Oatmeal, Peanut Butter, Banana and Frustration

Oh, it's been a frustrating week with Tommy and food! We dread every time Tommy asks for food because it's a guessing game as to what he'll eat this time. We try foods that he loves, but he turns his nose up at them. Or he'll eat three bites, throw it on the floor and ask for something else. Our patience has been running quite low. Not only that, but he's started throwing fits when he doesn't get his way--can't play with something or I won't let him put something in my mouth, he starts slapping and crying and banging his head on the floor. He's been sent to bed many times this week over these fits. Church was an exhausting nightmare today.

But on a more positive note, here's what we've learned this week:


Pull-ups are really fun!


Peanut butter is REALLY good! Straight out of the jar is best. If I try to put a pancake under it, he'll suck the peanut butter off and spit out the pancake.


This is the way we brush our teeth! He got his very own toothbrush this week and loves to use it every time we go to the bathroom to clean up after eating.


Gotta play with the water, too. What else is it there for?


And really, it's best if you watch yourself in the mirror because that's what Momma and Dadda do.


We got this wonderful toy from my sister Jen. It's amazing how many things we've found thrown down that top tube. It started with hair ties, bobby pins and hair clips. Lately it's progressed to bigger and better things though. Finger nail clippers, an apple core, and a rubber suction cup from his table top seat.


We've been in fly season for several weeks now, and thankfully, we're nearing the end of it. I'm not kidding when I say that three weeks ago we killed 20 flies a day in our house. The kill count dwindled down to 10 and then five a day. We've done our best to keep windows and doors closed, so now we're hovering around 2-3 a day. Tommy has a newfound love for the fly swatter though.


And oatmeal, on a completely unrelated note. He loves it! And the camera, hence the grin.


We eat a big bowl of oatmeal almost every day now. Takes several meals, but at least we know he'll eat it.


We went to the park last night and Tommy enjoyed it better than the last time we went.








He really liked the swing and held this position and expression for most of the time...


Until some girls got on the swing next to him and he had to watch them.


Oh, how this boy loves to spin!





It was fun watching him explore and play with things that he'd been to tender and scared to try before.






Mirrors are always a hit and he was really excited to find this one on the playground.


Don't know what he thought of the slide, because this is what his face looked like the whole time. He was too busy watching some other people in the park.


As we learned before, pull-ups are REALLY fun and exciting!






A lady offered to take a picture of the us. This is a better picture of the four of us than the one from last week:)


This is what happens when you try to feed your child, give him food and he squishes it and throws it on the floor without eating it. Shad got frustrated, picked the banana up from the floor and smeared it in Tommy's hair and on his face. Then gave the boy a bath.


Well, I'm burned out on a fussy child who doesn't get his way all the time...and I'm out of things to say.

Another Week...

Sounds pretty boring, but honestly, it's been relatively blase. Heck, I'm feeling VERY blase right now as I'm trying to make myself write this. We'll get through it though.

Tommy took his first 4 steps last Sunday (a week ago), walking to his Bumpa. We (Shad, his family and I) were all so thrilled and excited that we erupted into cheering and clapping, startling the little guy into tears. We toned it down to soft claps and cheers, and Tommy enjoyed that better and clapped with us. So Shad and I decided it was time to dig out some shoes for Tommy. When we went on our walk Monday, we put shoes on Tommy and held his hands to help him walk for the first block. He thought it was pretty awesome that he was wearing shoes and actually walking with us on our walk, but after a block (which is a LONG distance for such a little person), he got tired and sat down. We transferred him to his stroller and he asked to go see Nana. He was so excited to show off his cool big boy shoes and walking skills...though he didn't take any steps on his own all week until last night at their house again.

Tuesday night, Tommy really wanted to wear his shoes. So we helped him into them.


He kept lifting up his legs to check out the new shoe on his foot.


Then he took his shoe off to inspect it, and then beat it against his foot in an attempt to put it back on. He's a funny kid.


We've had a low-key week as far as our walking goes. It's been driving me nuts! My belly was really achy for a few days, and my right knee was giving me grief too, so I decided it was best to take it easy. I've discovered that 1) carrying Tommy around has been a cause of my belly aching (no pun intended), and 2) sitting around trying to let my body rest drives me nuts. I feel so useless and pent up. My tailbone area has also been achy and I've done a little bit of yoga to help just that one area...but that little bit of yoga has only increased my desire to do my full DVD program, but I don't think my knee is ready to handle that yet. Ugh!!

I got a couple books at the library last week...and returned them both this week hardly used, if used at all. One was Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals. I tried to crack that open one day, but really just didn't feel like reading it. Dad, disgustingly enough, that's the only Shaara book on our library shelves. I feel like every time I go to the library I end up leaving, shaking my head at how lacking it is. There are no travel books. They don't have The Crucible, or ANY book about the Salem witch trials, in fact. The Shakespeare section has only ONE book in it that is actually Shakespeare's plays--as opposed to scholars' analyses of his work. You wanna see what that ONE book looked like? Here it is:


It's the other book I returned. It's the full anthology of Shakespeare's plays. I did read a little in it. I tried to read Two Gentlemen of Verona, but honestly, it's just not one of Shakespeare's finer pieces of art. Aside from that, it's really hard to want to sit down and curl up with a book when the book is a monstrosity like that. Thus, it had to go back.

I think our only other bit of excitement this week was Shad getting a jury duty notice in the mail on Monday...from Arapahoe County. The funniest thing about that is that they didn't even send the notice to the last address we lived at in Denver and registered as voters. They sent it to our Greensview address. So that was Shad's main project this week--making sure that he got himself exempted from that so there wouldn't be a warrant out for his arrest for standing them up. Fun.

The aloe vera plant I got for Shad's birthday last year died on Thursday. Cause of death: over watering and an out-grown pot? Not really sure, but those are our theories. It was sad and unexpected; we really liked our funky plant.


We took an updated family picture this week. I've been wanting to get a picture with all of us (growing belly included). It didn't turn out too well, but here it is anyway. There are a few things that should help it work better for another try: not standing in so much sunlight, not using my phone as the camera, and not taking the picture after we get hot and sweaty on a late afternoon walk.


Well, time to get on with life...and making dinner.

We have SUCH a WEIRD KID!

Honestly, I don't know what got into Tommy this week, but he's been on a completely different setting and has been so unknown, unexpected and entertaining. I don't know where this child came from sometimes. But we love him.

On Tuesday after finishing our last time doing Levi's paper routes for him, Shad and I stopped by Larry and Treva Patterson's house to visit Treva. Treva is a less active member of the church and Larry is Shad's former boss and employer. They live just two blocks from us and we knew that Treva had participated in last Sunday's disc golf tournament, but we saw on the front page of the newspaper that she had taken 2nd place out of 22 participants. There was also a good sized picture of her on the cover, so we stopped by to make sure she had a copy since we had some extra papers. Larry ended up coming home as we were there, and I struck up a business proposition with him. His wife and daughter ate all the 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies he bought from me last week...that were intended for his employees. So I told Larry that if he looked at my dishwasher to figure out why it doesn't produce clean dishes for me (with already having tried switching detergents AND using a rinse aid), that I'd pay him in another batch of cookies. I know how Larry works with his business...he gets to a job when he gets to it, not necessarily when he says he will. So I was surprised when they rang my doorbell Wednesday morning at 9:30. Guess the guys really wanted their cookies:)

So I spent the day in the kitchen. I was already going to be baking 4 loaves of zucchini bread, so why not add in 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies? I was in the kitchen from 11-4 baking and cleaning. I also had to keep up with my laundry, Tommy and a "pregnant" Shad. (He gets all the sick, fatigued, etc pregnancy symptoms that I don't have this time:) I took a break to deliver the cookies, then get back to make dinner and finish setting my kitchen up for the Young Women to come over for our cake decorating activity. I had the intention to also clean my bathrooms and do yoga to ease my lower back pain, but my pregnant body told me that I'm not currently in the physical condition that would allow me to work a 15 hour bakery shift without stopping (something that I HAVE done before). I saved the bathrooms for another day, got a back rub and did do a couple minutes of yoga, which helped immensely. At the end of the day, I was beyond exhausted...and I stayed entirely out of the kitchen on Thursday.

Tommy, as before stated, has been quite the entertainer lately. Our new technique for eating and cleaning is to just not wear clothes and then sit in the sink to get washed off. Tommy thinks this is great, and even offers to clean the sink for me. (note the yellow scrub brush in his right hand)



He did such a good job, he thought he deserved ice cream. He's even in the process of saying "Mmmmmm!" in this picture!


