Months 8 and 9

Once again I'm combining two months of your life into one post for one reason -- laziness. OK. That isn't the only reason, I've been extremely busy raising you and working and trying to balance life with my spouse, dog, friends and self. So your mamma isn't as lazy as you may think. She's just overwhelmed and considering we're now one week into month 10, I better get this up fast before the post turns into Months 8 through XX.

Every day you are becoming more cute! First you melted our hearts with your version of a kiss. After we bombard you with kisses, you'll turn to us, opened mouth, and basically plant our cheek, nose, eye, forehead or shoulder directly into your mouth. Once firmly attached, you'll either lick us or blow raspberries or both. I end up laughing so hard that the mung seeping out of your mouth doesn't even phase me.

Another cute trait is fish-face. You made this face one day as I was feeding you some solid foods and in turn I fish-faced you back, which highly entertained you. There is a catch to fish-face, you don't make it outside of feeding time. Makes me wonder if your tastes buds are developing correctly because oatmeal shouldn't have a sour taste.

Your dad and I are also extremely proud of your ability to crawl. This took a lot of persistence on our part because you were and still are adverse to the idea. I believe you think it slows you down, which it does because we're not holding your hands as you take giant leaps down the hallway. To appease us, you will crawl towards other objects that give you leverage to pull yourself into an upright position. We don't care. You're crawling. Even if you complaining about it the entire time you move from point A to B. As soon as you realize you have to crawl, you begin spewing forth a list of syllables that are interpreted as your extreme displeasure in this activity. It's as if crawling is slowly killing your soul and if you don't stand up RIGHT NOW you're liable to sink into the ground, never to be seen from again. It's a bit dramatic, but we're also learning that you like the drama. And that scares us.

Oh yes, your tantrums leave much to be desired. Especially when it's time to go to bed. Good grief, if nothing will kill us, that will. Just when we believed we were making progress towards getting you into bed and remaining in bed, you decided to shake things up and either take an extra hour (or 3) to fall asleep and get up no less than 2 times during the night. For a child who loves sleep, you really do put up a good fight and I think I figured out why. It has nothing to do with how full your tummy is, but has everything to do with how much energy you've expended during the day. I like to think I'm doing a good job wearing you out, but the weather over the past few weeks has been brutal, so outside excursions have been cut to a bare minimum. Luckily, we met a little girl -- who is your age -- and she has introduced you to the world of bouncers. Oh Maia praise the bouncer!!

During one of your play dates, you tried out her bouncer and went to town and back and back again. I don't know why your dad and I never thought about getting you one of these earlier in your infant months. After relaying to dadda your adventures in the bouncer we were both set on buying on for you. Since I am trying to penny-pinch, I went through EBay. We got a good deal, but now your parents are like kids waiting for Christmas because the bouncer is coming via regular-mail and can take up to 14 days and we have a deep-rooted fear that our need to save a penny or 8000 might lead to us receiving the bouncer after your need to bounce has passed. I'll be clicking my heels morning, noon and night in hopes that isn't the case.

On another good note, your stranger anxiety is 90% gone. YAY!! This means we can go out and you won't cry as soon as someone says "hello"... no wait, I take that back. It means you won't cry if someone walks into your breathing space. Now, you'll look at strangers with interest and if they say 'Hello' you'll observe their gesture, take a few breathes and continue on with whatever goes on in that head of yours. You don't know how excited this makes me because it has led to successful play dates and outings to events tailored for YOU!! Now if we can only work on moving your nap schedule back a few hours so that you're awake for these play dates more then once a month we'll be golden.

5 Seconds and Counting

My dog loves to mark his territory. And when I say 'love' I mean his passion is so ingrained into his being that he could be running on 'E' and still lift that leg in hopes that one microscopic droplet escapes. Damn if any other dog or wildlife will think they are alpha in these here parts!

Because of this deep love of his, I can not go running with him. Talk about annoying. Every couple of feet he'll stop to sniff and mark. Or just when I think we're moving at a good clip I suddenly am thrown back because he decided to turn around and investigate an area we passed minutes ago. This frustration doesn't just reside with me either. Apparently my little girl doesn't enjoy his need to mark -- and that's because she constantly needs to be moving (wonder where she got that trait from). Now since I don't want to completely deprive Ollie of his passion, I devised a system that seems to make everyone happy.

If Ollie appears to be lingering over a particular spot, unsure as to whether he should actually mark it, I begin to countdown "5...4...3...2...1". If I reach '1', he receives the "Ollie COME!" command with a yank on his lead. Luckily Ollie picked up on this system relatively quickly. So now when I begin counting down, I'll get as far as '3' before he does a quick lift and squirt and trots on ahead.

Yes, it's absolutely ridiculous that I have to do this, but it keeps us all sane and in a way keeps Ollie in check too. Of course it also provides me with a good laugh and just increases my insanity factor with the neighbors. YAY!