carrie's first pregnancy

Well, Ben finally finished his antibiotics for his ear infection, and he's 100% better! He's laughing like a normal kid again. We finally got around to dropping his crib mattress today, so now it's on the lowest setting. Such a big boy! He hasn't started pulling up yet, but we didn't want the first time to be in his crib, and have him topple out.

Other than that, he's doing great! We are scheduling his one year photos early, since we want to have the photos done for Christmas, and because we know it will run into the holiday season. So we scheduled them for the first weekend in December (only one month away!). We decided to go to a formal studio with a local photographer, to get something a little more professional for the portraits. We also hope to get a fun family photo at the same time, and hopefully use that for our Christmas cards :)

The holiday season is right around the corner... we are traveling to NY for Thanksgiving so that Ben can meet his uncle Mike for the first time, and then we'll be in Michigan for Christmas. But if my parents sell their house before the New Year, it will be interesting figuring out where me, Joe, Ben and Lily will be staying! It will all work out though, and should be fun to see Ben react to presents!

We are also planning Ben's first birthday party... not sure what weekend we will do it, and it will probably be just a small one with a few friends. My parents said they will come out, but we'll still probably just do something at home. I'll know more in a few weeks though!

For now, we're just enjoying him and the Fall weather!

10 months 1 week 3 days old

Posted by carrie at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments

Poor Benny... he reached 10 months yesterday, weighing in at 24 lbs (from our home scale)... and seemed like he was recovering nicely from his sickness last weekend (head cold, no fever, lots of mucus-goodness). But this morning Joe called me to tell me that Ben had not stopped crying for over an hour, which is TOTALLY not like Ben. So he dropped him off at daycare hoping after a nap he'd be fine... but nope, daycare called and said poor Benny was still inconsolable. So I left work to pick him up, and so far he seems to be ok. Daycare suggested possibly an ear infection, which would make sense from the sinus cold he had last weekend, coupled with the NEW TEETH he has coming in (two more on the bottom, for a total of EIGHT!). But he has no fever, and was playing nicely after we got home. Then he had a blow out (oh fun), and bad mom that I am, as he was rolling over on the changing table, I accidentally pinched his fingers in the drawer. So THAT spawned a whole new set of tears... but those were consoled in a few minutes. So I laid him in his crib, because he was WAY overtired... and as he was sucking his fingers he accidentally slit either his gums or his lip with the edge of one of his fingernails (hard to tell) and THAT then spawned another set of tears. This poor kid! So we took care of that, got him calmed down again... and now he's sleeping peacefully (finally) in his crib. I just hope this time he stays sleeping, and wakes up with his normal happy self. I'm lucky I had a light afternoon today and got to leave work, but I'm so sad he was so upset.

But yay on the teeth coming in :) And speaking of his rolling antics, he has now decided the changing table is the best place to play "betcha can't stop me from rolling" game and changing his diaper is next to impossible. I have to use my full body weight sometimes to pin him while he wiggles, and he giggles the whole time. He thinks it is hilarious! I can't help but laugh sometimes at his absurdness, and I know that will get me into trouble as he gets older and decides some other not-funny-to-mommy game is hysterical. How do you NOT laugh at that?

Anyway, here's hoping he gets better later today.. he has his follow up flu shot (yes, our whole family gets the flu shot, and will get the H1N1 shot when it's available) tomorrow morning. I would hate for him to still feel miserable and get a shot on top of everything else!

10 months 1 day old

Posted by carrie at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

Joe yelled at me for teaching him "no"... but I swear I didn't do it! He was in his highchair, and I tried to feed him some "pasta dinner" pureed food (I know, but it tastes better than it sounds, I tried it) ;) He started shaking his head back and forth, and I realized what he was doing. So I shook my head at him going "no-no-no" and he copied me! So I tried to get him to do it for the camera, but he only *slightly* does it:



Still cute ;) And when I think he actually KNOWS the word "no", I won't be making it such a fun game!

9 months 3 weeks 1 day old

Posted by carrie at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments

Well, we decided to try a new photo place, and since we were out at Babies R Us, we checked to see if they had any appointments available. We hated it. SO expensive, and only one good shot. We don't even get the digital copies. So I did a photo shoot at home, and got some great shots :) Now, we borrowed a sailor suit from another Mom, and unfortunately, on Ben it looks like a dress. So with the curls, he could pass for a little girl EASILY. *sigh* But he's still so darn cute, I snapped the photos anyway. Forgive me Ben, but can you blame me??? :)















Thinking about pulling up!! :)





For some reason, this effect really goes with the outfit :)



Ben giving me the "why did you do this to me" look





I also caught some photos of him in his highchair, and in his pumpkin outfit... appropriate for this month!















Cats haven't learned to stay away yet ;)







And we're done with photos... proof he isn't ALWAYS happy ;)

For Halloween, we hope to dress him up as a tiger, but we'll see what we can find. Not going to take him out trick or treating, but we might try to visit some family with him in costume :)

We also have two new teeth!! They are both on the upper jaw, right next to his already existing ones. This teething cycle has been MUCH better than his first, with no waking up at night, no super fussiness, etc... so here's hope the next ones come in without a hitch :)

He's babbling up a storm, and had us cracking up the other night as he went on a mini-tirade using all "na-na-NA-NA-NA-na-na-na-NA-NA!". I only wish I could understand what the heck he was ranting about :) Still not crawling, or pulling up... but I watch him in his crib as he gets up on his knees. Only time will tell if he actually gets those working! He can feed himself fairly well now, and gets better every day. He doesn't tolerate pureed foods as much... he'd rather eat the crunchy stuff to put those new teeth to use! :) So I'm working on finding more finger foods, other than the Gerber puffs and yogurt drops he devours. He likes wheat toast, and I plan on introducing chickpeas sometime soon... maybe some softened carrots, and a sweet potato. He didn't like the avocado, but I read that you need to introduce a food TEN TIMES before you give up that they really don't like it. So I definitely have a ways to go.

Hopefully I'll have more photos soon, and I'm working on getting his mini rants on video. Maybe some crawling soon?

9 months 3 weeks old

Posted by carrie at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments