doesn't give you updates at the touch of a button.

The cannon went off and the people began. I had managed to squirm my way to the front half of the group so it was only a minute before I was able to get running. The weather was fabulous and it helped compensate over how mad I was at my ipod. I was basically running with no way of monitoring my progress (which I totally hate). As soon as I stared running, my arm band was jiggling and bopping all over the place. I thought to myself, oh no, this won't do. I tried to put the phone towards the underside of my arm to hold it against my body. So now, I was running with no speed sensor, repetitive music, a wobbly arm band and the use of only one arm. Can it get any worse? Actually, yes it can (I should have known better than to ask that). I dropped my car key! Fortunately, I felt it and heard it fall. I immediately stopped and looked for it to pick it up (I found it THANK GOD). Note to self: when running in a crowd of 20,000, it's not a good idea to stop all of a sudden...I'm just saying.

After the key fiasco (thank God it didn't fall when I was going over the bridge otherwise, my key would be in the Miami River at this point because the street has holes in it) I took my arm band off and held it in my hand along with my key. My nonfunctioning ipod was in my other hand. I was sure that I had totally lost my pace at this point. There is no way I'm beating my personal best (34+ minutes) with all this crap going on. I soldiered on and kept running as best I could. I didn't stop for water because it was too much of a hassle, plus it's not like I had any hands to hold it with.

After going over the 2nd bridge I didn't see how I could continue any longer. Running over bridges was not part of my training regimen, so that was pretty tough but I refused to walk at any point. I kept on and I saw the final turns ahead. I mustered the last bit of energy to run just a little faster. I was mad because an 8 year old was totally kicking my ass just ahead of me. As I turned the last corner I noticed the clock in the distance said 31 something...Oh my god, could it be? Wow, I'm actually running faster than I thought. I put in a final sprint and made it past the finish line at 32:09, estatic that I had beat my personal best despite all the issues with my equipment.

My happiness was short lived though, when I found out that the course had been shortened to 2.89 miles (or something like that), but that's OK, because I probably would have beat my time anyway. What an awesome experience, I can't wait to do it again.

Go Me.

Oh, and my ipod? It started working about a minute after I was done running. Nice.