Happy? Halloween

It was hot here today. In the 80s. Not necessarily fleece weather...

Once he got over the fact that he had something on his head he couldn't get off, we did go to two neighbors to get a little use out of the costume. He got a nerds box to shake (not to eat). I did give him a few bites of a butterfinger to celebrate Halloween. Daddy wasn't so sure about it, but Dean was!

Just one of the boys

Three generations of Bras(s) boys.
They are definitely related. I think Dean's inherited the cheeks.
They're all so cute.

The Dreaded 1 year Check up

Well, we just got home from the dreaded 1 year check up. I put it off a week because Grandma and Grandpa were here last week for his birthday, and I didn't want him all feverish from the shots while they were here.

He's ahead of schedule in his motor development. He was really well behaved and was showing off his walking skills on the table. This was the quickest visit we've had yet. In and out in 1/2 hour. Despite the fact that he had more shots (4 total), he actually stopped crying much quicker. He loved the bubble gum flavored tylenol and happily sucked on the little push dropper thing all the way home. Hopefully he doesn't get too achy, cranky or feverish with the MMR and chicken pox shots.

Here is a comparison from his 9 mo. to 12 mo. check ups.
9 month stats:
Weight at 9 mo.: 18 lbs 6 oz (11%)
Length at 9 mo.: 28.5 in. (48%)
Head circumference at 9 mo.: 17 3/4 in. (36%)

12 month stats:
Weight at 12 mo.: 19 lbs 8 oz (6%)
Length at 12 mo.: 30.25 in. (60%)
Head circ. at 12 mo.: 18 in. (27%)

So, she kept saying how most breast fed babies slow down in weight gain around this time, especially after weaning, and that's she's not too worried (though it used to really worry her until she noticed all breast fed babies were the same). She said I should try and work in high fat foods such as avocados (it is one of the few foods he HATES) and milk. He's not really taken a liking to the milk much the few times I've given it to him (except after the spicy ramen), but maybe I'll put a scant scoop of Isagenix chocolate mix in it when I really try and wean. He LOVES Isagenix shakes. I would have no reservations about weaning if I could wean him to Isagenix.

I think that there ought to be 2 growth scales until about age 2. One for formula fed babies and one for breast fed babies. He doesn't look scrawny to me, just lean, and he's happy and as healthy as can be.

I mean, just look at this video:


This a small glimpse at what he's like now-a-days:

• Quite a happy little fellow. I just can't resist his giggles when I'm tickling him. Charms the pants off people when we're in public.
  
• Just the last few days he has been putting his head down into the somersault position. I'll help him do one and he thinks it's great fun.
• He loved the Tonka dump truck he got for his birthday. He likes loading it up full and dumping it all out.
• He likes to push the cart at the grocery store and will only stay in his seat if I'm feeding him snacks.
  
• He's fascinated with wheels, trash cans, and the fire place! Just today he pulled out a rotten banana from the trash, ripped the top off and started eating it. I knew he was into something when I heard "mmmmm. mmmm." (the yum sound) from the kitchen.
• He likes to open and close doors and lids.
• He tries to plug back in all the plugs he takes out (usually the phone. So if you call and it just rings incessantly, it's probably because the phone's unplugged).
• Teeth number 9 and 10 are so close to popping through the skin on his bottom left!
• While the grandparents were here, we discovered that he loves pretzels, apples, and grapes. He went crazy for grandma's grapes. (Yes, I cut them all in halves or thirds!)
• Still taking 2 naps. Usually around 9 and 1. Still sleeping about 12 hours at night.
• Loves water, Isagenix shakes, and juice (the rare times I give it to him). Doesn't care much for whole milk by itself.
• Eats 3 meals a day and snacks. Usually something like oatmeal (real oatmeal...I make some for me and give him part) with yogurt or applesauce mixed in, or cottage cheese, or buttered toast and 1/2 a yogurt for breakfast. Lunch and dinner he eats something like a half of a bean burrito (or just the beans and cheese) and some sort of fruit or sweet potatoes or toast with a cheese stick and green beans. He eats puffs, crackers, pretzels, and raisins as snacks during the day.
• He still breastfeeds before both his naps and when he wakes up and goes to bed for the night.
  
• I've only tried giving him little bits of chicken twice. Both times he didn't like it. I'll try meat again in a little bit.
• When we're in the car he waves to us in his mirror. It's so cute. Often a double handed wave.
• He always asks for music when we're eating in the kitchen.
• He's much better at entertaining himself, except when I'm trying to cook. He can't stand me ignoring him when we're in the kitchen. He'll hold onto my leg the whole time and try and follow me while complaining every step I make.
• He is quite good at walking now. He can stand up on his own now without holding onto anything. He's an explorer.
  