We walked to the park for our evening walk on Thursday and stopped to sit on this wooden walkway (it had a bench). Shad and I had just put up a bathroom shelving unit in his parents' upstairs bathroom to surprise them a few minutes before they arrived home from Utah, and so there was a stud finder in the basket of Tommy's stroller. He helped himself to it, and almost seemed to know what he was doing as he used it. If you look closely in this picture, he does have the red light lit up.


But then confusion hit. He'd test out the tool in his hand, clicking the button a couple times to make sure it worked and was "on." Then he'd set it down on the wood and move it around, but not click the button. He'd get confused about why it wasn't working, and pick it up again to click the button once more. We laughed at him as he went through this pattern for several minutes. Here's a video to enjoy.



Friday morning, I was working in Tommy's room to get things a bit more organized with all the masses of toys and clothes we've inherited. By the way, anyone wanting to give Tommy anything for Christmas/birthday, I'm outlawing toys. Between two cousins, we've inherited plenty to keep us busy for quite a while at many different development stages. Talk to me first and I'll give you suggestions of what else might be acceptable...and not make me have to donate all the surplus to the thrift store. ANYWHO, as I was organizing, Tommy found the foam puzzle that Uncle Jimmy gave him for Christmas. We opened it and he just sat there holding the pieces and laughing at it. Here's a little bit of that:



In the afternoon, we found it necessary to entertain Tommy with his favorite thing to watch on youtube. Here's the Tommy video:



And here's the youtube video if anyone wants to see what he's rockin out to:
Electronic Music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHnd23xhBWE


In the evening, Tommy was driving himself...and us...nuts. We decided we needed to go visit his grandparents to save everybody's sanity. A block and a half en route, we passed a house that always has a momma cat and her 5 kittens hanging out in the yard. The kittens are probably between 8 and 10 weeks old now. The kittens decided it would be a great idea to follow us as we walked by their house. Not so much. Four of them followed us 3 blocks passed their house. Besides this being inconvenient in our attempt to get to Shad's parents' house (they're allergic), the kittens weren't just following us. They were scampering all over the road and ahead of us. I had to rescue one kitten from the road as a car (luckily) had seen it and was slowing to wait for it to move out of the way. Another kitten ran a block ahead of us to greet a riding lawn mower. Two others ran up to cut off a couple kids on their bikes and then try to climb a tree. In good conscience, I couldn't just let these kittens run around and get themselves killed because they followed me on my walk. Their mom did follow behind them, but there's nothing she can do to stop a car or lawnmower. I took me some effort, but I collected all four kittens in my arms and was determined to return them to their yard. Two jumped out right before Shad could snap this picture. They're playing under the Subaru and in the flowers behind me. I returned the two and their mom back to their house and the other two ended up finding their way home, too. I'm glad to know that they know where their home is, but I still couldn't let them just run amok like that on my conscience. Didn't wanna see dead kittens in the road on my next evening walk.

Saturday morning, Tommy patiently entertained himself in our bathroom while waiting for his turn to use the bathtub. It was sooooooooooo nice to open the shower curtain and see this. Why thank you, son, you're right-- I DID need to sweep and mop this floor.



And the happy little bug right after his bath:) You can actually see his bottom teeth in this picture! He does officially have four now, by the way.


We went to the Norton County Museum Saturday afternoon and Tommy wore his hat that our friend/neighbor Joe gave him.


We had the missionaries over for dinner Saturday night. Tommy was asleep when they arrived, but he's always sooooooooooo excited to come downstairs from a nap and see his friends at our house. On Saturday night, though, he just had a REALLY WEIRD way of showing it. This picture pretty much explains it all. He actually held this pose and face for me when he saw me pull out the camera for a picture. What a kid!


After dinner, we went to our new friends, Scott and Beverly's house for games. They have 3 young daughters--Madison, 5; MacKenzie, 2 1/2; Noelle, 14 months; and a son due Sept. 31. These girls ADORE Tommy. We've seen them twice and Tommy is still trying to figure out what to do with all this attention from little people. He did pretty well playing with them, coloring and eating chocolate animal crackers. He definitely let us know when it was time to go home for bed though.