Gardens and Crawling

Colten with two of his little girl friends, Isla and Nala, at our garden exchange

Ahhh. It's Sunday afternoon, and I just finished cleaning up from our latest garden exchange today. If you don't already know it, I started a garden exchange here in Carpinteria...it's really nothing very orginal; I copied the format of the exchanges happening in Santa Barbara. Basically, people come to our house, bring stuff from their gardens, and take stuff that other people have brought. It's been really fun meeting people in our community and getting inspired to grow things. I just made a sparkling mint lemonade from the lemons in our backyard and some mint that someone brought. Yum.

Colten is sitting on the floor here in the dining room as I type. He's playing with a green sharpie pen that he's banging on the floor and hitting against the legs of the dining room chairs. He is FINALLY crawling. And pulling himself up to stand! I'm really liking the crawling...today he followed me all over the house while I was vaccuming - no more crying when I walk out of the room. He does, however, cry EVERY single time I attempt to change his diaper. Like he's being tortured. I don't know what's up with that, but everyone comes out ok in the end. He's really into food right now. He'll eat anything, and he actually begs if someone is eating near him. Then when he gets a bite, he makes a loud "Mmmmm." He's got all four of his upper teeth in now, along with his bottom two. We went through a rough patch there while those top ones were coming through; Colten and I took some midnight strolls through the neighborhood to get through some of the tougher nights. But all's well now. Colten is now standing next to me happily chewing on some string cheese.

Colten started saying "papa" just a week or two ago - and it made Tim tear up. Now that he's more mobile, I've noticed that he's not so into the words. He sort of says "bird" (more like "brrr") and "cat" ("a-ta") and "dog" ("da"). He's been saying "mama" for a while now. Every day is so fun with him. He's super goofy, and it's so fun to see his little personality developing.

In a couple of weeks we're taking our first big road trip all together -- going to visit our friend Becky and her husband Chris in Wyoming. Yay! We can't wait. Tim's been working on our little camper, making sure the door locks and fixing the big hole in the side (yeah, it's super old). I don't know what got into Tim this weekend, but he's suddenly turned into mister handy man. He even got up early yesterday and cleaned the living room. What?! I'll take it!

Hmmm...I think I smell poo. More soon.

Easter pics and some 10th month thoughts

This is from Easter - we visited Tim's family in Delano

The four new cousins: DJ-2mths, Colten-9mths, Isa-11mths, and Roman-4mths.

With the Grandmas (all sisters).

The boys share a great grandmother (we couldn't get her to take a photo).

When Colten was first born, every hour was so momentous that we counted his age in days and weeks. Now he'll be ten months old tomorrow, and I seriously can't figure out where the last eight weeks went. In just two months, we'll be celebrating his first birthday! Crazy. In fact, Colten will actually be attending his first baby birthday party this Sunday at the zoo. I'm not able to go, but Tim's really excited (he loves the zoo). Most of the babies in our Mamatoto group are right around Colten's age, so we're coming up on party season here...Colten is going to have quite a full schedule this summer.

The three questions that I get the most these days are: Is he walking yet? What's he eating? And is he sleeping through the night? So let me tell you. No, Colten's not walking; not even a little bit. He's really not even crawling, if you want to get technical about it. I think he has the ability, just not the drive. I will say, though, that he's doing some other pretty spectacular stuff, like clapping, waving goodbye, mimicing our facial expressions, and beginning to say words like "mama" and "bird." One developmental thing at a time, please.

Now on to the eating. This kid eats like nothing I've ever seen before. He'll eat anything. Today he ate oatmeal with cinnamon and yogurt, a strawberry, some rice cereal and a few Cheerios, part of a croissant I was eating, some chicken out of my sandwich, at least an entire avocado, part of a banana, some watermelon, and a few forkfulls of rice and beans from my Mexican dinner. He's also still nursing two to three times a day and at night. He must be headed for a growth spurt or something.

Sleeping through the night? I don't know - do you sleep through the night? For some reason this is such a difficult question to answer. He usually falls asleep around 9pm and wakes up in the morning at 7:30am. He stirs and nurses throughout the night, but nothing that actually gets Tim or I out of bed. So, sure, he sleeps through the night. We're pretty stoked on the whole situation.

So, in general, things are good. Tim and I just freakin' adore this little guy. It's the best!

8 Months!

About two minutes after this picture was taken,

he fell asleep.

And about two minutes after this picture was taken,
he lost his red cap, never to be seen again.

At the zoo


swinging!

Ah, back to the blog. It's been awhile...Colten is 8 months old now and becoming more mobile every day. He's not exactly crawling yet - just wiggling and squirming and climbing and rolling a whole lot. He's incredibly grabby right now and we're constantly being pinched, bitten, head butted, and getting our hair pulled. He also has a tendency to knock over glasses full of liquid, fling bowls full of food, and pull over any potted plant that he can get his little mitts on. We're expecting horns to sprout out of his head any day now. He can be very sweet though...especially when he's asleep. And we're lucky he's a good sleeper.

We just had a pretty fun little family weekend together. We've been noticing that Colten loves to watch other kids, so on Saturday we took him to the park for the first time. Mainly he just checked out all the big kids running around and playing, but he also got to try the swing and go down the slide. It was pretty cute. Then we took him to the zoo and let him look at animals. It's hard to tell what he thought of everything. He fell asleep pretty quickly. On Sunday we went for a hike and Tim wore him in our big Kelty pack (a hand-me-down from our friend June!) for the first time. And then in the afternoon we took him to the beach and let him play in the sand. I love that he gets to grow up here, where being outside is just part of how we live.

Tim and Colten and I took a walk when Tim came home for lunch yesterday, and we were talking about how we couldn't imagine anything else we'd rather be doing at that moment than just walking on a sunny day in Carp, pushing the baby in the stroller. And how, just maybe, that's the real meaning of success.

A whole lot of nothing

This is this evening's sunset - that's me on the right, walking with Keri and Chemise (I'm wearing the baby)

Cute, yes?

His poor little bum looks sunburned or something in this picture...but, trust me, it's not really

Colten's asleep on my shoulder as I type this, so please forgive me if there are more typographical errors than usual. I don't have a whole lot to say...I just have a moment in front of the computer; so here I go.

For all my friends and family in the cold states, I hate to tell you this, but we have been experiencing the absolute most beautifully warm weather the past few days. My body actually hurts from all the walks our roommate keeps making me take with her each evening. The sunsets have been amazing, as you can see.

Other than to brag about the weather, all I have to say is that Colten is the cutest darn kid ever. EVER. I understand that now...how parents all think their kid is the cutest...but mine really is. Tim and I literally just sit around and say things like, "wow, that kid is cute," and "seriously, have you ever since such a cute kid?" So next time you see me, you can humor me and say, yes Jessica, your kid is very cute; even if you don't really think so (but seriously, how could you not?!). But I'll stop with the cute talk...I realize that this is an annoying train of thought.

So anyways, it's January, it's beautiful, Colten is 6 and a half months old, Tim's busy at work, I'm busy everywhere, and that's all I've got for today.

A short tail

I just feel the need to share this. The other morning I woke up groggy after a not-so-good night's sleep, and I went into the kitchen to make myself some tea. I turned on the burner to heat the water, then Tobey the Cat started meowing at me like crazy to feed him. So I put some cat food in a bowl and set it on the butcher block next to the stove for him to eat. Yeah, not such a good idea. In case you don't know it, cats + stoves = bad news. Yep, I set the cat's tail on fire.