• All personality.
  

Baby Gifts Tutorial

These were three of my favorite (and most used) presents I received when I had Dean. I just looked at the gifts given to me and tried to figure out a way to recreate them myself. I don't have any "patterns". I can't even tell you if it's the "right" way to do these. I've made 3 sets of these now, and they seem to work fine the way I'm doing them. Hopefully the directions are easy enough to follow. I almost hate to call this a tutorial because it's just cutting and sewing (somewhat) straight lines...

For a matching blanket, 2 burp rags, and a tag blanket you will need total:
2 pieces of coordinating flannel fabric each 1 1/2 yards (Here are some combos in my stash)

2 new pre-fold cloth diapers (can just get these from any mega mart. While Gerber cloth diapers aren't good for diapers, they're just fine for burp rags.)
4-5 types of ribbon, different widths and colors to match the fabric
Small piece of low loft batting (about the size of a notebook or a little larger)
Safety pins or straight pins

Handy but not essential items:
Rotary cutter
Self-Healing cutting mat

Big enough to wrap baby Blanket

1. Cut the two pieces of fabric to 1 1/4 yards.
2. Pin front side of fabric together.
3. Sew all sides together with a straight stitch leaving a small opening on the last side. I usually use 5/8 in. seam because I never can get the 2 fabrics exactly the same size. That allows for some errors in cutting. I'm sure you can use a smaller seam size, though.
4. Flip right side out and hand stitch the opening closed with a slip stitch.
5. Iron the seams flat and do a decorative stitch for a "binding". (I use a squiggle stitch because it's more forgiving than some if you're not even with your pedal and not a super straight seamstress.)
   

You're done! Because there's no batting you don't have to tie or anything.

Matching Burp Rags
Take two cloth diapers. Cut two rectangles of the left over fabric a little wider and slightly shorter than the middle padded strip of the diapers. Pin onto the diaper. Sew with a tight zig zag stitch and essentially applique the fabric on.

Tag blanket
Cut the remaining coordinating fabric into rectangles a little larger than a note book
Cut the various sized and patterned ribbons into 3 inch strips. (I used about 4 ribbon pieces of 5-6 types of ribbon. How close you want them and how big your square is will affect the exact number.)
Cut a piece of low-loft batting slightly smaller than the fabric.

On the patterned side of one of the fabrics, evenly space the pre-cut ribbons. Fold them in half and safety pin them to the right side of the fabric. The edge of the ribbon will be on the edge or the fabric. (You can use straight pins, but they're a big pain when you have to flip it right side out. Trust me.)

Place the coordinating piece of fabric on top of the ribbon pinned fabric, right side in.

Pin the batting on top. (I didn't have a full piece of batting this last time I made it, so I sewed some scraps I had together...)

Sew a straight stitch around the perimeter, leaving an opening on the last side to flip right side out. I almost always have to hand sew 1 ribbon when I slip stitch it closed.

Unpin all the safety pins. Do the same stitch as the blanket to make the binding.

Because this has batting, it needs some sort of "tie." I put my zig zag setting on the smallest and tightest stitch for this. I just do little "beads" of as short front and reverse stitch, stitching randomly spaced around the blanket.

Tie together all cutesy like and you have a nice gift for a baby shower!

The year in review: Happy Birthday Dean!!

It's a tradition in my family for my mom to tell the birth story at our birthday dinners. Since Dean ate his dinner of sweet potatoes before we ate our dinner, I didn't get to tell him his. So I'll settle by telling you. (And maybe, just maybe, he'll read it later.) I'll tell the condensed version. For the long version, you can click here.

I wasn't sure if I'd peed my pants or if it was my water breaking, but it really was just my water breaking. It broke at midnight on the 23rd.

I held out on getting an epidural until 9 am when Matt went for breakfast. Yeah, that meant I'd been in labor for 9 hours already.

By about 4 pm my epidural started wearing off and I could feel a lot of pressure. I was dilated to a 10.

TWO HOURS LATER!! The doctor (not mine) and nurses walked in and said, "Let have this baby!"

About 15 minutes later I was pushing, crying and hyperventilating (pretty much just totally freaking out because everything felt very wrong) and I heard the dr. yell "I see molding! The heart rate is dropping! Get [Dr.]Allen or [Dr.] Halderman here RIGHT NOW!" About 15 min. later my Dr. came. They let me try and push once more, but his heart rate fell again.

