ahoy thar, 17 months!

My baby is almost a year and a half old. gasp. Okay, I can't even say he's my baby anymore. He's far more toddler in the way he moves and the way he behaves.

Grayson, you are growing up so fast. I know everyone says that about their kids, but you really are. In the past month alone you have grown in the way you move and the way you interact with us.

You laugh so much about every little thing that seems to strike your funny bone. I love the way your eyes crinkle up and the way you stick your arms out when you're really excited. You love if we chase you around the room or play hide-n-seek. You're so generous, giving us things all of the time. You love to push buttons, read your books - with or without us - and climb anything you can.

Speaking of climbing, you're absolutely obsessed with stairs. When we ask if you want to go upstairs, you take off running and wait patiently for us to open the baby gate. You can climb our stairs all by yourself, though you still need help going back down. At playgrounds, all you want to do is go up and down stairs. (You do enjoy the slides if I make you go down one, and of course, you've always loved to swing.) You're close to being able to climb up on the couch by yourself - I'm not looking forward to that! Okay, so since I wrote that part this morning, you climbed up on the couch all by yourself this afternoon! Twice! Oh lordy.

You've stepped more into the tantrum phase of life now. When you're in a really bad mood, you'll scream and pitch yourself to the floor. Usually, your tantrums are over quickly, and you're still easily distracted. You've definitely discovered anger and how to express it - you'll ball up your little hands and yell. Lately, if you don't want to do something, you'll start shaking your head and babbling up a storm. It cracks us up so much, but I do appreciate that you're trying to communicate without making such a fuss.

You're still not saying any words besides "moo." But you understand a lot of what we say. You can point to your nose, head, hair, eyes, tummy, belly button, and feet. You're obsessed with pointing. You point at anything and everything all of the time, usually with a grunt. You know where your milk is kept, where your snacks are, and that you need a bib on first. You're starting to try more foods, though you can still be very picky. You just know what you like and what you don't!

You cut three molars in the past couple of weeks. I'll be happy when that's done, but I guess then we have to get through the fangs and then the second set of molars. Being a toddler is rough stuff.

You're just such a fascinating little person, G. I love you so stinkin' much. The pics below, taken from your bath tonight, show so much of your character.

My name is Grayson, and I have something to say.

Would you like a block?

How about a splash to the face?

Oh, okay. How about I just sit here and look cute?

How can you not want to just squish his cheeks together and kiss his little nose? Gah, I just die of cute.

I can't wait for the upcoming months, G, especially to see your face light up during Christmas. I love you so much!

Love,
Mama

dragon-baby

I already blogged about how we celebrated G's second Halloween, but we did end up going to a park to take a few more pics of him in his costume. He actually kept the booties AND the hat on the entire time, which was more than he did for the zoo. I was a happy picture-taking mama.

I shared a few on Halloween, but here are some more of my favorites.

Fly, baby dragon, fly!

God, I want to kiss on those cheeks.

His I'm-zoning-out face.

Dragon stomp-stomp-stomp.

G turns 17 months old tomorrow, so a more detailed bloggie blog then. Tonight, though, I'm pooped.

this is seriously what happened (on Halloween)

I swear Halloween decided to have its fair share of fun with me this year. I'm sure by the end of the day, I looked like this:

Now, my kiddo has seriously been easy to put down for a nap. When I was nursing, I'd just nurse him down. When that ended, I started rocking him. He's usually out in under 5 minutes. No kidding.

On Monday, it took TWO HOURS to put him down for a nap. I would have given up... and kinda did several times... but that's his only nap of the day. G has never had a no-nap day.

I wasn't about to start now.

First of all, I tried for about 40 minutes. He tossed and turned, fidgeted and fussed, but never closed his eyes long enough to fall asleep. In frustration, I put him in his crib and walked out of the room for a little while.

As soon as I leave, he's super hyper happy baby. I proceed to pull my hair out.

I go back in and that's when I smell it. The poop. So the kiddo had to poop, hence why he couldn't settle enough to sleep. Okay, fair enough. I can give you that, little baby-man. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

I change his diaper, put him back into his crib, and go outside to throw it away. Head back and of course he's still very hyper. At this point it's a little after noon, over an hour past his usual nap time of 11am. We have a rule that he's not allowed to sleep past 2pm because he won't go to sleep until way late.

Insert heavy sigh here.

After trying to get him to nap, I leave the room again for a while. Go back in later, and he falls asleep in about 2 minutes.

Of course, I got barely anything done during his short nap, and of course it was the night of the graduate class I'm taking. I scrambled around for an hour or so until the hubs came home to take over baby duty.

Since I was so rushed to get out the door, I barely managed to grab everything I needed for my class. I can't find my cell phone quickly enough, despite the fact that it had been in my hands mere minutes ago, so I leave without it.

This fact will be important later on.

I almost always have my cell phone on me, except for when I'm out with the hubs and he has his. But not tonight, on Halloween. And of course, I would pay for it.

I made it about two miles from the campus when my little exclamation point alert light comes on. I freak out, check out my dashboard, and see that my engine temperature gauge is reading all the way in the red.

Visions of my car overheating pop into my head. They resemble something like this:

If you remember, I don't have my cell phone on me.

I pull into the parking lot of a nearby middle school that's pretty much abandoned. Of course, because it's after school hours. I walk over to one door of the school and knock, seeing someone on the far end of the hall. They don't notice me, so I run around the building to another door. He sees me and opens the door. I swear I thought the guy was a janitor based on the way he was dressed, but lo, he was a teacher. He lets me use the school phone to call my husband.  

Of course, Dave is having phone trouble of his own in that he's barely able to get signal in our house which usually has fantastic signal.

It's about 5:15. My class begins at 5:30.

Dave agrees to see about a tow truck or some other way of moving my car that night. Luckily (my only luck of the night), the middle school teacher says he can take me to campus. I go grab my stuff about my car and meet him at his car.

He's dressed in a warm hat, a coat, and fingerless gloves. He kinda looks homeless, but I don't say anything about the outfit or the fact that it's 65 degrees outside.

I'm wearing short sleeves.

But whatev, he gives me a ride, so I'm happy to walk into my class at 5:35.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully. I get a ride home from my father-in-law, who lives nearby, and all is good. We hope my car won't cost much to repair. Dave tried to find my phone but had no luck. I try again when I get home and can't find it either.

The next morning, I finally find my phone. In my school bag. Which I had with me the whole time.

Insert face-to-desk here.

So that was my Halloween. One frustration after another. Things have been rather low-key after that - my car just had a broken thermometer - and kiddo went down easy for a nap on Tuesday. Today, he had to poop again, so he went down an hour later. I'm actually eager for the time change so it'll also change his poop schedule!

...

Okay, there was way too much talk of poop in this post. And no cute pictures of my kid. I'll rectify that tomorrow.

I can do this... right?

My senior year of college, I decided to do National Novel Writing Month, which is where you try to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I actually completed my novel that year - well, novella - with a few thousand words to spare. I've tried a couple times since then but haven't had any luck. NaNoWriMo was definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I'm a student, teacher, mother, and wife now, so I really don't think I could do it this year. Maybe later, once my kid is older. (Yeah, right!) But I discovered an alternative November writing challenge that I thought sounded fun but more doable.

Enter NaBloPoMo.

NaBloPoMo is a daily writing challenge: publish a blog post every day for the month of November. Why not, right?

In the name of blogging more, I'm going to accept this challenge. One thing I really want to do is include a pic of my kid each day. I know this first blog post is awfully boring, so here's a pic of G.

I'm standin' in mah bucket!