They rushed me to the Operating Room and gave me drugs. I could still feel them cutting on me. They gave me more drugs and I started to get real loopy. Next thing I knew I could barely open my eyes, my body was totally convulsing and shaking, and they were holding up this little guy: (6:45 PM, after 18 hours of labor and an emergency C-section)



Poor thing. His head got stuck and I just wasn't big enough for him to get through naturally. Luckily babies' heads are quite resilient and he looked like this the next time I saw him:

Phew! No cone head baby for me...

October 2007

November 2007

December 2007

January 2008

February 2008

March 2008

April 2008

May 2008

June 2008

July 2008

August 2008

September 2008

October 2008

October 23, 2008



Happy first birthday Dean!

I'm pretty sure you liked your pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting.

(Even though Daddy made me write out ugly words on my cute orange cake.)

We were glad Grandma and Grandpa were here to celebrate!
(Even though you were TOTALLY freaked out by grandpa the first half of the day. I mean, that was pure terror I saw in your eyes and heard in your cries. Luckily you got over it...mostly.)

Here's a video of him eating sugar for the first time.
(Well, kind of...he's had very small tastes here and there.)

Busy as a buzzzzy bee

Well, I've been quite busy lately with projects, so I haven't really felt like posting much. I've even had stuff to blog about. I hate when I do this, but I'll do mini blurbs about what's been going on, just for journaling's sake.

Lump in my neck
Well, about 3 weeks ago I noticed a hard mass in the back of my neck. It was about the size of a marble. I was not very worried, but decided it would be foolish not to go to the doctor. What an ordeal trying to find a doctor! I had to call about 6 family practice doctors before I could find one that was taking new patients.

She decided that it most likely was an infected lymph node, even though I hadn't been sick myself. She prescribed me antibiotics to take 2 times a day for 10 days. In 3 weeks (tomorrow) I was supposed to check back in to make sure it had gone down. It pretty much has, but it's still a very slight bump. I'm sure she'll give me a clean bill of health tomorrow.

Aside: While I was there I asked her if I should be concerned about my lower back hurting quite a bit. I've had back problems off and on since my last couple weeks of pregnancy (with Dean...I'm not currently pregnant). I was TOTALLY unimpressed by her response. She said, "Yep. You and every other mother. Well, you can take Motrin while you're nursing." I don't want to cover up the pain! I want to find and fix the root problem!! I've tried to do yoga more and it's seeming to help some. Enough that I've decided to put off finding a chiropractor.

Side effects
I did not have a pleasant time while on the antibiotics. It made me nauseous and gave me diarrhea for almost 2 weeks. Because the good bacteria in me was killed right along with the bad, I also got one of the worst yeast infections I've had (bad enough to go to the doctor about it!), and this morning my OB-Gyn called and said the other test results came back. I not only had a yeast infection, but I have vaginitis and a bladder infection. I'll tell you what, I hate taking medicine. Especially the kind that gives me other problems!

Baby Gifts
Last week I realized one of my friends would be having her baby any day and I hadn't made her anything yet! So, I pulled out some fabric that I bought well over a year ago (since I thought it was so cute and knew I'd be able to use it down the road) and made a few of my favorite baby gifts. I made a big flannel wrapping blanket, a tag blanket, and some matching burp cloths. I was going to do a tutorial on how to make these, but I probably won't unless someone really wants me to. So, if you do, just leave me a comment and I will.

Painting
When Matt was out of town for work, I decided it was the perfect time to paint our dresser. We got our dresser from the previous tenents of the last apt. we lived in in UT (unbeknownst to them). They had left it on the side walk to be collected with trash. We didn't have one and claimed it. It was a little beat up, but still functional. The white paint was chipped and there were a couple dents in the wood here and there. So, after two years of putting up with an ugly white dresser, I painted it green. I still have to paint the knobs and nice white, but it's close to done.

Quilting
I get a newsletter from a local quilt shop emailed to me, and in a recent one I saw a really cute Christmas craft book. It's called 12 days of Christmas: Heart to Art. I have been in a fabric mood since I made the fabric basket, so I splurged and got it. I love all the projects in it! (Probably should have checked amazon before I went since it was like $7 cheaper! Oh well..I'm supporting small, local business...) I'm first making numbers for a count down to Christmas. This past week has been spent in fabric selection (SO HARD!!!), cutting, sewing and adhering. The next week will be spent blanket stitching all the numbers. Matt says the colors aren't very Christmasy (despite the fact that they're red and green and the green one has Christmas trees on it...just the wrong red and green for him I guess), but I like it just fine. The colors and fabrics look better in person.

Setting the record straight on language acquisition
I decided I better write something about Dean's words. I previously wrote he knew a fair amount of words. Recently I've decided he doesn't actually know most of the words I thought he did. He's just pretty good at copying me, and he jabbers a lot. I am still fairly convinced he knows cracker, dada, and dog. He often sounds like he's saying "zik" or "gak" for music, "nk" for drink, "ungy" for hungry, and "yuck" for a number of things (such as the trash can and his diaper), but I'm not totally convinced he knows those words. I'm quite possibly that over excited mom who thinks her 1 year old is a genius.

He does understand more than he speaks. If I tell him to dance he starts moving his body. If I tell him to shake his toy, he will. He'll turn the light on and off on command (sometimes without looking at the switch. He'll just reach out his hand and feel around for it. It cracks me up.). When we're outside and he tries to put rocks in his mouth, I tell him to just toss it away. He usually does. (And then picks it up again and tries to eat it again.)

The Forager
Dean is what I consider a good eater. He'll eat large amounts of the things he really likes, and he'll eat about 5 or 6 bites of almost anything, even if he doesn't like it much (ie Spinach). The only thing he usually spits out immediately are cooked carrots. (I know, it's so weird since he'll eat rocks, sticks, and the bottom of shoes...but carrots, no thanks!) He'll even eat spicy things so long as they're not REALLY spicy. I normally try to not feed him junky food so he doesn't acquire a taste for it, but I'll occasionally let him have some Ramen since he had some of daddy's once and loved it. Last night I made him half a package. He ate ALL of it double handed so he could get it in his mouth more quickly. In addition to the noodles, he had 4 canned pear halves (don't worry, it was the no sugar added kind), and an adult sized handful of green beans! And then about 10 min. after I got him down, Matt found him opening the lid to our trash can and picking out the green beans on top (the ones that fell on the floor during dinner) and eating them too!! SICK. We have to keep an eye on that boy!

(His chin is red in the picture because he was eating spicy chili flavored ramen! He LOVED it, but was super happy when I gave him milk in a sippy (for the first time). He'd eat a bite and drink some milk and then repeat.

Politically incorrect guide to politics
I am always surprised at myself how politically charged I get during election time. While I was quilting last Friday I watched John Stossel on 20/20. It was called John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics. It was really, really informative and easy to follow. It was probably the best thing I've watched in relation to politics this year. It was a non-partisan look at the economy, the economic plans of the candidates, and some other governmental stuff. Search for it. I know you can see it online. It was totally worth watching, and I think everyone should see it.

The final debate

Well, this was an interesting one. I almost didn't watch it because I am sick of hearing the same things over and over without ever hearing anything of substance. I felt it was the most "real" of the 4 debates, and I have to say, I think Obama came out on top on this one. McCain seemed to be grasping at straws with the whole Ayers and Acorn links. I'm not sure why, but McCain seemed very...petty tonight. Obama seemed very even keeled and unruffled. He's a pretty smooth talker and I think much of the country is looking for that after Bush.

Obama's health care plan scares me. In theory it seems nice and fluffy. In practice it seems like much could go awry. I do think that many Americans would prefer it because it means less work and responsibility for individuals. I'd rather manage my own money, thank you.

I also have to say that when Palin joined McCain I was intrigued. She seemed like she could bring something new. But I have to say that I am less than impressed at this point. It's unfortunate. With the stock market crashing I think that McCain would have been better situated if he were matched with Romney. But he's not. It's unfortunate.

At this point I can't imagine anyone but Obama winning. It's [possibly] unfortunate. I'm mostly afraid that he is going to renig on his recent moderate leanings and be one of the furthest left Presidents we've had.

Okay. And since we're talking about politics, I have to say that I think this W. movie is so in poor taste. He is our President. Even if you don't agree with his politics, give him a little respect.

Shake your groove thang

Today when I turned on music at lunch, Dean BUSTED out dancing. Hand movements, body movements, leg movements. It really was the first time I thought, "Wow! He's really dancing!" By the time I got the camera he was done with his hand movements, so it's not the whole package, but it's still cute. His leg stomping is my favorite.

By my side

Here are a few of my early years compared with Dean. Scroll mouse over picture for approximate ages.